BOOK IV. Events in populace of the capital, and to allow itself to be plundered systematically by farmers of the revenue, traders, usurers, and, above all, by the annual governors. It was most fortunate for Rome' that, by the fall of Syracuse in 212, the Sicilian war had taken a favourable turn. For the same year was so disastrous to them in other parts, that the prospect for the future became more and more gloomy. In Spain the two brothers Scipio had, after the successful campaign of 215,' continued the war in the following year with the same happy results. Several battles are reported for this year, in which they are said invariably to have beaten the Carthaginians.' We may safely pass over the detailed accounts of these events, which are of no historical value, from their evident air of exaggeration, and on account of our ignorance of the ancient geography of Spain. Yet, through all misrepresentations, it appears certain that the war was continued in Spain, and that the Carthaginians were not able to carry out Hannibal's plan of sending an army across the Pyrenees and Alps to co-operate with the army already in Italy. How much of this result is due to the genius of the Roman generals and to the bravery of the Roman legions it is impossible to ascertain from the partial accounts of the annalists, who probably derived their information chiefly from the traditions of the Scipionic 1 See p. 268. 2 We cannot read Livy's report without the conviction that a great portion of it rests on fiction or exaggeration. (See p. 275, note 1; and Arnold, Hist. of Rome, iii. 260-263). The first alleged victory at Illiturgi (Livy, xxiv. 49) is evidently a repetition of the victory related before (Livy, xxiii. 18), and placed in the preceding year: the circumstances are precisely the same; the difference lies only in the number of the slain, of prisoners and military ensigns taken. In the battle of Munda which now follows, Cn. Scipio is wounded, and thus the Carthaginians are saved from a defeat, but lose, nevertheless, 12,000 dead, 3,000 prisoners, and 57 military ensigns. In a third battle, at Auringis, they lose about half as many, because,' as Livy (ibid. 42) adds in explanation, there were fewer left to fight.' Thereupon they are beaten a fourth time, with a loss of 8,000 dead, 1,000 prisoners, 58 ensigns, and 11 elephants. If we add up the numbers given by Livy, the Carthaginians lost in the two years 215 and 214, in Spain, not less than 80,000 men. The magnificence of such boasting is apt to inspire admiration. CHAP. VIII. FOURTH PERIOD, B.C. family. One cause of the failure of the Carthaginians lay no doubt in the frequent rebellions among the Spanish tribes, which the Romans instigated and turned to their own advantage. But the principal cause was a war in Africa 212–211 with Syphax, a Numidian chief or king, which seems to have been very serious, and which compelled them to withdraw Hasdrubal and a part of their army from Spain for the defence of their home territory. This circumstance operated most powerfully in favour of the Roman arms in Spain, leaving the Scipios almost unopposed, and enabling them to overrun the Carthaginian possessions, and to obtain a footing south of the river Ebro.2 In the year 214, the Romans took Saguntum, and restored it as an independent allied town five years after its capture by Hannibal. They also entered into relations with King Syphax. Every enemy of Carthage was of course an ally of Rome, and valuable in proportion as he was troublesome or dangerous to Carthage. Roman officers were dispatched into Africa to train the undisciplined soldiers of the Numidian prince, and especially to form an infantry, after the Roman model, which might be capable of resisting the Carthaginians in the field. Such a task as this, however, would have required more time than the Roman officers could devote to it. It seems that Syphax derived no benefit from the attempt to turn his irregular horsemen into legionary soldiers. He was soon after in great difficulties. The Carthaginians secured the alliance of another Numidian chief, called Gula, whose son Masinissa, a youth seventeen years old, gave now the first evidence of a 1 . Appian, vi. 15: Καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦδε (the year 217) οἱ δύο Σκιπίωνες τὸν ἐν Ιβηρίᾳ πόλεμον διέφερον, Ασδρούβου σφίσιν ἀντιστρατηγοῦντος μέχρι Καρχηδόνιοι μὲν ὑπὸ Σύφακος τοῦ τῶν Νομάδων δυνάστου πολεμούμενοι τὸν ̓Ασδρούβαν καὶ μέρος τῆς αὐτοῦ στρατιᾶς μετεπέμψαντο. τῶν δὲ ὑπολοίπων οἱ Σκιπίωνες εὐμαρῶς ékpárovv. (Livy, xxiv. 48). Appian altogether passes over the battle of Ibera. See p. 268. 2 Livy, xxiv. 48. * Livy (xxiv. 42) states erroneously that Saguntum was seven years in the hands of the Carthaginians. The capture and the restoration of the town to the old inhabitants indirectly shows that it could not have been totally destroyed by Hannibal in 219, as Livy's description would lead us to believe. BOOK IV. Employment of mercenaries in Spain. Defeat and death of the Scipios. military ability and an ambition destined in the sequel to become most fatal to the Carthaginians. Syphax was completely defeated and expelled from his dominions. He came to the Romans as a fugitive about the same time that Hasdrubal, after the victorious termination of the African war, returned to Spain with considerable reinforcements. 