252-243 B.C.

vice-admiral, Carthalo. The latter also took advantage of the folly of the second consul, Lucius Junius Pullus, who was in charge of a second Roman fleet, intended to convey supplies to the army at Lilybaeum. Carthalo met this fleet off the south coast, sailing in two squadrons at some distance from each other; interposing his own ships between the squadrons, he forced both to run on shore. A violent storm completed the work begun by Carthaginian assaults, and both squadrons were completely wrecked, while the Carthaginians easily weathered the storm out on the open sea.

Now, if ever, was the time for Carthage to humble her great antagonist. During a war of fifteen years the Romans had lost four fleets, three with armies on board; and one land army had been destroyed in Libya. This, added to the many minor losses by disease, guerrilla warfare, battles by sea and land, had reduced the burgess-roll, from the years 252-247 B.C. alone, by about forty thousand men, without reckoning the losses of the allies, who bore the whole brunt of the war by sea. The loss of ships and warmaterial, and the utter paralysis of trade, had inflicted incalculable damage. Moreover, every method and every plan had been tried, and Rome was no nearer the end than she was at the outset of the war. In utter despondency the senate no longer felt equal to the task of subduing Sicily; the fleet was discarded, and the state ships were placed at the disposal of privateer captains, whose unaided valor might perhaps compensate in some degree for the feebleness of the senate. The miserable indolence and weakness of the Carthaginian government alone saved Rome: relieved of the necessity of self-defense, the Carthaginians imitated the example of their enemy, and confined their operations by land and sea to the petty warfare in and around Sicily.

The next six years of uneventful warfare, from 248-243 B. C., reflect little credit on Carthage, and still less on Rome. Hamilcar, named Barak or Barca (i. e., lightning), the Carthaginian commander in Sicily, alone showed proper energy and spirit. Aware that the infantry of Carthage were no match for the Roman legions, and aware that his mercenaries cared as little for Carthage as for Rome, he proved that personal attachment to a general could compensate in the minds of his soldiers for the want of ties of nation and country. He established himself on Mount Ercte, and later captured the town of Eryx, and from these strong positions

243-241 B.C.

he carried on a plundering warfare, and levied contributions from the plains, while Phoenician privateers ravaged the Italian coast. The Romans were unable to dislodge him from either of his positions, and every day threatened to bring fresh defeat and disgrace to the Roman arms. This gloomy aspect of affairs was completely changed, not by the energy of the Roman government, but by the noble patriotism of individuals. By private subscription a fleet of two hundred ships, manned by sixty thousand sailors, and fitted out with the greatest care, was raised and presented to the state. This fleet, under the consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, had no difficulty in occupying the harbors of Drepana and Lilybaeum, and prosecuted the siege of both places with great vigor. Carthage, taken by surprise, dispatched a weak fleet with supplies to the beleaguered towns, and hoped to effect a landing without interference from the Romans. They were, however, intercepted and forced to accept battle off the small island of Aegusa, in the spring of 241 B.C. The result was never doubtful, and the Romans gained a complete and decisive victory. The last effort of the Roman patriots had borne fruit; it brought victory, and with victory peace.

Peace was concluded at last on terms not wholly unfavorable to Carthage. Sicily, however, had to be abandoned, and Hamilcar was forced by the incapacity of others to descend from the positions he had occupied for seven years with such conspicuous success. In addition to Sicily, Carthage ceded all the islands between Sicily and Italy. She was also condemned to pay a war indemnity of about four million dollars, a third of which was to be paid down at once, and the remainder in ten annual instalments. But Hamilcar refused to accede to certain demands of the Roman consul, and the independence and integrity of the Carthaginian state and territory was expressly guaranteed. Both Rome and Carthage bound themselves not to enter into a separate alliance with any dependency of the other, nor in any way to encroach on the rights which each exercised in her own dominions. The dissatisfaction of the patriotic party at Rome was so great that at first the public assembly refused to sanction the proposed terms of peace. But a commission was appointed to settle the question on the spot in Sicily, and practically the proposals of Catulus were adopted, and Hamilcar, the unconquered general of a vanquished nation, delivered up to the new masters of Sicily the fortresses which had been in the

241-238 B.C.

possession of the Phoenicians for at least four hundred years; and in 241 B.C. the West had peace.

The severe struggle, which thus ended in the extension of Roman dominion beyond Italy, throws a strong and by no means favorable light on the Roman military and political system. Notwithstanding the noble patriotism and heroic energy often exhibited by the citizens, we cannot fail to mark the miserable vacillation shown by Rome in the conduct of this war. The fact is that the organization of the Roman senate and of the military system were only adapted for a purely Italian policy, and a purely continental war. The wide area of the battlefield, the necessity of a fleet, the siege of maritime fortresses, were all hitherto unknown to the Romans. For the solution of such problems the senate, from its composition and ignorance, was quite unfitted: moreover, the system of choosing a new commander every year, often to reverse the plans of his predecessor, was manifestly absurd. The noble creation of this war-a Roman fleet-was never truly Roman; Italian Greeks commanded, and subjects, nay even slaves and outcasts, composed the crews; naval service was always held in slight esteem when compared with the honor of the legionary. The general, again, as we see in the case of Regulus, could not change his tactics to suit the exigencies of the moment. The old idea that any citizen was fit to be a general was true only in rustic warfare, while the notion that the chief command of the fleet should be regarded as a mere adjunct of the chief command of the land army excites our wonder and ridicule. To the energy of her citizens, and still more to the terrible blunders of her adversaries, Rome owed her victorious issue from the first Punic war.

