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Roman Strategy in Cisalpina, 224-222 and 203-191 B.C.*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

B. D. Hoyos
B. D. Hoyos*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

A. H. McDonald's contribution to the study of Rome's reconquest of Gallia Cisalpina raises several important questions concerning that momentous development. Momentous it surely was, for it brought under Roman rule a territory which was to be one of the heartlands of Roman, indeed western, culture in later ages. Another look at some aspects of the conquest and reconquest may thus be forgiven.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 10 , 1976 , pp. 44 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1976

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Footnotes

*

The abbreviations used in the footnotes will, I hope, be clear. It should be pointed out that L. = Livy; Pol. = Polybius; MRR = T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (New York, 1951), Vols, i, ii; Toynbee = A. Toynbee, Hannibal's Legacy (Oxford, 1965), Vols, i, ii.

References

1 ‘The Roman Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul (201-191 B.C.)’, Antichthon 8 (1974), 44–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar(henceforth referred to as McDonald).

2 McDonald (48) perhaps overstresses the former, mainly by implication: ‘Thus Rome [in 197] resumed the strategy of invasion that had taken shape in 224-222 and been used against Mago in 203, with full experience in the transport of armies by sea.’ Cf. 49, on the ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ Boii (on which distinction see below), and 51.

3 Pol. ii 31 . 8-10; his report ‘ gives no strategic details, but implies a single line of advance overall. That it came from the south is virtually certain because of geography, and we may also note Pol's remark (ibid.) that the Romans hoped they would now be able .

4 It is an attractive possibility that the troops were transported to Genua by sea at the out-set, though McDonald (45) is too hasty in stating this as fact. Pol. rather obscurely says the attack was made (ii 32. 1: see Walbank, F., A Hist. Comm. on Pol. Vol. i [Oxford, 1957], p. 207)Google Scholar; the Anares dwelt between the Po and Trebia (cf. ii 17. 7), i.e. south of the Insubres (McDonald's map, 46, does not show them). Genua may well have been under Roman control or influence by 223 – it certainly was in 218 (L. xxi 32. 5; Toynbee ii, pp. 263-4, 536).

5 A campaign by the consuls of that year is reported, against the Istri, at the head of the Adriatic (sources – late – in MRR i, pp. 2334)Google Scholar.

6 L. xxx 18-19 (19. 6: ‘nulla memorabili re in provincia Etruria Galliaque … gesta’); McDonald, 47. There was also, probably, a legion at Genua, but this played no part in the campaign (L. xxx 1. 9-10; MRR i, p. 315Google Scholar n. 4).

7 L. xxxi 2. 5-10; McDonald, 47; cf. Briscoe, J., A Commentary on Livy, Books XXXI-XXXIII (Oxford, 1973), p. 59.Google Scholar

8 McDonald, 47-8, with references; MRR i, pp. 323, 326Google Scholar n. 1, 326-7, 331.

9 For narrative see McDonald, 47-8, with references; also Toynbee ii, pp. 268-9.

10 L. xxxii 9. 5 and 26. 1-3 (doublets: cf. Briscoe, , Comm. pp. 184, 215-16)Google Scholar; McDonald, 48.

11 Pol. xviii 11.1-2; McDonald, 48.

12 Schlag, U., Regnum in Senatu (Stuttgart, 1968), pp. 42-4Google Scholar, emphasizes that after mid-199 all was quiet in the Po area until the consuls for 197 set out on their campaigns; she argues that the resulting conflicts were, in fact, provoked by them deliberately (cf. also her pp. 51-2). This deduction is extreme: though we hear nothing of the Boii in 199-198, the Insubres certainly were still in a state of hostilities with Rome, with an unavenged Roman defeat (199) to their credit. Both in the latter part of 199 and in 198, a consul was operating in Cisalpina, even if achieving or suffering little in the field (L. xxxii 7.8, 9. 5, 26. 1-4 – the latter passages are doublets, cf. n. 10 above; McDonald, 48). That Rome regarded a Cisalpine war as still in being is also indicated by L. xxxii 28. 9: ‘consulibus binae legiones decretae et ut bellum cum Gallis Cisalpinis, qui defecissent a populo Romano, gererent’. The Gallic tribes, however, must have been fairly quiet at the time (cf. xxxii 26. 4: ‘allia praeter spem quieta eo anno’ – 198) and a new Roman offensive could understandably have taken them by surprise.

