Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  In 265 BC the ancient city of Carthage was the most significant power in the Mediterranean. It was founded by Phoenicians (from what is now Lebanon) around 800 BC. Their skill lay in seafaring, and it was their single-minded pursuit to control the trading routes of the western Mediterranean that, by 265 BC, made Carthage the wealthiest, most culturally advanced city of the region. Its trading posts stretched from the coasts of Spain and France to Sicily and Sardinia, and from there south across the whole of North Africa. While Carthage had come into conflict with other maritime peoples, particularly the Greeks, in the process of establishing these trading routes, its relations with the city-state of Rome and the seafaring peoples of Italy had been friendly: treaties protecting Carthage’s trade routes were established with Rome in 509 BC and 348 BC. Now in 265 BC, however, all that was about to change, although no one knew it at the outset.

  Rome’s first great war with Carthage, known as the First Punic War (Punic being the Latin word for ‘Phoenician’), began in 264 BC. The moment of incitement was when Rome was called upon to help resolve a small dispute on the island of Sicily, a Carthaginian province (see map, previous page). The city of Messina, controlled by mercenaries from Campania in Italy, was being attacked by soldiers from the city of Syracuse. Rome took the side of Messina; Carthage took the side of Syracuse. The war by proxy blew up into a direct confrontation between Rome and Carthage after the consul in charge of the Roman army not only succeeded in relieving Messina, but also forced Syracuse to accept his generous terms, defect from Carthage and become an ally of Rome. Anxious to protect its province, Carthage joined battle in earnest by sending a large army to the island in 262 BC. So began a war that would last more than twenty years. At stake was the control of Sicily.

  As the conflict escalated, so too did Rome’s war aims. Rome realized that to win the war it needed to drive Carthage out of Sicily altogether; to do that it needed to weaken Carthage’s control of the seas around Sicily. This would be no mean feat, for it required developing a weapon Rome had not yet tried out, let alone built: a navy. According to Polybius, the Romans seized the opportunity to build a war fleet for the first time in their history when a Carthaginian ship harrying the crossing of Roman troops to Sicily ran aground on the coast of southern Italy.4 The Romans seized it, copied its design and within a year produced a navy of one hundred oared warships. They even took the opportunity of enhancing the ships with a secret weapon: a rotatable, spiked boarding bridge. Thus armed, the Romans, led by their admiral Gaius Dulius, won their first sea battle at Mylae in 260 BC.

  Despite some major setbacks, including an ill-advised invasion of North Africa, the destruction of their fleet by storms no less than three times, and near financial ruin, the Romans responded to adversity in typical, never-say-die fashion: they rebuilt their ships. Crucially, they were given a much-needed breathing space when, in 247 BC, the Carthaginians chose to focus not on defeating the Romans, but on restoring the loyalty – wavering towards Rome – of the Numidians and the Libyans in the interior of North Africa. When, on 10 March 241 BC, Rome won a decisive victory over a Carthaginian relief fleet off the Aegates Islands to the north of Sicily, the Romans finally achieved mastery of the sea. At that time the Carthaginian general Hamilcar was conducting a successful guerrilla war against the Roman army on Sicily. Even though he himself had not been beaten, he was instructed by the political leaders in Carthage to come to terms.

  The undefeated general’s submission to the Romans symbolized the unresolved nature of the first war. If striking the peace treaty rankled the Carthaginian leadership, there were more bitter pills to swallow. In the immediate aftermath of the war Carthage evacuated Sicily and, with the exception of the kingdom of Syracuse, which remained an ally, the island became Rome’s first overseas province. Harsh conditions were imposed, principally the indemnity that Carthage had to pay Rome: 3200 talents of silver, the equivalent of 82,000 kilograms (80 tons), to be paid over ten years. Rome then took advantage of Carthage’s weakness to expel Carthaginians unceremoniously from both Sardinia and Corsica. In the space of a few years Rome had moved seamlessly from a position of seeking to ‘defend’ its allies in the region by excluding the Carthaginians from ‘Italian’ waters to exploiting the three wealthy islands for its own enrichment. Corn, as well as other riches, flowed into Rome from the islands. And yet despite this naked show of imperialism, the question of who controlled the Mediterranean had still not been answered.

