The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries
Natural Boundaries of Italy
The Italian confederacy as it emerged from the crises of the fifth
century--or, in other words, the State of Italy--united the various
civic and cantonal communities from the Apennines to the Ionian Sea
under the hegemony of Rome. But before the close of the fifth century
these limits were already overpassed in both directions, and Italian
communities belonging to the confederacy had sprung up beyond the
Apennines and beyond the sea. In the north the republic, in revenge
for ancient and recent wrongs, had already in 471 annihilated the
Celtic Senones; in the south, through the great war from 490 to 513,
it had dislodged the Phoenicians from the island of Sicily. In the
north there belonged to the combination headed by Rome the Latin town
of Ariminum (besides the burgess-settlement of Sena), in the south the
community of the Mamertines in Messana, and as both were nationally of
Italian origin, so both shared in the common rights and obligations of
the Italian confederacy. It was probably the pressure of events at
the moment rather than any comprehensive political calculation, that
gave rise to these extensions of the confederacy; but it was natural
that now at least, after the great successes achieved against
Carthage, new and wider views of policy should dawn upon the Roman
government--views which even otherwise were obviously enough suggested
by the physical features of the peninsula. Alike in a political and
in a military point of view Rome was justified in shifting its
northern boundary from the low and easily crossed Apennines to the
mighty mountain-wall that separates northern from southern Europe,
the Alps, and in combining with the sovereignty of Italy the
sovereignty of the seas and islands on the west and east of the
peninsula; and now, when by the expulsion of the Phoenicians from
Sicily the most difficult portion of the task had been already
achieved, various circumstances united to facilitate its completion
by the Roman government.
Sicily a Dependency of Italy
In the western sea which was of far more account for Italy than the
Adriatic, the most important position, the large and fertile island
of Sicily copiously furnished with harbours, had been by the peace
with Carthage transferred for the most part into the possession of the
Romans. King Hiero of Syracuse indeed, who during the last twenty-two
years of the war had adhered with unshaken steadfastness to the Roman
alliance, might have had a fair claim to an extension of territory;
but, if Roman policy had begun the war with the resolution of
tolerating only secondary states in the island, the views of the
Romans at its close decidedly tended towards the seizure of Sicily
for themselves. Hiero might be content that his territory--namely, in
addition to the immediate district of Syracuse, the domains of Elorus,
Neetum, Acrae, Leontini, Megara, and Tauromenium--and his independence
in relation to foreign powers, were (for want of any pretext to
curtail them) left to him in their former compass; he might well be
content that the war between the two great powers had not ended in
the complete overthrow of the one or of the other, and that there
consequently still remained at least a possibility of subsistence for
the intermediate power in Sicily. In the remaining and by far the
larger portion of Sicily, at Panormus, Lilybaeum, Agrigentum, Messana,
the Romans effected a permanent settlement.
Sardinia Roman
The Libyan Insurrection
Corsica
They only regretted that the possession of that beautiful island was
not enough to convert the western waters into a Roman inland sea,
so long as Sardinia still remained Carthaginian. Soon, however,
after the conclusion of the peace there appeared an unexpected
prospect of wresting from the Carthaginians this second island of the
Mediterranean. In Africa, immediately after peace had been concluded
with Rome, the mercenaries and the subjects of the Phoenicians joined
in a common revolt. The blame of the dangerous insurrection was
mainly chargeable on the Carthaginian government. In the last years
of the war Hamilcar had not been able to pay his Sicilian mercenaries
as formerly from his own resources, and he had vainly requested that
money might be sent to him from home; he might, he was told, send his
forces to Africa to be paid off. He obeyed; but as he knew the men,
he prudently embarked them in small subdivisions, that the authorities
might pay them off by troops or might at least separate them, and
thereupon he laid down his command. But all his precautions were
thwarted not so much by the emptiness of the exchequer, as by the
collegiate method of transacting business and the folly of the
bureaucracy. They waited till the whole army was once more united in
Libya, and then endeavoured to curtail the pay promised to the men.
Of course a mutiny broke out among the troops, and the hesitating and
cowardly demeanour of the authorities showed the mutineers what they
might dare. Most of them were natives of the districts ruled by, or
dependent on, Carthage; they knew the feelings which had been provoked
throughout these districts by the slaughter decreed by the government
after the expedition of Regulus(1) and by the fearful pressure of
taxation, and they knew also the character of their government, which
never kept faith and never pardoned; they were well aware of what
awaited them, should they disperse to their homes with pay exacted by
mutiny. The Carthaginians had for long been digging the mine, and
they now themselves supplied the men who could not but explode it.
Like wildfire the revolution spread from garrison to garrison, from
village to village; the Libyan women contributed their ornaments to
pay the wages of the mercenaries; a number of Carthaginian citizens,
amongst whom were some of the most distinguished officers of the
Sicilian army, became the victims of the infuriated multitude;
Carthage was already besieged on two sides, and the Carthaginian
army marching out of the city was totally routed in consequence of
the blundering of its unskilful leader.
