241-222 B.C.

Eleusinian mysteries. Macedonia was too weak to protest by aught but words, and that part she disdained to play.

With the exception of a six-days' war with Falerii in 241 B.C., nothing broke the peace of Italy proper. But matters were not so settled in the northern district between the Alps and the Apennines, where strong Celtic races still held their ground. It was but natural that Rome should now wrest the gates of the Alps from the grasp of these barbarians, and make herself mistress, not only of the mighty river, navigable for 230 miles, but of the largest and most fertile plain in the then civilized Europe. The Celts, indeed, had begun to stir in 238 B.C., and two years later the army of the Boii, united with the Transalpine Gauls, encamped before the walls of Ariminum. Fortunately for Rome, exhausted as she then was by her struggle with Carthage, the two Celtic hosts turned on one another, and thus freed Rome from the threatened danger. In 232 B.C. the Celts, weary of waiting for the outbreak of that contest for Lombardy, which they perceived was inevitable, resolved to strike the first blow. All the Italian Celts, except the Cenomani and Veneti, took part in the war against Rome; advancing to the Apennines in 225 B.C., from which quarter the Romans did not expect an attack, they ravaged Etruria up to the walls of Clusium, and by a clever strategy almost succeeded in cutting off one Roman army before the other could relieve it. Failing in this attempt, the Celts retreated, but were intercepted at Telamon by some legions which had crossed from Sardinia and landed at Pisae. The consul Gaius Atilius Regulus commanded this force, and at once made a flank attack with his cavalry; he fell in the engagement, but his colleague, Papus, at the head of the Italian army, now came into action. Despite their desperate resistance against the double attack, the Celts were utterly defeated, and all the tribes south of the Po submitted in 224 B.C. The next year saw the struggle renewed on the northern side of the river. The valor of the Roman soldiers redeemed the blunder of their general, Gaius Flaminius, and turned what nearly proved a defeat into a glorious victory over the Insubres. Many conflicts took place in 222 B.C., but the capture of the Insubrian capital, Milan, by Gnaeus Scipio, put an end to their resistance. Thus the Celts of Italy were completely vanquished, and though in the most northern and remote districts. Celtic cantons were allowed to remain, in all the country south of the Po the Celtic race gradually disappeared. By extensive as

201-194 B.C.

signations of land in the country between Picenum and Ariminum; by carrying the great northern highway, or " Flaminian Road," on from Narnia across the Apennines to Ariminum on the Adriatic

coast; by planting fortresses and Roman townships, e. g., Placentia and Cremona on the Po itself, in the newly acquired territory, the Romans showed their determination to reap the fruits of their late conquests; but a sudden event checked them while in the full tide of their prosperity.

T

Chapter XIII

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 218-202 B.C.

HE most shallow-minded Carthaginian can scarcely have regarded the peace with Rome in 241 B.C. as likely to prove lasting. Carthage had, no doubt, long been divided into two parties, the one eager for political reform, the other striving to retain the close oligarchical constitution. These two parties were now further rent asunder by the cry for war and the demand for peace. To the latter, or peace-party, belonged the gerusia and Council of a Hundred, under the leadership of Hanno; to this party the timorous and indolent, the worshipers of money and place, naturally attached themselves. The war-party found its chief support in the democratic leaders and military officers, among whom Hasdrubal and Hamilcar were preeminent; the wisest, most far-seeing, and most patriotic Carthaginians lent their aid to this section of the state. The successful conclusion of the war against the revolted Numidians, while it made clear to all the genius of Hamilcar Barca, brought out in odious contrast the miserable incapacity of Hanno, and the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy. Great prominence was thus given to the patriotic party, and, although political reform was impracticable, while Rome was all-powerful and gave her countenance to the treacherous oligarchs, important changes were effected in the military system of Carthage. Hanno was deposed from his command, and Hamilcar was nominated commander-in-chief of all Africa for an indefinite period. He could only be recalled by the vote of the popular assembly, and the choice of a successor was made to depend, not on the magisterial board at home, but on the decision of the officers serving in the army. Apparently Hamilcar was invested with these dictatorial powers for the purpose of superintending the border-warfare with the Numidians; but we shall see what a different view he took of the charge committed to him.

