The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

mighty empire. Many

of the roving tribes were broken in; the others were driven into the desert

or into wild Morocco. A line of fortified posts and block-houses

protected the cultivated land. The desire to obtain red cloth and amber

and blue beads secured the allegiance of many unconquerable desert

tribes, and by their means, although the camel had not yet been

introduced, a trade was opened up between Carthage and Timbuktu.

Negro slaves, bearing tusks of ivory on their shoulders and tied to one

another so as to form a chain of flesh and blood, were driven across the

terrible desert—a caravan of death, the route of which was marked by

bones bleaching in the sun. Gold dust also was brought over from those

regions of the Niger, and the Carthaginian traders reached the same

land by sea. For they were not content, like the Tyrians, to trade only

on the Morocco coast as far as Mogadore. By good fortune there

has been preserved the log-book of an expedition which sailed to the

wood-covered shores of Guinea; saw the hills covered with fire, as they

always are in the dry season when the grass is being burnt; heard the

music of the natives in the night; and brought home the skins of three

chimpanzees which they probably killed near Sierra Leone.

 

When Phoenicia died, Carthage inherited its settlements on the coasts of

Sicily and Spain and on the adjoining isles. Not only were these islands

valuable possessions in themselves—Malta as a cotton plantation, Elba as

an iron mine, Majorca and Minorca as a recruiting ground for slingers;

they wee also useful as naval stations to preserve the monopoly of the

Western waters.

 

The foreign policy of Carthage was very different from that of the

motherland. The Phoenicians had maintained an army of mercenaries,

but had used them only to protect their country from the robber kings of

Damascus and Jerusalem. They had many ships of war, but had used

them only to convoy their round-bellied ships of trade and to keep off the

attacks of the Greek and Etruscan pirates. Their settlements were merely

fortified factories; they made no attempt to reduce the natives of the land.

If their settlements grew into colonies they let them go. But Carthage

founded many colonies and never lost a single one. Situated among

them, and possessing a large fleet, she was able both to punish and

protect. She defended them in time of war; she controlled them in time of

peace.

 

A policy of concession had not saved the Phoenicians from the Greeks,

and now these same Greeks were settling in the West and displaying

immense activity. The Carthaginians saw that they must resist or be

ruined, and they went to war as a matter of business. They first put down

the Etruscan rovers, in which undertaking they were assisted by the

events which occurred on the Italian main. They next put a stop to the

spread of the Greek power in Africa itself.

 

Half-way between Algeria and Egypt, in the midst of the dividing sea of

sand, is a coast oasis formed by a tableland of sufficient height to

condense the vapours which float over from the sea, and to chill them into

rain. There was a hole in the sky above it, as the natives used to say. To

this island-tract came a band of Greeks directed thither by the oracle at

Delphi, where geography was studied as a part of the system. They

established a city and called it Cyrene.

 

The land was remarkably fertile, and afforded them three harvests in the

course of the year. One was gathered on the coast meadows, which were

watered by the streams that flowed down from the hills; a second on the

hill-sides; a third on the surface of the plateau,* which was about two

thousand feet above the level of the sea. Cyrenaica produced the

silphium, or asafoetida, which, like the balm of Gilead, was one of the

specifics of antiquity, and which is really a medicine of value. It was

found in many parts of the world—for instance, in certain districts of

Asia Minor, and on the summit of the Hindu Kush. But the asafoetida of

Cyrene was the most esteemed. Its juice, when dried, was worth its

weight in gold; its leaves fattened cattle and cured them of all diseases.

 

*(spelt pleateau in the original text)

 

Some singular pits or chasms existed in the lower part of the Cyrene hills.

Their sides were perpendicular walls of rock: it appeared impossible to

descend to the bottom of the precipice, and yet, when the traveller peeped

over the brink, he saw to his astonishment that the abyss beneath had

been sown with herbs and corn. Hence rose the legend of the Gardens of

the Hesperides.

 

Cyrene was renowned as the second medical school of the Greek world.

It produced a noted freethinker, who was a companion of Socrates and

the founder of a school. It was also famous for its barbs, which won

more than one prize in the chariot races of the Grecian games. It obtained

the honour of more than one Pindaric ode. But owing to internal

dissension it never became great. It was conquered by Persia, it

submitted to Alexander, and Carthage speedily checked its growth

towards the west by taking the desert which lay between them, and which

it then garrisoned with nomad tribes.

 

The Carthaginians hitherto had never paid tribute, and they had never

suffered a serious reverse. Alcibiades talked much of invading them

when he had done with Sicily, and the young men of his set were at one

time always drawing plans of Carthage in the dust of the market-place at

Athens; but the Sicilian expedition failed. The affection of the Tyrians

preserved them from Cambyses. Alexander opportunely died. Pyrrhus in

Sicily began to collect ships to sail across, but he who tried to take up

Italy with one hand and Carthage with the other, and who also excited the

enmity of the Sicilian Greeks, was not a very dangerous foe. Agathocles

of Syracuse invaded Africa, but it was the action of a desperate and

defeated man and bore no result.

