Ancient Rome Part 2

Pyrrhus

At the time of his attack upon Italy Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was the most brilliant soldier of his day: and his ambition was to rule, like Alexander, over a world greater than that of his own Greek kingdom. From babyhood he breathed and grew up amid storm and adventure, all his life he was most at home in camps and on the battlefield. His father was killed in battle when Pyrrhus was but five years old: he himself was only saved from death by a faithful slave who carried him to the house of the King of the Illyrians and laid him at his feet. The baby Pyrrhus clasped the knees of the monarch who, looking into his face, could not resist the appeal of the child's eyes, but kept him safe till he was twelve years old and then helped to put him on his father's throne.

Though only a boy, Pyrrhus held it for five years. He was driven out, but later he recovered his kingdom again. As he grew up he studied the art of war constantly and wrote a handbook on tactics. As Plutarch, who wrote his life, puts it, 'he was persuaded that neither to annoy others nor be annoyed by them was a life insufferably languishing and tedious'.

Pyrrhus's appearance expressed the strong, generous simplicity and directness of his character and his singleness of aim. The most remarkable feature in his face was his mouth, for his front teeth were formed of a continuous piece of bone, marked only with small lines resembling the divisions of a row of teeth. Fear was absolutely unknown to him. His weakness was that he did not understand men: though a brilliant soldier he knew nothing about government. He was a soldier only. He could win battles but not rule men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PYRRHUS]

Pyrrhus came to Italy on the invitation of the people of Tarentum.

Tarentum was a wealthy and flourishing city in the south. Originally a Greek settlement, its people were famous for the luxury and elegance of their houses and lives, and scorned the rude, hardy, and simple Romans as untutored barbarians. When some Roman ships appeared in their harbour they were sunk by the Tarentines, who thought that as the Romans were at that time busy--the Gauls had swept down from the north and they were engaged with a war against the Samnites--Tarentum was safe from them.

But the Romans at once declared war (281). The Tarentines took fright: they had no mind for fighting themselves and looked about for some one who would do it for them. Thus they called to Pyrrhus to save the Greeks in Italy. Pyrrhus saw in their appeal his chance of realizing what for the great Alexander had remained a dream--an empire in the West. He took sail at once. He was indeed so eager that he started in mid-winter despite the storms, and lost part of his fleet on the way. Nevertheless he brought a great army with him: Macedonian foot soldiers, then considered the best in the world, hors.e.m.e.n, archers, and slingers; and elephants, never before seen in Italy. In Tarentum he found nothing ready. His first task was to make the idle, luxurious city into a camp.

The inhabitants, who cared for nothing but feasting, drinking, and games, did not like this, but it was too late to be sorry. Pyrrhus had come, and since no other towns in Italy gave any sign of joining him, he had to make the most of Tarentum. The Tarentines, who had been used to having all their fighting done for them by slaves, now had to go into training themselves.

In the spring the Roman army took the field and marched south against the invader. When Pyrrhus surveyed from a hill the Roman camp and line of battle he exclaimed in surprise: 'These are no barbarians!' In the end he won a victory at Heraclea (280), partly by reason of the panic caused among the Roman soldiers by the elephants--they had never seen such beasts before--but the victory was a very expensive one. Pyrrhus's own losses were so heavy that he said, 'One more victory like this and I shall be ruined.' As he walked over the field at night and saw the Roman dead, all their wounds in front, lying where they had fallen in their own lines, he cried: 'Had I been king of these people I should have conquered the world.'

A deep impression was made on him by the envoy Fabricius. Plutarch tells the story:

_Pyrrhus and Fabricius_

Presently envoys came to negotiate about the fate of the prisoners, and among them Gaius Fabricius, who was famed among the Romans, as Cineas told the King, for uprightness and military talent, and for extreme poverty as well. Therefore Pyrrhus received him kindly, apart from the rest, and urged him to accept a present, of course not corruptly, but as a so-called token of friendship and intimacy. When Fabricius refused, the King did no more for the moment, but next day, wishing to try his nerves as he had never seen an elephant, he had the largest of these beasts put behind a curtain close to them as they conversed. This was done, and at a signal the curtain was drawn aside, and the beast suddenly raised its trunk and held it over the head of Fabricius, uttering a harsh and terrifying cry. Undisturbed, he turned round and, smiling, said to Pyrrhus, 'Yesterday your gold did not move me, nor does your elephant to-day.'

