Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/775

Rh THIRD PUNIC WAR.] E O M E 751 midia, who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of Hannibal in 195 nor his death in 183 did much to check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the increasing irritation of the Cartha- ginians under the harassing raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour Masinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by some breach of the con- ditions imposed upon her, supply Rome with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 came the news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was actually at war with Masinissa. The anti-Carthaginan party in the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the oppor- tunity, and, in spite of the protests of Scipio Nasica and others, war was declared, and nothing short of the destruc- tion of their city itself was demanded from the despairing Carthaginians. This demand, as the senate no doubt foresaw, was refused, and in 149 the siege of Carthage begun. During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147 P. Cornelius Scipio JEmilianus, son of L. yEmilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedonia, and grandson by adoption of the conqueror of Hannibal was, at the age of thirty-seven, and though only a candidate for the sedileship, elected consul, and given the command in Africa. In the next year (146) Carthage was taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman province of Africa, while Numidia,.now ruled by the three sons of Masinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the raids of the desert tribes. Within little more than a century from the commencement of the First Punic War, the whole of the former dominions of Carthage had been brought under the direct rule of Roman' magistrates, and were regularly organized as Roman provinces. In Italy itself the Hannibalic war was inevitably followed by important changes, and these changes were naturally enough in the direction of an increased Roman predominance. In the north the Celtic tribes paid for their sympathy with Hannibal with the final loss of all separate political existence. Cispadane Gaul, studded with colonies, and flooded with Roman settlers, was rapidly Romanized. Beyond the Po in Polybius's time, about sixty years after the Hannibalic war, Roman civiliza- tion was already widely spread. In the extreme north- east the Latin colony of Aquileia, the last of its kind, was founded in 181, to hold in check the Alpine tribes, while in the north-west the Ligurians, though not finally subdued until a later time, were held in check by the colony of Luna (180), and by the extensive settlements of Roman citizens and Latins made on Ligurian territory in 173. 1 In southern Italy the effects of the war were not less marked. The depression of the Greek cities on the coast, begun by the raids of the Sabellian tribes, was com- pleted by the repeated blows inflicted upon them during the Hannibalic struggle. Some of them lost territory ; 2 all suffered from a decline of population and loss of trade ; and their place was taken by such new Roman settlements as Brundusium and Puteoli. 3 In the interior the southern Sabellian tribes suffered scarcely less severely. The Bruttii were struck off the list of Roman allies, and nearly 1 Livy, xlii. 4. 2 E.g., Tarentum, Livy, xliv. 16. A Roman colony was established at Croton in 194, and a Latin colony (Copia) at Thurii in 193 (Livy, xxxiv. 45, 53). 3 Brundusium was established after the First Punic War. Puteoli was fortified during the Second Punic War, and became a Roman colony- in 194 (Livy, xxxiv. 45). all their territory was confiscated. 4 To the Apulians and Lucanians no such hard measure was meted out ; but their strength had been broken by the war, and their numbers dwindled ; large tracts of land in their territories were seized by Rome, and allotted to Roman settlers, or occupied by Roman speculators. That Etruria also suffered from declining energy, a dwindling population, and the spread of large estates is clear from the state of things existing therein 133. It was indeed in central Italy, the home 621. of the Latins and their nearest kinsmen, and in the new Latin and Roman settlements throughout the peninsula that progress and activity were henceforth concentrated, and even within this area the Roman, and not the strictly Latin, element tended to preponderate. Of the twenty colonies founded between 201 and 146 only four were Latin. 553-608. (b) Rome in the East, 200-133. Ever since the re- 554-621. pulse of Pyrrhus from Italy, Rome had been slowly drift- ing into closer contact with the Eastern states. With one of the three great powers which had divided between them the empire of Alexander, with Egypt, she had formed an alliance in 273, and the alliance had been cemented by the growth of commercial intercourse between the two countries. 5 In 228 her chastisement of 526. the Illyrian pirates had led naturally enough to the establishment of friendly relations with some of the states of Greece proper. Further than this, however, Rome for the time showed no desire to go. The con- nexions already formed were sufficient to open the eastern ports to her trade, and the engrossing struggle with Carthage left her neither leisure nor strength for active interference in the incessant feuds and rivalries which had made up Eastern politics since the falling asunder of Alexander's empire. In 214 the alliance between Philip 540. and Hannibal, and the former's threatened attack on Italy, forced her into war with Macedon, but even then she con- tented herself with heading a coalition of the Greek states against him, which effectually frustrated his designs against herself ; and at the first opportunity (205) she 549. ended the war by a peace which left the position un- changed. The results of the war were not only to draw closer the ties which bound Rome to the Greek states, but to inspire the senate with a genuine dread of Philip's restless ambition, and with a bitter resentment against him for his union with Hannibal. The events of the next four years served to deepen both these feelings. In 205 549. Philip entered into a compact with Antiochus of Syria for the partition between them of the dominions of Egypt, 6 now left by the death of Ptolemy Philopator to the rule of a boy king. Antiochus was to take Ccele-Syria and Phoenicia, while Philip claimed for his share the districts subject to Egypt on the coasts of the ./Egean and the Greek islands. Philip no doubt hoped to be able, to secure these unlawful acquisitions before the close of the Second Punic War should set Rome free to interfere with his plans. But the obstinate resistance offered by Attalus of Perga- mum and the Rhodians upset his calculations. In 201 553. Rome ma'de peace with Carthage, and the senate had leisure to listen to the urgent appeal for assistance which reached her from her Eastern allies. With Antiochus indeed the senate was not yet prepared to quarrel ; Egypt was assured of the continued friendship of Rome, but Antiochus was allowed to work his will in Coele-Syria. 7 With Philip it is clear that the senate had no thoughts of a peaceful settlement. Their animosity against him had been deepened by the assistance he had recently rendered to Carthage. Always an unsafe and turbulent 4 Appian, ffann. , 61 ; Aul. Gell. , x. 3 ; cf. Beloch, Ital. Bund. 5 Egypt had supplied corn to Italy during the Second Punic War (Polyb., ix. 44). 6 Polyb., iii. 2, xv. 20 ; Livy, xxxi. 14. 7 Livy, xxxiii. 19.