only a candidate for the aedileship, elected consul, and given the 608. command in Africa. In the next year (146) Carthage was taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman province of Africa, while Numidia, now ruled by the three sons of Massinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the raids of the desert tribes (see Carthage).
In Italy itself the Hannibalic war had been followed by important changes. In the north the Celtic tribes paid for their Italy. sympathy with Hannibal by the final loss of all separate political existence. Cispadane Gaul, studded with colonies and flooded with Roman settlers, was rapidly Romanized. Beyond the Padus (Po) in Polybius's time Roman civilization was already widely spread. In the extreme north-east the Latin colony of Aquileia, the last of its kind, was 573. 574. 581. founded in 181, to control the Alpine tribes, while in the north-west the Ligurians were held in check by the colony of Luna (180), and by the extensive settlements of Roman citizens and Latins made on Ligurian territory in 173.[1] In southern Italy the depression of the Greek cities on the coast, begun by the raids of the Sabellian tribes, was completed by the repeated blows inflicted upon them during the Hannibalic struggle. Some of them lost territory;[2] all suffered from a decline of population and loss of trade; and their place was taken by such new Roman settlements as Brundusium (Brindisi) and Puteoli (Pozzuoli).[3] In the interior the southern Sabellian tribes suffered scarcely less severely. The Bruttii were struck off the list of Roman allies, and nearly all their territory was confiscated.[4] To the Apulians and Lucanians no such hard measure was meted out; but their strength had been broken by the war, and their numbers dwindled; large tracts of land in their territories were seized by Rome, and allotted to Roman settlers, or occupied by Roman speculators. That Etruria also suffered from declining energy, a dwindling population, and the 621. spread of large estates is clear from the state of things existing there in 133. It was indeed in central Italy, the home of the Latins and their nearest kinsmen, and in the new Latin and Roman settlements throughout the peninsula that progress and activity were henceforth concentrated.
(b) Rome in the East, 200-133.—Ever since the repulse of Pyrrhus from Italy, Rome had been slowly drifting 553-608. 554-621. 526. 540. into closer contact with the Eastern states. With one of the three great powers which had divided between them the empire of Alexander, with Egypt, she had formed an alliance in 273, and the alliance had been cemented by the growth of commercial intercourse between the two countries.[5] In 228 her chastisement of the Illyrian pirates had led naturally enough to the establishment of friendly relations with some of the states of Greece proper. In 214 the alliance between Philip V. and Hannibal, and the former's threatened attack on Italy, forced her into war with Macedon, at the head of a coalition of the Greek states against him, which effectually frustrated his designs against herself; at the first 549. opportunity, however (205), she ended the war by a peace which left the position unchanged. The results of the war were not only to draw closer the ties which bound Rome to the Greek states, but to inspire the senate with a genuine dread of Philip's restless ambition, and with a bitter resentment against him for his union with Hannibal. The events of the next four years served to deepen both these feelings. In 205 Philip entered into a compact with Antiochus III. of Syria for the partition between them of the dominions of Egypt,[6] now left by the death of Ptolemy Philopator to the rule of a boy-king. Antiochus was to take Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, while Philip claimed for his share the districts subject to Egypt on the coasts of the Aegean and the Greek islands. Philip no doubt hoped to be able to secure these unlawful acquisitions before the close of the Second Punic War should set Rome free to interfere with his plans. But the obstinate resistance offered by Attalus of Pergamum and the 553. Rhodians upset his calculations. In 201 Rome made peace with Carthage, and the senate had leisure to listen to the urgent appeal for assistance which reached her from her Eastern allies. With Antiochus indeed the senate was not yet prepared to quarrel; but with Philip the senate had no thoughts of a peaceful settlement. Their animosity against him has been deepened by the assistance he had recently rendered to Carthage. Always an unsafe and turbulent neighbour, he would, if allowed to become supreme in the Aegean, prove as dangerous to her interests in the East as Carthage had been in the West. To cripple or at least to stay the growth of Philip's power was in the eyes of the senate a necessity; but it was only by representing a Macedonian invasion of Italy as imminent 554. that they persuaded the assembly, which was longing for peace, to pass a declaration of war[7] (200). The war began in the summer of 200 B.C., and, though the landing of the Roman legions in Epirus was not followed, as had been hoped, by any general rising against Philip, yet the latter had soon to discover that, if they were Second Macedonian War. 200-197 = 554-57. not enthusiastic for Rome, they were still less inclined actively to assist himself. Neither by force nor by diplomacy could he make any progress south of Boeotia. The fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes, now the zealous allies of Rome, protected Attica and watched the eastern coasts. The Achaeans and Nabis of Sparta were obstinately neutral, while nearer home in the north the Epirots and Aetolians threatened Thessaly and Macedonia. His own resources both in men and in money had been severely strained by his constant wars,[8] and the only ally who could have given him effective assistance, Antiochus, was fully occupied with the conquest of Coele-Syria. It is no wonder then that, in spite of his dashing generalship and high courage, he made 556. but a brief stand. T. Quinctius Flamininus (consul 198), in his first year of command, defeated him on the Aous, drove him back to the pass of Tempe, and in the next year utterly routed him at Cynoscephalae. Almost at the same moment the Achaeans, who had now joined Rome, took Corinth, and the Rhodians defeated his troops in Caria.[9] Further resistance was impossible; Philip submitted, and early the next year a Roman commission reached Greece with instructions to arrange terms of peace. These were such as effectually secured Rome's main object in the war, the removal of all danger to herself and her allies from Macedonian aggression.[10] 553. Philip was left in possession of his kingdom, but was degraded to the rank of a second-rate power, deprived of all possessions in Greece, Thrace and Asia Minor, and forbidden, as Carthage had been in 201, to wage war without the consent of Rome, whose ally and friend he now became.
The second point in the settlement now effected by Rome was the liberation of the Greeks. The “freedom of Greece” The liberation of the Greece. 560. was proclaimed at the Isthmian games amid a scene of wild enthusiasm,[11] which reached its height when two years later (194) Flamininus withdrew his troops even from the “three fetters of Greece”—Chalcis, Demetrias and Corinth.[12] There is no reason to doubt that, in acting thus, not only Flamininus himself, but the senate and people at home were influenced, partly at any rate, by feelings of genuine
- ↑ Livy xlii. 4.
- ↑ E.g. Tarentum, Livy xliv. 16. A Roman colony was established at Croton in 194, and a Latin colony (Copia) at Thurii in 193 (Livy xxxiv. 45, 53).
- ↑ Brundusium was established in 246 (Liv. Epit. xix.) or 245 (Vell. i. 14). Puteoli was fortified during the Second Punic War and became a Roman colony in 194 (Livy xxxiv. 45).
- ↑ Appian, Hann. 61; Aul. Gell. x. 3; cf. Beloch, Ital. Bund.
- ↑ Egypt had supplied corn to Italy during the Second Punic War (Polyb. ix. 44).
- ↑ Polyb. iii. 2, xv. 20; Livy xxxi. 14.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxi. 6, 7.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxiii. 3.
- ↑ Ibid. 18.
- ↑ Polyb. xviii. 44-47; Livy xxxiii. 30-34.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxiii. 32, 33.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxiv. 48-52.
