The Comic History of Rome Part 11

The Colonial system pursued by Rome was peculiar, for instead of selecting uninhabited places, she preferred a population ready made, possessing wealth already acquired, of which she usually helped herself to a full third in exchange for a Government, which she supplied from her own large stock of persons in want of places. The relationship between Rome and her colonies has been compared to that of parent and child; but considering the stripping process to which Rome had recourse, she seems to have acted less as a mother than a kidnapper. The Roman Const.i.tution, like the Roman cement, was an excellent compound, of which it is impossible to describe the ingredients; and, indeed, it is found that the best Const.i.tutions--like our own British--are those which cannot be defined by a written prescription, or made the subject of a perfect a.n.a.lysis. There was a judicious spreading of political power over a considerable surface, and thus--to use a figure from the chemist's shop--a plaster was always ready to be applied to the sores, or even the trifling eruptions that might make their appearance on any portion of the great body of the nation.

As in our own admirable form of government, there were three estates, comprising the people, the senate, and the executive; but the want of a permanent and universally recognised head of the state, kept the country continually exposed to agitation on the part of designing demagogues.

As the sword, unfortunately, cuts the most prominent figure in the early history of Rome, we must not omit to speak of its military organisation, which was very complete; for in early times there seemed to be an impression that neighbours ought to be approached with the arm of war, rather than with the hand of friendship. Every Roman citizen was a soldier, and was liable at any moment to be called upon to turn his ploughshare into a sword, though when his special service was over he was at liberty to turn his sword back again into a ploughshare. This transformation was not effected without damage to the instrument, and the ordinary operations of agriculture were frequently interrupted by calling the labourer from the garden to the field, and forcing him to drill when engaged in sowing broad-cast. We have in a single chapter of Livy[39] an account of what a Roman army consisted of during the great Latin war, and though learned writers[40] have snarled and quarrelled over the materials, like dogs over a dry and meatless bone, we quietly walk into the midst of them, and deliberately extract the marrow. An army may be described in half-a-dozen lines, though it consisted of five, which were termed respectively, _Hastati_, _Principes_, _Triarii_, _Rorarii_, and _Accensi_.

The _Hastati_, so called from their carrying the _hasta_ or spear, consisted of youth in the bloom of early manhood, and who went in front, that their early bloom might encounter the first blow of the enemy. The next row was formed of the _Principes_, or men in the vigour of life, distinguished by the abundance and splendour of their shields, arms, and accoutrements, and comprising what may be termed the heavy swells of the army. Next in order came the _Triarii_, a body of veterans, selected for their past experience--a quality which, however valuable in council, may be often useless in war; for though experience might have told a veteran that he ought to run for his life, his heels, being as old as his head, might have refused to do the latter's bidding. The fourth rank was composed of _Rorarii_, from the word _Rora_, dew, who sprinkled the enemy with various missiles, and who standing behind the _Triarii_, must occasionally, by aiming short of the foe, have given more than their due to the veterans immediately in front of them. Last in order came the _Accensi_, or supernumeraries, whose courage and fidelity were not of the highest cla.s.s, and who either brought up the rear or left it behind, as their resolution urged them on, or their want of it kept them back, while there was always an opening left in case their fears should run away with them. It was frequently the practice of the _Accensi_ to reserve the vacant back-ground as a sort of race-course, in which races between their valour and their discretion were being continually run, and in the majority of cases the latter got by far the best of it.

The habits of the early Romans were extremely simple; agriculture was their most honoured employment; and it was thought high praise to say of any man, that he was a good husband, and a good husbandman. Their food was chiefly corn; and many a happy family afforded an ill.u.s.tration of the fact that love, notwithstanding the a.s.sertion of the song writer to the contrary, can sometimes live on flour. Wine was so precious, that, in libations to the G.o.ds, it was poured out drop by drop, to prevent their getting a drop too much; and, indeed, so scarce was it in the early days of Rome, that Romulus is said to have used milk in his sacrifices; while Papirius, at a later period, vowed, in the event of his victory over the Samnites, a small gla.s.s--or _pet.i.t verre_--to Jupiter.