At dinner all sorts of subjects were discussed, and as a great deal was said about Greece and its philosophers, Cineas happened to mention Epicurus and explained the doctrines of his disciples about the G.o.ds and service to the state and the chief end of life.

This last, as he said, they identified with pleasure, while they avoided service to the state as interrupting and marring their happiness, and banished the G.o.ds far away from love and anger and care for mankind to an untroubled life of ceaseless enjoyment.

Before he had finished, Fabricius interrupted him and said, 'By Hercules, I hope that Pyrrhus and the Samnites will hold these doctrines as long as they are at war with us.'

This filled Pyrrhus with such admiration of his high spirit and character that he was more anxious than before to be on terms of friendship instead of hostility with the Romans, and he privately urged Fabricius to arrange a peace and to take service with him and live as the first of all his comrades and generals. It is said that he quietly replied, 'O king, you would gain nothing; for these very men who now honour and admire you will prefer my rule to yours if they once get to know me.' Such were his words; and Pyrrhus did not receive them with anger or in a spirit of offended majesty, but he actually told his friends of the n.o.bility of Fabricius and gave him sole charge of the prisoners on the understanding that, if the Senate refused the peace, they should be sent back after greeting their friends and keeping the festival of Saturn. As it happened, they were sent back after the festival, the Senate ordaining the penalty of death for anyone who stayed behind.

Plutarch, x.x.x. 20.

He was yet more deeply impressed by the strength of the Roman character a little later. When he found that none of the Latins were going to join him Pyrrhus sent an amba.s.sador to the Senate, offering terms of peace.

This amba.s.sador was loaded with costly presents for the leading Romans and their wives. All these gifts were refused. Then Pyrrhus's envoy came before the Senate, to see whether eloquence could not do what bribes had failed to effect. He had been a pupil of the great Demosthenes, the most wonderful orator of Greece, and his golden words moved many of the senators; they thought it would be wise to make terms. But old Appius Claudius, one of the most distinguished men in Rome, the builder of the great military road known as the Appian way, had been carried into the Senate House by his sons and servants, for he was very old and nearly blind. He now rose to his feet and his speech made these senators ashamed of themselves. 'Hitherto', he cried, 'I have regarded my blindness as a misfortune; but now, Romans, I wish I had been deaf as well as blind, for then I should not have heard these shameful counsels.

Who is there who will not despise you and think you an easy conquest, if Pyrrhus not only escapes unconquered but gains Tarentum as a reward for insulting the Romans?' His words stirred the senators deeply. They voted as one man to continue the war. Pyrrhus's amba.s.sador was told to tell his master that the Romans could not treat so long as there was an enemy on Italian soil. He told Pyrrhus that the Senate seemed to him an a.s.sembly of kings.

The firm mind of the Romans did not change when Pyrrhus marched north.

Though he got within forty miles of the city there was no panic: only a rush of men to join the armies standing outside the walls to guard it.

He had to retire south again. Even after another victory in the next campaign--at Asculum (279)--Rome was not shaken: the Italians stood firm. Pyrrhus knew that to win battles was not enough; he could not conquer Rome unless he could shake the solid resistance of a whole people. This he could not do. Nor did he know how to appeal to the Italians and unite them against Rome. To the Italians Pyrrhus was a foreigner, called in by the Tarentine Greeks whom they rightly despised.

Against him they rallied round Rome. And the Romans never wavered for an instant. At the darkest hour there had been no break in the will of the whole people. Pyrrhus saw this: he saw that the Romans would last him out. After Asculum he crossed to Sicily and defeated the Carthaginians, the allies of Rome who were gradually capturing the island from Agathocles the king. But though he soon overran a large part of this island, the Greeks in Sicily liked his iron rule no better than the Greeks of Tarentum had done. He returned to Italy, leaving the great fortress of Lilybaeum still in Carthaginian hands, crying as he sailed away, 'What a battleground for Romans and Carthaginians I am leaving.'

