The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close of the Third Period
Subjugation of the Valley of the Po
The war waged by Hannibal had interrupted Rome in the extension of her
dominion to the Alps or to the boundary of Italy, as was even now the
Roman phrase, and in the organization and colonizing of the Celtic
territories. It was self-evident that the task would now be resumed
at the point where it had been broken off, and the Celts were well
aware of this. In the very year of the conclusion of peace with
Carthage (553) hostilities had recommenced in the territory of the
Boii, who were the most immediately exposed to danger; and a first
success obtained by them over the hastily-assembled Roman levy,
coupled with the persuasions of a Carthaginian officer, Hamilcar, who
had been left behind from the expedition of Mago in northern Italy,
produced in the following year (554) a general insurrection spreading
beyond the two tribes immediately threatened, the Boii and Insubres.
The Ligurians were driven to arms by the nearer approach of the
danger, and even the youth of the Cenomani on this occasion listened
less to the voice of their cautious chiefs than to the urgent appeal
of their kinsmen who were in peril. Of "the two barriers against the
raids of the Gauls," Placentia and Cremona, the former was sacked--not
more than 2000 of the inhabitants of Placentia saved their lives--and
the second was invested. In haste the legions advanced to save what
they could. A great battle took place before Cremona. The dexterous
management and the professional skill of the Phoenician leader failed
to make up for the deficiencies of his troops; the Gauls were unable
to withstand the onset of the legions, and among the numerous dead who
covered the field of battle was the Carthaginian officer. The Celts,
nevertheless, continued the struggle; the same Roman army which had
conquered at Cremona was next year (555), chiefly through the fault of
its careless leader, almost destroyed by the Insubres; and it was not
till 556 that Placentia could be partially re-established. But the
league of the cantons associated for the desperate struggle suffered
from intestine discord; the Boii and Insubres quarrelled, and the
Cenomani not only withdrew from the national league, but purchased
their pardon from the Romans by a disgraceful betrayal of their
countrymen; during a battle in which the Insubres engaged the Romans
on the Mincius, the Cenomani attacked in rear, and helped to destroy,
their allies and comrades in arms (557). Thus humbled and left in the
lurch, the Insubres, after the fall of Comum, likewise consented to
conclude a separate peace (558). The conditions, which the Romans
prescribed to the Cenomani and Insubres, were certainly harder than
they had been in the habit of granting to the members of the Italian
confederacy; in particular, they were careful to confirm by law the
barrier of separation between Italians and Celts, and to enact that
never should a member of these two Celtic tribes be capable of
acquiring the citizenship of Rome. But these Transpadane Celtic
districts were allowed to retain their existence and their national
constitution--so that they formed not town-domains, but tribal
cantons--and no tribute, as it would seem, was imposed on them.
They were intended to serve as a bulwark for the Roman settlements
south of the Po, and to ward off from Italy the incursions of the
migratory northern tribes and the aggressions of the predatory
inhabitants of the Alps, who were wont to make regular razzias in
these districts. The process of Latinizing, moreover, made rapid
progress in these regions; the Celtic nationality was evidently far
from able to oppose such resistance as the more civilized nations of
Sabellians and Etruscans. The celebrated Latin comic poet Statius
Caecilius, who died in 586, was a manumitted Insubrian; and Polybius,
who visited these districts towards the close of the sixth century,
affirms, not perhaps without some exaggeration, that in that quarter
only a few villages among the Alps remained Celtic. The Veneti, on
the other hand, appear to have retained their nationality longer.
Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of the Transalpine Gauls
The chief efforts of the Romans in these regions were naturally
directed to check the immigration of the Transalpine Celts, and to
make the natural wall, which separates the peninsula from the interior
of the continent, also its political boundary. That the terror of
the Roman name had already penetrated to the adjacent Celtic cantons
beyond the Alps, is shown not only by the totally passive attitude
which they maintained during the annihilation or subjugation of their
Cisalpine countrymen, but still more by the official disapproval and
disavowal which the Transalpine cantons--we shall have to think
primarily of the Helvetii (between the lake of Geneva and the Main)
and the Carni or Taurisci (in Carinthia and Styria)--expressed to
the envoys from Rome, who complained of the attempts made by isolated
Celtic bands to settle peacefully on the Roman side of the Alps. Not
less significant was the humble spirit in which these same bands of
emigrants first came to the Roman senate entreating an assignment
of land, and then without remonstrance obeyed the rigorous order to
return over the Alps (568-575), and allowed the town, which they
had already founded not far from the later Aquileia, to be again
destroyed. With wise severity the senate permitted no sort of
exception to the principle that the gates of the Alps should be
henceforth closed for the Celtic nation, and visited with heavy
penalties those Roman subjects in Italy, who had instigated any such
schemes of immigration. An attempt of this kind which was made on a
route hitherto little known to the Romans, in the innermost recess of
the Adriatic, and still more, as if would seem, the project of Philip
of Macedonia for invading Italy from the east as Hannibal had done
from the west, gave occasion to the founding of a fortress in the
extreme north-eastern corner of Italy--Aquileia, the most northerly of
the Italian colonies (571-573)--which was intended not only to close
that route for ever against foreigners, but also to secure the command
of the gulf which was specially convenient for navigation, and to
check the piracy which was still not wholly extirpated in those
waters. The establishment of Aquileia led to a war with the Istrians
(576, 577), which was speedily terminated by the storming of some
strongholds and the fall of the king, Aepulo, and which was remarkable
for nothing except for the panic, which the news of the surprise of
the Roman camp by a handful of barbarians called forth in the fleet
and throughout Italy.
