The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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Hannibal Reduced to the Defensive
His Prospects as to Reinforcements
The clear vision of Hannibal had not been dazzled by his victories.
It became every day more evident that he was not thus gaining his
object Those rapid marches, that adventurous shifting of the war to
and fro, to which Hannibal was mainly indebted for his successes,
were at an end; the enemy had become wiser; further enterprises were
rendered almost impossible by the inevitable necessity of defending
what had been gained. The offensive was not to be thought of; the
defensive was difficult, and threatened every year to become more so.
He could not conceal from himself that the second half of his great
task, the subjugation of the Latins and the conquest of Rome, could
not be accomplished with his own forces and those of his Italian
allies alone. Its accomplishment depended on the council at Carthage,
on the head-quarters at Cartagena, on the courts of Pella and of
Syracuse. If all the energies of Africa, Spain, Sicily, and Macedonia
should now be exerted in common against the common enemy; if Lower
Italy should become the great rendezvous for the armies and fleets of
the west, south, and east; he might hope successfully to finish what
the vanguard under his leadership had so brilliantly begun. The most
natural and easy course would have been to send to him adequate
support from home; and the Carthaginian state, which had remained
almost untouched by the war and had been brought from deep decline so
near to complete victory by a small band of resolute patriots acting
of their own accord and at their own risk, could beyond doubt have
done this. That it would have been possible for a Phoenician fleet
of any desired strength to effect a landing at Locri or Croton,
especially as long as the port of Syracuse remained open to the
Carthaginians and the fleet at Brundisium was kept in check by
Macedonia, is shown by the unopposed disembarkation at Locri of 4000
Africans, whom Bomilcar about this time brought over from Carthage to
Hannibal, and still more by Hannibal's undisturbed embarkation, when
all had been already lost. But after the first impression of the
victory of Cannae had died away, the peace party in Carthage, which
was at all times ready to purchase the downfall of its political
opponents at the expense of its country, and which found faithful
allies in the shortsightedness and indolence of the citizens, refused
the entreaties of the general for more decided support with the half-
simple, half-malicious reply, that he in fact needed no help inasmuch
as he was really victor; and thus contributed not much less than
the Roman senate to save Rome. Hannibal, reared in the camp and a
stranger to the machinery of civic factions, found no popular leader
on whose support he could rely, such as his father had found in
Hasdrubal; and he was obliged to seek abroad the means of saving
his native country--means which itself possessed in rich abundance
at home.
For this purpose he might, at least with more prospect of success,
reckon on the leaders of the Spanish patriot army, on the connections
which he had formed in Syracuse, and on the intervention of Philip.
Everything depended on bringing new forces into the Italian field of
war against Rome from Spain, Syracuse, or Macedonia; and for the
attainment or for the prevention of this object wars were carried
on in Spain, Sicily, and Greece. All of these were but means to an
end, and historians have often erred in accounting them of greater
importance. So far as the Romans were concerned, they were
essentially defensive wars, the proper objects of which were to hold
the passes of the Pyrenees, to detain the Macedonian army in Greece,
to defend Messana and to bar the communication between Italy and
Sicily. Of course this defensive warfare was, wherever it was
possible, waged by offensive methods; and, should circumstances be
favourable, it might develop into the dislodging of the Phoenicians
from Spain and Sicily, and into the dissolution of Hannibal's
alliances with Syracuse and with Philip. The Italian war in itself
fell for the time being into the shade, and resolved itself into
conflicts about fortresses and razzias, which had no decisive effect
on the main issue. Nevertheless, so long as the Phoenicians retained
the offensive at all, Italy always remained the central aim of
operations; and all efforts were directed towards, as all interest
centred in, the doing away, or perpetuating, of Hannibal's isolation
in southern Italy.