When the Romans thus saw their hated and still dreaded foe involved in
a greater danger than any ever brought on that foe by the Roman wars,
they began more and more to regret the conclusion of the peace of 513
--which, if it was not in reality precipitate, now at least appeared
so to all--and to forget how exhausted at that time their own state
had been and how powerful had then been the standing of their
Carthaginian rival. Shame indeed forbade their entering into
communication openly with the Carthaginian rebels; in fact, they gave
an exceptional permission to the Carthaginians to levy recruits for
this war in Italy, and prohibited Italian mariners from dealing with
the Libyans. But it may be doubted whether the government of Rome
was very earnest in these acts of friendly alliance; for, in spite
of them, the dealings between the African insurgents and the Roman
mariners continued, and when Hamilcar, whom the extremity of the peril
had recalled to the command of the Carthaginian army, seized and
imprisoned a number of Italian captains concerned in these dealings,
the senate interceded for them with the Carthaginian government and
procured their release. The insurgents themselves appeared to
recognize in the Romans their natural allies. The garrisons in
Sardinia, which like the rest of the Carthaginian army had declared
in favour of the insurgents, offered the possession of the island to
the Romans, when they saw that they were unable to hold it against the
attacks of the un-conquered mountaineers of the interior (about 515);
and similar offers came even from the community of Utica, which had
likewise taken part in the revolt and was now hard pressed by the
arms of Hamilcar. The latter suggestion was declined by the Romans,
chiefly doubtless because its acceptance would have carried them
beyond the natural boundaries of Italy and therefore farther than
the Roman government was then disposed to go; on the other hand they
entertained the offers of the Sardinian mutineers, and took over
from them the portion of Sardinia which had been in the hands of the
Carthaginians (516). In this instance, even more than in the affair
of the Mamertines, the Romans were justly liable to the reproach that
the great and victorious burgesses had not disdained to fraternize
and share the spoil with a venal pack of mercenaries, and had not
sufficient self-denial to prefer the course enjoined by justice and
by honour to the gain of the moment. The Carthaginians, whose troubles
reached their height just about the period of the occupation of
Sardinia, were silent for the time being as to the unwarrantable
violence; but, after this peril had been, contrary to the expectations
and probably contrary to the hopes of the Romans, averted by the
genius of Hamilcar, and Carthage had been reinstated to her full
sovereignty in Africa (517), Carthaginian envoys immediately appeared
at Rome to require the restitution of Sardinia. But the Romans, not
inclined to restore their booty, replied with frivolous or at any rate
irrelevant complaints as to all sorts of injuries which they alleged
that the Carthaginians had inflicted on the Roman traders, and
hastened to declare war;(2) the principle, that in politics power
is the measure of right, appeared in its naked effrontery. Just
resentment urged the Carthaginians to accept that offer of war; had
Catulus insisted upon the cession of Sardinia five years before, the
war would probably have pursued its course. But now, when both
islands were lost, when Libya was in a ferment, and when the state was
weakened to the utmost by its twenty-four years' struggle with Rome
and the dreadful civil war that had raged for nearly five years more,
they were obliged to submit It was only after repeated entreaties,
and after the Phoenicians had bound themselves to pay to Rome a
compensation of 1200 talents (292,000 pounds) for the warlike
preparations which had been wantonly occasioned, that the Romans
reluctantly desisted from war. Thus the Romans acquired Sardinia
almost without a struggle; to which they added Corsica, the ancient
possession of the Etruscans, where perhaps some detached Roman
garrisons still remained over from the last war.(3) In Sardinia,
however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted
themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of
the coasts. With the natives in the interior they were continually
engaged in war or, to speak more correctly, in hunting them like wild
beasts; they baited them with dogs, and carried what they captured to
the slave market; but they undertook no real conquest. They had
occupied the islands not on their own account, but for the security
of Italy. Now that the confederacy possessed the three large islands,
it might call the Tyrrhene Sea its own.
Method of Administration in the Transmarine Possessions
Provincial Praetors
The acquisition of the islands in the western sea of Italy introduced
into the state administration of Rome a distinction, which to all
appearance originated in mere considerations of convenience and almost
accidentally, but nevertheless came to be of the deepest importance
for all time following--the distinction between the continental and
transmarine forms of administration, or to use the appellations
afterwards current, the distinction between Italy and the provinces.
Hitherto the two chief magistrates of the community, the consuls, had
not had any legally defined sphere of action; on the contrary their
official field extended as far as the Roman government itself. Of
course, however, in practice they made a division of functions
between them, and of course also they were bound in every particular
department of their duties by the enactments existing in regard to it;
the jurisdiction, for instance, over Roman citizens had in every case
to be left to the praetor, and in the Latin and other autonomous
communities the existing treaties had to be respected. The four
quaestors who had been since 487 distributed throughout Italy did not,
formally at least, restrict the consular authority, for in Italy,
just as in Rome, they were regarded simply as auxiliary magistrates
dependent on the consuls. This mode of administration appears to have
been at first extended also to the territories taken from Carthage,
and Sicily and Sardinia to have been governed for some years by
quaestors under the superintendence of the consuls; but the Romans
must very soon have become practically convinced that it was
indispensable to have superior magistrates specially appointed for
the transmarine regions. As they had been obliged to abandon the
concentration of the Roman jurisdiction in the person of the praetor
as the community became enlarged, and to send to the more remote
districts deputy judges,(4) so now (527) the concentration of
administrative and military power in the person of the consuls had to
be abandoned. For each of the new transmarine regions--viz. Sicily,
and Sardinia with Corsica annexed to it--there was appointed a special
auxiliary consul, who was in rank and title inferior to the consul and
equal to the praetor, but otherwise was--like the consul in earlier
times before the praetorship was instituted--in his own sphere of
action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme
judge. The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from
these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld
from the consuls;(5) one or more quaestors were assigned to them,
who were in every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their
assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet
had specially to manage the finances and to render account of their
administration to the senate after having laid down their office.
Organization of the Provinces
-Commercium-
Property
Autonomy
This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential
distinction between the transmarine and continental possessions. The
principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy,
were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions.