The task set Hamilcar of saving the state by means of the army was calculated to try to the uttermost the abilities of that

238-226 B.C.

great man. Not only had he to construct an army out of poor material, and to pay his mercenaries out of an ill-supplied chest, but he had also, as leader of a party, to please and delude in turn the venal multitude at home, whose fickle devotion he knew but too well how to appraise. Although still a young man, Hamilcar possibly foreboded his premature fate, and, ere he left Carthage, he bound his son Hannibal, then nine years of age, by the most solemn oath to swear eternal enmity to Rome, and thus transmitted to his children his schemes, his genius, and his hatred. At the head of a strong army, and accompanied by a fleet under his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, Hamilcar marched westwards, apparently against the Libyans in that quarter; suddenly, without any authority from the government, he crossed over into Spain, and there laid the foundations of the Spanish kingdom of the Barcides. Of his personal achievements we have no details, save that Cato the Elder, on seeing the still fresh traces of his work, exclaimed that no king was worthy to be named by the side of Hamilcar Barca. After nine years of constant war with the Spanish native tribes, when he was beginning to see the result of all his labors, he fell fighting, in 228 B.C. For the next eight years his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, carried on his plans in the same spirit. The adroit statesmanship of Hasdrubal consolidated the Carthaginian kingdom in Spain which the generalship of Hamilcar had founded. The fairest regions of Spain, the southern and eastern coasts, became Carthaginian provinces; towns were founded, chief of which was Cartagena, on the only good harbor on the south coast, whose silver mines, then first discovered, a century later produced a yearly yield of more than $1,800,000. The revenues of the province not only paid for the maintenance of the army, but enabled Hasdrubal to remit a large sum to Carthage every year. The revival of commerce, which thus recouped in Spain what it had lost in Sicily and Sardinia, was in itself a sufficient reason for the non-interference of the home government with the plans of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal.

We must ascribe the inaction of Rome during such a long period of brilliant Carthaginian successes to the ignorance of the Romans, who knew very little of so remote a country as Spain, and who, no doubt, at first regarded with contempt the reports furnished them by their spies in Carthage. In 226 B.C., however, the senate warned Hasdrubal not to pass the Ebro, and received into alliance the two Greek towns on the east coast of Spain,

226-219 B.C.

Saguntum and Emporiae; by fixing this limit to the Carthaginian advance the Romans intended to secure a basis of operations in the country between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, should occasion arise for their active interference in Spain. The delay of the Romans in beginning the second Punic war was due to many causes, but chiefly to their inability to form a true conception of the great scheme which the family of Barca was pursuing with such success. The policy of the Romans was always more remarkable for tenacity, cunning, and consistency than for grandeur of conception or power of rapid organization.

So far fortune had smiled on the Carthaginians. It was not fated that Hasdrubal should attempt to realize the dream of his great predecessor. In 220 B.C. he fell by an assassin's hand, and his place was filled by Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar, then in his twenty-ninth year. Despite his youth, the man thus chosen by his comrades-in-arms was fully worthy of their confidence. Nature had bestowed upon him gifts both mental and physical, which were no mean qualifications for his mighty task; education and association had completed nature's work. Brought up from his infancy to cherish thoughts of vengeance on Rome, trained as a soldier in early youth under his father's eye, already highly distinguished, as the commander of the Spanish cavalry, alike for personal bravery and for the higher qualities of a leader, Hannibal was specially fitted to carry out the great projects of his father. Anger, envy, and meanness have written his history, but have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Combining in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy, Hannibal was marked in a peculiar degree by the Phoenician characteristic of inventive craftiness. Every page of the history of the period attests his genius as a general, and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in the reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which, as a foreign exile, he exercised in the cabinets of the Eastern potentates. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues-an army which never, in the worst times, mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went he riveted the eyes of all.

Hannibal resolved at once to begin the war, while the Celts in Italy were still unsubdued, and while a war between Rome and