Rhodas or Rosas, while they established their Emporium hard by, on the site of the modern Ampurias. Further down the coast, between Valencia and Alicante, there was another Greek colony, where the new-comers set up a magnificent temple dedicated to the goddess Diana, after whom the town was named Dianium, surviving in the modern name of the existing town of Denia; while some adventurers from the island of Zante, or possibly from the TyrrhenoPelasgic city of Ardea, founded on the site of the modern Murviedro the more famous city of Saguntum.' But all these settlers were merchants rather than soldiers. For long years they would seem to have made no attempt to extend their possessions into the interior of the country; and the first departure from their peaceful policy was the signal for a change of masters. About four hundred and eighty years before Christ, some eager spirits at Gadeira undertook an expedition into Southern Celtiberia, seeking no doubt new mines rather than new dominions. But the bold tribesmen of the central provinces-defending their territory with unexpected vigour, replied to the aggression of the foreigners by a counter invasion, and by the destruction of many of their settlements on the coast. Gadeira itself was threatened with assault; and the Phoenicians, greatly alarmed, applied for assistance to their brothers or cousins across the narrow sea at Carthage. Such requests are ever dangerous, and such succour has ever been of evil omen in Spain. The Carthaginians accepted the invitation, landed in force, beat off the Iberians; and then, turning their arms against those who had invited them into the country, they took possession of the city which they had relieved, and extended their operations with such vigour and such success, that in a few years there was left to the Phoenicians no foothold in the entire Peninsula of Spain. For nearly two hundred and fifty years the Carthaginians ruled the coast and a fringe of the interior, much as the Phoenicians had done before them; treating the country rather as a source of revenue than as a theatre of military glory, and pouring the rich treasures of the Spanish mines into the lap of Carthage; and no attempt was made to subdue the greater part of the country until the time of the great 1See Livy, xxi., 7. Saguntum-but 18 English miles to the north of Valencia along the coast-has developed into Murviedro, by the change of name from that of the heroic city, not once, but often destroyed, to that of its old walls—Muri veteres: Muros viejos-Murviedro. But within the last few years a patriotic attempt has been made to restore the ancient name, and the town is officially known as Sagunto. It was here, on the last day of the year 1874, that Martinez Campos put an end to the Republic under Serrano, by proclaiming Alfonso XII. King of Spain. Hamilcar Barca.1 But after the Roman successes which brought to a close the first Punic war, and the seizure of Sardinia by the Senate, and while the Carthaginians were occupied with the Mercenary Revolt which followed in Africa, Hamilcar, consummate statesman no less than skilled commander, conceived the bold and brilliant scheme of strengthening his position in Europe rather than in Africa, as a step to the invasion and subjugation of Rome, by extending and consolidating the Carthaginian possessions in Spain. Hamilcar, though he quickly overran Baetica, found it no easy task to vanquish the sturdy Celtiberians; and when after over nine years' warfare, and the foundation of the city which preserves the proud title of Barca3 in the modern name of Barcelona, he was killed in an unremembered battle, Spain was not only still unconquered, but the central and northern provinces were almost untrodden by the Carthaginians. 2 Hasdrubal, the son-in-law and successor of Hamilcar, wisely preferring peaceful to warlike methods, ruled over · Carthaginian Spain for some eight years [228-221] organizing and consolidating the Punic Empire, and cultivating the friendship of the native Celtiberians. The most enduring monument of his sway was the city of New Carthage, lying on a noble bay over against the Punic Capital in Africa, a city which still flourishes, after a lapse of over two thousand years, as Carthagena. The peaceful conquests of Hasdrubal were rudely and disastrously checked by his assassination at the hand of a slave; and his sympathetic policy was unhappily and abruptly reversed. For the young commander who succeeded him was before all things a man of war. Hannibal, the greater son of the great Hamilcar Barca, had been brought up from his early childhood in