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The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

Fall of the Sicilian Kingdom--
Recommencement of the Italian War

The fatal embarkation took place towards the end of 478. On the
voyage the new Syracusan fleet had to sustain a sharp engagement with
that of Carthage, in which it lost a considerable number of vessels.
The departure of the king and the accounts of this first misfortune
sufficed for the fall of the Sicilian kingdom. On the arrival of the
news all the cities refused to the absent king money and troops; and
the brilliant state collapsed even more rapidly than it had arisen,
partly because the king had himself undermined in the hearts of
his subjects the loyalty and affection on which every commonwealth
depends, partly because the people lacked the devotedness to
renounce freedom for perhaps but a short term in order to save
their nationality. Thus the enterprise of Pyrrhus was wrecked, and
the plan of his life was ruined irretrievably; he was thenceforth an
adventurer, who felt that he had been great and was so no longer, and
who now waged war no longer as a means to an end, but in order to
drown thought amidst the reckless excitement of the game and to find,
if possible, in the tumult of battle a soldier's death. Arrived on
the Italian coast, the king began by an attempt to get possession of
Rhegium; but the Campanians repulsed the attack with the aid of the
Mamertines, and in the heat of the conflict before the town the king
himself was wounded in the act of striking down an officer of the
enemy. On the other hand he surprised Locri, whose inhabitants
suffered severely for their slaughter of the Epirot garrison, and he
plundered the rich treasury of the temple of Persephone there, to
replenish his empty exchequer. Thus he arrived at Tarentum, it is
said with 20,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. But these were no longer
the experienced veterans of former days, and the Italians no longer
hailed them as deliverers; the confidence and hope with which they
had received the king five years before were gone; the allies were
destitute of money and of men.

Battle near Beneventum--
Pyrrhus Leaves Italy--
Death of Pyrrhus

The king took the field in the spring of 479 with the view of aiding
the hard-pressed Samnites, in whose territory the Romans had passed
the previous winter; and he forced the consul Manius Curius to give
battle near Beneventum on the -campus Arusinus-, before he could
form a junction with his colleague advancing from Lucania. But the
division of the army, which was intended to take the Romans in flank,
lost its way during its night march in the woods, and failed to appear
at the decisive moment; and after a hot conflict the elephants again
decided the battle, but decided it this time in favour of the Romans,
for, thrown into confusion by the archers who were stationed to
protect the camp, they attacked their own people. The victors
occupied the camp; there fell into their hands 1300 prisoners and four
elephants--the first that were seen in Rome--besides an immense spoil,
from the proceeds of which the aqueduct, which conveyed the water of
the Anio from Tibur to Rome, was subsequently built. Without troops
to keep the field and without money, Pyrrhus applied to his allies who
had contributed to his equipment for Italy, the kings of Macedonia
and Asia; but even in his native land he was no longer feared, and
his request was refused. Despairing of success against Rome and
exasperated by these refusals, Pyrrhus left a garrison in Tarentum,
and went home himself in the same year (479) to Greece, where some
prospect of gain might open up to the desperate player sooner than
amidst the steady and measured course of Italian affairs. In fact,
he not only rapidly recovered the portion of his kingdom that had
been taken away, but once more grasped, and not without success, at
the Macedonian throne. But his last plans also were thwarted by the
calm and cautious policy of Antigonus Gonatas, and still more by his
own vehemence and inability to tame his proud spirit; he still gained
battles, but he no longer gained any lasting success, and met his
death in a miserable street combat in Peloponnesian Argos (482).

