The rest of Italy was associated with Rome by alliance, and consisted of treaty states (civitates foederatae), whose inhabitants were aliens and allies (peregrini and socii) and not Roman citizens. Each city or state was bound to Rome by a separate treaty, but while many had only the ius peregrinum, others formed a special class of allies with peculiar privileges called the ius Latinum. These allied Latins, who represent the creation of a new Latium after the destruction of the old Latin League, fall into three classes: (a) a few original federal colonies of the Latin League, namely, Signia, Norba, Ardea, Circeii, Nepete, Sutrium and Setia; (b) Latin colonies founded after the Latin War between 338 and 268 and formed partly by Roman colonists who surrendered their citizenship; (c) Latin colonies planted after 268 with restricted ius migrandi (see note 24 above), such as Firmum, Aesernia or Brundisium. All these Latin colonies had complete internal government. They were bound to Rome, not to one another, but this early mutual segregation must gradually have broken down. With Rome they had rights of conubium and commercium, and any of their citizens on migrating to Rome could obtain Roman citizenship, although after 266 he had to leave a son behind in the colony; further, a Latin visiting Rome could vote in an especially allotted tribe. Though Latin colonies had to raise and pay their quota of troops, they did this on their own authority. The number of colonists, which varied in different colonies, was large, varying from 2,500 to 6,000. It was these fortresses, linked closely with the road system, that held Italy together. They guarded southern Etruria and the Adriatic coast and formed an iron ring around the Samnites.
The remainder of Rome’s allies (civitates liberae) were bound to her by treaties, which contained varying conditions; many were bilateral (foedera aequa) but some were unilateral. Like the Latin colonies, these allies had to supply military or naval contingents, which were kept distinct from the citizen troops. The number to be supplied by each state was fixed, but normally it would not be necessary to call up the whole contingent.26 The majority of the allies were free from direct Roman supervision, although Tarentum had to maintain a Roman garrison. They had full independence in civil and ordinary internal affairs, though they tended to adapt their institutions to the Roman model and to refer their disputes to Roman arbitration. Some may have had the right to coin money, but apart from purely local coinage, they soon ceased to use this right. Their citizens were probably limited in the exercise of the rights of commercium and conubium both with Roman citizens and with other allies. In this respect their status may have varied individually in accordance with their previous history: voluntary alliance and alliance imposed by conquest would produce different privileges. Indeed, the units with which the Romans made treaties varied. Their policy was to choose the smallest existing group, either the city as in Etruria and Magna Graecia, or the tribe as among the hills of central Italy. Where an ethnic group, such as the Samnites, appeared dangerous, it was cut down to the minimum by separate alliances with the outlying members; further, it was watched by Latin colonies. Rome ever followed the policy of ‘divide and rule’, and when she had made her divisions she tended to treat each section according to its degree of civilization. Etruria, which was alien alike in language and religion, was not assimilated till after the Social War, while the more cognate Sabines were soon welcomed into Roman citizenship. But ‘divide and rule’ is only a half-truth. By this policy Rome had won the hegemony of Italy; she retained her position only because she welded the divisions into a higher unity.
Such, in brief, was the Roman confederation, ranging from Roman colonies and municipalities of full citizens through municipalities of half-citizens to the allies of the Latin name and other allies of varying privilege. The claims that Rome made on Italy were small compared with the advantages she bestowed, but she did demand some surrender of independent sovereignty and the offering of men and money. Those who received the Roman franchise merely merged their interests with a wider loyalty; of the allies some officially retained their independence, though others surrendered all individual foreign policy. In fact, however, as Rome was so much more powerful than her separate allies, her will was paramount, and she even interfered on occasion with the internal affairs of cities. The main burden imposed by Rome was military service. Both citizens and allies had to supply troops; the former provided a little under half the total force. The allied troops were kept distinct from the Roman citizens, but came under Roman command.
