BOOK Occupation of Nuceria and Marcellus was magnified by the Roman annalists into a complete victory over Hannibal. Livy found in some of the writers whom he consulted the statement that 2,800 Carthaginians were slain; but he is sensible and honest enough to suspect that this is a great exaggeration. The extent of the success of Marcellus was no doubt this, that Hannibal's attempt to occupy Nola with the assistance of the Carthaginian party failed; and considering the importance of the place, this was indeed a great point gained. But it was an empty boast if Roman writers asserted in consequence that Marcellus had taught the Romans to conquer Hannibal.2 Livy hits the truth by saying that not to be conquered by Hannibal was more difficult at that time than it was afterwards to conquer him. It was the merit of Marcellus that he saved Nola from being taken. This was effected not only by anticipating the arrival of the Carthaginians, and by securing the town with a garrison, but by severely punishing the leaders of the popular party in Nola, who were guilty or suspected of an understanding with Hannibal. When seventy of them had been put to death, the fidelity of Nola seemed sufficiently secured.3 The pretended victory of Marcellus at Nola appears the more doubtful as Hannibal about the same time was able Acerme by to take in the immediate neighbourhood the towns of Nuceria and Acerræ,' and made several attempts to gain Hannibal. Livy, xxiii. 16. 2 Compare Cicero, Brut. iii. 12: Post Cannensem illam calamitatem primum Marcelli ad Nolam prælio populus se Romanus erexit.' Valerius Maximus, i. 6, 9. 3 Livy. xxiii. 17. On this occasion the stories of Hannibal's treachery and cruelty are repeated. According to Zonaras (ix. 2: compare Dion Cassius, ff. 50, 54; Appian, viii. 63), Hannibal caused the senators of Nuceria to be killed; and though he promised the other inhabitants to let them leave the town in safety, he caused them to be cut down on the road by his horsemen. This story is indirectly contradicted by Livy (xxiii. 15), who relates that the people of Nuceria rejected the offer of Hannibal, who wished them to take service with him, and took refuge all over Campania, but especially in Nola and Neapolis; that thirty senators of Nuceria, on being refused admittance into Capua, went to Cuma. Livy either could not have found anything of the possession of Neapolis. Neapolis would have been a most valuable acquisition, as a secure landing-place and a station for the Carthaginian fleet. But the Neapolitans were on their guard. All attempts to take the town by surprise failed, and Hannibal had not the means of laying siege to it in a regular manner. His attempts to take Cuma were equally futile, and even the petty town of Casilinum, in the immediate vicinity of Capua, on the river Volturnus, offered a stout resistance. But Casilinum was too important on account of its position to be left in the hands of the Romans. Hannibal therefore resolved to lay regular siege to it. CHAP. VIII. SECOND PERIOD, 216-215 B.C. Casilinum. The siege of Casilinum claims our special attention, as Siege of it shows the spirit and the quality of the troops of whom the Romans disposed in their struggle with Carthage. When the Roman legions in the spring of the year 216 в.c. assembled in Apulia, the allied town of Præneste was somewhat in arrear in preparing its contingent. This contingent, consisting of five hundred and seventy men, was therefore still on its march, and had just reached Campania, when the news of the disaster of Cannæ arrived. Instead of marching further south, the troops took up their position in the little town of Casilinum, and were there joined by some Latins and Romans, as well as by a cohort of four hundred and sixty men from the Etruscan town of Perusia, which, like the Prænestine cohort, had been delayed in taking the field. Shortly after this Capua revolted, and everywhere in Campania the popular party showed a disposition to follow the example of Capua. To prevent the people of Casilinum from betraying their Roman garrison to the Carthaginians, the soldiers anticipated treason by a treacherous and barbarous act. They fell upon the inhabitants, put to death all that were suspected,' destroyed alleged atrocities of Hannibal in the annals he consulted, or he discredited the statements. Mommsen (Rom. Hist. i. p. 623; Eng. translation, ii. 142) accepts them as true. 1 From Livy xxiii. 17 it would appear that all the inhabitants were killed, but this is contradicted by Livy himself in another place (xxiii. 19). This heinous act of the Roman garrison closely resembles the doings of the garrison BOOK that portion of the town which lay on the left bank of the river, and put the other half in a state of defence. The Carthaginians summoned the town in vain, and then tried to take it by storm; but several assaults were repulsed by the garrison with the greatest courage, and with perfect success. Hannibal with his victorious army was unable to take by force this insignificant place, with its garrison of scarcely one thousand men-so utterly was he destitute of the means and apparatus necessary for a regular siege; and perhaps he shrunk from sacrificing his valuable troops in this kind of warfare. Yet he did not give up Casilinum. He kept up a blockade, and in the course of the winter hunger soon began its ravages among the defenders. A Roman force under Gracchus, the master of the horse of the dictator Junius Pera, was stationed at a short distance, but made no attempt to throw supplies into the town, or to raise the siege. Gradually all the horrors of a protracted siege broke out in the town; the leather of the shields was cooked for food, mice and roots were devoured, many of the garrison threw themselves from the walls or exposed themselves to the missiles of the enemies to end the pangs of hunger by a voluntary death. The Roman troops under Gracchus tried in vain to relieve the distress of the besieged by floating down the river during the night casks partly filled with grain. The Carthaginians soon discovered the trick, and fished the casks out of the river before they reached the town. When all hope of relief was thus gone, and half of the defenders of Casilinum had perished by hunger, the heroic Prænestines and Perusians at last consented to surrender the town on condition of being allowed to ransom themselves for a stipulated sum.' of Enna in Sicily, and those of the Campanian legion in Rhegium.