In Italy he fought one more big battle, at Beneventum (275); but it was a defeat. His hopes were ended. He had won glory for himself, but he had, and this he knew, helped to unite Italy under Rome; and, as he saw, to prepare the way for a great struggle between Rome and Carthage.

Pyrrhus saw, sooner than any Roman, the great struggle coming in which the fate of Rome was to be decided. He had shown the Romans the way: had made their strength visible to them and turned their eyes beyond Italy, across the seas.

Carthage

The power of Carthage, to the men of the age of Pyrrhus, seemed infinitely greater than that of Rome. Rome at that time was but a single city whose rule did not extend even over the whole of Italy. Carthage was the head of an empire, built up on a trade which spread its name over the whole of the known world. The Punic or Phoenician people, as the ruling race in Carthage was called because of their dark skins, came from the East. Their earliest homes were in Arabia and Syria. It was from Tyre and Sidon, great and rich towns when Rome was hardly a village, that the traders came and settled in North Africa. Their ships, laden with woven stuffs in silk and cotton, dyed in rich colours, with perfumes and spices, ivory and gold, ornaments and implements in metal, sailed all the navigable seas, and brought home from distant places the goods and raw materials of different lands. At a time when the Romans had hardly begun to sail the seas at all, their vessels pa.s.sed out of the Mediterranean, through the Straits and up to the little-known lands of the Atlantic. They brought home tin from distant Cornwall, silver from Spain, iron from Elba, copper from Cyprus. Carthage itself was a magnificent city and the richest in the world. Its citizens lived in wealth and idleness on the labour of others. Trade supplied them with riches: the hardy tribes of Africa, Numidians and Libyans, were their slaves, manned their fleets and armies. Their navy ruled the seas. They had settlements in Spain; Corsica and Sardinia were owned by Carthage; all the west of Sicily was in their hands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DESOLATION OF CARTHAGE TO-DAY]

In Sicily the Carthaginians and the Romans first met. The eastern part of the island was ruled by King Hiero of Syracuse; but raids on it were constantly made by the people of Messina. After one of these Hiero attacked Messina. His force was driven off by the Carthaginians who then occupied the citadel. The people of the town looked round for a.s.sistance and finally appealed to Rome (265).

Messina was not a Roman city; but the Romans saw that if the Carthaginians were left in possession they would hold a bridge from which they could easily cross into Italy. That was the question that had to be faced when the Senate met to consider whether they should help the people of Messina. To do so meant war with Carthage at once. Not to do so might mean war with Carthage later on. The Senate called upon the people to decide. The people voted for war now.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTHAGINIAN PRIESTESS]

No man could then have foreseen how long and severe the war was going to be. It lasted three and twenty years (264-241); and at the beginning all the advantage seemed to be on the Carthaginian side. In the first place Carthage had the strongest navy in the world. The Carthaginian army was much the larger, though it was composed of paid soldiers of foreign race. There was no outstanding leader on the Roman side equal to Hamilcar, who commanded the Carthaginians in its later stages.

When the war began the Romans had no fleet. They had never had more than a few transport vessels: no fighting ships. They did not know how they were constructed. This did not daunt them, however. A Carthaginian man-of-war was driven ash.o.r.e. Roman carpenters and shipwrights at once set to work, studying how it was put together, and thinking out devices by which it could be improved. While the shipwrights were busy the men practised rowing on dry land. The most famous improvement invented by the Romans was the 'crow'. This was an attachment to the prow, worked by a pulley, consisting of a long pole with a sharp and strong curved iron spike at the end. As soon as an enemy ship came within range this pole was swung round so that the spike caught the vessel and held it in an iron grip. A bridge was fastened to the pole: the soldiers ran along and boarded, forcing a hand-to-hand fight. To this the Carthaginian sailors were not used. They were better navigators than the Romans, but not such good fighters. In hand-to-hand encounters the Romans got the best of it.

