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city which the grandfather had shaken. But as the bites of dying beasts are wont to be most fatal, so there was more trouble with Carthage half-ruined, than when it was in its full strength. The Romans having shut the enemy up in their single fortress, had also blockaded the harbour; but upon this they dug another harbour on the other side of the city, not with a design to escape, but because no one supposed that they could even force an outlet there. Here a new fleet, as if just born, started forth; and, in the mean while, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, some new mole, some new machine, some new band of desperate men, perpetually started up, like a sudden flame from a fire sunk in ashes. At last, their affairs becoming desperate, forty thousand men, and (what is hardly credible) with Hasdrubal at their head, surrendered themselves. How much more nobly did a woman behave, the wife of the general, who, taking hold of her two children, threw herself from the top of her house into the midst of the flames, imitating the queen that built Carthage. How great a city was then destroyed, is shown, to say nothing of other things, by the duration of the fire, for the flames could scarcely be extinguished at the end of seventeen days; flames which the enemy themselves had raised in their houses and temples, that since the city could not be rescued from the Romans, all matter for triumph might at least be burned.

CHAP. XVI. THE ACHEAN WAR.

As if this age had been destined for the subversion of cities, Corinth, the metropolis of Achaia, the ornament of Greece, situated, as if for an object of admiration, between the Ionian and Egean Seas, soon after shared the fate of Carthage. This city (a proceeding unworthy of the Roman name) was destroyed even before it was counted among the number of undoubted enemies. The cause of the war was Critolaus1, who used the liberty granted him by the Romans against themselves, and insulted the ambassadors sent from Rome, whether by personal violence is doubtful, but certainly by words. Revenge for this affront was committed to Metellus, who was at that time settling the state of Ma

Ch. XVI. Critolaus] He was chief of the Achæan league.

cedonia; and hence arose the Achæan war. In the first place, Metellus, now consul, cut to pieces the force of Critolaus on the open plains of Elis, and along the whole course of the Alpheus. The war was indeed ended in one battle; and a siege threatened the city itself; but, (such is the fortune of events,) after Metellus had fought, Mummius came to take the victory. He scattered, far and wide, the army of the other general Diæus, at the very entrance of the Isthmus, and dyed its two harbours with blood. At length the city, being forsaken by the inhabitants, was first plundered, and then pulled down to the sound of trumpets. What a profusion of statues, of garments, of pictures, was then burnt or scattered abroad! How great wealth the general then both carried off and burned, may be known from this fact, that whatever Corinthian brass is held in esteem throughout the world, we find to have been the relics of that conflagration. The ruin of that most opulent city even made the value of this brass the greater, inasmuch as, when many statues and images were melted together in the fire, veins of brass, gold, and silver, ran together into one mass.

CHAP. XVII, AFFAIRS IN SPAIN.

As Corinth followed the fortune of Carthage, so Numantia followed that of Corinth. Nor was there a single place, throughout the whole world, that was afterwards untouched by the Roman arms. After the famous conflagrations of these two cities, there was war far and wide, not with different nations one after another, but, as it were, one war pervading the whole world at the same time; so that those cities seemed, as if by the action of the winds, to have dispersed certain sparks of war over the whole globe. Spain never had the determination to rise in a body against us; it never thought of uniting its strength, or making an effort for empire, or combining for a general defence of its liberty; else it is so surrounded on all sides by the sea and the Pyrenees, that, by the very nature of its situation, it is secure from all attacks. But it was beset by the Romans before it knew itself, and was the only one of all their vinces that did not discover its strength till it was subdued. The war in this country lasted nearly two hundred years, from the time of the first Scipios to Cæsar Augustus, not

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continuously or without intermission, but as occasions excited the Romans; nor was the dispute at first with the Spaniards, but with the Carthaginians in Spain, from whom proceeded the contagion, and connexion, and causes of all the contentions. The two Scipios, Publius and Cnæus, carried the first Roman standards over the Pyrenæan mountains, and defeated Hanno, and Hasdrubal the brother of Hannibal, in important battles; and Spain would have been carried as it were by assault, had not those gallant men been surprised by Punic subtlety in the height of victory, and cut off at a time when they were conquerors by land and sea. Scipio, therefore, who was afterwards called Africanus, the avenger of his father and uncle, entered the country as a new and fresh province, and having speedily taken Carthage1 and other cities, and not being content with having expelled the Carthaginians, made the province tributary to us, reduced under our dominion all places on either side of the Iberus, and was the first of the Roman generals that prosecuted a victorious course to Gades and the mouth of the Ocean2.