As in military service, so in taxation the citizens and allies were organized separately. All Roman citizens had to pay a direct capital tax according to their capacity; at first this was levied on real property alone, but after 312 the whole personal estate of the taxpayer was included. This tax (tributum) however, was not permanent. It was only levied for military purposes in time of need, and taxpayers might later be reimbursed by the Treasury if it could afford it. The allies, on the other hand, were free from all direct taxation, although any who had settled on Roman state land naturally paid a regular rent (vectigal). Finally, citizens and allies alike were subject to a tariff in the form of customs duties (portoria).
But Rome’s gifts to Italy easily outweighed her impositions. The greatest of these was the pax Romana. Peace was substituted for war as the normal condition. Foreign invaders, except only Hannibal, were held at arm’s length, the coasts were protected by a line of Roman colonies, neighbouring cities could no longer fly at each other’s throats, and party strife within each city was quelled. Rome, who had won her hegemony at the point of the sword, now assumed the roles of judge and policeman. By skilfully grading the status of the various members of the body politic, she avoided the risk that the Italians might develop a sense of unity among themselves as a subject people under the heel of a common mistress. Instead she trained them all to look to her away from one another, and thus she obtained law and order throughout the peninsula as well as the loyal co-operation of its peoples. Rome was the head of a confederacy, not primarily a dominating military power. The pax Romana also fostered the growth of economic life. Except under the Etruscans and
MAP II
among the Greek towns of the south, commerce had been somewhat restricted. Now, protected by Roman law, it could spread throughout Italy along the Roman roads which began to link up the peninsula. The Viae Appia, Latina, Salaria, Flaminia, Clodia and Aurelia were the real arteries of the economic life of Italy, which was further united when Roman coinage began to oust local currencies. Other public works beside roads, such as bridges, aqueducts and drains benefited Italy. The roads also helped to diffuse Roman culture. The Romans did not impose their civilization on Italy, but just as they themselves succumbed to Greek cultural influences from southern Italy, so their own civilization now penetrated slowly throughout Italy. Local languages, customs and cults gradually gave place to a common culture based on the Latin tongue and Roman law, and very slowly but surely the various races of Italy became a nation.
The creation of a confederacy which gave the whole of Italy some kind of political, economic and social unity was a landmark in the political history of the ancient world. It was not an enlarged commonwealth like Sparta with her perioikoi, nor a confederation of separate sovereign states such as the Panhellenic League of Corinth founded by Philip II and upheld by Alexander; it was not a federal state of the type created by a king, as Thessaly, or a league that grew out of a cantonal commune, as the Aetolian League, or a league of cities, as the Achaean; nor was it the imperial rule of a city-state over subject communities, as the Athenian land-empire of Pericles. It was a new creation which blended many of these principles into a unique confederacy. By about 260 BC it extended for some 52,000 square miles, of which about 10,000 consisted of Roman territory; of the remaining 42,000 square miles of allied territory the Latins occupied nearly 5,000. It thus exceeded the empires of Macedonia, Carthage and the Ptolemies; it was inferior in size only to the Seleucid kingdom. The adult male Roman citizens numbered 292,000 in 264 BC. The allies, excluding the southern Greeks and Bruttians, could s
upply 375,000 regular troops in 225 BC; perhaps this figure should be doubled to represent the total number of adult male allies. That is, the Roman and allied adult males numbered over one million, although not all would be fit for active military service. The Roman citizens and their families numbered nearly one million, the allies double that figure; perhaps nearly a quarter of the allies enjoyed Latin rights. This total of some three million was small compared to the thirty million of the Seleucids, the ten millions of the Ptolemies, the five millions of the Carthaginian empire; it approximated to the population of Macedonia.27 But though the numbers were small, the military experience and the moral qualities of the old Roman character easily counter-balanced the hordes of Syria. Rome had become a world power, and when once the Carthaginian Empire had been broken there was no other military power in the whole Mediterranean basin that could meet her on equal terms.
