Story of the Greek and the Roman People
- Автор: Tappan Eva March
- Год: 1910
- Язык: английский
- Год: Heritage History
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «Story of the Greek and the Roman People». Краткое содержание книги:
Story of the Greek People
Story of the Roman People
A Roman describes the omens seen by an augur.
A description of a wedding procession.
How the Romans Conquered Carthage
Italy is shaped like a boot, and the toe of the boot points across Sicily and the Mediterranean to Africa where the city of Carthage once stood. Carthage was founded about one hundred years earlier than Rome. The land about it was most fertile, and it had an excellent harbor. The Carthaginians were famous merchants, and they had a large number of trading vessels. They loaded these with gold, ivory, linen, precious stones, and slaves from Africa; embroideries and purple cloth and glass from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean; iron from the little island of Elba; wax from Corsica; gold from Spain; and oil and wine from Sicily; and these products they carried from port to port. Chiefly through this trading, Carthage had become wealthy: her rule extended over all northern Africa to the westward, and over several large islands; southern Spain paid her tribute; her trading posts and colonies were so thickly scattered over the Mediterranean shores that the Carthaginians declared this sea to be only a Carthaginian lake, wherein no one might venture to wash his hands without their permission. They could well defend their claims, for they had, besides trading vessels, a powerful navy of warships.
Just between Carthage and the "toe" of Italy lies the island of Sicily, only ninety miles from the African shores. The Carthaginians traded with Sicily, and finally planted colonies on the western coast. On the eastern coast were some Greek colonies, settled soon after the founding of Rome. The Greeks were traders as well as the Carthaginians, and the two peoples carried on a constant warfare. In the midst of this enmity, some military adventurers from Italy, took possession of Messana (Messina), the Sicilian town nearest Italy. The Greeks attempted to drive them away, and the Italians asked the Romans for aid. "We are Mamertines (sons of Mars)," they said, "and you, too, are descended from Mars. We have come for help to our brothers." The Romans did not wish to help these pirates; but if aid was refused, they would ask the Carthaginians to become their allies, and Messana would become a Carthaginian town. That would never do, declared the Romans; and so the first war with Carthage began. Carthage had been founded by Phoenicians, whom the Romans called Poeni. Therefore the wars with Carthage were known as the Punic Wars.
For nearly twenty years the Romans had paid no attention to their navy, and they were now almost without warships. They borrowed a few from the Greek colonies in southern Italy and succeeded in landing troops on the shores of Sicily. It was not easy to win a victory over the Romans, and they were as successful in Sicily as elsewhere. They began to dream of more than winning a few Sicilian cities and taking some land and treasure. Why not go on and conquer the whole island? There was one extremely good reason "why not," and that was their lack of warships. While they were in Sicily, the Carthaginians had been sending their ships of war along the Italian coast, and what the Romans had gained in Sicily they had lost at home. Moreover, even if they captured the island, they could not hope to keep it if they had no navy with which to meet the attacks of the Carthaginians. "We must build warships," the Romans declared; but that was more easily said than done, for no one knew how. The ships of war of those days galleys, they were called were moved by both sails and oars, but the Romans did not understand how to sail against the wind; therefore, in a naval battle, where it was necessary to move rapidly, they depended chiefly upon the use of oars. The oarsmen sat in tiers, one above another, the higher tier using longer oars than the one below. The Romans could borrow of the Etruscans and the Greeks galleys with two or three banks of oars; but these would be helpless before the Carthaginian galleys with five banks.
People as determined as the Romans can usually find a way out of a difficulty. A Carthaginian warship was wrecked on their coast, and they thought they could make this serve as a model. They began to cut down trees. In sixty days, if we may trust the old story, a forest had been made into a fleet of one hundred and twenty warships. The Romans had not forgotten that the ships must have men; and while the shore resounded with the noise of hammers and axes and saws, soldiers were sitting on tiers of benches, practicing a sort of dry land rowing. At length the ships were ready; but they must have been rather clumsy, and even the rowing practice can hardly have made very skillful sailors.
A SEA FIGHT.
Probably the Carthaginians laughed scornfully when they had their first view of the enemy's fleet. Probably, too, they wondered why the ignorant Romans came out to battle without lowering their masts, as the custom was, and what could be the use of a queer contrivance shaped like a draw-bridge and held up to the masts by ropes running over pulleys. They found out before long; for as soon as a Roman vessel was brought near a Carthaginian galley, down fell the drawbridge, and a heavy spike at the end pierced the enemy's deck, holding the two ships together. Over the drawbridge rushed the fierce Roman soldiers. It was not long before they had taken nearly half the Carthaginian fleet. The rest had fled.
Then the Romans began to dream of a time when the Mediterranean should be, not a Carthaginian, but a Roman lake. Duillius, the consul who had won this battle, was most highly honored. The senate decreed that a pillar adorned with the beaks of the ships which he had captured should be set up in the forum in memory of his victory; and that as long as he lived he should be escorted home from evening visits to his friends by torches and music.
The Romans won another great naval victory; then the consul Regulus led them to the coast of Africa. There they burned and robbed and destroyed. If it had not been for the wisdom of a Greek who was in Africa, Carthage might have been conquered at once. "You have cavalry and elephants," he said to the Carthaginians, "but you try to use them on the hills. Choose a level battlefield and you will win." They begged him to lead them. He did so and won. Regulus was taken prisoner.
Meantime the war was going on in Sicily. The Romans had learned to meet the charge of elephants, and now they not only won a victory by repulsing the animals, but captured them and carried them to Rome. A number of Carthaginian nobles were taken captive in this same battle, and the Carthaginians sent Regulus to Rome to propose an exchange of prisoners and to offer terms of peace. They thought this would surely be brought about because they had made him `promise to return if the Romans refused their offers. They did not know how brave and unselfish he was. He did not think it would be for the gain of Rome to exchange prisoners, or to make a treaty with Carthage, and he persuaded the senate not to consent to it. Then he took his last look at his beloved home city, kept his word, and went back to the torture and death that he knew were awaiting him in Carthage.
For twenty-four years the war went on. Then peace was made. The Carthaginians paid Rome a large sum of money, surrendered their prisoners, and gave up all claim to Sicily. Both nations were exhausted, and they were glad to have the war come to an end for a time, but neither expected the peace to last for many years.
The first question for Rome to settle was how to govern Sicily. Up to this time she had used two methods of government for conquered peoples. The Latins she treated almost like equals. She gave them some of the rights of citizens and also the hope that if they were faithful to her, they should some time become full citizens. The other tribes of Italy she allowed to govern their own cities, but required them to be obedient to her. Sicily she made into what was called a "province"; that is, a district ruled by magistrates sent from Rome. She collected taxes from the islanders, but she gave them no hope that they could ever become Roman citizens.