Long beards were worn by the Romans until the arrival of a Greek barber from Sicily; and he is said to have plucked out, with a pair of tweezers, the beard which had grown for four centuries and a half into a rooted habit. On some he employed the razor, and he was able to reap an abundant harvest from the chins of a people who had never yet worn a smooth-faced aspect.

The invasion of Pyrrhus caused the adoption at Rome of many Grecian luxuries, and among others was the luxury of subst.i.tuting a silver coinage for copper, which had been found so inconvenient that a rich man had been obliged to use a wagon instead of a purse, if he wished to take his money about with him. Silver was, however, so scarce, that one Cornelius Rufinus was turned out of the Senate for having on his sideboard more than ten pounds of plate; for it was believed that he could not have come honestly by so much of it, and he was regarded as either a thief, or at least as a receiver of stolen property.

So humble were the pretensions to display in those early days, that a silver cup and a salt-cellar formed, usually, the entire contents of a Roman n.o.ble's plate-basket. Music, among the early Romans, was at the lowest possible pitch, and the only professors were flute-players, of scarcely any note, from Etruria. Their strains were so dismal as to be employed only at a sacrifice or a funeral, when extreme melancholy was required. On one occasion the band is said to have struck, and retired to Tibur, when the musicians were only brought back by being made helplessly drunk,--a weakness to which some of those hirelings who a.s.sist at the performance of funerals are in our day liable.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Polybius.

[37] Polyb., ii. 20.

[38] The ignorantly squeamish, who may object to the word "togged," will please to observe that it is purely cla.s.sical--the Latin _toga_ being the root of the participle "togged," as well as the substantive "toggery."

[39] Livy, viii.--8.

[40] Lipsius and others.

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

All Italy now belonged to Rome, but the thirst for conquest was not quenched even by the sea itself, beyond which the Romans prepared to extend their power. Among those who made a business of bloodshed, by lending themselves out as soldiers to any one who paid them, the Campanians enjoyed--if there could have been any real enjoyment in the matter--a bad eminence. They had followed the trade of human butchers for about fifty years; and, among other sanguinary engagements, they had accepted a job from the tyrant[41] of Syracuse.

The Campanians had done their work of devastation; and there being no further use for them, they had received notice to quit; but instead of returning home, they resolved to stay, and perpetrate a little plunder for their own exclusive benefit. They accordingly surprised the town of Messana--if any enormity may be considered surprising, when committed by such a set--and calling themselves the Sons of Mamers, or Mars, they established themselves under the t.i.tle of the Republic of the Mamertines. From this point they carried on their trade of robbery and murder, which they put in practice right and left, upon most of their neighbours. On the unerring principle, that wrong never comes right, the rulers of Syracuse, who had, for their own bad purposes, introduced the Campanians into the place, became, in turn, the victims of that lawless band of freebooters. At length, Hiero, a king of Syracuse, determined on getting rid of the nuisance which his predecessors had established, and fell upon the Mamertines with such effect, that they were on the point of being crushed, when they were saved by the interference of a Carthaginian Admiral. The Mamertines being themselves faithless, were suspicious of every one else, and were as false to each other as they were untrue to all besides; so that they looked distrustingly on the offer made, and were unable to agree as to the policy of accepting it.

They were speedily in the position of a house divided, for some were ready to receive the protection of Carthage, while others sent for help to the Romans, who, to their utter disgrace, pa.s.sed a decree, pledging themselves to an alliance with the Mamertine miscreants. It must be stated, to the honour of the Senate, that a majority of that body rejected the humiliating proposal with scorn; but the Consuls, desirous of giving _eclat_ to their term of office--an evil incidental to the system of having a temporary, instead of a permanent, head to the state--did all they could to plunge the country into a war, and brought the question before the a.s.sembly of the people.

