Michael Crawford – The Roman Republic (страница 11)

Furthermore, Rome had of course suffered defeats, some of them momentarily catastrophic; but that hardly explains why a desire for security, understandable in any community, amounted in Rome almost to a neurosis over her supposed vulnerability; in 149 Rome persuaded herself that Carthage was still a threat and duly annihilated her (see here).

Sheer greed also often played a part, overtly expressed by a character in Plautus:

Yes, you both go in, for I shall now summon a meeting of the senate in my mind, to deliberate on matters of finance, against whom war may best be declared, so that I can get some money thence (Epidicus 158–60).

But perhaps more important than any of these factors was the nature of the Roman confederation in Italy; Rome drew no tributum from any of her associates (other than from the cives sine suffragio) or allies, but demanded from them manpower. The origin of the institution is intelligible enough in a world in which Rome and Latium and the Hernici lived under permanent threat of invasion from marauding upland tribesmen; but the consequence of the institution was that the only way in which Rome could derive benefit from her confederation was by summoning troops. The only way in which she could symbolize her leadership, a factor of at least as great importance in an empire as its practical benefits, was by placing the troops of the confederacy under the command of the consuls. And then – what else but war and conquest?

The Roman involvement with Pyrrhus came about because of the difficulties of Tarentum. Under increasing pressure from the barbarian tribes of the interior in the latter half of the fourth century, Tarentum turned to the Greek homeland and to the help of a series of Greek condottieri, Archidamus of Sparta, Alexander of Epirus, Acrotatus of Sparta, Cleonymus of Sparta (in Italy from 304 to 299) and finally Pyrrhus of Epirus (in the west from 280 to 275); this last general was summoned to help not against the barbarian tribes who were neighbours to Tarentum but against the expanding power of Rome.

After a series of successes and an expedition to Sicily, Pyrrhus was finally defeated by the Romans at Beneventum and abandoned the Tarentines to their fate. The confrontation with Rome was in a sense marginal to the career of Pyrrhus; but it was a confrontation between Rome and a successor of Alexander the Great and marked the definitive emergence of Rome into the Greek world (see here).

Not long after the defeat of Pyrrhus, Rome found herself in 264 led to intervention outside Italy for the first time:

The Mamertini (Italian mercenaries settled in Messana and under threat of attack from Syracuse) wanted, some of them, to appeal to the Carthaginians (the other great power apart from Rome in the western Mediterranean and known to the Romans as Poeni, Phoenicians, whence Bellum Punicum, Punic War) and to hand over themselves and the acropolis to them, others to send an embassy to Rome, handing over the city to them and asking them to help them as being men of the same race. The Romans were in a quandary for a long time because the illogicality of such help seemed absolutely obvious; for shortly before they had inflicted the supreme penalty on some of their own citizens for illegally seizing Rhegium; now to seek to help the Mamertini, who had behaved in much the same way not only towards Messana, but also towards Rhegium, involved misconduct hard to condone. The Romans did not ignore any of these factors, but they realized that the Carthaginians had not only subjugated Africa, but also much of Spain (Polybius or his source here exaggerates), and controlled all the islands in the Sardinian and Tyrrhenian seas; and the Romans were worried lest if the Carthaginians became masters of Sicily they would be overpowering and dangerous neighbours for them, surrounding them and threatening all parts of Italy. It was clear that they would rapidly subjugate Sicily, unless the Mamertini received help; for if Messana were handed over to their control, they would rapidly conquer Syracuse, being already masters of almost all the rest of Sicily.

The Romans foresaw all this and thought that they must not abandon Messana and allow the Carthaginians as it were to acquire for themselves a stepping-stone over to Italy; they debated for a long time and eventually the senate did not pass the motion (to help Messana), for the reasons I have just outlined; for the illogicality of helping the Mamertini balanced the advantages to be derived from helping them.

But the assembly took a different line; the people had been worn out by recent wars and badly needed a change for the better in their circumstances; in addition to the arguments I have just outlined on the desirability of the war from the point of view of the state, the generals-to-be spoke of the clear and considerable advantage (in terms of booty) which each individual might expect; the people voted to help the Mamertini (Polybius 1, 10, 1–11, 2).

After some successes, including the acquisition of Hiero of Syracuse as an ally, Rome found that the war had reached a position of stalemate, with the Carthaginians masters of the sea, the Romans masters of Sicily apart from a few fortified places. As capable of innovation in the technical sphere as elsewhere, the Romans took to the sea:

When they saw that the war was dragging on for them, they set to for the first time to build ships, a hundred quinqueremes and twenty triremes. And since the shipwrights were totally inexperienced in building quinqueremes, none of the communities of Italy then using such ships, their project caused the Romans considerable difficulty. All this shows better than anything else how ambitious and daring the Romans are as policy-makers. (Using a wrecked Carthaginian ship as a model the Romans duly built a fleet and put to sea.) (Polybius 1, 20, 9–11)

The war was settled by Roman persistence, a characteristic which had already helped to defeat Pyrrhus and which was to help defeat Hannibal, the chief Carthaginian general in the Second Punic War; Rome built one more fleet than Carthage was capable of building and in the peace imposed in 241 made Carthage withdraw from Sicily and pay a large indemnity. By a piece of what even Polybius regarded as sharp practice, Rome acquired Sardinia and Corsica shortly after.

Not altogether surprisingly, there were those in Carthage who did not regard the verdict of the First Punic War as final; the creation of an empire in Spain and the acquisition thereby of substantial military and financial resources were followed by Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in 218 (the Roman tradition attempted to make the entirely justified attack on Saguntum by Hannibal into the casus belli, in order to salve its conscience over the failure to respond effectively to the appeal by Saguntum to Rome, see here). By a curious irony, the decisive confrontation between Rome and Carthage came at a moment when trading links between the two communities were greater than ever before – a large part of such fine pottery as Rome exported in the third quarter of the third century went to Carthage and her neighbourhood.²

Hannibal’s initial success was electrifying; invading Italy with 20,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry, he defeated the Romans in a succession of battles; at the River Ticinus and the River Trebia in the Po valley in 218, at Lake Trasimene in Etruria in 217 and at Cannae in south-east Italy in 216. Given his small forces, it was inevitable that he should seek to supplement them with such allies as became available and indeed ultimate success depended on detaching the majority of the members of the Roman confederacy. Given the secular enmity between the Romans and the Gauls settled in the Po valley and the Roman attempts immediately before 218 to plant colonies in the Po valley, it was inevitable that the Gauls should be anxious to join him, quite apart from the prospects of plunder. Their adhesion, however, was unlikely to endear Hannibal to the rest of Italy.

5 Map showing places to which Roman fine pottery was exported in the middle of the third century BC

Hannibal’s spectacular initial successes in fact only masked a deeper long-term failure. The battle of Cannae was followed by the revolt of a number of Italian communities and conspicuously of Capua, some eager to abandon Rome, others constrained to do so by military force; Hieronymus, the grandson of Rome’s ally of the First Punic War, Hiero of Syracuse (see here), was persuaded to join Carthage. But most of Rome’s allies remained loyal and the community of interest between them and Rome remained the most important factor in deciding the outcome of the war.

It was clear in the immediate aftermath of Cannae that Rome had no intention of ever surrendering; given that, her allies recalled her leadership in the series of battles against Gallic raids and the fact that the Gauls were now allied with Hannibal. They recalled the sense of identity which Rome had created for an Italy united under her leadership. Above all they recalled the shared rewards of success.