Part 27 (1/2)
(M897) Too late, the doomed city prepared to make a last stand against an inexorable enemy. The most violent feelings of hatred and rage, added to those of despair, at last animated the people of Carthage. It was the same pa.s.sion which arrayed Tyre against Alexander, and Jerusalem against t.i.tus.
It was a wild patriotic frenzy which knew no bounds, inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, and aside from all calculation of success or failure. As the fall of the city was inevitable, wisdom might have counseled an unreserved submission. Resistance should have been thought of before. In fact, Carthage should not have yielded to the first Africa.n.u.s.
And when she had again become rich and populous, she should have defied the Romans when their spirit was perceived-should have made a more gallant defense against Masinissa, and concentrated all her energies for a last stand upon her own territories. But why should we thus speculate? The doom of Carthage had been p.r.o.nounced by the decrees of fate. The fall has all the mystery and solemnity of a providential event, like the fall of all empires, like the defeat of Darius by Alexander, like the ruin of Jerusalem, like the melting away of North American Indians, like the final overthrow of the ”Eternal City” itself.
(M898) The desperation of the city in her last conflict proves, however, that, with proper foresight and patriotism, her fall might have been delayed, for it took the Romans three years to subdue her. The disarmed city withstood the attack of the Romans for a period five times as long as it required Vespasian and t.i.tus to capture Jerusalem. The city resounded day and night with the labors of men and women on arms and catapults. One hundred and forty s.h.i.+elds, three hundred swords, five hundred spears, and one thousand missiles were manufactured daily, and even a fleet of one hundred and fifty s.h.i.+ps was built during the siege. The land side of the city was protected by a triple wall, and the rocks of Cape Camast and Cape Carthage sheltered it from all attacks by sea, except one side protected by fortified harbors and quays. Hasdrubal, with the remnant of his army, was still in the field, and took up his station at Nephesis, on the opposite side of the lake of Tunis, to hara.s.s the besiegers. Masinissa died at the age of ninety, soon after hostilities began.
(M899) The first attack on Carthage was a failure, and the army of the Consuls Censorinus and Manius Manilius would have been cut to pieces, had it not been for the the reserve led by Scipio aemilia.n.u.s, a grandson of Africa.n.u.s, who was then serving as military tribune. He also performed many gallant actions when Censorinus retired to Rome, leaving the army in the hands of his incompetent colleague.
(M900) The second campaign was equally unsuccessful, under L. Calpurnius Fiso and L. Mancinus. The slow progress of the war excited astonishment throughout the world. The suspense of the campaign was intolerable to the proud spirit of the Romans, who had never dreamed of such resistance. The eyes of the Romans were then turned to the young hero who alone had thus far distinguished himself. Although he had not reached the proper age, he was chosen consul, and the province of Africa was a.s.signed to him. He sailed with his friends Polybius and Laelius. He was by no means equal to the elder Scipio, although he was an able general and an accomplished man.
He was ostentatious, envious, and proud, and had cultivation rather than genius.
(M901) When he arrived at Utica, he found the campaign of B.C. 147 opened in such a way that his arrival saved a great disaster. The admiral Mancinus had attempted an attack on an undefended quarter, but a desperate sally of the besieged had exposed him to imminent danger, and he was only relieved by the timely arrival of Scipio.
(M902) The new general then continued the siege with new vigor. His headquarters were fixed on an isthmus uniting the peninsula of Carthage with the main-land, from which he attacked the suburb called Megara, and took it, and shut up the Carthaginians in the old town and ports. The garrison of the suburb and the army of Hasdrubal retreated within the fortifications of the city. The Carthaginian leader, to cut off all retreat, inflicted inhuman barbarities and tortures on all the Roman prisoners they took. Scipio, meanwhile, intrenched and fortified in the suburb, cut off all communication between the city and main-land by parallel trenches, three miles in length, drawn across the whole isthmus.
The communication with the sea being still open, from which the besieged received supplies, the port was blocked up by a mole of stone ninety-six feet wide. The besieged worked night and day, and cut a new channel to the sea, and, had they known how to improve their opportunity, might, with the new fleet they had constructed, have destroyed that of their enemies, unprepared for action.
