021 - Interbellum

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 21, Interbellum. For both the Romans and the Carthaginians, the First Punic War had been an exhausting experience. Rome emerged in a better position geopolitically speaking, but both sides had been drained of money and manpower, and were significantly weaker for the great effort they had expended over Sicily. As a consequence, both sides were vulnerable to attack from opportunistic enemies. I will only briefly review the challenges faced by the North Africans during the interwar period, before moving on to a detailed look at the Roman confrontations with Gallic armies to the north, and Illyrian pirates across the Adriatic. This is, after all, the History of Rome, not the History of Carthage.

So to quickly sum up Carthage's major post-war problem, let me just say that the Carthaginian ignored one of life's basic rules, do not stiff mercenaries. Essentially, the new party that had taken control of Carthage in the last years of the war saw the conflict with Rome as a diversion from their main objective, making money. When the war ended, the mercenaries arrived in North Africa from Sicily and patiently waited for their due payment, but the new Carthaginian government was strapped for cash and decided a good way to save money and reduce the final bill for the war would be to drastically cut payments to their soon-to-be ex-employees. How they thought this would not blow up in their face is still a mystery.

When the Carthaginian paymasters arrived at the mercenary camp, the troops, who were beginning to lose their cool because they had not yet been paid, began to settle down. Yeah, there had been a delay, but the Carthaginians were good for their word, and here at last was the riches they had just spent years earning with their blood and sweat. The Carthaginian envoys, however, launched into a speech that I can only imagine sounds eerily familiar to employees who have listened to a layoff announcement. We want to thank everybody for their hard work, the future looks bright for Carthage, we just need to streamline our liquidity outflow to maximize our revenue streams going forward. So anyway, you're all fired, and oh by the way, your severance packages have been cancelled.

To say the least, the mercenaries did not take this lying down. They did not write letters to the editor railing against the injustice of the new global economy as they touched up their resumes. They grabbed their swords and said, trying to screw us, eh? We'll see about that. For the next three years, Carthage was locked in a war with its ex-army, a very dicey proposition when the whole reason you hired the mercenaries in the first place was that you didn't have a homegrown army of your own to speak of. But Carthage found some change in the couch cushions and hired different mercenaries to fight the aggrieved mercenaries. Carthage eventually won the fight, but the whole thing wound up costing more than if the Carthaginians had just paid up in the first place. There's a lesson in there somewhere, something about how easy life is when you simply live up to your obligations, and how difficult it becomes when you renege on promises. That, and always pay your mercenaries in full, plus 10%.

The Romans, on the other hand, were not dealing with internal divisions, but rather external pressures. To put it broadly, there were two competing visions for the way the Roman Empire ought to grow, and two families who embodied those competing visions. On the one hand were the Claudii, who, as we have already seen, pushed for southern expansion and pressed for the invasion of Sicily. On the other hand were the Fabii, who looked north and pressed for Roman settlement of the Po Valley. At one point, the Etruscans had held this land, but by the time Va was captured by Rome, the Po Valley had been lost to migrating Gallic tribes.

So for Rome, expansion north meant poking with a stick one of their most feared enemies, the Gauls. It had been 150 years since the sack of Rome, but the memory of barbarian hordes pouring through the gates was still fresh, and indeed, fear of the Gauls was a psychological demon the Romans would never fully overcome. But for the Fabii, this was immaterial. Rome's destiny was the conquest of the entire world, and they weren't going to let childish fears halt the inexorable advance of the empire. Rome did not explicitly pick a fight with the Gauls, but the permanent settlements they were building in Gallic territory were obviously going to spark some sort of response.

In 241 BC, a single Gallic tribe rose up against the Romans, but were put down with ease. A few years later, in 236 BC, a piecemeal coalition of tribes and factions began to march south, but when they actually stood on the brink of engaging the legions, internal squabbles broke up the coalition, and the threat dematerialized before the Romans' grateful eyes. These minor uprisings were warning shots, and the Romans did not dismiss them. Rome was in the process of annexing the Gallic tribes right out of existence, but eventually the barbarians would have to fight or die. The Romans knew this, and so made their preparations accordingly.