In the years that followed this peace Rome gradually extended her dominion to what we may term the natural boundaries of Italy, to the Alps in the north and to Sicily in the south. On the expulsion of the Phoenicians, Rome contented herself with allowing her steadfast ally, Hiero, to retain his independence as ruler of Syracuse, and of the neighboring districts of Elorus, Neetum, Acrae, Leontini, Megara, and Tauromenium; the rest of Sicily she permanently appropriated. Meanwhile Carthage, in consequence of her cowardly and miserly attempt to dock the pay of the mercenaries of Hamilcar, was engaged in a deadly conflict with her revolted soldiers and her Libyan dependencies, among whom the revolution spread far and wide. The city of Carthage itself was

238-237 B.C.

besieged, and not only in Libya, but even in Sardinia, the insurgents looked to Rome for aid. Rome, although she refused to succor the revolted Libyans, availed herself of the treachery of the Sardinian garrisons, and seized possession of that island in 238 B.C.; shortly afterwards she added Corsica to her new possessions. Carthage, restored by the genius of Hamilcar to her full sovereignty in Africa, demanded in 237 B.C. the restitution of Sardinia; but she did not dare to take up the gage of battle which was promptly thrown down by Rome; and therefore she had to submit to the cession of Sardinia, and in addition, to pay 1200 talents ($1,460,000).

The acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia caused an important change in the Roman method of administration, and one which marked the difference between Italy and the provinces, between the conquests of Rome in her own proper land of Italy and those she made across the sea. The necessity of some special magistrate for these transmarine regions caused the appointment of two provincial pretors, one for Sicily, and one for Sardinia and Corsica; the coasts of these latter islands alone were occupied, and with the natives of the wild interior perpetual war was waged. The two pretors exercised powers very similar to those of the consuls in early times; the pretor was commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme judge. One or more questors were assigned to each pretor, to look after the finance-administration. With the exception of this difference in the chief power, the same principles were adhered to as those which Rome had observed in organizing her dependencies in Italy. All independence in external relations was taken away from the provincial communities; every provincial was restricted, as regards the acquisition of property, and perhaps the right of marriage, to his own community. But in Sicily, at least, the cities retained their old federal organization, and their harmless federal diets: the power of coining money was probably withdrawn. The land, however, was left untouched, and each Sardinian and Sicilian community retained self-administration and some sort of autonomy. A general valuation corresponding to the Roman census was instituted every fifth year, and all democratic constitutions were set aside in favor of aristocratic councils.

Another de facto distinction, of great importance, between the Italian and transmarine communities, was that the latter furnished no fixed contingent to the army or fleet of Rome; they lost the right

244-229 B.C.

of bearing arms, and could only use them in self-defense when called upon by the pretor. In lieu of a contingent they paid a tithe of their produce and a tax of five per cent. on all articles of commerce exported or imported; these taxes were not new to the Sicilian Greeks, who had paid them to the ruling power, whether the Persian king, Carthage, or Syracuse. Certain communities were no doubt exempted from these imposts; Messana, for instance, was enrolled in the Roman alliance, and furnished its contingent of ships; other towns, such as Segesta and Halicyae, Centuripa and Alaesa, and Panormus, the future capital of Roman Sicily, though not admitted as confederates of Rome, were exempted from taxation. But on the whole the position of Sicilian and Sardinian communities was one of tributary subjection, not of dependent alliance.

By the possession of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, Rome might now call the Tyrrhene Sea her own. On the east coast the founding of Brundisium in 244 B.C. had from the first established Roman supremacy; the quarrels of the Greek states prevented any rival power arising in Greece itself. But the Adriatic Sea was a prey to Illyrian pirates, and hordes of these tribes, in their dreaded Liburnian galleys, defied all authority and ravaged every coast. They established themselves in Phoenice, the most flourishing town in Epirus, and at length took possession of the rich island of Corcyra. Urgent appeals from hard-pressed Greek settlements on the Adriatic coast, and constant complaints from Italian mariners, at last caused Rome to interfere, and to send an embassy to Agron, king of Scodra and Illyria, with demands that he should put the evil down. His refusal was met with an insulting threat from one of the Roman envoys, for which all the ambassadors paid with their lives. A Roman fleet, with an army on board, appeared to succor the hard-pressed town of Apollonia in 229 B.C., and the corsairs were completely vanquished and their strongholds razed to the ground. The territory of the sovereigns of Scodra was greatly restricted by the terms imposed by Rome, and much of the Illyrian and Dalmatian coasts, together with several Greek cities in that quarter, was practically reduced under Roman sway, or attached to Rome under forms of alliance. The Greeks submitted with a good grace to the humility of seeing their countrymen delivered from the scourge of piracy by barbarians from across the sea, and admitted the Romans to the Isthmian games and the