The lower pa.s.sions of pride and avarice are soon aroused among the ma.s.s by specious promises of glory and conquest; and though each man might, for himself, have spurned an alliance with the Mamertine mercenaries, the result proved the truth of the saying, that "a corporation will do what an individual will shrink from with shame;" for the Comitia Tributa voted that the disgraceful compact should be formed.

Appius Claudius, the son of the blind Consul, was sent to Messana with a fleet of TRIREMES, or vessels with three ranks of oars, which had been borrowed from the Greek towns of Italy; for the Roman Admiralty, in the true spirit of a board, though continually building ships, was unable to produce an effective navy. Appius Claudius was not seaman enough to carry his TRIREMES to Sicily, and his rowers were not so expert as they should have been in the management of the oars, which were placed in ranks, one above the other, to a considerable height, so that a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether was extremely difficult.

Having at last got near enough for a parley, he invited Hanno, the Carthaginian general, to a conference; and, finding him a weak and nervous person, he seized him by the neck, and fairly shook the whole of his resolution out of him.

Hanno was frightened into delivering up the citadel, and returning to Carthage, he was hurried off to speedy execution, for having failed in the execution of his duty. King Hiero, being deprived of his Carthaginian aid, was completely beaten, and was glad to offer peace, or rather he was glad to get it, on any conditions, for his own condition was truly deplorable. He paid down 200 talents in ready money, which was equivalent to about fifty thousand pounds of our modern coin, to prevent the sacking of Syracuse, and by sacrificing all his cash in hand, he was able to save his capital. From this period may be dated the commencement of the first Punic War; and as a feeble-minded reader may be dwelling on the word Punic, in the silly expectation of a pun, we, by explaining that it is derived from Phnicia, whence Phnic or Punic, at once check the morbid appet.i.te. The city of Carthage is said to have been about one hundred years older than Rome; but cities, like ladies beyond a certain date, baffle all attempts to reduce their age to a matter of certainty.

Tradition a.s.signs the foundation of Carthage to Dido, who, having been converted into an unprotected female by the murder of her husband, fled from Tyre, and when completely tired out, sat down to rest on the coast of Africa. Here she agreed to take, on a building lease, as much land as could be covered with a bull's hide, when, to the astonishment of the lessor, she produced a skin cut up into thongs, and acting as her own surveyor, she claimed to be monarch of all she surveyed, by putting this new species of leathern girdle round as much earth as possible. There was certainly less of the princess than of the tradeswoman in this transaction, which, however, was characteristic of the future city, for it became famous for its business and its bargains, as well as infamous for its bad faith; the term _Punica fides_ having become a by-word to express the grossest dishonesty. Her devotion to commerce led to the establishment of a powerful navy, and her citizens having something more profitable to do than to fight, her army was always hired from abroad when occasion required. Rome, on the other hand, had made war her chief pursuit, and the consequence was, that she had plenty of soldiers, but no ships, except a few she had taken from her foes; and her occupations being mostly of a military or destructive kind, she had no resources but her valour to rely upon.

The Romans remained in Sicily, where several powers claimed their protection; but Hannibal Gisco, anxious to preserve Agrigentum, threw himself and sixty elephants into it. Here he was besieged for seven months with an army of 50,000 men, who, of course, consumed daily a large quant.i.ty of food; but there was something utterly irrational in providing daily rations for sixty elephants. It was arranged, therefore, that Hanno should proceed to the relief of Agrigentum, but he was defeated with the loss of thirty elephants, left dead on the field--a field which must have been necessarily a very wide one for conjecture.

Hannibal Gisco's army consisted of a medley of mercenaries, including some Gauls, who, having much money owing to them, refused to strike, except for their pay, and who intimated that they would not draw their swords until they had drawn their salaries. Their general, unable to settle with them in cash, chose a more treacherous way of paying them off; for, getting them into an ambush, he caused a volley of missiles to be aimed at them, and the discharge was in full of all demands, for it effectually stopped all further clamour.

