ROME AND CARTHAGE
I am afraid you will have suffered disappointment from time to time
in the course of the telling of this greatest of great stories. I am
afraid that I have been obliged to speak rather slightingly of that
beautiful lady for whose sake you will have heard that the Trojan War
was fought, the lady about whom Homer sang. I have made my excuses
for that disrespectful treatment.
There is another famous lady of whom Virgil, the great Latin poet,
sings--Queen Dido, of Carthage. His story goes that Æneas, the
Trojan, escaping over-sea after the fall of Troy, was swept by storms
into Carthage, where Dido entertained him pleasantly. From her court
he went to Italy, and from him the Romans were said to be descended.
The Æneid--that is, the story of Æneas--is the name of Virgil's poem
in which this tale is told. You may believe as much or as little of
it as you like, for there is no evidence at all that it is true; but
it is a fine tale, finely told.
Then there is the story about Romulus and Remus and the good old
wolf-mother, and the rest of it--all very pleasant too. But I do not
think that you need believe any more of that either than you like.
[Sidenote: The Gauls in Rome]
They are not very ancient stories, nothing like as old as some of the
stories about Egypt and Babylonia for which there is plenty of
evidence. A thousand {165} years or so B.C. could cover them all.
Yet for what was really going on round about what came to be called
Rome we have very little evidence until a great deal later. One
other pretty tale certainly has some truth in it--the story that the
Gauls came down upon Rome, and that the Capitol, or strong citadel,
on which the sentries must have gone to sleep, was only saved by the
alarm being given by some geese. There may be some doubt as to
whether the geese really were there, and were the city's saviours,
for it is possible that this too, like other tales, may have seemed
to the poets to be a pretty story to tell, and they may have told it
to please their hearers without inquiring closely into its truth; but
however it may have been about the geese, there is no doubt at all
about the Gauls. They were there, and in terrible numbers, and they
only consented to go away on being bribed to do so with an immense
sum of money. So it is not a very dignified appearance that this
great Rome makes on her first appearance in our story--saved from
Gauls, in the first instance, by geese, and in the second place by
bribes! This happened in 390 B.C.
[Illustration: GALLIC WARRIORS. (From the British Museum.)]
By Gaul we generally understand France--the Gallic, or Gaulic nation.
But Gaul at that time was the name of the country not only of what we
now call France, but of a great deal of the north of what we call
Italy. So the Gauls had not very far to come to reach Rome.
Although the Capitol, the citadel, was saved from the Gauls at this
time, the Gauls destroyed the city completely, and after their
retirement the Romans set about its rebuilding.
You will see, of course, that I have only told you, so far, who the
Romans were not. I have not told you who they were. But I have a
very good reason for {166} that. I have not told you, and I am not
going to tell you, because I do not know.
Rome has been called the City of the Seven Hills, because it is built
on those seven hills which stand above the River Tiber that runs out
westward into the Mediterranean Sea. What we do know is that peoples
from the neighbouring country came and settled themselves on one or
other of these hills. They were peoples of different origins. The
most civilised, in the earliest days of this settlement, were from
the district called Etruria. They were Etruscans. The Sabines were
another of these peoples. And there were Latins from Latium, in
which district Rome itself was situated.
These peoples became united into one state under rulers of the Latin
race, and that, in very few words, appears to have been the origin of
the Roman nation. The Etruscans seem at first to have been pushed
off the hills into the plains by the others, and there was frequent
fighting between the plain people and the hill people. For their
protection from the attacks from the plains, the early kings of Rome
built walls round the seven hills; but the Etruscans, though they had
given way at first to the Latins and Sabines, must have come back as
conquerors. They were a powerful people. They imposed their own
kings upon the Romans, and Romans and Etruscans together became the
strongest nation in the country.
Probably the Romans never were satisfied with their Etruscan kings,
who seem to have governed with great severity. More than a hundred
years before the Gauls came upon them, which was in 390 B.C., they
successfully rebelled, drove out the kings and set up a republic.
The Etruscans strove to restore them, and the struggle went on until
a very important victory was gained by {167} the Roman republican
armies at Veii. The Romans had never been so strong in Italy before,
and although the attack of the Gauls threatened them with destruction
only six years later, those barbarians, after a seven months' siege
of the Capitol, went back and made no attempt at establishing their
power permanently. The Romans rebuilt their walls and their houses.
