Streams of History: Ancient Rome (Yesterday's Classics) (6 page)

Rome became impatient of the plan of Fabius, and finally Æmilius Paulus, a more energetic man, was elected consul. He enlisted a large army, ninety thousand or more, and marched at once to Cannæ, in south-eastern Italy, where Hannibal was encamped, with the purpose of defeating him at once. How little they knew, even yet, the strength and power of the great general!

Hannibal met Æmilius on a plain where there was plenty of room to use his cavalry. He formed his men in a line the shape of the new moon, with the cavalry at each end. When Æmilius dashed at him with 76,000 men, Hannibal opened a space for him in the center, then closed on both sides with his terrible cavalry, slew Æmilius, most of his staff, many knights and the whole army except six thousand men. Hannibal is said to have gathered a bushel of gold rings from the dead nobles and sent them to Carthage.

When Rome heard of this great defeat, her people were stricken with the greatest fear and proposed to leave the city at once. It was then that the senate saved the city. Ever wise and brave, even in the greatest danger, it ordered that mourning and weeping for the dead should cease in the city, the city gates be closed, the country crops near Rome be destroyed, so that Hannibal's men if they came might be starved out, the bridges leading into the city be broken down, and new levies of soldiers made. If you would understand this war, you must know that it is the senate, sitting as calmly as a council of kings in the Capitol at Rome, which is guiding every movement in this life-and-death struggle. It was at this time one of the wisest, and most powerful bodies of men that ever ruled any nation, being composed of three hundred trained men who had had the experience of holding the greatest offices of Rome before they became senators. After being elected, they served in the senate for life. They were compelled to attend all the meetings of the senate and were not allowed to engage in any other business. They had charge of religion, the treasury, appointed the dictator, determined what nations should be their friends, ordered the raising of armies and helped in making the laws.

Hannibal won no more great victories in Italy after Cannæ, 216 B.C., though he was victor in many small conflicts. Fabius was again made general of the army, and he tried his old plan. And thus the years went on, Hannibal's army gradually getting smaller through death and because he received very little help from home; while Rome, ere long, regained Capua, the rich city in the plains of Campania, which had deserted her Mistress on the Seven Hills and gone over to Hannibal after the battle of Cannæ.

All this time most of Rome's allies, scattered throughout the peninsula, clung to her like children to their father in time of danger. The Roman traders and farmers loved their country so dearly that they would not give up to a foreign foe, even if they lost their farms, their stores and their lives. Thus you see that when Rome built roads and made her conquered people obey her and gave them just laws and peace so that they could easily trade and become wealthy, she did not do it in vain.

In this way Rome taught the ancient people, and all the world after her, a great lesson. When once she had conquered a people, she attached them to herself by roads and laws, and forts and colonies, and held them as a part of herself in a way that no other nation had ever done before.

At length, two hundred and seven years before Christ, Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, who was at the head of an army in Spain, resolved to go to the assistance of his brother. He rapidly crossed the Alps, as his brother had done, making use of the same rock cuttings and mountain roads which his brother had made eleven years before. Then he hastily gathered an army in the north of Italy and moved southward to meet his brother. Had his plan been successful, it might have been the ruin of Rome; but some of Hasdrubal's messengers, who carried letters telling Hannibal to meet Hasdrubal north of Rome, were captured by Roman troops. The Romans, seeing their great danger, raised an army in haste, and met Hasdrubal and his army on the Metaurus River before they could join Hannibal. The Carthaginians were defeated with great slaughter. Hasdrubal bravely fell in the battle, fighting to the last. His head was cruelly sent to Hannibal and thrown over the lines into his camp. When Hannibal saw it, he sadly remarked, "I recognize in this the doom of Carthage."

Although Hannibal had now lost all hope of conquering Rome, he yet for four years remained in the mountains of southern Italy, holding his army together as it slowly grew smaller. But Rome now chose a new general, who made a new plan to capture Hannibal. This general was the famous Scipio, and his plan was to cross the Mediterranean and attack Carthage. He now raised an army and sailed from southern Italy across the sea to attack the great city.