Agrigentum was plundered by the Romans, who sold 25,000 of the inhabitants for slaves--at least, according to tradition, who usually deals in round numbers, amounting often in value to the sum which a perfectly round number or figure indicates.

Though the Carthaginians had failed on land, their fleet gave them advantages at sea, for there the Romans were completely out of their element. The latter, however, resolved to have a navy of their own, and the Board of Admiralty set to work in good earnest, with the cooperation of the Woods and Forests, which supplied the requisite timber. The difficulty now felt, was to obtain a design upon which to build, and instead of trusting to official surveyors, who might have shown plenty of cunning, without producing any craft, the Romans took for a model a Carthaginian quinquereme that had come ash.o.r.e on the coast of Bruttium.

Being relieved from the supervision of the professional architects, the ship-building progressed rapidly, and within sixty days after the trees had been felled, one hundred and thirty ships were built; though the builders must have been as green as the wood, and as crazy as the craft, to have imagined that such a fleet could have any but the most fleeting existence. While the vessels were being got ready, it occurred to the authorities that crews would be required, and as the Romans had as yet neither ships nor sailors, a few scaffolds were erected on land, that the intended tars might try their hands at naval tactics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roman Man-of-War, from a scarce Medal.]

Matters went smoothly enough on sh.o.r.e, till the would-be seamen, having ventured out to sea, found themselves as ignorant as babies, when rocked in the cradle of the deep; and as the waves washed over them, they perceived they had learnt nothing of their new art but its driest details. With seventeen of these queer quinqueremes, each with 300 rowers, who by their misunderstandings kept up a continual but useless row, the Consul, Cn. Cornelius Scipio, sailed for Messana, when the Punic Captain Bugud, a regular Carthaginian tar, sent him flying, with half his timbers shivered, into a port of the Lipari. The crews, most of them half dead with sea sickness, scrambled as well as they could on sh.o.r.e. Their commander, Cn. Scipio, was taken prisoner, and so ridiculous had been the figure he cut, that his countrymen conferred upon him the name of Asina--or the donkey--a character that might in these days have qualified him for an appointment to a jacka.s.s frigate.

After this ludicrous defeat, the command of the Roman navy was taken by the other Consul, C. Duilius, who determined to wash out in the ocean, as well as he could, the stain thrown upon his countrymen. He felt that naval tactics were out of the question among those who were, in one sense, sailors of the first water, for they had never been on the water before; and as to rowing, he knew it to be so impracticable that he resolved to throw the oars overboard. He hit on an expedient for making a naval engagement resemble as much as possible a fight on sh.o.r.e; and by overcoming in some respect the inequalities of the waves, he put his own men on nearly the same footing with the enemy. He constructed boarding bridges, capable of holding two or three persons abreast, and these bridges being thrown on to the enemy's ships, enabled the Romans to walk into them.

The Carthaginians who were not prepared for such close quarters, and had trusted rather to the roughness of the sea, to deprive their opponents of an even chance of success, were so thoroughly taken by surprise, that they suffered their ships to be taken one after the other. C. Duilius was handsomely rewarded for his victory; he was hailed as the first naval hero that Rome had introduced, and as if the festive propensities of a sailor on sh.o.r.e had been foreseen, he was allowed the curious privilege of being accompanied home at night from banquets by an attendant with a torch--in which we see a foreshadowing of the policeman and the bull's-eye. He was further honoured by a _columna rostrata_, a sort of Nelson Column, adorned with the beaks of ships--a short stumpy looking affair, of which the museum at Rome contains an imitation from the hand of Michael Angelo,[42]--who has afforded us a fair copy of one of the columns of the Times, in which the deeds of great men were advertised.

