The State of Greece, Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt after the Depression of Carthage

Hannibal did not abound in witticisms, especially in favour of Fabius and Marcellus against himself.

I am sorry to see Livy strew his flowers on these enormous colossuses of antiquity: I wish he had done like Homer, who neglects embellishing them, and knew so well how to put them in motion.

Besides, what Hannibal is made to speak, should have common sense. But if, on hearing the defeat of his brother, he said publicly, that it was the prelude of the ruin of Carthage; could any thing have a greater tendency to drive to despair a people, who had placed their confidence in him, and to discourage an army which expected such high recompences after the war?

The Carthaginians lost every battle they fought, either in Spain, in Sicily, or in Sardinia.

Hannibal was reduced to the necessity of engaging in a defensive war. This suggested to the Romans the design of making Africa the seat of war.

Accordingly Scipio, went into North Africa. So great was his success, that the Carthaginians were forced to recall from Italy. Hannibal wept for grief at his surrendering to the Romans those very plains in which he had so often triumphed over them.

Whatever is in the power of a great general and a great soldier to perform, all this Hannibal did to save his country.

Having fruitlessly endeavoured to bring Scipio to pacific terms, he fought a battle, in which fortune seemed to delight in confounding his ability, his experience and good sense.

Carthage received the conditions of peace, not from an enemy, but from a sovereign. Its citizens were obliged to pay 10,000 talents in 50 years to give hostages to deliver up their ships and elephants, and not to engage in any war without the consent of the Romans.

The victors heightened the power of Masinissa, its irreconcileable enemy, so that the Carthaginian Republic might always continue in a dejected state.

Before the depression of Carthage, the Romans only obtained petty victories in mighty wars.

But after the depression of Carthage, they started to engage in petty wars and win mighty victories.

There were in those times two worlds, separate from each other:

1. The world where the Carthaginians and Romans fought
2. The world after the death of Alexander, shaken by feuds and divisions

In the latter, no regard was had to the transactions of the western world. Philip, king of Macedon, had concluded a treaty with Hannibal. Yet very little resulted from it. Philip gave the Carthaginians but very inconsiderable succours, just shewed the Romans that he bore them a fruitless ill will.

When two mighty people are seen to wage a long and obstinate war, it is often ill policy to imagine that it is safe for the rest of the world to continue as so many idle spectators, for whichsoever of the two people triumphs over the other, engages immediately in new wars; and a nation of soldiers marches and invades nations who are but so many citizens.

This was very manifest in those ages; for scarce had the Romans subjected the Carthaginians, but they immediately invaded other nations, and appeared in all parts of the earth, carrying on an universal invasion.

There were at that time in the east but four powers capable of making head against the Romans; Greece, the kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria and Egypt: we must take a view of the condition, at that time, of the two first of those powers; because the Romans began by subjecting them.

There were three considerable people in Greece, the Ætolians, the Achaians, and the Bœotians; these were so many associations formed by free cities, which had their general assemblies and magistrates in common. The Ætolians were martial, bold, rash; greedy of gain, very lavish of their promises and oaths; in fine, a people who warred on land in the same manner as pirates do at sea. The Achaians were incommoded perpetually by troublesome neighbours or defenders. The Bœotians, who were the most heavy people of all Greece, but at the same time the wisest, lived generally in peace; guided entirely by a sensation of happiness and misery, they had not genius enough to be either roused or misguided by orators. What is most extraordinary, their republic subsisted even in the midst of anarchy * .

Lacedæmon had preserved its power, by which I mean that warlike spirit which the institutions of Lycurgus inspired. The Thessalians were, in some measure, enslaved by the Macedonians. The Illyrian kings had already been very much depressed by the Romans. The Acarnanians and Athamanes had been cruelly infested by the troops of Macedon and Ætolia successively. The Athenians * , weak in themselves and unsupported by † allies, no longer astonished the world, except by the slatteries they lavished on kings; and the orators no more ascended the rostra where Demosthenes had harangued, unless to propose the basest and most scandalous decrees.

Besides, Greece was formidable from its situation, its strength, the multitude of its cities, the great number of its soldiers, its polity, manners and laws; the Greeks delighted in war; they knew the whole art of it; and, had they united, would have been invincible.

They indeed have been terrified by the first Philip, by Alexander, and by Antipater, but not subdued; and the Kings of Macedon, who could not prevail with themselves to lay aside their pretensions and their hopes, made the most obstinate attempts to enslave them.