B. C. his good qualities. His cousin Dion, and then the Co- 367. cusans had not virtue enough to retain their recovered He died in On his death Syracuse fell into confusion. Pyrrhus was invited over from Italy to no purpose. The Mamertines, a portion of the mercenary troops whom Agathocles had had in pay, seized on the city of Messina, and murdered the inhabitants: the Syracusans allied themselves with the Carthaginians against them; the Mamertines applied for support to the Romans. After some delay, occasioned by the flagrant injustice of the Mamertine cause, interest prevailed over principle, and the required aid was promised. Thus began the first of those wars called Punic. Rome was mistress of all Italy, except what was held in the north by the Gauls: Carthage was in the height of her power, possessed of a large portion of Africa, Spain, and Sicily, and of Sardinia, and other islands. Rome's civil constitution was in its vigour; that of Carthage in its decline: Rome's troops were free-born citizens; those of Carthage mercenaries: Rome had no fleet; that of Carthage was numerous. Such was the relative state of the two nations when they descended into the arena. The Romans determined to have a fleet. A Carthaginian ship of war, that was driven on shore, served as a model: the crews were taught to row on land. Inferior to their foes in the art of manoeuvring their vessels, they invented machines for grappling, and bringing a sea to resemble a land-fight. The consul Duillius won the first naval victory. The Romans were already victorious in Sicily. The consul Regulus, in imitation 289. 265 of Agathocles, carried the war into Africa, and spread terror to the gates of Carthage. A Spartan mercenary, named Xanthippus, was opposed to him. Roman courage failed before Grecian skill, and Regulus and his army surrendered. National hatred invented a lying tale of Punic cruelty and Roman virtue, in the person of this unhappy general. A signal defeat, off the Ægatian islands, forced the Carthaginians to sue for peace, and a war of twenty-three years terminated by their giving 243. up all Sicily, and paying a large sum of money. B. C. Illyrian War-Gallic War. The Illyrians, a people inhabiting the north-eastern coast of the Adriatic, were addicted to piracy. The Italian merchants complained of their losses at Rome : ambassadors were sent to Illyria to remonstrate: the ambassadors were ill-treated, and some of them murdered. Rome took up arms to avenge them, and to put down piracy. The Illyrian queen, Teuta, was compelled to surrender a large portion of her dominions, to reduce her shipping, and to pay an annual tribute. The Senonian Gauls possessed the rich plains watered by the Po; the Ligurians, the rugged hills west and south of them. Rome engaged in war with both: the former were completely subdued, after a hard contest, in which they were aided by their kindred tribes from be224. yond the Alps. The battle of Clusium decided the fate of Cisalpine Gaul. Defended by their mountains, the Ligurians, often overcome, were long unconquered. They were a hardy active race, who lived by feeding cattle, and by hiring out their services in war. Second Punic War. The Carthaginians now turned their views to conquests in Spain. Their troops were commanded by Asdrubal, one of the ablest generals they had ever possessed. On his death the troops chose for their com mander his son Annibal, now but twenty-six years old, who had been reared in the camp, and was the sworn foe of Rome. All his thoughts were turned on war against that republic: he attacked Saguntum, a city in B. c. alliance with Rome, took it, after an obstinate but un- 219. availing defence, marched with a numerous, veteran, and well-appointed army through the Pyrenees and Gaul to the confluence of the Rhone and Saone, passed through the country of the Allobroges, crossed the Alps, and descended into the modern Piedmont. He defeated the Romans on the banks of the Ticinus, then on those of the Trebia, next at the Trasimene lake in Tuscany, and finally gave them an overthrow at Cannæ in Apulia, worthy to be compared with those of Syracuse, Leuctra, and Arbela. But here his career of victory ended. The Roman armies hitherto opposed to him had been militia, their generals rash and inexperienced. The chief command was now given to Fabius the Delayer, who would never come to a general engagement, but hovered about and harassed the Punic army, and raised the courage of his own. Yet Annibal, though opposed by a faction at home, and ill supplied with men and money, kept possession of the fairest portion of Italy during seventeen years. Rome gradually recovered her strength; her