Hannibal was immediately recalled home by the Carthaginians to defend his country. With a new army he met the troops of Scipio on the plains of Zama, south of Carthage, and for the first time in his life the great Hannibal suffered defeat. Twenty thousand of his men were slain, and he barely escaped with his own life.

The war was now closed, 202 B.C., and by it Rome had gained Spain and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. She also made Carthage give up her war elephants, destroy all her ships of war except twenty, and promise to pay to Rome $240,000 each year for fifty years.

Amid all these troubles Hannibal did not give up to discouragement. When the war closed, he was placed at the head of Carthage; and so wisely did he rule that the triremes and quinqueremes were soon again pouring the riches of the seas into her lap and raising before her the vision of being mistress of the seas.

But as Carthage rose again in strength, Rome's jealousy rose also, and especially her jealousy of Hannibal. The nobles of Carthage and Roman spies hatched evil reports against him; after seven years of noble effort he was forced to leave his city, his house being leveled to the earth and all his property seized. Hunted almost like a beast for the next twelve years, he fled from one country to another to escape the cruel hand of his enemies. How the Romans would have liked to have him walk in chains in one of their great triumphs! Finally, in 183 B.C., when he was perhaps sixty-six years old, to avoid capture and so great a disgrace, and being betrayed by a king of Asia Minor to whom he had fled for protection, Hannibal took poison, fighting, as he had sworn, to the last hour of his life against Rome or Rome's allies. In the same year (183 B.C.) died his great conqueror, Scipio Africanus, also an exile and full of bitterness toward the country which he had saved when it tottered under the heavy blows of Hannibal.

But Rome was still afraid new Hannibals might be born, and in 146 B.C. made an excuse for fighting Carthage again, and in order to destroy her trade, ordered the Carthaginians to remove the city ten miles inland. How this must have stung and vexed these brave seamen, who had grown rich on the seas for six hundred years! Of course they refused, and then began a four years' siege of their beautiful city.

I have already told you something of the mighty walls which surrounded Carthage, and of the great towers for protection which were built upon them; and I must now tell you something of the implements of war which Rome attacked them with in her stubborn siege. The battering-ram was principally used to destroy the walls. It was made of the trunk of a large tree, and was often one hundred feet long. On the end of it was fastened a large piece of iron or bronze, shaped like a ram's head. This huge log was swung by ropes or chains from a beam above, so that the soldiers did not have to hold it up while they swung it backward and forward, making the iron head go crashing against the stone wall. The beam was made long, so that it would reach across the ditch, fifty to seventy-five feet wide, which was just outside the wall. A roof was built above the battering-ram, so that the men, oftentimes a hundred or more, who were running it, could not be hurt by the weapons of the enemy on the walls.

The Romans also had huge machines called catapults, used for hurling large stones, weighing from fifty to three hundred pounds, over the walls into the city. These they used instead of cannon. Why did they not use cannon and cannon balls as we do now?

They had also high towers built on wheels, which were rolled up to the walls. The enemy in the city could prevent them from climbing on top only by throwing stones down on them, or hot oil, or by digging mines under the towers, so they would fall over, or by some means setting fire to them, or by building their walls still higher than the tower.

Well, as I told you, Rome surrounded Carthage and began the siege. At first the Carthaginians were in despair, but they asked the Romans to give them thirty days of peace in which to consider whether they would surrender or not.

In these thirty days the whole city was turned into a workshop. Lead was torn from the roofs of the houses and made into balls for the slingers. Iron was stripped from the walls of the buildings to be beaten into swords; the women cut off their hair to be twisted into ropes for the catapults and for strings for the bows; stones were piled on top of the walls to be thrown down on those who should attempt to climb them. Oil was brought to the walls, and kettles for boiling it. When the thirty days were over, and Scipio (the grandson of Hannibal's conqueror) came to demand the surrender of the city, he was surprised to find the gates closed and everything ready for the siege.