As a matter of course, these communities without exception lost
independence in their external relations. As to internal intercourse,
no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property in the province
out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude a
valid marriage. On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at
least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, a certain
federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets
with a harmless right of petition and complaint.(6) In monetary
arrangements it was not indeed practicable at once to declare the
Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands; but it
seems from the first to have obtained legal circulation, and in like
manner, at least as a rule, the right of coining in precious metals
seems to have been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily.(7) On
the other hand not only was the landed property in all Sicily left
untouched--the principle, that the land out of Italy fell by right of
war to the Romans as private property, was still unknown to this
century--but all the Sicilian and Sardinian communities retained self-
administration and some sort of autonomy, which indeed was not assured
to them in a way legally binding, but was provisionally allowed.
If the democratic constitutions of the communities were everywhere
set aside, and in every city the power was transferred to the hands
of a council representing the civic aristocracy; and if moreover the
Sicilian communities, at least, were required to institute a general
valuation corresponding to the Roman census every fifth year; both
these measures were only the necessary sequel of subordination
to the Roman senate, which in reality could not govern with Greek
--ecclesiae--, or without a view of the financial and military
resources of each dependent community; in the various districts
of Italy also the same course was in both respects pursued.
Tenths and Customs
Communities Exempted
But, side by side with this essential equality of rights, there was
established a distinction, very important in its effects, between the
Italian communities on the one hand and the transmarine communities
on the other. While the treaties concluded with the Italian towns
imposed on them a fixed contingent for the army or the fleet of
the Romans, such a contingent was not imposed on the transmarine
communities, with which no binding paction was entered into at all,
but they lost the right of arms,(8) with the single exception that
they might be employed on the summons of the Roman praetor for the
defence of their own homes. The Roman government regularly sent
Italian troops, of the strength which it had fixed, to the islands;
in return for this, a tenth of the field-produce of Sicily, and a toll
of 5 per cent on the value of all articles of commerce exported from
or imported into the Sicilian harbours, were paid to Rome. To the
islanders these taxes were nothing new. The imposts levied by the
Persian great-king and the Carthaginian republic were substantially of
the same character with that tenth; and in Greece also such a taxation
had for long been, after Oriental precedent, associated with the
-tyrannis- and often also with a hegemony. The Sicilians had in this
way long paid their tenth either to Syracuse or to Carthage, and had
been wont to levy customs-dues no longer on their own account. "We
received," says Cicero, "the Sicilian communities into our clientship
and protection in such a way that they continued under the same law
under which they had lived before, and obeyed the Roman community
under relations similar to those in which they had obeyed their
own rulers." It is fair that this should not be forgotten; but to
continue an injustice is to commit injustice. Viewed in relation not
to the subjects, who merely changed masters, but to their new rulers,
the abandonment of the equally wise and magnanimous principle of Roman
statesmanship--viz., that Rome should accept from her subjects simply
military aid, and never pecuniary compensation in lieu of it--was of
a fatal importance, in comparison with which all alleviations in the
rates and the mode of levying them, as well as all exceptions in
detail, were as nothing. Such exceptions were, no doubt, made in
various cases. Messana was directly admitted to the confederacy of
the -togati-, and, like the Greek cities in Italy, furnished its
contingent to the Roman fleet. A number of other cities, while not
admitted to the Italian military confederacy, yet received in addition
to other favours immunity from tribute and tenths, so that their
position in a financial point of view was even more favourable than
that of the Italian communities. These were Segesta and Halicyae,
which were the first towns of Carthaginian Sicily that joined the
Roman alliance; Centuripa, an inland town in the east of the island,
which was destined to keep a watch over the Syracusan territory in its
neighbourhood;(9) Halaesa on the northern coast, which was the first
of the free Greek towns to join the Romans, and above all Panormus,
hitherto the capital of Carthaginian, and now destined to become
that of Roman, Sicily. The Romans thus applied to Sicily the ancient
principle of their policy, that of subdividing the dependent
communities into carefully graduated classes with different
privileges; but, on the average, the Sardinian and Sicilian
communities were not in the position of allies but in the
manifest relation of tributary subjection.
Italy and the Provinces
It is true that this thorough distinction between the communities that
furnished contingents and those that paid tribute, or at least did not
furnish contingents, was not in law necessarily coincident with the
distinction between Italy and the provinces. Transmarine communities
might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example
were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there
existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities
with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia any more than in the country
beyond the Apennines. Communities on the mainland might be deprived
of the right of bearing arms and become tributary; this arrangement
was already the case with certain Celtic districts on the Po, and was
introduced to a considerable extent in after times. But, in reality,
the communities that furnished contingents just as decidedly
preponderated on the mainland as the tributary communities in the
islands; and while Italian settlements were not contemplated on the
part of the Romans either in Sicily with its Hellenic civilization or
in Sardinia, the Roman government had beyond doubt already determined
not only to subdue the barbarian land between the Apennines and the
Alps, but also, as their conquests advanced, to establish in it
new communities of Italic origin and Italic rights. Thus their
transmarine possessions were not merely placed on the footing of land
held by subjects, but were destined to remain on that footing in all
time to come; whereas the official field recently marked off by law
for the consuls, or, which is the same thing, the continental
territory of the Romans, was to become a new and more extended Italy,
which should reach from the Alps to the Ionian sea. In the first
instance, indeed, this essentially geographical conception of Italy
was not altogether coincident with the political conception of the
Italian confederacy; it was partly wider, partly narrower. But even
now the Romans regarded the whole space up to the boundary of the Alps
as -Italia-, that is, as the present or future domain of the -togati-
and, just as was and still is the case in North America, the boundary
was provisionally marked off in a geographical sense, that the field
might be gradually occupied in a political sense also with the advance
of colonization.(10)
Events on the Adriatic Coasts
In the Adriatic sea, at the entrance of which the important and long-
contemplated colony of Brundisium had at length been founded before
the close of the war with Carthage (510), the supremacy of Rome was
from the very first decided. In the western sea Rome had been obliged
to rid herself of rivals; in the eastern, the quarrels of the Hellenes
themselves prevented any of the states in the Grecian peninsula from
acquiring or retaining power. The most considerable of them, that of
Macedonia, had through the influence of Egypt been dislodged from the
upper Adriatic by the Aetolians and from the Peloponnesus by the
Achaeans, and was scarcely even in a position to defend its northern
frontier against the barbarians. How concerned the Romans were to
keep down Macedonia and its natural ally, the king of Syria, and how
closely they associated themselves with the Egyptian policy directed
to that object, is shown by the remarkable offer which after the end
of the war with Carthage they made to king Ptolemy III. Euergetes,
to support him in the war which he waged with Seleucus II. Callinicus
of Syria (who reigned 507-529) on account of the murder of Berenice,
and in which Macedonia had probably taken part with the latter.
