Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/772

Rh HOME [HISTORY, of the long struggle had come at last. The Carthaginian government, despairing of being able to send further aid to their troops in Sicily, authorized Hamilcar to treat for peace. His proposals were accepted by Catulus, and the terms agreed upon between them were confirmed in all essential points by the commissioners sent out from Rome. The Carthaginians agreed to evacuate Sicily and the adjoining islands, to restore all prisoners, and to pay an indemnity of 2300 talents. In its duration and its severity the First Punic War is justly ranked by Polybius above all other wars of his own and preceding times, though neither in the military talent displayed nor in the importance of its results can it be compared with the war that followed. It was distin- guished by no military achievement comparable with Hannibal's invasion of Italy, and with the single excep- tion of Hamilcar it produced no general of the calibre of Hannibal or Scipio. It was in fact a struggle in which both Rome and Carthage were serving an apprenticeship in a warfare the conditions of which were unfamiliar to both. The Roman legions were foes very unlike any against which the Carthaginian leaders had ever led their motley array of mercenaries, while Rome was called upon for the first time to fight a war across the sea, and to fight with ships against the greatest naval power of the age. The novelty of these conditions accounts for much of the vacillating and uncertain action observable on both sides, and their effect in this direction was increased by the evident doubts felt by both antagonists as to the lengths to which the quarrel should be pushed. It is possible that Hamilcar had already made up his mind that Rome must be attacked and crushed in Italy, but his govern- ment attempted nothing more than raids upon the coast. There are indications also that some in the Roman senate saw no end to the struggle but in the destruction of Carthage; yet an invasion of Africa was only once seriously attempted, and then only a halfhearted support was given to the expedition. But these peculiarities in the war served to bring out in the clearest relief the strength and the weakness of the two contending states. The chief dangers for Carthage lay obviously in the jealousy exhibited at home of her officers abroad, in the difficulty of controlling her mercenary troops, and in the ever-present possibility of disaffection among her subjects in Libya, dangers which even the genius of Hannibal failed finally to surmount. Rome, on the other hand, was strong in the public spirit of her citizens, the fidelity of her allies, the valour and discipline of her legions. What she needed was a system which should make a better use of her splendid materials than one under which her plans were shaped from day to day by a divided senate, and executed by officers who were changed every year, and by soldiers most of whom returned home at the close of each summer's campaign. The interval between the First and Second Punic Wars was employed by both Rome and Carthage in strengthen- ing their respective positions. Of the islands lying off the coast of Italy, the most important, Sicily, had fallen to Rome as the prize of the recent war. The eastern end of the island was still left under the rule of King Hiero as the ally of Rome, but the larger western portion became directly subject to Rome, and a temporary arrangement seems to have been made for its government, either by one of the two praetors, or possibly by a quaestor. 1 Sardinia and Corsica had not been surrendered to Rome 13,516. by the treaty of 241, but three years later (238), on the invitation of the Carthaginian mercenaries stationed in the islands, a Roman force occupied them ; Carthage pro- 1 Marquardt, Rom. Staatsver., i. 92; Mommsen, R. G., i. 543; Appian, Sic. , 2. tested, but, on the Romans threatening war, she gave way, and Sardinia and Corsica were formally ceded to Rome, though it was some seven or eight years before all re.^i.st- ance on the part of the natives themselves was crushed. In 227, however, the senate considered matters ripe for 527. the establishment of a separate and settled government, not only in Sardinia and Corsica, but also in Sicily. In that year two additional praetors were elected ; to one was assigned the charge of western Sicily, to the other that of Sardinia and Corsica, 2 and thus the first stones of the Roman provincial system were laid. Of at least equal importance for the security of the peninsula was the sub- jugation of the Celtic tribes in the valley of the Po. These, headed by the Boii and Insubres and assisted by levies from the Celts to the westward, had in 225 alarmed 529. the whole of Italy by invading Etruria and penetrating to Clusium, only three days' journey from Rome. Here, however, their courage seems to have failed them. They retreated northward along the Etruscan coast, until at Telamon their way was barred by the Roman legions, returning from Sardinia to the defence of Rome, while a second consular army hung upon their rear. Thus hemmed in, the Celts fought desperately, but were com- pletely defeated and the flower of their tribesmen slain. The Romans followed up their success by invading the Celtic territory. The Boii were easily reduced to submis- sion. The Insubres, north of the Po, resisted more obstinately, but by 222 the war was over, and all the 532. tribes in the rich Po valley acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. The conquered Celts were not enrolled among the Italian allies of Rome, but were treated as subjects beyond the frontier. Three colonies were founded to hold them in check Placentia and Cremona in the territory of the Insubres, Mutina in that of the Boii ; and the great northern road (Via Flaminia) was completed as far as the Celtic border at Ariminum. On the Adriatic coast, where there was no Carthage to be feared, and no important adjacent islands to be annexed, the immediate interests of Rome were limited to rendering the eea safe for Italian trade. It was with this object that, in 229, the first Roman expedition crossed the 525. Adriatic, and inflicted severe chastisement on the Illyrian pirates of the opposite coast. 3 But the results of the expedition did not end here, for it was the means of estab- lishing for the first time direct political relations between Rome and the states of Greece proper, to many of which the suppression of piracy in the Adriatic was of as much importance as to Rome herself. Alliances were concluded with Corcyra, Epidamnus, and Apollonia ; and embassies explaining the reasons which had brought Roman troops into Greece were sent to the ^Etolians, the Achaeans, and even to Athens and Corinth. Everywhere they were well received, and the admission of the Romans to the Isthmian games 4 (228) formally acknowledged them as the natural allies of the free Greek states against both barbarian tribes and foreign despots, a relationship which was destined to prove as useful to Rome in the East as it had already proved itself to be in the West. While Rome was thus fortifying herself on all sides, Carthage had acquired a possession which promised to compensate her for the loss of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The genius of her greatest citizen and soldier, Hamilcar Barca, had appreciated the enormous value of the Spanish peninsula, and conceived the scheme of founding there a Carthaginian dominion which should not only add to the wealth of Carthage, but supply her with troops, and with a base of operations for that war of revenge with Rome on which his heart was set. The conquest of southern and eastern Spain, begun by Hamilcar (236-228), and carried 518- Livy, Epit. xx. 3 Pol yb., ii. 8 sq. 4 Polyb., ii. 12.