B.C. 236.]

GALLIC AND LIGURIAN WARS.

419

of Carthage acquires an entirely new character from the ascendancy of the house of Barca, and their conflict with the old aristocracy; but our attention is first claimed briefly by the events taking place in Italy.

The possessions of Rome beyond the Apennines were as yet confined to the district between the rivers Æsis and Rubico, from which they had extirpated the Senonian Gauls. The Boii and other Celtic tribes held the centre of the great northern plain, between the Ligurians on the west and the various Illyrian tribes in the east and round the head of the Adriatic. The relations of Rome with all these peoples were still unsettled; and it was fortunate for them that hostilities were only resumed on a large scale in the last year of the war with Carthage (B.C. 241). The Boii invited fresh hordes of their Gallic countrymen across the Alps; and the Romans were glad to gain time by inviting their envoys to state their demands at Rome. Meanwhile the two bodies of Celts quarrelled among themselves; and the invaders returned after a great battle, which left the Boii an easy conquest to the Romans, who were content with a cession of territory (B.c. 236). A contest with the Ligurians, which had begun in B.C. 241, was also ended in this year; and, after the suppression of revolts in Corsica and Sardinia, the temple of Janus was closed, for the second time in the history of Rome (B.c. 235).

Fresh hostilities soon broke out with the indomitable mountaineers of Liguria, and with the Corsicans and Sardinians, who were said to be instigated by the emissaries of Carthage; but no incident demands mention-except the Agrarian law of the tribune C. Flaminius (B.c. 232)-till the outbreak of the war with the Illyrian pirates on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Content with the repulse of Pyrrhus, the Romans had not yet been tempted across that sea, to mingle in the conflicts of the Macedonians and the Achæan and the Ætolian leagues, even though the Acarnanians had sought their aid upon the plea that they alone of all the Greeks had taken no part in the expedition against Troy (B.c. 239). But the case was altered, when the Illyrians, who were encouraged by Macedonia to prey upon Greek commerce, began to turn their Liburnian* galleys against the vessels which Roman citizens fitted out from Brundisium. An embassy was sent to Scodra, the capital of Illyricum; and, when the King Agron replied that his subjects considered piracy a lawful trade, he was told

*This was the name given to a peculiar class of swift vessels with two banks of oars, large fleets of which were maintained by the Illyrians expressly for piracy.

that Rome would make it her business to teach the Illyrians better law. The threat was avenged by the murder of the envoys on their way home, and satisfaction was refused for the outrage. A strong fleet and army were forthwith sent to Apollonia; the pirate vessels were swept from the seas, and their fortresses on the coast were demolished. Teuta, the widow of King Agron, was forced to relinquish her hold upon Corcyra, Epidamnus, and Apollonia; and these states, already so famous in Greek history, accepted the sovereignty of Rome by a tie somewhat similar to our own recent protectorate of the Ionian islands.* With the best naval stations in the upper Adriatic, Rome had gained a footing in Greece, and a vantage-ground for future action against Macedonia; while the Greeks accepted their liberation from the pirates with mingled shame and admiration. In the persons of the first envoys whom they had ever sent to Greece, the Romans were admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries and the Isthmian games (B.C. 229-8). A few years later, Demetrius of Pharos-who as general of Queen Teuta had aided the Romans by the surrender of Corcyra, and had received a great part of her dominions as the reward of his treason-ventured to revive piracy for his own benefit. But the death of Antigonus Gonatas deprived him of the protection of Macedonia (B.c. 221); and the Romans, though at war in Gaul, and expecting the attack of Hannibal, sent an army against him under the consul L. Æmulius Paulus, who took his island of Pharos, and expelled him from his dominions (B.c. 219). Philip, the new king of Macedonia, was too young to resent this attack upon his ally; nor did he assume a position of hostility towards Rome, till the worst pressure of the Second Punic War was passed.

Meanwhile the Celtic war in Italy was renewed by a great confederacy of all the Cisalpine Gauls, with the exception of the Veneti and Cenomani. Reinforcements were again invited from beyond the Alps; † and, before the Romans had time to meet the danger, a host of 50,000 foot-soldiers, and 20,000 on horseback or in chariots, passed the Apennines into Etruria. The two consular

* The form of government adopted seems to have been that of a military prefect, who was regarded as the lieutenant of the consuls, like the præfectus pro legato of the Balearic Islands.

These were chiefly from the upper valley of the Rhone (the Valais). It is very interesting to meet for the first time on this occasion with the name Germani in the Capitoline Fasti. But there is no sufficient ground for believing that these Germans were a Teutonic people; for the name is certainly of Celtic origin, and may have been applied in this instance to a Celtic tribe.

B.C. 221.]

ITALY EXTENDED TO THE ALPS.

421

armies, hastily summoned from Ariminum and Sardinia, arrived only just in time to gain a decisive battle at Telamon, which might have had a different issue, had not the Gauls sacrificed a first advantage in their eagerness for plunder. They left 40,000 men dead upon the field, and 10,000 were taken prisoners with their king. The consul C. Antilius Regulus fell in the battle (B.c. 225). The fruit of this victory was the submission of the Boii, and the conquest of the half of Cisalpine Gaul south of the Po (Gallia Cispadana, B.c. 224).