Colonizing of the Region on the South of the Po
A different course was adopted with the region on the south of the Po,
which the Roman senate had determined to incorporate with Italy. The
Boii, who were immediately affected by this step, defended themselves
with the resolution of despair. They even crossed the Po and made an
attempt to rouse the Insubres once more to arms (560); they blockaded
a consul in his camp, and he was on the point of succumbing; Placentia
maintained itself with difficulty against the constant assaults of
the exasperated natives. At length the last battle was fought at
Mutina; it was long and bloody, but the Romans conquered (561);
and thenceforth the struggle was no longer a war, but a slave-hunt.
The Roman camp soon was the only asylum in the Boian territory;
thither the better part of the still surviving population began to
take refuge; and the victors were able, without much exaggeration, to
report to Rome that nothing remained of the nation of the Boii but old
men and children. The nation was thus obliged to resign itself to the
fate appointed for it. The Romans demanded the cession of half the
territory (563); the demand could not be refused, and even within the
diminished district which was left to the Boii, they soon disappeared,
and amalgamated with their conquerors.(1)
After the Romans had thus cleared the ground for themselves,
the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona, whose colonists had been
in great part swept away or dispersed by the troubles of the last few
years, were reorganized, and new settlers were sent thither. The new
foundations were, in or near the former territory of the Senones,
Potentia (near Recanati not far from Ancona: in 570) and Pisaurum
(Pesaro: in 570), and, in the newly acquired district of the Boii, the
fortresses of Bononia (565), Mutina (571), and Parma (571); the colony
of Mutina had been already instituted before the war under Hannibal,
but that war had interrupted the completion of the settlement.
The construction of fortresses was associated, as was always the case,
with the formation of military roads. The Flaminian way was prolonged
from its northern termination at Ariminum, under the name of the
Aemilian way, to Placentia (567). Moreover, the road from Rome to
Arretium or the Cassian way, which perhaps had already been long a
municipal road, was taken in charge and constructed anew by the Roman
community probably in 583; while in 567 the track from Arretium over
the Apennines to Bononia as far as the new Aemilian road had been put
in order, and furnished a shorter communication between Rome and the
fortresses on the Po. By these comprehensive measures the Apennines
were practically superseded as the boundary between the Celtic and
Italian territories, and were replaced by the Po. South of the Po
there henceforth prevailed mainly the urban constitution of the
Italians, beyond it mainly the cantonal constitution of the Celts;
and, if the district between the Apennines and the Po was still
reckoned Celtic land, it was but an empty name.
Liguria
In the north-western mountain-land of Italy, whose valleys and hills
were occupied chiefly by the much-subdivided Ligurian stock, the
Romans pursued a similar course. Those dwelling immediately to the
north of the Arno were extirpated. This fate befell chiefly the
Apuani, who dwelt on the Apennines between the Arno and the Magra, and
incessantly plundered on the one side the territory of Pisae, on the
other that of Bononia and Mutina. Those who did not fall victims in
that quarter to the sword of the Romans were transported into Lower
Italy to the region of Beneventum (574); and by energetic measures the
Ligurian nation, from which the Romans were obliged in 578 to recover
the colony of Mutina which it had conquered, was completely crushed in
the mountains which separate the valley of the Po from that of the
Arno. The fortress of Luna (not far from Spezzia), established in 577
in the former territory of the Apuani, protected the frontier against
the Ligurians just as Aquileia did against the Transalpines, and gave
the Romans at the same time an excellent port which henceforth became
the usual station for the passage to Massilia and to Spain. The
construction of the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Luna, and
of the cross road carried from Luca by way of Florence to Arretium
between the Aurelian and Cassian ways, probably belongs to the
same period.
With the more western Ligurian tribes, who held the Genoese Apennines
and the Maritime Alps, there were incessant conflicts. They were
troublesome neighbours, accustomed to pillage by land and by sea: the
Pisans and Massiliots suffered no little injury from their incursions
and their piracies. But no permanent results were gained amidst these
constant hostilities, or perhaps even aimed at; except apparently
that, with a view to have a communication by land with Transalpine
Gaul and Spain in addition to the regular route by sea, the Romans
endeavoured to clear the great coast road from Luna by way of Massilia
to Emporiae, at least as far as the Alps--beyond the Alps it devolved
on the Massiliots to keep the coast navigation open for Roman vessels
and the road along the shore open for travellers by land. The
interior with its impassable valleys and its rocky fastnesses,
and with its poor but dexterous and crafty inhabitants, served
the Romans mainly as a school of war for the training and hardening
of soldiers and officers.
