Chapter III: Civil War and Blood Money
Just as the 2nd Century BCE has been described as 'The Merchants' Century' owing to the power of the Barcid family and the merchants of Carthage throughout much of the century, so too has it been described as one of the most tumultuous centuries politically before 0 CE. In Carthage, there was a series of political conflicts beginning with the Carthaginian Civil War of 182-180 BCE but continuing intermittently throughout the century as the Barcids vied to maintain their continued hegemony in the system, a political battle that became ever more desperate as time went on. So too, however, the century saw significant political turmoil in Rome as the same conflicts between the Plebeian and Senatorial classes that had been taking place for centuries continued to play out, driven in part by demographic and economic pressures that only continued to grow upon Roman society. The conflicts between the Plebeian and Senatorial classes had long been a feature of Roman society, often driven by the issues of Rome's burgeoning population and a lack of land for distribution. In earlier centuries this had led to calls for redistribution of the land held primarily by the Senatorial and Equestrian classes, a reform that had been dodged by Roman expansion throughout the peninsula. By conquering more and more of Italy, the Roman senatorial classes could distribute new land and retain what they already held, one of the major impetuses behind Rome's final push to destroy Veii a couple of centuries earlier. In turn, the defeat by Hannibal Barca in the 200s was a huge threat to the demographic stability thus far achieved. For one, large numbers of settled Romans throughout the peninsula suddenly found themselves losing their land as the Italian Alliance grew and targeted Roman interests more and more. In turn, many soon found themselves landless and promptly turned back to their mother city, prompting subsequent Roman migration adding on to the already large numbers of refugees who had fled Hannibal's onslaught at the end of the 3rd Century. While Rome still dominated large portions of Latium, there was only so much that she could support in terms of population, especially since many of those now arriving in Rome had recently gone from landowners to homeless migrants and refugees.
While Rome still had land for settlement and, especially, during the early years when the memories of the humiliations at the hands of the Barcids were still fresh, these problems seemed largely minimised for the Romans. In true Roman tradition, the conflict between the Plebeians and the Senators was largely put on hold in moments of crisis and especially during wars and the common enemy of the Barcids who had deprived them of their land was enough to turn anger away from political conflict. But by the 170s, political power was increasingly turning in favour of a generation that hadn't even seen the heights of the Republic nor Hannibal's invasion of Italy, even Hannibal himself was no longer around in 170 BCE. In turn, Rome very quickly became primed for these political conflicts to explode once again but with the issue that the sheer demographics, the burgeoning population, the lack of enough land for the people and the refusal of the Senatorial class to give up what land they held, meant that if conflict came, it threatened to be even more chaotic. This was a situation worsened immeasurably by the food issues and the struggles to feed such a large population with what land Rome held, while their population differences held several Latin cities to them and their power, the presence of the Italian Alliance inevitably weakened that power and gave cities an alternative to Roman rule should they so choose. This meant that what land Rome did control could change very quickly and we have several cases of Latin cities on the borders changing from pro-Roman to pro-Italian several times, meaning that not only did they not always have enough land to feed themselves but some years they even had far less than that. This is not to add on to the issues of raiding by Italian cities against Roman land which could devastate their land and forced much more agricultural importing year on year. Needless to say, the enforced import of food to keep the city fed was very much one of the big issues holding Rome back from attempts at expansion. Any war against the Italian Alliance would cut off the main food exporters to Rome, since the Barcids controlled the seas and could blockade Roman ports and thus risked a famine that, at best, would simply devastate the population but at worst could also be devastating for the very bases of Roman society. However, as the population continued to grow, the food that Rome herself could grow became more and more inadequate throughout the Second Century BC and forced more imports which served to enrich the Italian Alliance cities ever further. Capua, in particular, became a massive exporter of agricultural produce to Rome during this period, helping to cement its increasing rise to dominance within Italian politics and economics. Capua was the gateway to Italy for Carthaginian and Barcid merchants and had soon become the centre of most of Southern-Italian trade and the point from which most goods from Carthage went out to the other cities or North into Northern Italy.