Last Struggles in Italy--
Capture of Tarentum

In Italy the war came to an end with the battle of Beneventum; the
last convulsive struggles of the national party died slowly away.
So long indeed as the warrior prince, whose mighty arm had ventured
to seize the reins of destiny in Italy, was still among the living,
he held, even when absent, the stronghold of Tarentum against Rome.
Although after the departure of the king the peace party recovered
ascendency in the city, Milo, who commanded there on behalf of
Pyrrhus, rejected their suggestions and allowed the citizens
favourable to Rome, who had erected a separate fort for themselves
in the territory of Tarentum, to conclude peace with Rome as they
pleased, without on that account opening his gates. But when after
the death of Pyrrhus a Carthaginian fleet entered the harbour, and
Milo saw that the citizens were on the point of delivering up the city
to the Carthaginians, he preferred to hand over the citadel to the
Roman consul Lucius Papirius (482), and by that means to secure a free
departure for himself and his troops. For the Romans this was an
immense piece of good fortune. After the experiences of Philip before
Perinthus and Byzantium, of Demetrius before Rhodes, and of Pyrrhus
before Lilybaeum, it may be doubted whether the strategy of that
period was at all able to compel the surrender of a town well
fortified, well defended, and freely accessible by sea; and how
different a turn matters might have taken, had Tarentum become to the
Phoenicians in Italy what Lilybaeum was to them in Sicily! What was
done, however, could not be undone. The Carthaginian admiral, when he
saw the citadel in the hands of the Romans, declared that he had only
appeared before Tarentum conformably to the treaty to lend assistance
to his allies in the siege of the town, and set sail for Africa; and
the Roman embassy, which was sent to Carthage to demand explanations
and make complaints regarding the attempted occupation of Tarentum,
brought back nothing but a solemn confirmation on oath of that
allegation as to its ally's friendly design, with which accordingly
the Romans had for the time to rest content. The Tarentines obtained
from Rome, presumably on the intercession of their emigrants, the
restoration of autonomy; but their arms and ships had to be given up
and their walls had to be pulled down.

Submission of Lower Italy

In the same year, in which Tarentum became Roman, the Samnites,
Lucanians, and Bruttians finally submitted. The latter were obliged
to cede the half of the lucrative, and for ship-building important,
forest of Sila.

At length also the band that for ten years had sheltered themselves in
Rhegium were duly chastised for the breach of their military oath, as
well as for the murder of the citizens of Rhegium and of the garrison
of Croton. In this instance Rome, while vindicating her own rights
vindicated the general cause of the Hellenes against the barbarians.
Hiero, the new ruler of Syracuse, accordingly supported the Romans
before Rhegium by sending supplies and a contingent, and in
combination with the Roman expedition against the garrison of Rhegium
he made an attack upon their fellow-countrymen and fellow-criminals,
the Mamertines of Messana. The siege of the latter town was long
protracted. On the other hand Rhegium, although the mutineers
resisted long and obstinately, was stormed by the Romans in 484; the
survivors of the garrison were scourged and beheaded in the public
market at Rome, while the old inhabitants were recalled and, as far as
possible, reinstated in their possessions. Thus all Italy was, in
484, reduced to subjection. The Samnites alone, the most obstinate
antagonists of Rome, still in spite of the official conclusion of
peace continued the struggle as "robbers," so that in 485 both
consuls had to be once more despatched against them. But even the
most high-spirited national courage--the bravery of despair--comes
to an end; the sword and the gibbet at length carried quiet even
into the mountains of Samnium.

Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

For the securing of these immense acquisitions a new series of
colonies was instituted: Paestum and Cosa in Lucania (481); Beneventum
(486), and Aesernia (about 491) to hold Samnium in check; and, as
outposts against the Gauls, Ariminum (486), Firmum in Picenum (about
490), and the burgess colony of Castrum Novum. Preparations were made
for the continuation of the great southern highway--which acquired in
the fortress of Beneventum a new station intermediate between Capua
and Venusia--as far as the seaports of Tarentum and Brundisium, and
for the colonization of the latter seaport, which Roman policy had
selected as the rival and successor of the Tarentine emporium. The
construction of the new fortresses and roads gave rise to some further
wars with the small tribes, whose territory was thereby curtailed:
with the Picentes (485, 486), a number of whom were transplanted to
the district of Salernum; with the Sallentines about Brundisium (487,
488); and with the Umbrian Sassinates (487, 488), who seem to have
occupied the territory of Ariminum after the expulsion of the Senones.
By these establishments the dominion of Rome was extended over the
interior of Lower Italy, and over the whole Italian east coast from
the Ionian sea to the Celtic frontier.

Maritime Relations

Before we describe the political organization under which the Italy
which was thus united was governed on the part of Rome, it remains
that we should glance at the maritime relations that subsisted in the
fourth and fifth centuries. At this period Syracuse and Carthage were
the main competitors for the dominion of the western waters. On the
whole, notwithstanding the great temporary successes which Dionysius
(348-389), Agathocles (437-465), and Pyrrhus (476-478) obtained at
sea, Carthage had the preponderance and Syracuse sank more and more
into a naval power of the second rank. The maritime importance of
Etruria was wholly gone;(6) the hitherto Etruscan island of Corsica,
if it did not quite pass into the possession, fell under the maritime
supremacy, of the Carthaginians. Tarentum, which for a time had
played a considerable part, had its power broken by the Roman
occupation. The brave Massiliots maintained their ground in their
own waters; but they exercised no material influence over the course
of events in those of Italy. The other maritime cities hardly came
as yet into serious account.

