The first Punic war was over, and the Romans remained in undisputed possession of Sicily, with the exception of the small kingdom they left to Hiero, their firm ally. Carthage was obliged, by the terms of the peace, to pay the sum of three thousand two hundred talents, equivalent to nearly eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in the space of ten years; and besides Sicily, all the islands between Sicily and Italy were to be abandoned to the Romans. The latter interpreted the clause as including Sardinia, and took possession of it within a few years.
The south had peace. Wise in all his ways, Hiero returned as far as he could to the neutrality which he had always wished to observe, and while he was satisfied to serve Rome and held his kingdom at her pleasure, he was careful to avoid giving offence to Carthage. He strengthened the friendships he had formed with Egypt and with Rhodes. When a fearful earthquake in the latter place destroyed a great part of the capital and overthrew the famous Colossus, he sent the Rhodians a hundred talents, which are nearly twenty-five thousand pounds, in money, and many costly vessels for the temples, and engines for building, and he removed the export duties on cornº sent from Syracuse to Rhodes. Moreover he set up two statues in the market-place there. Though Athenaeus gives no date for the building of the great ship, the Alexandrian already described, it must have been constructed during the twenty-four years’ peace which followed the first Punic war. Among the presents which Ptolemy sent to Hiero in return was the papyrus, which the latter planted on the banks of the river Anapus, and though it is extinct in Egypt, and is not found growing naturally in any other part of the world, the river banks are full of it to this day, for two or three miles, after more than two thousand years.
If Syracuse were not one of the most beautiful places in the world, that one sight should be enough to take many a scholar there to‑day. The stream is deep and swift, swift and quite silent, running through the low land where so many thousands of brave men have perished. Clear as crystal it is, and ever cool, so that it is good to drink of it even in the dog days; and the papyrus grows as thick beside it as canes in the southern brake, •nine and ten feet high, gracefully straight, but often drooping till the tufts of silky green wet their tiny gold-green blossoms in the gliding water; green from root to crown, the delicate stem, as thick as a man’s wrist at the ground, tapers finely to the plume that is a cloud of tangled curves. The stream is often barely ten feet wide, and nowhere more than twenty till it widens to a circle in the spring of Kyane, •five fathoms deep, and clear as glass, the source of the lower branch. The shade is deep and soft, and from the bottom of the thick river grass reflects a darker green through the smooth surface. Shadowy dragon-flies, black, and amaranth, and light sky blue, dart in and out among the stems, or hover over the velvet-like weed that floats in the shade under the bank. It is a place where one feels that river gods and nymphs are alive forever in the truth of poetry, which is itself that fourth dimension in our understanding wherein all is possible, and all that is possible is beautiful, and all that has beauty is true.
On the desolate southeast coast of Malta, looking toward the molten enamel of the southern sea, white-hot under the pitiless sun, out of sight of humanity, there are certain ruins of Phoenician temples, the places of worship of Ashtaroth, or of Moloch, or of Baal. Huge slabs of rock, split off from the mountain, and neither carved nor plainly hewn, are thrust upright into the stony soil, side by side, for walls, in strange curves and rough half circles, like Druid stones, with great blocks set here and there upon uncouth pedestals, and masses of rock that figure nameless powers of nature; and there are small chambers, within which two persons can hardly stand, each having something like an altar, and each one closed by a door of stone to make a secret place. Under the blazing sky they are furnaces within furnaces, desolations within desolations, that were long ago abominable with the blood of human victims; and they reeked with the burning of human flesh that sent up yellow smoke in the cloudless glare of noon, and the stones echoed a wild litany of shrieks, while the dark-faced priests looked gravely on and gathered back their white robes from the flames and brushed the sparks from their black beards. There are also a few places like these in Sicily, lonely and full of a horror, as though they were cursed.
That is what the Phoenicians left behind them in the lands that were theirs, the Phoenician Carthaginians, whose brazen god, set up in Carthage, grasped little children in his hot brass hands by a hidden machinery concealed within, and dropped them one by one into the raging fire; the god to whom believers sacrificed their first-born, the god to whom the boy Hannibal swore that he would hate the Romans while he lived.
