Rise of the Roman Republic

The **Rise of the Roman Republic** lasted from about 280 BC until 146 BC. It began with the Pyrrhic War, the final step in Roman expansion in Italy. It then ended with the great city of Carthage razed to the ground, and a bewildered Greece kneeling before their new Roman masters

There were now three major actors in the arena of the western Mediterranean: the Romans; the western Greeks, of which Syracuse was by far the most important; and the Carthaginian commercial empire. Roman expansion over the Italian peninsula was still incomplete, when the Greeks sought the assistance of a great military leader of mainland Greece, Pyrrhus of Epirus, who campaigned against both Rome and Carthage, but achieved only the costly and crippling victories to whose type he gave his name. The natural flashpoint between the three powers was now Sicily, an exceptionally fertile island between neighbours bound to covet it. Within a few years, Syracuse bowed out, and Rome was caught up willy-nilly in a struggle with Carthage in which the whole western Mediterranean was at stake – the Punic Wars. They form a duel of more than a century. There were three bursts of fighting, but the first two settled the question of predominance. In the First, the Romans built a navy for the first time. With their new fleet, they took Sicily, and established themselves in Sardinia and Corsica too, which became the first Roman "provinces"; a momentous step. This was only round one. The Second Punic War, the greatest of the three, was fought in a greatly extended theatre, for when it began the Carthaginians were well-established in Spain. It is famous for Hannibal's great march to Italy and passage of the Alps with an army that included elephants. His crushing victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae badly shook Rome’s grasp on Italy; some of her allies began to look at Carthaginian power with a new respect. Virtually all the south changed sides, though central Italy remained loyal. With the great advantage that Hannibal lacked the numbers needed to besiege Rome itself, the Romans hung on and then boldly embarked upon a strategy of striking at Carthage in her own possessions, especially in Spain. When an attempt by Hannibal’s younger brother to reinforce him was beaten-off at Metaurus, the great Roman hero of the war, Scipio Africanus, transferred the offensives to North Africa itself. There, at last, Hannibal had to follow him to meet his defeat at Zama. The peace imposed on Carthage was so punishing that she would never challenge Roman supremacy in the western Mediterranean again. All of southern Spain was now Roman, where another province was set up. Nor was this all. These events opened the way to the east. Because Macedonia had once allied with Carthage during the war, her presumption was punished by the loss of her independence. Rome thus began to dabble in Greek politics. The twists and turns are complicated, but the conquest and reduction of Greece to a province was accomplished in a series of wars, that end in 148 BC with the bewildered Greeks kneeling before their new Roman masters. On the way, an intervention by a Seleucid king led to the first passage of Roman legions into Asia. Meanwhile, some went on fearing even the crippled enemy left after Zama; "*Carthage must be destroyed*" went Cato's famous call. Finally, the chance long sought came in the Third and last Punic War. After a three years siege, the city was destroyed, and a new Roman province existed in its stead. By then a Roman empire was in being in fact, if not in name.

## History

### Affluence of Carthage

One important consequence of the conquests carried out by Alexander the Great, and wars of his successors, was that, for a century or so, the Hellenistic world was preoccupied with events in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and paid little attention to events further west. Even Macedonia and Greece had been almost oblivious to the rise of Rome. The western Greek colonies knew more about it, of course, but they were themselves long preoccupied with the first great threat they had faced, **Carthage** (814-146 BC), Carthage, on what is now the Tunisian coast, was founded by the Phoenicians, but became richer and more powerful than Tyre and Sidon had ever been. The subsequent spread and growth of Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean was as much the achievement of Carthage, as of them. By the sixth century BC, there were colonies beyond the Strait of Gibraltar; one at Cadiz in southern Spain, and another at Larache on the Moroccan coast. And trade was carried-on much further afield in both directions; Carthaginian coins have been found in Britain, and all along the Atlantic coast of Africa.

   Unfortunately, the native records of Carthage were to perish when, finally, the city was razed to the ground, and we know little of its own history. Sometimes after 480 BC, a political upheaval overthrew the Carthaginian monarchy, and established an oligarchic republic. The top position was held by two elected executives known as *Sufetes* (“judges”), who governed in conjunction with a *Senate* chosen from the wealthiest elements of Carthaginian society. If the *Suffetes* and *Senate* could not come to an agreement, a popular assembly of citizens had the deciding vote. Aristotle praises Carthage's government as more meritocratic than its Greek counterparts. Access to political power was based largely on wealth; if a man made himself rich, he would join the *Senate*; if a *Senator* lost all his money, he was kicked-out; it made no difference whether the money was made five generations ago, or in the last five months. As a result, Carthage seems to have lacked the kind of class conflict that forever plagued the Romans. In contrast to Rome, Carthage remained a city-state, using commercial treaties, alliances, and protection rather than conquests, her citizens preferring trade to fighting. Her economic success and dependence on seaborne trade led to the creation of a powerful navy, but no large standing army. Instead Cathage relied heavily, though not exclusively, on foreign mercenaries and auxiliaries from client states; most notably the Numidians (based in modern northern Algeria). Yet it was clearly a formidable commercial competitor for the western Greeks. From around 535 BC, Carthage began expanding its sphere of influence at the expense of the Greeks, who were shut-out of trade in Spain. and confined to little more than the Marseille, southern Italy, and, above all, Sicily. This large, centrally-located island, and its pre-eminent cities, Syracuse, became the main arena of conflict between the two rivals. Tension between Carthaginian colonies on the west of the island (including present-day Palermo), and the Greek east, first escalated into open conflict in 480 BC; the same year as Salamis. But there was plenty of vigour in Syracuse, which met and defeated them at the Battle of Himera (480 BC). A much-needed period of peace followed, until the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition sent by Athens tempted Carthage to come back. From 410 BC, there was almost constant war for control of Sicily, with the dividing line between the Carthaginian west and Greek east frequently moving backwards and forwards. At one point, in 311 BC, the Carthaginians controlled almost all of Sicily, and were besieging Syracuse. In desperation, the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles (317–289 BC) sent a secret expedition to attack Carthage itself. Although Carthage did not fall, neither did Syracuse, and, by 306 BC, the two sides had agreed to a peace that restored the status quo. Yet, within a few years, it was increasingly clear that Carthaginian power was growing, while the western Greeks were threatened in southern Italy by an emerging third power, Rome. They faced certain defeat unless they could enlist the aid of mainland Greece; a call answered by Pyrrhus of Epirus.

### Pyrrhic War

There were now three major actors in the arena of the western Mediterranean. By 290 BC, at the end of the three Samnite Wars, Rome had established her hegemony over central and parts of southern Italy. She was now at last face to face with the western Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, of which Tarentum, on the heel of the Italian boot, was the largest and most powerful. With colonization, Greek culture had exported to southern Italy its traditions of the fiercely independent city-states, so there was no collective response to this common threat. The Romans decided that all they had to do was play-off the cities against one another; though their plans were be complicated by an intervention from across the Adriatic. Around 284 BC, the minor Greek city of Thurii appealed to Rome for aid against its neighbour. When the Romans sent a small garrison and fleet to the city, it provoked Tarentum, who had long considered internal Greek quarrels to be her domain. The Tarentines sank a few Roman ships off their coast (allegedly sight-seeing), but, having drawn Rome's wrath, realized they needed allies to have any hopes of standing against the Romans; the call was answered by **Pyrrhus of Epirus** (d. 272 BC). Pyrrhus' grandfather had thought that he was protecting the Kingdom of Epirus (on the Adriatic coast of Greece), by marrying his daughter Olympias to Philip II of Macedonia; on his death, Philip simply annexed it. As a prince without a kingdom and a first cousin of Alexander himself, Pyrrhus had an unfortunate childhood; handed from relative to relative in an attempt to keep him out of harm’s way. But he made a smart match in a daughter of Ptolemy II of Egypt. With help from his father-in-law, he managed to get his old kingdom of Epirus back, and then went on to overrun Macedonia itself. But his rule in Macedonia lasted all of two years, before being driven out again. By 278 BC, Pyrrhus was penned up in Epirus with no hope of extending his power or winning glory. It was then that messengers arrived simultaneous from Tarentum and Syracuse; the one to come drive out Rome, the other to drive out Carthage.

