WARS IN THE WEST. THE GALLIC, LIGURIAN, AND SPANISH WARS. B.C. 200-175.
While the Roman legions in the East were acquiring wealth and winning
easy conquests, their less fortunate comrades in the West were carrying
on a severe struggle with the warlike Gauls, Ligurians, and Spaniards.
The Romans had hardly concluded the Second Punic War when they received
intelligence that Hamilcar, a Carthaginian officer, had excited several
tribes in Northern Italy to take up arms against Rome. These were the
Gauls on both sides of the Po, and the Ligurians, a race of hardy
mountaineers, inhabiting the upper Apennines and the Maritime Alps. They
commenced the war in B.C. 200 by the capture and destruction of the
Roman colony of Placentia, and by laying siege to that of Cremona, the
two strong-holds of the Roman dominion in Northern Italy. The Romans now
set themselves to work, with the characteristic stubbornness of their
nation, to subdue thoroughly these tribes. The Insubres and the
Cenomani, to the north of the Po, were the first to yield; but the Boii
resisted for some years all the efforts of the Romans, and it was not
till B.C. 191 that the Consul P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica received their
final submission. He slaughtered the Boii without mercy, and made it one
of the claims of his triumph that he had left only children and old men
alive. This warlike people was now thoroughly subdued, and from
henceforth Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province, and gradually adopted
the language and customs of Rome. The submission of the people was
secured by the foundation of new colonies and the formation of military
roads. In B.C. 190 a colony was established at Bononia, now Bologna, in
the country of the Boii, and six years afterward others were also
founded at Mutina (Modena) and Parma. A military road made by M. Æmilius
Lepidus, Consul for B.C. 180, and called the Via Æmilia, was a
continuation of the Via Flaminia, and ran from Ariminum past Placentia,
Mutina, and Parma to Placentia. The subjugation of the Ligurians was a
longer and more difficult task. These hardy mountaineers continued the
war, with intermissions, for a period of eighty years. The Romans, after
penetrating into the heart of Liguria, were seldom able to effect more
than to compel the enemy to disperse, and take refuge in their villages
and castles, of which the latter were mountain fastnesses, in which they
were generally able to defy their pursuers. But into the details of
these long-protracted and inglorious hostilities it is unnecessary to
enter.
The conquests of Scipio Africanus had driven the Carthaginians out of
Spain, and established the Roman supremacy in that country. Accordingly,
soon after the end of the Second Punic War (about B.C. 198), the Romans
proceeded to consolidate their dominion in Spain by dividing it into two
provinces, each governed by a Prætor, which were called Hispania
Citerior, or Hither Spain, and Hispania Ulterior, or Farther Spain, and
divided from each other by the Iberus or the Ebro. But it was little
more than the eastern part of the peninsula that was really subject to
Rome. The powerful tribes of the Celtiberians in Central Spain, the
Lusitanians in Portugal, and the Cantabrians and Gallæcians in the
northwest, still maintained their independence. The division of the
country into two provinces showed that the Romans intended to occupy it
permanently, and occasioned a general insurrection.
The Consul M. Porcius Cato, of whom we shall speak more fully presently,
was sent to put down this insurrection (B.C. 195). The whole country was
in arms; but his military genius and indefatigable industry soon
re-established the superiority of Rome. He gained several decisive
victories, contrived to set tribe against tribe, and took native
mercenaries into his pay. The details of his campaign are full of
horrors. We read of the wholesale slaughter of men who had laid down
their arms, of multitudes sold as slaves, and of many more who had put
themselves to death to escape this fate. Cato was not the man to feel
any compunctions of conscience in the performance of what he considered
a rigorous public task. He boasted of having destroyed more towns in
Spain than he had spent days in that country. When he had reduced the
whole of Hither Spain to a hollow, sullen, and temporary submission, he
returned to Rome, and was rewarded with a triumph.
The severe measures of Cato only exasperated the Spaniards. They again
took up arms, and continued to resist the Roman Prætors for the next
sixteen years, till Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, the father of the
celebrated tribunes, after gaining several brilliant victories over the
Celtiberians, granted them an honorable peace. By his wise measures and
conciliatory conduct he won the affections of the natives, and induced
them to submit to the Roman supremacy (B.C. 179).
It remains to mention two other wars in the West. The Sardinians and
Corsicans revolted, and held out for two years against the Conqueror of
Spain (B.C. 177-175). But Gracchus effected their complete subjugation,
and brought to Rome so large a number of captives for sale as to give
rise to the proverb "Sardi venales" for any thing that was cheap and
worthless.
The Istrians, near the head of the Adriatic Gulf, had been conquered by
the Romans just before the Second Punic War. But their complete
subjugation was now necessary, on account of their proximity to the
newly-formed province of Cisalpine Gaul. Accordingly, the Consuls
invaded Istria in B.C. 178, and in the following year the whole people
was reduced to submission.
[Illustration: Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. (From a Coin.)]
[Illustration: Lictors.]