But they did not know so much of wind and weather, and again and again the storms made havoc with them. Four great fleets were destroyed or captured in the first sixteen years of the war, which lasted for twenty-three. In the year 249 Claudius the Consul lost 93 vessels at a stroke in the disastrous battle of Drepana and killed himself rather than live on under the disgrace. Later in the same year another great fleet was dashed to pieces in a storm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PICTURES FROM POMPEII--]

The year ended with the Carthaginians masters of the seas and on land.

Four Roman armies had been lost almost to a man. In five years one man in every six of the population of Rome had perished in battle or on the sea. After sixteen years' hard fighting and extraordinary efforts the end of the war seemed further off than ever, unless the Romans were to admit defeat. But it was no part of their character to admit defeat. As Polybius, the great Greek historian who knew them well, said some years later, 'The Romans are never so dangerous as when they seem to be reduced to desperation.' So it proved. No one had any thought of giving in. Regulus, captured by the Carthaginians and sent by them to Rome to urge his countrymen to surrender, urged them to go on fighting, though he knew he must pay the penalty for such words with his life. Had the Carthaginians been made of the same metal they might have used the hour to strike the fatal blow; but they were not. On land they did not trust the one really great general whom they had--Hamilcar Barca. For six years nothing serious was done in Sicily. On sea they let the fleet fall into disrepair because they were confident that the Romans, after their tremendous losses, could do nothing much. They did not know the Roman temper. In the coffers of the State there was no money to build ships.

But there were rich men in Rome who put their country's needs before their own comfort. A number of them sold all they had and gave the money for shipbuilding. Shipwrights and carpenters worked night and day, and in a wonderfully short time a fleet of 250 vessels was constructed and given to the State. And this fleet ended the war. Every man in it was alive with enthusiasm, ready to die for Rome. The Consul Lutatius Catulus, who was put in command of it, utterly defeated the Carthaginian navy in a great battle off the Aegatian Islands (241). In Sicily Hamilcar could do nothing; no supplies could reach him. With bitterness in his heart he had to make a peace which gave Sicily to Rome. The real heroes are the Roman people who, whether in the armies or the navies or at home, never yielded or lost courage in spite of defeat and disaster but held on to the end. They won the victory. They defeated Hamilcar. In this, the first Punic War, the Carthaginian Government was glad to make peace; Hamilcar was not. He was determined that Carthage should defeat Rome yet: he made his young son Hannibal swear never to be friends with Rome.

[Ill.u.s.tration: --OF A MIMIC NAVAL BATTLE]

Hannibal

This son of Hamilcar was the most dangerous enemy the Romans ever had to face. He was not only, like Pyrrhus, a brilliant soldier and general: he was much more than this. He was a genius in all the arts of war, and in the leadership of men; great as Napoleon and Julius Caesar were great.

He had the power to fill the hearts of his followers with a devotion that asked no questions; they were ready to die for him, to endure any and every hardship. No Roman general of the time was a match for him: few in any time. Yet he was defeated. The reason was simple. He was defeated not by this or that Roman general but by the Roman people. His genius broke against their steady endurance, grim patience, and devotion to Rome. Hannibal could and did win battles, but no victory brought him nearer to his great object, that of dividing Italy and breaking the dominance of Rome. Except for the southern tribes and Capua the Italians stood solid; in Rome there was never any talk of giving in. When Varro, after a rout, partly due to his own recklessness, which left the road to Rome open to Hannibal, brought his remnant back to the city, the senators came out to meet him, and instead of uttering reproaches or lamentations, thanked him because he had not despaired of the Republic.

This spirit Hannibal could not break. Behind him there was nothing of this kind. He had his genius and the soldiers he had made; but the people of Carthage only gave him grudging support.

Hannibal's invasion of Italy failed: but it is one of the most wonderful stories in the whole history of war, and he is one of the great men of history.

His father, Hamilcar Barca ('Barca' means 'lightning'), was a brilliant general; that the Carthaginians lost their first war with Rome was their fault, not his. Of his three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, Hannibal the eldest was the dearest to him and most like himself in strength of will, in the power to form a purpose and hold to it unshaken by all that happened to him or that other people said. Soon after the war with Rome was ended Hamilcar left Carthage, taking his sons with him. Before he left he made young Hannibal, then nine years old, swear on the altars never to be friends with Rome. They sailed for Spain.