This was a problem for Rome, Capua was rising as a potentially major Italian rival economically and politically and its dominance within the trade networks of Italy threatened to tie the other Italian states to it rather than Rome, something that might be even helped by the already existing political ties between the Italian states through the Italian Alliance. In turn, this wealth and power increasingly made Capua the forefront of resistance to any attempts by Rome to reclaim her position in Italy and a local leader in containing Roman ambitions. In short, Rome was stuck between a rock (the Italian Alliance and their desire to contain Roman ambitions) and a hard place (Rome's demographic problems pushing her towards expansion). The result was that Rome was being pushed increasingly towards a crisis point politically and economically, the more people in Rome, the more pressure was put upon the economic strength of the city which put more pressure on the political system in turn. Between 180 and 174 there were no fewer than 9 periods of elected dictatorships in Rome as tensions increasingly reached a boiling point. Calls for land redistribution became the spearhead of pushes for mass reform to reduce the power of the Senatorial classes and increasingly the Plebeian classes took more and more desperate action to push their points of view. As previously the political system was often marked by conflicts between the Senate and the Consuls on one side and the Plebeians and the Military Tribunes on the other. By 175, these conflicts were starting to diverge from mainstream politics and into more illegitimate, illicit side conflicts. In at least one case, the Senate's refusal to grant land reform devolved into the two sides coming to blows on the Senate floor. In Carthage, the political system, while facing very different issues, was not that much better than in Rome. The 182 BCE 'Slaughter of Carthage' proved only the beginning of Carthage's political troubles and resulted in a short-lived civil war lasting two years from the attack on the Barcids in 182 to the Barcids storming the city in February 180 BCE. Having forced the Barcids and many of their supporters out of the city (and having arrested or killed the rest), Hanno and Hasdrubal immediately convened a meeting of the Council of 104 (the Carthaginian Senate) which was now, obviously, much reduced having seen many of its members purged in the initial chaos. The survivors called a vote reaffirming the new status of the Barcid family as traitors and calling for the immediate raising of an army to ensure control of Carthaginian lands in North Africa.
This proved easier said than done, however, and several largely Barcid-dominated cities maintained open resistance to Hanno and Hasdrubal's attempts to reclaim the African hinterlands, bogging their soldiers down in sieges and fighting throughout the region. In the meantime, the Barcids were rapidly raising an army in Sicily, calling upon soldiers from not only the island itself but upon forces from Spain and their allies in Italy as well. The later Greek historian Demodocus, one of our main sources for the period, claims that the numbers of soldiers raised by the Barcids was as high as 100,000 soldiers but this has been significantly reevaluated in more recent times to about 30-40,000 at most with more conservative estimates leaning towards 15-20,000 soldiers. The vast majority of these soldiers would have been from Spain, drawn from various allied or dependent tribes and the areas directly ruled over by the Barcids themselves but we believe that given where the army was situated, a significant number also would have come from the allied Sicilian cities and maybe a few thousand from their Italian allies, primarily Capua. Upon reaching Africa, the Barcid army was certainly bolstered by reinforcements from friendly cities and African kingdoms including the all-important Numidian cavalry. Given Hannibal's reliance on the Numidian cavalry in the Second Latin War, the Barcids had spent a lot of effort building up good relations with various kingdoms in the region and ensuring a largely pro-Barcid political stance amongst the leading powers in the region. Now obviously this also created enemies and there is no doubt that Hanno and Hasdrubal also had access to Numidian cavalry from the enemies of those whom the Barcids had supported. Most notably, the majority of their army came from North Africa around Carthage and Libya and Demodocus attests to treaties signed between Hanni's alliance and the Garmantes to the South for further soldiers, although we don't know how many soldiers came from them. We also have some evidence from one site excavated in 1991 that Greek soldiers were fighting for Hanno and Hasdrubal as well, probably from the Cyrenaica region. An interesting attestation by Demodocus tells us that the Seleucids may have provided some support for Hanno's alliance which, while unconfirmed, may suggest that even as early as the late 180s BCE, the seeds of the dispute between the Barcids and the Seleucids were being sown. Estimates have put this army at around 25-35,000 soldiers.