(M903) Scipio now resolved to make himself master of the ports, which were separated from the sea by quays and a weak wall. His battering-rams were at once destroyed by the Carthaginians. He then built a wall or rampart upon the quay, to the height of the city wall, and placed upon it four thousand men to hara.s.s the besieged. As the winter rains then set in, making his camp unhealthy, and the city was now closely invested by sea and land, he turned his attention to the fortified camp of the enemy at Nephesis, which was taken by storm, and seventy thousand persons put to the sword. The Carthaginian army was annihilated.
(M904) Meanwhile famine pressed within the besieged city, and Hasdrubal would not surrender. An attack, led by Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quant.i.ty of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants amid the narrow streets which led to the Byrsa. The tall Oriental houses were only taken one by one and burned, and the streets were c.u.mbered with the dead. The miserable people, crowded within the citadel, certain now of destruction, then sent a deputation to Scipio to beg the lives of those who had sought a retreat in the Byrsa. The request was granted to all but Roman deserters. But out of the great population of seven hundred thousand, only thirty thousand men and twenty-five thousand women marched from the burning ruins. Hasdrubal and the three hundred Roman deserters, certain of no mercy, retired to the temple of aesculapius, the heart of the citadel. But the Carthaginian, uniting pusillanimity with cruelty, no sooner found the temple on fire, than he rushed out in Scipio's presence, with an olive-branch in his hands, and abjectly begged for his life, which Scipio granted, after he had prostrated himself at his feet in sight of his followers, who loaded him with the bitterest execrations. The wife of Hasdrubal, deserted by the abject wretch, called down the curses of the G.o.ds on the man who had betrayed his country and deserted at last his family. She then cut the throats of her children and threw them into the flames, and then leaped into them herself. The Roman deserters in the same manner perished. The city was given up to plunder, the inhabitants whose lives were spared were sold as slaves, and the gold and works of art were carried to Rome and deposited in the temples.
(M905) Such was the fate of Carthage-a doom so awful, that we can not but feel that it was sent as a chastis.e.m.e.nt for crimes which had long cried to Heaven for vengeance. Carthage always was supremely a wicked city. All the luxurious and wealthy capitals of ancient times were wicked, especially Oriental cities, as Carthage properly, though not technically, was-founded by Phnicians, and a wors.h.i.+per of the G.o.ds of Tyre and Sidon. The Roman Senate decreed that not only the city, but even the villas of the n.o.bles in the suburb of Megara, should be leveled with the ground, and the plowshare driven over the soil devoted to perpetual desolation, and a curse to the man who should dare to cultivate it or build upon it. For fourteen days, the fires raged in this once populous and wealthy city, and the destruction was complete, B.C. 146. So deep-seated was the Roman hatred of rivals, or States that had been rivals; so dreadful was the punishment of a wicked city, of which Scipio was made the instrument, not merely of the Romans, but of Divine providence.
(M906) All the great cities of antiquity, which had been seats of luxury and pride, had now been utterly destroyed-Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Carthage. Corinth was already sacked by Mummius, and Jerusalem was to be by t.i.tus, and Rome herself was finally to receive a still direr chastis.e.m.e.nt at the hands of Goths and Vandals. So Providence moves on in his mysterious power to bring to naught the grandeur and power of rebellious nations-rebellious to those mighty moral laws which are as inexorable as the laws of nature.
The territory on the coast of Zeugitana and Byzantium, which formed the last possession of Carthage, was erected into the province of Africa, and the rich plain of that fertile province became more important to Rome for supplies of corn than even Sicily, which had been the granary of Rome.
(M907) Scipio returned to Rome, and enjoyed a triumph more gorgeous than the great Africa.n.u.s. He also lived to enjoy another triumph for brilliant successes in Spain, yet to be enumerated, but was also doomed to lose his popularity, and to perish by the dagger of a.s.sa.s.sins.