Part II
ROME AND CARTHAGE
VII
THE FIRST STRUGGLE
1. THE CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE
Of the settlements which, as we have seen (p. 19), the Phoenicians planted in the central and western Mediterranean, the most important was the New City, Carthage (Qart Chadascht), which the Tyrians are said to have founded about 814 BC.1 The Tyrian princess, Elissa, it is said, fleeing from King Pygmalion with a few faithful followers, reached Africa, where the tribes granted her as much land as she could cover with a cowhide (byrsa). By ingeniously cutting this into narrow strips she surrounded enough ground to form the citadel of her new city, the Byrsa of Carthage. Later writers wove around the story of Elissa a mass of myth and legend, until the saga received its final shape at the hands of the magician Virgil who moulded from it an undying drama of love and death. Elissa, now named Dido, welcomes to her new city the Trojan hero Aeneas. At heaven’s bidding he forsakes his new love to fulfil his destiny of founding Rome, while deserted Dido stabs herself on her funeral pyre, and her cry goes up to heaven: ‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.’ The drama of the struggle of Rome and Carthage has come to birth.
The native tribes of North Africa, with whom the Phoenician settlers came into contact, had formed no extensive political union although they were all of similar stock, being the predecessors of the modern Berbers and racially distinct from the negroes of the south. Those who later became subjects of Carthage were known to the Greeks as Libyans, the rest as nomads or Numidians. Among these primitive and semi-nomadic peoples Carthage soon became the dominating power, thanks to her superior civilization and to her magnificent geographical position. Situated on a peninsula which afforded room for expansion and protection from the natives, the city lay sheltered in the heart of a bay Her hinterland was fertile and her prominent position in the mid-Mediterranean allowed her to trade with east and west and to control trans-Mediterranean shipping.
In her early days Carthage maintained a link with her mother city of Tyre, but from the seventh century the Phoenicians of the home country were smitten by the great oriental monarchies, one after another: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Persia. Consequently the Phoenicians of the west were left to their own devices: to preserve their independence, their scattered energies must be united. Carthage stepped into the breach, and from the sixth century she became mistress of an empire which gradually extended far beyond the confines of North Africa.
The centre of this empire was the hinterland which Carthage took into her possession, stretching from Hippo Regius in the west, inland to Theveste and thence to Thenae on the east coast; it was guarded by a frontier called the Phoenician Trenches. The inhabitants served in the army of their mistress and supplied her with a quota of their produce. Under Carthaginian protection agriculture prospered and the population increased. In addition, the inhabitants of the African colonies of Phoenicia and Carthage, which stretched from beyond the Straits of Gibraltar to the three great towns in Tripoli called Emporia, became the loyal allies of Carthage. Known as Libyphoenicians, they supplied contingents in wartime and in some cases at any rate paid tribute. The individual towns were allied with Carthage on varying conditions, much as the Italian cities were with Rome. Including the territory of these Libyphoenician cities, Carthage controlled an area of about 28,000 square miles and a population of three to four million. Further, the Numidian tribes beyond often found it expedient to seek her friendship and thus formed a great potential source of power.
But the ambition and commercial aims of Carthage were not limited to Africa. For many a year she was not strong enough to aid the early Phoenician traders in Sicily, who had been driven to the west end of the island by the advancing tide of Greek colonists, but in about 580 BC she was drawn into the troubled waters, until despite the efforts of Malchus and his successors her advance in Sicily was checked by the battle of Himera, which saved Greek civilization in the west from being overwhelmed (480). The vicissitudes of the struggle between Carthage and the Greeks in Sicily, which recommenced about 400 BC after a period of economic recession and continued till the days of the first Punic War, belong to the history of the Greek rather than of the Roman world.
