both by land and sea. The harbor was dismantled of its works, and a
first, second, and even third wall taken, while nevertheless the Byrsa,
which was the name of the citadel, held out like another city. But
though the destruction of the place was thus very far advanced, it was
the name of the Scipios only that seemed fatal to Africa. The
Government, accordingly, applying to another Scipio, desired from him a
termination of the war. This Scipio, the son of Paulus Macedonicus, the
son of the great Africanus had adopted as an honor to his family, and,
as it appeared, with this destiny, that the grandson should overthrow
the city which the grandfather had shaken. But as the bites of dying
beasts are wont to be most fatal, so there was more trouble with
Carthage half-ruined than when it was in its full strength. The Romans
having shut the enemy up in their single fortress, had also blockaded
the harbor; but upon this they dug another harbor on the other side of
the city, not with a design to escape, but because no one supposed that
they could even force an outlet there. Here a new fleet, as if just
born, started forth; and, in the mean while, sometimes by day and
sometimes by night, some new mole, some new machine, some new band of
desperate men perpetually started up, like a sudden flame from a fire
sunk in ashes. At last, their affairs becoming desperate, forty thousand
men, and (what is hardly credible) with Hasdrubal at their head,
surrendered themselves. How much more nobly did a woman behave, the wife
of the general, who, taking hold of her two children, threw herself from
the top of her house into the midst of the flames, imitating the queen
that built Carthage. How great a city was then destroyed is shown, to
say nothing of other things, by the duration of the fire, for the flames
could scarcely be extinguished at the end of seventeen days; flames
which the enemy themselves had raised in their houses and temples, that,
since the city could not be rescued from the Romans, all matter for
triumph might at least be burned.
BATTLE OF THE METAURUS
B.C. 207
SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY
(During the closing years of the Second Punic War the resources of the
Romans were drained to such an extent as to bring great disheartenment
to their rulers and generals. Under the stress of financial
difficulties, the cost of living greatly increased, and the State was
compelled to resort to loans of various kinds, and to levy upon citizens
of means for the pay of seamen. This scheme for raising Roman "ship
money" was one of the most significant indications of the extreme weight
resting upon the republic in the prosecution of this arduous war. A war
with Sicily was fortunately terminated, releasing some additional force
for employment against the Carthaginians; but for some time little
headway was made by the Roman commanders, and when, in B.C. 207, the
people were called upon to elect consuls, their affairs were still in a
condition which caused serious anxiety. The consuls chosen in that year
were Marcus Livius and Caius Claudius Nero, and without delay they went
to take command in southern Italy, which the Carthaginians under
Hannibal, though not in much strength, had invaded.
But when, later in the season, Hasdrubal crossed the Alps from the north
to join his brother, Hannibal, the aspect of the war became still more
grave in the eyes of the Romans. Hasdrubal solicited the support of the
Gauls, but to little purpose. Meanwhile Hannibal made skilful use of his
small forces in eluding the consul Nero; but the capture by the Romans
of despatches from Hasdrubal disclosed his plans, and Nero at once
formed his own for intercepting him. The result was that Nero and Livius
joined their forces in Hasdrubal's front, and to the Carthaginian they
offered immediate battle. Hasdrubal attempted a retreat, but was
compelled to give battle on the banks of the Metaurus. Of this, one of
the "decisive battles of the world," Creasy has left an authoritative
and graphic account, which here follows. The part of the consul Nero in
the campaign is thus remarked upon by Lord Byron:
"The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal
and deceived Hasdrubal, thereby accomplished an achievement almost
unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to
Hannibal, was the sight of Hasdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When
Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed, with a sigh, that 'Rome would now be
the mistress of the world.' To this victory of Nero's it might be owing
that his imperial namesake reigned at all. But the infamy of the one has
eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of Nero is heard, who
thinks of the consul? But such are human things.")
About midway between Rimini and Ancona a little river falls into the
Adriatic, after traversing one of those districts of Italy in which a
vain attempt has lately been made to revive, after long centuries of
servitude and shame, the spirit of Italian nationality and the energy of
free institutions. That stream is still called the Metauro, and wakens
by its name the recollections of the resolute daring of ancient Rome,
and of the slaughter that stained its current two thousand and
sixty-three years ago, when the combined consular armies of Livius and
Nero encountered and crushed near its banks the varied hosts which
Hannibal's brother was leading from the Pyrenees, the Rhone, the Alps,
and the Po, to aid the great Carthaginian in his stern struggle to
annihilate the growing might of the Roman republic, and make the Punic
power supreme over all the nations of the world.
