As the Greek was individually, so were the Greeks in a body, wherever they established themselves, in the fertile plains and undulating hills of Asia Minor, in the wild mountains and isolated valleys of their own Greece, and in that greater Hellas with which this story has been concerned. They were always at odds with each other, and they rarely fought a foreign foe without seeing the faces of their born countrymen in the ranks that opposed them; they were alike incapable of submitting without a murmur to the rule of a single master, and of governing themselves as one whole by the orderly judgment of the many. Wherever they appeared they excited admiration and they often inspired terror; wherever they dwelt, even for a brief term of years, they left behind them works of lasting beauty; but whereas, as artists, as poets, and as philosophers, they created a standard that has made rivalry impossible and imitation ridiculous, their government has left no trace in the lands they once inhabited, and their laws have had less influence upon the subsequent law-givers of mankind than those of the Chinese or the Aztecs. In their arts and in their literature they worked for all time; in their government they were opportunists and intriguers, when they were not visionaries, and the type of their race having disappeared from the world, the conditions under which it lived are beyond the comprehension of other civilized peoples. ‘These Greeks,’ said the Roman, ‘can do everything to perfection, yet they are the barbers and we are the praetors.’ The slight foundation of truth contained in the paradox explains the failure of the Greek race to reach that height of domination to which many other races have attained. When we see what they did for themselves we cannot but wish that they might have obtained the power to do as much for others, that they might have outnumbered and outfought the Romans, spreading over Italy, over Europe, over Asia, and Africa as the Romans did. The vast monuments of Rome would have been as perfect in beauty as they are stupendous in dimensions; four-fifths or nine-tenths of the best Greek literature would not have perished utterly, or have been preserved in miserable fragments; and the enlightenment of an Augustan age might not, perhaps, have been closely followed by the brutal horrors of a Nero’s reign.
But these are idle dreams. The Greeks filled the south with their monuments and overspread it with their civilization during more than four centuries, and when the end of their story came they were no nearer to extinction as a people than the Poles were when their kingdom was divided among the nations of Europe. They simply ceased to have any political existence and became, with all they had, with their resources undiminished, their wealth unspent, their energies still all alive with them, the possession, body and soul, of a race that had mastered the only art they could ever learn, the art of governing men; and thereafter, recognizing once and for always their position as a part of their conquerors’ property, they worked for him and for Roman money as they had once laboured for glory and for themselves; and in the slow decadence of genius in captivity, their supreme gifts were weakened by degrees, then scattered, and then lost. Henceforth the history of the south becomes for more than half a thousand years the story of the Romans, from the days of Appius Claudius who took Messina till after the times of Christian Constantine.
The Romans
THE FIRST PUNIC war, which was brought on by the appeal of the Mamertines to Rome, and lasted twenty-two years, was the turning-point in Roman history and the beginning of Rome’s empire. The first Punic war means the conquest of Sicily, and since Rome held Messina and was in alliance with Syracuse, the struggle took place chiefly in the western and southern part of the island. It is no easy matter to sketch briefly a contest in which the winner lost seven hundred ships and an untold number of men; it is impossible to condense into a few pages anything more than the shortest possible account of the principal battles fought, and this I shall endeavour to do with as much clearness as the difficult nature of the subject admits, henceforth calling places by their Latin names or by their modern ones.
The war opened slowly. For more than two hundred years Rome and Carthage had maintained towards one another an attitude of distrust without hostility, and when the two great powers were at last in open opposition for the possession of Sicily, they fenced and manoeuvred for some time, as if testing their relative strength. Rome took Messina at the start, and having got the valuable alliance of Hiero, proceeded to subjugate the centre of Sicily, west of the little Syracusan kingdom. Carthage held Agrigentum as an outpost on the southern coast, Panormus was the centre of her strength, and the strong position she maintained at Lilybaeum was her base of supplies from Africa. In the smaller cities inland which were under her control there were few Carthaginians.
The Romans proceeded to attack Agrigentum, and during a siege that lasted seven months, in the year 262 B.C., they would have been themselves cut off and starved, but for the timely supplies sent them by Hiero. The siege ended with a great battle in the hollow land west of the city and above Porto Empedocle. After long and stubborn fighting, the Romans succeeded in terrifying the enemy’s elephants, as in the battle against Pyrrhus at Beneventum, and the whole Carthaginian army was soon in confusion, and was mercilessly cut to pieces. In the night that followed, the remainder of the Carthaginians crept out of the city, crossed the besieger’s trenches by filling a short extent of them with sacks stuffed with husks, and succeeded in escaping. In the morning the Romans occupied and plundered the city without destroying it, as it was a valuable position. They sold twenty-five thousand of the inhabitants as slaves, and in that connexion it may be noticed that the vast number of captives who suffered this fate in successive wars formed, in time, that race of slaves which long afterwards rose in power against Rome.