Carthage was more successful in Spain. In the late seventh and early sixth centuries the empire of Tartessus was flourishing, freer now from Phoenician influence. Its King, Arganthonius, the ‘Silver Man’, encouraged friendly relations with the Greeks who were now penetrating the western seas. As early as 620 BC Colaeus, a mariner from Samos, was blown by an easterly gale to Tartessus (p. 21), and the Phocaeans founded two colonies in Spain at Maenace and Hemeroscopium to open up the Tartessian market. This was little to the taste of the traders of Carthage, and the clash of interests ultimately culminated in the sea battle of Alalia, when the combined Carthaginian and Etruscan fleets broke the Phocaean thalassocracy in the west (p. 31). As a result Carthage made settlements in Sardinia, leaving Corsica to her allies, and then, as a stepping-stone to Spain, she occupied the island of Ebusus which the Phoenicians had already visited. Finally, by destroying Tartessus and Maenace, she entered into the heritage of the Tartessian Empire, although she could not drive the Greeks from northern Spain beyond Cape Palos (near Cartagena).2 In southern Spain Carthage gained an almost inexhaustible source of natural wealth and of manpower, as well as control over the Atlantic trade of her predecessors. Merchants now sailed forth from Gades instead of from Tartessus; Himilco was sent to explore the tin routes of the north, while Hanno voyaged down the west coast of Africa to bring back gold and ivory. But the Carthaginians were careful not to share this new prize; they jealously barred the gates of the Atlantic and closed the western Mediterranean to foreign shipping.
Carthage had thus won an overseas empire which she selfishly exploited. The old Phoenician colonies abroad assumed much the same relation to her as the Libyphoenician towns in Africa. In Sardinia and southern Spain some of the natives were reduced to subjection; the rest were exploited commercially and supplied mercenary troops. In Sicily the Carthaginians had to tread more warily, to avoid driving the whole island into the arms of her enemy Syracuse. The Punic province in the west gradually embraced some native and Greek cities, but these retained their internal autonomy and paid a tithe on their produce instead of supplying troops. Further, Carthage had to keep an open market in her Sicilian province. On the whole the condition of her subjects, though tolerable, was far inferior to that of most of the allies of Rome, who had infused her federation with a feeling of loyalty and imposed no tribute. The subjects of Carthage had no real bond, although common interests might sustain their loyalty for a time. Like the members of the naval confederacies of Athens they became increasingly dependent on their mistress without sharing in the advantage which the Greeks had enjoyed of all entering into relation with their leader at approximately the same time.
During this period of external expansion Carthage first came into contact with Rome. The intermediaries were her Etruscan allies, whose ports in Italy had long been open to Phoenician merchants. The product of such trade is seen in the rich seventh-century tombs
at Caere and Praeneste: silver and gilded bowls, painted ostrich eggs, and ivory plaques like those made for Solomon’s temple by Tyrian artists. When the Etruscan dynasty was driven from Rome, Carthage struck a treaty with the new Republic. A copy of this treaty, engraved on brass, was preserved in the Treasury at Rome and was known to the historian Polybius. It was obviously the work of Carthage, as all the restrictions imposed were in her favour; only Rome’s lack of commercial interests can explain why she accepted it. The Romans agreed not to sail west of a point, the Fair Promontory, close to Carthage itself, unless driven by stress of weather or fear of enemies; men trading in Libya or Sardinia were to strike no bargain save in the presence of a herald or town clerk; any Romans coming to the Carthaginian province in Sicily should enjoy all rights enjoyed by others. Thus Carthage was already enforcing the policy of a mare clausum: Numidia, Morocco, and the Straits of Gibraltar were closed: conditions of trade in Libya and Sardinia were restricted, though Carthage was not yet strong enough to claim a monopoly there or to close western Sicily. Further, it is assumed that the ports over which Rome had any control were to remain open. In return for these substantial advantages Carthage merely pledged herself to abstain from injuring certain towns in Latium. When this treaty was renewed, probably in 348, Rome allowed Carthage to stiffen up the conditions very considerably. By the new agreement Roman traders were excluded from Sardinia and Libya and from the western Mediterranean from the Gulf of Tunis to Mastia (Cartagena) in Spain; Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself alone remained open. Thus the new Republic willingly sacrificed any commercial interests which Rome may have had under the Etruscan regime; for many a long year her thoughts turned landwards while her future rival was transforming the western Mediterranean into a Carthaginian lake.3
A History of the Roman World Page 22