becoming again the rival of Rome, and himself from renewing the great Barcine enterprise. The stake had been played and lost, and the forfeit was enough to satisfy even the revenge of Rome. Carthage was placed so completely at her feet, that no attempt was made to improve the opportunity of the great Eastern wars, and resistance was only roused at length when the doom of the city was pronounced. Besides the conditions already prescribed in favour of Rome and Masinissa, and the increase of the pecuniary demand to an annual contribution of 200 talents (nearly £50,000), the Carthaginians bound themselves to make no war upon Rome or her allies beyond the limits of Africa, and not to go to war even in Africa itself without the permission of the Romans. Thus she was restricted within the limits of her original territory in Zeugitana and Byzacium, with the settlements on the coast of Tripolis, hemmed in on the land side by Masinissa's Numidian hordes,* shut out from the Mediterranean by Rome, and reduced to a condition little more than tributary. The peace was ratified in B.C. 201, and with this closing year of a century Carthage virtually disappears from the history of the world, until our attention is recalled to the brief episode of her destruction. The military career of Hannibal in his country's service was closed, when-like Wellington and Napoleon-he was but 45 years old; and, if he was not destined, like the former, to influence the policy of a long peace won by victory, neither did he die, like the latter, in distant exile, till he had made more than one effort to retrieve the fortunes of his country. The vast influence he had won in spite of his defeat-confessed by his opponents when they left the peace negociations in his hands—and the power acquired by the popular party through the obvious incapacity of the nobles, enabled him to commence an internal reform as a new basis of political power for Carthage. We have already noticed the nature of this reform, and its inevitable failure through the hopeless corruption of the people; but his political ascendancy seems to have lasted during the nine years that he remained at Carthage. Meanwhile, it is no discredit to the enthusiastic patriot and the enemy devoted by a life-long vow, if he did what he could to encourage the foes of Rome, though the details of such intrigues are recorded only by his enemies. It was no fault of Hannibal, but a striking example It should be remembered that the Numidian kingdom of Masinissa did not merely lie, like the Numidia of the maps, to the west of the Carthaginian territory (Africa Propria), but swept round it on the south, to the Lesser Syrtis, and still further eastward, below Tripolis. of the providential dispensation by which the course of events is ordered, that the kings of Macedonia and Syria reserved their attacks till Rome could deal with them singly. At length, when Antiochus the Great was on the point of engaging in his war with Rome, the Anti-Bareine faction at Carthage denounced Hannibal as an abettor of the Syrian king. Cn. Servilius was sent as ambassador to Carthage, openly to demand an explanation, but secretly to obtain the surrender of Hannibal, or even, as is alleged by some, his assassination. Hannibal remained all day at his post in the Senate and Forum and took part in the discussion, but at nightfall he rode off to his marine villa, where in a hidden bay he had ships always ready to put to sea, and left the ambassador to carry back to Rome the alarming news of his escape. He was received with open arms by Antiochus at Ephesus (B.c. 195), and arranged a plan of campaign, in which his military genius and his steadfast enmity to Rome were equally conspicuous; but, as we shall see in the following chapter, only so much of it was adopted as involved Hannibal in his last defeat, fighting at sea against Rome aided by the ships of Carthage. When the rejection of his advice produced the foreseen result, and Antiochus was overthrown by the Scipios at Magnesia (B.c. 190), the surrender of Hannibal was made one of the conditions of peace. Once more he fled to the court of Prusias of Bithynia; but the Romans could feel no security while their dreaded enemy still lived, and T. Quinctius Flamininus was sent to demand his surrender or death. Hannibal's house was beset by assassins, and he chose death by taking poison. "He had long been prepared to do