Pyrrhus set sail from Epirus, with some 22,500 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, and ambitious plans to build himself an empire, that would, hopefully, soon include southern Italy and Sicily; the **Pyrrhic War** (280–275 BC). Arriving at Tarentum, he bought twenty war-elephants (probably from Carthage), and mercenaries (largely Samnites), for the defence of the city. The two sides met at the Battle of Heraclea (July 280 BC), on the instep of Italy. The battle remained undecided until Pyrrhus deployed his elephants on both flanks; the Roman horses, alarmed by these strange beasts, bolted, throwing the Roman legion into rout. Pyrrhus held the field, but began to have doubts on seeing the defeated Romans withdraw in good order; these were not the "barbarians" the Tarentines had described. In the wake of his victory, Pyrrhus' army, swelled by Greeks and southern Italians, began to march boldly towards Rome itself. After ravaging and plundering Campania and Latium, his marched stopped about four miles from Rome, alarmed by its formidable defences, and how quickly the Romans had replenished the losses suffered at Heraclea. The next year, Pyrrhus campaigned up the Adriatic coast, hoping to peel-off Roman allies, and secure his supply lines. The Romans met him in another pitcher battle, this time at Asculum (279 BC). Pyrrhus won this encounter too, but in such hard fighting that he lost almost as many men as the Romans. When congratulated on the victory, he famously commented, “*Another such victory will utterly undo me*”. Pyrrhus decided to move-on from Italy, which had always been a stepping stone to the real prize, Sicily. In 278 BC, soon after disembarking his army, Pyrrhus lifted the latest Carthaginian siege to Syracuse, and was proclaimed king. Over the next two years, the Carthaginians were pressed back until they held only the port-city of Lilybaeum, on the western end of the island, Although the Carthaginians were inclined to come to terms, Pyrrhus, confident of victory, refused their offered to abandon all of Sicily, except Lilybaeum; a vital harbour on the route to their holding on Sardinia and Corsica. During a long and ultimately futile siege, the Greek king became ever more tyrannical, which prompted the Sicilians to fall-out with the man who might have saved them. Facing growing hostility and rebellion, Pyrrhus decided to return to southern Italy, where the Tarentines and Samnites were losing ground to the Romans. According to Plutarch, as his ship left the island, he foreshadowed the Punic Wars, saying, "*My friends, what a beautiful field we leave for the Romans and Carthaginians to fight in*". Pyrrhus met his old enemies once again at the inconclusive Battle of Beneventum (275 BC). At his wits end, he left Tarentum to its own problems, and went back to Greece; having achieved only the costly and crippling victories to which he gave his name, "Pyrrhic victories". Three years later, the Romans conquered and sacked Tarentum. In that same year, Pyrrhus, still seeking for glory, was killed in bizarre circumstances during a nasty little Spartan civil war; he was knocked unconscious when an old woman threw a tile from a rooftop, and ruthlessly slain by his enemy.

### First Punic War

A decade later, Roman soldiers pushed off from the shores of the Italian peninsula, headed for the island of Sicily. This was a historic moment; Rome was getting ready to embark on her first overseas conquest. Like most fledgling empire-builders, the Romans had an excuse for this invasion. In 289 BC, a band of Italian mercenaries, known as the Mamertines, were left unemployed and idle in Sicily, by the death of Agathocles, a tyrant of Syracuse. They took a shine to the small port-city of Messina, and decided to take it for themselves. All went well for a decade or so. When threatened by Carthage, they joined in the call for Pyrrhus to drive them out once and for all; when the Greek king's rule began to reek of tyranny, they joined in the subsequent call for Pyrrhus to please go home again. But the Mamertine presence did not go unchallenged forever. Hiero II (275-215 BC), a Syracusan tyrant, set his sights on controlling the whole island. Since Hiero's ambition threatened both the Mamertines and Carthaginians, it resulted in an unlikely agreement; in 265 BC, the Mamertines formally requested a Carthaginian garrison for their city. But the faithless Mamertines immediately regretted their decision, and now appealed to Rome to help drive-out their new allies. According to Polybius, a considerable debate then took place in Rome as to whether to accept the Mamertines' appeal, as it could easily lead to war with Carthage, but the prospect of a foothold in Sicily carried the day. When a Roman military expedition arrived at Messina in 264 BC, and was warmly welcomed by the Mamertines, the Carthaginian garrison commander judged his position untenable, and withdrew without a fight. The Carthaginian *Senate*, however, was apoplectic; the garrison commander was literally crucified on his return to Carthage. Thus began the Punic Wars (264-146 BC), which would form a duel of more than a century, in which the fate of the whole western Mediterranean was at stake. Their name comes from the Roman rendering of the word Phoenician, and, unfortunately, we have only the Roman version of what happened. There were three bursts of fighting, but the first two settled the question of predominance.

The **First Punic War** (264-241 BC) quickly became straight slog between Rome and Carthage. After capturing Messina, Syracuse was besieged once again, this time by the Romans, and Hiero II rapidly agreed to become an Roman ally; securing Syracusan self-government, in return for an annual indemnity, and, perhaps most importantly, agreeing to help supply the Roman army in Sicily. In 262 BC, the Romans marched on Agrigentum, an important Carthaginian port-city halfway along the south coast, and laid siege to it. A large Carthaginian relief army attempted to lift the siege, but was heavily defeated at the Battle of Agrigentum (262 BC). That night the Carthaginian garrison escaped, and the Romans seized the city, selling its population into slavery. After this success the war on Sicily became a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending their well-fortified coastal cities, which could be resupply and reinforce by sea. The focus of the war shifted to the sea, where the Romans had little experience. In 260 BC, the *Senate* took the momentous decision; the Carthaginians would be challenged on their own terms. Rome, until now purely a land power, would build a fleet. During the opening skirmishes, a Carthaginian warship had run aground on Italian shores; a *Quinquereme*, larger and heavier than the Greek *Triremes*, with five banks of oars and three-hundred oarsmen. Roman shipwrights took it apart, and built 120 copies in an astonishing two months. Even so, the skills of fighting at sea could not be quickly learnt; the new Roman fleet was despatched to Sicily and promptly captured. The Romans rebuilt, refitted, and set to sea again, this time pinning their hopes on a clever device which had briefly featured in Greek naval warfare; the *Corvus* ("Raven"), a hinged drawbridge designed to pierce and anchor into an enemy ship, allowing Roman soldiers, trained in the legions, a more stable platform from which to board and capture them. And it won them battles. The first such victory at the Battle of Mylae (260 BC) came as a major shock to the Carthaginians. They anticipated victory over the inexperienced Romans, but fifty Carthaginian ships were grappled and successfully boarded by the *Corvus*, before the rest flee in panic. The new Roman confidence at sea prompted the building of a massive invasion fleet to attack Carthage itself. It sailed in 256 BC. The Carthaginians knew of Rome's intentions, and intercept them at the Battle of Cape Ecnomus (256 BC), but were defeated again; possibly the largest naval battle in history by the number of combatants. The invasion initially went well, and, in 255 BC, the Carthaginians sued for peace; the proposed terms were so harsh they fought on. Over the winter, the Carthaginian leadership sent out appeals for help all over the Mediterranean, and hit upon Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus. The subsequent Battle of Tunis (255 BC) was an unmitigated disaster for the Romans. Xanthippus saw clearly the advantage his superior Carthaginian-Numidian cavalry afforded him. He first ordered-in his war-elephants, inflicting casualties and considerable confusion. While the Romans were dealing with them. his cavalry was able to sweep away their Roman counterparts, and attack both Roman flanks. Xanthippus' fresh, and so far unused, infantry cleaned-up the rest. Another vast Roman fleet was sent out to evacuate the survivors, which won another victory at sea against the Carthaginians, only to be wrecked in a storm on the return journey.

The massive losses - most of the ships and over 100,000 men in the storm alone - reduced Roman enthusiasm for naval campaigns. Instead the conflict returns to the island of Sicily, where it becomes a long slow war-of-attrition. By 250 BC, the Romans had occupied most of Sicily, and were besieging the last two Carthaginian strongholds, Lilybaeum and Drepana. Repeated attempts to storm the walls failed, as did blockading the harbours, and the Romans settled-in for two long sieges; both would last nine-years. With the Romans all but swept from the sea, the Carthaginian leadership invested little money or manpower in Sicily; but they were not quite done yet. Hamilcar Barca (d. 228 BC), the Carthaginian commander on the island, waged a brilliant guerilla war, striking Roman outposts without warning, harassing the their rear, and cutting their supply-lines. In 244 BC, he captured the hilltop fort on Mount Eryx, which became his base-of-operations for the rest of the war. Although this restrict his movement, he continued to coordinate skirmishes and seaborne raids on the Italian coast. Hamilcar was probably the best general in the war, but, without the necessary supplies, his effect on the conflict was ultimately a limited one. In 243 BC, the Romans made a final push to end the war, rebuilding their fleet again, and blockading the Carthaginian strongholds. Carthage assembled a fleet which attempted to relieve them, but it was destroyed at the Battle of the Aegates Islands (241 BC), forcing the exhausted Carthaginian leadership to order Hamilcar to negotiate for peace. Hamilcar came down from Mount Eryx, in “*grief and rage*”, and agreed to the Treaty of Lutatius (241 BC). By its terms, Carthage would pay sizeable war-reparations over a ten year period, and give up all of Sicily; neither power was to interfere in any territory or ally of the other. The war was over. The *Senate* ordered the double-doors of Janus closed, to symbolize peace everywhere in the Roman lands. Sicily was now one of those lands; Rome's first province.

