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205-204 B.C.

and the overthrow of all Hannibal's plans and hopes. Hannibal retired to the Bruttian territory; while Rome, overjoyed at the relief from the terrible strain of past years, and conscious that the peril was over, resumed business and even pleasure as in time of peace, and made no great effort to finish the war. Thenceforth

the struggle languished in Italy, nor could all the superior force of his opponents compel Hannibal to shut himself up in fortresses or to leave Italian soil.

We have now reached the final scene of this great contest. Publius Scipio, who had returned from Spain in the previous year, was chosen consul in 205 B.C. His popularity with the multitude made him no favorite with the senate, whose members viewed with suspicion his Greek refinement and modern culture, and not unjustly criticised his leniency and indulgence towards his officers and his conduct of the war in Spain. Moreover, the senate was averse to an expedition into Africa as long as Hannibal was in Italy, and was specially disinclined to intrust it to Scipio, who had shown too clearly a tendency to slight the constitutional authority of the senate and to rely on his fame and popularity with the masses. At last, however, Scipio was intrusted with the task of building a fleet in Sicily, and raising an army, of which the two legions in Sicily' formed the nucleus. The fleet was ready in forty days, and seven thousand volunteers responded to the call of their beloved commander.

In the spring of 204 B.C. Scipio set sail with 30,000 men, 40 ships of war, and 400 transports, and landed unopposed at the Fair Promontory near Utica. He was at once joined by his old foe Massinissa, who had been driven from his kingdom by the combined armies of Carthage and Syphax. The latter had embraced the side of Carthage, and, as a reward, had caused Carthage to renounce her old ally Massinissa. The arrival of Syphax with a powerful army, and his junction with the Carthaginian force stationed to oppose Scipio, caused the Roman general to abandon the siege of Utica, and to entrench himself for the winter on a promontory between Utica and Carthage. Fortune, however, never failed to smile on Scipio, and, under cover of proposals for peace, Scipio succeeded in surprising both camps on the same night, and in utterly routing the two armies. Reinforcements at this moment arrived, consisting of a Macedonian corps under Sopater, and of Celtiberian mercenaries. The Carthaginians, thus strengthened, resolved to

204-202 B.C.

venture on a pitched battle in the "Great Plains," five days' march from Utica. Scipio was completely successful, and Syphax fell

into his hands.

The peace party at Carthage now tried to reverse the Barcid policy, and sued for peace. The terms proposed by Scipio were so moderate that the peace faction were for accepting them at once. But the patriotic party had not lost hope, and during the negotiations recalled Hannibal and Mago from Italy. The latter, however, after striving for three years to form a coalition in northern Italy against Rome, had just been defeated near Milan, and during his voyage home died of a wound received in that battle. Hannibal at once embarked at Croton, and, after an absence of thirty-six years, returned once more to his native land in 203 B.C. The Roman citizens breathed freely when the mighty Libyan lion, whose departure no one even now ventured to compel, thus voluntarily turned his back on Italian ground. To mark the occasion, a grass wreath, the highest distinction possible in the Roman state, was presented to the veteran Quintus Fabius, then nearly ninety,his last honor, for in the same year he passed away.

Hannibal's arrival in Africa ignited the torch of war once more. The people of Carthage refused to ratify the peace practically concluded, and the seizure of a ship of war with Roman envoys on board broke the armistice. Scipio, in just wrath, ravaged the valley of the Bagradas, and penetrated the interior, when his course was arrested by Hannibal. After fruitless negotiations both armies prepared for a decisive battle at Zama, in 202 B.C. By a skillful disposition Scipio managed that the elephants of the enemy should pass through his lines without breaking them: forcing their way to the side, these unwieldly creatures threw the cavalry of Hannibal into disorder, and the far more numerous horse of Massinissa easily scattered the Carthaginian squadrons. The infantry battle was most bloody and severe: nor did the veterans of Hannibal ever flinch until the cavalry of Massinissa, returning from pursuit, surrounded them on all sides. The Phoenician army was annihilated and Cannae avenged. Hannibal with a few men escaped to Hadrumetum.