Corsica
Sardinia
Wars as they are called, of a similar character with those against the
Ligurians, were waged with the Corsicans and to a still greater extent
with the inhabitants of the interior of Sardinia, who retaliated for
the predatory expeditions directed against them by sudden attacks on
the districts along the coast. The expedition of Tiberius Gracchus
against the Sardinians in 577 was specially held in remembrance,
not so much because it gave "peace" to the province, as because
he asserted that he had slain or captured as many as 80,000 of
the islanders, and dragged slaves thence in such multitudes to
Rome that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb.
Carthage
In Africa the policy of Rome was substantially summed up in the one
idea, as short-sighted as it was narrow-minded, that she ought to
prevent the revival of the power of Carthage, and ought accordingly
to keep the unhappy city constantly oppressed and apprehensive of
a declaration of war suspended over it by Rome like the sword of
Damocles. The stipulation in the treaty of peace, that the
Carthaginians should retain their territory undiminished, but
that their neighbour Massinissa should have all those possessions
guaranteed to him which he or his predecessor had possessed within
the Carthaginian bounds, looks almost as if it had been inserted not
to obviate, but to provoke disputes. The same remark applies to the
obligation imposed by the Roman treaty of peace on the Carthaginians
not to make war upon the allies of Rome; so that, according to the
letter of the treaty, they were not even entitled to expel their
Numidian neighbours from their own undisputed territory. With such
stipulations and amidst the uncertainty of African frontier questions
in general, the situation of Carthage in presence of a neighbour
equally powerful and unscrupulous and of a liege lord who was at once
umpire and party in the cause, could not but be a painful one; but
the reality was worse than the worst expectations. As early as 561
Carthage found herself suddenly assailed under frivolous pretexts,
and saw the richest portion of her territory, the province of Emporiae
on the Lesser Syrtis, partly plundered by the Numidians, partly
even seized and retained by them. Encroachments of this kind were
multiplied; the level country passed into the hands of the Numidians,
and the Carthaginians with difficulty maintained themselves in the
larger places. Within the last two years alone, the Carthaginians
declared in 582, seventy villages had been again wrested from them in
opposition to the treaty. Embassy after embassy was despatched to
Rome; the Carthaginians adjured the Roman senate either to allow them
to defend themselves by arms, or to appoint a court of arbitration
with power to enforce their award, or to regulate the frontier anew
that they might at least learn once for all how much they were to
lose; otherwise it were better to make them Roman subjects at once
than thus gradually to deliver them over to the Libyans. But the
Roman government, which already in 554 had held forth a direct
prospect of extension of territory to their client, of course at the
expense of Carthage, seemed to have little objection that he should
himself take the booty destined for him; they moderated perhaps at
times the too great impetuosity of the Libyans, who now retaliated
fully on their old tormentors for their former sufferings; but it
was in reality for the very sake of inflicting this torture that the
Romans had assigned Massinissa as a neighbour to Carthage. All the
requests and complaints had no result, except either that Roman
commissions made their appearance in Africa and after a thorough
investigation came to no decision, or that in the negotiations at
Rome the envoys of Massinissa pretended a want of instructions and
the matter was adjourned. Phoenician patience alone was able to
submit meekly to such a position, and even to exhibit towards
the despotic victors every attention and courtesy, solicited or
unsolicited with unwearied perseverance. The Carthaginians
especially courted Roman favour by sending supplies of grain.
Hannibal
Reform of the Carthaginian Constitution
Hannibal's Flight
This pliability on the part of the vanquished, however was not mere
patience and resignation. There was still in Carthage a patriotic
party, and at its head stood the man who, wherever fate placed him,
was still dreaded by the Romans. It had not abandoned the idea of
resuming the struggle by taking advantage of those complications that
might be easily foreseen between Rome and the eastern powers; and, as
the failure of the magnificent scheme of Hamilcar and his sons had
been due mainly to the Carthaginian oligarchy, the chief object was
internally to reinvigorate the country for this new struggle. The
salutary influence of adversity, and the clear, noble, and commanding
mind of Hannibal, effected political and financial reforms. The
oligarchy, which had filled up the measure of its guilty follies by
raising a criminal process against the great general, charging him
with having intentionally abstained from the capture of Rome and with
embezzlement of the Italian spoil--that rotten oligarchy was, on the
proposition of Hannibal, overthrown, and a democratic government was
introduced such as was suited to the circumstances of the citizens
(before 559). The finances were so rapidly reorganized by the
collection of arrears and of embezzled moneys and by the introduction
of better control, that the contribution due to Rome could be paid
without burdening the citizens in any way with extraordinary taxes.
The Roman government, just then on the point of beginning its critical
war with the great-king of Asia, observed the progress of these
events, as may easily be conceived, with apprehension; it was no
imaginary danger that the Carthaginian fleet might land in Italy and
a second war under Hannibal might spring up there, while the Roman
legions fighting in Asia Minor. We can scarcely, therefore, censure
the Romans for sending an embassy to Carthage (in 559) which was
presumably charged to demand the surrender of Hannibal. The spiteful
Carthaginian oligarchs, who sent letter after letter to Rome to
denounce to the national foe the hero who had overthrown them as
having entered into secret communications with the powers unfriendly
to Rome, were contemptible, but their information was probably
correct; and, true as it was that that embassy involved a humiliating
confession of the dread with which the simple shofete of Carthage
inspired so powerful a people, and natural and honourable as it was
that the proud conqueror of Zama should take exception in the senate
to so humiliating a step, still that confession was nothing but the
simple truth, and Hannibal was of a genius so extraordinary, that none
but sentimental politicians in Rome could tolerate him longer at the
head of the Carthaginian state. The marked recognition thus accorded
to him by the Roman government scarcely took himself by surprise.