The Sending of Reinforcements Temporarily Frustrated
Had it been possible, immediately after the battle of Cannae, to bring
into play all the resources on which Hannibal thought that he might
reckon, he might have been tolerably certain of success. But the
position of Hasdrubal at that time in Spain after the battle on the
Ebro was so critical, that the supplies of money and men, which the
victory of Cannae had roused the Carthaginian citizens to furnish,
were for the most part expended on Spain, without producing much
improvement in the position of affairs there. The Scipios transferred
the theatre of war in the following campaign (539) from the Ebro to
the Guadalquivir; and in Andalusia, in the very centre of the proper
Carthaginian territory, they achieved at Illiturgi and Intibili two
brilliant victories. In Sardinia communications entered into with
the natives led the Carthaginians to hope that they should be able
to master the island, which would have been of importance as an
intermediate station between Spain and Italy. But Titus Manlius
Torquatus, who was sent with a Roman army to Sardinia, completely
destroyed the Carthaginian landing force, and reassured to the Romans
the undisputed possession of the island (539). The legions from
Cannae sent to Sicily held their ground in the north and east of
the island with courage and success against the Carthaginians and
Hieronymus; the latter met his death towards the end of 539 by the
hand of an assassin. Even in the case of Macedonia the ratification
of the alliance was delayed, principally because the Macedonian envoys
sent to Hannibal were captured on their homeward journey by the Roman
vessels of war. Thus the dreaded invasion of the east coast was
temporarily suspended; and the Romans gained time to secure the very
important station of Brundisium first by their fleet and then by the
land army which before the arrival of Gracchus was employed for the
protection of Apulia, and even to make preparations for an invasion of
Macedonia in the event of war being declared. While in Italy the war
thus came to a stand, out of Italy nothing was done on the part of
Carthage to accelerate the movement of new armies or fleets towards
the seat of war. The Romans, again, had everywhere with the greatest
energy put themselves in a state of defence, and in that defensive
attitude had fought for the most part with good results wherever the
genius of Hannibal was absent. Thereupon the short-lived patriotism,
which the victory of Cannae had awakened in Carthage, evaporated; the
not inconsiderable forces which had been organized there were, either
through factious opposition or merely through unskilful attempts
to conciliate the different opinions expressed in the council, so
frittered away that they were nowhere of any real service, and but a
very small portion arrived at the spot where they would have been most
useful. At the close of 539 the reflecting Roman statesman might
assure himself that the urgency of the danger was past, and that the
resistance so heroically begun had but to persevere in its exertions
at all points in order to achieve its object.
War in Sicily
Siege of Syracuse
First of all the war in Sicily came to an end. It had formed no part
of Hannibal's original plan to excite a war on the island; but partly
through accident, chiefly through the boyish vanity of the imprudent
Hieronymus, a land war had broken out there, which--doubtless because
Hannibal had not planned it--the Carthaginian council look up with
especial zeal. After Hieronymus was killed at the close of 539, it
seemed more than doubtful whether the citizens would persevere in
the policy which he had pursued. If any city had reason to adhere
to Rome, that city was Syracuse; for the victory of the Carthaginians
over the Romans could not but give to the former, at any rate, the
sovereignty of all Sicily, and no one could seriously believe that
the promises made by Carthage to the Syracusans would be really kept.
Partly induced by this consideration, partly terrified by the
threatening preparations of the Romans--who made every effort to
bring once more under their complete control that important island,
the bridge between Italy and Africa, and now for the campaign of 540
sent their best general, Marcus Marcellus, to Sicily--the Syracusan
citizens showed a disposition to obtain oblivion of the past by a
timely return to the Roman alliance. But, amidst the dreadful
confusion in the city--which after the death of Hieronymus was
agitated alternately by endeavours to re-establish the ancient freedom
of the people and by the -coups de main- of the numerous pretenders to
the vacant throne, while the captains of the foreign mercenary troops
were the real masters of the place--Hannibal's dexterous emissaries,
Hippocrates and Epicydes, found opportunity to frustrate the projects
of peace. They stirred up the multitude in the name of liberty;
descriptions, exaggerated beyond measure, of the fearful punishment
that the Romans were said to have inflicted on the Leontines, who had
just been re-conquered, awakened doubts even among the better portion
of the citizens whether it was not too late to restore their old
relations with Rome; while the numerous Roman deserters among the
mercenaries, mostly runaway rowers from the fleet, were easily
persuaded that a peace on the part of the citizens with Rome would
be their death-warrant. So the chief magistrates were put to death,
the armistice was broken, and Hippocrates and Epicydes undertook
the government of the city. No course was left to the consul except
to undertake a siege; but the skilful conduct of the defence,
in which the Syracusan engineer Archimedes, celebrated as a learned
mathematician, especially distinguished himself, compelled the Romans
after besieging the city for eight months to convert the siege into
a blockade by sea and land.