Again and again did Scipio assault the city, only to be driven back. The rams battered against the walls, but the Carthaginians hung great sacks of earth down in front of them and thus broke the shock. Those who attempted to scale the walls were scalded with boiling oil dashed down by those who defended from the towers above. Mines were attempted under the walls, only to be stopped by countermines dug by the Carthaginians. So, for four weary years full of suffering, the siege went on, the Romans pressing closer and closer, the Carthaginians, defending themselves with heroic courage, but every day coming nearer to the point of starvation. Disease, death and famine began at last to weaken the strong defense of the great city. Finally the walls were scaled, the Romans entered and began making their way toward the great rock, Byrsa, of which I have already told you.

In this last hour of despair the Carthaginians heroically defended every foot of street, every house, every temple. For seven days the Romans fought from house to house, from story to story, till at last they came to the towering rock, upon which was seated the sacred temple, defended by fifty thousand men. Diseased and starving, these soon surrendered; many, however, preferring death to submission to their great enemy, took poison or flung themselves into the flames.

Then came special orders from Rome to burn Carthage, plow up its site, and curse the ground that no city should ever arise upon the site again.

Thus Carthage, living for six hundred years, and becoming the center of the world of trade and wealth in her day, as London is in ours, was crushed to death by her great rival, and her wealth taken up by Rome.

No people were ever braver than some of her people, and no general in all the world, perhaps, was greater than Hannibal.

But although the Carthaginians were so brave and rich, and Hannibal so great a warrior, it is no doubt better that Rome succeeded in this great struggle instead of Carthage.

Rome, with all her faults, had more than Carthage that was good to teach to the world of her time and all the world since.

Rome knew how to teach people of different tribes and customs to obey one ruler—Rome; Carthage did not know how to build and rule a great nation. Rome was coming, at this time, to care for beautiful things; Carthage cared little for art but greatly for wealth. Carthage still kept up cruel and harsh ways of worshiping their gods; Rome was fast losing her faith in her own gods, but by conquering the peoples around the Mediterranean and teaching them to obey
one government
instead of many, it led them after a while to think of obeying and worshiping
one God
  instead of many. Thus, though Rome was often cruel in what she did, she unconsciously prepared the path for greater things.

How all this came about, and how Rome wove her web slowly around every nation touching the Mediterranean, and went on for hundreds of years afterward giving the world great models of government, and how after a time the gentle spirit of Christ silently conquered the medieval and modern world more completely than Rome conquered the ancient, we shall see in the later volumes of this series, as we follow the spread of Christianity and watch the influence of Rome spread over western Europe and in the French and Spanish colonies, even to North and South America.

W
HEN
Carthage was conquered and destroyed, Rome's struggle for life was over. For five hundred years and more she had been meeting and conquering enemies; and although she was almost always successful, there were many times when it was not certain whether Rome would conquer her enemies, or her enemies Rome.

In this period of five hundred years, Rome had grown from a little village of mud huts and a few hundred people to a great city of fine buildings and streets, and perhaps a half million people. She had grown in size from a little plain on the Tiber no larger than a small township in one of our counties to a great state extending over most of Italy, all of Carthage, and all of the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. She had reached her strong arm over mountains, plains, rivers, valleys and seas, and conquered hundreds of cities with wealth, like herself, and in the mountains scores of tribes who spent their time in wandering from place to place herding cattle and sheep.

But the one most important thing which Rome had done in all this time was this,—she had taken the snarling tribes and quarreling cities of the entire Peninsula and had taught them the lesson of
strength in union
  as the father taught his sons:—after binding a number of sticks together firmly, the father brought the bundle to his seven sons, and offered a reward to the one who could break them. They all tried and failed except the last son. When it came his turn to try, he unbound the bundle, took the sticks singly, and easily broke them all. When the other sons said to the father that they, too, could have broken the sticks by taking them singly, the father replied: "My sons, I have taken this method of teaching you the important lesson that in union there is strength; if you stand together and help one another in life, none can injure you or take from you your possessions; if, on the other hand, you do not unite, but each struggles, selfishly, against the others, you will not only ruin others, but lose your own possessions as well." Of all the nations we have studied—Egypt, Judea, Phoenicia and Greece—not one of them had any such power to bind peoples and nations together and teach them to obey as Rome had. And it was because Rome had taught these many people to obey her, and stand by her, and fight for her, that she had conquered every enemy, and had now, about 150 B.C. conquered the greatest enemy she ever met,—Carthage.