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

supposed that with a handful of cavalry

he could subdue a country which had a million armed men to bring into

the field. He had taken it for granted that if he could gain some success at

first he would be joined by the subject cities. But in spite of his great

victories they remained true to Rome. Nothing shows so clearly the

immense resources of the Italian Republic as that second Punic War.

Hannibal was in their country, but they employed against him only a

portion of their troops. A second army was in Sicily waging war against

his Greek allies; a third army was in Spain, attacking his operations at the

base, pulling Carthage out of Europe by the roots. Added to which, it

was now the Romans who ruled the sea. When Scipio had taken New

Carthage and conquered Spain, he crossed over into Africa, and Hannibal

was of necessity recalled. He met on the field of Zama a general whose

genius was little inferior to his own, and who possessed an infinitely

better army. Hannibal lost the day, and the fate of Carthage was decided.

It was not the battle which did that; it was the nature and constitution of

the state. In itself the battle of Zama was not a more ruinous defeat than

the battle of Cannae. But Carthage was made of different stuff from that

of Rome. How could a war between those two people have ended

otherwise than as it did? Rome was an armed nation fighting in Italy for

hearth and home, in Africa for glory and revenge. Carthage was a city of

merchants, who paid men to fight for them, and whose army was

dissolved as soon as the exchequer was exhausted. Rome could fight to

its last man; Carthage could fight only to its last dollar. At the beginning

of both wars the Carthaginians did wonders, but as they became poor they

became feeble; their strength dribbled out with their gold; the refusal of

Alexandria to negotiate a loan perhaps injured them more deeply than the

victory of Scipio.

 

The fall of the Carthaginian empire is not a matter for regret. Outside the

walls of the city existed hopeless slavery on the part of the subject,

shameless extortion on the part of the officials. Throughout Africa

Carthage was never named without a curse. In the time of the mercenary

war the Moorish women, taking oath to keep nothing back, stripped off

their gold ornaments and brought them all to the men who were resisting

their oppressors. That city, that Carthage, fed like a vulture upon the

land. A corrupt and grasping aristocracy, a corrupt and turbulent

populace, divided between them the prey. The Carthaginian customs

were barbarous in the extreme. When a battle had been won they

sacrificed their handsomest prisoners to the gods; when a battle had been

lost the children of their noblest families were cast into the furnace. Their

Asiatic character was strongly marked. They were a people false and

sweet-worded, effeminate and cruel, tyrannical and servile, devout and

licentious, merciless in triumph, faint-hearted in danger, divinely heroic

in despair.

 

Let us therefore admit that, as an imperial city, Carthage merited her fate.

But henceforth we must regard her from a different point of view. In

order to obtain peace she had given up her colonies abroad, her provinces

at home, her vessels and elephants of war. The empire was reduced to a

municipality. Nothing was left but the city and a piece of ground. The

merchant princes took off their crowns and went back into the glass and

purple business. It was only as a town of manufacture and trade that

Carthage continued to exist, and as such her existence was of unmixed

service to the world.

 

Hannibal was made prime minister, and at once set to work to reform the

constitution. The aristocratic party informed the Romans that he was

secretly stirring up the people to war. The Romans demanded that he

should be surrendered; he escaped to the court of Antiochus, the Greek

king in Asia Minor, and there he did attempt to raise war against Rome.

The senate were justified in expelling him from Carthage, for he was

really a dangerous man. But the persecution to which he was afterwards

subjected was not very creditable to their good fame. Driven from place

to place, he at last took refuge in Bithynia, on the desolate shores of the

Black Sea, and a Roman consul, who wished to obtain some notoriety by

taking home the great Carthaginian as a show, commanded the prince

under whose protection he was living to give him up. When Hannibal

heard of this he took poison, saying, ”Let me deliver the Romans from

their cares and anxieties since they think it too tedious and too dangerous

to wait for the death of a poor, hated old man.” The news of this

occurrence excited anger in Rome, but it was the presage of a greater

crime which was soon to be committed in the Roman name.

 

There was a Berber chief named Masinissa who had been deprived of his

estates, and who during the war had rendered important services to Rome.