This nautical exploit of Rome was followed up by minor successes, and L. Scipio made an attack upon Corsica, where he was opposed by a Carthaginian fleet, under the command of Hannibal Gisco, who was killed by his own men, but honourably entombed by the Romans, who n.o.bly buried their former animosity.

Carthage and Rome were mutually suffering by their hostilities, and each nation lost its thousands alternately, according to what is called the fortune of war; but which, like the fortune of the gaming-table, must end in the ruin of both sides, for the sole profit of the grim enemy.

While the forces of Rome were being diminished nearly every day, her enemies were multiplying; and that inextinguishable race, the Samnites--the increase of whose population would present a most startling series of returns--appeared to the number of upwards of 4000, who had been enlisted into the Roman navy. Their intention was to set the city on fire, but their own leader threw cold water on it before it was even lighted, by making himself an engine of communication with the Roman Government.

In Sicily the Romans were continually in motion, but they took little by their motion beyond a few small towns. At length they determined on one grand naval effort, and they prepared 330 quinqueremes, which were placed under the Consuls, L. Manlius and M. Atilius Regulus, who were probably selected as the most likely to be able to command a fleet because they had never tried. The Carthaginians went to meet them with 350 quinqueremes, in which were--according to tradition--150,000 men; an instance of overcrowding which would have qualified the commander, Hamilcar, for the captainship of a Thames steam-boat. The collision between the two fleets was as destructive as might be antic.i.p.ated.

Thirty ships of the Carthaginians went to the bottom; and, considering their cargo, we can only wonder how they remained at the top. The Romans lost comparatively little, for with them matters went on pretty swimmingly. Regulus was so elated that he sailed for Africa, and, having taken Clupea, the neighbourhood of which was cultivated like a garden, he sat down to enjoy the fruits of success. He took the pick of everything he could lay his hands upon, and he pounced upon the cattle wherever a herd was to be seen. At the end of the year his colleague, L.

Manlius, returned to Rome, with a portion of the fleet, and 27,000 prisoners--an arrangement that savours of an enormous cram--and left Regulus alone in his glory, which was destined to become his shame.

Early in the year of the city 498, Regulus, having the field to himself, went into it with great confidence. He laid siege to the town of Adis, which the Carthaginians tried to relieve; but getting among the mountains with their elephants, they were unable to turn round, and found themselves enc.u.mbered by the trunks as well as the bodies of these ponderous animals. Regulus took Tunis, and several other places, though in the course of the campaign he is said to have encountered an unexpected enemy in the form of a snake in the gra.s.s--a species of serpent one hundred and twenty feet long, which swallowed up his soldiers by hundreds--swords and all--though the reptile ran the risk of cutting its own throat by such extreme voracity.[43]

The Carthaginians were anxious for peace, and sent amba.s.sadors to the Roman camp to negotiate, but Regulus, in his proposal of terms, exceeded all reasonable limits. He pretended to act on the principle of give and take, but the giving was to be all on one side, and the taking all on the other. The Carthaginians returned no answer to these insolent demands; but it is probable their silence must soon have been construed into consent, had it not been for the valour of a Spartan of the name of Xanthippus. This individual was a mere mercenary, who put other people to death for his own living; but he was, at all events, a working man, and infused his own spirit of energy into the Carthaginian army. He personally superintended the training, not only of the men, but of the elephants, and taught the soldiers how to wield as a power those hitherto unwieldy animals. Taking a hundred under his immediate tuition, he brought them into such a state of docility, that when turned out for exercise, they formed a stud worthy of the zoologist's attentive study.