-See vol. i. p. 518. 1 Again some annalists accused Hannibal of an act of cruel perfidy. They said (Livy, xxiii. 19) that horsemen were sent after the men and killed them. Livy had no difficulty in rejecting this impudent lie, which is exposed by the subsequent narrative of the honours publicly awarded to the Prænestine soldiers after their return. He says: Donec omne aurum persolutum est, in vinculis habiti; tum remissi summa cum fide. They were justly proud of their performance. Marcus Anicius, the commander of the Prænestine cohort, who, as Livy remarks, had formerly been a public clerk, caused a statue of himself to be erected on the market-place of Præneste, with an inscription to commemorate the defence of Casilinum. The Roman senate granted the survivors double pay and exemption from military service for five years. It is added that the Roman franchise was also offered to them, but declined. Probably the men of Perusia were honoured like the Prænestines, but we have no information on the subject. CHAP. VIII. SECOND PERIOD, 216-215 B.C. The obstinate defence of Casilinum is instructive, as Prospects showing the spirit by which the allies of Rome were ani- of the war. mated. If after the battle of Cannæ the citizens of two towns which did not even possess the Roman franchise fought for Rome with such firmness and heroism, the republic could look with perfect composure and confidence upon all the vicissitudes of the war; nor could Hannibal with a handful of foreign mercenaries have much hope of subduing a country defended by several hundred thousand men as brave and obstinate as the garrison of Casilinum. Italian The blockade of Casilinum had lasted the whole winter, Hannibal's and the surrender of the town did not take place before allies. the following spring. Meanwhile Hannibal had sent a portion of his army' to take up their winter-quarters in Capua. The results of the battle of Cannæ were in truth considerable, but we can hardly think that they answered his expectations. The acquisition of Capua was the only advantage worth mentioning; and the value of this acquisition was considerably reduced by the continued resistance which he had to encounter in all the other important towns of Campania, especially in those on the sea coast. Thus Capua was in constant danger, and instead of vigorously supporting the movements of Hannibal it compelled him to take measures for its protection. It could not be left without a Carthaginian garrison, for the 1 Two detachments of his army were in Lucania and Bruttium; a third was blockading Casilinum. BOOK Defeat of Hasdrubal at Ibera Roman party in the town would, as the example of Nola showed, have seized the first opportunity for betraying it into the hands of the Romans. The conditions on which Capua had joined the Carthaginian alliance, viz. exemption from military service and war taxes, show clearly that Hannibal could not dispose freely of the resources of his Italian allies. He could rely only on their voluntary aid; and it was his policy to show that their alliance with Carthage was more profitable for them than their subjection to Rome. It was evident, therefore, that he could not raise a very considerable army in Italy; and that if he could have found the men, he would have had the greatest difficulty in providing for their food and pay, and for the materials of war. Still, whatever difficulties Hannibal might encounter by continuing the war in Italy, he might, after the in Spain. stupendous success that had hitherto accompanied him, expect to overcome, provided he obtained from home the reinforcements on which he had all along calculated. His first expectations were directed to Spain. In this country the Romans had with a just appreciation of its importance made great efforts during the first two years of the war to occupy the land between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and they had thus blocked up the nearest road by which a Punic army could march from Spain to Italy. The two Scipios had even advanced beyond the Ebro to attack the Carthaginian dominions in the southern part of the peninsula, and, following the example of Hannibal in Italy, they had adopted the policy of endeavouring to gain over to their side the subjects and allies of Carthage. In the third year of the war Hasdrubal had to turn his arms against the Tartessii,' a powerful tribe in the valley There is some doubt whether the revolted tribe was that of the Tartessii or the Carpesii. (See Drakenborch's note to Livy, xxiii. 26.) Our ignorance of the ancient geography of Spain, and still more the ignorance of it which the ancient historians betray, and which makes their narratives so vague, is the chief cause of the obscurity in which the events in Spain are hidden, and has given ample scope to the inventions and exaggerations with which the narrative of the war in Spain is disfigured. |