Decline of the Roman Naval Power

Rome itself was not exempt from a similar fate; its own waters were
likewise commanded by foreign fleets. It was indeed from the first
a maritime city, and in the period of its vigour never was so untrue
to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine or so
foolish as to desire to be a mere continental power. Latium furnished
the finest timber for ship-building, far surpassing the famed growths
of Lower Italy; and the very docks constantly maintained in Rome are
enough to show that the Romans never abandoned the idea of possessing
a fleet of their own. During the perilous crises, however, which the
expulsion of the kings, the internal disturbances in the Romano-Latin
confederacy, and the unhappy wars with the Etruscans and Celts brought
upon Rome, the Romans could take but little interest in the state of
matters in the Mediterranean; and, in consequence of the policy of
Rome directing itself more and more decidedly to the subjugation of
the Italian continent, the growth of its naval power was arrested.
There is hardly any mention of Latin vessels of war up to the end of
the fourth century, except that the votive offering from the Veientine
spoil was sent to Delphi in a Roman vessel (360). The Antiates indeed
continued to prosecute their commerce with armed vessels and thus,
as occasion offered, to practise the trade of piracy also, and the
"Tyrrhene corsair" Postumius, whom Timoleon captured about 415, may
certainly have been an Antiate; but the Antiates were scarcely to be
reckoned among the naval powers of that period, and, had they been so,
the fact must from the attitude of Antium towards Rome have been
anything but an advantage to the latter. The extent to which the
Roman naval power had declined about the year 400 is shown by the
plundering of the Latin coasts by a Greek, presumably a Sicilian, war
fleet in 405, while at the same time Celtic hordes were traversing and
devastating the Latin land.(7) In the following year (406), and
beyond doubt under the immediate impression produced by these serious
events, the Roman community and the Phoenicians of Carthage, acting
respectively for themselves and for their dependent allies, concluded
a treaty of commerce and navigation-- the oldest Roman document of
which the text has reached us, although only in a Greek
translation.(8) In that treaty the Romans had to come under
obligation not to navigate the Libyan coast to the west of the Fair
Promontory (Cape Bon) excepting in cases of necessity. On the other
hand they obtained the privilege of freely trading, like the natives,
in Sicily, so far as it was Carthaginian; and in Africa and Sardinia
they obtained at least the right to dispose of their merchandise at a
price fixed with the concurrence of the Carthaginian officials and
guaranteed by the Carthaginian community. The privilege of free
trading seems to have been granted to the Carthaginians at least in
Rome, perhaps in all Latium; only they bound themselves neither to do
violence to the subject Latin communities,(9) nor, if they should set
foot as enemies on Latin soil, to take up their quarters for a night
on shore--in other words, not to extend their piratical inroads into
the interior--nor to construct any fortresses in the Latin land.

We may probably assign to the same period the already mentioned(10)
treaty between Rome and Tarentum, respecting the date of which we are
only told that it was concluded a considerable time before 472. By it
the Romans bound themselves--for what concessions on the part of
Tarentum is not stated--not to navigate the waters to the east of
the Lacinian promontory; a stipulation by which they were thus wholly
excluded from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.

Roman Fortification of the Coast

These were disasters no less than the defeat on the Allia, and the
Roman senate seems to have felt them as such and to have made use of
the favourable turn, which the Italian relations assumed soon after
the conclusion of the humiliating treaties with Carthage and Tarentum,
with all energy to improve its depressed maritime position. The most
important of the coast towns were furnished with Roman colonies: Pyrgi
the seaport of Caere, the colonization of which probably falls within
this period; along the west coast, Antium in 415,(11) Tarracina in
425,(12) the island of Pontia in 441,(13) so that, as Ardea and
Circeii had previously received colonists, all the Latin seaports of
consequence in the territory of the Rutuli and Volsci had now become
Latin or burgess colonies; further, in the territory of the Aurunci,
Minturnae and Sinuessa in 459;(14) in that of the Lucanians, Paestum
and Cosa in 481;(15) and, on the coast of the Adriatic, Sena Gallica
and Castrum Novum about 471,(16) and Ariminum in 486;(17) to which
falls to be added the occupation of Brundisium, which took place
immediately after the close of the Pyrrhic war. In the greater part
of these places--the burgess or maritime colonies(18)--the young men
were exempted from serving in the legions and destined solely for the
watching of the coasts. The well judged preference given at the same
time to the Greeks of Lower Italy over their Sabellian neighbours,
particularly to the considerable communities of Neapolis, Rhegium,
Locri, Thurii, and Heraclea, and their similar exemption under the
like conditions from furnishing contingents to the land army,
completed the network drawn by Rome around the coasts of Italy.