Carthaginian Expedition to Sicily
The Carthaginian Troops Destroyed
Conquest of Syracuse
In the meanwhile Carthage, which hitherto had only supported the
Syracusans with her fleets, on receiving news of their renewed rising
in arms against the Romans had despatched a strong land army under
Himilco to Sicily, which landed without interruption at Heraclea Minoa
and immediately occupied the important town of Agrigentum. To effect
a junction with Himilco, the bold and able Hippocrates marched forth
from Syracuse with an army: the position of Marcellus between the
garrison of Syracuse and the two hostile armies began to be critical.
With the help of some reinforcements, however, which arrived from
Italy, he maintained his position in the island and continued the
blockade of Syracuse. On the other hand, the greater portion of the
small inland towns were driven to the armies of the Carthaginians not
so much by the armies of the enemy, as by the fearful severity of the
Roman proceedings in the island, more especially the slaughter of the
citizens of Enna, suspected of a design to revolt, by the Roman
garrison which was stationed there. In 542 the besiegers of Syracuse
during a festival in the city succeeded in scaling a portion of the
extensive outer walls that had been deserted by the guard, and in
penetrating into the suburbs which stretched from the "island" and
the city proper on the shore (Achradina) towards the interior. The
fortress of Euryalus, which, situated at the extreme western end of
the suburbs, protected these and the principal road leading from the
interior to Syracuse, was thus cut off and fell not long afterwards.
When the siege of the city thus began to assume a turn favourable
to the Romans, the two armies under Himilco and Hippocrates advanced
to its relief, and attempted a simultaneous attack on the Roman
positions, combined with an attempt at landing on the part of the
Carthaginian fleet and a sally of the Syracusan garrison; but the
attack was repulsed on all sides, and the two relieving armies were
obliged to content themselves with encamping before the city, in the
low marshy grounds along the Anapus, which in the height of summer and
autumn engender pestilences fatal to those that tarry in them. These
pestilences had often saved the city, oftener even than the valour of
its citizens; in the times of the first Dionysius, two Phoenician
armies in the act of besieging the city had been in this way destroyed
under its very walls. Now fate turned the special defence of the city
into the means of its destruction; while the army of Marcellus
quartered in the suburbs suffered but little, fevers desolated the
Phoenician and Syracusan bivouacs. Hippocrates died; Himilco and
most of the Africans died also; the survivors of the two armies,
mostly native Siceli, dispersed into the neighbouring cities. The
Carthaginians made a further attempt to save the city from the sea
side; but the admiral Bomilcar withdrew, when the Roman fleet offered
him battle. Epicydes himself, who commanded in the city, now
abandoned it as lost, and made his escape to Agrigentum. Syracuse
would gladly have surrendered to the Romans; negotiations had already
begun. But for the second time they were thwarted by the deserters:
in another mutiny of the soldiers the chief magistrates and a number
of respectable citizens were slain, and the government and the defence
of the city were entrusted by the foreign troops to their captains.