As it was Hannibal and not Carthage that had carried on the last war,
so it was he who had to bear the fate of the vanquished. The
Carthaginians could do nothing but submit and be thankful that
Hannibal, sparing them the greater disgrace by his speedy and prudent
flight to the east, left to his ancestral city merely the lesser
disgrace of having banished its greatest citizen for ever from his
native land, confiscated his property, and razed his house. The
profound saying that those are the favourites of the gods, on whom
they lavish infinite joys and infinite sorrows, thus verified itself
in full measure in the case of Hannibal.
Continued Irritation in Rome towards Carthage
A graver responsibility than that arising out of their proceedings
against Hannibal attaches to the Roman government for their
persistence in suspecting and tormenting the city after his removal.
Parties indeed fermented there as before; but, after the withdrawal
of the extraordinary man who had wellnigh changed the destinies of the
world, the patriot party was not of much more importance in Carthage
than in Aetolia or Achaia. The most rational of the various ideas
which then agitated the unhappy city was beyond doubt that of
attaching themselves to Massinissa and of converting him from
the oppressor into the protector of the Phoenicians. But neither
the national section of the patriots nor the section with Libyan
tendencies attained the helm; on the contrary the government remained
in the hands of the oligarchs friendly to Rome, who, so far as they
did not altogether renounce thought of the future, clung to the single
idea of saving the material welfare and the communal freedom of
Carthage under Roman protection. With this state of matters the
Romans might well have been content. But neither the multitude, nor
even the ruling lords of the average stamp, could rid themselves of
the profound alarm produced by the Hannibalic war; and the Roman
merchants with envious eyes beheld the city even now, when its
political power was gone, possessed of extensive commercial
dependencies and of a firmly established wealth which nothing could
shake. Already in 567 the Carthaginian government offered to pay up
at once the whole instalments stipulated in the peace of 553--an offer
which the Romans, who attached far more importance to the having
Carthage tributary than to the sums of money themselves, naturally
declined, and only deduced from it the conviction that, in spite of
all the trouble they had taken, the city was not ruined and was not
capable of ruin. Fresh reports were ever circulating through Rome as
to the intrigues of the faithless Phoenicians. At one time it was
alleged that Aristo of Tyre had been seen in Carthage as an emissary
of Hannibal, to prepare the citizens for the landing of an Asiatic
war-fleet (561); at another, that the council had, in a secret
nocturnal sitting in the temple of the God of Healing, given audience
to the envoys of Perseus (581); at another there was talk of the
powerful fleet which was being equipped in Carthage for the Macedonian
war (583). It is probable that these and similar reports were founded
on nothing more than, at most, individual indiscretions; but still
they were the signal for new diplomatic ill usage on the part of Rome,
and for new aggressions on the part of Massinissa, and the idea gained
ground the more, the less sense and reason there was in it, that the
Carthaginian question would not be settled without a third Punic war.
Numidians
While the power of the Phoenicians was thus sinking in the land of
their choice, just as it had long ago succumbed in their original
home, a new state grew up by their side. The northern coast of Africa
has been inhabited from time immemorial, and is inhabited still, by
the people, who themselves assume the name of Shilah or Tamazigt, whom
the Greeks and Romans call Nomades or Numidians, i. e. the "pastoral"
people, and the Arabs call Berbers, although they also at times
designate them as "shepherds" (Shawie), and to whom we are wont to
give the name of Berbers or Kabyles. This people is, so far as its
language has been hitherto investigated, related to no other known
nation. In the Carthaginian period these tribes, with the exception
of those dwelling immediately around Carthage or immediately on the
coast, had on the whole maintained their independence, and had also
substantially retained their pastoral and equestrian life, such as the
inhabitants of the Atlas lead at the present day; although they were
not strangers to the Phoenician alphabet and Phoenician civilization
generally,(2) and instances occurred in which the Berber sheiks had
their sons educated in Carthage and intermarried with the families of
the Phoenician nobility. It was not the policy of the Romans to have
direct possessions of their own in Africa; they preferred to rear a
state there, which should not be of sufficient importance to be able
to dispense with Roman protection, and yet should be sufficiently
strong to keep down the power of Carthage now that it was restricted
to Africa, and to render all freedom of movement impossible for the
tortured city. They found what they sought among the native princes.