Carthage might now have proposed a peace which the Romans would have accepted, had she not been the greatest sea power of the age. She preferred to continue the struggle, and Rome understood at once that without a fleet it would be impossible to get possession of western Sicily and hold it. During the year 261 B.C., the Romans accordingly equipped a number of ships, no less than a hundred and twenty, and put to sea. The first aim of the expedition was to seize Lipari, in order to have a naval station in the neighbourhood of Panormus. The squadron of seventeen Roman vessels engaged in this undertaking surrendered to the Carthaginian fleet without striking a blow, but soon afterwards an engagement took place on the Sicilian coast in which Carthage lost a larger number. From first to last, and in spite of her great inferiority in shipbuilding and seamanship, Rome only lost one naval battle during the whole war, at Drepanum. After the first engagement, the Romans were quick to see that their enemies were superior in skill and rapidity, and they retorted by fitting all their own vessels with strong grappling irons, an invention which turned every naval engagement into a hand-to‑hand fight, in which the Romans generally were sure of success. The first time these were used was in the same year, at Milazzo, under Caius Duilius, who took or destroyed fifty Carthaginian vessels, of which the beaks were taken to Rome and set up as a trophy on the famous ‘columna rostrata’ in the Forum; and it was decreed that ever afterwards, when Duilius went home from any feast by night, he should be accompanied by torch-bearers and musicians.
The Romans fought with varying fortune on the island, while their fleet attacked Sardinia; and there one of the many Carthaginian generals who bore the name of Hannibal met them and was defeated, and suffered for his defeat on the cross. But in Sicily the Carthaginians strengthened themselves by fortifying the ‘sickle’ of Drepanum, and Trapani, and bringing down thither a number of the inhabitants of Mount Eryx; and Drepanum and Lilybaeum each defended the other, so that the difficulty of seizing either was very great. These things occupied two years. Then at last the Romans made their first attack upon Panormus, but could not take it, and their army marched up inland and besieged a strong place called Mytistratum, on one side of which was an ascent so steep that it was almost a cliff, and seemed to need no defence. But when the siege did not advance, a devoted man, M. Calpurnius Flamma, climbed the rugged approach with four hundred men, all sworn to d
ie, in order that while they drew the defenders to that side, the Romans might take the place by the other; and so it happened, and they all died like men, and the Romans won the town.
At this time the only real base of operations upon which the Romans could rely was Agrigentum, and the necessity impressed itself more and more upon them of getting possession of the great seaports in the west, an object which could only be attained by means of a powerful fleet. This they did not as yet possess, though they obtained a naval advantage in 257 B.C., when they sank or captured eighteen Carthaginian ships off Lipari. They had, however, an ample number of transports, and since the Carthaginians continually made forays upon the Italian coast, it seemed practicable to retaliate by sending an army to Africa. To this end great preparations were made, and in the year 256 B.C., three hundred and thirty Roman ships, many of which must have been very lately built, set sail for Africa with a hundred and forty thousand men. This great expedition was met by an even larger Carthaginian force near the headland of Ecnomus, now Licata, on the south coast of Sicily. As they came in sight of each other, the two fleets formed in line of battle: the Carthaginians divided their vessels into three squadrons, which appear to have moved forward simultaneously; the Romans advanced in an entirely different order, which was then quite new in naval tactics, the attack being led by the two Roman admirals, whose squadrons followed them in more and more extended order, so that the admirals’ ships united to form the point of a wedge, behind which another squadron brought up the transports, while a fourth protected the rear. The plan of the Carthaginians was to let their centre give way before the Roman wedge, which was then to be caught and destroyed by the Carthaginian wings. The result was disastrous to the Carthaginian fleet; the Roman centre was completely victorious at the first onslaught, and when attacked by the Carthaginian wings, the latter were crushed by the Romans’s second squadron. Carthage lost in this engagement ninety-four ships, and made overtures for peace, which were refused, however, and the Romans sailed on unhindered to Africa.
This was the celebrated expedition under Regulus, which, after many signal successes, was destined to total defeat in the year 255 B.C. The whole Roman force, excepting two thousand men, was destroyed, and when Rome sent another fleet to rescue the remnant, it also perished in a storm upon the Sicilian coast, between Camarina and Pachynus. Taking quick advantage of her enemy’s disaster, Carthage now recaptured Agrigentum and several other points of minor importance. Defeat and disaster, instead of disheartening the Romans, roused them to enormous efforts, and in the incredibly short space of three months two hundred and twenty new ships were built and sent to sea.