The footnote to the war took place on the ship carrying Hamilcar Barca away from Sicily, with his nine-year-old son Hannibal (d. 181 BC) in toe. According to legend, he made boy swear an oath of eternal hatred for the Romans; "*I swear, so soon as age will permit...I will use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome*". It was an oath Hannibal never forgot, and, in 218 BC, he would make good on it, descending into Italy to wreak havoc, not just on the Roman army and countryside, but on the Roman mind.

### Second Punic War

This First Punic War had in it the seeds of a more terrible conflict. In its aftermath, Carthage attempted to avoid paying in full the foreign mercenaries who had fought for Hamilcar Barca on Sicily; he had to promise considerable rewards to retain their loyalty and morale. This erupted into a full-scale mutiny, which spread to some of Carthage's overseas dependencies; the Mercenary War (241-238 BC). It now became evident that Rome had little intention of keeping her side of the peace; an army was sent to Carthaginian Sardinia to assist the rebels. Weakened by years of war, Carthage reluctantly agreed to the Roman demand to ceded both Sardinia and Corsica, rather than again enter into conflict with Rome. This breach of the recently signed treaty fuelled resentment of Rome in Carthage; it is often cited by modern scholars as the single greatest cause of war breaking out again in 218 BC. For Rome, the end of the First Punic War, marked the start of its expansion beyond mainland Italy. Sicily was a valuable acquisition, and prompted a new arrangement. Territories in Italy, granted the status of allies, must provide manpower for Roman armies. But the men of the Sicily was less interesting to Rome than its agricultural wealth. Moreover, both Carthagians and Greeks had developed an excellent means of exploiting the native Sicilians; a proportion of their produce as tax. Rome, adopting this system, found a governor (a former *Praetor*), supported by a strong military presence, was necessary to ensure taxes were collected. Sicily became the first Roman province; the administrative unit by means of which an empire would develop. Sardinia and Corsica combined the second. Before the next showdown with Carthage, Roman attention was diverted to the east, where Illyrian piracy in the Adriatic had finally become intolerable. The Illyrian tribes, on the western fringe of the Greek world, had united to form a formidable kingdom in the 3rd century BC, stretching all along the Adriatic coast; including what had once been the Kingdom of Epirus. The kingdom did not stretch far inland, though, so the Illyrians looked to the sea for their livelihood. But the economy of this new power was based, not on merchants and maritime trade, but on piracy and privateering against Roman shipping; much like the Barbary states of the sixteenth-century. The Roman-Illyrian war of 229 BC was a brief affair. Within a year, several Illyrian ports were under Roman control, and the Illyrian queen was sending envoys to Rome, suing for peace. The terms were harsh; Illyrian ships were banished from the Adriatic, and southern Illyria (opposite Brundisium on the heel of Italy) became a Roman protectorate. When the intervention was over, Roman garrisons remained, theoretically as a peacekeeping force; Rome was not yet ready to confront its Greek and Macedonian neighbours. Rome also expanded in the north of the Italian peninsula, either side of the Po river; known as Cisalpine Gaul. Roman attempts to establish new towns, or "colonies", in the region led to repeated clashes with the local Celtic Gauls, who were finally defeated at the Battle of Telamon (225 BC). Most of the Gauls simmered with resentment at this intrusion, and were ripe for revolt. So the years between the two Punic wars had been eventful and successful for Rome, but paled into insignificance compared to those of Carthage. With the major islands of the western Mediterranean seized by Rome, the obvious area in which Carthage might hope to compensate for her losses was Spain. It had mines of gold, silver and copper, and a plentiful supply of Celt-Iberian tribes, tough warriors, useful recruits for an army. In 237 BC, Hamilcar Barca took the army, which he had led to victory in the Mercenary War, to Spain, where Carthage already had a handful of prosperous coastal cities. The Carthaginian expedition landed at Cadiz, and, over the next eight years, Hamilcar carved himself out a sizeable province, aided by a total lack of cooperation amongst the natives. It was here that Hannibal grew to adulthood, watching his father wheedle and browbeat the surrounding tribes into submission; without ever setting foot in his home city of Carthage. When Hamilcar died in battle in 228 BC, Hannibal, now eighteen, was not considered quite old enough to take command. The governance of the Spanish province went instead to Hamilcar's son-in-law, Hasdrubal (d. 221 BC). Compared to his predecessor, Hasdrubal largely preferred consolidation over military expansion. In accordance with local custom, he demanded hostages from the tribes who bent the knee to Carthage, to dissuade them from breaking their treaties. He founded the important port-city of *Cartagena* ("New Carthage") in the east; a virtually impregnable fortress from which he ruled. He also seems to have lacked the family loathing for Rome, agreeing a treaty with the Republic around 225 BC, which established the River Ebro as the northern boundary of the Carthaginian sphere of influence. Perhaps Hasdrubal might have built a new and lasting kingdom in Spain, but he was killed by one of his slaves in 221 BC, and leadership of the Spanish province fell to Hannibal.

    Only twenty-five at the time, Hannibal Barca was elevated to a position of supreme command, and did not waste any time making good on his childhood oath to make himself Rome's greatest enemy. But first, he spent two years consolidating his holdings, and completing the conquest of Spain south of the Ebro; with the sort of efficiency that foreshadowed things to come. There is still argument about which side, in this touchy situation, was responsible for the outbreak of the **Second Punic War** (218–201 BC ), the greatest of the three. The speed with which the crisis escalates suggests that both Rome and Carthage regarded another conflict as inevitable. In 219 BC, the Romans, fearing the growing strength of Carthaginian Spain, made an alliance with the port-city of Saguntum, which lay a considerable distance south of the Ebro river. Hannibal did not react to this apparent violation of the treaty signed with Hasdrubal, as he had already resolved to attack Rome, and this was a way to start the war. So he laid siege to Saguntum, which fell after eight months. Rather than sacrificing its new ally for the greater peace, the Roman *Senate* sent envoys to Carthage demanding that Hannibal be suitably punished. The Carthaginian leadership refused, and countered that they would act as they pleased within their own agreed sphere of influence. When the senior Roman envoy shouted that he carried both peace and war in the folds of his garment, and would let war fall from it if they weren’t careful, the Carthaginians shouted back, “We accept it!” The Roman declared war, and generally got the better of the preliminary navel skirmishes in the waters around Sicily, which perhaps explains a certain laxity when it came to their preparations. Two *Consular* armies began to be assembled; the one under Sempronius Longus bound for the north African coast to inflict as much damage as possible there; and the other under Publius Scipio (father of the great Scipio Africanus) bound for Spain to teach the young upstart a lesson. Two legions were also placed in the Po valley, to deal with any opportunistic revolts by the Gauls. But in Spain, Hannibal was making preparations of his own, that would throw the Roman plans into complete disarray.

    Hannibal formulated a bold strategy to break the Romans by **crossing the Alps** into Italy itself; where the possibility of a sustained campaign on Roman soil had been proven by Pyrrhus. And so, in the summer of 218 BC, Hannibal left his younger brother, Hasdrubal (207 BC), in command of the province, and himself headed north along the Spanish coast . He took with him an army that ultimately numbered over a 90,000 infantry, perhaps 12,000 cavalry, and 37 war-elephants. Entering Gaul, this army took an inland route, to avoid the Roman allies in the south. In Rome, Hannibal's movements went unnoticed, until Publius Scipio put into port at Marseille, with his Spain-bound army. Scipio was shocked at the news that Hannibal, had not only left Spain, but was just a few miles away on the western-bank of the River Rhône. Scipio immediately dispatched a cavalry unit to investigate, and a minor skirmish ensued, that served only to inform Hannibal that the Romans were finally on to him. He moved with all haste to cross the river, not helped by an army of angry Gauls which sought to bar his way; he broke them with little difficulty at the Battle of Rhone Crossing (September 218 BC). With the way clear, he reached the foot of the mountains quickly. Hannibal's fifteen-day passage through the Alps is one of the most celebrated achievements in history; with good reason. Not only was winter closing in, but his men were terrified; most of them were African-raised, and Spain was the coldest land they had known. And they were constantly harassed by wild local tribes. Hannibal fought one major pitched battle on a narrow mountain trail near the summit; the horses panicked, sending men and animals sliding to their death. On the much steeper descent, they had to literally hack a path through a landslide to accommodate the elephants and pack animals. According to Livy, Hannibal himself reckoned that he lost a staggering 36,000 men, as well as 34 of the elephants.

