cruised before the harbour: they battered the wall, and pulled down
part of it; but Himilco, the commander of the Carthaginians, withstood
them with the most unflinching steadfastness. A disposition to
treachery often showed itself among the troops of the Carthaginians;
for they scarcely ever employed their citizens as soldiers, but only
as officers, and some also in the cavalry; the main body therefore
consisted of mercenaries, so that it is the more to be wondered at that
the Carthaginians had distinguished generals. For this reason, they had
now much trouble to secure the attachment of these soldiers, who were
gathered together from all quarters, most of them being Greeks, Gauls
and Spaniards; they could scarcely manage them by any other means than
by the hope of gain. Hamilcar and Hannibal alone knew how to bind to
themselves even these mixed masses by their own personal qualities;
at all other times, these men were ready to commit every sort of
treachery for money. Into a plot of this kind some of them now entered
with the Roman consul; but an Achæan, Alexo, discovered it, and tried
to counteract it; and so the rest were gained over by promises and
sacrifices, and the traitors cast out. The Romans here, for the first
time, betook themselves to the Greek method of besieging: before the
Punic wars, there is nothing like a real siege, but only blockading
and storming.[7] They made great progress, and threw down six towers
(unless Polybius dates this circumstance too early). The Carthaginians
communicated with the besieged by means of a bold seaman, who in a
swift ship ventured to pass through the midst of the Roman fleet, and
repeated the same feat several times. They ascertained that without
speedy assistance, the town must be lost; and so they determined to
send ten thousand men to its relief, who, to the great dismay of the
Romans, made their way through their guardships. Just at first, the
Carthaginians made a sally, which indeed led to no advantage; but
soon afterwards, during a dreadful hurricane, they ventured upon a
new and successful attack with every possible sort of contrivance for
setting fire: as all the Roman machines were made of wood, they were
every one of them burnt. It was high time, as six towers had already
fallen (for to this period of the siege the notice in Polybius seems
in fact to belong). The Romans must have felt convinced that after the
loss of their battering engines, they could no longer do any harm to
the town by merely blockading it; they tried therefore to throw up a
mole across the entrance of the harbour. In this, however, they only
succeeded so far, as in some measure to obstruct the communication of
the Carthaginians with the town, which had hitherto been too free.
In the course of so long a war as this, some distinguished Carthaginian
generals had already been formed; but not a single one among the
Romans, whose advantage lay only in their troops. In 503, the Romans,
without the enemy’s being aware of it, received reinforcements under
the command of the consul P. Claudius, the son[8] of Ap. Claudius
Cæcus, who had all the faults of his father, but none of his great
qualities. He was a reckless, unprincipled man. On account of the
great expense, Rome seems to have confined herself to one army. It is
uncertain, whether Claudius had already come out as consul to Sicily
before the sally of Himilco, or only after it. The Roman fleet was
lying near Lilybæum, most of the vessels being drawn up on the strand,
while only single ships rode out at sea to keep up the blockade; the
sailors had been armed, and made to fight on shore. But infectious
diseases had broken out to some extent, as might be expected, the
small island of Sicily being quite exhausted by the war; many also had
perished in the engagements, so that seamen were scarce. To remedy this
defect, sailors were enlisted at Rome; they were, however, people of
the lowest rank, whose property was under four hundred _asses_, and who
had certainly never been at sea. Claudius now proposed in a council of
war, to make an attempt to surprise by sea the port of Drepana, where
the enemy’s fleet was stationed. The council, according to Polybius,
seems to have approved of it. This writer indeed is himself of opinion
that the undertaking was practicable; yet we can hardly believe it,
when we see that it was so easily foiled. Claudius then set sail
about midnight with the newly manned fleet; at the dawn of day, the
Carthaginians beheld from their watch-towers that part of the Roman
ships were already in the harbour. The fleet was sailing in a single
line along the coast. The Carthaginian general Adherbal knew that,
if he confined himself to the defence of the town, his ships in the
harbour would be in great danger of being taken; he therefore ordered
the ships to be quickly manned, and to sail out on the other side of
the haven. His object was, to drive the Romans quite into the harbour
along the coast, which was lined by the Carthaginian soldiers. The
Roman consul now gave the signal for retreat; but this, owing to the
narrow entrance of the harbour, occasioned the greatest confusion:
the thronging of the ships which turned back, and of those, which,
having received no counter order, were still coming in, was very great,
and they were severely damaged. Outside the harbour, they found the
Carthaginian fleet, which had better ships and better crews, already
drawn up; and these now advanced to attack the Romans. The consul then
placed his ships along the coast, with the πρύμνα towards the land,
in a long line; the Carthaginians, having behind them the open sea,
had the advantage of being able freely to manœuvre: it seems that the
Romans made no more use of the boarding-bridges. Ninety-three Roman
ships were taken, many were destroyed, not more than about thirty
reached Lilybæum: with them was the consul Claudius. He was recalled:
fierce reproaches were made against him that he was the cause of the
disaster; that he had impiously scorned the auspices; that the birds of
the augurs had refused to eat, and that thereupon he had ordered them
to be thrown into the sea. He had to appoint a dictator: in mockery he
named the son of a freedman, a client of his, one M. Claudius Glycia:
the name of the grandfather is not mentioned in the Fasti. Since the
curies had lost their power, it had become the right of the consul
to appoint a dictator; whereas formerly he merely proclaimed him. P.
