Free A History of the Roman World by H. H. Scullard

the great house of Barca at length succumbed to the solid moral qualities of the self-sacrifice of a nation at war. It was by moral forces that Rome survived her ordeal: forces which were soon to be blunted by ambition and avarice at home and by the contagious corruption of the eastern world into which she was next drawn. Never did the spirit of the Roman People shine forth brighter than in the dark hours of the Second Punic War.

Part III
ROME AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

XIV
ROME, ITALY AND THE WESTERN MEDTERRANEAN
    1. THE NORTHERN FRONTIER
    After the Second Punic War Rome had to face the challenge of the barbarian, as well as of the civilized, world. Cisalpine Gaul must be recovered, subdued and secured. In Spain the natives must be driven back to render the Roman occupation safe; having wrested the Peninsula from Carthage, the Romans no more thought of giving it back to the natives than the Allies after the First World War thought of letting German colonial possessions revert to a native administration. Yet Rome had not entered on a systematic career of conquest; perhaps it would have been better for the native populations if she had. Distracted by eastern affairs and exhausted by the Hannibalic War, she only fought as need arose. A systematic conquest, followed up by the spreading of Roman civilization, could have been accomplished in a few years. Instead, slow wars dragged on interminably, often with little plan, under mediocre or ambitious generals; useless cruelty and great losses were endured by both sides, until at length a semblance of order was imposed. Although the final settlement of these barbarian tribes was only completed by Augustus the peacemaker, yet in the fifty years which followed the Hannibalic War Rome had asserted her suzerainty, not only in Corsica, Sardinia and the highlands of central Spain, but also on her northern frontier from near Marseilles, along the sweep of the Alps to Istria and thence down the western coast of the Balkan peninsula.
    At Hannibal’s approach many of the Gauls of the valley of the Po who had just bowed the knee to Rome had rallied to his standard. But they had not given him adequate support; not till the end of the war did his agent succeedin fomenting a serious Gallic revolt, and then it was too late; the golden opportunity of 218 BC had been lost. The loyalty of the Veneti and Mantua, Cremona and Placentia gave the Romans an invaluable foothold in the north against Gallic unrest, which only came to a head in 201 when the Boii defeated a Roman detachment (near modern Forli), while the consul Paetus was trying to secure an important pass over the Apennines by the Sapi (Savio) valley. Encouraged by the victory, instigated further by Hamilcar, and supported by the Insubres and Cenomani, they fell on Placentia (200 or 199). The praetor Furius Purpureo arrived too late to save the town, but he parried a Gallic thrust at Cremona where he defeated the Insubres. 1
    When affairs in Greece began to shape better the Senate decided on more drastic action in the north. The consuls of 197 converged on Cisalpine Gaul from opposite directions. Cornelius Cethegus approached from Venetia and found the Cenomani ready to acknowledge Rome’s suzerainty once more, while he defeated the Insubres on the banks of the Mincio near Mantua. Meantime his colleague Minucius Rufus, who marched from Genoa over the Apennines, burnt Clastidium as punishment for its defection in the Hannibalic War, and mastered the country around Litubio; but the Gauls and Ligurians would not meet him in open battle. In 196 both consuls again took the field. Marcellus, the son of the victor of Syracuse, crossed the Po and finished the war in Transpadane Gaul by defeating the Insubres near Comum. They signed a treaty by which no Insubrian was ever to receive Roman citizenship; soon afterwards the district of Mediolanum (Milan) was occupied by Italian settlers. Although the Boii were thus isolated, they withstood the other consul