  The region of contention between the established Carthaginian empire and Rome’s fledgling overseas empire now became Spain. The general Hamilcar headed up an expeditionary force and went there in 238 BC with the express purpose of building a new empire to make up for the loss of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. The mines of Spain were rich in gold and silver, a new army could be recruited from the local tribes there, and the country’s grain supply could compensate for the loss of Sardinia’s. Through a combination of campaigns, treaties and alliances, Hamilcar with his sons expanded their control of Spain, while Carthage continued to supply his expeditionary force with officers, elephants and colonists to populate the new cities being built. Nervous of the growing power base that Carthage was building in Spain, Rome sent envoys in 226 BC to New Carthage (modern-day Cartagena), asking the Carthaginians to limit their expansion to the river Ebro (see map, page 49). They agreed, but the peace was only temporary because Rome then strategically established an alliance with the independent city of Saguntum on the Mediterranean coast north of New Carthage. By making an ally of a city on the periphery of Carthage’s expanding Spanish empire, Rome could eventually justify a war once again by claiming to come to Saguntum’s defence. A time bomb for a future war was thus set ticking.

  The man who was prepared to take on Rome for a second time and try to reverse the result of the first war was Hamilcar’s younger son, Hannibal. In 221 BC he had assumed command of the Carthaginian forces in Spain. When he was nine, went one famous story, his father had dipped his hand in the blood of a sacrifice and sworn him to an eternal hatred of Rome. Now the twenty-seven-year-old general had his excuse to vent that wrath. To his mind the city of Saguntum, which had begun harassing neighbouring Carthaginian towns, was a threat, an impediment to their control of Spain and the security of the western empire. So, with authorization from the leaders of Carthage, Hannibal crossed the river Ebro and took the city by storm. War had been declared.

  The Romans expected the Second Punic War to be fought in Spain. They were utterly wrong-footed. This conflict, which lasted from 218 to 201 BC and was the greatest of the wars between the two rival empires, is legendary for Hannibal’s extraordinary decision: to invade Italy and march on Rome. In the spring of 218 BC he set out on the 1600-kilometre (1000-mile) journey across hostile territory with 12,000 cavalry, 90,000 infantry and thirty-seven war elephants. Such a feat demanded courage and resourcefulness. At the river Rhone, 500 metres (1650 feet) wide and too deep to wade across, the elephants were enticed on to rafts by mahouts. The animals were deceived by a covering of soil laid on the rafts to make them look like solid ground. Once two females had floated across, the others, despite some casualties, overcame their panic and followed. However, the greatest challenge to Hannibal was not a river, but the snowcapped mountains of the Alps.

  Enduring ambushes, falling rocks and boulders, steep, slippery tracks, low food supplies and freezing temperatures, Hannibal headed his army through the narrow passes with ingenuity and inspired leadership. When his men were cold he spent the night in the open with them; when a road was blocked by a landslide he rallied them to heat up sour wine, pour it over the obstructing rocks and thus break them up; when his army was flagging from exhaustion he raised their spirits by reminding them of the opportunities for glory and loot that lay ahead: ‘You are passing over the protective barrier of Italy – nay more, you are passing over the very walls of Rome!’5 After four weeks crossing the whole Alpine range, Hannibal walked into Italy in the company of (at the lowest estimate) 20,000
infantry, 6000 cavalry and a minority of the elephants. The infantry might have been double that size. He rested them all for two weeks before proceeding to match the great feat of reaching Italy with another: destroying every Roman force he met there.