Claudius was put on his trial: according to Polybius, and to judge from
an expression of Cicero’s, he was condemned to a severe punishment;
according to others, the _comitia_ were dispersed by a thunderstorm,
whereupon the matter was dropped, which seems to betoken the influence
of a powerful party. When he was already dead, his sister likewise
brought upon herself a severe punishment by her genuine Claudian
insolence. Annoyed by the crowd in a procession, in which she took
a part as a Vestal, she loudly exclaimed, it was a pity that her
brother was no more alive to get rid of some of the rabble at sea.
This also proves, that at that time the sailors were levied from the
_capite censi_. She was prosecuted for a _crimen majestatis_ before
the plebeian ædiles, and condemned to pay a heavy fine. The dictator
Claudius Glycia was of course induced by the senate and the people
to resign his dignity. The conduct of Claudius is quite in keeping
with the many acts of wanton insolence which were displayed by all
his family; they may be traced from the middle of the fourth century
down to the emperor Tiberius: the character for insolence is nearly
hereditary in them. Immediately afterwards, another misfortune befalls
the Romans. They had still kept up their spirits; for they already sent
again eight hundred ships with provisions to Lilybæum, without doubt
escorted by a considerable fleet, a proof of the importance of the
commerce in the Mediterranean; but the ships of war were not sufficient
to protect them. With this fleet the consul L. Junius sailed again
through the straits of Messina to Syracuse, as the commissariat was
chiefly dependent on the latter town; he there took in his full cargo,
and very imprudently sent part of the fleet with some ships of war in
advance. The Carthaginians under Carthalo put to sea to meet them, and
so frightened them, that they laid to in a very bad roadsted among
breakers, off the southern coast (between Agrigentum and Camarina),
so that even Carthalo shrank from attacking them. L. Junius was very
late before he set out from Syracuse, and when he found that Carthalo
was lying between him and the other convoy, he likewise went to a bad
roadsted. Then arose one of those terrific gales, which in Italy are
always southerly winds. The Carthaginians, experienced seamen as they
were, had the foresight to double Pachynus in time, and there they got
into a safe harbour; the Romans, on the contrary, were driven by the
Scirocco on the breakers off the coast, and were so completely wrecked
that not a plank of their ships remained serviceable; out of the whole
fleet, two ships only were saved. A great number of lives also were
lost; the consul escaped, and retreated with the survivors by land
towards Lilybæum. An opportunity now offered itself to him of doing
something after all, even of surprising Eryx, a town, which lay on the
slope of the mountain of the same name, at the top of which was the
temple of Venus as an Acropolis. He made himself master of the town by
means of bribery. This was the only advantage which the Romans gained
this year.
The Romans now gave up the sea, with the exception of a few ships, and
the war was hopeless for them: it required Roman perseverance, not to
despair altogether. No doubt it was also somewhat earlier than this
that the Carthaginians tried to get a loan from Ptolemy, 15,000,000
dollars, I believe; but he declared to them, that he would thus break
his neutrality. The Romans helped themselves in every possible way by
war-taxes; yet this struggle ate away their strength as well as that of
the Carthaginians.