Within weeks of the Slaughter of Carthage, the city was being blockaded by Barcid ships and several naval skirmishes were fought inconclusively between the ships owned by Hanno's alliance and those owned by the Barcids. However, even as the Barcids attempted to starve Carthage of trade, the continued fighting in North-Africa between Barcid supporters and Hanno's alliance proved more devastating for Carthage. While the pro-Barcid cities couldn't hope to hold out forever against Hanno, their resistance proved increasingly troublesome for Hanno and his allies. On one hand, he couldn't afford to leave them in Africa but, on the other, he similarly couldn't afford to turn his back for too long on a potential counter-attack from Sicily. Numidian raiders and bandits proved just as dangerous, attacking property and farms all across North Africa, often with devastating effect. In effect, the conflict also played out so many local rivalries as well, as pro-Hanno kingdoms and local interests attacked the pro-Barcid cities and kingdoms and vice versa and these divisions, divisions that had now spilt over with the Carthaginian Civil War into their wars and battles would remain long after Hanno's defeat. In 181 BCE, a Barcid army landed on the shores of Africa and began making its way straight North towards Carthage. Having been unable to defeat the pro-Barcid cities entirely in the West and with his forces spread then fighting off raids by Numidian and Maesylian kingdoms, Hanno found himself with no choice but to pull back and try to intercept the Barcids before they could reach the city. But the Barcids had had a year to prepare and while they did funnel money, resources and soldiers to allies in North Africa, their main army hadn't been there fighting and dying. This was both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, Hanno had an army veteran from fighting and Hanno himself had gained a lot of experience as a general from this period but, at the same time, he had lost a lot of soldiers in the fighting and those losses couldn't be replaced forever. On the other hand, the Barcid army was less experienced (this wasn't, after all, the army of Hannibal anymore) but it was fresh and ready for combat and likely bigger, if not initially, probably by now. The two met at a location only 20 miles South of Carthage, Hanno having rushed his army to meet the Barcids before they could reach and besiege the city and in a bloody and desperate battle that Demodocus tells us went on over two days, the two fought back and forth for a victory. Hanno lost, but only narrowly, and retained one major advantage, the city of Carthage itself into which he now retreated, blockading himself in and resolving to wait the Barcid army out. The siege of Carthage would drag on for the remainder of 181 and well into 182 but Hanno had been unable to properly supply the city for a siege, owing largely to the constant raids and devastation of the North-African farms and the blockade of the city and his army couldn't hold out forever. Finally, realising he had little option for either being relieved or waiting the Barcids out, Hanno resolved to face them once again in November 182 BCE at the Battle of Carthage. Once again, the Barcids won and in a scene made famous by later plays, Hanno killed himself, supposedly by throwing himself off the battlements of Carthage after crying 'With me, does our Republic die'.
As it turns out, Hanno's fears were far from unjustified and his death ushered in a period, one lasting from 182 BCE to the eventual ousting of the Barcids 53 years later in the Revolution of 139 BCE, during which the Barcids held almost total authority in Carthage to the point at which they came dangerously close to monarchy and the Republic came just as dangerously close to destruction. Hasdrubal escaped and fled to a friendly Numidian Kingdom, launching raids against the now Barcid controlled Carthage well into the 150s before his eventual capture and execution. What neither Hanno nor Hasdrubal ever really lived to see was that, while their actions to stop the Barcids ironically led to the Barcids reaching the peak of their power, so too, by doing so, they also set the stage for their dramatic and, eventually, bloody downfall. The culmination of Barcid power and the beginning of the end is something I will cover next time but, for now, we need to turn back to Rome because, just as Carthage was entering the 'Barcid Era' of its history, Rome was descending into chaos and bloodshed. As I mentioned previously, Roman history has often been defined by constant class struggle of a sort between the Senatorial Class on one side and the Plebeian Class on the other and this was a struggle fought on several levels throughout the years, from the right of Plebeians to marry Senators to the rise of the Military Tribunes as a significant force to simply demands for land redistribution. But it was the latter, land redistribution, that would form the basis of one of the most crucial points in Italian history and, arguably, the history of the Mediterranean. Rome had lost a lot of land and influence in Italy following their defeat at Hannibal's hands but they still faced the same demographic issues as before, now expounded by refugees fleeing from Roman colonies across Italy back into Latium. As their population grew, there was less land to go around even if the Senatorial class had been willing to accept reform of land ownership, something they were loathe to do. So too, food was rapidly becoming more and more scarce in Rome as the population grew but the ability for the Romans to grow that food themselves didn't. On one hand, the Roman people found themselves faced with a Senatorial class unwilling to discuss land reform while, on the other, an Italian Alliance that still remembered Roman domination but, even without that, had no financial incentive to just give food away to the Romans especially because the sheer population of Rome still promised the possibility that they could be a very real opponent to Capua's growing power. On a sheer financial level, this suited neither Capua nor the Barcids, the latter of whom still featured Hannibal himself until the 170s pushing for harsh measures on Rome. The result was famine.