courage had never failed: she sent an army to Spain, which was at first resisted with success; but under the command of the youthful, virtuous, and heroic Scipio overcame the troops of Carthage. Annibal was repeatedly checked in Italy; Gracchus conquered Sardinia; Syracuse, which had now gone against Rome, was, though defended by the machines of the great Archimedes, taken by Marcellus; and Annibal's last hope,-the army led to his assistance from Spain by his brother Asdrubal,- -was annihilated on the banks of the Metaurus by Tiberius Nero. Scipio at length passed with his victorious army over to Africa, and Annibal was recalled to the defence of his country. On the plains of Zama a battle was fought between the two greatest generals of the age, and the B. C. 202. fate of Carthage was decided. Annibal was defeated for the first time; Carthage was forced to sue for peace. Rigorous terms were imposed; she was confined to Africa, obliged to surrender her ships, prohibited engaging in war, and compelled to yield Numidia to Masinissa, the ally of Rome. The Macedonian and Syrian Wars. Rome now possessed all Italy, Sicily, and the other islands, and a part of Spain. Her arms now, for the first time, show themselves in Greece. Carthage being reduced, Philip, king of Macedon, was the prince who could give Rome most disturbance. Philip, though he had made an alliance with Annibal, imprudently neglected to assist him; he wasted his strength in petty conflicts in Greece, and, instead of uniting the people of that country, unwisely put them in fear for their independence. The Etolians called on the Romans for aid, who came forward as 198. the champions of Grecian liberty. The battle of Cynocephale overthrew the power of Macedon. Philip had to sue for peace, and Rome proclaimed liberty to Greece a nominal, deceptive liberty, like the independence she had left to Carthage: she would fain be mistress of the world, without the world discerning its subjection. Thoas, the Ætolian, thought himself not sufficiently rewarded for his services by the Romans. He betook himself to Antiochus the Great, king of Syria; represented to him the danger to be apprehended from suffering the Romans thus to go on extending their power, a power the more to be suspected, as they were the known foes of kings; and exhorted the monarch to lose no time in opposing their farther progress. His representations were enforced by Annibal, who, driven by a faction favourable to Rome from his own country, where he was endeavouring by salutary reforms and wise regulations to restore Carthage to a condition of resuming her former rank, was now at the court of Antiochus. Their suggestions were listened to with a willing ear; war was declared: Asia arrayed against Rome; but fortunately for the latter, the counsels of Annibal, respecting the mode of conducting the war, were not attended to. Antiochus was by far the most powerful monarch of Asia; his sway was acknowledged from the Troas to Caucasus: Media, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine obeyed him. With an army estimated at 400,000 men he entered Greece. Asiatic luxury attended this second Xerxes: pomp and splendour shone in his purple and silken tents; but he, too, had to encounter an iron race, who fought, not indeed for liberty, but for empire. A defeat at Thermopyla drove him from Greece. The Romans pursued him into Asia. Another decisive vic- 191. tory at Magnesia reduced the Syrian monarch to seek a peace, the conditions of which were the surrender of all Lesser Asia, as far as Mount Taurus, and of the half of his ships. Conquest of Macedon. B. C. Philip had put to death the better of his two sons: learning when too late his innocence, he died of grief. His successor, Perseus, vainly hoped to restore Macedon to its pristine strength and dignity, and he wanted to engage its forces once more in conflict with those of Rome. But Paulus Æmilius, the Roman general, overcame all obstacles presented by the nature of the country. The battle of Pydna, in which 20,000 Macedonians fell, was decisive. Perseus was seized with a panic; he fled from his kingdom, and sheltered himself in Samothrace, where he meanly surrendered himself to his enemies. In the 156th year after the death of Alexander the Great, the 169. last king of his paternal kingdom walked in the triumphal procession of the general of a nation which had not, at that time, attracted the attention of Greece. Perseus died in prison. Macedonia was declared free, under the protection of Rome. Fifteen years afterwards, a commotion was raised in that state by one Andriscus, who called himself the son of Perseus. The Romans were |