Spain. In Spain he had served his apprenticeship in arms. He had married a Spanish wife. His friends and companions were rather Spaniards than Carthaginians, and his only foe was Rome. And when at the age of twenty-six, he succeeded to the supreme command in Punic Iberia, his armies numbered as many Spaniards as Africans in their ranks. Grasping the slackened reins of military dominion in his master hand, Hannibal inspired every soldier under his command with his own dauntless spirit, and he soon carried his victorious army 1 See Diodorus Siculus., lib. V., cap. 35, also the authorities cited in James' Gibraltar, cap. i. As to the oath taken by Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal, see Polybius iii., II. 3 Bark, Hebrew and Arab, Lightning, Cf. Bosworth Smith, Carthage, cap. ix. Lafuente, I. 330. Carthagena Polybius, ii. 13, 36. Phoen., Carth = city; gena=new. Founded in B.C. 228. over the whole of southern and eastern Spain. One city alone resisted; and the name of SAGUNTUM lives in history, as glorious as that of Hannibal himself. By a treaty made but a few years before, between the Roman Senate and the diplomatic Hasdrubal, it had been stipulated that Saguntines should be considered as allies of Rome, and that their ancient rights and privileges should be respected by the Carthaginians. But good reasons are ever to be found for the rupture or evasion of treaties, and a real or imaginary attack made by the Saguntines upon the neighbouring semi-Carthaginian tribe of the Turditanians, afforded Hannibal a specious pretext for laying siege to the city. The population of Saguntum was largely Iberian. And in the Punic armies, thanks to the genial policy of Hasdrubal, and the magic military charm which ever attended the name of the younger Hannibal, were found great numbers of those Iberian or Celtiberian soldiers in whose veins flowed the blue blood of the future Spanish people. The attack was tremendous, the defence unflinching. For nearly nine months the city withstood all the assaults of the besiegers. Hannibal himself, fighting in the forefront of a party of the assailants, was wounded under the walls; and in spite of all his skill as a general and all his impetuosity as a soldier-in spite of the presence of a host which is said to have amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand men-in spite of the invention and use of new engines of battery and escalade, the fall of Saguntum was due rather to famine than to force of arms. Embassies were despatched from the beleaguered city to Rome. But Rome was too busy with party politics,' and Rome sent no help. Good advice indeed was offered to the besieged. Threats were conveyed to the besieger. But Hannibal was undismayed. The Saguntines would hear of no surrender; and after nine months' agony, came the inevitable end. The spoils of the victors and the slaughter of the vanquished, were equally enormous; and the self-immolation of the Saguntine leaders, who preferred to perish, with their wives, their children, and their treasure, rather than fall into the hands of the victorious enemy, is immortalized in the glowing pages of Livy.3 1 Dum Romæ consulitur, Saguntum expugnatur. 2 Signo dato ut omnes puberes interficerentur. Livy, xxi. 14. 20. Livy, xxi. 7.15. 3 See Saint Augustine De Civitate Dei., iii. Appian, Iberica. Silius Italicus, i. 271. Polybius, iii. 15; and for the inevitable counter criticism, Niebuhr's unsympathetic contention that "Livy's account of Saguntum is a childish exaggeration well suited to a rhetorician like Coelius Antipater, from whom he took his discription. Saguntum was restored by the Romans, and became a considerable town under the Empire." Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient Geography and Ethnography, ii., 292-3. CHAPTER II. NUMANTIA. (B.C. 209-B.C. 27.) THE events that immediately followed the fall of Saguntum, important as they are in themselves and in the annals of Carthage and of Rome, are chiefly interesting to the student of Spanish history in so far as they led to the invasion of Spain,' and the ultimate absorption of the whole country into the Roman Empire. Of the varying fortunes of Romans and Carthaginians; of the ever changing alliances between the high contending parties and the native Celtiberians; of the successes of Hannibal and his Spanish soldiers in far away Italy; of the coming of Publius and Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, who took the field with twenty thousand Celtiberian allies against Hasdrubal and his Carthaginians in Spain; of the defection of the Spaniards, and the defeat and