  Between the winter of 218 BC and the summer of 216 BC, at the battles of Ticinus, Trebia and Trasimene (see map, page 49), the young general Hannibal surpassed the Romans in military flair, strategy and daring to consistently crush armies far larger than his own. The climax to his Italian campaign, however, was the battle of Cannae, a place that became synonymous with Roman tragedy. At this confrontation in the region of Apulia he succeeded in surrounding an army double the size of his own with both flanks of his superior African cavalry. As the encircling Carthaginian alliance closed in, a prolonged period of butchery ensued; 45,500 Roman and allied infantry were killed, along with 2700 cavalry. The battle cut a massive swathe through the officer corps of the aristocratic élite too: no fewer than eighty senators died on the battlefield. Indeed, it is said that perhaps no Western army has suffered higher casualties in a single day of fighting before or since than the Romans did at Cannae. The defeat sent shock waves through southern Italy, where many of Rome’s allies and colonies now defected to Carthage. This had always been Hannibal’s plan, and now it was paying off. To all appearances, Rome, the precocious fledgling empire, was doomed to be short-lived.

  And yet, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, one man would show the never-say-die spirit of defiance with which Rome would turn events around. His name was Publius Cornelius Scipio and he was the man who was to become the grandfather of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Although the then nineteen-year-old junior magistrate had just witnessed his father-in-law killed on the battlefield, he rallied the surviving officers. Scipio’s energy and authority checked the impulse of the terrified soldiers who were threatening to flee. In fear now of Scipio, they promptly pulled themselves together and swore their loyalty to the Roman republic. The same indomitable spirit was echoed at the gates of Rome too. Here the victorious Hannibal sent a delegation to sue for terms in the expectation that his enemy would capitulate. The Romans responded by refusing to allow the Carthaginians even to enter the city. When Hannibal himself subsequently drew up his army outside the city walls, so the story goes, the land on which they camped happened to be for sale. Such was the confidence of the Romans that, before Hannibal and his army left, a buyer for it was found.6 The message was clear: the Romans were determined to fight on and fight to win.

  The man who would lead their comeback between 216 and 202 BC was Scipio. The key to his success in reversing Hannibal’s achievement was the Romans’ ability to draw on a seemingly endless supply of high-quality manpower. Although the Italian allies of Rome in the south defected to Hannibal, many others remained loyal, and it was from these and other allied communities throughout Italy that Rome created new armies. With them at their disposal, the Romans now adopted a different tactic altogether. They allowed Hannibal free rein in the south of Italy to try to raise a coalition of new forces, and meanwhile set out to defeat the Carthaginians in Spain. The plan was to prevent a second invasion and to stop Hannibal from acquiring much-needed reinforcements from abroad. At the age of just twenty-six, Scipio took New Carthage, won over many Spanish tribes and drove the Carthaginians out of Spain altogether. Such was his popularity that, despite opposition from the Senate in Rome, the charismatic and highly motivated young general was then able to raise another army of volunteers and set his sights on the one feat the Romans had not achieved during the First Punic War: an invasion of North Africa.

  With Hannibal and his army recalled to Carthage to help defend the country, Scipio finally came to face to face with the great Carthaginian general at Zama, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Carthage, in 202 BC. At a meeting with his adversary, Hannibal attempted to negotiate a peace. Scipio refused. The Roman knew that the advantage was now with him. As the lines of the battle drew up, he and his army knew too what to expect from a fight with the Carthaginians. When, for example, Hannibal released the elephants the Romans, under orders from Scipio, stood firm and allowed them to pass through clearly marked lanes in their formation. Then, when the two sides joined battle, the envelopment tactic was used, but this time it was Hannibal and the Carthaginian army who were trapped inside. With some 20,000 Carthaginian deaths and only 1500 Roman losses, the battle of Zama brought about a stunning Roman victory and concluded the Second Punic War beyond all expectation. Rome’s extraordinary comeback was capped by the terms of the peace. Carthage was allowed to retain the territory in Africa that it had held before the war, but its overseas empire was taken away for ever. It was forced to surrender its fleet and its elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (250,000 kilograms or 245 tons) of silver in indemnity and, crucially, to agree, in a way similar to a nuclear non-proliferation treaty today, never to re-arm or declare any war without permission from Rome.