One who leaves those hideous ruins behind him, and comes to Syracuse, may well feel that he has returned to a human world where he can breathe again, where he can linger on the steps of the vast theatre and almost hear the lovely strains of the Alcestis, the voice of Admetus, and the Chorus, and the cheerful laugh of Hercules, coming up from the wide stage; where he may muse away thoughtful hours in the enchanted gardens of the Latomie, recalling indeed how the unhappy Athenians languished and died there in fearful captivity, but remembering how many were set free because the magic of Greek verse was familiar to their lips, and not forgetting the provocation, when friend and foe were of the same race, and the grasping came against the peaceful; where he may float upon the silent stream in the papyrus shade, and read in a vision the verse and the philosophy, the history and the wisdom, all written down age after age on the wafer-thin slips of fibre so skilfully fastened each to each in pages and scrolls, and yet all but a small part of what Greece left the world.
If Hiero could have made history, he would have made war impossible and peace beautiful. All he could do, he did, and while he lived he made a garden, a temple, and an academy of his small kingdom, and of Syracuse. Few years of absolute peace were given him — in all not a quarter of a century — for Rome was young, and Carthage was not beyond her great prime, and the two powers were like vast clouds in the intervals of a tempest, that lower and threaten each other from their mountain ranges, and are destined to meet in storm and lightning before the air can clear.
Being deprived of her island colonies and of her supremacy in the Mediterranean, Carthage turned in a new direction in order to retrieve her fortunes and replace her loss. Hamilcar Barca had not lost the confidence of his fellow-citizens; he had fought a brave fight and had withstood the growing force of Rome as long as it had been humanly possible. His country acknowledged his valour and received him with mourning, but not without honour. As soon as the injuries she had suffered during a war of twenty-two years’ duration could be in part repaired, she intrusted him with a fleet and an army wherewith to make new conquests. Hamilcar set forth and conquered the Spanish seacoast, colonizing as he went, and fighting his way on from the Greek settlements in the Gulf of Lyons down the coast and westward towards the Pillars of Hercules, the forerunner by a thousand years of the great Semitic invasion.
Years passed, and still he fought, and still he won new lands, till Carthage had a broad possession in Europe, whence it was possible, though not easy, to invade Italy from the north. Dying at last, Hamilcar left in his son a greater general and a more daring spirit than himself. For generations the great house of the Barcides had given leaders to the Carthaginian army; some had died the death of soldiers in the field, some had come home in glory and laden with spoil, and more than one had returned to expiate defeat upon the cross. Neither rank nor wealth nor a descent from heroes could protect the unfortunate from the wrath of a people whose altars ran with human blood, and who could throw their first-born to the flames as burnt sacrifices to Moloch. In Hannibal were concentrated at once the gifts of his own soldierly race and the spirit of the Carthaginian people. It was as if, for the final struggle now at hand, the whole nation had distilled its genius and its energies to their essence in one man. From the day when he set forth, at the age of twenty-six years, till the final destruction of his army at Zama, Hannibal was the soul and life of hi
s country; to his enemies his name meant all that Carthage was; to his countrymen it stood for all they hoped and looked to win in future years.
Hiero was in extreme old age when the war broke out again. We may fairly suppose with Holm that his diplomatic spirit was not altogether displeased by the news. Before all things he was a Syracusan and a patriot, and while he loved peace and used it for his country’s good, as few have done, he must have looked with apprehension upon the vast predominance of Rome. On the other hand, his son Gelon, while devotedly attached to his father, differed with him altogether in his views of the situation, and would gladly have gone over to the Carthaginian side. But Hiero, though he probably wished that Rome might be held in check by an adversary of nearly equal strength, lest Syracuse should lose its independence altogether, was wise enough to see that Rome meant civilization, of a kind, whereas Carthage carried with her everywhere a strange mixture of commercial methods which were altogether selfish and injurious to others, and of religious institutions which were as terrible as they were barbarous. The king’s old age must have been embittered by his foreknowledge of what was sure to happen after his death, and he appears to have done all in his power to give stability to the position he had given his kingdom. He could not be wholly neutral, any more than he could be at heart wholly pleased by Rome’s success.
In the year 219 B.C. Hannibal set forth. The little Greek colony of Saguntum, now Murviedro, on the Spanish coast, had allied itself with the Romans, and Hannibal’s first aggressive act was to take it by siege, which was of course a violation of the peace of 242 B.C. Rome at once sent an embassy to Carthage to demand satisfaction; the spokesman gathered his cloak in his hands like a sack and held it up to the assembled council, saying, that he brought peace or war, as those who heard him might choose. They answered that the choice should be his, not theirs. He shook out the folds of his cloak before him and bade them take war, since they would have him choose, — war only, war at once, and war to the death.