They were engaged in almost perpetual fighting with other peoples, of
whom we should notice particularly the Samnites, in one or other part
of Italy. Now and again they met with reverses, but on the whole
they prevailed and extended their authority over the countries that
they conquered. The aid of the Romans was sought by now one and now
another people who found themselves pressed by hostile neighbours;
and the help was given in consideration that those who were helped
should regard their helper for ever after as their master.
[Sidenote: Pyrrhus]
It was a little later than 300 B.C. that the Greek city states
established along the southern shores of Italy found themselves
bothered by the attacks of some inland neighbours and called for the
aid of Rome. There was one of these cities, however, and the most
important, which repelled the assistance of the Roman Republic,
jealous of her growing power. This was Tarentum. And just at the
moment when the struggle between the Roman forces and this Greek
city, which must inevitably have ended in the defeat of the Greeks,
was about to commence, Tarentum found a new ally in Pyrrhus, the king
of Epirus.
Epirus, as you may see, is the north-western region of Greece, and
the nearest to Italy. Pyrrhus had allied himself by marriage with
Ptolemy of Egypt and had made a great effort to gain the throne of
Macedonia, {168} but was defeated in that attempt and had to content
himself awhile with being king of his own little country of Epirus.
It was then that there came to him, and was welcomed by him, a call
to their assistance by the people of Tarentum menaced by the Roman
armies.
[Sidenote: Pyrrhic victories]
Pyrrhus marched into Italy with a force that was strong in cavalry
and also in elephants. The elephants seem to have terrified the
Romans, and Pyrrhus won several victories. But though he won
victories it was always at so great a cost to his own force that the
phrase "a Pyrrhic victory," which you may have heard, is taken even
now to mean a victory in which the victor loses more heavily than the
vanquished.
We are now, I would have you see, at a point of some particular
interest in the great story, for it is the first time that Greek and
Roman have been facing each other and fighting each other in any
large force and as nation against nation.
Pyrrhus, after his victories, called on Rome to surrender. His army
was then on the Roman territory of Latium. Rome replied that she
would hold no parley with a foe as long as any of his troops were on
her soil. It was a proud reply, worthy of her future greatness, to a
victorious enemy at her very gates; but she had formed a strong
confederation of several states that acknowledged her as their
sovereign and was still formidable. Pyrrhus won another victory, but
again gained little by it, and finding that his project did not
prosper in Italy itself he went over to Sicily.
He came to that island on the invitation of the Greek city states
there, who wished his help to rid them of the Carthaginians, but here
again, although he won victories, he could not establish his power.
He {169} made himself thoroughly unpopular with the Greeks, who had
called him in, by the despotic manner in which he tried to lord it
over them, and, what was still worse for him, his attacks on the
Carthaginians drove them to make an alliance with the Romans against
him. A result of that alliance was that when, after three years of
unproductive fighting in Sicily, he went back to the mainland of
Italy, his fleet was attacked and severely handled by the
Carthaginians. He fought one more battle against the Romans and
their confederates, in Italy, but he did not receive much support
from the Tarentines or any of the Italian-Greek cities. This time it
was not even a "Pyrrhic victory" for him, but a decisive defeat, and
he went back to his native Epirus after a six years' absence. He was
killed some years later in a political revolution in Greece.
The total result of the enterprise of Pyrrhus was to establish Rome
more firmly than ever as the mistress state of Italy, and to bring
her into alliance, which was very soon to be broken, with the great
sea-power of the Carthaginians.
The story of Rome herself, within the city walls, during all the
years from the expulsion of the Etruscan kings down to the date,
about 280 B.C., to which we have now come, was one of perpetual
struggle between the patricians, the aristocratic party, and the
plebs, the party of the people, the populace. The patricians had all
the power after the first driving out of the Tarquins, as the
Etruscan kings were called, because they had been the chief managers
of the revolution against them, but all through the later years the
populace grew in power, and took the power out of the hands of the
patricians. The constitution of the state became, as we should say,
more and more democratic. {170} The power fell more and more into
the hands of the "demos," the plebeians, the common people.
The Romans, as you saw, had made an alliance with the Carthaginians
at the time of the invasion of Italy and Sicily by Pyrrhus; but it
was a friendship that lasted only a very short while. Our story is
now coming to a point at which it will be very largely occupied by
wars between these two nations who are now, for the moment, friends.