Hannibal came down on the plain of the Po river with a weary and shrunken army, to face Publius Scipio, who had returned back to Italy to brace the two legions in the Po Valley for Hannibal's arrival; the majority of his army had sailed on to Spain under his brother Gnaeus Scipio. Weary as they were, at the **Battle of Ticinus**, the Carthaginian cavalry broke through the Roman line almost at once, and the Romans scattered and fled, with heavy casualties. Publius Scipio himself was badly wounded; and, according to legend, was only saved from death or capture by his then sixteen year old son. As a result, most of the Gallic tribes defected to the Carthaginian cause and Hannibal's army grew to more than 40,000 men. News of the defeat soon reached Rome, and the *Senate* immediately recalled Sempronius Longus with his North African invasion force in order to join with Scipio to engage Hannibal. It arrived back in Rome to great and perilous acclaim; the Romans were suffering from a dangerous disconnect between public confidence and military reality. This combined Roman force of two *Consuls* promptly gave Hannibal an opportunity to display his military genius at the **Battle of the Trebia** (December 218 BC). On a cold and snowy morning, Hannibal sent his cavalry to lure the Romans out of their winter camp, and into a hasty pursuit that took them through the icy waters of the Trebia river. On the far bank, they found Hannibal lined-up for battle at the head of a well-breakfasted and dry army. Compounding matters, Hannibal had hidden 1,000 cavalry behind a rocky outcrop. The battle was an unmitigated disaster for the Romans; only 10,000 men out of 40,000 were able to fight their way to safety. Having secured his position in northern Italy, Hannibal quartered his troops for the winter among the Gauls, who continued to join him in large numbers; bringing his army up to 50,000 men. When the news of another defeat reached Rome, it caused panic: “*People fancied that at any moment Hannibal would be at the city gates*”, Livy writes. Rome went into full mobilization, raising fresh legions from Romans and Italian allies. Hannibal began the year 217 BC by force marching his whole army over the Apennines, and through a swamp. The Romans had the roads covered, so he simply abandoned them. The terrain was his army's worst enemy. Polybius writes that Hannibal's men marched for four days and three nights "*through a land that was under water*", suffering terribly from fatigue and want-of-sleep. The general shared the pain of his men, though; his eyes succumbing to an infection, that would eventually lead to the removal of one of them. But Hannibal achieved his goal, bypassing the Roman armies in the field, and emerging deed in Etruria, with no army between himself and Rome itslef. Once he learnt that he had been outmanoeuvred, one of the Consuls, Gaius Flaminius, set-off in pursuit, assuming Hannibal would make directly for Rome. Instead, Hannibal found a suitable spot for an ambush along the shores of **Lake Trasimene**. The north shore of the lake butted-up against steep hills, and the Carthaginians made camp for the night towards the east. This was clearly visible to the Romans. Once it was dark, Hannibal sent various components of his army on night marches to take up positions behind the northern hills; his cavalry was positioned furthest to the west. On the misty morning of 21 June, the Romans set-off eastward towards the Carthaginian camp with undue haste. Unable to see too far ahead, they literally stumble into Hannibal's main heavy infantry. The Roman were still converting their formation from march into battle array, when the Carthaginian cavalry closed-off their line-of-retreat. As Flaminus was wrapping his head around fighting on two fronts, the rest of the Carthaginians came pouring down the northern hills. The Romans didn't stand a chance. All 25,000 were killed or captured; the corpse of the ill-fated Flaminius was never found.

    Hannibal’s army seemed unstoppable. He continued to push south, temporarily bypassing Rome itself, but only in the hope that his success would persuade some of Rome's allies in southern Italy over to his side. The Romans, shocked at the destruction of another *Consular* army, turned to an old solution to see them through the growing crisis; a *Dictator*. The man chosen was Quintus Fabius Verrucosus (d. 203 BC), Fabius was a man who respected Hannibal's military skill, and thus adopted a new strategy against him. This was not a particularly popular strategy; it was not a strategy to bring a quick end to the war; it was not a strategy to win everlasting glory for Rome; it was not even a strategy to win everlasting glory for Fabius himself. It was a strategy, however, that would ensure the survival of Rome; one that earned him a enduring place in history by affixing his name to "*Fabian tactics*". Fabius refused to engage Hannibal in a pitched battle at the time and place of his choosing. Instead, he kept his army close to Hannibal, harassing his foraging parties, denying him easy passage, and, wherever possible, seeking a favourable opportunity to attack. Unfortunately for Fabius, Hannibal was too savvy a general to be drawn into a battle that he himself had not himself orchestrated, so the end result was no fighting at all. Fabius did almost trap Hannibal on one occasion, but he managed to slip-away from the **"Battle" of Ager Falernus**, Hannibal had moved into Campania, as part of his strategy of peeling-off Roman allies; he hope to flip Capua, the largest city in Italy after Rome itself. However, the geography of the area, restricted by the virtually unfordable Volturnus River, left only three passes leading out of the valley. Here Fabius pounced, occupying the three exits, and trapping Hannibal. His solution was audacious. One dark night, Hannibal had his men tie burning torches to the horns of some 2,000 oxen. and then a few camp followers drove the herd towards one of the guarded passes. Assuming Hannibal was planning a night battle, the Romans promptly converged on the decoy, allowing Hannibal's army to withdraw in complete silence through an unguarded pass. This setback severe damaged Fabius. He had never been popular with the army, the public, or the *Senate*, since avoidance of battle was anathema to the Roman character. With the outcry against him now deafening, the *Senate* took the unprecedented step of appointing a co-*Dictator*, a more aggressive man named Minucius; in doing so, they made a mockery of the office of *Dictator*, which soon fell into disuse, until revived a century later by Sulla. In the *Consular* elections of 216 BC, Rome clamoured for leaders who would take the fight to Hannibal, and got what they wanted in Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. And for their trouble, they got everything Fabius had predicted; the **Battle of Cannae** (August 216 BC), the most famous military disaster in Roman history. Together, Varro and Paullus managed to raise an army of 86,400 men - the largest Roman army up to that point - and marched south from Rome to find and destroy Hannibal. In the spring, the Carthaginian army, numbering just 50,000, had seized the large supply depot at Cannae on the Apulian plain. Hannibal must have been nervous at this massive Roman force, but decided to accept battle because the ground was perfect for his superior cavalry. The Romans seemed to count on sheer weight of numbers bulldozing the enemy, and massed their heavy infantry in a deeper formation than usual. Hannibal responded to this by forming-up with a deliberately weakened centre, mostly Gauls and Spaniards; one that seemed entirely unequal to the task ahead of them. On his left and right, he placed his strongest and fiercest infantry, the north Africans, and positioned his cavalry on the flanks. Hannibal himself took his place in the centre; unless he put himself in the same danger as his troops, he could not expect them to carry out the difficult task he had in mind. At first, things seemed to go great for the Romans. The thin Carthaginian centre fought ferociously, but was slowly and steadily pushed back, drawing the Romans with them. In the heat of battle, they did not notice that the Africans on either side were holding their position, and pretty soon the battle-line had become a deep curve, menacing them on both flanks. Meanwhile on the wings, the Carthaginian cavalry easily routed their Roman counterparts, and then wheeled around on the Roman rear. The legions were now completely surrounded with no means of escape. And their systematic slaughter began. At an absolute minimum, 50,000 Romans fell, with estimates going at high as 70,000. Livy goes on to record that among the dead were 29 of 48 *military tribunes* (the cream of the Roman army officers), and 80 men of *Senatorial* rank, including the *Consul* Paullus and the former co-*Dictator* Minucius. Varro added to the disgrace of defeat, by fleeing the field with 70 cavalrymen; the survivors out of 6,000. The Battle of Cannae has gone down as one of the most famous battles in history. Generals have always tried to emulate Hannibal's near perfect double envelopment of an enemy army; Dwight D. Eisenhower described it as the “*classic example*” of a battle of annihilation.