Generally, the relations of Rome with the Hellenistic states became
closer; the senate already negotiated even with Syria, and interceded
with the Seleucus just mentioned on behalf of the Ilians with whom
the Romans claimed affinity.
For a direct interference of the Romans in the affairs of
the eastern powers there was no immediate need. The Achaean league,
the prosperity of which was arrested by the narrow-minded coterie-
policy of Aratus, the Aetolian republic of military adventurers, and
the decayed Macedonian empire kept each other in check; and the Romans
of that time avoided rather than sought transmarine acquisitions.
When the Acarnanians, appealing to the ground that they alone of all
the Greeks had taken no part in the destruction of Ilion, besought
the descendants of Aeneas to help them against the Aetolians, the
senate did indeed attempt a diplomatic mediation; but when the
Aetolians returned an answer drawn up in their own saucy fashion,
the antiquarian interest of the Roman senators by no means provoked
them into undertaking a war by which they would have freed the
Macedonians from their hereditary foe (about 515).
Illyrian Piracy
Expedition against Scodra
Even the evil of piracy, which was naturally in such a state of
matters the only trade that flourished on the Adriatic coast, and
from which the commerce of Italy suffered greatly, was submitted to by
the Romans with an undue measure of patience, --a patience intimately
connected with their radical aversion to maritime war and their
wretched marine. But at length it became too flagrant. Favoured by
Macedonia, which no longer found occasion to continue its old function
of protecting Hellenic commerce from the corsairs of the Adriatic for
the benefit of its foes, the rulers of Scodra had induced the Illyrian
tribes--nearly corresponding to the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and
northern Albanians of the present day--to unite for joint piratical
expeditions on a great scale.
With whole squadrons of their swift-sailing biremes, the veil-known
"Liburnian" cutters, the Illyrians waged war by sea and along the
coasts against all and sundry. The Greek settlements in these
regions, the island-towns of Issa (Lissa) and Pharos (Lesina), the
important ports of Epidamnus (Durazzo) and Apollonia (to the north of
Avlona on the Aous) of course suffered especially, and were repeatedly
beleaguered by the barbarians. Farther to the south, moreover, the
corsairs established themselves in Phoenice, the most flourishing town
of Epirus; partly voluntarily, partly by constraint, the Epirots and
Acarnanians entered into an unnatural symmachy with the foreign
freebooters; the coast was insecure even as far as Elis and Messene.
In vain the Aetolians and Achaeans collected what ships they had, with
a view to check the evil: in a battle on the open sea they were beaten
by the pirates and their Greek allies; the corsair fleet was able at
length to take possession even of the rich and important island of
Corcyra (Corfu). The complaints of Italian mariners, the appeals for
aid of their old allies the Apolloniates, and the urgent entreaties
of the besieged Issaeans at length compelled the Roman senate to
send at least ambassadors to Scodra. The brothers Gaius and Lucius
Coruncanius went thither to demand that king Agron should put an end
to the disorder. The king answered that according to the national law
of the Illyrians piracy was a lawful trade, and that the government
had no right to put a stop to privateering; whereupon Lucius
Coruncanius replied, that in that case Rome would make it her business
to introduce a better law among the Illyrians. For this certainly not
very diplomatic reply one of the envoys was--by the king's orders, as
the Romans asserted--murdered on the way home, and the surrender of
the murderers was refused. The senate had now no choice left to it.
In the spring of 525 a fleet of 200 ships of the line, with a landing-
army on board, appeared off Apollonia; the corsair-vessels were
scattered before the former, while the latter demolished the piratic
strongholds; the queen Teuta, who after the death of her husband
Agron conducted the government during the minority of her son Pinnes,
besieged in her last retreat, was obliged to accept the conditions
dictated by Rome. The rulers of Scodra were again confined both on
the north and south to the narrow limits of their original domain,
and had to quit their hold not only on all the Greek towns, but also
on the Ardiaei in Dalmatia, the Parthini around Epidamnus, and the
Atintanes in northern Epirus; no Illyrian vessel of war at all, and
not more than two unarmed vessels in company, were to be allowed in
future to sail to the south of Lissus (Alessio, between Scutari and
Durazzo). The maritime supremacy of Rome in the Adriatic was
asserted, in the most praiseworthy and durable way, by the rapid
and energetic suppression of the evil of piracy.
Acquisition of Territory in Illyria
Impression in Greece and Macedonia
But the Romans went further, and established themselves on the east
coast. The Illyrians of Scodra were rendered tributary to Rome;
Demetrius of Pharos, who had passed over from the service of Teuta to
that of the Romans, was installed, as a dependent dynast and ally of
Rome, over the islands and coasts of Dalmatia; the Greek cities
Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and the communities of the Atintanes
and Parthini were attached to Rome under mild forms of symmachy.