Rome was a city rife with suspicion and fear, the Plebeians distrusted the Senators whom they felt would quite happily let them starve to protect their interests and then Senators distrusted the Plebeians whom they saw as threatening their interests and, even, potential violent revolution. On one hand, the Senators wouldn't give up their land and on the other, the Plebeians wouldn't back down from demands for them to do so. At the same time, this all simply compounded the issue that there wouldn't be enough land to give enough to everyone anyway, especially if you included other Italian peoples living in the city. Needless to say, suspicion also turned on them as well as the rich merchants also residing in the city, particularly the Barcids. Accusations and whispers of plots to raise the price of grain, lining the pockets of the merchants while the Romans starved spread throughout the city like wildfire, supposed conspiracies of Italian communities against the Romans. In truth, Rome couldn't support her population, she had neither the land nor the food to do so although it is no doubt true that the Capuans and the Barcids had no incentive to try to help them. As raids by the Italian hill tribes worsened the food situation in Rome, food became more expensive and more scarce. For the most part, food was still available to the Romans even as its price crept upwards slowly but surely. But food wasn't the only problem, huge numbers of homeless Romans and Italians, some refugees others just poor, roamed the streets, landless people were crowded into the cities and influxes of cheap slave labour from Spain made the problems steadily worse as the Senatorial classes often turned to simply buying slaves as farmhands (although still relying on educated Romans for most other roles), in part due to their cheaper cost but also simply because they were less politically active and enraged than the Romans. Now it may seem ultimately counter-intuitive to bring even more disenfranchised and angry people (slaves) into the city when the city was already in the situation it was in but the slave trade flowed through the city from Capua, north into Etruria and it was simply cheaper for Senators to do so. There have been several debates about this, some argue it was a response to what was happening, that the Senators were under fire for the rising prices of grain in the city and resolved to fix it by cheapening labour costs and production to keep prices low while others have argued that the Senators simply saw little reason to not go for a cheaper option that would help their interests. Whatever the case, the result was the same, waves of anger and suspicion spread through the city as Roman citizens turned on the Senators for serving themselves above the good of the people, on foreigners in the city for various reasons and on the merchants for lining their own pockets as people starved. The Senators turned on the Plebeians for agitating and threatening their position, on foreigners in the city for representing an alliance that seemed hostile to themselves and amongst themselves as disputes broke out over what exactly they should do.