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But it is a greater matter to preserve a provinces than to acquire one. Generals were accordingly despatched into several parts of the country, sometimes one way, sometimes another, who, with much difficulty, and many bloody engagements, taught those savage nations, which had till then been free, and were consequently impatient of control, to submit to the Roman yoke. Cato the Censor humbled the Celtiberians, the main strength of Spain, in several battles. Gracchus, the father of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, inflicted on the same people the demolition of a hundred and fifty cities. Metellus, who was surnamed Macedonicus, deserved also to be called Celtibericus, for when he had with great glory reduced Contrebia and the Nertobriges, he with greater glory spared them. Lucullus conquered the Turduli and Vaccæi, from whom the younger Scipio, having been chal1 Ch. XVII. Carthage] That is, New Carthage, in Spain.

2 Mouth of the Ocean] Oceani ora. The Strait of Gibraltar, Fretum

Gaditanum.

3 A greater matter to preserve a province, &c.] He makes the same observation in b. iv., c. 12.

4 The Nertobriges] This word is probably corrupt. It ought apparently to be the name of a town, not of a people; and it has been proposed to substitute Nertobrigam.

lenged by their king to a single combat, carried off the spolia opima. Decimus Brutus, taking a somewhat wider range, overcame the Celts and Lusitanians, and all the tribes of Gallæcia, crossed the river of Oblivion1, an object of dread to the soldiers, and having pursued a victorious route along the shore of the Ocean, did not turn back until he beheld, not without some dread and apprehension of being guilty of impiety, the sun descend into the sea, and his fire buried in the waters.

But the main difficulty of the war was with the Lusitanians and Numantines; and not without reason; for they alone, of all the nations of Spain, had the good fortune to have leaders. There would, indeed, have been difficulty enough with all the Celtiberians, had not Salendicus, the author of their insurrection, been cut off at the beginning of the war. He would have been a great man, from the union of craft and daring in his character, if the course of events had favoured him. Brandishing a silver spear, which he pretended to have been sent him from heaven, and conducting himself like a prophet, he drew upon him the attention of every one. But having, with corresponding rashness, penetrated the camp of the consul in the night, he was slain near his tent by the javelin of a sentinel. The Lusitanians Viriathus stirred up, a man of the most consummate craft, who, from a hunter becoming a robber, was from a robber suddenly made a leader and commander, and who would have been, if fortune had seconded his attempts, the Romulus of Spain. Not content with defending the liberty of his countrymen, he for fourteen years wasted all that belonged to the Romans, on both sides of the Iberus and Tagus, with fire and sword. He attacked the camps of prætors and governors, defeated Claudius Unimanus, with the almost utter destruction of his army, and erected, in the mountains of his country, trophies adorned with the robes and fasces which he had taken from our generals. At last the consul Fabius Maximus overcame him, but his victory was disgraced by his successor, Pompi

1 The river of Oblivion] Otherwise called Limia, or Limius. Strabo, lib. iii.; Pomp. Mel., iii., 1; Cellar., ii., 1. It was called the river of Oblivion from the loss of some troops on its banks, in some of the contentions of the Spaniards among themselves. The word transiit, or some such verb, is, as Duker observes, wanting in the text.

lius, who, eager to bring the matter to an end, proceeded against the hero, when he was weakened and meditating a surrender, by the aid of fraud and treachery and domestic assassins, and conferred upon his adversary the glory of seeming to have been invincible by any other means.

CHAP. XVIII. THE NUMANTINE WAR.

Numantia, however inferior to Carthage, Capua, and Corinth, in wealth, was, in regard to valour and distinction, equal to them all. If we look to the conduct of its inhabitants, it was the greatest glory of Spain; for, though without a wall, without towers, situate only on a slight ascent by the river Douro, and manned only with four thousand Celtiberians, it held out alone, for the space of fourteen years, against an army of forty thousand men; nor did it hold out merely, but also several times repulsed them1, and forced them to dishonourable treaties. At last, when it was found impregnable by its present assailants, it was necessary, they thought, to apply to him who had destroyed Carthage.

Scarcely ever, if we may confess the truth, was the pretext for a war more unjust. The Numantines had sheltered certain Segidians, some of their own allies and relatives, who had escaped from the hands of the Romans. The intercession which they made for these refugees had no effect; and when they offered to withdraw themselves from all concern in the war, they were told to lay down their arms as the condition of a treaty on fair terms. This was understood by the barbarians to signify that their hands were to be cut off. In consequence they immediately flew to arms, and under the conduct of Megara, a very determined leader, attacked Pompeius; yet, when they might have cut his army to pieces, they chose rather to make a treaty with him. They had next for an assailant Hostilius Mancinus, whose troops they so dispirited, by continual slaughters, that not a man of them could endure the looks or voice of a Numantine. Yet, when they might have put all his followers to the sword, they preferred making a treaty also with him, and were content with

1 Ch. XVIII. Several times repulsed them] Sæpiùs aliquando perculit. This is the reading preferred by Lipsius. Duker has sævius, which Grævius interprets Sævius quam Carthago, Capua, et Corinthus. But these names are at too great a distance for such an interpretation.

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