But with a statesmanlike sagacity, from which the succeeding
generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman
commonwealth perceived that all these coast fortifications and coast
garrisons could not but prove inadequate, unless the war marine of
the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.
Some sort of nucleus for this purpose was already furnished on the
subjugation of Antium (416) by the serviceable war-galleys which were
carried off to the Roman docks; but the enactment at the same time,
that the Antiates should abstain from all maritime traffic,(19) is a
very clear and distinct indication how weak the Romans then felt
themselves at sea, and how completely their maritime policy was still
summed up in the occupation of places on the coast. Thereafter, when
the Greek cities of southern Italy, Neapolis leading the way in 428,
were admitted to the clientship of Rome, the war-vessels, which each
of these cities bound itself to furnish as a war contribution under
the alliance to the Romans, formed at least a renewed nucleus for a
Roman fleet. In 443, moreover, two fleet-masters (-duoviri navales-)
were nominated in consequence of a resolution of the burgesses
specially passed to that effect, and this Roman naval force
co-operated in the Samnite war at the siege of Nuceria.(20) Perhaps
even the remarkable mission of a Roman fleet of twenty-five sail to
found a colony in Corsica, which Theophrastus mentions in his "History
of Plants" written about 446, belongs to this period. But how little
was immediately accomplished with all this preparation, is shown by
the renewed treaty with Carthage in 448. While the stipulations of
the treaty of 406 relating to Italy and Sicily(21) remained unchanged,
the Romans were now prohibited not only from the navigation of the
eastern waters, but also from that of the Atlantic Ocean which was
previously permitted, as well as debarred from holding commercial
intercourse with the subjects of Carthage in Sardinia and Africa, and
also, in all probability, from effecting a settlement in Corsica;(22)
so that only Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself remained open
to their traffic. We recognize here the jealousy of the dominant
maritime power, gradually increasing with the extension of the Roman
dominion along the coasts. Carthage compelled the Romans to acquiesce
in her prohibitive system, to submit to be excluded from the seats of
production in the west and east (connected with which exclusion is the
story of a public reward bestowed on the Phoenician mariner who at the
sacrifice of his own ship decoyed a Roman vessel, steering after him
into the Atlantic Ocean, to perish on a sand-bank), and to restrict
their navigation under the treaty to the narrow space of the western
Mediterranean--and all this for the mere purpose of averting pillage
from their coasts and of securing their ancient and important trading
connection with Sicily. The Romans were obliged to yield to these
terms; but they did not desist from their efforts to rescue their
marine from its condition of impotence.

Quaestors of the Fleet--
Variance between Rome and Carthage

A comprehensive measure with that view was the institution of four
quaestors of the fleet (-quaestores classici-) in 487: of whom the
first was stationed at Ostia the port of Rome; the second, stationed
at Cales then the capital of Roman Campania, had to superintend the
ports of Campania and Magna Graecia; the third, stationed at Ariminum,
superintended the ports on the other side of the Apennines; the
district assigned to the fourth is not known. These new standing
officials were intended to exercise not the sole, but a conjoint,
guardianship of the coasts, and to form a war marine for their
protection. The objects of the Roman senate--to recover their
independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of
Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus,
and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy--were very
obvious. Their already explained relations with Carthage during the
last Italian war discover traces of such views. King Pyrrhus indeed
compelled the two great cities once more--it was for the last time
--to conclude an offensive alliance; but the lukewarmness and
faithlessness of that alliance, the attempts of the Carthaginians
to establish themselves in Rhegium and Tarentum, and the immediate
occupation of Brundisium by the Romans after the termination of the
war, show clearly how much their respective interests already came
into collision.