Now appeared the great Hamilcar Barcas. Whether he sprang from a high
family, is unknown to us. Barcas, Barak (ברק), seems to mean lightning,
even as the Scipios in Lucretius are called _fulmina belli_: _Barka_ is
the Syriac form. He enters upon the stage at once. His undertakings are
not dazzling, he makes no conquests; but he retrieved the affairs of
Carthage in Sicily by his indefatigable activity (_unus illis restituit
rem_). Hamilcar, to my mind, is almost greater than his son; the whole
of history does not know another instance of a father and son who were
so eminently great in an art, as these two were: one must be born a
general as well as a painter, or indeed any other kind of artist. Had
Hamilcar guided the councils of the senate of Carthage earlier, the
war would have ended to the disadvantage of Rome. Hamilcar began his
career with an undertaking, which in boldness surpasses everything that
we know. Near Palermo is Hercte, a mountain of considerable extent;
from its name, there must have been there a state-prison; by its side
is a harbour which was quite sufficient for the wants of the ships of
war of those times. Here Hamilcar landed unexpectedly with a squadron;
gained possession of the height by surprise or treachery; established
himself in it, and remained in connexion with the fleet, which, at
every opportunity, devastated from thence the coast of Italy as far
as Cumæ, perhaps also with the intention of driving the allies into
defection. He was himself just returned from a foray into Bruttium
when he took up his position there, and he maintained himself, as
in a fortress; he got reinforcements from time to time, but as for
provisions, he had often barely enough to keep body and soul together.
By his appearance in the field, the attention of the Romans was turned
from the siege of Lilybæum. Battles were of daily occurrence; men
fought from sheer exasperation. At the end of three years, he managed
to get into communication with the town of Eryx, and made himself
master of it quite unexpectedly. The Romans, however, still held the
_arx_ on the top of the mountain; and he now encamped between it and
the town below, that by blockading the citadel, he might always give
the Romans plenty to do, and thus draw them away from Lilybæum and
Drepana, and wear them out. He fully attained his object; and so he
remained four years in this position, without the Romans making any
progress. This struggle shows what dogged resolution can do; and
therefore Polybius himself, who had much experience in war, expresses
the highest admiration for it. The communication with the sea was more
difficult here, than even at Hercte. Hamilcar found himself there
with an army of mercenary soldiers, hundreds of whom would certainly
have sold their father and mother for a hundred pieces of gold; but
such was the awe with which he inspired them, that not an attempt was
made to practise any treachery against him. He now carried on the war
in the most simple manner; Polybius says that it was not possible to
relate its history, on account of the sameness of the incidents; we
therefore know but very little of it. The engagements were often most
bloody; yet they never afforded any decisive advantage to the Romans,
not even when the Carthaginians were beaten. The newly discovered
fragments of Diodorus contain an interesting anecdote. The year before
the war was brought to a close, C. Fundanius, an obscure general, was
fighting against Hamilcar, whose troops suffered a defeat, owing to
the fault of Vodostor, a commander of the infantry. Hamilcar sought
for a truce, that he might fetch the dead bodies and bury them; but
the consul answered, that he ought rather to take care of the living,
and to capitulate to him. A very short time afterwards, the Romans in
their turn were soundly beaten; but Hamilcar told them, that as far as
he was concerned, they might freely take away their dead, as he made
war against the living only. This story, like others of the same kind,
is no doubt from Philinus, who always represents the Carthaginians as
generous.
The peculiar character of the war in Sicily impressed the Romans with
the conviction, that without an immense effort they would not be able
to bring it to an end. They therefore resolved upon building a third
fleet, and had recourse to a very remarkable way of raising a loan. The
property-tax, which had hitherto defrayed the expense of building the
fleet,--it was so much per thousand,--could no more be levied, because
the poor could not now pay it: it must until then have been a dreadful
burthen upon the people. The state may have in the meanwhile sold much
of the _ager publicus_; the cost besides of the administration of
the republic was almost nothing, and indeed the allies also may have
contributed much to the building of the former fleets. Of permanent
loans the ancients had no idea: once, in the second Punic war, we meet
with one which was more in the style of our own. The wealthy Romans
now undertook to build two hundred ships at their own expense, on
condition that the money was to be repaid to them should matters turn
out well. This implies that in the event of a failure they renounced
their claims. The fleet was built quite on a different plan from the
former ones; for the Romans had got hold near Lilybæum of a very
fine Carthaginian galley, and all the quinqueremes were constructed
after its model. These were manned with particular care from the best
sailors of all Italy; as marines, the best soldiers of the legions
were employed. This time also, the Romans made no more use of the
boarding-bridges. It is possible that the ships were better built owing
to the very circumstance of their having been taken in hand by private
individuals: all the public works were done by contract, and of course
the censor could not always have his eye upon the way in which they
were executed.