so," adds a Roman, "for he knew the Romans and the faith of kings. The year of his death is uncertain; probably he died in the latter half of B.C. 183, at the age of 76. When he was born, Rome was contending with doubtful success for the possession of Sicily; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the vessels of his native city, which had itself become Roman; and he was constrained at last to remain a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have weathered the storm. There was left to him no further hope to be disappointed when he died; but he had honestly, through fifty years of struggle, kept the oath he had sworn when a boy. His great adversary Scipio died, probably in the same year, in voluntary exile. Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. ii. p. 282. At Rome the peace was celebrated with rejoicings not yet free from the dash of bitterness infused by the survival of their great enemy, whose supreme personal influence in the contest their own writers justly mark by calling it the Hannibalic, as well as the Second Punic War. Its result was to make the great rival of Rome her vassal, and the warlike Africans, who had formed the chief military strength of Carthage, her allies;-to transfer from the Phoenician to the Latin republic the dominion of the seas and the empire of the West, where Spain and the islands were provinces of Rome and Massilia her close ally ;—and to foreshadow the great conflict with the East, of which a beginning had been made in the fitful hostilities with Macedonia. Meanwhile much had still to be done in Italy itself. The tribes of Cisalpine Gaul had to be reduced to a state which should make it impossible for them to assist another invader, and the Sabellian and Greek states, which had for a time been seduced to the side of Hannibal, had to be Latinized more and more by the confiscation of their lands, the imposition of Latin customs, and the foundation of Latin colonies. In the ten years following the second Punic war, colonies were planted at Venusia, Narnia, Cosa, Sipontum, Croton, Salernum, and other places; and some of the maritime cities of the south received Latin names; thus, Thurii became Copia, and Vibo Valentia. It was slower work to restore the ruined cities and to fill up the blanks in the population and in the culture of the land, caused by the fifteen years during which Italy had been the theatre of the war. The extent to which the country suffered from its inveterate sore of brigandage is attested by the condemnation in one year of 7000 robbers in Apulia alone. Finally, the old simple habits of the Latin rural population and of the yeomen burgesses of Rome had been completely undermined. But time was required to decide how far these evils would affect the stability of the republic, and what would be the issue of the brilliant prospect of foreign conquest opened by the victory over Carthage. For the present there was enough to fill the minds of men, from the highest to the lowest, as they shared or witnessed the triumphal procession of the young conqueror to the Capitol, to thank the gods to whom he never ceased to give the glory of his exploits. CHAPTER XXVII. THE MACEDONIAN AND ASIATIC WARS. "After this shall he [the king of the north] turn his face unto the Isles, and shall take many but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him. Then he shall turn bis face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found."-Daniel xi. 18, 19. ACCESSION OF PHILIP V.-STATE OF MACEDONIA AND GREECE-PHILIP'S PART IN THE SOCIAL WAR-HIS ALLIANCE WITH CARTHAGE-FIRST MACEDONIAN WAR-ANTIMACEDONIAN LEAGUE-ATTALUS AND THE RHODIANS-AFFAIRS OF EGYPT-PEACE WITH PHILIP-RENEWED MACEDONIAN INTRIGUES-ALLIANCE OF PHILIP AND ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT-VIEWS OF ROME REGARDING THE EAST-EMBASSY TO EGYPT, ANTIOCHUS, AND PHILIP THE SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR-TITUS QUINCTIUS FLAMININUS-PHILIP LOSES NORTHERN GREECE-THE ACHEAN LEAGUE JOINS THE ROMANS -PROPOSALS FOR PEACE-BATTLE OF CYNOSCEPHALE-PEACE WITH PHILIP THE FREEDOM OF GREECE PROCLAIMED BY FLAMININUS-HIS TRIUMPH-DISCONTENT OF THE ETOLIANS-THEIR INTRIGUES WITH ANTIOCHUS-REVIEW OF THE SYRIAN KINGDOM WARS WITH EGYPT FOR CŒLE-SYRIA AND PALESTINE-INVASION OF AND WARS WITH THE PARTHIANS AFFAIRS OF ASIA MINOR-ACCESSION OF ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT HIS WARLIKE