These acquisitions on the east coast of the Adriatic were not
sufficiently extensive to require the appointment of a special
auxiliary consul; governors of subordinate rank appear to have
been sent to Corcyra and perhaps also to other places, and the
superintendence of these possessions seems to have been entrusted
to the chief magistrates who administered Italy.(11) Thus the most
important maritime stations in the Adriatic became subject, like
Sicily and Sardinia, to the authority of Rome. What other result was
to be expected? Rome was in want of a good naval station in the upper
Adriatic--a want which was not supplied by her possessions on the
Italian shore; her new allies, especially the Greek commercial towns,
saw in the Romans their deliverers, and doubtless did what they could
permanently to secure so powerful a protection; in Greece itself
no one was in a position to oppose the movement; on the contrary,
the praise of the liberators was on every one's lips. It may be a
question whether there was greater rejoicing or shame in Hellas, when,
in place of the ten ships of the line of the Achaean league, the most
warlike power in Greece, two hundred sail belonging to the barbarians
now entered her harbours and accomplished at a blow the task, which
properly belonged to the Greeks, but in which they had failed so
miserably. But if the Greeks were ashamed that the salvation of their
oppressed countrymen had to come from abroad, they accepted the
deliverance at least with a good grace; they did not fail to receive
the Romans solemnly into the fellowship of the Hellenic nation by
admitting them to the Isthmian games and the Eleusinian mysteries.
Macedonia was silent; it was not in a condition to protest in arms,
and disdained to do so in words. No resistance was encountered.
Nevertheless Rome, by seizing the keys to her neighbour's house, had
converted that neighbour into an adversary who, should he recover his
power, or should a favourable opportunity occur, might be expected to
know how to break the silence. Had the energetic and prudent king
Antigonus Doson lived longer, he would have doubtless taken up the
gauntlet which the Romans had flung down, for, when some years
afterwards the dynast Demetrius of Pharos withdrew from the hegemony
of Rome, prosecuted piracy contrary to the treaty in concert with
the Istrians, and subdued the Atintanes whom the Romans had declared
independent, Antigonus formed an alliance with him, and the troops
of Demetrius fought along with the army of Antigonus at the battle
of Sellasia (532). But Antigonus died (in the winter 533-4); and his
successor Philip, still a boy, allowed the Consul Lucius Aemilius
Paullus to attack the ally of Macedonia, to destroy his capital,
and to drive him from his kingdom into exile (535).
Northern Italy
The mainland of Italy proper, south of the Apennines, enjoyed profound
peace after the fall of Tarentum: the six days' war with Falerii (513)
was little more than an interlude. But towards the north, between the
territory of the confederacy and the natural boundary of Italy--the
chain of the Alps--there still extended a wide region which was not
subject to the Romans. What was regarded as the boundary of Italy on
the Adriatic coast was the river Aesis immediately above Ancona.
Beyond this boundary the adjacent properly Gallic territory as far as,
and including, Ravenna belonged in a similar way as did Italy proper
to the Roman alliance; the Senones, who had formerly settled there,
were extirpated in the war of 471-2,(12) and the several townships
were connected with Rome, either as burgess-colonies, like Sena
Gallica,(13) or as allied towns, whether with Latin rights, like
Ariminum,(14) or with Italian rights, like Ravenna. On the wide
region beyond Ravenna as far as the Alps non-Italian peoples were
settled. South of the Po the strong Celtic tribe of the Boii still
held its ground (from Parma to Bologna); alongside of them, the
Lingones on the east and the Anares on the west (in the region of
Parma)--two smaller Celtic cantons presumably clients of the Boii--
peopled the plain. At the western end of the plain the Ligurians
began, who, mingled with isolated Celtic tribes, and settled on the
Apennines from above Arezzo and Pisa westward, occupied the region of
the sources of the Po. The eastern portion of the plain north of the
Po, nearly from Verona to the coast, was possessed by the Veneti, a
race different from the Celts and probably of Illyrian extraction.
Between these and the western mountains were settled the Cenomani
(about Brescia and Cremona) who rarely acted with the Celtic nation
and were probably largely intermingled with Veneti, and the Insubres
(around Milan). The latter was the most considerable of the Celtic
cantons in Italy, and was in constant communication not merely
with the minor communities partly of Celtic, partly of non-Celtic
extraction, that were scattered in the Alpine valleys, but also with
the Celtic cantons beyond the Alps. The gates of the Alps, the mighty
stream navigable for 230 miles, and the largest and most fertile plain
of the then civilized Europe, still continued in the hands of the
hereditary foes of the Italian name, who, humbled indeed and weakened,
but still scarce even nominally dependent and still troublesome
neighbours, persevered in their barbarism, and, thinly scattered over
the spacious plains, continued to pasture their herds and to plunder.
It was to be anticipated that the Romans would hasten to possess
themselves of these regions; the more so as the Celts gradually began
to forget their defeats in the campaigns of 471 and 472 and to bestir
themselves again, and, what was still more dangerous, the Transalpine
Celts began anew to show themselves on the south of the Alps.