In 254 B.C. the Romans took Drepanum, but failed to hold it long, and at once turned their whole strength against Panormus, which they blockaded by land and sea. At that time the harbour occupied a part of the present city, the sea running much further inland than it now does, so that the neck connecting the height now called Monte Pellegrino with the land was far narrower than at present. While the Romans beleaguered the city, the Carthaginian general held the promontory and the isthmus, and was supported by his fleet, which was able to approach the neck from the other side. The Romans made no serious effort to dislodge him but turned their whole attention to the city, which they before long starved to surrender. They now controlled the three best harbours of the island, for Panormus and Messina were theirs, while their alliance with Hiero placed Syracuse at their disposal. Nevertheless, Carthage still held Monte Pellegrino with a small force, and apparently unmolested. In 253 B.C., after a second attempt upon Africa, the Romans lost another large fleet in a storm. After this, they for a time made no further effort to establish their superiority by sea, but in the following year, with only sixty transports, which could not be classed as war-ships, they seized and held the long-coveted island of Lipari.
The turning-point of the first Punic war came in the following year, when the Romans defeated the whole Carthaginian force in a great battle before Panormus. The Carthaginians on Monte Pellegrino had received large reënforcements from Africa, and at last attempted to recapture the city. The Romans awaited their approach under the walls and only sent out a small detachment to harass the enemy’s flank. When the Carthaginian elephants were at close quarters, the Romans adopted their usual tactics, maddening the beasts with darts and arrows until the whole line was thrown into confusion. The main body of the Roman army, which had been standing under arms, then charged, and the victory was immediate and complete. The elephants adorned the triumph of Metellus in Rome, and the Romans were now masters of the greater part of Sicily. The Carthaginians sued for peace, and hoping to obtain it on good terms sent Regulus, whom they had held four years a prisoner, to intercede for them in the Senate. They had misjudged the man. Instead of following their instructions, and fully aware of the fate that awaited him, he urged the Romans to grant no peace at any price. He spoke, he took leave of his family and of his friends, and he calmly returned to die a death of unimagined torture.
It now seemed certain that if Lilybaeum could be taken, the war would be at an end, and in the following year, 250 B.C., a powerful fleet was sent out for that purpose. The Romans proceeded to a regular siege, which was destined to be long and tedious. By the most skilful seamanship, and thorough knowledge of wind and water, a Carthaginian leader entered the harbour of Lilybaeum with fifty war-ships, in the face of the Roman fleet of two hundred sail, and having supplied the city with provisions, sailed out again with the same success, and anchored further north in Drepanum, thus strengthening the already numerous fleet that occupied that port. Immediately afterwards, a certain Carthaginian seaman, surnamed the Rhodian, ran the blockade again and again with a single vessel, establishing a regular communication between Carthage and the beleaguered city. The superiority of the Carthaginian vessels was so great that before long the blockade became utterly derisory, and the Romans attempted to close the entrance of the harbour by a dam. Before it was half finished a first-rate Carthaginian ship ran aground upon the work. The Romans promptly captured it, and turning their prize to advantage soon caught the Rhodian blockade runner.
But they were not destined to immediate success, for before long a southwesterly gale, which must have blown with the force of a hurricane, wrecked their siege engines, which were promptly fire by the Lilybaeians. The Romans now attempted to starve the city to submission, being themselves supplied with provisions by Hiero. In 249 B.C., a Roman army safely reached Lilybaeum by land from the interior, and the general who now took command made an attempt upon Drepanum by sea; it ended in the only real defeat which the Romans suffered in any naval engagement during the war. The disaster was due to the Roman ships being so crowded together that they could not use their grappling irons. In this year misfortune pursued the Romans, and they lost another large fleet during a gale on the south coast, while the Carthaginian squadron that was observing them succeeded in running under the lee to the eastward. The attempt upon Drepanum had failed, and the Roman losses were enormous, yet Eryx was taken and held, and the position is a commanding one. Once more the Romans retired temporarily from the sea, with the result that the enemy gained new courage to face them on land. At this time appears on the Carthaginian side a man of genius, Hamilcar, surnamed Barca, the ‘lightning.’ He once more seized Monte Pellegrino, which the Carthaginians had abandoned, and retrieving the ill-fortune of his predecessors he kept the Romans at bay during the greater part of six years. It was not until 243 B.C. that Rome called upon her citizens to build ships at their private expense, promising them full indemnity in case of ultimate success. The rich citizens responded magnificently to the call made upon them, and in 242 B.C. two hundred vessels, built on the model of the captured blockade runners, suddenly appeared before Lilybaeum, to the great surprise of the enemy. In greatest haste, Carthage sent forth the last fleet she was able to raise, for her resources had been severely taxed, and she appears at that time to have been grappling with difficulties at home. The engagement which fo
llowed, and which was fought about the islands off Drepanum, resulted in the most overwhelming defeat. Fifty Carthaginian ships were sunk, seventy were captured with all hands on board, and the victors sailed into the harbour of Lilybaeum with no less than ten thousand prisoners.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1420