    When news of Cannae reached Rome, almost every family in the city found that they had lost a brother, a father, or a son. For a brief period, the Romans were in complete disarray. Within just three campaign seasons, upwards of 150,000 soldiers had been killed. and 50,000 captured. But, in the long-run, Rome's determination to fight-on was only bolstered by her defeats; that special blend honour, pride, and obstinacy, which had seen the Romans through so much, would see them through this, their darkest hour. After his victory, Hannibal's cavalry commander, Maharbal, urged him to seize the opportunity and march on Rome itself. At his refusal, Maharbal is said to have exclaimed, "*You know how to gain a victory, but not how to make use of your victory*". But Hannibal had good reasons to view the strategic situation differently from Maharbal. Like Pyrrhus in 280 BC, he judged Rome's defences too formidable (even in its weakened state) for his own mauled army, now reduced to 40,000 men. After Cannae, many of Rome's allies in southern and central Italy desert to the Carthaginian cause. These included the large city of Capua, the major port-city of Tarentum, and two of the four Samnite tribes. But a majority stood firm in their allegiance. Hannibal's subsequent campaign assumed a new character. The Romans more or less abandoned all hope of confronting him directly, and returned to the tactics pioneered by Fabius, of wearing down the enemy through a war of attrition. Hannibal was, meanwhile, faced with the problem that his new allies increased the number of fixed points which his army was expected to defend from Roman retribution. Wherever he wasn't, they would recapture them by siege, or by suborning factions within to give them entry. The same pattern was repeated ad nauseam over the next years; Hannibal would take a city, and then move on; the Romans would follow behind and return it to the Roman fold; Hannibal would then be forced, either to backtrack and retake it, or move on and hope for better luck next time. The two armies would occasionally meet directly; sometimes Hannibal would win, sometimes the Romans would; but victory no longer took the form of annihilated armies, but rather strategic withdrawals and prudent retreats. Hannibal became like a bull in the ring, tormented by lesser beings, while his own strength slowly ebbed away. As the fighting in Italy dragged on, the focus of the Second Punic War shifted to other military theatres.

On Sicily, old Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse and staunch Roman ally, finally died in 215 BC, after 45 years on the throne. He was succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus, barely 15 years-old. A large bulk of the Syracusan nobility was all for breaking away from Rome after Cannae, and persuaded the impressionable youth to negotiate a treaty whereby Syracuse went over to Carthage, at the price of making the whole of Sicily a Syracusan possession. But Hieronymus soon proved a stereotypical child-tyrant, and, after thirteen months, he was assassination in a pro-Roman coup. But the conspirators then went too far by murdering the rest of Hieronymus' popular family. Public opinion immediately turned solidly against Rome, and a Carthagian general, sent to advise Hieronymus, was elevated in his place. Just like that, Carthage seemed to be on the verge of reclaiming Sicily. But the Syracusan army proved no match for the Romans, and, in the spring of 213 BC, they were laying siege to the great city by land and sea. This siege is best remembered for the ingenuity of Archimedes in inventing war machines to counteract Roman siege warfare, already made difficult by the city's strong defences. But after eight-months, the defenders became complacent. The Romans were able to storm the outer city in a surprise night assault. The Carthaginians withdrew into the inner city, and another lengthy siege ensued, which brought great hardship and hunger onto the defenders. With a parlay in progress, a Carthagian captain decided to save his own life by letting the Romans into the inner city. Frustrated after the lengthy and costly siege, the Romans looted and sacked Syracuse, killing indiscriminately. Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. The whole of Sicily was now a Roman possession. Meanwhile, in Greece, Philip V of Macedonia (d. 179 BC) decided to ally himself with Carthage, in order to extend his own power westward into Illyria. Fearing Macedonian reinforcement of Hannibal, the Senate dispatched Marcus Valerius Laevinus with a modest force across the Adriatic. The legions did little more than skirmish with the Macedonians, but Philip proved no match for Laevinus' diplomacy. Rome managed to contain the Macedonians by allying themselves with anti-Macedonian Greek cities, including the *Aetolian League* (of central Greece), Sparta, and Pergamon (in western Anatolia). The Romans were less successful in Spain. In 218 BC, a Roman army of 30,000 had landed at Agrigentum, a Roman ally north of the Elbo River, under the brothers Gnaeus and Publius Scipio. Due to a lack of support from Rome, the Scipios spent seven years campaigning with little result, other than limiting the resources available to Hannibal in Italy. But in 211 BC, the brothers managed to hired 20,000 Celt-Iberian mercenaries to reinforce their army, and went on the offensive. Observing that they outnumbered two nearby Carthaginian armies, deployed apart from each other, the Romans decided to split their own army. Unbeknownst to the Scipios, however, the army that Publius was attacking was just about to be reinforced, and the Celt-Iberians under Publius' command had been bribed to desert at the outset of battle. Outnumbered everywhere, both battles ended in complete defeat for the Romans; usually referred to jointly as the Battle of the Upper Baetis (211 BC). Both Scipio brothers died in the fighting. This gave one Roman officer the personal hatred for Carthage which Hannibal had long felt for Rome.

In 210 BC, Publius Cornelius Scipio (d. 183 BC) arrived to take command of the situations in Spain, and attempt to avenge his father's death there; he would be known for generation after as **Scipio Africanus**, a towering figure in Roman history. Only 25-years-old at the time, Scipio was given the command at this unprecedented age, not because he displayed any great ability, nor his noble demeanour and flamboyant language, but rather because he was the only man who volunteered for the task; most regarded it as a death sentence. Scipio landed at Agrigentum, north of the Elbo River, with 20,000 soldiers, who joined about 8,000 Roman survivors of the Battle of the Upper Baetis. After spending his first year getting a feel for the Celt-Iberian locals, Scipio made his mark on the war by doing the last thing anyone expected. He decided to make an audacious assault on the largest, strongest, and richest Carthaginian city in Spain; Cartagena. The Roman campaign was conducted in winter to capture the city using the element of surprise. Carefully evading the three Carthaginian armies in the field, he made for the lightly-defended centre of Carthaginian power in Spain, The small garrison was shocked when a Roman army appeared on the horizon. The Romans did not lay siege, intending to take the city by storm before help could arrive. Scipio attempted a direct assault on the main eastern gate over the isthmus, while his fleet attacked from the southern side, but was repelled with heavy losses. That night, he received a piece of crucial information; a local pointed out that, at certain times during the day, the lagoon drained out with the tide and became shallow enough to ford. The next morning, the Romans renewed their attack on the eastern gate, while Scipio himself led a small force through the lagoon, scaled the undefended north wall, and attacked the rear of the defenders. With the fall of Cartagena, the Romans seized not only a rich cache of supplies, an excellent harbour, and a base of operations, but also members of the various Celt-Iberian tribes who had been held there by the Carthaginians as hostages. In a savvy move, designed to portray the Romans as liberators as opposed to conquerors, Scipio released them all. He did not particularly win over many reliable allies, but the Carthaginians were immediately on the defensive, with their own Spanish allies deserting in droves. Leaving a garrison behind in Cartagena, Scipio then set-off in pursuit of Hasdrubal. The pair did fight a pitched battle, but it was a timid affair on both sides. Scipio feared that the other two armies in the fields would arrive and surround his small force. And Hasdrubal had already decided that his best way to regain the initiative was to follow Hannibal’s route to Italy with his 35,000 men. If the two brothers were able to join-up, they would form an army that could overrun anything the Romans sent against them. Hasdrubal made much easily progress than his brother had a decade earlier, partly due to the season; crossing the Pyrenees in late 208 BC, wintering in Gaul, and waiting until the spring to make his way through the Alps. Also, the Gauls now feared and respected the Carthaginians, and allowed his passage unmolested. The Romans were not ignorant of the threat from this second invading army. As Hasdrubal passed into the Po valley, picking-up Gallic allies, he was shadowed by two legions led by one of the *Consuls*, Marcus Livius. The other *Consul*, Gaius Claudius Nero, was two-hundred miles to the south, keeping watch on Hannibal. In was not until the Barca brothers arranged to meet up in southern Umbria that decisive measures were finally taken. One of Hasdrubal's messengers was captured, and their plans fell into Roman hands. Recognizing the urgency, Nero took a bold decision; leaving a token force in camp to keep up appearances, he force-marched the bulk of his army north to join-up with Livius. Roman luck held, and Nero was abled to close the two-hundred miles in a mere seven days, without Hannibal or Hasdrubal catching wind of the plan. Hasdrubal found himself outnumbered, and attempted to withdraw, but was trapped against the Metaurus River. The **Battle of the Metaurus** (June 207 BC) turned from an equal engagement into a rout, when the Gauls allowed themselves to be outflanked on the extreme left; "*Gauls always lack stamina*", Livy remarks. Hasdrubal, with his armies in disorganized retreat, charged into the fray to his certain death. Hannibal had lost both his brother, and his last best hope of defeating the Romans. The next year, he lost Carthaginian Spain too. Scipio's campaign culminated in the **Battle of Ilipa** (Spring 206 BC) against Hannibal's youngest brother, Mago Barca (d. 203 BC). This victory was, tactically, Scipio's finest hour, having borrowed a few tricks from Hannibal's playbook. The two opponents spent a few days observing and testing each other, with the Roman formation always presented the legions in the centre and the weaker Spanish allies on the wings, until Mago got used to this. On the morning that Scipio had decided to fight, though, he sent his cavalry to rouse the Carthaginians early (like Hannibal had at Trebia), and then formed-up with the Spanish in the centre and the legions on the wings. His "*reverse Cannae*" formation easily achieved a decisive victory, which forever broke the Carthaginian hold on Spain. Soon, the Peace of Phoenice (205 BC) halted all hostilities in Greece, and freed Roman soldiers there too.