The Roman historian,[59] who termed that struggle the most memorable of
all wars that ever were carried on, wrote in no spirit of exaggeration;
for it is not in ancient, but in modern history that parallels for its
incidents and its heroes are to be found. The similitude between the
contest which Rome maintained against Hannibal, and that which England
was for many years engaged in against Napoleon, has not passed
unobserved by recent historians. "Twice," says Arnold, "has there been
witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the
resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the
nation has been victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against
Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon Bonaparte strove against England: the
efforts of the first ended in Zama; those of the second in Waterloo."
[Footnote 59: Livy.]
One point, however, of the similitude between the two wars has scarcely
been adequately dwelt on; that is, the remarkable parallel between the
Roman general who finally defeated the great Carthaginian, and the
English general who gave the last deadly overthrow to the French
Emperor. Scipio and Wellington both held for many years commands of high
importance, but distant from the main theatres of warfare. The same
country was the scene of the principal military career of each. It was
in Spain that Scipio, like Wellington, successively encountered and
overthrew nearly all the subordinate generals of the enemy before being
opposed to the chief champion and conqueror himself. Both Scipio and
Wellington restored their countrymen's confidence in arms when shaken by
a series of reverses, and each of them closed a long and perilous war by
a complete and overwhelming defeat of the chosen leader and the chosen
veterans of the foe.
Nor is the parallel between them limited to their military characters
and exploits. Scipio, like Wellington, became an important leader of the
aristocratic party among his countrymen, and was exposed to the
unmeasured invectives of the violent section of his political
antagonists. When, early in the last reign, an infuriated mob assaulted
the Duke of Wellington in the streets of the English capital on the
anniversary of Waterloo, England was even more disgraced by that outrage
than Rome was by the factious accusations which demagogues brought
against Scipio, but which he proudly repelled on the day of trial by
reminding the assembled people that it was the anniversary of the battle
of Zama. Happily, a wiser and a better spirit has now for years pervaded
all classes of our community, and we shall be spared the ignominy of
having worked out to the end the parallel of national ingratitude.
Scipio died a voluntary exile from the malevolent turbulence of Rome.
Englishmen of all ranks and politics have now long united in
affectionate admiration of our modern Scipio; and even those who have
most widely differed from the duke on legislative or administrative
questions, forget what they deem the political errors of that
time-honored head, while they gratefully call to mind the laurels that
have wreathed it.
Scipio at Zama trampled in the dust the power of Carthage, but that
power had been already irreparably shattered in another field, where
neither Scipio nor Hannibal commanded. When the Metaurus witnessed the
defeat and death of Hasdrubal, it witnessed the ruin of the scheme by
which alone Carthage could hope to organize decisive success--the scheme
of enveloping Rome at once from the north and the south of Italy by two
chosen armies, led by two sons of Hamilcar. That battle was the
determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage,
but between the two great families of the world, which then made Italy
the arena of their oft-renewed contest for preëminence.
The French historian, Michelet, whose _Histoire Romaine_ would have been
invaluable if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any
degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It
is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the
Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere
struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but it was a
strife on the event of which depended the fate of two races of mankind,
whether the dominion of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or
to the Semitic family of nations. Bear in mind that the first of these
comprises, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Germans. In the other are ranked the Jews and the Arabs, the
Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. On the one side is the genius of
heroism, of art, and legislation; on the other is the spirit of
industry, of commerce, of navigation.
"The two opposite races have everywhere come into contact, everywhere
into hostility. In the primitive history of Persia and Chaldaea, the
heroes are perpetually engaged in combat with their industrious and
perfidious neighbors. The struggle is renewed between the Phoenicians
and the Greeks on every coast of the Mediterranean. The Greek supplants
the Phoenician in all his factories, all his colonies in the East: soon
will the Roman come, and do likewise in the West. Alexander did far more
against Tyre than Shalmaneser or Nebuchadnezzar had done. Not content
with crushing her, he took care that she never should revive; for he
founded Alexandria as her substitute, and changed forever the track of
the commerce of the world. There remained Carthage--the great Carthage,
and her mighty empire--mighty in a far different degree than Phoenicia's
had been. Rome annihilated it. Then occurred that which has no parallel
in history--an entire civilization perished at one blow--banished, like
a falling star. The _Periplus_ of Hanno, a few coins, a score of lines
in Plautus, and, lo, all that remains of the Carthaginian world!
"Many generations must needs pass away before the struggle between the
two races could be renewed; and the Arabs, that formidable rear-guard of
the Semitic world, dashed forth from their deserts. The conflict between
the two races then became the conflict of two religions. Fortunate was
it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the
impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chivalrous valor of
Charles Martel and the sword of the Cid. The crusades were the natural
reprisals for the Arab invasions, and form the last epoch of that great
struggle between the two principal families of the human race."