About the time of the Hannibalic war the natives of North Africa were
subject to three principal kings, each of whom, according to the
custom there, had a multitude of princes bound to follow his banner;
Bocchar king of the Mauri, who ruled from the Atlantic Ocean to the
river Molochath (now Mluia, on the boundary between Morocco and the
French territory); Syphax king of the Massaesyli, who ruled from the
last-named point to the "Perforated Promontory," as it was called
(Seba Rus, between Jijeli and Bona), in what are now the provinces of
Oran and Algiers; and Massinissa king of the Massyli, who ruled from
the Tretum Promontorium to the boundary of Carthage, in what is now
the province of Constantine. The most powerful of these, Syphax king
of Siga, had been vanquished in the last war between Rome and Carthage
and carried away captive to Rome, where he died in captivity. His
wide dominions were mainly given to Massinissa; although Vermina the
son of Syphax by humble petition recovered a small portion of his
father's territory from the Romans (554), he was unable to deprive
the earlier ally of the Romans of his position as the privileged
oppressor of Carthage.
Massinissa
Massinissa became the founder of the Numidian kingdom; and seldom has
choice or accident hit upon a man so thoroughly fitted for his post.
In body sound and supple up to extreme old age; temperate and sober
like an Arab; capable of enduring any fatigue, of standing on the same
spot from morning to evening, and of sitting four-and-twenty hours on
horseback; tried alike as a soldier and a general amidst the romantic
vicissitudes of his youth as well as on the battle-fields of Spain,
and not less master of the more difficult art of maintaining
discipline in his numerous household and order in his dominions;
with equal unscrupulousness ready to throw himself at the feet of his
powerful protector, or to tread under foot his weaker neighbour; and,
in addition to all this, as accurately acquainted with the
circumstances of Carthage, where he was educated and had been on
familiar terms in the noblest houses, as he was filled with an African
bitterness of hatred towards his own and his people's oppressors,
--this remarkable man became the soul of the revival of his nation,
which had seemed on the point of perishing, and of whose virtues and
faults he appeared as it were a living embodiment. Fortune favoured
him, as in everything, so especially in the fact, that it allowed
him time for his work. He died in the ninetieth year of his age
(516-605), and in the sixtieth year of his reign, retaining to the
last the full possession of his bodily and mental powers, leaving
behind him a son one year old and the reputation of having been
the strongest man and the best and most fortunate king of his age.
Extension and Civilization of Numidia
We have already narrated how purposely and clearly the Romans in
their management of African affairs evinced their taking part with
Massinissa, and how zealously and constantly the latter availed
himself of the tacit permission to enlarge his territory at the
expense of Carthage. The whole interior to the border of the desert
fell to the native sovereign as it were of its own accord, and even
the upper valley of the Bagradas (Mejerdah) with the rich town of Vaga
became subject to the king; on the coast also to the east of Carthage
he occupied the old Sidonian city of Great Leptis and other districts,
so that his kingdom stretched from the Mauretanian to the Cyrenaean
frontier, enclosed the Carthaginian territory on every side by land,
and everywhere pressed, in the closest vicinity, on the Phoenicians.
It admits of no doubt, that he looked on Carthage as his future
capital; the Libyan party there was significant. But it was not
only by the diminution of her territory that Carthage suffered injury.
The roving shepherds were converted by their great king into another
people. After the example of the king, who brought the fields
under cultivation far and wide and bequeathed to each of his sons
considerable landed estates, his subjects also began to settle and
to practise agriculture. As he converted his shepherds into settled
citizens, he converted also his hordes of plunderers into soldiers who
were deemed by Rome worthy to fight side by side with her legions;
and he bequeathed to his successors a richly-filled treasury, a well-
disciplined army, and even a fleet. His residence Cirta (Constantine)
became the stirring capital of a powerful state, and a chief seat of
Phoenician civilization, which was zealously fostered at the court of
the Berber king--fostered perhaps studiously with a view to the future
Carthagino-Numidian kingdom. The hitherto degraded Libyan nationality
thus rose in its own estimation, and the native manners and language
made their way even into the old Phoenician towns, such as Great
Leptis. The Berber began, under the aegis of Rome, to feel himself
the equal or even the superior of the Phoenician; Carthaginian envoys
at Rome had to submit to be told that they were aliens in Africa,
and that the land belonged to the Libyans. The Phoenico-national
civilization of North Africa, which still retained life and vigour
even in the levelling times of the Empire, was far more the work
of Massinissa than of the Carthaginians.