Scipio returned to Italy in 205 BC, and was unanimously elected to the *Consulship*, at the age of thirty-one. He was determined to take the fight to the Carthaginians in **North Africa**; Rome must go on the offensive. He was not without detractors in the *Senate*, though, chief among them old Quintus Fabius who urged caution; to re-secure the Po valley, and continue the war of attrition against Hannibal. Despite this resistance, Scipio's invasion was given the go ahead, and he embarked for Sicily to make his preparation. The most formidable part of the Carthaginian army, Scipio knew, was the superb Numidian cavalry, which again and again had proven decisive against the largely infantry-based Roman legions. So one of his lieutenants, Gaius Laelius, was sent ahead to try and bring the Numidians over to the Roman side. In North Africa, Laelius made contact with a disinherited Numidian prince named Masinissa (d. 148 BC), who agreed to fight for Rome against Carthage. After landing in Africa in 204 BC, Scipio and Masinissa twice gave battle, and destroyed two large Carthaginian armies. At this point, the Carthaginian leadership had no choice; Hannibal had to be recalled from Italy. Arriving in Carthage, Hannibal despaired of the situation. On the open country of Italy, always playing the aggressor, he had been unbeatable. But now the conditions had been reversed. Hannibal was fighting a defensive war in unfamiliar rocky land, with an army composed of raw recruits, unreliable mercenaries, few cavalry, and eighty half-wild war-elephants; apart from his own Italian veterans, The two armies met at the **Battle of Zama** (October 202 BC), just south of Fair Promontory. Beforehand, Hannibal and Scipio met in person for peace talks. Perhaps the negotiations were genuine, but Scipio had sent for reinforcements, and was waiting for them to arrive. The defeat of Cannae, fourteen years ago, was still fresh in Roman memory; the sons of dead fathers were now in their twenties, battle-ready and furious. The Roman reinforcements arrived, the peace talks inevitably failed, and Rome and Carthage joined-in-battle for the final time. Hannibal deployed his infantry with the raw recruits in the front line, with his veterans behind; this way, they would have nowhere to run, and, hopefully, would tired the legions, allowing the veterans to sweep through. He also placed his war-elephants at the head of the army. But Scipio was well-prepared for this, positioning lanes all the way through the legions; when the elephants charged, they passed through the lines harmlessly. The battle begun, the Roman legions cut-through Hannibal's raw soldiers, but rout was prevented by the strength of his veterans, who blunted the Roman advance. The battle hung in the balance, as the two greatest generals of their day oversaw a crude clash of brute force. On the wings, the Carthaginian cavalry, acting on Hannibal's instructions, tried to lure the superior Roman cavalry away from the battlefield, but they were eventually forced to turn and fight; and were routed. When the Roman cavalry returned to attack the Carthaginian rear, the battle turned decisively. Zama ended with Scipio in total control of the field; Hannibal had been forced, finally, to seek refuge in Carthage. The Carthaginian leadership immediately sued for peace. Unlike the treaty that had ended the First Punic War, the terms were to be so punishing that Carthage would never be able to challenge Roman supremacy in the western Mediterranean again. The treaty stripped them of all of their overseas territories and some of their African ones; most notably, Spain became a Roman province (Hispania); and Numidia became an independent kingdom and Roman ally under Masinissa. Huge war reparations were to be paid over the next 50 years, which almost bankrupted Carthage. Hostages were taken. Carthage was forbidden to possess war-elephants, and more than ten warships; five-hundred ships were towed away from the shore and set ablaze. And it was also prohibited from waging war without Rome's express permission. Many Carthaginians wanted to reject the treaty, but Hannibal himself told the leadership that peace with Rome was the only option; the terms were accepted in spring 201 BC.

After the war, Scipio was welcomed back to Rome in *Triumph*, and granted the honorific "Africanus". He was elected *Censor* in 199 BC, but then largely took no part in public life, apart from a brief cameo in the Roman–Seleucid War. Although considered a hero by the Roman people, Scipio had enemies in the *Senate* who envied and hated him. In 187 BC, he was prosecuted in court for misappropriation of money; if guilty, which is a distinct possibility, then other *Senators* got away with far worse. Whatever the case, he was never at serious risks of conviction; his popularity with the masses made him bulletproof. Disillusioned by the ingratitude of his peers, Scipio soon left Rome and retired to his villa in Liternum, where he died in 183 BC. Meanwhile, Hannibal, still only forty-six at the end of the war, remained in Carthage for a time, and soon showed that he could be a statesman as well as a soldier. Elected *Suffete* (chief magistrate), he initiated reforms that allowed Carthage to pay the indemnity without raising taxes; particularly by eliminating corruption and recovering embezzled funds. Under his leadership, Carthage, free of defence burdens, soon enjoyed a modest post-war economic recovery. For this, he got very little gratitude. Six years after Zama, the Romans, alarmed by Carthage's renewed prosperity and suspicious of Hannibal as a potential threat as long as he lived, demand that Carthage surrender him into their custody. Aware that he had many enemies, not least among the corrupt oligarchs, Hannibal fled into voluntary exile. He would also play a brief cameo in the Roman–Seleucid War, After that, Roman vengeance pursued him all the way to an obscure little port on the Black Sea. Facing imminent capture, Hannibal chose suicide instead. According to legend, his last words were, "*Let us relieve the Romans from the anxiety they have so long experienced, since they think it tries their patience too much to wait for an old man's death*".

### Rome in Greece

Emerging from the Second Punic War, Rome was the undisputed master of the western Mediterranean. After nearly twenty years locked in a massively destructive conflict, one might have expected the Romans to take a breather. But no. Almost before peace with Carthage had been signed, Rome began embroiling herself in the cut-throat world of Hellenic power politics. Philip V of Macedonia (238–179 BC) had managed to emerge from the First Macedonian War in pretty good shape. There were still Roman "peacekeepers" down in southern Illyria, but Macedonia had increased her own holdings in the Peace of Phoenice. And while the Romans were preoccupied with Carthage, Philip V had made a secret treaty with the powerful Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire (222-187 BC). In 204 BC Ptolemy IV of Egypt had died, leaving the throne to his six-year-old son. Seizing on the leadership vacuum, Philip and Antiochus agreed to partition Ptolemaic possessions; the Seleucids would take Syrian Phoenicia and Egypt itself, while Macedonia got the Ionian coast and the Aegean islands. When Philip took the cities of Samos and Miletus, which disconcerted Attalus I of Pergamon (241–197 BC); his kingdom, in western Anatolia, now bordered both the Macedonians and Seleucids, and it was not hard to guess where the allies would look next, after stripping young Ptolemy of his inheritance. Attalus sent an appeal to the rising power of Rome, reminding them how Pergamon, among others, helped keep Philip V tied-up in Greece during long struggle with Hannibal. Very little in Philip's actions concerned the Republic, but the *Senate* decided that war now, was better than war later; before he got too strong. In 200 BC, legions were sent across the Adriatic. The Aetolian League once again jumped onto Rome’s side, as did Athens, and this **Second Macedonian War** was brought to a speedy close at the Battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC). The battle is often cited as an illustration of the superiority of the Roman *Manipular* formation over the inflexible Macedonian *Phalanx.* The Roman commander, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, sent a surprised attack on the Philip's camp, that forced the Macedonian to retreat up into the hills. By then the Romans had formed-up for battle, and Philip ordered his own troops into the rigid line of a *Phalanx*. The Macedonian right, with the hill in their favour, was proving more than a match for the legions. But the left had trouble forming-up on the broken ground, and the Romans were able to smash through. At this point, an unnamed Roman military tribune, on his own initiative, detached a few maniples (a smaller tactic unit than a legion), spun them around and smashed into the rear of the Macedonian right. Trapped in their Phananx, and unable to re-position themselves to face this new threat, the battle turned into a slaughter. The next year, Philip V signed a peace treaty that allowed him to stay on the Macedonian throne, but he was forced to surrender his recent conquests, and withdraw his soldiers from the whole of Greece. In a clever move, borne out of necessity, Flamininus appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth, and announced that all the Greek cities were free. "*It was a wholly admirable action*", gushes Polybius; the truth was that, weakened by years of war, Rome had neither the manpower nor money to occupy Greece. Polybius notes that there were more than a few sceptical voices; “*the Greeks were not being given their freedom, but merely a change of masters*”. But the Romans insisted on their own disinterested benevolence.