  Zama marked a key turning point. While Carthage lost a western Mediterranean empire, Rome – now master of the two new provinces of Spain and the sole power in the region – gained one. For his inspired leadership and brilliance in warfare Publius Cornelius Scipio was honoured with the name ‘Africanus’. He was not the only one who bathed in glory. For their instrumental part in winning the west the ancient aristocratic family of the Cornelii Scipiones shot to pre-eminence among the Roman élite. So, one branch of young Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus’ family tree was thus established. However, it was another of his ancestors who would go on to match Scipio’s conquest of the western Mediterranean. He would do so by concluding the conquest of the Greek east.

  The strategy by which Rome came to dominate the east between 197 and 168 BC was a little different from that used in the west. In the aftermath of the Punic Wars, the signs of an empire were plain to see. Roman garrisons and standing armies were now dotted around Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Spain; taxes from these provinces were being raised; and the annually elected Roman office holders allotted to govern those provinces immediately began to exploit their mineral wealth for the benefit of Rome. In the east, by contrast, the Roman Senate took a slightly more subtle, gradual and diplomatic path to asserting Rome’s supremacy.

  The eastern Mediterranean was at this time made up of a series of kingdoms. They were known as the ‘successor kingdoms’ of Alexander the Great, because the dynasties that ruled them were founded by Alexander’s Greek generals when the great conqueror died and his vast but brief empire collapsed. One of these kings, Philip V of Macedon, had already incurred the anger of Rome. He had taken advantage of the republic’s weakness after Cannae and made an alliance with Carthage. By 197 BC, with Carthage subdued, Rome was in a position to declare war proper on Philip. The excuse it chose was a familiar one: the defence of its Greek friends who were being tyrannized by him. Within the year Philip was defeated at the battle of Cynoscephalae and Rome had won the right to dispose of his kingdom as it saw fit. Instead of making the kingdom of Macedon a province of the republic, however, the Roman commander in the region attended the Isthmian Games at Corinth, received the rapturous welcome normally accorded to Greek kings, and cleverly declared Greece now to be ‘free’. Then he withdrew his army.

  Another opportunity for such Roman generosity soon presented itself. When the Greek king, Antiochus of Syria, expanded his Seleucid kingdom with attacks on Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and northern Greece, the Roman army returned to the region again with the stated purpose of aiding the Greek cities under threat. Antiochus was defeated at the battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, his kingdom was returned to its former limits and the Greek lands he had overrun were allocated to Rome’s loyal allies in the war. Then, once again, the Roman troops were evacuated. Although both these brief wars gave the impression that freedom and autonomy remained with the Greek cities of the east, the reality was quite different. The consequence of Roman intervention was that the Greek cities were now bound by an unspoken obligation to Rome. In exchange for their ‘freed
om’ the Greek cities of the east owed Rome their loyalty.7

  The actions of one king, however, would provoke Rome into letting the mask of its benevolent eastern policy slip. When Philip V’s son Perseus came to the throne he sought to re-establish the prestige and authority of the Macedonian kingdom in the region. Through interventions in the local wars of Greece, he duly won influence and widespread popular support among the Greek city-states. His gain in influence, however, was to the cost of Rome’s and in the eyes of the Roman Senate that was simply unacceptable. A new excuse for a ‘just war’ was devised and hostilities were declared in 171 BC.

  At first Perseus’s Macedonian phalanx was successful. By June 168 BC, however, the close-packed battle formation of infantry soldiers that had conquered the known world under Alexander the Great was fighting its last battle. At Pydna on the northeast coast of Greece the Roman legions of Lucius Aemilius Paullus won a decisive victory; 20,000 Macedonians were killed and 11,000 were taken prisoner. The once-mighty Greek kingdom was broken up into four republics loyal to Rome; it was only a matter of time before Macedonia became a Roman province in its own right. King Perseus himself, the last royal descendant of Alexander, was captured and taken to Rome. Here he was paraded as a trophy of Rome’s dominion in the eastern Mediterranean. The stage on which the prisoner walked was the triumphal procession of Lucius Aemilius Paullus; the triumphant general was the future great-uncle of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the younger.