CHAP. VII. THIRD PERIOD, B.C. he avoided them, and steered to Tarentum, after having dispatched an order to the transports to return to Africa. The cause of this extraordinary proceeding does not appear in the account handed down to us. If it be true, as Livy 215-212 reports,' that Bomilcar's fleet was stronger than that of the Romans, it cannot have been fear which prevented him from accepting battle. Perhaps he thought that his presence at Tarentum was more necessary than at Syracuse; perhaps he quarrelled with Epikydes. At any rate he left to its own resources the town which he was sent to relieve, and thus spread discouragement among its defenders and hastened its fall. From this moment the fate of Syracuse was sealed. Anarchy in Epikydes himself probably lost all hope, as he did not Syracuse. return, but remained in Agrigentum. Again the republican party took courage. The leaders of this party renewed negotiations with the Romans, and again Marcellus guaranteed the liberty and independence of Syracuse as the price for surrendering the town. But the friends of Rome were not able to fulfil the promises they had made. The unhappy town was torn by a desperate struggle between the citizens and the soldiers. At first the citizens had the advantage. They succeeded in killing the chief officers appointed by Epikydes, and in electing republican magistrates in their place, who were ready to hand the town over to the Romans. The lawless soldiery seemed overpowered for a moment. But, after a short time, that faction among the troops got the upper hand again who had a just apprehension that their lives were in jeopardy if they fell into the hands of the Romans. The foreign mercenaries were persuaded to resist to the last. Another revolution followed. The republican magistrates were murdered, and a general massacre and pillage signalised the final triumph of the enemies of Rome and of Syracuse. The unhappy town resembled a helpless wreck, drifting fast towards a reef whilst the crew, instead of battling with 1 Livy, xxv. 27. BOOK Treachery of Meri cus. Fall and sack of Syracuse. the elements, spends its last strength in bloody internecine strife. Even now Marcellus did not make a direct attempt to take Syracuse by force until he had secured the co-operation of a party in the town. The troops had chosen six captains, each of whom was to defend a certain part of the walls. Among these captains was a Spanish officer of the name of Mericus, who commanded on the southern side of Ortygia. Seeing that the town could not possibly be held much longer, and that therefore it was high time to make his peace if he wished to obtain favourable terms, at least for those soldiers who were not deserters, he entered secretly into negotiations with Marcellus. An agreement was soon made. A barge approached at night the southern extremity of Ortygia, and landed a party of Roman soldiers, who were admitted through a posterngate into the fortification. On the following day Marcellus ordered a general attack upon the walls of Achradina, and whilst the garrison rushed from all parts, and also from Ortygia to the threatened spot, Roman soldiers landed in several ships unopposed on Ortygia and occupied the place with a sufficient force. Having made sure of the fact that Ortygia was in his power, Marcellus at once desisted from any further attack on Achradina, well knowing that, after the fall of Ortygia, the defence of Achradina would not be continued. His calculation proved correct. During the following night the deserters found means of escaping, and in the morning the gates were opened to admit the victorious army. If Thus, at length, after a siege that had lasted more than two years, the Romans reaped the fruit of their dogged perseverance. any town that had ever succumbed to the Roman arms was justified in expecting a lenient, or even a generous treatment, this town assuredly was Syracuse. The invaluable services which Hiero had rendered in the course of more than half a century, could not in Compare the just remarks of Livy, xxvi. 32. CHAP. VIII. THIRD PERIOD, B.C. justice be considered as balanced by the follies of a child, and by the hostility of a political party with which the better class of Syracusan citizens had never sympathized. From the very beginning of the sad complications and 215-212 revolutions at Syracuse, the true republican party, which was attached to order and freedom, inclined to Rome and wished to continue the foreign policy of Hiero. It was they who conspired to put down the tyrant Hieronymus and his anti-Roman relations and councillors. They had attempted to rid themselves of the emissaries of Hannibal and of their adherents in the army; they were overpowered without renouncing their plans; they had made every effort, in conjunction with their exiled friends who had taken refuge in the camp of Marcellus, to deliver Syracuse into the hands of the Romans; they had resisted the reign of terror exercised by the foreign mercenaries and the Roman deserters, and many of them lost their lives in the attempt to deliver their native town from the tyranny of an armed mob of mutineers and traitors, and to renew the old alliance with Rome. Syracuse had not rebelled against Rome, but had implored assistance from Rome against its worst oppressors. Not only clemency and magnanimity, but even justice, should have prompted