The honeymoon period did not last long. The Greeks might have been declared free from foreign interference, but it turned out that Rome was not among the foreign powers that Greece was free from. The *Aetolian League*, Rome's first allies in Greece, resented the generous peace terms that had been granted to Philip V of Macedonia; two of its former members remained under Macedonian control. The *Aetolians* began conspiring with Sparta, who had her own grievances. Hoping to pre-empt an alliance, the Roman legions under Flamininus invaded and defeated Sparta in 195 BC. This move backfired, turning Greek public opinion against Rome; if Greece was free, why was a Roman intervention in Greece? The *Aetolian League* now called upon the last best hope of Hellenistic power, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus III was already in his thirty-second year of an eventful reign. He had substantially expanded the empire's territory, pacified both Parthia and Bactria, and forced Ptolemaic Egypt into an unfavourable peace; accomplishments that earned him the honorific Antiochus "the Great". Now he decided to embark on a new campaign: to go west. By 196, Antiochus had blown through the disorganized resistance that met him in Anatolia, and crossed over the Hellespont to claim a foothold in Thrace, He was rather more inclined to start a war with Rome than not, partly because he now had a new military advisor: the fugitive Hannibal had shown up at the Seleucid court, his love for his homeland having faded, but his lifelong loathing for Rome remained. The **Roman–Seleucid War** (192–188 BC) began with Antiochus III marching south into Greece at the head of ten-thousand men. However, the *Aetolian League* had painted a somewhat rosy picture of the reception Antiochus would receive; greeted, not as a welcome liberator, but as just another foreign invader, he found the gates of Greece closed to him. And Rome's disinterested benevolence last only as long as no other power stepped into the vacuum. Antiochus' ten-thousand was soon facing a Roman army grown to almost double that size. Knowing he had miscalculated but unwilling to back-down, Antiochus made for the most famous bottleneck in history, the Pass of Thermopylae, where the clear numerical superiority of the Romans would be negated. The Second Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC) had none of the lustre of the original. The Roman commander, Manius Acilius Glabrio, exhorted the legions in terms that confirmed the worst suspicions of the Greeks: “*You are fighting for the independence of Greece, to free now from the Aetolians and Antiochus a country which you earlier freed from Philip. And after that you will open up to Roman domination Asia, Syria, and all the wealthy kingdoms stretching as far as the rising sun*”. It was not a particularly convincing speech of liberation, but it did the trick. The Roman victory was quick and decisive. Antiochus managed to escape the slaughter with his cavalry, departing Greece soon afterwards, with the Romans coming fast on his heels. One of the lasting legacy of this Battle of Thermopylae was the entrance of Marcus Porcius Cato (d. 149 BC), also know as Cato "the Elder", onto history's stage. The man, who would dominate Roman politics for the next fifty years, made a name for himself, leading his detachment through the hills, surprising the garrisoned fort (which has built there since the previous battle), and outflanking the enemy; this proved to be the critical manoeuvre of the battle. Cato, the great conservative of his day, would be the leading defender of old Roman virtue, and fought a loosing battle against the evolution of the Roman character; Hellenized, worldly, and corrupt. Meanwhile, the Romans carried the fight over into Seleucid Anatolia, under another member of the Scipio family. Antiochus gave Hannibal command of a naval force, and himself commanded a land defence, but both failed. Hannibal’s fleet surrendered off the south coast of Anatolia; Antiochus’s army was defeated again, this time at Magnesia. This Scipio earned himself the honorific "Asiaticus" for his trouble, while Antiochus was forced to come to terms. The Treaty of Apamea deprived him of most of his territory north of the Taurus Mountains. Although western Anatolia would not become an official Roman province for decades, like Greece itself, it was henceforth part of the Roman hegemony. This defeat was the beginning of the end for the Seleucid Empire. By the mid-second century BC, eastern Anatolia had become the independent Kingdom of Armenia (189 BC-428 AD), the Parthians had conquered most of the eastern lands, and the Seleucid kings ruled over a rump state in Syria.

After the Roman–Seleucid War, the legions returns home to Italy, leaving the Greeks to enjoy their freedom in the usual manner - with a rapid return to arms. The catalyst of the next Roman intervention was the death of Philip V, and a quarrel over the Macedonian throne. Philip's younger son, Demetrius, had been hauled-off to Rome as a hostage for his good behaviour. When the young prince was returned by the Romans out of goodwill, he received with enough joy to put his elder brother’s nose out of joint. This man, Perseus, suspected his younger brother of intending to supplant him on the throne, with Roman assistance; perhaps not without cause. He began to drop hints to Philip V that the newly freed Demetrius was a Roman puppet; “*I don’t want to say a traitor, but at least a spy. The Romans gave his body back to us, but they have retained his heart*”. Shortly before his death, Philip gave in to his suspicions; Livy says that he ordered poison put into Demetrius’s cup. When Perseus (179–168 BC) became king of Macedonia, he sent messages of friendship to Rome, but these were deceptive. He began building his own strength, and building an anti-Roman alliance of Greek cities, without raisin suspicion. This went well for three years, until one Greek king, Eumenes of Pergamum, went to Rome in person to complain about Perseus’s behaviour. Macedonian intentions were made clearer when Perseus sent assassins after Eumenes to silence him; they failed and made the accusations all the more believable. In 171 BC, 17,000 Roman soldiers headed for Macedonia under Publius Licinius Crassus (an ancestor of the famous *Triumvir*), inaugurating the **Third Macedonian War** (171–168 BC). This Crassus did not get his familial legacy off to a good start, promptly leading the Romans into their first defeat in Greece at Callinicus (171 BC). It was a minor engagement, but a boon for Perseus, and Greeks began flocking to him; a decision that would haunt them all. Frustrated at the lack of success against Macedonia, the legions turn to more profitable ventures; the merciless sack of defenceless Greek cities. But eventually Roman discipline was restored by a new *Consul*, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who finally crushed the Macedonians in one big disastrous battle, this one at Pydna (168 BC). Unlike the Second Macedonian War, the Third brought an end to Macedonia. The Romans were fed up with fighting unpleasant little wars in the north of Greece. In 168 BC, Perseus was hauled back to Rome as a captive, and Aemilius oversaw the division of Macedonia into four separate client states. The Macedonian monarchy, which had produced Alexander, had ended. On his way back to Italy, Aemilius led his army on one of the great senseless rampages of ancient times. Furious at the Greeks for turning on Rome, he decided that an example had to be made of someone, anyone, to prevent this sort of thing happening again. Epirus was chosen out of simple convenience; it had played almost no role in the war against Paullus. At first, Aemilius demanded a bribe from each city. Once paid, he simply let his soldiers off their leash, and let them sack, rape, plunder, and burn anything they came across. Upwards of 150,000 locals were sold into slavery; the rest were killed or left destitute. Like Machiavelli, the Romans had decided that "*It is better to be feared than loved*". They hoped the example made of Epirus would leave them free of military costs in the east; but it was not to be. Trouble began around 150 BC, when a pretender to the Macedonian throne made a bid to reunite the kingdom. Rome did not react kindly to this. A Roman army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus made quick work of the revolt, and then annexed Macedonia as an official new province, taking away even the small freedoms that the republics had been permitted. Not long afterward, some Roman diplomats decided to mediate a dispute between Sparta and Corinth. They held their deliberations in Corinth, but came to a decision favouring the Spartans; which was not the cleverest of arrangements. The Corinthians rioted and the Roman diplomat was caught up in it. Retuning to Rome, the indignant officials put the worst possible spin on the incident, presenting the violence, not as a sudden outbreak, but as a deliberately intended insult upon Rome. In an absolutely brutal display of power, Corinth was besieged, captured, and burned to the ground; the men were slaughtered, and the women and children sold into slavery. This marked the complete subjugation of Greece; in a few years, the territory would join Macedonia as a collection of provinces. It was a Roman world; the Greeks just lived in it.