But before the final showdown came, Roman attention was diverted from the Gallic threat in a direction it had never looked before, east. The Adriatic had stood as the unofficial dividing line between the eastern and western Mediterranean for hundreds if not thousands of years, but the division was about to break down completely. The process of integration begun by Pyrrhus as he tried to impose the east on the west would be completed by Rome when they ultimately imposed the west on the east.

Rome's first official contact with the Greek world as an equal power came around 230 BC, after Illyrian piracy finally grew to be intolerable. Ancient Illyria, what we know of today as the Balkans, represented the far west reaches of the Greek world. The Greeks in Athens or Corinth viewed the Illyrians as barbarians living on the fringe of the civilized world, and hardly worthy even of contempt. But then again, the Greeks of Athens and Corinth viewed the Macedonians the same way, so we can fairly take their snobbery with a grain of salt.

The new kingdom of Illyria had formed around 240 BC, and at its height controlled the entire eastern seaboard of the Adriatic, including the once independent kingdom of Epirus. The kingdom did not extend far inland, however, and as a result, the Illyrians looked to the sea as their major source of wealth and power. But the economy of this new power was not run by an association of scrupulous merchants and traders, but rather by a gang of pirates and privateers. Much like the barbary states of the 18th century, Illyria was a recognized sovereign funded entirely by criminal activity. They were tolerated by the Greeks because the targets of the piracy were non-Greeks, and the goods from the west still made their way to eastern markets, often at a reduced price what with a low overhead outright theft provides.

The Romans, however, who were the targets of the piracy, took a very different view. It was a menace that had to be dealt with. Little was done at first, but when the Illyrians began to boldly attack Roman port cities, the dam of restraint was broken and in 228 BC, Rome launched itself against the Illyrians with brutal precision.

At the same time as the military campaign was launched against the Illyrian cities along the Adriatic, Rome also launched a diplomatic mission to Greece to explain what they were about to do. The Romans wanted to make sure the Greeks understood that the war with Illyria was limited in scope and would be over when the pirate menace was crushed. Yes, Roman troops were about to set foot in Greek territory, but there were no plans for them to remain longer than necessary and no further invasions east were planned. The Greeks took this to heart and the Romans were well received, marking the official beginning of diplomatic relations between Rome and the great cities of Greece. The Greeks still viewed the Romans as backward barbarians, but the power of Rome was at least acknowledged, the Corinthians even going so far as to invite Rome to take part in the Ifmian Games, which finalized the acceptance of Rome into the Greek political world as a full equal.

There was also another element to the diplomatic mission, which was secondary to the mission at hand, but would far outstrip the Illyrian pirate question in ultimate importance. The Macedonians had been consolidating their empire again, much to the dismay of Greece proper. The Romans too looked at the successors of Alexander with concern. They had their hands full with Carthage in the west and had no desire to have their back door kicked down by a newly resurgent Macedonian empire. The Romans needed allies in Greece who could tie the hands of Macedon and protect the Roman eastern flank, and the Greeks needed money and equipment to pull off any sustained engagement. These mutual overtures would come to fruition during the Second Punic War, when Philip V of Macedon signed a treaty with Hannibal to join in the war against Rome. Philip may have been able to tilt the scales decisively against Rome, but he never made it out of Greece as Roman allies there opened up front after front and kept Philip plugging leaks in his empire rather than marching his armies across the Italian peninsula and joining with Hannibal to form an invincible anti-Roman army. Rome was saved then by the diplomatic groundwork laid at the beginning of the Illyrian expedition.