The State of Culture in Spain
In Spain the Greek and Phoenician towns along the coast, such as
Emporiae, Saguntum, New Carthage, Malaca, and Gades, submitted to the
Roman rule the more readily, that, left to their own resources, they
would hardly have been able to protect themselves from the natives;
as for similar reasons Massilia, although far more important and more
capable of self-defence than those towns, did not omit to secure a
powerful support in case of need by closely attaching itself to the
Romans, to whom it was in return very serviceable as an intermediate
station between Italy and Spain. The natives, on the other hand, gave
to the Romans endless trouble. It is true that there were not wanting
the rudiments of a national Iberian civilization, although of its
special character it is scarcely possible for us to acquire any clear
idea. We find among the Iberians a widely diffused national writing,
which divides itself into two chief kinds, that of the valley of the
Ebro, and the Andalusian, and each of these was presumably subdivided
into various branches: this writing seems to have originated at a very
early period, and to be traceable rather to the old Greek than to the
Phoenician alphabet. There is even a tradition that the Turdetani
(round Seville) possessed lays from very ancient times, a metrical
book of laws of 6000 verses, and even historical records; at any rate
this tribe is described as the most civilized of all the Spanish
tribes, and at the same time the least warlike; indeed, it regularly
carried on its wars by means of foreign mercenaries. To the same
region probably we must refer the descriptions given by Polybius of
the flourishing condition of agriculture and the rearing of cattle
in Spain--so that, in the absence of opportunity of export, grain and
flesh were to be had at nominal prices--and of the splendid royal
palaces with golden and silver jars full of "barley wine." At least a
portion of the Spaniards, moreover, zealously embraced the elements of
culture which the Romans brought along with them, so that the process
of Latinizing made more rapid progress in Spain than anywhere else in
the transmarine provinces. For example, warm baths after the Italian
fashion came into use even at this period among the natives. Roman
money, too, was to all appearance not only current in Spain far
earlier than elsewhere out of Italy, but was imitated in Spanish
coins; a circumstance in some measure explained by the rich silver-
mines of the country. The so-called "silver of Osca" (now Huesca
in Arragon), i. e. Spanish -denarii- with Iberian inscriptions, is
mentioned in 559; and the commencement of their coinage cannot be
placed much later, because the impression is imitated from that of
the oldest Roman -denarii-.
But, while in the southern and eastern provinces the culture of the
natives may have so far prepared the way for Roman civilization and
Roman rule that these encountered no serious difficulties, the west
and north on the other hand, and the whole of the interior, were
occupied by numerous tribes more or less barbarous, who knew little of
any kind of civilization--in Intercatia, for instance, the use of gold
and silver was still unknown about 600--and who were on no better
terms with each other than with the Romans. A characteristic trait
in these free Spaniards was the chivalrous spirit of the men and, at
least to an equal extent, of the women. When a mother sent forth her
son to battle, she roused his spirit by the recital of the feats of
his ancestors; and the fairest maiden unasked offered her hand in
marriage to the bravest man. Single combat was common, both with
a view to determine the prize of valour, and for the settlement of
lawsuits; even disputes among the relatives of princes as to the
succession were settled in this way. It not unfrequently happened
that a well-known warrior confronted the ranks of the enemy and
challenged an antagonist by name; the defeated champion then
surrendered his mantle and sword to his opponent, and even entered
into relations of friendship and hospitality with him. Twenty years
after the close of the second Punic war, the little Celtiberian
community of Complega (in the neighbourhood of the sources of the
Tagus) sent a message to the Roman general, that unless he sent to
them for every man that had fallen a horse, a mantle, and a sword,
it would fare ill with him. Proud of their military honour, so that
they frequently could not bear to survive the disgrace of being
disarmed, the Spaniards were nevertheless disposed to follow any
one who should enlist their services, and to stake their lives in
any foreign quarrel. The summons was characteristic, which a Roman
general well acquainted with the customs of the country sent to a
Celtiberian band righting in the pay of the Turdetani against the
Romans--either to return home, or to enter the Roman service with
double pay, or to fix time and place for battle. If no recruiting
officer made his appearance, they met of their own accord in free
bands, with the view of pillaging the more peaceful districts and
even of capturing and occupying towns, quite after the manner of the
Campanians. The wildness and insecurity of the inland districts are
attested by the fact that banishment into the interior westward of
Cartagena was regarded by the Romans as a severe punishment, and that
in periods of any excitement the Roman commandants of Further Spain
took with them escorts of as many as 6000 men. They are still more
clearly shown by the singular relations subsisting between the Greeks
and their Spanish neighbours in the Graeco-Spanish double city of
Emporiae, at the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees. The Greek
settlers, who dwelt on the point of the peninsula separated on the
landward side from the Spanish part of the town by a wall, took care
that this wall should be guarded every night by a third of their civic
force, and that a higher official should constantly superintend the
watch at the only gate; no Spaniard was allowed to set foot in the
Greek city, and the Greeks conveyed their merchandise to the natives
only in numerous and well-escorted companies.
Wars between the Romans and Spaniards
These natives, full of restlessness and fond of war--full of the
spirit of the Cid and of Don Quixote--were now to be tamed and, if
possible, civilized by the Romans. In a military point of view
the task was not difficult. It is true that the Spaniards showed
themselves, not only when behind the walls of their cities or under
the leadership of Hannibal, but even when left to themselves and in
the open field of battle, no contemptible opponents; with their short
two-edged sword which the Romans subsequently adopted from them, and
their formidable assaulting columns, they not unfrequently made even
the Roman legions waver. Had they been able to submit to military
discipline and to political combination, they might perhaps have
shaken off the foreign yoke imposed on them. But their valour was
rather that of the guerilla than of the soldier, and they were utterly
void of political judgment. Thus in Spain there was no serious war,
but as little was there any real peace; the Spaniards, as Caesar
afterwards very justly pointed out to them, never showed themselves
quiet in peace or strenuous in war. Easy as it was for a Roman
general to scatter a host of insurgents, it was difficult for the
Roman statesman to devise any suitable means of really pacifying and
civilizing Spain. In fact, he could only deal with it by palliative
measures; because the only really adequate expedient, a comprehensive
Latin colonization, was not accordant with the general aim of Roman
policy at this period.