Upon the Carthaginians, the news of this building came quite
unexpectedly. They too had broken up their fleet on account of the
expense, and had confined themselves merely to what was strictly
necessary; nor had they at Carthage any notion of making extraordinary
sacrifices, as was done at Rome. They therefore equipped in all haste
what ships they had, in order to convey reinforcements and provisions
to Lilybæum, Drepana, and Eryx. These vessels, even those which were
ships of war, laden with corn, and manned with marines who were by no
means picked, arrived at the Ægatian islands, from whence they were to
cross over to the coast, along which the Roman fleet was then cruising.
The plan of the Carthaginians was, after having landed, to take in the
best troops of Hamilcar as marines, and then to risk a sea-fight. The
Roman fleet was under the command of the consul C. Lutatius Catulus,
and of the prætor Q. Valerius Falto. They also had their doubts. A
battle could not be avoided; it was therefore best to attack at once,
while the Carthaginian ships were still heavily laden. Corn, when it is
only pitched in loosely, and not put into sacks, is a very bad cargo,
as it shifts with every wind. If then these were allowed to land, they
would return with lightened ships, and with marines from Hamilcar’s
army who were not afraid of fighting the Romans; yet the true advantage
of the latter was indeed in the lightness of their galleys and the
excellence of their troops. There was only this objection, that the
Carthaginians had the wind in their favour, whilst the Romans would
have with great difficulty to bear up against them with their oars,--a
circumstance which among the ancients was very unfavourable in a
sea-fight, as a ship which was going against the wind, offered a much
greater surface to the stroke of the enemy. Hanno, the Carthaginian
general, tried to cross over with full sails, and perhaps also with
oars (the ancients had latteen sails); thus they came upon the Romans
with double force, and it seemed a great risk for the latter to accept
the battle. Nevertheless they did not shrink from it. The Carthaginians
were hardly able to move their ships, and the bad condition of their
troops gave the Romans such an advantage, that they won a complete
victory. Both had played their last stake, so that the Carthaginians
were ruined. The Romans took seventy of their ships, sank a number of
them, and scattered the rest.
It was impossible for the Carthaginians to provision their distressed
garrison, and still less could they quickly fit out a new fleet. They
therefore resolved to make peace, and, according to Polybius, chose
Hamilcar to negociate it. Sicily, of course, was to be ceded; two
thousand two hundred talents (3,300,000 dollars) were to be paid, and
all the Roman prisoners and deserters to be given up, while they should
have to ransom their own prisoners: the assent of the Roman people was
reserved. The demand that Hamilcar and his troops should lay down their
arms, and march out as prisoners of war, was indignantly rejected.
The Roman people insisted on an additional charge of a thousand
talents, these to be paid at once, and the two thousand two hundred by
instalments within ten years; and likewise on the cession of all the
islands between Sicily and Carthage, which shows that the Carthaginians
still held the Lipari isles. This was necessary, if a lasting peace was
to be concluded.
Thus ended this war of twenty-four years, which indeed gained Sicily
for the Romans, but turned it into a wilderness: the whole of the
western part of the island especially was laid desolate, and from
that time it has never recovered. There was yet, it is true, some
civilization left; Greek art still lingered there. The work of
devastation was completed in the second Punic war; in the Servile war,
the island was nothing but a dreary waste, and however wretched its
state is now,--the modern Sicilians, next to the Portuguese, rank the
lowest among the nations of Europe,--yet it was still more lonely and
desolate in the times of Verres. Under the Roman emperors, there was no
amendment: hence in the itineraries we find that the roads do not pass
by towns,--for these had perished,--but by farms. Thus dissolved into
large estates Sicily continues until the days of Gregory the Great,
when we may again have an insight into its condition from the letters
of that pontiff. The present population, in spite of its miserable
government, has risen nearly to the double of what it was: under Verres
it was below a million. It is as if the soil had lost all its heart and
fruitfulness. The small kingdom of Syracuse was an exception, owing to
the great wisdom with which it was ruled by Hiero.
SICILY A ROMAN PROVINCE. _PRÆTOR PEREGRINUS._ WAR WITH THE FALISCANS.