Marcellus now entered into a negotiation with one of these, which gave
into his hands one of the two portions of the city that were still
free, the "island"; upon which the citizens voluntarily opened to
him the gates of Achradina also (in the autumn of 542). If mercy
was to be shown in any case, it might, even according to the far
from laudable principles of Roman public law as to the treatment
of perfidious communities, have been extended to this city, which
manifestly had not been at liberty to act for itself, and which had
repeatedly made the most earnest attempts to get rid of the tyranny
of the foreign soldiers. Nevertheless, not only did Marcellus stain
his military honour by permitting a general pillage of the wealthy
mercantile city, in the course of which Archimedes and many other
citizens were put to death, but the Roman senate lent a deaf ear to
the complaints which the Syracusans afterwards presented regarding the
celebrated general, and neither returned to individuals their pillaged
property nor restored to the city its freedom. Syracuse and the towns
that had been previously dependent on it were classed among the
communities tributary to Rome--Tauromenium and Neetum alone obtained
the same privileges as Messana, while the territory of Leontini became
Roman domain and its former proprietors Roman lessees--and no
Syracusan citizen was henceforth allowed to reside in the "island,"
the portion of the city that commanded the harbour.
Guerilla War in Sicily
Agrigentum Occupied by the Romans
Sicily Tranquillized
Sicily thus appeared lost to the Carthaginians; but the genius of
Hannibal exercised even from a distance its influence there. He
despatched to the Carthaginian army, which remained at. Agrigentum
in perplexity and inaction under Hanno and Epicydes, a Libyan cavalry
officer Muttines, who took the command of the Numidian cavalry, and
with his flying squadrons, fanning into an open flame the bitter
hatred which the despotic rule of the Romans had excited over all the
island, commenced a guerilla warfare on the most extensive scale and
with the happiest results; so that he even, when the Carthaginian and
Roman armies met on the river Himera, sustained some conflicts with
Marcellus himself successfully. The relations, however, which
prevailed between Hannibal and the Carthaginian council, were here
repeated on a small scale. The general appointed by the council
pursued with jealous envy the officer sent by Hannibal, and insisted
upon giving battle to the proconsul without Muttines and the
Numidians. The wish of Hanno was carried out, and he was completely
beaten. Muttines was not induced to deviate from his course; he
maintained himself in the interior of the country, occupied several
small towns, and was enabled by the not inconsiderable reinforcements
which joined him from Carthage gradually to extend his operations.
His successes were so brilliant, that at length the commander-in-
chief, who could not otherwise prevent the cavalry officer from
eclipsing him, deprived him summarily of the command of the light
cavalry, and entrusted it to his own son. The Numidian, who had
now for two years preserved the island for his Phoenician masters,
had the measure of his patience exhausted by this treatment. He and
his horsemen who refused to follow the younger Hanno entered into
negotiations with the Roman general Marcus Valerius Laevinus and
delivered to him Agrigentum. Hanno escaped in a boat, and went to
Carthage to report to his superiors the disgraceful high treason of
Hannibal's officer; the Phoenician garrison in the town was put to
death by the Romans, and the citizens were sold into slavery (544).
To secure the island from such surprises as the landing of 540, the
city received a new body of inhabitants selected from Sicilians well
disposed towards Rome; the old glorious Akragas was no more. After
the whole of Sicily was thus subdued, the Romans exerted themselves to
restore some sort of tranquillity and order to the distracted island.
The pack of banditti that haunted the interior were driven together
en masse and conveyed to Italy, that from their head-quarters at
Rhegium they might burn and destroy in the territories of Hannibal's
allies. The government did its utmost to promote the restoration
of agriculture which had been totally neglected in the island.
The Carthaginian council more than once talked of sending a fleet
to Sicily and renewing the war there; but the project went no further.
Philip of Macedonia and His Delay
Macedonia might have exercised an influence over the course of
events more decisive than that of Syracuse. From the Eastern powers
neither furtherance nor hindrance was for the moment to be expected.