Peace was now inevitable if Carthage was to be saved from destruction. The terms proposed by Scipio, and subsequently ratified by the senate, were: the cession of the Spanish possessions and the islands of the Mediterranean; the transference of the king

202-201 B.C.

dom of Syphax to Massinissa; the surrender of all ships of war except twenty, and an annual contribution of two hundred talents ($240,000) for the next fifty years; an engagement not to make war against Rome or her allies, and not to wage war in Africa beyond the Carthaginian boundaries without the permission of Rome. The practical effect of these terms was to render Carthage tributary and to deprive her of her political independence. The terms of this peace have often been considered too light, and they served as a handle to the charge that Scipio, in his eagerness to secure for himself the glory of finishing the war, forgot what was due to Rome. A true estimate of the peace and of its effect on the future position of Carthage inclines rather to the view that these terms were the outcome of the nobleness of the two greatest men of the age, and a recognition on the part of Scipio of the crime of blotting out one of the main props of civilization merely to gratify the petty ferocity of his fellow-countrymen. The noble-mindedness and statesmanlike gifts of the great antagonists are no less apparent in the magnanimous submission of Hannibal to what was inevitable than in the wise abstinence of Scipio from an extravagant and insulting use of victory.

It remains for us to sum up the results of this terrible war, which for seventeen years had devastated the lands and islands from the Hellespont to the Pillars of Hercules. Rome was henceforth compelled by the force of circumstances to assume a position. at which she had not directly aimed, and to exercise sovereignty over all the lands of the Mediterranean. Outside Italy there arose the two new provinces in Spain, where the natives lived in a state of perpetual insurrection; the kingdom of Syracuse was now included in the Roman province of Sicily: a Roman instead of a Carthaginian protectorate was now established over the most important Numidian chiefs: Carthage was changed from a powerful commercial state into a defenseless mercantile town. Thus all the western Mediterranean passed under the supremacy of Rome. Italy itself, the destruction of the Celts became a mere question of time the ruling Latin people had been exalted by the struggle to a position of still greater eminence over the heads of the non-Latin or Latinized Italians, such as the Etruscans and Sabellians in lower Italy. A terrible punishment was inflicted on the allies of Hannibal. Capua was reduced from the position of second city to that of first village in Italy: the whole soil, with a few exceptions, was

In

218-202 B.C.

declared to be public domain-land, and was leased out to small occupiers. The same fate befell the Picentes on the Silarus. The Bruttians became in a manner bondsmen to the Romans, and were forbidden to carry arms. All the Greek cities which had supported Hannibal were treated with great severity: and in the case of a number of Apulian, Lucanian, and Samnite communities a loss of territory was inflicted, and new colonies were planted. Throughout Italy the non-Latin allies were made to feel their utter subjection to Rome, and the comedies of the period testify to the scorn of the victorious Romans.

It seems probable that not less than three hundred thousand Italians perished in this war, the brunt of which loss fell chiefly on Rome. After the battle of Cannae it was found necessary to fill up the hideous gap in the senate by an extraordinary nomination of 177 senators: the ordinary burgesses suffered hardly less severely. Further, the terrible strain on the resources of the state had shaken the national economy to its very foundations. Four hundred flourishing townships had been utterly ruined. The blows inflicted on the simple morality of the citizens and farmers by a camp-life worked no less mischief. Gangs of robbers and desperadoes plundered Italy in dangerous numbers. Home agriculture saw its existence endangered by the proof, first given in this war, that the Roman people could be supported by foreign grain from Sicily and Egypt. Still, at the close and happy issue of so terrible a struggle, Rome might justly point with pride to the past and with confidence to the future. In spite of many errors she had survived all danger, and the only question now was whether she would have the wisdom to make a right use of her victory, to bind still more closely to herself the Latin people, to gradually Latinize all her Italian subjects, and to rule her foreign dependents as subjects, not as slaves,-whether she would reform her constitution and infuse new vigor into the unsound and fast-decaying portion of her state.

[graphic]

HANNIBAL CROSSES THE RHONE, FERRYING HIS ELEPHANTS OVER ON RAFTS, BUOYED UP BY INFLATED BAGS

Painting by Henry Motte

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