He was made king of Numidia, and it was stipulated in the treaty that the

Carthaginians should restore the lands and cities which had belonged to

him and to his ancestors. The lands which they had taken from him were

accordingly surrendered, and then Masinissa sent in a claim for certain

lands which he said had been taken from his ancestors. The wording of

the treaty was ambiguous. He might easily declare that the whole of the

seacoast had belonged to his family in ancient times, and who could

disprove the evidence of a tradition? He made no secret of his design; it

was to drive the Phoenician strangers out of Africa and to reign at

Carthage in their stead. He soon showed that he was worthy to be called

the King of Numidia and the Friend of Rome. He drilled his bandits into

soldiers; he taught his wandering shepherds to till the ground. He made

his capital, Constantine, a great city; he opened schools in which the sons

of native chiefs were taught to read and write in the Punic tongue. He

allied himself with the powers of Morocco and the Atlas. He reminded

the Berbers that it was to them the soil belonged, that the Phoenicians

were intruders who had come with presents in their hands and with

promises in their mouths, declaring that they had met with trouble in their

own country, and praying for a place where they might repose from the

weary sea. Their fathers had trusted them; their fathers had been bitterly

deceived. By force and by fraud the Carthaginians had taken all the lands

which they possessed; they had stolen the ground on which their city

stood.

 

In the meantime Rome advanced into the East. As soon as the battle of

Zama had been fought Alexandria demanded her protection. This

brought the Romans into contact with the Graeco-Asiatic world; they

found it in much the same condition as the English found Hindustan, and

they conquered it in much the same manner.

 

Time went on. The generation of Hannibal had almost become extinct.

In Carthage war had become a tradition of the past. The business of that

city was again as flourishing as it had ever been. Again ships sailed to

the coasts of Cornwall and Guinea; again the streets were lined with the

workshops of industrious artisans. Such is the vis medicatrix, the

restoring power of a widely extended commerce, combined with active

manufactures and the skilful management of soil, that the city soon

regained its ancient wealth. The Romans had imposed an enormous

indemnity which was to be paid off by instalments extending over a series

of years. The Carthaginians paid it off at once.

 

But in the midst of all their prosperity and happiness there were grave and

anxious hearts. They saw ever before them the menacing figure of

Masinissa. The very slowness of his movements was portentous. He was

in all things deliberate, gradual, and calm. From time to time he

demanded a tract of land; if it was not given up at once he took it by

force. Then, waiting as if to digest it, he left them for a while in peace.

 

They were bound by treaty not to make war against the Friend of Rome.

They therefore petitioned the senate that commissioners should be sent

and the boundary definitely settled. But the senate had no desire that

Carthage should be left in peace. The commissioners were instructed to

report in such a manner that Masinissa might be encouraged to continue

his depredations. They brought back astonishing accounts of the

magnificence and activity of the African metropolis; and among these

commissioners there was one man who never ceased to declare that the

country was in danger, and who never rose to speak in the House without

saying before he sat down: “And it is my opinion, fathers, that Carthage

must be destroyed.”

 

Cato the censor has been called the last of the old Romans. That class of

patriot farmers had been extinguished by Hannibal’s invasion. In order to

live during the long war they had been obliged to borrow money on their

lands. When the war was over the prices of everything rose to an

unnatural height; the farmers could not recover themselves, and the

Roman law of debt was severe. They were ejected by thousands—it was

the favourite method to turn the women and children out of doors while

the poor man was working in the fields. Italy was converted into a

plantation; slaves in chains tilled the land. No change was made in the

letter of the constitution, but the commonwealth ceased to exist. Society

was now composed of the nobles, the money-merchants or city men, and

a mob like that of Carthage which lived on saleable votes, sometimes

raging for agrarian laws, and which was afterwards fed at government

expense like a wild beast every day.

 

At this time a few refined and intellectual men began to cultivate a taste

for Greek literature and the fine arts. They collected libraries, and

adorned them with busts of celebrated men and with antiques of

Corinthian bronze. Crowds of imitators soon arose, and the conquests in

the East awakened new ideas. In the days of old the Romans had been

content to decorate their door-posts with trophies obtained in single

combat, and their halls with the waxen portraits of their ancestors. The

only spoils which they could then display were flocks and herds, wagons

of rude structure, and heaps of spears and helmets. But now the arts of

Greece and the riches of Asia adorned the triumphs of their generals, and

the reign of taste and luxury commenced. A race of dandies appeared

who wore semi-transparent robes, and who were always passing their

hands in an affected manner through their hair—who lounged with the

languor of the Sybarite, and spoke with the lisp of Alcibiades. The wives

of senators and bankers became genteel, kept a herd of ladies’ maids,

passed hours before their full-length silver mirrors, bathed in asses’ milk,

rouged their cheeks and dyed their hair, never went out except in

palanquins, gabbled Greek phrases, and called their slaves by Greek

names even when they happened to be of Latin birth. The houses of the

great were paved with mosaic floors, and the painted walls were works of

art: sideboards were covered with gold and silver plate, with vessels of

amber and of the tinted Alexandrine glass. The bathrooms were of

marble, with the water issuing from silver tubes.

 

New amusements were invented, and new customs began to reign. An

academy was established, in which five hundred boys and girls were

taught castanet dances of