Rome and the Greek Naval Powers

Rome very naturally sought to find support against Carthage from the
Hellenic maritime states. Her old and close relations of amity with
Massilia continued uninterrupted. The votive offering sent by Rome
to Delphi, after the conquest of Veii, was preserved there in the
treasury of the Massiliots. After the capture of Rome by the Celts
there was a collection in Massilia for the sufferers by the fire,
in which the city chest took the lead; in return the Roman senate
granted commercial advantages to the Massiliot merchants, and, at the
celebration of the games in the Forum assigned a position of honour
(-Graecostasis-) to the Massiliots by the side of the platform for the
senators. To the same category belong the treaties of commerce and
amity concluded by the Romans about 448 with Rhodes and not long after
with Apollonia, a considerable mercantile town on the Epirot coast,
and especially the closer relation, so fraught with danger for
Carthage, which immediately after the end of the Pyrrhic war
sprang up between Rome and Syracuse.(23)

While the Roman power by sea was thus very far from keeping pace with
the immense development of their power by land, and the war marine
belonging to the Romans in particular was by no means such as from the
geographical and commercial position of the city it ought to have
been, yet it began gradually to emerge out of the complete nullity to
which it had been reduced about the year 400; and, considering the
great resources of Italy, the Phoenicians might well follow its
efforts with anxious eyes.

The crisis in reference to the supremacy of the Italian waters was
approaching; by land the contest was decided. For the first time
Italy was united into one state under the sovereignty of the Roman
community. What political prerogatives the Roman community on this
occasion withdrew from all the other Italian communities and took into
its own sole keeping, or in other words, what conception in state-law
is to be associated with this sovereignty of Rome, we are nowhere
expressly informed, and--a significant circumstance, indicating
prudent calculation--there does not even exist any generally current
expression for that conception.(24) The only privileges that
demonstrably belonged to it were the rights of making war, of
concluding treaties, and of coining money. No Italian community could
declare war against any foreign state, or even negotiate with it, or
coin money for circulation. On the other hand every declaration of
war made by the Roman people and every state-treaty resolved upon by
it were binding in law on all the other Italian communities, and the
silver money of Rome was legally current throughout all Italy. It is
probable that the formulated prerogatives of the leading community
extended no further. But to these there were necessarily attached
rights of sovereignty that practically went far beyond them.

The Full Roman Franchise

The relations, which the Italians sustained to the leading community,
exhibited in detail great inequalities. In this point of view, in
addition to the full burgesses of Rome, there were three different
classes of subjects to be distinguished. The full franchise itself,
in the first place, was extended as far as was possible, without
wholly abandoning the idea of an urban commonwealth as applied to the
Roman commune. The old burgess-domain had hitherto been enlarged
chiefly by individual assignation in such a way that southern Etruria
as far as towards Caere and Falerii,(25) the districts taken from the
Hernici on the Sacco and on the Anio(26) the largest part of the
Sabine country(27) and large tracts of the territory formerly
Volscian, especially the Pomptine plain(28) were converted into land
for Roman farmers, and new burgess-districts were instituted mostly
for their inhabitants. The same course had even already been taken
with the Falernian district on the Volturnus ceded by Capua.(29) All
these burgesses domiciled outside of Rome were without a commonwealth
and an administration of their own; on the assigned territory there
arose at the most market-villages (-fora et conciliabula-). In a
position not greatly different were placed the burgesses sent out
to the so-called maritime colonies mentioned above, who were likewise
left in possession of the full burgess-rights of Rome, and whose
self-administration was of little moment. Towards the close of
this period the Roman community appears to have begun to grant full
burgess-rights to the adjoining communities of passive burgesses who
were of like or closely kindred nationality; this was probably done
first for Tusculum,(30) and so, presumably, also for the other
communities of passive burgesses in Latium proper, then at the end
of this period (486) was extended to the Sabine towns, which doubtless
were even then essentially Latinized and had given sufficient proof
of their fidelity in the last severe war. These towns retained the
restricted self-administration, which under their earlier legal
position belonged to them, even after their admission into the Roman
burgess-union; it was they more than the maritime colonies that
furnished the model for the special commonwealths subsisting within
the body of Roman full burgesses and so, in the course of time, for
the Roman municipal organization. Accordingly the range of the full
Roman burgesses must at the end of this epoch have extended northward
as far as the vicinity of Caere, eastward as far as the Apennines, and
southward as far as Tarracina; although in this case indeed we cannot
speak of boundary in a strict sense, partly because a number of
federal towns with Latin rights, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia,
Norba, Circeii, were found within these bounds, partly because beyond
them the inhabitants of Minturnae, Sinuessa, of the Falernian
territory, of the town Sena Gallica and some other townships,
likewise possessed the full franchise, and families of Roman
farmers were presumably to be even now found scattered throughout
Italy, either isolated or united in villages.