It is not within the province of the story of the south to tell how Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees and marched along the southern coast of France, nor how he effected the passage of the Rhone, and lost more than half his army before he reached the Italian side of the Alps. Once in Italy, the natives of the north joined him without hesitation, and he drove the Romans southwards step by step, defeating them again and again from the river Ticinus down to southern Cannae. While he made his famous triumphal progress overland, the Romans still held Sicily and the islands, and it is amazing that while suffering such defeats on the one hand they should have been able to drive a Carthaginian fleet from the Sicilian shore on the other. But Hiero had received notice that the attempt was to be made, and every headland of the west was guarded, while the small Roman fleet that was in Lilybaeum was provisioned for ten days and held in readiness to sail at any moment. On a fair moonlit night the Carthaginian ships stood in towards the shore, but their white sails betrayed them; from cape to cape the beacon signals shot up their flames, and in an hour the Roman fleet was under way. When day broke the battle began, and the Carthaginians were driven to flight, after losing seven of their vessels. Before the news of the victory had travelled far, a Roman consul arrived in Messina on his way to the rescue and was met by old King Hiero, with all his ships of war and with every expression of gladness and promise of help. He was anxious to impress upon the Romans from the first that he meant to stand by them as he had done long ago. But when it was known that Lilybaeum was already safe, the consul sailed across southward and fell upon Malta, where he captured a Carthaginian force of two thousand men, whom he immediately sold as slaves in Sicily. It had been the first intention of Rome that he should attack Carthage from Lilybaeum; but Hannibal had by this time crossed the Alps, and the consul was ordered to sail round the east coast of Italy as far as Ariminum, now Rimini, to land there and march against Hannibal’s troops. Even in the next year, 217 B.C., when Rome was losing the disastrous battle of Thrasimene and was forced to elect a dictator, a hundred and twenty ships were sent to harry the African coast. Hiero did more to help the Romans in the second Punic war than is commonly remembered. In the same year he sent five hundred Cretans and a thousand light-armed infantry, and in 216 B.C. a Syracusan fleet arrived at Ostia with ambassadors, and seventy-five thousand bushels of wheat, fifty thousand of barley, a thousand slingers and archers, and a golden statue of Victory weighing three hundred and twenty pounds. But the present was not of good augury, for on the second day of August, in the same year, the Roman general Varro lost seventy thousand men in the almost incredible defeat at Cannae, far to southward in Apulia, where the swift and shallow river Aufidus, the Ofanto of our times, sweeps through the Pezza di Sangue, which is the ‘field of blood’ to this day, and where the rivulet still flows which Hannibal crossed on a causeway of corpses.
Then a Carthaginian fleet sailed up and ravaged the coast of Hiero’s dominion, and he appealed for help in vain, for the Carthaginian ships were also threatening Lilybaeum in the west; but Rome could do nothing, neither for him nor for her own praetor in Sicily, and at the last it was Hiero, the ever willing, who sent help instead of receiving it. But his days were numbered. His son Gelon died very suddenly, and he himself not long afterwards, in the year 215 B.C., a very old man, deeply mourned by his people.
While Rome was slowly gathering strength after her cruel loss, and while Hannibal idled away golden hours in the soft Capuan plain, Hiero’s grandson, Hieronymus, a spoiled boy of fifteen years, began to reign at Syracuse, at first under the guidance of fifteen guardians whom Hiero had appointed in his will, but soon alone, through the intrigues of court favourites who hoped to attain their ends by declaring him of age. Soon the boy began to array himself in purple and to wear a crown, and went about with a life-guard in the true tyrant fashion, and his boyish displeasure turned suddenly to cruelty at the least provocation. So the courtiers conspired to kill him, but he was warned of his danger, and tortured one of the courtiers to betray the rest; who, being very strong and very cunning, bore much before he would speak, and then accused the only loyal man in the palace, who was not in the conspiracy and was promptly put to death, for he was staunch to the Romans, and the king hated him.