Antiochus the Great, the natural ally of Philip, had, after the
decisive victory of the Egyptians at Raphia in 537, to deem himself
fortunate in obtaining peace from the indolent Philopator on the basis
of the -status quo ante-. The rivalry of the Lagidae and the constant
apprehension of a renewed outbreak of the war on the one hand, and
insurrections of pretenders in the interior and enterprises of all
sorts in Asia Minor, Bactria, and the eastern satrapies on the other,
prevented him from joining that great anti-Roman alliance which
Hannibal had in view. The Egyptian court was decidedly on the side
of Rome, with which it renewed alliance in 544; but it was not to be
expected of Ptolemy Philopator, that he would support otherwise than
by corn-ships. Accordingly there was nothing to prevent Greece and
Macedonia from throwing a decisive weight into the great Italian
struggle except their own discord; they might save the Hellenic name,
if they had the self-control to stand by each other for but a few
years against the common foe. Such sentiments doubtless were current
in Greece. The prophetic saying of Agelaus of Naupactus, that he was
afraid that the prize-fights in which the Hellenes now indulged at
home might soon be over; his earnest warning to direct their eyes to
the west, and not to allow a stronger power to impose on all the
parties now contending a peace of equal servitude--such sayings had
essentially contributed to bring about the peace between Philip and
the Aetolians (537), and it was a significant proof of the tendency
of that peace that the Aetolian league immediately nominated Agelaus
as its -strategus-.
National patriotism was bestirring itself in Greece as in Carthage:
for a moment it seemed possible to kindle a Hellenic national war
against Rome. But the general in such a crusade could only be Philip
of Macedonia; and he lacked the enthusiasm and the faith in the
nation, without which such a war could not be waged. He knew not
how to solve the arduous problem of transforming himself from the
oppressor into the champion of Greece. His very delay in the
conclusion of the alliance with Hannibal damped the first and best
zeal of the Greek patriots; and when he did enter into the conflict
with Rome, his mode of conducting war was still less fitted to awaken
sympathy and confidence. His first attempt, which was made in the
very year of the battle of Cannae (538), to obtain possession of the
city of Apollonia, failed in a way almost ridiculous, for Philip
turned back in all haste on receiving the totally groundless report
that a Roman fleet was steering for the Adriatic. This took place
before there was a formal breach with Rome; when the breach at length
ensued, friend and foe expected a Macedonian landing in Lower Italy.
Since 539 a Roman fleet and army had been stationed at Brundisium to
meet it; Philip, who was without vessels of war, was constructing a
flotilla of light Illyrian barks to convey his army across. But when
the endeavour had to be made in earnest, his courage failed to
encounter the dreaded quinqueremes at sea; he broke the promise which
he had given to his ally Hannibal to attempt a landing, and with the
view of still doing something he resolved to make an attack on his own
share of the spoil, the Roman possessions in Epirus (540). Nothing
would have come of this even at the best; but the Romans, who well
knew that offensive was preferable to defensive protection, were by no
means content to remain--as Philip may have hoped--spectators of the
attack from the opposite shore. The Roman fleet conveyed a division
of the army from Brundisium to Epirus; Oricum was recaptured from the
king, a garrison was thrown into Apollonia, and the Macedonian camp
was stormed. Thereupon Philip passed from partial action to total
inaction, and notwithstanding all the complaints of Hannibal, who
vainly tried to breathe into such a halting and shortsighted policy
his own fire and clearness of decision, he allowed some years to
elapse in armed inactivity.
Rome Heads a Greek Coalition against Macedonia
Nor was Philip the first to renew the hostilities. The fall of
Tarentum (542), by which Hannibal acquired an excellent port on the
coast which was the most convenient for the landing of a Macedonian
army, induced the Romans to parry the blow from a distance and to give
the Macedonians so much employment at home that they could not think
of an attempt on Italy. The national enthusiasm in Greece had of
course evaporated long ago. With the help of the old antagonism to
Macedonia, and of the fresh acts of imprudence and injustice of which
Philip had been guilty, the Roman admiral Laevinus found no difficulty
in organizing against Macedonia a coalition of the intermediate and
minor powers under the protectorate of Rome. It was headed by the
Aetolians, at whose diet Laevinus had personally appeared and had
gained its support by a promise of the Acarnanian territory which
the Aetolians had long coveted. They concluded with Rome a modest
agreement to rob the other Greeks of men and land on the joint
account, so that the land should belong to the Aetolians, the men
and moveables to the Romans. They were joined by the states of anti-
Macedonian, or rather primarily of anti-Achaean, tendencies in Greece
proper; in Attica by Athens, in the Peloponnesus by Elis and Messene
and especially by Sparta, the antiquated constitution of which had
been just about this time overthrown by a daring soldier Machanidas,
in order that he might himself exercise despotic power under the
name of king Pelops, a minor, and might establish a government of
adventurers sustained by bands of mercenaries. The coalition was
joined moreover by those constant antagonists of Macedonia, the
chieftains of the half-barbarous Thracian and Illyrian tribes, and
lastly by Attalus king of Pergamus, who followed out his own interest
with sagacity and energy amidst the ruin of the two great Greek states
which surrounded him, and had the acuteness even now to attach himself
as a client to Rome when his assistance was still of some value.