In the following year, the consul C. Flaminius crossed the Po, to carry on the war against the Insubrians. The enterprise was hazardous; and after Flaminius had been once allowed to retreat from a false position, he found himself compelled to give battle to the whole force of the Gauls, cut off from his base, and with only the uncertain friendship of the Cenomani to secure his retreat in case of a disaster. But the legions cut their way through the enemy, and repaired by their valour the error of the consul (B.C. 223). Another critical battle, in which the victory apparently gained by the Celts was again wrested from them by the obstinate valour of the Romans, decided the issue of the war; and the resistance of the Insubrians was terminated by the fall of their capital Mediolanum (Milan) and their last stronghold of Comum (Como). These cities were taken by the consul Cn. Cornelius Scipio; while his colleague, M. Claudius Marcellus, gained the greater honour of the spolia opima-the third and lastby slaying the Gallic King Virdumarus with his own hand (B.C. 222).

A victory over the Illyrians of the Istrian peninsula, in the following year, linked these new acquisitions with the conquests of the Romans in Illyria. And now, for the first time in history, the whole peninsula and its adjacent islands were united, from the barrier of the Alps to the sea which divides Sicily from Africa (B.c. 221). The people of Cisalpine Gaul had become either the subjects or dependent allies of the Romans, except some few tribes which were allowed to remain undisturbed for the present in the valleys of the Alps and other parts beyond the Po. To the south of the river, the Celtic tribes began from this time to undergo a process of slow but sure extinction, only surviving as serfs of the colonists to whom their lands were assigned. The country was commanded by fortresses and colonies, and penetrated by the great Flaminian Road, the first that had been constructed across the Apennines. Passing from Rome to Ariminum, it linked

together the opposite shores of Italy; and was continued from Ariminum through the new fortresses of Mutina (Modena) and of Placentia (Piacenza), which commanded the passage of the Po, to Mediolanum (Milan), whence branches were ultimately carried to the chief towns of Gallia Cisalpina. The censor Flaminius, from whom the road received its name, adorned Rome itself with the Flaminian circus (B.c. 220). The census of this year made the civil population 270,213, an increase of about 20,000 in twenty years. Rome seemed to have entered fully upon the great work of Italian consolidation, when she was roused by the worst alarm of war she had yet heard. In the very year of her conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, Hannibal took the command of the Carthaginian army in Spain (B.c. 221).

The peace concluded twenty years before had left Carthage in a position as precarious as it was humiliating. It was not merely that she had lost the rich revenues of Sicily and the monopoly of her ancient lines of commerce: she had seen Rome take up a position of readiness to make a descent at any moment upon Africa; while the reluctance with which the treaty had been ratified, and the subsequent seizure of Sardinia, proved that the will would not be wanting for the final attack. Nor was there much consolation to be found in the state of the government at home. The old money-worshipping aristocracy, who in the crisis of the war had withheld the means of victory, and the careless waiters upon the course of events, knew no better policy than to harp upon the necessity of peace. These had the ascendant in the Council of Elders, the Hundred, and the boards of government. But the urgent danger called into prominence another party, of which we have as yet scarcely heard, though it had doubtless been growing into prominence. The popular instinct, which so often seizes the truth which rulers keep at bay, saw their only hope in war and their only saviour in Hamilcar. The chief leader of the party in the senate was Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of Hamilcar. The aristocratic and peace party was led by Hanno, who by some unknown achievements had been called the Great, but whose sluggish incompetence had reduced the affairs of the republic to a state too low to be retrieved even by Hamilcar's efforts. He guided the councils of his party from the beginning of the First Punic War to the end of the Second, never relaxing his bitter enmity to the house of Barca. When the senate were compelled in their extremity to call for the services of Hamilcar against the Libyans, they joined Hanno with him in the command; and

B.C. 238.]

DESIGNS OF HAMILCAR.

423

though the indignant soldiers sent the unpopular leader home, Hamilcar consented to receive him back as a colleague.

The Libyan war brought out by a new and severe test the corrupt incompetency of the aristocracy, who even dared to impeach Hamilcar for having provoked the revolt by promising his troops their pay; and the seizure of Sardinia showed what might be expected from the Romans. A change of government was inevitable, but the popular party had to avoid giving any pretext for Roman intervention. As the Roman writers are hostile to the Barcine party, we have no fair account of the reform that was effected; but their very abuse of "the revolutionary clubs of the most wicked men,' proves that the people had become a real power in the state. All we know for certain is that, without any great formal change in the constitution, Hanno was deposed from his command, and Hamilcar appointed commander-in-chief for an unlimited period. He could only be recalled by a vote of the popular assembly, and meanwhile his position was independent of the governing boards. Accordingly we find his successors making treaties by their own authority, and receiving embassies like the senate.* His successor was to be appointed by the army, subject to the confirmation of the popular assembly. His position was apparently distinguished from that of the military dictators to whom the people have so often committed their liberties by the absence of political power; and we can only account for the acquiescence of the nobles in such an appointment by their supposing that African warfare could furnish him no great scope for mischief.

What then were his real powers to save or destroy the state? To the latter question there is an answer unparalleled in history. The privileges of the nobles were treated by the Barcine party with unexampled respect, and the people had no liberties to lose. Unwilling to commit the treason of usurping a tyranny, he had no basis of an honest popular feeling on which to build. Besides creating the resources with which to save his country in war, he had to waste a part of them in satisfying a populace hitherto governed only by corruption. Nor was he better able to rely on the materials for an army. The citizens who had followed him to the field in the Libyan war, had fought on that, as in former emergencies, only for self-preservation; and all that he could expect from that class was a supply of able and devoted officers of the popular party. And after all, a moment's reverse, a change

The position of the Barcine family towards Carthage is compared by Mommsen to that of the princes of the House of Orange towards the States-General in Holland.