It is difficult, amid the glimmering light supplied by the allusions of
the classical writers, to gain a full idea of the character and
institutions of Rome's great rival. But we can perceive how inferior
Carthage was to her competitor in military resources, and how far less
fitted than Rome she was to become the founder of centralized and
centralizing dominion that should endure for centuries, and fuse into
imperial unity the narrow nationalities of the ancient races that dwelt
around and near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea?
Carthage was originally neither the most ancient nor the most powerful
of the numerous colonies which the Phoenicians planted on the coast of
Northern Africa. But her advantageous position, the excellence of her
constitution--of which, though ill-informed as to its details, we know
that it commanded the admiration of Aristotle--and the commercial and
political energy of her citizens gave her the ascendency over Hippo,
Utica, Leptis, and her other sister Phoenician cities in those regions;
and she finally reduced them to a condition of dependency similar to
that which the subject allies of Athens occupied relatively to that once
imperial city. When Tyre and Sidon and the other cities of Phoenicia
itself sank from independent republics into mere vassal states of the
great Asiatic monarchies, and obeyed by turns a Babylonian, a Persian,
and a Macedonian master, their power and their traffic rapidly declined,
and Carthage succeeded to the important maritime and commercial
character which they had previously maintained.
The Carthaginians did not seek to compete with the Greeks on the
northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, or in the three inland seas
which are connected with it; but they maintained an active intercourse
with the Phoenicians, and through them with Lower and Central Asia; and
they, and they alone, after the decline and fall of Tyre, navigated the
waters of the Atlantic. They had the monopoly of all the commerce of the
world that was carried on beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. We have yet
extant (in a Greek translation) the narrative of the voyage of Hanno,
one of their admirals, along the western coast of Africa as far as
Sierra Leone; and in the Latin poem of Festus Avienus frequent
references are made to the records of the voyages of another celebrated
Carthaginian admiral, Himilco, who had explored the northwestern coast
of Europe. Our own islands are mentioned by Himilco as the lands of the
Hiberni and Albioni. It is indeed certain that the Carthaginians
frequented the Cornish coast--as the Phoenicians had done before
them--for the purpose of procuring tin; and there is every reason to
believe that they sailed as far as the coasts of the Baltic for amber.
When it is remembered that the mariner's compass was unknown in those
ages, the boldness and skill of the seamen of Carthage, and the
enterprise of her merchants, may be paralleled with any achievements
that the history of modern navigation and commerce can produce.
In their Atlantic voyages along the African shores the Carthaginians
followed the double object of traffic and colonization. The numerous
settlements that were planted by them along the coast from Morocco to
Senegal provided for the needy members of the constantly increasing
population of a great commercial capital, and also strengthened the
influence which Carthage exercised among the tribes of the African
coast. Besides her fleets, her caravans gave her a large and lucrative
trade with the native Africans; nor must we limit our belief of the
extent of the Carthaginian trade with the tribes of Central and Western
Africa by the narrowness of the commercial intercourse which civilized
nations of modern times have been able to create in those regions.
Although essentially a mercantile and seafaring people, the
Carthaginians by no means neglected agriculture. On the contrary, the
whole of their territory was cultivated like a garden. The fertility of
the soil repaid the skill and toil bestowed on it; and every invader,
from Agathocles to Scipio Æmilianus, was struck with admiration at the
rich pasture lands carefully irrigated, the abundant harvests, the
luxuriant vineyards, the plantations of fig and olive trees, the
thriving villages, the populous towns, and the splendid villas of the
wealthy Carthaginians, through which his march lay, as long as he was on
Carthaginian ground.
Although the Carthaginians abandoned the Ægean and the Pontus to the
Greek, they were by no means disposed to relinquish to those rivals the
commerce and the dominion of the coasts of the Mediterranean westward of
Italy. For centuries the Carthaginians strove to make themselves masters
of the islands that lie between Italy and Spain. They acquired the
Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, still bears
the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the
greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their
power. They repeatedly invaded that island, and nearly overran it; but
the resistance which was opposed to them by the Syracusans under Gelon,
Dionysius, Timoleon, and Agathocles preserved the island from becoming
Punic, though many of its cities remained under the Carthaginian rule
until Rome finally settled the question to whom Sicily was to belong by
conquering it for herself.
With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth, with
commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a
capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that
insured for centuries the blessing of social order, with an aristocracy
singularly fertile in men of the highest genius, Carthage yet failed
signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Rome. One of the
immediate causes of this may seem to have been the want of firmness
among her citizens, which made them terminate the First Punic War by
begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens
caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonists had suffered
far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of
faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second
war from being properly reënforced and supported. But there were also
more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her
position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants of the country which
she ruled, and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars.
Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about
Carthage is derived from Diodorus Siculus. That historian enumerates
four different races: first, he mentions the Phoenicians who dwelt in
Carthage; next, he speaks of the Liby-Phoenicians: these, he tells us,
dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by
intermarriage with the Phoenicians, which was the cause of their
compound name; thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most
ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely on
account of the oppressiveness of their domination; lastly, he names the
Numidians, the nomad tribes of the frontier.
It is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a
subject class, without franchise or political rights; and, accordingly,
we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political
office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem
to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred,
from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right
of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs
of one of this race being intrusted with authority, and that, too, not
emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer
sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybius
calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we
find to have been a Liby-Phoenician; and it is expressly mentioned what
indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that
this half-caste should control their operations.
With respect to the composition of their armies, it is observable that,
though thirsting for extended empire, and though some of her leading men
became generals of the highest order, the Carthaginians, as a people,
were anything but personally warlike. As long as they could hire
mercenaries to fight for them, they had little appetite for the irksome
training and the loss of valuable time which military service would have
entailed on themselves.
As Michelet remarks: "The life of an industrious merchant, of a
Carthaginian, was too precious to be risked, as long as it was possible
to substitute advantageously for it that of a barbarian from Spain or
Gaul. Carthage knew, and could tell to a drachma, what the life of a man
of each nation came to. A Greek was worth more than a Campanian, a
Campanian worth more than a Gaul or a Spaniard. When once this tariff of
blood was correctly made out, Carthage began a war as a mercantile
speculation. She tried to make conquests in the hope of getting new
mines to work or to open fresh markets for her exports. In one venture
she could afford to spend fifty thousand mercenaries, in another rather
more. If the returns were good, there was no regret felt for the capital
that had been sunk in the investment; more money got more men, and all
went on well."
Armies composed of foreign mercenaries have in all ages been as
formidable to their employers as to the enemy against whom they were
directed. We know of one occasion--between the First and Second Punic
wars--when Carthage was brought to the very brink of destruction by a
revolt of her foreign troops. Other mutinies of the same kind must from
time to time have occurred. Probably one of these was the cause of the
comparative weakness of Carthage at the time of the Athenian expedition
against Syracuse, so different from the energy with which she attacked
Gelon half a century earlier and Dionysius half a century later. And
even when we consider her armies with reference only to their efficiency
in warfare, we perceive at once the inferiority of such bands of
_condottieri_, brought together without any common bond of origin,
tactics, or cause, to the legions of Rome, which, at the time of the
Punic wars, were raised from the very flower of a hardy agricultural
population, trained in the strictest discipline, habituated to victory,
and animated by the most resolute patriotism.
And this shows, also, the transcendency of the genius of Hannibal, which
could form such discordant materials into a compact organized force, and
inspire them with the spirit of patient discipline and loyalty to their
chief, so that they were true to him in his adverse as well as in his
prosperous fortunes; and throughout the checkered series of his
campaigns no panic rout ever disgraced a division under his command, no
mutiny, or even attempt at mutiny, was ever known in his camp; and
finally, after fifteen years of Italian warfare, his men followed their
old leader to Zama, "with no fear and little hope,"[60] and there, on
that disastrous field, stood firm around him, his Old Guard, till
Scipio's Numidian allies came up on their flank, when at last,
surrounded and overpowered, the veteran battalions sealed their devotion
to their general by their blood!
[Footnote 60: "We advanced to Waterloo as the Greeks did to Thermopylae:
all of us without fear, and most of us without hope."--_Speech of
General Foy._]
"But if Hannibal's genius may be likened to the Homeric god, who, in his
hatred to the Trojans, rises from the deep to rally the fainting Greeks
and to lead them against the enemy, so the calm courage with which
Hector met his more than human adversary in his country's cause is no
unworthy image of the unyielding magnanimity displayed by the
aristocracy of Rome. As Hannibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the
contrary, Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as
nothing when compared to the spirit and wisdom and power of Rome. The
senate, which voted its thanks to its political enemy, Varro, after his
disastrous defeat, 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth,'
and which disdained either to solicit or to reprove or to threaten or in
any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused their accustomed
supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honored than the
conqueror of Zama. This we should the more carefully bear in mind
because our tendency is to admire individual greatness far more than
national; and, as no single Roman will bear comparison to Hannibal, we
are apt to murmur at the event of the contest, and to think that the
victory was awarded to the least worthy of the combatants. On the
contrary, never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in
the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage.