Chapter M: Livius Drusus, 340 (3)

It is, however, quite a different question, whether an extensive settlement in those parts was prudent at such a time, when a war with the neighbouring Gauls was to be dreaded. Yet after all, this war must one day or other have broken out. The Gauls could not long dwell quietly in Lombardy, and it was all one, whether it came on a little sooner. Certain it is, that this settlement alarmed the Boians in what are now the districts of Modena and Bologna, probably also in that of Parma: the population in fact had recovered from its losses, and was thirsting for revenge. They were also afraid that the great men at Rome, who had lost their large estates in the Romagna, might seek for new ones in their own country. The Romans, however, did not yet think of war with the Gauls: they had cast their eyes on Spain, and they had no hope of being able to drive the Gauls out of Lombardy. It is said that at that time the Romans carried on wars against the Ligurians; but we should be sadly mistaken if we fancied that they had already invaded Liguria proper, the territory of Genoa. It was, on the contrary, the Ligurians who had spread in the Apennines as far as Casentino and Arezzo, after the might of the Etruscans and Gauls had been broken at the Vadimo; and it could have been none other than these. It was a hard struggle. The Ligurians defended every single mountain, and each of the small tribes was only mastered after having been almost entirely crushed.

Of the Gauls, there were in the north of Italy the Boians and Insubrians; the former, south of the Po in the Romagna; the latter, in the territory of Milan, and in the plain between Bergamo and Brescia; yet these two cantons were not Gallic, but probably Rhætian, of Etruscan extraction. Between the Insubrians and Venetians dwelt the Cenomanians, between Milan and Mantua; these had placed themselves under the protection of the Romans. On the other side of the Alps, there was a great movement, and the Boians could now induce Transalpine volunteers to come over: these negociations caused the Romans great alarm. Several years now passed away: at length, eight years after the Flaminian law, a countless horde made its appearance, and the war broke out in 527. This war is memorable in history for the immense preparations of the Romans; it was a swarm which they had to deal with, very much as in the time of the Cimbrians. Among the tribes which were in arms, there were also Tauriscans. These, on other occasions, we meet with only in Carniola: whether in those days they were also in Helvetia, we must leave undecided. The Romans called forth a general levy throughout all Italy: the allies obeyed very readily, as they looked forward with dismay to an invasion of the Gauls. The Romans opposed to the enemy an army on the common road of the Gauls near Rimini, which was under the consul L. Æmilius, and another, a prætorian one, in Etruria. At the same time, the consul C. Atilius had gone with a fleet and army to Sardinia, as the Sards had revolted. In the neighbourhood of Rome, there was a reserve: all the Italian nations were in marching order. Polybius here gives a list, from which we find that he had not a clear insight into the subject. The numbers are wrongly written, and all attempts to sum them up are fruitless: several peoples are not named at all. I believe that Fabius wrote in a hurry, when he stated the numbers at 800,000 foot and 80,000 horse. In short, this list is of no use; and at any rate, one ought never to draw from this census such conclusions with regard to the population of the ancient world, as was done in the dispute between Hume and Wallace; for although Hume keeps on the side of common sense, yet he takes the matter too lightly. Perhaps something has slipped out in Polybius.

The Romans evidently looked forward to this war with far greater fear than they did to that of Hannibal. Such is human nature! The Apennines north of Tuscany were then quite impassable, and there were only two ways there by which Italy could be invaded: the one was by Fæsulæ, and the other through the territory of Lucca, down by Pisa, where the whole valley at that time was a great marsh. By one of these two roads the Gauls must have passed, probably by the latter; but whilst Hannibal’s march through these swamps has become famous, history is silent with regard to that of the Gauls. They left the Roman consul in his position near Ariminum, and fifty thousand of them burst into Etruria. Probably the army of the Romans was stationed near Florence, so as to block up the road to Rome; and thus one can understand that they were late in knowing of the invasion of the Gauls, and of their march as far as Clusium. Thither the Gauls had arrived, within three days’ march from Rome. The Romans now broke up, that they might either cut off from them the way to Rome, or at least follow after them: the Gauls were apprised of this, and retreated. They marched from Clusium through the Siennese territory to the sea: here we find them in the neighbourhood of Piombino, over-against Elba. Polybius says that they now fell in with the Romans near a place called Φαίσολα. This the commentators preposterously mistook for Fæsulæ above Florence; yet it must have been between Chiusi and the sea-coast, not far from Aquapendente.[12] Here they laid a trap for the Romans. They broke up with their infantry, and withdrew to a good position; the cavalry remained behind, and was to provoke the Romans, and then, slowly falling back, to entice them to the spot whither they wished to bring them. The Romans suffered there a great defeat: a part only of them retreated to a strong height among the Apennines, where they defended themselves against the Gauls. Luckily, the consul Æmilius, who had left his station near Ariminum, had now advanced through the Apennines to reinforce the army; and when he did not find it in its former place, he proceeded by forced marches along the road to Rome, and came up the night after the disastrous battle. He did not know that the Romans were surrounded on the mountains; but the Gauls halted when they saw his watch-fires, and the hard-pressed Romans sent messengers to him, and acquainted him with their situation. The next morning, he now wanted to attack the Gauls; these, however, had chosen to retire. As they had gotten a vast deal of booty during the campaign, they did not wish with such an _agmen impeditum_ to enter into battle, and so they resolved to return home, and advance again afterwards. Such a resolution can only be made by a barbarous people. They marched slowly along the sea-coast, laying everything waste: the consular army followed, to keep them in check, but was afraid of them. The Gauls would thus have returned unhurt, had not Atilius in the meanwhile brought his undertaking in Sardinia to a successful close. The Sardinian army having been recalled, was driven by contrary winds to land at Pisa, not far from the very spot where the Gauls just happened to be. Atilius had the intention of joining the other army; but when he heard of the invasion of the Gauls, he left his baggage behind at Pisa, and began his march to Rome along the coast: as for the defeat of the Romans, he knew nothing of it. Near a place, called Telamon, his light troops fell in with some of the Gauls. Some of these, who were made prisoners, let out how matters really stood; that the Gauls were close at hand, and that the consul Æmilius was following them. Æmilius had heard of the march of Atilius; but he was not aware how near he was. Now as the battle of Telamon was fought in the neighbourhood of Populonia, it is evident also from this, that Φαίσολα could not possibly have been Fæsulæ near Florence. The Gauls, who were now in a dreadful plight, first got their baggage out of the way, and then tried to occupy an eminence hard by the road: thither Atilius sent his cavalry, and the fight began. The Gauls opposed one front to Atilius, and another to Æmilius. Atilius was slain, and his head cut off, and brought to the prince of the Gauls; but his troops avenged his death, and the cavalry became masters of the hillock. The warriors who were arrayed against Æmilius, fought stark naked with all the wildness of savages; the rest of the Gauls also were without coats of mail, and they had narrow shields, and large Celtic mantles. Polybius speaks in this battle of _Gæsati_; these can hardly have been mercenaries, as he supposes, but javelin bearers,--from _gæsum_, a javelin, inasmuch as Virgil in his magnificent description of the Gauls uses this word in contradistinction to the swordbearers: they were Allobroges; for they came from the Rhone. These Gæsatians all of them made a stand against Æmilius; the light troops, armed likewise with missiles, were sent to attack them, and after a fierce struggle they fled. The rest of the Gauls having collected on both sides into immense masses, the day ended in the death of 40,000, and the captivity of 10,000 of them, so that scarcely any one escaped. Thus, by the most lucky combination of circumstances, the danger was warded off. The war was not, however, decided before the fourth year.

In the following year, the Romans crossed over the Apennines into the country of the Boians, who immediately submitted. In 529 and 530, the war was in the Milanese territory, the land of the Insubrians. These were supported by the Transalpine Gauls, and they offered a stout resistance: that such an open country, which had but one stronghold, was defended in this manner, does honour to the bravery of these tribes. The Romans were forced at the confluence of the Po and the Adda to retreat. The Cenomanians, between the Adda and the Lago di Garda; the Venetians, whose capital was Patavium; and the Euganeans, were friendly to the Romans: the Venetians were a people of quite a different race from the Tuscans, being probably of Liburno-Pelasgian descent; they possessed the country between the Adige and the four eastern rivers, and were highly civilized. The Insubrians afterwards sued in vain for peace: the Romans did not trust them, and wished for their destruction. In 529, C. Flaminius gained a great battle against the Insubrians, north of the Po, in which he is unjustly reproached with bad generalship. In the fourth year of the war, the Romans reduced their only fortified place, Acerræ, and utterly routed them near Clastidium. The great captain M. Claudius Marcellus slew with his own hand the Gallic chief Virodomarus. After this campaign, Milan was taken, and the Insubrians made their unconditional submission, having been all but exterminated.

In the Capitoline Fasti, we find that Marcellus had triumphed _De Gallis Insubribus et_ GERMANIS. I cannot say positively whether the piece of stone on which the _er_ stands, has been put in at a later period or not, often as I have examined that monument. The stone is broken at the _r_, thus much is certain: but whether the restoration is new, or whether the piece which was broken off, was again fastened in, I do not venture to decide. It cannot be _Cenomanis_, the _G_ being distinct; _Gonomanis_ does not occur among the Romans. The thing is not quite impossible. This would then be the earliest mention of our national name. In the age of Julius Cæsar, the Germans in all likelihood dwelt only as far as the Main, or the Neckar at most; but in earlier times, they lived further to the south, and were pushed back by the Gauls. Those Germans in the Valais who were known to Livy,[13] are remnants of that migration.

After the victory at Clastidium, between Piacenza and Alessandria, the Romans immediately founded two colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on both banks of the Po: the boundary was pushed on to the Ticinus. There is every reason to think that Modena also was fortified; but it was afterwards lost again for some time, during a fresh insurrection of the Boians. The Ligurian tribes in Piedmont were still independent by rights, though not in reality.

In the first Illyrian war, the Romans owed their speedy success to a Greek, Demetrius of Pharus. As governor of Corcyra, having in all probability been bribed, he had surrendered the island to them; and by their influence he had been appointed guardian of the king who was a minor. His was a character in keeping with that age of infamy; he was a traitor to all parties. He now conspired against the Romans, and during the Gallic war he excited the Illyrians to rebellion, which shows that these peoples paid tribute to Rome. Besides this, with a fleet of fifty _Lembi_, he dared to commit piracy in the Archipelago against the defenceless Cyclades. The Romans sent over a consular army under L. Æmilius Paulus; the hopes of the rebels were quickly blighted, and their capital Dimalus was taken (a name which proves, that the modern Albanian language is like the ancient Illyrian, for _dimal_ in Albanian means a double mountain). The seat of Demetrius was his native island Pharus, which the Romans took by a stratagem: he himself made his escape to Macedon, where the last Philip had just begun his reign, and he became his evil genius. Thus the second Illyrian war was very soon ended. The Romans on the whole at that time enlarged their dominion. We have nothing to inform us when the Venetians became dependent: in the great Gallic war we find them as allies. The Istrians, however, were subjected even before the war of Hannibal, and the Venetians must then have been already conquered; so that the acquisition of the supremacy over them probably dates from this period.

While all this was taking place, events were brooding, of the fearful nature of which the Romans were far from having the least conception. Hamilcar Barcas had turned his eyes towards Spain, thus showing that he was a truly great man in not allowing himself to be discouraged by his former ill successes, and in not repining against fate. The Carthaginians had until then placed all their hopes on Sicily; and there were fellows indeed at Carthage (like Hanno, by whose speeches Livy spoils his fine description of the war of Hannibal), who partly from envy and bad feeling, and partly from miserable cowardice, were of opinion, that after the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, one ought now to yield altogether. Just as Pitt, after the American war, when it was believed in foreign countries that the peace of Paris had broken the power of England, with redoubled courage undertook the task of infusing new strength into his country; thus also did Hamilcar. At an early period already, the Phœnicians had settled in Spain. Gades is said to have been older than Carthage, and that place was indeed very important as the centre of the trade with the Cassiterides. Tin was of the greatest value to the ancients for making the copper, of which they had plenty, fusible: the use of calamine in the manufacture of brass, is of much later invention. Very likely, neither the Phœnicians nor Carthaginians had any settlements on the western coast besides Gades; but they certainly had some on the southern coast, in Granada, Malaga, and Abdera, and a mixed nation (Μιξοφοίνικες) had sprung up there, namely the Bastulans. But into the interior the Carthaginians had not yet penetrated, although they seem to have had connexions there. The yoke of Carthage was deeply hated in Africa, as was shown in the insurrection of the mercenaries; now, on the contrary the great tact of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal shines forth in the foundation of a Carthaginian empire in Spain: they laid upon the Spaniards a very easy yoke. Hannibal was married to a Spanish woman of Castulo, and these alliances between Carthaginians and native women must have been of very frequent occurrence: among the Romans, such marriages were regarded only as concubinage. Hamilcar had devised the plan of creating in Spain a province, which was to make up to Carthage for Sicily and Sardinia, and from which it might also derive what it could never have got from those isles: neither Sicily nor Sardinia were able to give Carthage any considerable military strength. The weakness of Carthage lay in this, that it had no army of its own; and that great man now conceived the idea of forming a national Carthaginian army out of Spaniards, who were partly to be subjected, and partly to be gained over and made Punic. Southern Spain has immense natural advantages; its silver mines are of extraordinary richness. The Carthaginians had known of these before; but it was Hamilcar who first introduced a regular system of working them, and thus he, or his son-in-law Hasdrubal, was led to found the town of New Carthage (Carthagena). The stores which had been furnished by Sicily and Sardinia, were just as well supplied by Spain. They now got a population of millions, from which they no more took faithless mercenaries; but there they made levies as in their own country. The Romans no doubt looked with jealousy at the progress they were making; yet they could not hinder it, so long as the Cisalpine Gauls stood on their frontier, prepared to avenge the defeat of the Senonians and Boians.

The whole of Spain consisted of a number of petty tribes without any connexion whatever between them; whilst in Gaul, at least some one nation or other, the Æduans, the Arvernians, held the supremacy. The Spaniards were of various kinds: whether the Turdetanians and the northern peoples, the Cantabrians, were of a different race, as the ancients say; or whether all the Iberians were sprung from the same stock, as is maintained by that great etymologist, Humboldt, we cannot decide. Not being acquainted with the language myself, I must abstain from giving an opinion; yet surely, notwithstanding the great weight of Humboldt’s authority, the statements of the ancients ought also to be taken in consideration. Certain it is, that the tribes south of the Sierra Morena, the inhabitants of Bœtica, had quite a different character from those of the northern part of the country. They were highly civilized; they had a literature of their own, written laws, and books; of their alphabet, which is altogether peculiar to themselves, and not derived from that of the Phœnicians, there are remnants still existing on inscriptions and coins. The letters have quite a primitive form. Yet these peoples were quite as warlike as those of the north: they were not, however, good for attack, but merely for defence. In earlier times only, they succeeded in driving the Celts across the Pyrenees into Aquitain; afterwards, we always find them confined to their boundaries, within which they made a desperate stand; so that what an Arab general said of them is true, that behind walls they were more than men, and in the field more cowardly than women, which has also been borne out in the latest wars. An exception to this, however, were the Celtiberians; and the others also showed themselves brave, when they were trained by great generals like Hannibal and Sertorius, and likewise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Otherwise, they confine themselves to desperate resistance, even behind wretched fortifications; they kill their women and children, and defend themselves to their last drop of blood. Now Hamilcar, and after him Hasdrubal, spread further and further, drawing one people after the other into the Carthaginian league, and training soldiers.

Hamilcar had hardly finished his war against the mercenaries, when he founded the Carthaginian empire in Spain. He staid there eight years, of which he made an incomparable use. He died in Spain, and left the command to his son-in-law Hasdrubal, which was quite different from the Roman custom. The Carthaginian general not only keeps his office for life, but he also bequeaths it at his death to his son-in-law, like an heirloom. It is true that this required a great deal of influence at Carthage, and this is what Livy calls _factio Barcina_.

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.

Livy begins his account of the war of Hannibal with the remark, which several others had made before him, that it was the greatest war which had ever been waged by the greatest and most powerful states, when in the height of their greatest vigour. Yet now that two thousand years are passed, we can no longer say the same. The seven years’ war, especially the campaign of 1757, exhibits a greater accumulation of achievements than any part of the war of Hannibal; nor is it inferior in the greatness of the generals. But thus much we may say, that no war in the whole of ancient history is to be compared to this. Nor is there, on the whole, any general to be placed above Hannibal, and of the ancients none can stand at his side. Whilst in the first Punic war, only one great general makes his appearance upon the stage, we see in this, besides Hannibal, Scipio likewise, who, as a general, is indeed not fully his equal, but has claims notwithstanding to be ranked among the very first; and after him, Fabius and Marcellus, who in any war would have gained a high renown, and could have only been eclipsed by men of such extraordinary greatness; and besides these, many other stars of the second magnitude.

The war of Hannibal has been described by several of the ancients. It formed the substance of the works of Fabius and Cincius: in those of the latter it was treated exclusively. He wrote it, as far as he himself lived to see it, very explicitly, merely prefixing an introduction on the earlier history. Fabius had a more extensive plan; he took in both wars. Of Fabius we may say with certainty, that his account to a great extent forms the groundwork of that of Appian: Dionysius left him at the beginning of the first Punic war, and he is there without any guide. I am able to show, that statements of a marked character in Appian and in Zonaras are taken from Fabius; for Dio Cassius also acknowledged that he could find no better source. Very nearly about the same time, Chæreas and Sosilus wrote: of both of these Polybius speaks with censure; he denounces them as fabulists, although Sosilus had staid in the camp with Hannibal. It is strange that Livy did not think of making any use of Hannibal’s short memoirs, and of a letter of Scipio to Philip of Macedon in which he recounted his achievements. Polybius has made use of an authentic document of Hannibal, on a brass tablet in the temple of Juno in Lacinia,[14] in which the numbers especially were given with great accuracy. As far as Polybius goes, we have nothing left to desire: the third book is the masterpiece of what has been preserved to us of his history; unfortunately we have but the first years of his. He too certainly had before him the excellent work of L. Cincius, who described this war as an eye-witness. There was also an account of it in Latin, about the middle of the seventh century, by L. Cœlius Antipater, probably a Greek freedman. He wrote with rhetorical pretension, and I think that many things in Livy are to be traced to him, particularly where the latter goes off into the romantic. For Cœlius had wished to write history for effect, and it may not have been without justice, that Cicero speaks slightingly of him.

In Livy’s work we may clearly distinguish the different sources. In the beginning, the description of the siege of Saguntum is taken beyond a doubt from Cœlius Antipater; other parts follow most closely in the footsteps of Polybius; elsewhere he has either made use of the _Annales Pontificum_, or of those annalists who had embodied them in their histories. The whole of the third decade is written with evident fondness for the subject; yet he is wanting in the knowledge of facts, in experience of real life, and in the power of taking a general view: he never gets away from the _umbracula_ of the school. Wherever he deviates from Polybius, he is altogether unworthy of belief; and however beautifully his history of the war is written, it is still quite plain that he was unable to bring before his mind one single event, as it really happened: his account of the battle of Cannæ, for instance, is untrue and impossible; whilst, on the other hand, that of Polybius is so excellent, that one may get a most distinct idea of the locality, and even draw a map from his statements, and the better one knows the nature of the spot, the clearer becomes his description. The work of General Vaudoncourt, published some years ago at Milan under the title of _Campagnes d’Annibal_, which, merely because its author is such an able man, has been praised by every body, is an utterly worthless production. The maps are good for nothing, and the plans are drawn from fancy; he did not understand how to read an author critically, he had no knowledge of Greek, and he has not given anything new: there is only one point of ancient tactics about which I have learned anything from him. He is especially mistaken in the notion which he has formed of the battle array of the Carthaginians; he believes them to have been drawn up in phalanx, which they were not. They were just as moveable as the Romans, and the sword alone was the weapon which they relied on: lances they very likely had none, but javelins in abundance. Ulric Becker’s treatise on the history of the war of Hannibal (in Dahlmann’s “Researches in the Field of History”),[15] although not a mature work, is really valuable, and should not be overlooked.

Hamilcar was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who, after an administration of nine years, was murdered by an Iberian whose chieftain he had caused to be put to death. This personal attachment to their princes prevailed among the Iberians: no one durst leave the death of his chief unavenged,--nay, if possible, he was not to survive him. Hasdrubal had with him for his education young Hannibal, who soon became the favourite of the army. The oath of Hannibal rests on his own authority; the circumstances of it, however, are told in different ways. He is said to have been nine years old when his father went over to Spain (516 according to Cato), and this seems to be historical: if so, he was born about 507, which would make him twenty-seven years old when he marched to Italy. This is the very age, at which several generals have shown themselves greatest. Frederic the Great was twenty-eight years old when he conquered Silesia; Napoleon twenty-seven, or twenty-eight, when he undertook the Italian campaign. The whole conduct of Hannibal during this war bears the character of a very young man; and he was by no means an old one when he died, being nearer his fiftieth than his sixtieth year. Very likely, he was born just before Hamilcar went to Sicily. His brothers were Hasdrubal and Mago. Whether Hasdrubal was his elder, is doubtful; Mago was considerably younger.

The opinions of the ancients as to Hannibal’s personal character might very easily have been divided. In the Roman writers, he appears throughout only as a terrific being. Livy’s delineation of him is in some parts quite excellent,--no one could gainsay his extraordinary qualities as a general: yet when Livy says that these were darkened by _vitia_ of equal magnitude, he is in direct opposition to Polybius. The latter expressly disputes the fact of Hannibal’s cruelty, and says that whenever anything of the kind did happen, it was through the fault of some subordinate commander, especially of another Hannibal. He also flatly contradicts the statements about his bad faith (_plus quam Punica fides_). Atrocities may have been committed,--there are stories of these in Appian which are borrowed from Fabius,--nor will I doubt in the least that the war was conducted with cruelty on the side of the Carthaginians; but so it was likewise by the Romans. This is the general character of the ancient wars, which we are far from representing to ourselves as so horrible as they really were. Sometimes also there are cases in which a general cannot help himself.[16] Of the bad faith of Hannibal, not an instance can be brought forward; on the contrary, as far as we have any positive evidence, he must have kept his word; otherwise he would have been taxed with it, especially in capitulations, and then indeed people would not have capitulated to him. The Romans are awful liars when they want to lay the blame upon their enemies. Such stories as the murder of the senate of Nuceria, and the extermination of that of Acerræ,[17] are unauthenticated. In peace, he is quite a different man from Scipio. The latter forgot himself after his victory; he did not find himself at home in the free constitution of his native city, and as a peaceful citizen he never was of any use to the commonwealth; the example which he set of contempt for an impeachment was perhaps highly perilous and baneful. It was great in him, that he did not make an ill use of the popular enthusiasm in his behalf: but he was conscious of his own greatness; he displayed from the very first, when he stood for the ædileship and the consulship, an overbearing pride; he wished to raise himself with impunity above the laws wherever he could harmlessly do it. With the influence which he had, he might have become the source of the greatest blessings to the state; but this was not the case. Not a law, not a beneficial measure is to be traced to him. The neglect of the Roman constitution after the Punic wars, was a principal cause of the decay of the republic: with regard to this, it was in his power to have done much good. Hannibal, on the contrary, comes forth after the Punic war as a public benefactor likewise, as a reformer of the law, of the administration and finances of his country. Scipio and Hannibal were both of them well acquainted with Greek literature. Hannibal had Greeks for his companions, and though indeed they were not the most distinguished men of their day, this shows that in his leisure hours he enjoyed a literary conversation.[18] There was something irresistible about him, which he seems to have inherited from his father. For sixteen years, he commanded an army which at last, like that of Gustavus Adolphus, had not a man of the old soldiers left; but consisted only of a herd of abandoned adventurers. Though he was placed in the most difficult circumstances, no Gaul ever attempted anything against him; the ruthless, reckless Numidians never dared to raise a hand against him. He demanded of the Italians the most gigantic efforts; he wore them out, was not able to protect them; and still he so fascinated them also, that they never wavered in their fidelity. A man, like him, who achieved such things as the settlement and subjugation of Spain, the march across the Alps, the victories over the Romans, the shaking of Italy to its centre, we may call the first and greatest of his age,--indeed we might almost call him the first and greatest in all history. How little in comparison has Alexander done! He had no difficulties whatever to overcome. As for Scipio, he entered the lists against his rival under the most favourable circumstances: if he had not conquered, Hannibal must have been more than man. But Hannibal worked for the sole purpose of delivering his country; and when he returned thither, it was his only object to restore it. Even when banished, he did not seek for protection anywhere; but wherever he was, he commanded, he stood forth as a superior, and never bowed before any one, nor ever sinned against truth. Such a man I admire and love, almost without any qualification. That he let Decius Magius go from Capua, was not policy: it was a greatness of mind of which very few only would have been capable. Scipio could have done it.

The third general of this war, Q. Fabius Maximus, had gained some reputation already in the former obscure contest: the surname of Maximus, however, is inherited from his grandfather, or great-grandfather, Q. Fabius Rullianus in the days of the Samnite wars, who received it when he separated the four city tribes from the country ones. He acted in what seemed to him the fittest way, and was net afraid of doing what might be mistaken in him for cowardice. _Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem_, says Ennius. He was a very good general; he had coolness, circumspection, and quickness of eye: but he has been much overrated notwithstanding. Daun has been compared to him, and there were many who thought that this was doing too much honour to the Austrian commander; but Daun was by no means inferior to him as a general. The only important achievement of Fabius is the recovering of Tarentum; yet, after all, what was it? What is certainly true, is his opposition to Scipio. All the speeches of Hanno and others in Livy, are perhaps rhetorical trifles from Cœlius Antipater; but this opposition bears the impress of history. One sees distinctly that he was of an envious mind. He could not bear the great rising star; he would rather have had Hannibal unconquered, than that Scipio should gain a glory which outvied his own. He did not rejoice at the freshness of the new generation; he wished Hannibal to be worn out by the power of time alone.

The fourth character of this war is M. Claudius Marcellus, a dashing, able general, the opposite to Fabius in his daring, distinguished as a commander, and at the same time a brave soldier.

We also divide this war into periods. To the introduction belongs all that happened previously in Spain from the taking of Saguntum to the march over the Alps 534. The first period of the war itself contains the first three years, and a part of 537, during which was the irresistible progress of Hannibal. The second extends from 537 to the taking of Capua 541, when his star was already on the wane, while the Romans once more gained ground, and their prospects became brighter. The third is from 541 to 545, when Hannibal set his hopes on Spain, and on being reinforced by his brother Hasdrubal. He maintains himself in Apulia, Bruttium, and Lucania, until Hasdrubal’s defeat on the Metaurus. The fourth period is from 545 to 550, when Hannibal was obliged to evacuate Italy. The last, from his arrival in Africa to the end of the war.

The years 535 to 546, or 547, are those of the wars of the Romans in Spain, which were waged with various success until the taking of New Carthage. The time from 548 to the end, may be called the African war of Scipio. The Sicilian war and the conquest of Sardinia, from 535 to 540, come in like episodes. In 540, the Macedonian war begins, which lasts until 547.

Hannibal had taken upon himself the command after Hasdrubal’s death, and he forthwith displayed increased activity. The Romans, probably after the outbreak of the Cisalpine war, had made a treaty with Hasdrubal, not with the Carthaginian state, by which both parties with regard to Spain fixed upon the Ebro as the boundary between their respective possessions. Owing to the great gap which here occurs in our history, we cannot make out at what time the Romans settled in those parts; yet at the beginning of the second Punic war, they were masters of Tarraco and of the coast of Catalonia. Livy adds, that the Saguntines were to be left as a free state between both. Polybius, notwithstanding his general excellence, is sometimes mistaken in details. He had first edited his work down to the war of Perseus, a second edition went as far as the taking of Corinth; yet it may clearly be shown that he did not revise the first books in the second edition, and it is plain that he had not at that time the least knowledge of the geography of Spain: very likely he fancied, as Livy evidently did, that Saguntum lay east of the Ebro. Moreover, he knows nothing of the fact that Saguntum was to remain independent, and yet he had all the documents before him. Were it not so, there would then indeed have been a breach of faith on the side of Hannibal. Perhaps the Romans did not mean at any rate to abandon the people of Saguntum, with whom they were in alliance; and yet it may not have been expressedly stipulated, that an attack on Saguntum would be a violation of the peace. Now it is generally thought from the treaty between Rome and Carthage, that the Carthaginians had then under their rule the whole of Spain as far as the sources of the Ebro; but this is by no means the case. Under Hamilcar, they seem to have acquired the whole of Andalusia, and the greater part of Valencia; but beyond the Sierra Morena, they in all likelihood only first spread under Hasdrubal: their sway never extended further than New Castile and Estremadura; Lusitania, Old Castile, and Leon, never belonged to them. The farthest point to which Hannibal reached in the campaign against the Vaccæans, described by Polybius, was Salamanca, where, however, he did not found any lasting dominion: the tribes in the interior, and the Celtiberians, seem never to have acknowledged the supremacy of Carthage. The other peoples were under its protectorate: they retained their own form of government, and though not bound to serve, were ready to enlist under the banners of the Carthaginians, who gave good pay. Polybius himself remarks very justly, that the Romans kept silent at the progress of the Carthaginians, because they were greatly afraid of offending them now that the Gauls had stirred. Had Hamilcar been alive, he would perhaps have taken a share in that war. It is strange that once during this period a Carthaginian fleet makes its appearance off the coast of Etruria.

Hannibal carried on the war in Spain only as a preparatory one: his real object was the war in Italy, which he now tried to kindle. The Carthaginians stood in the same position to him, as the Romans did to Cæsar; commanding as he did an army entirely devoted to him, in a country subjected by him, he was not to be controlled by the senate. Carthage, according to the natural march of development in republics, was then already on the decline: the chief power had passed from the senate to the popular assembly. Now, although the people might have idolized Hannibal, yet the senate was hardly friendly towards him; and notwithstanding the general hatred against the Romans, the majority at that time were not perhaps of opinion, that a war would bring relief, and they could not see in what way Rome was to be attacked. The higher classes were also afraid of Hannibal at the head of a victorious army.

The siege of Saguntum is placed by Livy in the year 534; yet he sees himself that it took place in 533. Polybius blames Hannibal for having tried to kindle the war by all kinds of artifices, and for this he has been reproached with having been too much the partisan of the Romans; but even as he is to be acquitted of this charge, so must Hannibal of his. Polybius would have had him at once demand Sardinia; but that he could not do. Had Hannibal been a king, he would perhaps have done it; but as it was, he was obliged to draw the Carthaginians into the war by degrees, whether they liked it or not. With this view, he intrigued in Saguntum, and got up a quarrel between the Saguntines and the Turdetanians, (but very likely we ought to read, instead of Turdetanians, _Edetanians_, who were inhabitants of Valencia, as the former lived too far off). Saguntum may not have been a purely Iberian town: it is said that colonists from Ardea had settled there, in which case it would be Tyrrhenian; and this is not unlikely, although afterwards perhaps the Iberian population outnumbered them. The derivation from Zacynthus has probably originated only from its name. Some years before, there had been troubles there; (several of these Spanish towns were republics; one must not fancy that their inhabitants were barbarians like the Celts;) and the Romans had come forward as mediators, and the victorious party had wreaked its vengeance upon the conquered. Hannibal took advantage of this, and stirred up the latter: at the same time, he complained at Carthage that the Saguntines, relying upon Rome, had been guilty of acts of violence against Carthaginian subjects. This is certainly craftiness; but he could hardly have behaved otherwise if he wanted to kindle the war. The Romans were exceedingly afraid of a Carthaginian war: the manner in which the city had risen again, could not but make an impression upon them. They did not know how it was to be carried on. They could only remove it to Africa by means of a fleet, of which the cost was enormous, not to speak of the many disasters which they had already had to suffer from it. To Spain also they had to transport the war by sea; and in that country, they had no base for their operations, and only insignificant allies. There, on the other hand, Carthage had at her disposal the whole of a subjugated population, and all the troops which were wanted in readiness; whilst Rome had to fight her battles with her own men, and these she had to bring over at an immense expense. The Romans therefore let Hannibal widen his rule, without themselves undertaking anything; nay, even when he began the siege of Saguntum, they merely negociated, and took no measures for sending assistance thither; so that Hannibal besieged the town for eight months, whilst they were engaged in the Illyrian war. The full description in Livy of the siege of Saguntum is certainly from Cœlius Antipater: according to him, the inhabitants themselves destroyed their town from despair; this is a repetition of what is told of so many Spanish towns. Another account is given by Polybius, which is really historical. Hannibal besieged the town, which lay one mile from the sea-coast, on the last ridges of the mountains which, rising from thence, separate Arragon from Castile. At the end of eight months, it was taken, but by no means destroyed: on the contrary, Hannibal found in the booty the means for fresh undertakings, and for rich presents to Carthage; and thus he was able to strengthen and encourage his own army. This is a complete refutation of Livy’s story, which also betrays itself by its empty prolixity. Hannibal himself had been wounded at this siege. So little is it to be placed in the year 534, that Hannibal afterwards put his army into winter-quarters, where he completed his preparations for his great expedition. The Romans had sent an embassy to him in behalf of their injured allies, but he referred them to Carthage: there they made their complaints, and demanded the giving up of Hannibal, and of the commissaries (σύνεδροι) who were with him, which throws some light on the state of things at Carthage, which is otherwise so obscure. The Carthaginians, instead of going into the complaint, tried to prove to the Romans that Hannibal had done no wrong; that Carthage could not be restricted by its treaties with Rome with regard to its acquisitions in Spain. Polybius justly remarks, that they argued beside the point, without entering into the question which was really before them. The Roman ambassadors now made a _sinus_ of their toga, and declared to the Carthaginians, that they might choose between peace and war; the Carthaginians answered that they would follow the choice of the Romans; and when these cried out “war,” a loud shout of joy was raised.

One would now have thought that the Romans had already made great preparations; yet this was not the case. They had at that time only a small fleet, which moreover we afterwards hear of but seldom, and even then, little is said about it. The consuls, since the Ides of March, were P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti. Sempronius Longus. The Romans had the intention of sending the consul Scipio with two legions and ten thousand allies to Spain, and Sempronius with the same number of troops to Africa. The Carthaginians had no fleet of any importance; this was the first fault committed by them in this war. It may be that the rich who were in the government made niggardly retrenchments, that they might cut down the expenses of the war as much as possible. The plan of the Romans was not badly devised; only it is plain that they were quite mistaken in their estimate of their antagonist. Had Scipio arrived in Spain, before Hannibal had passed the Ebro, his army would have been driven by Hannibal into the sea, or annihilated within the first weeks, and the invasion of Italy would have become far more easy. And yet, if Hannibal had not carried on the war with such very great speed, the season of the year might have come on, in which he could no longer have crossed the Alps. The Romans show themselves unskilful at the beginning of every great war; their troops were not thoroughly trained, they had no standing army like Hannibal, nor did it even occur to them that they ought to place the very best of their generals in command. Hannibal took the wisest precautions: he sent the chief men of the conquered tribes over to Carthage, or kept them with him; and he despatched besides some picked Spanish troops for the defence of Africa, and a body of Libyans trained by himself, who were to garrison Carthage. Into Spain, on the other hand, he drew over a great many Libyans.

The Roman consul Sempronius went with a hundred and sixty quinqueremes to Africa, and already dreamed of a siege of Carthage; but before he reached it, events of quite a different kind had come to pass. Hannibal, who had rested himself during the winter, now crossed the Ebro with ninety thousand infantry and twelve thousand horse (according to Polybius, who took it from the tablet of Hannibal,--a number which the writer certainly meant to be correct; yet one ought perhaps to suppose it to be a slip of the pen, so as to read seventy thousand instead of ninety). The tribes beyond the Ebro were allies of the Romans, though not subject to them, and were therefore hostile to the Carthaginians: they made a stout resistance; but Hannibal quickly hastened on and took their strongholds, at the cost, however, of many men’s lives. He in all likelihood set out in May, as from Polybius it is pretty certain that he reached Italy in the middle of October. There is no doubt but that, if he could have started a month sooner, his expedition would have been far from being as dangerous as it was; yet the obstacles which had given rise to this delay, must have been insurmountable. He was leagued with those Gauls in Lombardy, who four years before had been subjected and cruelly treated by the Romans: they had promised him to put the whole of their force at his disposal. The Romans, however, had now seen through his plan. A year before, they had begun to build Placentia and Cremona; colonists were sent thither in great haste, and the fortifications completed before the beginning of the campaign; so that neither Hannibal nor the Gauls were able to take these places. Polybius rebukes the writers of his day, who spoke of Hannibal’s undertaking as of a thing that had never happened before, but had sprung from a desire of doing some thing which was unheard of, and never could be carried through without the co-operation of unearthly powers. The story that a demon had showed Hannibal the way, is in Livy changed into a dream of surpassing beauty, as if a being more than human were directing Hannibal not to look backward, but only forward; but the writers of those times gave it as an actual part of their narrative.

Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees with fifty thousand infantry and nine thousand horse, numbers which Polybius has likewise evidently taken from the monumental tablet of Hannibal. The passage was effected near Figueras and Rosas towards Roussillon, where it is easiest. He had previously sent envoys to the Gallic tribes from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, to ask them for a free passage through their countries, and had tried to move them to peace by presents of money; so that he reached the Rhone without meeting with any hostility worth mentioning. After the passage over the Pyrenees, signs of a dangerous mutiny began to show themselves; three thousand Carpetanians returned home, and Hannibal also of his own accord sent back other Spaniards whom he suspected. His army seems to have suffered from desertion besides: otherwise it could not have lessened so much as Polybius states. He advanced with the utmost speed. From Carthagena to the Po, Polybius reckons two hundred German miles, which is indeed somewhat exaggerated; but, even then, what difficulties were to be overcome! Until Hannibal came to Cisalpine Gaul, he had to pass through nothing but tribes to whom his march was as a curse. Having gone through the beautiful province of Lower Languedoc, he came to the Rhone in the neighbourhood of Pont St. Esprit. As for the inhabitants of Languedoc, they had been obliged to send their women and children into the Cevennes; but things were now quite different. The Gauls of the Dauphiné, Provence, and those parts, had the rapid river in front of them, and could therefore more readily venture upon resistance; perhaps they had heard moreover that a Roman army was already in Catalonia, nay, even, on the Gallic coast. However much they at other times had scorned the Romans, they now looked to them with eager confidence. P. Scipio had on his voyage to Spain put in at Marseilles, as he had learned that Hannibal, whom he supposed still at the Ebro, was already near the Rhone. He could not but have found it hazardous to take the field against an army of such superior numbers; but in conjunction with the Gauls on the left bank of the Rhone, he could have hindered the enemy’s passage over the river. Hannibal, even without this, had already immense difficulties in his way: the building of a bridge of boats was no easy task. He therefore bought from the people who lived along the bank on which he was, every kind of boat that he could get, and he had canoes made of trees; then he ordered a division to make a night-march higher up the river, so as to cross over on rafts at a spot which was some way off, and threaten the Gauls in the rear. This plan succeeded; yet one cannot understand how the Gauls were not up to it. When the detachment had made its appearance, Hannibal embarked all his forces in the boats, and crossed the stream whilst this division attacked the Gauls. Thus, after inflicting great loss upon the Gauls, he landed on the other side: he got the elephants over with a great deal of trouble. His victory over Nature, which seemed here herself to have set bounds to his advance, made a decisive impression on the neighbouring tribes. Had he delayed eight days longer, Scipio would have barred his way, and hindered him from crossing. He had only thirty-eight thousand infantry, and eight thousand cavalry left; the latter were most of them Numidians, and on the whole were only good for foraging and skirmishing, but not for regular fighting: he had still nearly all his elephants. He now sent some Numidians on to the road to Marseilles, and these fell in with some of the Roman horse: on both sides they were astonished at the meeting. Scipio, who had but just heard of Hannibal’s passing over the Pyrenees, could not have thought that he had already crossed the Rhone. An insignificant skirmish took place, in which the Romans had the advantage. Hannibal, however, did not mind the Roman general, but continued his march.