Celtic Wars
In fact the Boii had already renewed the war in 516, and their
chiefs Atis and Galatas had--without, it is true, the authority of the
general diet--summoned the Transalpine Gauls to make common cause with
them. The latter had numerously answered the call, and in 518 a
Celtic army, such as Italy had not seen for long, encamped before
Ariminum. The Romans, for the moment much too weak to attempt a
battle, concluded an armistice, and to gain time allowed envoys from
the Celts to proceed to Rome, who ventured in the senate to demand
the cession of Ariminum--it seemed as if the times of Brennus had
returned. But an unexpected incident put an end to the war before it
had well begun. The Boii, dissatisfied with their unbidden allies and
afraid probably for their own territory, fell into variance with the
Transalpine Gauls. An open battle took place between the two Celtic
hosts; and, after the chiefs of the Boii had been put to death by
their own men, the Transalpine Gauls returned home. The Boii were
thus delivered into the hands of the Romans, and the latter were at
liberty to expel them like the Senones, and to advance at least to
the Po; but they preferred to grant the Boii peace in return for
the cession of some districts of their land (518). This was probably
done, because they were just at that time expecting the renewed
outbreak of war with Carthage; but, after that war had been averted by
the cession of Sardinia, true policy required the Roman government to
take possession as speedily and entirely as possible of the country up
to the Alps. The constant apprehensions on the part of the Celts as
to such a Roman invasion were therefore sufficiently justified; but
the Romans were in no haste. So the Celts on their part began the
war, either because the Roman assignations of land on the east coast
(522), although not a measure immediately directed against them, made
them apprehensive of danger; or because they perceived that a war with
Rome for the possession of Lombardy was inevitable; or, as is perhaps
most probable, because their Celtic impatience was once more weary of
inaction and preferred to arm for a new warlike expedition. With the
exception of the Cenomani, who acted with the Veneti and declared for
the Romans, all the Italian Celts concurred in the war, and they were
joined by the Celts of the upper valley of the Rhone, or rather by
a number of adventurers belonging to them, under the leaders
Concolitanus and Aneroestus.(15) With 50,000 warriors on foot, and
20,000 on horseback or in chariots, the leaders of the Celts advanced
to the Apennines (529). The Romans had not anticipated an attack on
this side, and had not expected that the Celts, disregarding the Roman
fortresses on the east coast and the protection of their own kinsmen,
would venture to advance directly against the capital. Not very long
before a similar Celtic swarm had in an exactly similar way overrun
Greece. The danger was serious, and appeared still more serious than
it really was. The belief that Rome's destruction was this time
inevitable, and that the Roman soil was fated to become the property
of the Gauls, was so generally diffused among the multitude in Rome
itself that the government reckoned it not beneath its dignity to
allay the absurd superstitious belief of the mob by an act still more
absurd, and to bury alive a Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman in the
Roman Forum with a view to fulfil the oracle of destiny. At the same
time they made more serious preparations. Of the two consular armies,
each of which numbered about 25,000 infantry and 1100 cavalry, one
was stationed in Sardinia under Gaius Atilius Regulus, the other at
Ariminum under Lucius Aemilius Papus. Both received orders to repair
as speedily as possible to Etruria, which was most immediately
threatened. The Celts had already been under the necessity of leaving
a garrison at home to face the Cenomani and Veneti, who were allied
with Rome; now the levy of the Umbrians was directed to advance from
their native mountains down into the plain of the Boii, and to inflict
all the injury which they could think of on the enemy upon his own
soil. The militia of the Etruscans and Sabines was to occupy the
Apennines and if possible to obstruct the passage, till the regular
troops could arrive. A reserve was formed in Rome of 50,000 men.
Throughout all Italy, which on this occasion recognized its true
champion in Rome, the men capable of service were enrolled, and stores
and materials of war were collected.
Battle of Telamon
All this, however, required time. For once the Romans had allowed
themselves to be surprised, and it was too late at least to save
Etruria. The Celts found the Apennines hardly defended, and plundered
unopposed the rich plains of the Tuscan territory, which for long had
seen no enemy. They were already at Clusium, three days' march from
Rome, when the army of Ariminum, under the consul Papus, appeared on
their flank, while the Etruscan militia, which after crossing the
Apennines had assembled in rear of the Gauls, followed the line of the
enemy's march. Suddenly one evening, after the two armies had already
encamped and the bivouac fires were kindled, the Celtic infantry again
broke up and retreated on the road towards Faesulae (Fiesole): the
cavalry occupied the advanced posts during the night, and followed the
main force next morning. When the Tuscan militia, who had pitched
their camp close upon the enemy, became aware of his departure, they
imagined that the host had begun to disperse, and marched hastily in
pursuit. The Gauls had reckoned on this very result: their infantry,
which had rested and was drawn up in order, awaited on a well-chosen
battlefield the Roman militia, which came up from its forced march
fatigued and disordered. Six thousand men fell after a furious
combat, and the rest of the militia, which had been compelled to seek
refuge on a hill, would have perished, had not the consular army
appeared just in time. This induced the Gauls to return homeward.
Their dexterously-contrived plan for preventing the union of the two
Roman armies and annihilating the weaker in detail, had only been
partially successful; now it seemed to them advisable first of all to
place in security their considerable booty. For the sake of an easier
line of march they proceeded from the district of Chiusi, where they
were, to the level coast, and were marching along the shore, when
they found an unexpected obstacle in the way. It was the Sardinian
legions, which had landed at Pisae; and, when they arrived too late to
obstruct the passage of the Apennines, had immediately put themselves
in motion and were advancing along the coast in a direction opposite
to the march of the Gauls. Near Telamon (at the mouth of the Ombrone)
they met with the enemy. While the Roman infantry advanced with close
front along the great road, the cavalry, led by the consul Gaius
Atilius Regulus in person, made a side movement so as to take the
Gauls in flank, and to acquaint the other Roman army under Papus as
soon as possible with their arrival. A hot cavalry engagement took
place, in which along with many brave Romans Regulus fell; but he had
not sacrificed his life in vain: his object was gained. Papus became
aware of the conflict, and guessed how matters stood; he hastily
arrayed his legions, and on both sides the Celtic host was now pressed
by Roman legions. Courageously it made its dispositions for the
double conflict, the Transalpine Gauls and Insubres against the
troops of Papus, the Alpine Taurisci and the Boii against the
Sardinian infantry; the cavalry combat pursued its course apart on
the flank. The forces were in numbers not unequally matched, and the
desperate position of the Gauls impelled them to the most obstinate
resistance. But the Transalpine Gauls, accustomed only to close
fighting, gave way before the missiles of the Roman skirmishers; in
the hand-to-hand combat the better temper of the Roman weapons placed
the Gauls at a disadvantage; and at last an attack in flank by the
victorious Roman cavalry decided the day. The Celtic horsemen made
their escape; the infantry, wedged in between the sea and the three
Roman armies, had no means of flight. 10,000 Celts, with their king
Concolitanus, were taken prisoners; 40,000 others lay dead on the
field of battle; Aneroestus and his attendants had, after the Celtic
fashion, put themselves to death.
