History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 1 of 2Napoleon III, Emperor of the French
History
History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 1 of 2
Napoleon III, Emperor of the French
Caesar, Julius; Rome -- History -- Republic, 265-30 B.C.
It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L.
Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his
lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip
favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace,
and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus
by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled
Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and
pay 15,000 talents--a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after
the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a
province, exacted only just and moderate conditions.[568] All the Greek
towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied
certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of
Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman
army. Eumenes II., the successor of Attalus I., saw his kingdom
increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of
Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred
talents.[569]
[Sidenote: The War in the Cisalpine (558-579).]
IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the
Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at
any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of
the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.
Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the
Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged
continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of
Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the
defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the
Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and
the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561,
fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus,
brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the
following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half
of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three
years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.
As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of
the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it
with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures
were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost
without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond
the Po were distributed to other Ligures.[570] Every year the frontiers
receded more towards the north, and military roads,[571] the foundation
of important colonies, secured the march of the armies--a system which
had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards
adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the
Cisalpine.[572]
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