The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain
Cato
Gracchus
The territory which the Romans acquired in Spain in the course of the
second Punic war was from the beginning divided into two masses--the
province formerly Carthaginian, which embraced in the first instance
the present districts of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, and
the province of the Ebro, or the modern Arragon and Catalonia, the
fixed quarters of the Roman army during the last war. Out of these
territories were formed the two Roman provinces of Further and Hither
Spain. The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the
interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they
comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were
content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western
provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern
Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory;
with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians,
and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
The territories thus won, however, could not be maintained and secured
without a standing garrison, for the governor of Hither Spain had no
small trouble every year with the chastisement of the Celtiberians,
and the governor of the more remote province found similar employment
in repelling the Lusitanians. It was needful accordingly to maintain
in Spain a Roman army of four strong legions, or about 40,000 men,
year after year; besides which the general levy had often to be called
out in the districts occupied by Rome, to reinforce the legions. This
was of great importance for two reasons: it was in Spain first, at
least first on any larger scale, that the military occupation of the
land became continuous; and it was there consequently that the service
acquired a permanent character. The old Roman custom of sending
troops only where the exigencies of war at the moment required them,
and of not keeping the men called to serve, except in very serious
and important wars, under arms for more than a year, was found
incompatible with the retention of the turbulent and remote Spanish
provinces beyond the sea; it was absolutely impossible to withdraw
the troops from these, and very dangerous even to relieve them
extensively. The Roman burgesses began to perceive that dominion over
a foreign people is an annoyance not only to the slave, but to the
master, and murmured loudly regarding the odious war-service of Spain.
While the new generals with good reason refused to allow the relief of
the existing corps as a whole, the men mutinied and threatened that,
if they were not allowed their discharge, they would take it of
their own accord.
The wars themselves, which the Romans waged in Spain, were but of
a subordinate importance. They began with the very departure of
Scipio,(3) and continued as long as the war under Hannibal lasted.
After the peace with Carthage (in 553) there was a cessation of
arms in the peninsula; but only for a short time. In 557 a general
insurrection broke out in both provinces; the commander of the
Further province was hard pressed; the commander of Hither Spain was
completely defeated, and was himself slain. It was necessary to take
up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor
Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in
559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain. On landing at
Emporiae he actually found the whole of Hither Spain overrun by the
insurgents; with difficulty that seaport and one or two strongholds
in the interior were still held for Rome. A pitched battle took place
between the insurgents and the consular army, in which, after an
obstinate conflict man against man, the Roman military skill at length
decided the day with its last reserve. The whole of Hither Spain
thereupon sent in its submission: so little, however, was this
submission meant in earnest, that on a rumour of the consul having
returned to Rome the insurrection immediately recommenced. But the
rumour was false; and after Cato had rapidly reduced the communities
which had revolted for the second time and sold them -en masse- into
slavery, he decreed a general disarming of the Spaniards in the Hither
province, and issued orders to all the towns of the natives from the
Pyrenees to the Guadalquivir to pull down their walls on one and the
same day. No one knew how far the command extended, and there was no
time to come to any understanding; most of the communities complied;
and of the few that were refractory not many ventured, when the Roman
army soon appeared before their walls, to await its assault.
These energetic measures were certainly not without permanent effect.
Nevertheless the Romans had almost every year to reduce to subjection
some mountain valley or mountain stronghold in the "peaceful
province," and the constant incursions of the Lusitanians into the
Further province led occasionally to severe defeats of the Romans.
In 563, for instance, a Roman army was obliged after heavy loss to
abandon its camp, and to return by forced inarches into the more
tranquil districts. It was not till after a victory gained by the
praetor Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 565,(4) and a second still more
considerable gained by the brave praetor Gaius Calpurnius beyond the
Tagus over the Lusitanians in 569, that quiet for some time prevailed.
In Hither Spain the hitherto almost nominal rule of the Romans over
the Celtiberian tribes was placed on a firmer basis by Quintus Fulvius
Flaccus, who after a great victory over them in 573 compelled at least
the adjacent cantons to submission; and especially by his successor
Tiberius Gracchus (575, 576), who achieved results of a permanent
character not only by his arms, by which he reduced three hundred
Spanish townships, but still more by his adroitness in adapting
himself to the views and habits of the simple and haughty nation.
He induced Celtiberians of note to take service in the Roman army,
and so created a class of dependents; he assigned land to the roving
tribes, and collected them in towns--the Spanish town Graccurris
preserved the Roman's name--and so imposed a serious check on their
freebooter habits; he regulated the relations of the several tribes
to the Romans by just and wise treaties, and so stopped, as far as
possible, the springs of future rebellion. His name was held in
grateful remembrance by the Spaniards, and comparative peace
henceforth reigned in the land, although the Celtiberians still
from time to time winced under the yoke.