The Celts Attacked in Their Own Land
The victory was complete, and the Romans were firmly resolved to
prevent the recurrence of such surprises by the complete subjugation
of the Celts on the south of the Alps. In the following year (530)
the Boii submitted without resistance along with the Lingones; and in
the year after that (531) the Anares; so that the plain as far as the
Po was in the hands of the Romans. The conquest of the northern bank
of the river cost a more serious struggle. Gaius Flaminius crossed
the river in the newly-acquired territory of the Anares (somewhere
near Piacenza) in 531; but during the crossing, and still more while
making good his footing on the other bank, he suffered so heavy losses
and found himself with the river in his rear in so dangerous a
position, that he made a capitulation with the enemy to secure a free
retreat, which the Insubres foolishly conceded. Scarce, however, had
he escaped when he appeared in the territory of the Cenomani, and,
united with them, advanced for the second time from the north into the
canton of the Insubres. The Gauls perceived what was now the object
of the Romans, when it was too late: they took from the temple of
their goddess the golden standards called the "immovable," and with
their whole levy, 50,000 strong, they offered battle to the Romans.
The situation of the latter was critical: they were stationed with
their back to a river (perhaps the Oglio), separated from home by the
enemy's territory, and left to depend for aid in battle as well as for
their line of retreat on the uncertain friendship of the Cenomani.
There was, however, no choice. The Gauls fighting in the Roman ranks
were placed on the left bank of the stream; on the right, opposite to
the Insubres, the legions were drawn up, and the bridges were broken
down that they might not be assailed, at least in the rear, by their
dubious allies.
The Celts Conquered by Rome
In this way undoubtedly the river cut off their retreat, and their way
homeward lay through the hostile army. But the superiority of the
Roman arms and of Roman discipline achieved the victory, and the army
cut its way through: once more the Roman tactics had redeemed the
blunders of the general. The victory was due to the soldiers and
officers, not to the generals, who gained a triumph only through
popular favour in opposition to the just decree of the senate. Gladly
would the Insubres have made peace; but Rome required unconditional
subjection, and things had not yet come to that pass. They tried to
maintain their ground with the help of their northern kinsmen; and,
with 30,000 mercenaries whom they had raised amongst these and their
own levy, they received the two consular armies advancing once more in
the following year (532) from the territory of the Cenomani to invade
their land. Various obstinate combats took place; in a diversion,
attempted by the Insubres against the Roman fortress of Clastidium
(Casteggio, below Pavia), on the right bank of the Po, the Gallic
king Virdumarus fell by the hand of the consul Marcus Marcellus. But,
after a battle already half won by the Celts but ultimately decided
in favour of the Romans, the consul Gnaeus Scipio took by assault
Mediolanum, the capital of the Insubres, and the capture of that town
and of Comum terminated their resistance. Thus the Celts of Italy
were completely vanquished, and as, just before, the Romans had shown
to the Hellenes in the war with the pirates the difference between a
Roman and a Greek sovereignty of the seas, so they had now brilliantly
demonstrated that Rome knew how to defend the gates of Italy against
freebooters on land otherwise than Macedonia had guarded the gates of
Greece, and that in spite of all internal quarrels Italy presented as
united a front to the national foe, as Greece exhibited distraction
and discord.
Romanization of the Entire of Italy
The boundary of the Alps was reached, in so far as the whole flat
country on the Po was either rendered subject to the Romans, or, like
the territories of the Cenomani and Veneti, was occupied by dependent
allies. It needed time, however, to reap the consequences of this
victory and to Romanize the land. In this the Romans did not adopt
a uniform mode of procedure. In the mountainous northwest of Italy
and in the more remote districts between the Alps and the Po they
tolerated, on the whole, the former inhabitants; the numerous wars,
as they are called, which were waged with the Ligurians in particular
(first in 516) appear to have been slave-hunts rather than wars, and,
often as the cantons and valleys submitted to the Romans, Roman
sovereignty in that quarter was hardly more than a name. The
expedition to Istria also (533) appears not to have aimed at much
more than the destruction of the last lurking-places of the Adriatic
pirates, and the establishment of a communication by land along the
coast between the Italian conquests of Rome and her acquisitions on
the other shore. On the other hand the Celts in the districts south
of the Po were doomed irretrievably to destruction; for, owing to
the looseness of the ties connecting the Celtic nation, none of the
northern Celtic cantons took part with their Italian kinsmen except
for money, and the Romans looked on the latter not only as their
national foes, but as the usurpers of their natural heritage. The
extensive assignations of land in 522 had already filled the whole
territory between Ancona and Ariminum with Roman colonists, who
settled here without communal organization in market-villages and
hamlets. Further measures of the same character were taken, and
it was not difficult to dislodge and extirpate a half-barbarous
population like the Celtic, only partially following agriculture,
and destitute of walled towns. The great northern highway, which had
been, probably some eighty years earlier, carried by way of Otricoli
to Narni, and had shortly before been prolonged to the newly-founded
fortress of Spoletium (514), was now (534) carried, under the name of
the "Flaminian" road, by way of the newly-established market-village
Forum Flaminii (near Foligno), through the pass of Furlo to the coast,
and thence along the latter from Fanum (Fano) to Ariminum; it was the
first artificial road which crossed the Apennines and connected the
two Italian seas. Great zeal was manifested in covering the newly-
acquired fertile territory with Roman townships. Already, to cover
the passage of the Po, the strong fortress of Placentia (Piacenza)
had been founded on the right bank; not far from it Cremona had been
laid out on the left bank, and the building of the walls of Mutina
(Modena), in the territory taken away from the Boii, had far advanced
--already preparations were being made for further assignations of
land and for continuing the highway, when sudden event interrupted
the Romans in reaping the fruit of their successes.