13 McDonald, 48-50.

14 L. xxxii 29.5-30.4; Toynbee ii, p. 269. Cf. n. 12 above.

14a McDonald, 48. Toynbee ii, p. 678 and n. 9, argues that Minucius must have gone by sea: he could not have used the land route along the coast, because it was too dangerous (cf. his pp. 2634). Now fighting did occur in later years along that coast and its hinterland, but this proves nothing for 197. The praetor killed by Ligurians when en route to Spain in 190 was, it would seem, accompanied only by an escort of comites – not by a full legion (L. xxxvii 57. 1-2). In 193 Pisa was besieged by, reportedly, 40,000 Ligurians, but Q. Minucius Thermus, who operated against the Ligurians as consul that year and proconsul until 190, was denied a triumph on his return (xxxvii 46. 1-2) and assailed by Cato in a book de falsis pugnis (Gellius, , Noct. Att. x 3. 14Google Scholar = Malcovati, , ORF2, pp. 26-7)Google Scholar: all of which rather suggests that, even in the later 190s, the Ligurian peril was still not regarded as severe by many senators.

15 Toynbee ii, p. 270 n. 3; McDonald, 48.

16 L. does say that the Boian army ‘haud ita multo ante traiecerat Padum’ when Minucius from Genua began ravaging Boian territory (xxxii 29.8-30.1).

17 On his route, cf. McDonald, 49, and map on his p. 46; on the location of tribus Sapinia and Mutilum see e.g. Briscoe, , Comm. p. 59Google Scholar (against Toynbee's placing of the former else-where than the valley of the river Sapis: i, pp. 485-7).

18 On Felsina, see e.g. Briscoe, , Comm. p. 320.Google Scholar

19 Toynbee (ii, p. 270) and Schlag (op. cit. [note 12], pp. 45-6) are thus wrong to ascribe the activities in 37. 5-8 to Purpurio alone. This latter did not obtain a triumph, in fact: as Boian resistance continued, moreover, long after this, the ‘pugna secunda’ cannot have been as crushing a victory as L. claims; and I will suggest evidence below (p. 52) that the Boian armed force remained active in 195 and 194. Schlag, p. 44, considers the Boian raid across the Po as a pursuit of Marcellus, since she accepts L.'s narrative order of his movements; but there is no evidence for this (confusingly, on her p. 45 she merely repeats L.'s presentation of the raid as a ‘Raubzug’).

20 Toynbee ii, p. 270 n. 3 (briefly anticipated by de Sanctis, G., Storia dei Romani iv. 1, p. 414Google Scholar n. 17; also Frank, T., CAM viii 327Google Scholar, without discussion); McDonald, 48-9.

21 Toynbee, ibid.; McDonald, 49: ‘We may take Marcellus' victory at Comum by itself (36. 9-14), dropping the connective reference to a crossing of the Po.’

22 McDonald, 48: Marcellus, ‘backed by the Cenomani’, was to strike at the Insubres.

23 A march along the route of the later Via Postumia from Genua, over the Appennines and down the valley of the Scrivia river (on which Dertona stood) to the Po, was perfectly practicable: see Toynbee ii, pp. 262-3, on the terrain. It would have brought Marcellus to the Po opposite the Libui and Laevi (see McDonald's map, 46; a good map of the area is in Chilver, G.E.F., Cisalpine Gaul [Oxford, 1941], at end)Google Scholar. These small tribes were attacked later that year by the Boii (L. xxxiii 37. 6), perhaps for pro-Roman sympathies (this is also suggested by Toynbee ii, p. 271 n. 1). Marcellus, crossing the river there, could have approached Comum while giving the Insubrian heartland around Mediolanum – not mentioned at all in this campaign – a good berth.

Schlag, op. cit. (n. 12 above), map V on back endpapers, has Marcellus march straight through Boian territory and across the Po between Placentia and Cremona; as mentioned above (n. 19), she accepts L.'s narrative order for his movements, which places his setback at Boian hands before his success at Comum. But her discussion of Marcellus' movements (her pp. 45-6) seems to me almost as ill-adjusted between its sections as L.'s (cf. Briscoe's remarks, Comm. p. 318;although he too accepts L.'s narrative as it stands).