Free to take out the pirates with Greek blessing, the Romans then proceeded with deliberate strategic and tactical skill that completely outclassed the Illyrians. In less than a year, the major cities of Illyria were under Roman control, and the Illyrian queen was sending envoys to Rome asking for peace. The terms were harsh. Illyrian ships were banished from the Adriatic, and southern Illyria, opposite the heel of Italy, was annexed and established as a Roman protectorate. The Romans had achieved a dual victory. Not only had they eradicated the threat of piracy, but they also had set up now a permanent base on the far side of the Adriatic where they could keep an eye on the growing Macedonian threat.

The quick end to the Illyrian campaign turned out to be a major blessing, not just for its own sake, but because the Gallic storm was brewing again, and this time it would not simply break up and leave a pleasant afternoon in its wake. This time, the Gauls were united and driven. In 226 BC, the Gauls began to pour through the Alps, intent on sacking Rome a second time. To face the invasion, Rome mustered an unprecedented number of men. They turned out the full fighting capacity of the Italian peninsula, with every Italian community committing themselves fully to what could only be considered a fight for civilization itself. The Gauls have as many as 700,000 infantry and 70,000 cavalry being raised. Not all of these were first-rate legionaries, and many were employed merely for local defense, but still, it gives you an idea of how seriously the Romans took the threat.

Armies were divided up and sent to cover key strategic points, but the Gauls were able to more or less march all the way to Clusium in southern Etruria before they met any resistance. The first battle went poorly for the Romans, and their armies were trapped by the Gauls, but the invaders took the opportunity to pillage the countryside rather than maintain their vigil over the Romans, and the trapped legions were able to escape. This greed wound up being the undoing of the Gallic army.

When the Gauls settled into camp that night, the decision was made by the chieftains to put the sack of Rome on hold for the moment. The chiefs recognized that their men were too laden with booty to fight effectively, and unwilling to give up their spoils, decided to march back north and deposit their gains before returning to finish the job. They chose a route up the Etruscan coastline that offered the easiest passage for their overloaded pack animals, but this proved to be a horrendous mistake. The passage lay between the sea to the west and steep hills to the east and only permitted movement north or south. A Roman army picked up the Gallic movement and came down from the north, plugging up the passage. The Gauls decided to turn around and try a different route, but it was too late. The Roman army they had let escape came up from the south, trapping the Gauls in the pass.

The Romans were delighted at their strategic coup, but immediately were filled with unease as they watched 50,000 trapped and desperate Gauls ready themselves for a fight to the death. It was a hard and bloody battle, but the Gauls eventually could not maintain both fronts and were crushed between the two Roman lines. With the main force of the Gauls now destroyed, the Romans turned to the other, subsidiary Gallic army still roaming the countryside, defeating them one by one. The threat posed by the invasion thus ended, the Romans pressed their advantage and cleared the Gauls out of Italy altogether. The Italian land just south of the Alps, which had long been considered a part of Gaul, was now firmly Roman territory and would remain so for the 750 years left to the empire.

The years between the two Punic Wars were eventful and successful for Rome. They had opened up relations with Greece and established a cadre of allies who would play an important role in the great war against Hannibal. They had secured the safety of their trade and communication routes to the east, which would be more important than ever as the west erupted into all-out war. After the fight with the Gauls, Italy had never been more united and it was this unity more than anything else that would wind up stymieing Hannibal in his attempt to break Rome. His plan was to beat the Romans on the battlefield and then convince Rome's Italian allies to turn on the great city. But to his chagrin, they refused to abandon Rome, even after Hannibal demonstrated how much better he was than the Romans time and time again. The frightening invasion of the Gauls and the Romans' ability to beat it back endeared them to their Italian allies, who were in no mood to turn on the great protector of Italian civilization when Hannibal came knocking.

Next week, we will cover the events leading up to the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian conquest of Spain, and the Roman response. It is impossible to argue that the Romans were not knowingly breaking the treaty with Carthage when they agreed to come to the aid of Saguntum. But as in the case of Massana in Sicily, they saw an opportunity to establish a foothold in Spain and took it, damn the consequences. And the consequences, needless to say, were vast.