the conquerors to look upon the sufferings of Syracuse in this light; and it would have been the undying glory of Marcellus-brighter than the most splendid triumph-if, on obtaining possession, he had shielded the wretched town from further miseries. He would indeed have acted right in punishing with Roman severity the soldiers who had violated the military oath and deserted their colours, and who were the chief cause of the pertinacity of the struggle. But he ought to have spared the citizens of the town, the deplorable victims of hostile factions. He did the very opposite. He allowed the deserters to escape, perhaps with the object of being able to plunder so much the more leisurely, and he treated the town as if it had been taken by storm, handing it over to the rapacity of soldiers maddened to fury by the long resistance and by the BOOK IV. prospect of plunder and revenge. The noble Syracuse, which had ranked in the foremost line of the fairest cities that bore the Hellenic name, fell never to rise again from that time to the present. Marcellus had indeed promised that the lives of the people should be spared;' but how such a promise was kept we may infer from the savage murder of the best man in Syracuse, whose grey hair and venerable, thought-furrowed forehead ought to have shielded him from the steel even of a barbarian. Where Archimedes was slain, because, absorbed in his studies, he did not readily understand the demand of a plundering soldier, there, we may be sure, ignoble blood was shed without stint.2 Marcellus was intent only on obtaining possession of the royal treasures, which he hoped to find in the island of Ortygia; but it is hardly likely that much of them had been left by the successive masters of Syracuse during the time of anarchy. On the other hand, the works of art which had been accumulated in Syracuse during the periods of prosperity were still extant. These were all, without exception, taken, to be sent to Rome.3 Syracuse was not the first town where the Romans learnt and practised this kind of public spoliation.* Tarentum and Volsinii had already experienced the rapacity rather than the taste of the Romans for works of art. But the art Probably an order was issued to the Roman soldiers forbidding that indiscriminate butchery of all the inhabitants which usually followed the storming of a hostile town, according to the detailed and graphic account of Polybius, x. 39. 2 Livy, xxv. 31 : ‘'Cum multa iræ, multa avaritiæ fœda exempla ederentur,' etc. Zonaras, ix. 5: Εγκρατεῖς δὲ τούτων οἱ Ρωμαῖοι γενόμενοι ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸν ̓Αρχιμήδην ἀπέκτειναν. * Polybius, ix. 10: Ἐκρίθη μὲν οὖν διὰ τοῦτο τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις τὰ τῶν Συρακουσών πολυτελέστατα κατασκευάσματα πάντα μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν μετακομίζειν εἰς τὴν ἑαυτῶν πατρίδα καὶ μηδὲν ἀπολιπεῖν. Cicero indeed says (Verr. ii. 2, 2) that Marcellus spared the conquered enemies,' and not only preserved Syracuse uninjured, but left it so adorned that it was a monument of his victory and, at the same time, of his clemency. This is not historical evidence, but a rhetorical artifice by which the orator pressed history into his service and shaped it according to his wants. Cicero used Marcellus only as a foil for Verres. His assertion is of no force to contradict Polybius. See vol. i. p. 563. VIII. FOURTH treasures of Syracuse were so numerous and so splendid CHAP. that they threw into the shade everything of the sort that had been transported to Rome before. It came therefore to be a received tradition that Marcellus was the first who set the example of enriching Rome, at the expense of her conquered enemies, with the triumphs of Greek art.' PERIOD, 212-211 B.C. Fourth Period of the Hannibalian War. FROM THE TAKING OF SYRACUSE TO THE CAPTURE OF CAPUA, 212-211 B.C. of Agrigentum by Mutines, and com By the taking of Syracuse the war in Sicily was decided Surrender in favour of the Romans, but not by any means finished. Agrigentum was still held by the Carthaginians, and a great number of Sicilian towns were on their side. A plete subLibyan cavalry general, named Mutines, sent to Sicily by jugation of Sicily. Hannibal, and operating in conjunction with Hanno and Epikydes, gave the Romans a great deal of trouble. But when Mutines had quarrelled with the other Carthaginian generals, and had gone over to the Romans in consequence, the fortune of war inclined more and more to the side of the latter. At length, two years after the fall of Syracuse, Mutines betrayed Agrigentum to the Romans. The consul, M. Valerius Lævinus, who then commanded in Sicily, ordered the leading inhabitants of Agrigentum to be scourged and beheaded, the rest to be sold as slaves, and the town to be sacked. This severe punishment had the effect of terrifying the other towns. Forty of them submitted voluntarily, twenty were betrayed, and only six had to be taken by force. All resistance to the Roman arms in Sicily was now broken, and the island returned to the peace and slavery of a Roman province. Its principal task was henceforth to grow corn for feeding the sovereign 1 Livy, xxv. 40: Ceterum inde primum initium mirandi Græcarum artium opera, licentiæque huic sacra profanaque omnia vulgo spoliandi factum est.'Compare Plutarch (Marcell. 21). 2 Livy, xxvi. 40. |