ROME 



789 



of Italy, to reinforce Hannibal in the south. But 

 he was beaten ami killed on the Metaurus by Nero, 

 who, turning southwards, marched up to Hannibal's 

 camp and threw Hasdrubal's head into it. The 

 war in Italy was virtually at an end. Hannibal's 

 attempt on Rome had failed. Meanwhile young 

 I'ublius Scipio, having driven the Carthaginians 

 from Spain, returned to the city with the proposal 

 to descend on Carthage herself. The senate, not 

 without misgiving, consented. Scipio's successes 

 in Africa compelled Hannibal to leave his vantage 

 ground in Southern Italy and come to the aid of his 

 hard -pressed compatriots. The great battle at 

 Zama left Scipio the victor, Hannibal a fugitive, 

 and Carthage suing for peace. Her request was 

 granted, and she retained her territory, but bound 

 herself to undertake no wars outside Africa and 

 (without the consent of Rome) no wars inside. 

 She surrendered nearly all her navy and had to pay 

 an indemnity of 10,000 talents in fifty years. Rome 

 was now (202) mistress of the Mediterranean, but 

 she had to consolidate her acquisitions. Sicily, 

 easily ruled under a praetor, became her granary 

 ami the provision store for her legions. Spain, 

 however, required praetors invested with consular 

 power and a permanent garrison of four legions to 

 keep her in order. The insurrection of Viriathus 

 lasted till the fall of Numantia after a memorable 

 resistance ; and not before Scipio Africanus the 

 younger took it in hand could the country really be 

 called pacified and its rich resources made available. 

 Meanwhile Rome had a secret dread of the resusci- 

 tation of Carthage, and she courted ever}' pretext for 

 renewing war with her and razing her to the ground. 

 That came in 151 when Carthage, goaded by Masi- 

 nissa's forays, broke her treaty obligations to punish 

 him. In 149 Rome laid siege to her, and by 146 she 

 was stamped out from the roll of great cities. Her 

 territory was now the Roman province of Africa, 

 protected by Masinissa's three sons, who ruled 

 Nnmidia. In Italy herself the cities that had 

 declared for Hannibal were severely punished. In 

 the north the Celts forfeited their separate political 

 existence. In the south Roman settlers occupied 

 confiscated lands nearly everywhere but in Apulia 

 and Lncania ; and even the Latins soon felt the 

 preponderance of the Roman element, which tended 

 more and more to assert itself. 



Fifty years after she became mistress of the 

 west, Rome had also become the mightiest state in 

 the east, first by conquering Philip of Macedon, 

 who had been the ally of Hannibal, and whose 

 ambition to dominate the ./Egean drew Rome into 

 the second Macedonian war (200), which ended in 

 Philip's defeat at Cynoscephalfe and the reduction 

 of Macedon to a minor power. Next came the 

 'liberation of Greece,' which, with the alliance 

 that followed, enabled Rome to proceed against 

 Antioclms, king of Syria, who in 197-196 had over- 

 run Asia Minor and penetrated into Thrace. 

 Beaten by land and sea, Antiochus sustained a 

 decisive defeat at Magnesia in Asia Minor, and 

 fell back behind the Halys and Taurus range, to 

 the west of which all the kingdoms and com- 

 munities were now under Rome's protection. 

 Western Greece, however, began to give trouble, 

 and Philip of Macedon's successor, Perseus, in- 

 curred a final encounter with the Romans in a 

 third Macedonic war, terminating in his utter rout 

 and capture at Pydna (168). So that, twenty-two 

 \riir* thereafter, Macedonia had sunk into a Roman 

 province, whose governor came gradually to con- 

 trol the Greek states till the whole peninsula was 

 subservient to Rome. Steadily strengthening her 

 hold on Aia Minor, Rome further assumed the 

 guardianship of the king of Syria ; while in Egypt, 

 which in 168 had acknowledged her suzerainty, she 

 restored a jn-ottgt of here to the throne, at the 



same time, true to her policy, dividing and weaken- 

 ing his power. From Syria to Spain the Mediter- 

 ranean was now a Roman lake, but her authority 

 was better established in the west than in the 

 east. In the former her provincial government 

 was fairly established ; not so in the latter, which, 

 besides its more elastic frontier, possessed a civilisa- 

 tion in some respects superior to her own. 



With the establishment of her supremacy without 

 began Rome's troubles within. The ennobled 

 plebeians (nobiles) combined with the old patrician 

 families ( optimates ) to exclude all but themselves 

 from high office or the senate. The constitution 

 had become an oligarchy in which the comitia, 

 nominally supreme in electing magistrates and 

 passing laws, were practically superseded. The 

 prestige of having saved Rome from Hannibal and 

 raised her to undisputed empire belonged to the 

 aristocratic senate, while the graver disasters (at 

 Trasimene and Cannae) were due to the people's 

 favourites. But that prestige was getting gradu- 

 ally impaired by economic failure at home and con- 

 fusion abroad, and the people were awaking to a 

 sense of the power the senate had taken from them. 

 The small holders, particularly in Etruria and 

 South Italy, burdened with military service and 

 competing vainly with foreign importations of corn 

 and labour, deserted the farms on which they could 

 neither thrive nor live, and the multiplication of 

 colonies throughout the peninsula gave but tempo- 

 rary relief. To arrest the imminent annihilation 

 of these freeholders Rome's main-stay Tiberius 

 Gracchus, the tribune (133), proposed his reform, 

 which was practically the first of a series of attacks 

 on senate-rule. Occupiers not recognised by the 

 Licinian law were to be evicted ; occupation was 

 not to extend beyond 1000 acres ; public grazing- 

 lands were to be reclaimed for tillage. The senate 

 opposed him strenuously, and he was killed in an 

 incidental collision ; but his struggle was renewed 

 on a larger scale by his brother Gaius, who curtailed 

 the senatorial power by getting the comitia to 

 deprive it of privilege after privilege. He, too, fell 

 in a brawl, and by 111 his reforms had already 

 been frustrated and a quite new aspect given to 

 the agrarian question. But the popular party had 

 been taught its lesson by means of the tribunate to 

 reassert its power in the comitia to work out its 

 salvation. Gaius Gracchus had been dead ten 

 years when the client-state Numidia was seized by 

 Jugurtha, who had supplanted its legitimate gover- 

 nors and insulted the Roman name. The popular 

 leaders insisted on his chastisement ; but the war, 

 mismanaged under patrician officers, was carried to 

 a triumphant close by the people's favourite, the 

 low-born, illiterate, but efficient Marius, who in 

 January 104 brought Jugurtha in chains to Rome. 

 Still greater successes awaited their hero. Having 

 annihilated the Cimbri and Teutones, who had 

 inflicted four defeats on the patrician generals, and 

 been made consul for the sixth time, he aided the 

 popular vindicators, Saturninus and Glaucia, to 

 harass the senate. But the advantages they 

 secured were small, their violence had to be curbed 

 by Marius himself, and at last the populace turned 

 upon and killed them. The rise of Marius, how- 

 ever, was fraught with far-reaching results. His six 

 consulships, his intervention as a soldier in politics, 

 his military reforms, by which all classes, irrespec- 

 tive of rank or means, were admitted to the legion, 

 and the compulsory levy replaced by volurteer 

 service under a popular leader were epoch making 

 in the revolution. 



The commercial class soon to develop into the 

 equestrian order had by their power in the couris 

 and their increasing exactions as farmers-general 

 (pitblicani) been at feud with their controllers, the 

 magisterial class in the provinces, and fiscal reform 