This being done, Hieronymus turned to the Carthaginians and offered his alliance, promising that he would help them to conquer Italy, if they would promise him all Sicily in return for his help; and Carthage agreed to this, as she would have agreed to any terms, without the least intention of carrying them out. So Hieronymus began to make war upon the Roman possessions in Sicily, not dreaming that the real conspirators were his advisors, who had sworn to make Sicily once more a republic; and the revolution broke out at Leontini. There, as the king rode through a narrow street towards the market-place, he was treacherously separated from his life-guards by one of themselves, and the conspirators fell upon him and slew him. But when they had done the deed, some proclaimed the republic and others took the crown and the blood-stained mantle from the boy-king’s dead body, and galloped to Syracuse, and rode through the quarter of Tyche and through Achradina, showing these things to the people, who rejoiced greatly. And the people went up to the temple of the Olympieum and armed themselves with all the splendid weapons, both Gallic and Illyrian, which the Romans had sent as presents to King Hiero, praying the Olympian Zeus to bless their swords, that they might fight for their freedom, their country, and their gods. On that same day they got possession of a part of the island of Ortygia, and on the next morning they summoned the governor, who was the young king’s uncle by marriage, to surrender and acknowledge the republic, and he agreed.
On the day after that, he solemnly gave up to the people the keys of the palace and of the treasure house, and the people chose generals as of old, most of whom had been among the conspirators; but the governor himself received as many votes as any of the rest. He therefore planned to make himself master, but was betrayed, and the generals murdered him without delay. Then suddenly the city was in
confusion, for he had been popular because he had spoken well and had given up the keys at once; and they called upon the man who betrayed him to tell all he knew. But this fellow accused Harmonia, the sister of the dead king, and another false witness appeared and accused all the women of the royal house; and the people rose tumultuously to slay them. Two were murdered at once, but the third, who was Heraclea, fled with several young daughters into the little temple of the palace; and first she begged for her life, but seeing that she was to die, she piteously pled for her daughters. They slew her by the altar, but the maidens were swift of foot and ran from the murders for their lives, and wounded they still fled on, through the courts of the palace, shrieking, till at last the people hunted them to corners, one after the other, as dogs hunt weak and wounded animals, and they died.
After this, the people chose new generals, and the mercenary soldiers who were there forced them to choose two Carthaginian officers; yet suddenly the old attachment to Rome made itself felt, and messages were sent to the Roman general in Sicily, to undo what Hieronymus had done and ask a renewal of the alliance. But Rome had already seen that although Hannibal could not conquer alone, he might be victorious with the help of Syracuse; and while the people hesitated and quarrelled among themselves, a Roman fleet of a hundred sail was already in sight off Megara, which is Agosta, under one of Rome’s greatest generals, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. He was of that great Claudian house that gave Rome more soldiers of genius than any other, and from which sprang all the Claudian Caesars; he had fought in the first Punic war, and in Gaul he had slain with his own hand Vindomar the king, and had brought home the spoils to the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, a feat accomplished three times only, — by Romulus, by Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and by himself.
But no sooner was Marcellus in sight than the Carthaginian fleet appeared from the opposite direction, and as the rival forces faced each other on the sea, so within Syracuse the opposite factions quarrelled, manoeuvred, intrigued, and betrayed each other. The Carthaginian officers who had been elected generals whispered that there was a plot to betray the city to the Romans; but as the people armed themselves to go and defend the walls, a man who had their respect rose up and spoke to them, and convinced them that whereas their alliance with one party or the other was a matter of choice, there could be no doubt as to which friendship had proved to be of the most value in the past, since the city had been far more prosperous under Hiero than under his grandson, Hieronymus. The people were inclined to accept this view, and agreed to a peace with Rome, which was immediately broken when one of the generals, being sent with four thousand men to strengthen the garrison of Leontini, crossed the border into the Roman possessions on his own responsibility, and proceeded to plunder the country. The Romans now defended themselves and demanded satisfaction of Syracuse, but the Syracusans answered them, saying that they could not hold themselves responsible for what was done in Leontini. By way of retort Marcellus immediately took that city, which had indeed declared itself independent of Syracuse. In the capital the disturbances continued, and while the Romans endeavoured to bring the government to reason, it became more and more evident that there was indeed no government at all with which to treat. Marcellus sent ambassadors at last to the gate with his ultimatum, but they were not admitted, and received a scornful message from the walls. They might come back, they were told, when those who sent them were masters of Syracuse.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1421