Notes for Chapter III
1. III. II. Evacuation of Africa
2. That the cession of the islands lying between Sicily and Italy,
which the peace of 513 prescribed to the Carthaginians, did not
include the cession of Sardinia is a settled point (III. II. Remarks
On the Roman Conduct of the War); but the statement, that the Romans
made that a pretext for their occupation of the island three years
after the peace, is ill attested. Had they done so, they would merely
have added a diplomatic folly to the political effrontery.
3. III. II. The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia
4. III. VIII. Changes in Procedure
5. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers
6. That this was the case may be gathered partly from the appearance
of the "Siculi" against Marcellus (Liv. xxvi. 26, seq.), partly from
the "conjoint petitions of all the Sicilian communities" (Cicero,
Verr. ii. 42, 102; 45, 114; 50, 146; iii. 88, 204), partly from well-
known analogies (Marquardt, Handb. iii. i, 267). Because there was no
-commercium- between the different towns, it by no means follows that
there was no -concilium-.
7. The right of coining gold and silver was not monopolized by Rome
in the provinces so strictly as in Italy, evidently because gold
and silver money not struck after the Roman standard was of less
importance. But in their case too the mints were doubtless, as a
rule, restricted to the coinage of copper, or at most silver, small
money; even the most favourably treated communities of Roman Sicily,
such as the Mamertines, the Centuripans, the Halaesines, the
Segestans, and also in the main the Pacormitaus coined only copper.
8. This is implied in Hiero's expression (Liv. xxii. 37):
that he knew that the Romans made use of none but Roman or Latin
infantry and cavalry, and employed "foreigners" at most only among
the light-armed troops.
9. This is shown at once by a glance at the map, and also by the
remarkable exceptional provision which allowed the Centuripans
to buy to any part of Sicily. They needed, as Roman spies, the
utmost freedom of movement We may add that Centuripa appears to
have been among the first cities that went over to Rome
(Diodorus, l. xxiii. p. 501).
10. This distinction between Italy as the Roman mainland or consular
sphere on the one hand, and the transmarine territory or praetorial
sphere on the other, already appears variously applied in the sixth
century. The ritual rule, that certain priests should not leave Rome
(Val. Max. i. i, 2), was explained to mean, that they were not allowed
to cross the sea (Liv. Ep. 19, xxxvii. 51; Tac. Ann. iii. 58, 71; Cic.
Phil. xi. 8, 18; comp. Liv. xxviii. 38, 44, Ep. 59). To this head
still more definitely belongs the interpretation which was proposed in
544 to be put upon the old rule, that the consul might nominate the
dictator only on "Roman ground": viz. that "Roman ground" comprehended
all Italy (Liv. xxvii. 5). The erection of the Celtic land between
the Alps and Apennines into a special province, different from that of
the consuls and subject to a separate Standing chief magistrate, was
the work of Sulla. Of course no one will Urge as an objection to this
view, that already in the sixth century Gallia or Ariminum is very
often designated as the "official district" (-provincia-), usually of
one of the consuls. -Provincia-, as is well known, was in the older
language not--what alone it denoted subsequently--a definite space
assigned as a district to a standing chief magistrate, but the
department of duty fixed for the individual consul, in the first
instance by agreement with his colleague, under concurrence of the
senate; and in this sense frequently individual regions in northern
Italy, or even North Italy generally, were assigned to individual
consuls as -provincia-.
11. A standing Roman commandant of Corcyra is apparently mentioned in
Polyb. xxii. 15, 6 (erroneously translated by Liv. xxxviii. ii, comp.
xlii. 37), and a similar one in the case of Issa in Liv. xliii. 9.
We have, moreover, the analogy of the -praefectus pro legato insularum
Baliarum- (Orelli, 732), and of the governor of Pandataria (Inscr.
Reg. Neapol. 3528). It appears, accordingly, to have been a rule in
the Roman administration to appoint non-senatorial -praefecti- for the
more remote islands. But these "deputies" presuppose in the nature of
the case a superior magistrate who nominates and superintends them;
and this superior magistracy can only have been at this period that of
the consuls. Subsequently, after the erection of Macedonia and Gallia
Cisalpina into provinces, the superior administration was committed to
one of these two governors; the very territory now in question, the
nucleus of the subsequent Roman province of Illyricum, belonged, as
is well known, in part to Caesar's district of administration.
12. III. VII. The Senones Annihilated
13. III. VII. Breach between Rome and Tarentum
14. III. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads
15. These, whom Polybius designates as the "Celts in the Alps and on
the Rhone, who on account of their character as military adventurers
are called Gaesatae (free lances)," are in the Capitoline Fasti named
-Germani-. It is possible that the contemporary annalists may have
here mentioned Celts alone, and that it was the historical speculation
of the age of Caesar and Augustus that first induced the redactors of
these Fasti to treat them as "Germans." If, on the other hand, the
mention of the Germans in the Fasti was based on contemporary records
--in which case this is the earliest mention of the name--we shall here
have to think not of the Germanic races who were afterwards so called,
but of a Celtic horde.