A Manual of Ancient History. A. H. L. Heeren
it gave rise to the feud between Hamilcar and Hanno the Great, which compelled Hamilcar to seek for support against the senate by becoming the leader of a democratic faction.
Sardinia is lost, 237.
4. The revolt spread abroad; it reached Sardinia and caused the loss of that most important island, of which the Romans, flushed with power, took possession, in spite of the terms of the peace.
Rise of the house of the Barcas:
5. The influence of the family of the Barcas, supported in their disputes with the senate by the popular party, now got the upper hand in Carthage; and the first fruit of their power was the new and gigantic project of repairing the loss of Sicily and Sardinia by the conquest of Spain; a vast projects upon Spain, country where the Carthaginians already had some possessions and commercial connections. The immediate object of the Barcas was the support of their family and party; but the Spanish silver mines soon furnished the republic with the means of renewing the contest with Rome also.
executed by Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, 237—221.
By treaty with the Romans the Ebro is fixed as the boundary of their possessions in Spain, 226.
Carthagena founded.
Hannibal succeeds to the command of the army, 221;
and begins the second Punic war, 218.
6. During the nine years in which Hamilcar commanded, and in the following eight in which Hasdrubal, his son-in-law and successor, was at the head of the army, the whole of the south of Spain, as far as the Iberus, was brought under subjection to Carthage, either by negotiation or force of arms. The further progress of the Carthaginians was only arrested by a treaty with the Romans, in which the Iberus was fixed upon as a frontier line, and the freedom of Saguntum acknowledged by both powers. Hasdrubal crowned his victories as a general and as a statesman by the foundation of New Carthage, (Carthagena,) which was to be the future seat of Carthaginian power in the newly-conquered country. Hasdrubal having fallen by the hand of an assassin in the year 221, the party of the Barcas succeeded in appointing Hamilcar's son, Hannibal, a young man of one-and-twenty, for his successor. Hannibal found every thing already prepared in Spain for the furtherance of the hereditary project of his family, which was a renewal of the contest with Rome; and the vigour with which this project was pursued, clearly proves how great must have been the preponderance of the Barcine influence, at that time, in Carthage. Had the commonwealth attended to the marine with the same ardour as their great general did to the land service, the fate of Rome would perhaps have been very different.
Second war with Rome, 218—201, (seventeen years,) first in Italy and Spain, afterwards, from 203, in Africa itself. (See the history of this war below, in the Roman history, Book V, Period ii, parag. 6 sqq.)
Internal state of Carthage during the second Punic war.
7. Until Africa became the scene of action, the second war cost the republic much less than the first; the expenses being principally defrayed by Spain and Italy. Hanno, however, was at the head of a powerful party at home, who were clamorous for peace, and who can say they were wrong? As might be expected, the family of the Barcas were for war, and their influence carried the day. That general who, with hardly any support from Carthage, was yet able to maintain a footing in the country of his powerful foes for no less than fifteen years, and that, too, as much by policy as by force of arms, must extort our admiration. It cannot, however, be denied, that during the struggle one favourable opportunity, at least, was let slip of making peace; a fatal omission, for which the hero of Cannæ paid dearly enough, by the failure of his darling project.
A disgraceful peace the result of the war.
8. By the second peace with Rome, Carthage was deprived of all her possessions out of Africa, and her fleet was delivered into the hands of the Romans. She was now to be a mere trading city under the tutelage of Rome. But Carthage found by this peace her most formidable enemy on the soil of Africa itself. Massinissa had been elevated to the dignity of king of Numidia; and his endeavours to form his nomads into an agricultural Massinissa of Numidia a new instrument of Roman policy. people, and to collect them into cities, must have changed the military system that Carthage had hitherto followed. Roman policy, moreover, had taken care that the article inserted in his favour in the last treaty of peace, should be so ambiguously worded, as to leave abundant openings for dispute.
Hannibal at the head of affairs;
attempts to check the oligarchy.
9. Even after this disgraceful peace, the family of the Barcas still preserved their influence, and Hannibal was placed as supreme magistrate at the head of the republic. He attempts to reform the constitution and the finances, by destroying the oligarchy of the hundred, by whom the finances had been thrown into confusion. Complete as was the success of the first blow, it soon became apparent that aristocratic factions are not so readily annihilated as armies.
The democratic faction to which even the Barcas owed their first elevation, was the cause of the degeneracy of the Carthaginian constitution. By that faction the legislative authority of the senate and magistrates was withdrawn and transferred to the ordo judicum—probably the same as the high state tribunal of the hundred—which now assumed the character of an omnipotent national inquisition; and the members being chosen for life exercised oppressive despotism. This tribunal was formed of those who had served the office of ministers of finance, with whom it shared unblushingly the revenues of the state. Hannibal destroyed this oligarchy by a law, enacting that the members should hold their office but for one year; whereas before they held it for life. In the reform wrought by this law in the finances it was seen, that after all wars and losses, the revenues of the republic were still sufficient, not only for the usual expenditure and the payment of tribute to Rome, but also for leaving a surplus in the public treasury. Ten years had hardly elapsed before Carthage was enabled to pay down at once the whole of the tribute which she had engaged to furnish by instalments.
Hannibal compelled to fly to Syria.
10. The defeated party, whose interests were now the same with those of Rome, joined the Romans, to whom they discovered Hannibal's plan of renewing the war in conjunction with Antiochus the Great, king of Syria. A Roman embassy was sent over to Africa, under some other pretext, to demand that Hannibal should be given up. The Carthaginian general secretly fled to 195. king Antiochus, at whose court he became the chief fomenter of the war against Rome; although unsuccessful in his endeavour to implicate the Carthaginian republic in the struggle.
See hereafter the history of Syria, Book IV, Period iii, separate kingdoms. I. Seleucidæ, parag. 18; and Book V, Period ii, parag. 10 sq.
Roman influence completely established in Carthage.
11. In consequence of the absence of Hannibal, Carthage fell once more under the dominion of the Romans, who contrived, by taking a crafty advantage of the state of parties, to give a show of generosity to the exercise of their power. Even the patriotic faction, if we may judge by the violent steps which they took more than once against Massinissa and his partisans, seem to have been but a tool in the hands of Rome.
The Carthaginian territory gradually dismembered.
12. Disputes with Massinissa, which led to the gradual partition of the Carthaginian territory in Africa. The manner in which this territory had been acquired, facilitated the discovery of claims upon each of the component parts; and the interference of Rome, sometimes disinterested, but oftener swayed by party feeling, ensured the possession of the territory to the Numidian.
Even in 199, a disadvantageous treaty framed with Massinissa for fifty years: nevertheless the rich province of Emporia is lost in 193.—Loss of another province unnamed, to which Massinissa inherited some claims from his father.—Seizure of the province of Tysca, with fifty cities, about 174. Probable date of Cato's embassy, who returned in disgust, because his decision had been rejected, and became the fomenter of a project to destroy Carthage.—New disputes about 152.—Massinissa's party is expelled Carthage.—War breaks out in consequence, during which the king in his ninetieth year personally defeats the Carthaginians; and what with famine and the sword, Hasdrubal's army, which had been surrounded by the