The Romans continually accused the Carthaginians of treachery and of
broken faith. The Roman name for the Carthaginians was "Punici,"
which is somehow derived from the name, Phœnicia, of the country
from which, as you know, the colony of Carthage was founded. So
bitterly did the Romans resent their acts of treachery that the words
"Punica fides," that is to say, Punic, or Carthaginian, faith, were
used as a kind of proverb to express a faith or fidelity which was no
faith at all--a promise made only to be broken. Probably they were
not very true to their engagements; they were a very bold,
enterprising people, wonderful sailors, considering the ships that
they had. They went round Africa, they planted colonies all along
the shores of Spain, they went to the Cassiterides, or tin islands,
which are said to have been our own British islands. It is a
marvellous record of adventure.
But they do not seem to have been as highly civilised as the Romans,
who had been very largely influenced by this time by that
civilisation and culture of Greece which we have seen spreading
itself very widely. Greece had some influence even with them, for
among the temples for the worship of those gods Baal and Astaroth,
which they had brought with them from Phœnicia, was a temple to
the Greek god {171} Apollo. But in thinking over the whole story of
the intercourse and the fighting between Rome and Carthage we ought
to remember that it is almost entirely from the Roman point of view
that we have the story told. We do not know much of what the
Carthaginians might have had to say about the Romans. They might
perhaps have said something about broken faith on the Roman side
also. It is likely that neither party was very particular about
keeping promises which it was more convenient not to keep.
[Sidenote: First Punic war]
However that may be, it was almost inevitable that trouble must break
out between them before long; for here was the great and growing land
power of Rome on the northern side of the Mediterranean stretching
down the long leg of Italy; here was Carthage, with its powerful
navy, its determined sailors, and its adventurous courage, on the
southern shore; and there was Sicily, supposed to be independent of
both, lying like a football just at the very toe of Italy, ready to
be kicked, and reaching nearly over to the Carthaginian coast. It
was an unfortunate position for that island, and may remind us of the
position of Palestine as the bridge between the great ancient empires
of Egypt and Babylonia. There is this difference between the
positions of the two, that the fighting round about Sicily was sure
to be largely naval, an affair of sea-fights. It was not so in
Palestine.
Pyrrhus was driven back home to Epirus out of Italy in 275 B.C. In
268 B.C., only seven years later, began the first of those great
struggles between Rome and Carthage which are known as the Punic
Wars. There were three of these wars, interrupted by truces
which--owing, as the Romans said, to the infamous "Punica
fides"--never were lasting. The true reason {172} doubtless was that
both powers were too masterful in character to endure a rival. One
or other had to have the upper hand. There were times in the
struggle when it looked very doubtful indeed which would have it.
Sicily was of great importance to the Romans, because they depended
much on the supply of corn which it gave them. That was another
reason, besides the reason of its position as a kind of bridge or
stepping-stone between the two great rivals, why it became their
battle-field. If the Carthaginians could get Sicily, they could cut
off much of the enemy's food supply. The Romans, for their own
preservation, had to make sure of Sicily. It was over the possession
of Sicily that this first Punic war broke out.
The Romans had gradually made their fleet stronger and stronger until
they were powerful enough to risk a sea battle with the great naval
forces of Carthage, and they twice met and beat the navies of
Carthage, once in 260 B.C. and again four years later. Thus, having
command of the sea, they ventured to send an army into Africa,
against Carthage itself, but there they suffered a very heavy defeat
and their general was taken captive. The Carthaginians were much
aided in this victory by Spartan mercenaries. But the fate of
Sicily, where there were both Roman and Carthaginian armies, remained
to be decided. The war went on, with varying results, in and around
that unfortunate island, with now the one nation and now the other
gaining a victory, until a decision was at length reached by a great
victory of the Romans in 241 B.C. This war had lasted twenty-seven
years.
And here we may note a point in which Rome seems to have been like
our own country, of which {173} Napoleon I. complained that she
always won "the last battle of a war." Many times we see her very
hardly pressed, with the enemy at the gates of the city; but she goes
on fighting and she wins the last battle, the battle which counts and
which settles the result in her favour.