Spain, Hamilcar saw, could be worth more than Sicily, if the people were trained as soldiers and taught the arts of agriculture and mining. The country was rich in metals. His sons helped him, and he meantime taught them not only everything connected with war and the training and handling of men, but languages and all that was then known of history and of art, so that although their boyhood was spent in camps they were as well taught as the n.o.blest Roman.

At the age of six-and-twenty Hannibal was chosen by the army to command the Carthaginian forces in Spain. Although young in years Hannibal's purpose in life had long been clear to him: since his father's death he had lived and thought for nothing else. He had trained the army in Spain for this purpose; his captains knew and shared it; and they and the men were filled with a pa.s.sionate love for and belief in their young commander. Hannibal could make himself feared. The discipline in his army was strict, though he never asked men to do or suffer what he would not do or suffer himself. It was not through fear, however, that he made men devoted to him. They followed him because they believed in him, believed that he had a clear plan and the will to carry it through, and because they loved him. He was the elder brother and companion of his soldiers, and never forgot that they were men.

Three years after he had been made general in Spain Hannibal's plans were complete. Everything was ready. He knew what he was going to do.

Suddenly he laid siege to Saguntum (219), a town in Spain allied to Rome, and took it. This was a declaration of war on Rome. A few months later news came to Rome; news which at first could hardly be believed.

Hannibal had left New Carthage, his great base in Spain, with a large army. He had defeated the northern Spaniards and was preparing to cross the Alps and descend on Italy. The Roman army sent to stop him on the Rhone arrived too late to do so. But to cross the Alps with troops and baggage when the winter snows were beginning to fall upon the mountain pa.s.ses and the streams were freezing into ice was believed to be impossible: no army had ever done it. The paths were precipitous, at places there were no tracks at all. Wild fighting tribes of Gauls held the pa.s.ses. There was no food: not even dry gra.s.s for the animals.

Fierce storms of hail and snow swept the mountain tops.

Nevertheless, before winter had fully set in Hannibal had brought his army over. The losses of men and animals had been severe; but a thing thought impossible had been done. The season was still early for fighting: Hannibal could let his suffering troops rest in the fertile North Italian plains. Livy describes the last stage of the journey:

_Hannibal's March: the Sight of the Promised Land_

On the ninth day they reached the crest of the Alps, pushing on over trackless steeps, and sometimes compelled to retrace their steps owing to the treachery of the guides or, where they were not trusted, to the random choice of some route through a valley. For two days they encamped on the top, and the soldiers, exhausted by marching and fighting, were allowed to rest. A number of baggage animals, too, that had slipped on the rocks, reached the camp by following the tracks of the army. Tired as the men were, and wearied by so many hardships, a further dismay was caused by a fall of snow, which the setting of the Pleiades brought with it.

They started again at dawn, and the army was slowly advancing through ways blocked with snow, listlessness and despair visible on the faces of all, when Hannibal hurried in front of his men and ordered them to stop on a ridge commanding a wide and distant view, from which he pointed out Italy and the plains of the Po lying at the foot of the Alps. 'Here', he exclaimed, 'you are scaling the walls, not merely of Italy, but of Rome; the rest of the way will be smooth and sloping; one or at most two battles will make you masters of the fortress and capital of Italy.'

Livy, xxi. 35. 4-9.

Just across the river Ticinus a Roman army came to meet him under Cornelius Scipio (218). It was defeated; a month later the other consul, Semp.r.o.nius, was out-generalled and defeated on the river Trebia. These two victories meant that Italy north of the Po was in Hannibal's hands.

Moreover the Gauls had risen and joined him. Hannibal at once set to work training them, and filling the thinned ranks of his own army with fresh men. His hope was that not only the Gauls--poor allies, for they could never be trusted--but the Italians generally would rise and join him. He counted on their being eager to shake off the yoke of Rome.