After the First Punic War and the campaigns of the 230s on Sardinia, the Roman Senate and assemblies also sent magistrates and military forces to northern Italy and across the Adriatic Sea. The wars with Gauls were more persistent and the initiative usually rested with the Senate. By the end of the fourth century, northern Italy contained a complex ethnic mosaic of Gallic tribes, some surviving Etruscan and Umbrian communities, Picentes, and Veneti. Roman authors often divided the Gauls into a few major groupings, such as the Boii, the Insubres, and the Senones, but these larger units themselves were often divided into a number of even smaller units under their own leaders. The Gauls had a long history of enmity with Rome. Early in the fourth century, a large force of Gauls succeeded in sacking in Rome, while later Gauls fought with Etruscans, Umbrians, and Samnites against Rome either as allies or as mercenaries. At least in part, Roman operations in Cisalpine and Cispadane Gaul may have grown out of the Roman assertion of leadership over Etruria and Umbria and a desire to deny restive allies there any support.
During the First Punic War, Gauls and Romans fought no major campaigns, possibly a sign of how heavily Roman commanders and forces were committed to the wars in Sicily. Tensions rose again after the end of the war. In 238, the Boii unsuccessfully attacked Ariminum, a colony that Roman officials had established over a generation earlier after Roman armies had virtually destroyed the Senones. In 232, Gaius Flaminius, a tribune of the plebs, proposed and carried an agrarian law instructing that grants of land be made to individual Roman citizens on other land taken from the Senones, an action that Polybius (2.21.7-9) held convinced the Boii and other Gauls that the Romans desired their extermination. In later periods, colleges of special magistrates, chosen for the task according to provisions in the authorizing law itself, implemented land laws such as this.3 L. Caecilius Metellus (cos. 251, 247), one of the leading senators of the time, served on such a commission, possibly the one established to implement Flaminius’ law.
Large-scale war broke out less than a decade after the law’s passage. The Roman elite must have viewed hostilities as imminent: in 226, officials buried alive in the Forum Boarium two Gauls and two Greeks to avert a prophecy that Rome would fall again to Gauls. In the following year, a large Gallic force crossed the Apennines into Etruria and defeated a Roman force near Faesulae. Later in the year, however, two consular armies defeated the Gauls at Telamon near Cosa in Etruria. For the next five years, both consuls led their armies into the Po valley, fighting against the Boii, the Insubres, and the Istrii. In 219, a Roman colonial commission founded two large colonies on confiscated land at Placentia and Cremona, bringing the Roman practice of colonization into the Po valley.
Before and after these Gallic wars, Roman commanders also fought two brief Illyrian wars. During the First Punic War, Agron had established a powerful kingdom in Illyria, which he began to expand in alliance with Demetrius II, king of Macedon. His widow and successor Teuta succeeded in overrunning Epirus by land, while pressing the cities of the Dalmatian coast by sea. Pleas for Roman assistance provided the occasion for the Senate to dispatch an embassy demanding redress (Polyb. 2.12.1-4; App. III. 1.7; see also Chapter 2). According to Polybius, Teuta promised not to intervene in Italy, but the legati, and presumably the Senate too, expected complete submission to their demands.4 After the embassy’s failure, the Senate assigned both consuls of 229 Illyria as their province. One broke the Illyrian siege of Corcyra; the other crossed to Apollonia in Epirus. Joining forces, both commanders then moved north, winning over cities on their way, until they forced Teuta to capitulate early in 228. To end the war, Teuta agreed to pay an indemnity and to set limits beyond which Illyrian ships would not sail; Rome formed ties with coastal cities such as Corcyra, Apollonia, and Epidamnus. War broke out again in 220, marking a temporary end to consular campaigns against the Gauls. With the support of Antigonus Doson, who was restoring the power of the Macedonian monarchy,
Demetrius of Pharos replaced Teuta as ruler and began to ignore the limits set by the treaty with Rome. Both consuls of 219 campaigned against him, driving him from his kingdom, but, because of the impending war with Carthage, they brought the war to a swift conclusion. These wars, it should be noted, not only provided Rome with new dependants and a new sphere in which to exercise influence, but also introduced Roman power into an area in which the Macedonian monarchy, one of the strongest states in the Hellenistic east, had long sought dominance.
World History