Resultless Warfare
Peace between Philip and the Greeks
Peace between Philip and Rome
It is neither agreeable nor necessary to follow the vicissitudes of
this aimless struggle. Philip, although he was superior to each one
of his opponents and repelled their attacks on all sides with energy
and personal valour, yet consumed his time and strength in that
profitless defensive. Now he had to turn against the Aetolians,
who in concert with the Roman fleet annihilated the unfortunate
Acarnanians and threatened Locris and Thessaly; now an invasion of
barbarians summoned him to the northern provinces; now the Achaeans
solicited his help against the predatory expeditions of Aetolians and
Spartans; now king Attalus of Pergamus and the Roman admiral Publius
Sulpicius with their combined fleets threatened the east coast or
landed troops in Euboea. The want of a war fleet paralyzed Philip in
all his movements; he even went so far as to beg vessels of war from
his ally Prusias of Bithynia, and even from Hannibal. It was only
towards the close of the war that he resolved--as he should have done
at first--to order the construction of 100 ships of war; of these
however no use was made, if the order was executed at all. All who
understood the position of Greece and sympathized with it lamented
the unhappy war, in which the last energies of Greece preyed upon
themselves and the prosperity of the land was destroyed; repeatedly
the commercial states, Rhodes, Chios, Mitylene, Byzantium, Athens, and
even Egypt itself had attempted a mediation. In fact both parties had
an interest in coming to terms. The Aetolians, to whom their Roman
allies attached the chief importance, had, like the Macedonians,
much to suffer from the war; especially after the petty king of the
Athamanes had been gained by Philip, and the interior of Aetolia had
thus been laid open to Macedonian incursions. Many Aetolians too had
their eyes gradually opened to the dishonourable and pernicious part
which the Roman alliance condemned them to play; a cry of horror
pervaded the whole Greek nation when the Aetolians in concert with
the Romans sold whole bodies of Hellenic citizens, such as those of
Anticyra, Oreus, Dyme, and Aegina, into slavery. But the Aetolians
were no longer free; they ran a great risk if of their own accord they
concluded peace with Philip, and they found the Romans by no means
disposed, especially after the favourable turn which matters were
taking in Spain and in Italy, to desist from a war, which on their
part was carried on with merely a few ships, and the burden and
injury of which fell mainly on the Aetolians. At length however
the Aetolians resolved to listen to the mediating cities: and,
notwithstanding the counter-efforts of the Romans, a peace was
arranged in the winter of 548-9 between the Greek powers. Aetolia had
converted an over-powerful ally into a dangerous enemy; but the Roman
senate, which just at that time was summoning all the resources of the
exhausted state for the decisive expedition to Africa, did not deem it
a fitting moment to resent the breach of the alliance. The war with
Philip could not, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, have been
carried on by the Romans without considerable exertions of their own;
and it appeared to them more convenient to terminate it also by a
peace, whereby the state of things before the war was substantially
restored and Rome in particular retained all her possessions on the
coast of Epirus except the worthless territory of the Atintanes.
Under the circumstances Philip had to deem himself fortunate in
obtaining such terms; but the fact proclaimed--what could not indeed
be longer concealed--that all the unspeakable misery which ten years
of a warfare waged with revolting inhumanity had brought upon Greece
had been endured in vain, and that the grand and just combination,
which Hannibal had projected and all Greece had for a moment joined,
was shattered irretrievably.