VIGOUR-REVOLT OF MEDIA AND PERSIA SUPPRESSED HIS WAR WITH EGYPT AND DEFEAT AT RAPHIA-WARS IN ASIA MINOR AND WITH THE PARTHIANS-DEATH OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR-ALLIANCE OF ANTIOCHUS AND PHILIP CONQUEST OF CILICIA, CŒLE-SYRIA, AND PALESTINE-ATTACK ON ATTALUS, THE RHODIANS, AND THE GREEK CITIES OF ASIA MINOR-SUCCESSES OF ANTIOCHUS ON THE HELLESPONT-HE CROSSES OVER INTO EUROPE AND OCCUPIES THRACE-PROTESTS OF THE ROMANS-FLIGHT OF HANNIBAL TO ANTIOCHUS-HE PREPARES FOR WAR THE ETOLIANS SEIZE DEMETRIAS AND DECLARE WAR WITH ROME-ANTIOCHUS LANDS IN GREECE-BEGINNING OF THE ASIATIC WAR-ATTITUDE OF MACEDONIA AND THE GREEKS-DEFEAT OF ANTIOCHUS AT THERMOPYLE-GREECE AGAIN SUBJECT 19 ROME-REDUCTION OF THE ETOLIANS-MARITIME CAMPAIGN-ROMAN EXPEDITION TO ASIA-BATTLE OF MAGNESIA-FALL OF THE SYRIAN EMPIRE-WAR WITH GALATIANS THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS-SETTLEMENT OF ASIA AND GREECE-THE ETOLIANS AGAIN SUBDUED PHILIP AND THE ACHEANS-DEATH OF ANTIOCHUS. THE THE peace with Carthage had scarcely lasted for a year, when the consul, P. Sulpicius Galba, on behalf of the Senate, moved in the assembly of the centuries a declaration of war against Philip V. of Macedonia, on account of his attacks upon the allies of Rome in the East. Under this able prince, who had ascended the throne in B.C. 220, at the age of seventeen, Macedonia had acquired a position which marked her as the one among all the Hellenistic states best fitted to set bounds to the advance of Rome towards the East. Alone of all the kingdoms which had arisen out of the disruption of Alexander's empire, she had preserved much of the native Macedonian vigour and of the compact military organization by which that empire had been acquired; and the establishment of her monarchy on a more despotic basis, at the expense of the great chieftains, had helped to consolidate her power for war. By the vigour of Antigonus Gonatas and his successors, the country had recovered surprisingly from the effect of the great Gallic invasion, and the garrisons on the frontier were strong enough to protect her from the Celtic and Illyrian barbarians. In Greece, though no longer wielding the supremacy she had possessed before the rise of the Etolian and Achæan Leagues, she held the balance between those confederacies, and had still a dominion of her own over large portions of the peninsula. Thessaly and Magnesia were entirely hers, with the central states of Locris, Phocis, and Doris; and among other positions elsewhere, she held the three great fortresses of Corinth, Chalcis in Euboea, and Demetrias in Magnesia, which were known as "the three fetters of the Greeks." While Sparta had fallen under the yoke of tyrants, and Athens was content to barter freedom for the enjoyments of literature and philosophy, the remnants of Hellenic vigour were found chiefly among the northern states, most of which were subject to Macedonia. However inferior in magnitude and external splendour to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, she surpassed the former in the compactness of her strength, while she was as much above the latter in force as below it in devotion to literature and science. The Macedonian monarchy, in short, had more of the vigour of the Roman republic than all the Oriental kingdoms put together; and, if Philip could have obtained the position of his great namesake, as the head of a united Hellas, or even if he had made the timely decision to give an energetic support to Hannibal, it would seem as if the course of history might have been changed. How little such a change would have benefited the world, must at once be felt by any one who considers the absence of all congenial elements between Macedonia and Carthage, and the evil effects of destroying the Latinism now established in Italy. The course pursued by Philip from the beginning of his reign precluded any such disastrous experiment. A Macedonian alliance had long been a cherished scheme of the Barcine family; and, had Antigonus Doson lived, it might probably have been made in time to turn the fortune of the Second Punic War. But Philip's attention was diverted from the West by the prospect of becoming the arbiter of Greece. The great defeat of Aratus and the Achæans by the Etolians led the former to seek his aid, and for three years he was so entirely occupied by the Social War,* as * See p. 117. VOL. II. I I |