1 The fortune of war now changed rapidly and decidedly. The Scipios, having long been left without a supply of new troops from home, had been obliged to enrol a great number of Spanish mercenaries. Rome now learnt to know the difference between mercenaries and an army of citizens. It was not indeed the first time that such troops had been employed. In the first Punic war a body of Gallic deserters had been taken into Roman pay.2 The Cenomanians and other tribes of Cisalpine Gaul, mentioned as serving on the Roman side in the beginning of the Hannibalian war, were no doubt regularly paid, and were, in fact, mercenaries. So were of course the Cretans and other Greek troops whom Hiero had sent as auxiliary contingents on several occasions.3 But it appears that the first employment of mercenaries on a large scale, after the model of the Carthaginians, took place in Spain on the present occasion. Where the Scipios obtained the means for paying these troops we cannot tell. Perhaps they were not able to pay them punctually, and this fact would alone suffice to explain their faithlessness and desertion. It was in 212 B.C. that Hasdrubal, the son of Barcas, after the defeat of Syphax, returned to Spain. He found that the Roman generals had divided their forces, and were operating separately in different parts of the country. Their Celtiberian mercenaries had deserted and gone 1 The defeat of Cn. Scipio suggests to Livy (xxv. 33) the following remark: Id quidem cavendum semper Romanis ducibus erit, exemplaque hæc vere pro documentis habenda, ne ita externis credant auxiliis, ut non plus sui roboris suarumque proprie virium in castris habeant.' 2 See above, p. 102. See above, pp. 200, 226. СНАР. VIII. FOURTH PERIOD, B.C. home, tempted, it is said, by their countrymen who served in the Carthaginian army. Thus, weakened by desertion and by the division of their strength, the two Scipios were one after another attacked by Hasdrubal, and so thoroughly 212-211 routed that hardly a remnant of their army escaped.' Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother Cneius both fell at the head of their troops. A poor remnant was saved, and made good its retreat under the command of a brave officer of equestrian rank, called L. Marcius. But almost It is difficult to decide whether the defeat of the Scipios took place in 212 or in 211, as Livy contradicts himself. The arguments in favour of the year 211 are stated by U. Becker, Vorarbeiten zur Geschichte des zweiten punischen Krieges, p. 113. 2 Livy, xxv. 32-40. The exploits of this Marcius were the subject of the most impudent and barefaced exaggerations. It was, as we know from numerous examples, a practice of the Roman annalists to make it appear that every Roman defeat was compensated in a signal manner by some glorious victory. This disingenuous vanity is nowhere more apparent than in the boastful report of the doings of L. Marcius. Whilst Appian (vi. 17) says that Marcius (whom he erroneously calls Marcellus) accomplished so little that the Romans were expelled from almost the whole of Spain and shut up in a small district among the Pyrenees, the annalist Piso-according to Livy (xxv. 39)—reported that Marcius turned round upon the pursuing army under Mago, and killed 5,000 of the enemy. Valerius Antias was not satisfied with this result. According to him, Marcius attacked and took Mago's camp, killed 7,000 Carthaginians, then fought a battle with Hasdrubal, killed 10,000, and took 4,730 prisoners. But the lies of Valerius Antias are modest in comparison with those of another annalist, called Acilius, whose report contained the raw materials for Livy's elaborate description. The number of slain Carthaginians, which was at first 5,000, then 7,000 and 10,000, is swelled here to 37,000 (in the account of Valerius Maximus (i. 6, 2) even to 38,000, but what is a trifle of 1,000 men more or less?) and two Carthaginian camps are stormed in succession. Such victories, gained by the flying remnants of a routed army, belong seemingly to the regions of the miraculous; but we actually meet also with a genuine miracle, for, according to Valerius Antiasquoted by Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 111) and Livy (xxv. 39)-the head of Marcius, when he addressed his soldiers, was surrounded by a halo. Reading such reports as these, we can fancy that we are still in the time of the Samnite wars. But distance of locality lends almost as much freedom to the storyteller as distance of time. Spain, as we have already noticed (p. 314, note 2), was a fruitful soil for fiction. After this, we become very sceptical about the genuineness of a silver shield of 137 pounds weight, containing a portrait of Hasdrubal, which is said to have been preserved in the Capitol till the great conflagration, 84 B.C. (Livy, loc. cit. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 4). If such a shield existed, could it have come from Spain on the occasion of the imaginary victories of Marcius? BOOK Operations of Hannibal in southern Italy. the whole of Spain was lost to the Romans at one blow. The war which they had vigorously and successfully carried on for so many years, for the purpose of preventing a second invasion of Italy from Spain, had ended now with the annihilation of almost all their forces, and nothing seemed henceforth able to check the Carthaginian general, if he intended to carry out the plan of his brother. The disastrous issue of the war in Spain was the more alarming as in the year 212 Hannibal again displayed in Italy an energy which was calculated to remind the Romans of his first three campaigns after he had crossed the Alps in 218. The year 213 had passed almost as quietly as if a truce had been concluded. Hannibal had spent the summer in the country of the Sallentinians, not far from Tarentum, in the hope of taking by surprise or by treason that city, which was of the greatest importance to him from the facilities which it afforded for direct communication with Macedonia. He obtained possession of several small towns in the neighbourhood; but, on the other hand, he lost again Consentia and Taurianum in Bruttium, while a few insignificant places in Lucania were taken by the consul Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.1 this occasion we learn incidentally that Rome allowed at that time, or rather encouraged, a kind of guerilla warfare of volunteers, not unlike privateering in naval wars, which must have contributed largely to brutalize the population. A certain Roman knight and contractor, called T. Pomponius Veientanus, commanded a body of irregulars in Bruttium, pillaging and devastating those communities which had joined the Carthaginian side. He was joined by a large number of runaway slaves, herdsmen, and peasants, and he had formed something like an army, which, without costing the republic anything, did good service in damaging and harassing her enemies. But this mob was not fit to encounter a Carthaginian army, and it 1 Livy, xxv. 1. On |