With these sagacious brutes, and a large number of troops, he went forth against Regulus, whose army amounted to 30,000 men; but the soldiers of Xanthippus fought with the courage of lions, which, backed up as it was by the firmness of the elephants, gave them a decisive victory. More than 30,000 Romans perished, if the accounts handed down to us are to be believed, and 500 were taken prisoners, though, if the same accounts are to be believed, the Roman army was only 30,000 strong; so that the 500 captives must have been supplied from some of those exclusive sources which are open to none but the historian. 2000 more are alleged to have escaped, but we must leave the reader to solve the difficulty as he can; for as two into one will not go, so 33,500 out of 30,000 will not come by any process we are acquainted with. Xanthippus, the mercenary, had made it worth his while, for he was highly paid, and received rich presents, with which, as he dreaded the envy of the n.o.bles, he thought he had better make himself absent as speedily as possible. He returned, therefore, to Sparta, to astonish the natives of his own city with the wealth he had acquired.

The Consuls of the year, Ser. Fulvius and M. Aemilius, were now despatched with the whole of the Roman fleet, amounting to about 300 ships, to Africa, where, after destroying the whole of the Carthaginian fleet, it went ash.o.r.e on the southern coast; and this fleet of 300 ships lost, according to the authorities,[44] 340 vessels. The Carthaginians, whose army on land amounted to about 18,000, managed to lose about 30,000 at sea; but an abundant population was still left for the historian to deal, or rather to cut and shuffle, with. We must confess ourselves wholly incompetent to grapple with the arithmetical problems that continually present themselves to us in the course of our researches, and we therefore postpone all attempt at a solution of the difficulty until the universal solvent shall be discovered.

The Romans and Carthaginians, instead of being overwhelmed by their own misfortunes, were in high spirits at the disasters of each other, and both parties proceeded to repair the damage done to themselves, in order to qualify them for doing further injury. At Rome the Senate ordered a new fleet to be built, which took several Carthaginian towns, and Carthage ordered a fresh army to be levied, which took nearly all the Roman vessels.

Shortly afterwards another naval force was despatched under the Consuls, Cn. Serulius Caepio and C. Semp.r.o.nius Blaesus, who had got together 260 ships, with which sundry ravages had been committed on the African coast, when the sea, with its insatiable appet.i.te, swallowed up at a few gulps the greater part of the squadron.

Rome was now thoroughly sea-sick, and determined to have nothing more to do with the water, but to wash her hands of it. She was, however, still powerful by land, and encountered the Carthaginians at Panormus, where the pro-consul, L. C. Metellus, gained a decisive victory, by turning the elephants against their owners, and fighting the latter as it were with their own weapons. This defeat led to a desire on the part of Carthage for peace, and an emba.s.sy was sent to Rome, accompanied by Regulus, who had been a prisoner five years, and who agreed to consider himself morally in p.a.w.n, pledging himself to return, if the terms proposed by Carthage should not be acceded to by his countrymen. The conduct of Regulus seems to have been dictated by a strong love of histrionic display, for he appears to have been acting a part in which he sought to make as many effective points as possible. In the first act we find him at the gates of Rome, refusing to come in, although he had left Carthage for the purpose of doing so. His wife and two children having gone to meet him, he looked at them as strangers; but this piece of dramatic effect may be accounted for as springing from various other motives than those affecting the patriot.

Having been invited to take his seat in the Senate, he at first refused, but he yielded after a considerable amount of pressing; a proof that his refusal was founded on no fixed principle. When asked for his opinion on the Carthaginian question, he spoke against the arrangement he had been sent home to further, and the n.o.ble Romans strongly urged him to stay behind, though he had pledged his honour to return, and the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the religion of the nation, devised a dodge by which Regulus might have evaded his promise. It must, however, be stated, to his credit, that he kept his word to the Carthaginians, and returned among them; but instead of being hailed as a hero, he was denounced as an impostor, and put to death in the most cruel manner. The stories told of his being corked up in a cask filled with nails and serpents, are altogether false; for, after carefully looking into the matter, we are glad to be enabled to knock the cask to pieces by the gentlest tap possible.