The Roman example may have civilized the more primitive western lands, but the east was to prove that it had its own strengths and powers of resistance. As the poet Horace put it, "*Captive Greece held captive her uncouth conqueror and brought the arts to the rustic Latin lands*". Although Rome had been in some measure Hellenized before the conquest of Greece, with direct contact, almost every facet of Roman civilisation was influenced by the Greeks. The first Roman literature was translated Greek works, and the first Latin theatre was imitations of Greek models. Art began to flow to Rome through pilfering and looting, but Greek style – above all its architecture – was already familiar from the western Greeks. There was a movement of people, too. Among the thousands of Greek slaves and hostages sent to Rome was Polybius (d. 118 BC), who provided Rome with its first analytical history in the tradition of Thucydides. His history of the years 220–146 BC is our main source for almost every aspect of the Punic Wars. Educated Romans were likely bilingual in Greek and Latin, having been taught to read and write by Greek slave. The lives of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Julius Caesar are examples of Romans who travelled to Greece to continued their education. Athens, in particular, prospered as a cultural hub of philosophy, education, and learned knowledge. But the throb of Greece itself, in politics, was a thing of the past.

### End of Carthage

Greece was not the only problem on the Roman agenda. The period after the Second Punic War was, for Carthage, a return to her true calling; the Carthaginians were at heart merchants and traders. Force by Rome to dissolve their army, she found her ledgers free from an enormous annual cost; money that could be invested in more productive endeavours. Soon the Carthaginian economy was booming once again; which filled the Romans with a combination of envy and dead. But Carthage was in peril. During these years, the dominant power in North Africa was Numidia, under Rome's loyal ally Masinissa (d. 148 BC); who had been with them since Zama. Masinissa exploited the prohibition on Carthage waging war to raid and seize Carthaginian possessions with impunity. Whenever Carthage petitioned Rome for redress, or permission to take military action, Rome backed Masinissa, and his raids on became ever more flagrant. In 151 BC, fifty-years after the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians paid-off the final instalment of the war reparations, which many released them from any obligation to Rome. They raised a modest army for their own defence, but, after years of peace, the untried soldiers quickly proved no match for the seasoned Numidians. And, for their troubles, all the Carthaginians achieved was to give the Roman a pretext to destroy them. There had long been a faction within the Roman *Senate* that wished to take military action against Carthage. Cato the Elder famously ended all of his speeches, no matter the topic, with, “*And to conclude, I think that Carthage ought to be utterly destroyed*". Historians have advanced many theories as to why Rome was so eager for war: a fear of Carthage as a commercial rival; use of Carthage as a political "bogeyman" to keep the common people in check; a desire to forestall a wider war upon Masinissa's death (who was now in his eighties); rage at the defiance of a previously beaten enemy; or simple greed for glory and loot. Whatever the reason, in 149 BC, Roman ships sailed for the North African coast under the command of Scipio Aemilianus, grandson of the great Scipio Africanus. Although traditionally called the *Third Punic War* (149-146 BC), it was was purely a punitive expedition. The Carthaginian leadership attempted at once to sue for peace, but Roman demands were vindictive: to abandon their city, and relocate no less than ten-miles away from the sea. They broke off negotiations, and set to work preparing for a siege. The city of Carthage unusually large for the time; modern historians places its population at 500,000, which would make it the largest city in the world. She was strongly fortified with three lines of defensive walls, of which the strongest was 30-feet-wide, and 50-feet-high, with a 70-feet-wide ditch in front. She also raised a strong and enthusiastic force to garrison the city from her citizenry. The last holdouts fought on from the citadel, and, when all was lost, burned it down. At this point, the Carthaginian commander surrendered to Scipio Aemilius on the promise of his life; his own wife cursed him, and walked back into the citadel with her children, to burn to death. There were 50,000 Carthaginian prisoners, who were sold into slavery; everyone else was either dead or had fled. According to the *Senate*'s orders, Scipio Aemilius set fire to the city, which according to legend took ten days to burn to the ground. Another legend maintains that the Romans then ploughed the earth with salt, but the story is a much later invention. The remaining Carthaginian territory was annexed was annexed as the Roman province of "Africa", though it long remained sparsely populated due to the belief a curse had been placed on Carthage.

With Carthage destroyed and Greece pacified, Rome had conquered all of the ancient powers that lay within easy reach. Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucids, and the Parthians, still lay beyond, but, before further campaigns, Rome had domestic troubles to settle.

### Rise of Parthia

On the Euphrates, Rome was to eventually meet a new power from the east; the **Parthians**. Their origins lay among the tribal nomads, specifically one tribe called the Parni, which lay beyond the Hellenic Seleucid Empire, in the steppes east of the Caspian Sea. One weakness of the Seleucids was an over-preoccupation with its western half. There, the bulk of its population, trade, and wealth was concentrated, and its territory was contested with other Hellenistic states. Meanwhile, its north-east was threatened - as always - by Central Asian nomads, but government was distracted from this danger by the need to supply money and resources for repeated quarrels with Ptolemaic Egypt. The temptation for a remote provincial governor to strike out on his own was often irresistible. Two of the places in which this happened were Bactria and Parthia. In Bactria, a Seleucid governor named Diodotus (d. 235 BC) founded a remarkable Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (256-100 BC), in an important area covering much of present-day Afghanistan. It was to become more important still as time passed for it lay across the caravan routes by which the western Classical world and China came to be remotely in touch – the Silk Road. Not long afterwards, a Hellenized Iranian nobleman named Andragoras (d. 238 BC) declared his own homeland of Parthia - to the south-east of the Caspian Sea - free as well. This proved a miscalculation. Without Seleucid military support, Andragoras had difficulty in maintaining his borders. Scholars contest the details, but, about 238 BC, a Parni tribal chief named Arsaces (d. 217 BC) invaded Parthia, and seized control of the northern part. A short while later the Parni seized the rest of Parthia from Andragoras, killing him in the process. Arsaces spent the rest of his reign consolidating his rule, and successfully fending-out Seleucid efforts at reconquest. By his death, he had laid the foundations of a strong Parthian Kingdom (247-171 BC), anachronistically taking its name from the Seleucid province that the Parni had conquered. Who were the Parthians? They most impressed the Greeks as warriors, fighting in the way characteristic of the Central Asian nomads; using heavy composite bows from horseback, falling back when faced with a superior force. They became a byword for a military skill then peculiar to them; the "Parthian shot", in which a horseman fires an arrow over the rump of the horse as he gallops away. The Parthians did not build nearly five hundred years of political continuity only on this, though. They also inherited an administrative structure left to the Seleucids by Alexander, who had taken it from the Persians. Indeed, in most things the Parthians seemed inheritors, not originators; their great dynasty used Greek for its official documents; they seem to have had no law of their own, but readily accepted existing practice, whether Persian or Hellenistic.

Parthia remained one of many medium sized powers in the Near East, until the accession of Mithridates I (165–132 BC). With the Seleucids disastrously engaged in the Roman–Seleucid War to the west, Mithridates was able to transform his small kingdom into the **Parthian Persian Empire** (171-224 AD) through conquest. He began by seizing the western half of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Turning his sights on Seleucid land, he invaded Media in 148 BC, and occupied the ancient city of Ecbatana; which he made another capital. This victory opened the route to Mesopotamia. The Parthians built themselves a camp at Ctesiphon, which they used to campaign closer and closer to the old Babylonian heartland between the Tigris and Euphrates. In 141 BC, Mithridates took the Seleucid capital of Seleucia, and was recognised as the king of Babylon. The next year, while Mithridates was back east fighting hostile nomads, the Seleucid king Demetrius II (d. 125 BC) attempted to regain his lost territories. Initially successful, Demetrius was defeated, captured, and hauled back to Parthia; Josephus claims that he died, still in captivity. Shortly afterwards, the Parthians punished Persia (southwestern Iran on the Persian Gulf) for aiding Demetrius, making it a vassal state. Consciously reminiscent of those who had gone before, Mithridates assumed the ancient Achaemenid title of *King of Kings*. Yet the Parthian Empire seems a much looser arrangement than the Persian; more reminiscent of a feudal grouping of nobles about a warlord, than a bureaucratized state. There were setbacks after Mithridates' death, but his namesake Mithridates II (124-91 BC) recovered lost ground and went even further. The once-great Seleucids were confined to Syria, with a new capital at Antioch. Before long, Mithridates II was alarming Pergamon in western Anatolia, a Roman ally. In 96 BC, an up-and-coming Roman general, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, was sent to meet a Parthian ambassador on the Euphrates, inaugurating contact between Rome and Parthia. A few years earlier, the Parthian had also opened relations with another great power; China. Following the diplomatic venture of Zhang Qian into Central Asia, Emperor Wu of Han sent a delegation to the Parthian court in 121 BC, opening official trade relations via the Silk Road. The Parthians were enriched by taxing the Eurasian caravan trade in silk, the most highly valued import from China; Parthian spices, perfumes, and fruit went the other way.