MUTINY OF THE MERCENARIES IN CARTHAGE. THE FIRST ILLYRIAN WAR. THE _LEX
FLAMINIA_ FOR THE DIVISION OF THE _AGER GALLICUS PICENUS_. WAR AGAINST
THE CISALPINE GAULS. THE SECOND ILLYRIAN WAR. THE CARTHAGINIANS FOUND
AN EMPIRE IN SPAIN.
After the peace, the Romans formed Sicily into a province. In a
province, a Roman commander, either still holding a curule office
or with a prolonged _imperium_, carried on the government, and had
the same power over the country as in times of war, by virtue of the
_lex de imperio_. It is a false notion, that in the provinces the
inhabitants had no right of ownership; they had indeed, though not
according to Roman, but according to provincial law. There were in the
provinces _civitates liberæ_, _civitates foederatæ_, and subjects.
The confederate states were treated like the Italian allies: some
of them had the land as their own, and paid taxes on it, sometimes
in proportion to the produce, and sometimes at a fixed rate; others
indeed lost their ownership in it, so that it might be disposed of by
the Roman republic; but retained the enjoyment of it on paying a rent.
This was done when the provinces rebelled again and again, and were
reconquered; and thus it came to pass that in several states the land
was almost entirely forfeited to the Roman republic, whilst in others
it was not so at all. This was not understood by the later writers,
as Theophilus, and even Gaius himself already. From that time, there
was generally a prætor and a quæstor in the province of Sicily. Hiero
remained independent as did the free cities in Italy, and likewise the
state of the Mamertines, Tauromenium, Centoripa, and other towns in the
interior.
The war was ruinous to the Romans, whom it impoverished, and
consequently to their morals also; for wounds like these do not always
heal after the return of peace. During a struggle of this kind,
contractors and the very dregs of the rabble grow rich, and the old
citizens become poor: the first Punic war is therefore one of the
first causes of the degeneracy of the Roman people. In the course of
this war, there must have been many changes of which we have few or no
records; we only know of some small matters. In the year of the city
506, as we have now been able to learn from Lydus _de Magistratibus_,
a second prætor was appointed, who was to administer the laws to
the _peregrini_. A great change had therefore taken place, that
foreigners were to have a _persona_ in Rome, instead of being obliged
to be represented by a citizen as formerly: in this we acknowledge
an important diminution of the spirit of faction. Suetonius says of
a Claudius, who without doubt belongs to the beginning of the first
Punic war, that he had resolved upon ruling Italy by means of the
clients: this is one of the proofs which show that the clientship had
a dangerous character, and how beneficial it was to dissolve that
connexion. Yet the prætor was not restricted to his civil jurisdiction;
Q. Valerius commanded the fleet besides, and another prætor we meet
with at a later period in Etruria. We also find in Livy by no means
in every year a prætor for the _peregrini_. The phrase _prætor
peregrinus_ is a barbarism; Livy, in the fourth decade, always uses a
circumlocution instead of it.[9]
Another great change from an accidental cause, is little noticed.
Dionysius says, that until the Φοινικὸς πόλεμος, the state had yearly
given fifty thousand drachmas for the public festivals. This was now
changed, and the Greek system of Liturgies was introduced, by which
rich men had to defray the cost of the festivals as a public burthen.
As the ædileship was the stepping-stone to higher offices, this measure
gave rise to an important political revolution. Polybius has not
remarked this. He finds fault with the Carthaginians for their practice
of selling offices, and sets the custom of the Romans in direct
contrast with theirs; yet it was then just the same at Rome. Fabricius,
and men like him, could now no longer have worked their way to high
office, without having to encounter the greatest difficulties.
In the nature of the senate, there was likewise a great change effected
shortly before the first Punic war. The senate had at first been a
representation of the people, and then of the curies; afterwards the
will of the censors was paramount in its selection, and this was a
blessing for the state. The composition of the Roman senate may perhaps
have been best about this time: on the other hand, this power was in
truth anomalous and dangerous, as the example of Ap. Claudius had
shown. But now the senate was indirectly chosen by the people for life.
The quæstors, of whom there had originally been two, then four, and now
eight, became the _seminarium senatus_: he who had been quæstor had
already the right _sententiam dicendi in senatu_, and might in case of
a vacancy at the next census, if there was no particular charge brought
against him, reckon with certainty upon getting into the senate. In
this way, the senate was then changed into a sort of elective council;
only the expulsion of unworthy members still belonged to the province
of the censor. Still more completely was the senate chosen by the
people in the seventh century, when the tribunes of the people also got
into it.