(M908) Rome had now acquired the undisputed dominion of the civilized world, and with it, the vices of the nations she subdued. A great decline in Roman morals succeeded these brilliant conquests. Great internal changes took place. The old distinction of patricians and plebeians had vanished, and a new n.o.bility had arisen, composed of rich men and of those whose ancestors had enjoyed curule magistracies. They possessed the Senate, and had control of the Comitia Centuriata, by the prerogative vote of the equestrian centuries. A base rabble had grown up, fed with corn and oil, by the government, and amused by games and spectacles. The old republican aristocracy was supplanted by a family oligarchy. The vast wealth which poured into Rome from the conquered countries created disproportionate fortunes. The votes of the people were bought by the rich candidates for popular favor. The superst.i.tions of the East were transferred to the capitol of the world, and the decay in faith was as marked as the decay in virtue. Chaldaean astrologers were scattered over Italy, and the G.o.ds of all the conquered peoples of the earth were wors.h.i.+ped at Rome. The bonds of society were loosed, and a state was prepared for the civil wars which proved even more destructive than the foreign.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
ROMAN CONQUESTS FROM THE FALL OF CARTHAGE TO THE TIMES OF THE GRACCHI.
Although the Roman domination now extended in some form or other over most of the countries around the Mediterranean, still several States remained to be subdued, in the East and in the West.
The subjugation of Spain first deserves attention, commenced before the close of the third Punic war, and which I have omitted to notice for the sake of clearness of connection.
After the Hannibalic war, we have seen how Rome planted her armies in Spain, and added two provinces to her empire. But the various tribes were far from being subdued, and Spain was inhabited by different races.
(M909) This great peninsula, bounded on the north by the ocean Cantabricus, now called the Bay of Biscay, and the Pyrenees, on the east and south by the Mediterranean, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, was called Iberia, by the Greeks, from the river Iberus, or Ebro. The term Hispania was derived from the Phnicians, who planted colonies on the southern sh.o.r.es. The Carthaginians invaded it next, and founded several cities, the chief of which was New Carthage. At the end of the second Punic war, it was wrested from them by the Romans, who divided it into two provinces, Citerior and Ulterior. In the time of Augustus, Ulterior Spain was divided into two provinces, called Lusitania and Baetica, while the Citerior province, by far the larger, occupying the whole northern country from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was called Tanagona. It included three-fifths of the peninsula, or about one hundred and seven thousand three hundred square miles. It embraced the modern provinces of Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, Biscay, Asturias, Galicia, Northern Leon, old and new Castile, Murcia, and Valentia, and a part of Portugal. Baetica nearly corresponded with Andalusia, and embraced Granada, Jaen, Cordova, Seville, and half of Spanish Estremadura. Lusitania corresponds nearly with Portugal.
(M910) The Tanaconneusis was inhabited by numerous tribes, and the chief ancient cities were Barcelona, Tanagona the metropolis, Pampeluna, Oporto, Numantia, Saguntum, Saragossa, and Cartagena. In Baetica were Cordova, Castile, Gades, and Seville. In Lusitania were Olisipo (Lisbon), and Salamanca.
(M911) Among the inhabitants of these various provinces were Iberians, Celts, Phnicians, and h.e.l.lenes. In the year 154 B.C., the Lusitanians, under a chieftain called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory which the elder Scipio had conquered, and defeated two Roman governors. The Romans then sent a consular army, under Q. Fulvius n.o.bilior, which was ultimately defeated by the Lusitanians under Caesarus. This success kindled the flames of war far and near, and the Celtiberians joined in the warfare against the Roman invaders. Again the Romans were defeated with heavy loss. The Senate then sent considerable re-enforcements, under Claudius Marcellus, who soon changed the aspect of affairs. The nation of the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans-a people living on the branches of the Darius, near Numantia-and their western neighbors, the Vaccaei, were also subdued, and barbarously dealt with. On the outbreak of the third Punic war the affairs of Spain were left to the ordinary governors, and a new insurrection of the Lusitanians took place. Viriathus, a Spanish chieftain, signally defeated the Romans, and was recognized as king of all the Lusitanians. He was distinguished, not only for bravery, but for temperance and art, and was a sort of Homeric hero, whose name and exploits were sounded throughout the peninsula. He gained great victories over the Roman generals, and destroyed their armies. General after general was successively defeated. For five years this gallant Spaniard kept the whole Roman power at bay, and he was only destroyed by treachery.
(M912) While the Lusitanians at the South were thus prevailing over the Roman armies on the bunks of the Tagus, another war broke out in the North among the Celtiberian natives. Against these people Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the consul, was sent. He showed great ability, and in two years reduced the whole northern province, except the two cities of Termantia and Numantia. These cities, wearied at last with war, agreed to submit to the Romans, and delivered up hostages and deserters, with a sum of money.