This was more particularly so in the Second Punic War, which began in
219 B.C.
Carthage had very great trouble with her own mercenary troops at the
end of the first war against Rome; they demanded their pay, which was
long overdue. That matter was largely settled by such heavy fighting
between them and the Carthaginians themselves that comparatively few
of the mercenaries were left alive at the end of it to receive pay,
if there had been any for them.
In the years that followed, Carthage became rich and prosperous. She
had a large trade with the interior of Africa as well as with all the
coast cities round the Mediterranean. She worked mines in Spain, and
in order to draw more wealth from that rich and fertile country she
gradually made herself mistress of a great part of it, and it was the
capture by Carthage of Saguntum, a city in southern Spain, which was
in the Roman alliance, that led to the outbreak in 219 B.C. of the
Second Punic War.
[Sidenote: Hannibal]
The Carthaginian general who captured Saguntum, and thus provoked
this greatest of the three Punic Wars, was Hannibal, perhaps the most
famous leader of armies in all history.
In telling this story of the world in mere outline, as I am trying to
tell it, it is impossible to speak of any of the details of his
extraordinary campaign. He had his army there in southern Spain. He
marched with it, {174} meeting no very serious opposition, through
Spain into that northern part of Italy which was then part of Gaul,
and he thence descended into southern Italy and into the very heart
of the Roman country itself. He won three great victories over the
Roman armies on the way, and finally, a fourth, at Cannæ, in the
autumn of 216 B.C., three years after he set out from Spain; and
after Cannæ Rome herself seemed to lie at his mercy.
[Illustration: HANNIBAL.]
Why he did not at once press on and lay siege to the city is one of
the puzzles of history. His army had been continuously marching and
fighting; he may have thought that it needed rest. Almost certainly
he expected further forces to be sent him from Carthage. But these
forces did not come.
[Sidenote: Battle of Zama]
There were several rival parties in Carthage itself, and it seems
likely that there was jealousy of Hannibal's great successes.
Whatever the reason, the help he expected was very long in coming.
He stayed on in Italy with his army which had been so victorious.
The Romans would not come to another fixed battle with him, but they
hovered about his army, continually harassing it. Probably it lost
much of its fighting force in this time of waiting. It was not until
nine years after Cannæ that Hannibal's brother, Hasdrubal, was sent
with an army to his help, and by that time the Romans had so
recovered their strength that they met and defeated, on the Metaurus,
this army of Hasdrubal's; and it was really this great battle that
settled the war. It left Hannibal helpless for any big fighting in
Italy. {175} It left the Romans free to make their power firm again
in Spain. They were so little troubled by the presence of Hannibal,
in his present condition, in Italy, that they again sent a force
oversea into Africa. This time their arms were completely successful
over the Carthaginians and their African allies. The Carthaginians,
in their alarm, recalled Hannibal, to see if his genius could save
them. But it was too late. He was defeated in the battle of Zama,
in 202 B.C., and therewith came the end of the Second Punic War.
Really it was the end of Carthage as a formidable rival to the power
of Rome. In the arrangements which followed she was compelled to
give up her fleet, to give up all her claims on Spain, and on the
islands in the Mediterranean, and to be content with her possessions
in Africa itself.
Again, Rome had won the last battle.
Why she did not meet her doom after Cannæ, we can never know. Had
Hannibal pressed forward after that victory the whole course of the
great story would probably have been quite different. To what extent
the hand of Providence interferes at such moments of the story as
these we cannot tell--or to what extent man is allowed to work out
his own fortunes without that correcting hand. Undoubtedly there are
certain moments when it looks very much as if Providence had actively
intervened; and perhaps, in our ignorance, we had better not attempt
to say more than that.
For more than fifty years, Rome had no trouble from Carthage, nor can
she really have been very seriously troubled when, in 149 B.C., she
declared the Third Punic War. Carthage had existed during that
half-century as an opulent and large city. She had made alliance
with some of the African peoples. There {176} were certain of the
Romans who deemed her power dangerous. A pretext for a quarrel was
easily found. Rome had now become so powerful that there was no
question as to where the battle-fields of this war would be. There
was no prospect of a Punic force in Italy or Sicily. The war, which
began in 149, lasted for three years, for the Carthaginians within
their walls made a desperate resistance which was worthy of their
splendid history; but at the last they had to yield. No mercy was
shown; the city was destroyed. Carthage ceased to exist.
{177}