 

Sicily was long the battlefield of the Carthaginians, and ultimately proved

their ruin. Its western side belonged to them: its eastern side was held by

a number of independent Greek cities which were often at war with one

another. Of these Syracuse was the most important: its ambition was the

same as that of Carthage—to conquer the whole island, and then to

extend its rule over the flourishing Greek towns on the south Italian coast.

Hence followed wars generation after generation, till at length the

Carthaginians obtained the upper hand. Already they were looking on the

island as their own when a new power stepped upon the scene.

 

The ancient Tuscans or Etruscans had a language and certain arts peculiar

to themselves, and Northern Italy was occupied by Celtic Gauls. But the

greater part of the peninsula was inhabited by a people akin to the Greeks,

though differing much from them in character, dwelling in city states,

using a form of the Phoenician alphabet, and educating their children in

public schools. The Greek cities on the coast diffused a certain amount of

culture through the land.

 

A rabble of outlaws and runaway slaves banded together, built a town,

fortified it strongly, and offered it as an asylum to all fugitives. To Rome

fled the over-beaten slave, the thief with his booty, the murdered with

blood-red hands. This city of refuge became a war-town—to use an

African phrase—its citizens alternately fought and farmed; it became the

dread and torment of the neighbourhood. However, it contained no

women, and it was hoped that in course of time the generation of robbers

would die out. The Romans offered their hands and hearts to the

daughters of a neighbouring Sabine city. The Sabines declined, and told

them that they had better make their city an asylum for runaway women.

The Romans took the Sabine girls by force; a war ensued, but the

relationship had been established; the women reconciled their fathers to

their husbands, and the tribes were united in the same city.

 

The hospitality which Rome had offered in its early days in order to

sustain its life became a custom and a policy. The Romans possessed the

art of converting their conquered enemies into allies, and this was done

by means of concessions which cities of respectable origin would have

been too proud to make.

 

Their military career was very different from that of the Persians, who

swept over the continent in a few months. The Romans spent three

centuries in establishing their rule within a circle of a hundred miles

round the city. Whatever they won by the sword they secured by the

plough. After every successful war they demanded a tract of land, and on

this they planted a colony of Roman farmers. The municipal

governments of the conquered cities were left undisturbed. The Romans

aimed to establish, at least in appearance, a federation of states, a United

Italy. At the time of the first Punic War this design had nearly been

accomplished. Wild tribes of Celtic shepherds still roamed over the rich

plains at the foot of the Alps, but the Italian boroughs had acknowledged

the supremacy of Rome. The Greek cities on the southern coast had, a

few years before, called over Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, a soldier of fortune

and the first general of the day. But the legion broke the Macedonian

phalanx, and the broadsword vanquished the Macedonian spear. The

Greek cities were no longer independent except in name. Pyrrhus

returned to Greece, and prophesied of Sicily, as he left its shores, that it

would become the arena of the Punic and the Roman arms.

 

In the last war that was ever waged between the Syracusans and the

Carthaginians, the former had employed some mercenary troops

belonging to the Mamertines, an Italian tribe. When the war was ended

these soldiers were paid off and began to march home. They passed

through the Greek town of Messina on their road, were hospitably

received by the citizens, and provided with quarters for the night. In the

middle of the night they rose up and massacred the men, married the

widows, and settled down as rulers of Messina, each soldier beneath

another man’s vine and fig-tree. A Roman regiment stationed at

Rhegium, a Greek town on the Italian side of the straits, heard of this

exploit, considered it an excellent idea, and did the same. The Romans

marched upon Rhegium, took it by storm, and executed four hundred of

the soldiers in the Forum. The king of Syracuse, who held the same

position in eastern Sicily as did Rome on the peninsula, marched against

Messina. The Mamertine bandits became alarmed; one party sent to the

Carthaginians for assistance; another party sent to Rome, declaring that

they were kinsmen and desired to enter the Italian league.

 

The Roman senate rejected this request on account of its “manifest

absurdity.” They had just punished their soldiers for imitating the

Mamertines; how then could they interfere with the punishment of the

Mamertines? But in Rome the people possessed the sovereign power of

making peace or war. There was a scarcity of money at that time; a raid

on Sicily would yield plunder, and troops were accordingly ordered to

Messina. For the first time Romans went outside Italy-—the vanguard of

an army which subdued the world. The Carthaginians were already in

Messina: the Romans drove them out, and the war began. The

Syracusans were defeated in the first battle, and then went over to the

Roman side. It became a war between Asiatics and Europeans.

 

The two great republics were already well acquainted with each other. In

the apartment of