Italy had been devastated by the sixteen years of Hannibal’s occupation, and one of the legacies of the Second Punic War was a lasting fear of invaders from the north. However, victory had been won and much of the credit was due to the senate, whose resolve had proved unshakeable. The next fifty years saw its greatest prestige.
Moreover, there had been no concessions made to any of Rome’s allies and Rome went on to deal ruthlessly with cities that had defected. Capua was treated with especial fury. The city ceased to be a municipium and all its land was declared Roman property. The forcible removal of much of the population of Campania was also ordered, though it is probable that this was never fully carried out. Meanwhile in the north of Italy the Celts were marked out for final subjection. From 201 to 190 the senate assigned one or both consuls to the north, and the two main Celtic tribes, the Boii and Insubres, were dealt with ruthlessly. The Insubres submitted and they survived. The Boii resisted. The richest part of their land was confiscated and their presence so effectively eliminated that there is virtually no archaeological evidence for La Tene culture in north-western Italy after this period. Roman settlers were moved in to take their place. In the north-west, another tribe, the Ligurians, were also conquered so that by 180 Bc northern Italy was finally under Roman control. The area would be naturally prosperous and one colony, Aquileia, founded in 181 BC, was to become one of the wealthiest cities of the empire. A plaque recording the digging of the furrow of the first settlement still survives (in the museum there).
Control had also to be consolidated over Spain. After 197 two further praetors were appointed each year and Spain divided into two provinciae, Hispania Cite-rior, Nearer Spain, along the eastern coast, and Hispania Ulterior, Further Spain, stretching inland from the southern coast. At first the situation in Spain seemed so calm that the two legions stationed there were withdrawn to Rome. It was a serious miscalculation. Very soon the tribes had risen in revolt and for the next twenty years there were continual wars of pacification in Spain before Roman control was established well into the interior. The Roman commitment was not enormous. Spain was clearly not seen to be as important as Italy or, later, Greece. In most years four legions were deployed there, about 22,000 men, with an equal number of allies. Alongside the desire to keep order a major incentive for pacification was the plunder of silver and slaves. One commander, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, brought back 40,000 pounds of silver with which to celebrate a triumph. The mines themselves were given to the censors to farm out to local contractors and they soon made Spain the richest source of raw materials in the empire. Even Judas Maccabaeus, the defender of Israel against the Seleucids, had heard of ‘all the Romans had done in the province of Spain to gain possession of the silver and gold mines there’ (1 Maccabees 8: 3).
In the 150s revolt broke out again in Spain, sparked off by an invasion of Roman territory by a still independent people, the Lusitanians. Pacification was renewed, often with great brutality, the Roman commanders taking the opportunity to raid into unconquered territory. Enslavement of whole peoples was normal and in at least one city, Cauca, surrender in 151 was followed by the massacre of the entire male population of 20,000. Yet the fighting was not easy in the mountainous country and reports that reached Italy were disquieting enough to seriously affect recruitment and dampen national morale. The final Spanish stronghold to be conquered, Numantia, only fell when the most gifted of the Roman commanders, Scipio Aemilianus, subdued it in 133 with an army expanded to 60,000 men.
He spared fifty of its inhabitants for his triumph, sold off the rest, and razed the city to the ground.
World History