Rome, having refused to make peace, was compelled, in self-defence, to go to war, and ordered 200 new ships with the recklessness of the spend-thrift who, calling on his coachmaker, desired that "some more gigs" should be immediately sent home to him. The Carthaginian fleet was in the harbour of Drepana, when P. Claudius Pulcher--son of Appius the blind, and who seems to have wilfully shut his eyes to the danger he ought to have seen--determined to surprise the enemy. Every attempt to dissuade him from his rash purpose was vain, and he persevered in spite of the auspices, which were declared to be unfavourable; for the sacred chickens were completely off their feed--a fact he set at defiance, by observing that, if the birds would not eat, he would at least make them drink; and he threw them all neck and crop into the water. The fate of the chickens went to the hearts of the Roman soldiers, who became thoroughly chicken-hearted, and fought so languidly, that they allowed themselves to fall by hundreds into the hands of the enemy. The Senate recalled Claudius to Rome, where a charge of high treason was preferred against him; but a thunder-storm interrupted the proceedings, which were never resumed, for the thunder seems to have cleared the air of all the clouds impending over him. As he must have ultimately died in some way or other, and as there are no records of his having been put to death, history has returned an open verdict, which is equally adapted to the suspicion that he came to his death by his own hands, or that it was brought to him by the hands of his fellow countrymen.

The reverses of Rome by sea were a second time the cause of her giving up her naval establishments, and she sold her marine equipments to the dealers in marine stores, at a ruinous sacrifice. Carthage, therefore, became mistress of the seas; but the mistress being unable to pay the wages she owed, began borrowing money of her neighbours. Ptolemy of Egypt was applied to, but he civilly laid his hand on his heart, declaring he had nothing to lend, and kept his money--if he had any--in his pocket. In this dilemma, the command of the Carthaginians fell upon Hamilcar, surnamed Barca, or the lightning, from his being one of the fastest men of the day; and though any general, equal to the general run, might head a force with plenty of money to pay the troops, a genius was required to keep an army going, or rather to keep up a standing army, with empty pockets. He found the mercenaries in a state of insubordination for want of their customary emolument; but, having no money of his own, he made Bruttium and Locri his bankers, and gave his soldiers a general authority to draw, with their swords, for whatever they required. Taking his position on Mount Hercte, now the Monte Pelegrino, he maintained himself and his army for three years, enabling his troops to carry out the principle of spending half-a-crown out of sixpence a day--the sixpence being their own, and the half-crown being anybody else's, from whom it could be most conveniently taken. After remaining three years at Hercte, he removed to the town of Eryx, intending to tire the Romans out; but like many others who attempt to exhaust the patience of others, he found his own stock rapidly diminishing. He was drawn into an engagement, in which he lost so many of his soldiers, that he was obliged to ask for a truce to bury the dead; but the Roman general would give him no undertaking not to proceed during the funerals. A short time afterwards, when the fortune of war had changed, Hamilcar was asked to give a similar permission, and, by allowing the burials to proceed, he has raised a monument to his own magnanimity.

The Romans, who were as fickle on the subject of a fleet as the element to which it was destined, resolved a third time to have a naval force; but ships were out of the question, when raising the wind was quite impossible. The state being without funds, appealed to the merchants, who consented to sink a large sum in an entirely new navy, with the understanding that if the tide of fortune should turn in their favour, they were to receive their money back again. The Romans had by this time become better sailors than before, while the Carthaginian tars had greatly deteriorated for want of practice. The ships of the latter were so heavily laden with corn that they could not proceed like chaff before the wind; and the sailors, enc.u.mbered by the cargo, found themselves going continually against the grain in attempting to work the vessels.

The Romans obtained an easy victory, but it could not have been so easy to dispose of its results; for, after killing 14,000 men, they found themselves still saddled with 34,000 prisoners. A peace was concluded; one of the conditions being, that Carthage should pay to Rome 200 talents by instalments extending over twenty years--an arrangement equivalent to the discharge of a liability at the rate of one shilling per annum in the pound, and the extinction of the whole debt by simply paying the interest.