death of the Roman Generals in Spain; of all these things but little need be said in this place, partly because it concerns Spain so little, and partly because, in the plain language of Thomas Arnold, "we really know nothing about them." What we do know is certainly not to the advantage of the Roman commanders, nor even of the Roman soldiers. Had they been more successful, their records would, no doubt, be more definite. But the arrival of Scipio Africanus in 209; his taking of New Carthage, or Carthagena, and his masterly 2 1 The derivation of the name of Spain, España, Hispania, is most uncertain. To the Greeks the country was known as Hesperia, the land of the setting sun, and as we have seen in Scylax, ante, p. 1, as Iberia, the land of the Iberians, and of the Ebro; and as Hispania, which has been derived (1) from Phon., Span=hidden or distant, as being the most remote land known to them; (2) from Phon., pahan, a rabbit, from the number of rabbits found in the country, cuniculosa. On some of the coins struck in the reign of Hadrian, during his visit to the Peninsula, the bust of the Emperor is seen on the obverse, and on the reverse a female figure with an olive branch in her hands and a rabbit [conejo] at her feet, and the legend Hispania. Humboldt derives España from the Basque España, margin or edge, as being on the margin or edge or border of western Europe, an idea possibly apparent in the poetical name of Hesperia. See Marrast's edition of Humboldt (1866), pp. 54-56. According to Mariana, Spain is called after its founder Hispanus, a son or grandson of Hercules; and he devotes many pages to the history of his reign! Mariana, I. cap., 8-11. 2 Hist. of Rome, vol. iii., p. 215. Bosworth Smith's Carthage, cap. xvii. display of unaccustomed humanity after the fall' of the city, entirely changed the condition of affairs. The historic or legendary episode of "The Continence of Scipio," which has formed the subject of so many well-known pictures, is supposed to have taken place after the capture of Carthagena. Whether the youthful commander actually restored the weeping virgin 2 to her lover, or whether the graceful story is one of the fables of history, it is certain that Scipio distinguished himself by a most politic and most honourable clemency, more fruitful even than his military successes in obtaining for him the admiration and respect of the sympathetic Iberians, who offered to salute him as their king. When Scipio returned to Tarragona, in 408, Rome had well nigh triumphed over Carthage in Spain; while his crowning victory less than a year afterwards, with an army composed almost entirely of Spaniards, apparently put an end to the struggle. (But although the Carthaginians were thus defeated, it was impolitic as well as ungenerous in Scipio to treat his Spanish allies as a conquered people. The Iberians promptly responded to his change of attitude by rising against the Roman arms: and when Mago at length abandoned Cadiz [B.C. 206], the last of the Carthaginian possessions in Europe, the war in Spain was only about to begin. And the new enemy was far more stubborn than the old. The details of battle and siege are for the most part entirely wanting; but we read in the scanty annals of the time how the unknown Iberian defenders of a well-nigh forgotten town, with a determination hardly equalled at Saguntum, and not exceeded at Numantia, preferred death to surrender; and leaving a small guard within the city, to slay the women and children and to set fire to the town, sallied forth from unconquered Ataspa,3 and died every man with his face to the foe, by the unsparing swords of the Roman besiegers [B.C. 206]. It was about this time, in 207, or more probably 206, that Scipio founded the city to the north of Hispalis, and on the other side of the river, which, peopled as it was by Italian troops and camp followers, was known as Urbs Italica the birth-place of Trajan and of Theodosius the Great, the 1At a place called by different writers Silpia, Ilipa, and Elinga. 2 Adulta virgo eximia forma. Livy, xxvi., 50. Polyb. x., 19. 3 The town was Ataspa [see Livy, xxviii., 22-23] on the Betis or Guadalquivir. It is referred to by Mariana, lib. vii., cap. 9, as a rebellious city as late as A.D. 888. The etymology of Ataspa is highly interesting; Asta in Basque means Rock; and is the root of the word Asturia = the country of rocks, and Asturica, water of the rock; asta = rock; ura-water. Ataspa is still used in modern Basque for "a house at the foot of a rock or rocks," pa=foot, Ataspa must thus, in the time of Livy, have been an ancient Iberian town. |