Administration of Spain
The system of administration in the two Spanish provinces was similar
to that of the Sicilo-Sardinian province, but not identical. The
superintendence was in both instances vested in two auxiliary consuls,
who were first nominated in 557, in which year also the regulation of
the boundaries and the definitive organization of the new provinces
took place. The judicious enactment of the Baebian law (573), that
the Spanish praetors should always be nominated for two years, was not
seriously carried out in consequence of the increasing competition for
the highest magistracies, and still more in consequence of the jealous
supervision exercised over the powers of the magistrates by the
senate; and in Spain also, except where deviations occurred in
extraordinary circumstances, the Romans adhered to the system of
annually changing the governors--a system especially injudicious in
the case of provinces so remote and with which it was so difficult to
gain an acquaintance. The dependent communities were throughout
tributary; but, instead of the Sicilian and Sardinian tenths and
customs, in Spain fixed payments in money or other contributions were
imposed by the Romans, just as formerly by the Carthaginians, on the
several towns and tribes: the collection of these by military means
was prohibited by a decree of the senate in 583, in consequence of the
complaints of the Spanish communities. Grain was not furnished in
their case except for compensation, and even then the governor might
not levy more than a twentieth; besides, conformably to the just-
mentioned ordinance of the supreme authority, he was bound to adjust
the compensation in an equitable manner. On the other hand, the
obligation of the Spanish subjects to furnish contingents to the Roman
armies had an importance very different from that which belonged to
it at least in peaceful Sicily, and it was strictly regulated in the
several treaties. The right, too, of coining silver money of the
Roman standard appears to have been very frequently conceded to the
Spanish towns, and the monopoly of coining seems to have been by no
means asserted here by the Roman government with the same strictness
as in Sicily. Rome had too much need of her subjects everywhere in
Spain, not to proceed with all possible tenderness in the introduction
and handling of the provincial constitution there. Among the
communities specially favoured by Rome were the great cities along
the coast of Greek, Phoenician, or Roman foundation, such as Saguntum,
Gades, and Tarraco, which, as the natural pillars of the Roman rule
in the peninsula, were admitted to alliance with Rome. On the whole,
Spain was in a military as well as financial point of view a burden
rather than a gain to the Roman commonwealth; and the question
naturally occurs, Why did the Roman government, whose policy at that
time evidently did not contemplate the acquisition of countries beyond
the sea, not rid itself of these troublesome possessions? The not
inconsiderable commercial connections of Spain, her important iron-
mines, and her still more important silver-mines famous from ancient
times even in the far east(5)--which Rome, like Carthage, took into
her own hands, and the management of which was specially regulated by
Marcus Cato (559)--must beyond doubt have co-operated to induce its
retention; but the chief reason of the Romans for retaining the
peninsula in their own immediate possession was, that there were no
states in that quarter of similar character to the Massiliot republic
in the land of the Celts and the Numidian kingdom in Libya, and that
thus they could not abandon Spain without putting it into the power
of any adventurer to revive the Spanish empire of the Barcides.
Notes for Chapter VII
1. According to the account of Strabo these Italian Boii were driven
by the Romans over the Alps, and from them proceeded that Boian
settlement in what is now Hungary about Stein am Anger and Oedenburg,
which was attacked and annihilated in the time of Augustus by the
Getae who crossed the Danube, but which bequeathed to this district
the name of the Boian desert. This account is far from agreeing with
the well-attested representation of the Roman annals, according to
which the Romans were content with the cession of half the territory;
and, in order to explain the disappearance of the Italian Boii,
we have really no need to assume a violent expulsion--the other
Celtic peoples, although visited to a far less extent by war and
colonization, disappeared not much less rapidly and totally from the
ranks of the Italian nations. On the other hand, other accounts
suggest the derivation of those Boii on the Neusiedler See from the
main stock of the nation, which formerly had its seat in Bavaria and
Bohemia before Germanic tribes pushed it towards the south. But it is
altogether very doubtful whether the Boii, whom we find near Bordeaux,
on the Po, and in Bohemia, were really scattered branches of one
stock, or whether this is not an instance of mere similarity of name.
The hypothesis of Strabo may have rested on nothing else than an
inference from the similarity of name--an inference such as the
ancients drew, often without due reason, in the case of the Cimbri,
Veneti, and others.
2. III. I. Libyphoenicians
3. III. VI. Gades Becomes Roman
4. Of this praetor there has recently come to light the following
decree on a copper tablet found in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar
and now preserved in the Paris Museum: "L. Aimilius, son of Lucius,
Imperator, has ordained that the slaves of the Hastenses [of Hasta
regia, not far from Jerez de la Frontera], who dwell in the tower of
Lascuta [known by means of coins and Plin. iii. i, 15, but uncertain
as to site] should be free. The ground and the township, of which
they are at the time in possession, they shall continue to possess and
hold, so long as it shall please the people and senate of the Romans.
Done in camp on 12 Jan. [564 or 565]." (-L. Aimilius L. f. inpeirator
decreivit utei qui Hastensium servei in turri Lascutana habitarent,
leiberei essent, Agrum oppidumqu[e], guod ea tempestate posedissent,
item possidere habereque ioussit, dum poplus senatusque Romanus
vettet. Act. in castreis a. d. XII. k. Febr.-) This is the oldest
Roman document which we possess in the original, drawn up three years
earlier than the well-known edict of the consuls of the year 568 in
the affair of the Bacchanalia.
5. 1 Maccab. viii. 3. "And Judas heard what the Romans had done
to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold
mines there."