In turn, foreign communities began to distrust Romans of all classes whom they felt were about to turn on them and began isolating themselves into their communities and avoiding contact with Roman citizens for the most part. Disputes became especially pronounced amongst the Senators and between the Senators and the Military Tribunes (who traditionally had represented the interests of the Plebeians) and this, in turn, served only to paralyse Roman government as the Senators fought to maintain their position and the Military Tribunes fought to force through land reform but neither the Plebeian Assembly electing the tribunes nor the Senate could agree amongst themselves either on the best course of action. But there was one answer for the Senate, an answer they had turned to in the past and that had rarely failed Rome in the past. War and expansion. Traditionally, Roman class disputes had been put on hold in a way during war as the Plebeians and the Senate united against a common foe and an expansion of the land held by Rome would also provide more land for agriculture and distribution, allowing new lands to be given to the landless, those who had been part of colonies before 200 BCE could return to some of those colonies and the Senate could again avoid land redistribution. In effect, they could attempt to restore their power within Italy, the power they had held before the Second Latin War. We don't have many details for the famous 179-176 BCE war from our sources, Demodocus focuses more on the growing disputes between Carthage and the Seleucid Empire at the time, except for that it was a disaster. One of the reasons the Romans had been so successful against the Etruscans was that there was little unified political will to work together all the time and so there was less of a unified front against Rome in wars. This wasn't the Italian Alliance as such as it was dominated by the Barcids and Capua, neither of whom had any desire to see a resurgent Rome and so brought their resources to bear to prevent that from happening. Funds and soldiers flowed in from Carthage (and their growing rival at the time, the Seleucid Empire was too far to provide the same support for Rome) while the Romans found themselves forced to face up against the Italian Alliance on multiple fronts which, combined with a blockade by Carthaginian ships and raids by the Italian Hill tribes, worsened the food situation. For the first time in a long time, in 177 BCE, Rome ran out of food. Added onto this was the heavy war indemnity imposed on Rome after their defeat in 176 BCE and the stripping of Rome of more lands by the Italian alliance which, yet again, only worsened the land redistribution problems.
In effect, Rome was bankrupt, her people were hungry and angry and blamed a Senatorial class unwilling to give up their position for the good of the people. These political issues were a storm trapped in a bottle and with no avenue of expansion, the pressure built and built and the result was brutal. After 2 years known as 'The Great Famine', the crisis entered its final phase: the Roman Revolution. In 174 BCE, the Plebeian Class rose in revolt under the leadership of one Marcus Andronicus and marched en masse towards the Senate. Later Roman historians describe the revolution of 174 BCE as this mass march to the Senate culminating in a battle between loyalist Roman soldiers and the rebels, the victory of the rebels, the siege of the Senate and the capture of Rome. In truth, while these events did happen over 3 days, they were a lot more brutal and a lot bloodier than those historians make out. For one, the Siege of the Senate likely did not end with an accord with the Senatorial classes as some historians suggested but rather, as more recent evidence has shown, simply the wholesale slaughter of those inside. Another example is that this revolt also coincided with a slave revolt out on the Italian farms (a trend we will see in connection with Spain in years to come and quite probably linked to the slave revolts in Spain at the time as well) but neither the revolting slaves nor the Plebeians saw any common ground between them, rather the revolting slaves saw the Romans as the very people who had oppressed them and the Romans saw them as a revolt against their position in the system, a revolt that needed to be put down. So just as the Plebeians fought the Senators, the Senators and the Plebeians both found themselves fighting the revolting slaves out on the farms as well as each other and, in some areas, also raiding Italian hill tribes that didn't let up during this period. So too did the foreign communities that the Plebeians and Senators had both seen as an enemy begin to find themselves the targets of attacks and purges in some areas of the city, resulting in more fighting between the Plebeians and those foreign communities, fighting that tended to end up favouring the greater numbers of the Plebeians and resulting in bloodbaths throughout Rome. Merchants were attacked and seized, one storytelling us of a number who were hung from the walls. Nor were the atrocities limited to just the Plebeians, the Senatorial forces proved just as capable of them in their desperate defence. That said, we also have stories of great heroism, of a certain priest who fought to save innocent bystanders from the fighting or of both Romans and other Italian communities banding together to help fight fires throughout the city, even as the fighting continued. We even have evidence that some neighbouring members of the Italian Alliance stepped in to help, sending soldiers to beat back the hill tribes and defend isolated rural communities.
The Revolution of 174 BCE has been remembered as a watershed moment in Roman history, just as the fall of the Tarquins marks the end of the Roman Kingdom, the Revolution of 174 BCE (also known as the Purge of the Senate) marks the end of the Roman Republic. In its place rose a form of government that had existed for almost 4 Centuries, a much more radical government form that had been tried out in Greece by several states and now, in the wake of bloodshed and mayhem, was making a dramatic arrival in Rome, impacting the entire Peninsula and the Mediterranean for centuries to come. Democracy.