24 Op. cit. p. 61.

25 xxxiii 37. 9. Schlag admits that no challenge to this award is reported – unlike several others in this decade (see her pp. 56-65 generally) – but seems to wish there had been one.

26 McDonald, 49.

27 Ibid.; southern and northern Boii are already mentioned on pp. 47-8 without immediate discussion.

28 McDonald, 50.

29 xxxv 22. 4, with doublet at 40. 3.

30 McDonald, 49-50. On this interpretation, moreover, the Boian iuventus who avoided surrender at Felsina and thereafter followed the Roman army without making contact, must be the warband of the ‘southern’ half of the tribe alone; and though they were hunting the combined Roman forces, and though these forces in turn must have passed through – or fairly close to – ‘southern’ Boian territory on their return from the ‘northern’, no further contact between Boian iuventus and Roman army is heard of.

31 Toynbee ii, p. 257, and Brunt, P.A., Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (Oxford, 1971), p. 176Google Scholar, cite sources.

32 Cf. L. xxi 25. 9 on L. Manlius' march (218) towards Mutina: ‘silvae tunc circa viam erant, plerisque incultis’; also Strabo v 1. 11 (217 C): ‘A considerable part of Cisalpina used to be covered by marshes … but Scaurus [late second century B.C.] drained the plains by running navigable canals from the Padus as far as Parma’ (Loeb trans.).

33 xxxi 2.5 etc.; McDonald, 47.

34 L. xxxii 10. 2: ‘Boi’ without qualification; McDonald, 47: ‘the Insubres, joined by the Cenomani, northern Boii and Ligurian Ilvates’.

35 McDonald, 50.

36 Mutina itself was an independent and pro-Roman town: Pol. iii 40. 8; L. xxi 25. 3-8; Walbank, , Comm. i, p. 375Google Scholar; Philipp, H., RE XVI (1933), 940Google Scholar s.v. ‘Mutina’; Ewins, U., ‘The Early Colonization of Cisalpine Gaul’, PBSR 20 (1952), 55Google Scholar; Salmon, E.T., OCD2 (1970), p. 713Google Scholar: ‘Rome apparently held Mutina uninterruptedly’ from 218 or earlier. Admittedly Sanctis, de, Stor. d. Rom. iii2, p. 100Google Scholar (= iii1, p. 102), and iv. 1, p. 411, does not include Mutina among towns he thinks remained pro-Roman in the Second Punic War, but this is because the town is not mentioned one way or the other in the sources. It may well have been small, without much of a territorium: cf. n. 38 below. All the same, when L. reports that the battle came on after the consul ‘agro hostium excessit et ad Mutinam– ducebat’ (xxxv 4. 3, cf. 4), there would be no grounds for taking him to mean the ager of the ‘northern’ Boii alone.

37 McDonald, 51. It is just possible that the bulk of Boian population and land-occupation lay in the Bononia region: see p. 54 below.

38 xxvi 40. 3: ‘P. Cornelius consul… agri parte fere dimidia eos multavit, quo, si vellet, populus Romanus colonias mittere posset’; xxxvii 57. 7-8 (foundation of Bononia –‘ager captus de Gallis Bois fuerat’); xxxix 55. 6-7 (Parma and Mutina ‘in agro qui proxime Boiorum, ante Tuscorum fuerat’).

39 xxxiv 48. 1; differing views on the discrepancy: Toynbee ii, p. 271; Schlag, pp. 47-8; McDonald, 51. Scipio, who had wanted a mission to the East, probably did not make a great effort in the field.

40 L. xxxiv 22. 1-3, esp. 3: ‘consul rehquum aestatis circa Padum Placentiae et Cremonae exercitum habuit restituitque quae in iis oppidis bello diruta fuerant’; presumably, and understandably, the re-establishment of colonists at the towns by Sex. Paetus three years earlier (xxxii 26. 3) still required complementary activity in rebuilding structures and defences.

41 Toynbee ii, pp. 270-1, suggests that the Insubres may have capitulated after Flaccus' victory. But as Sempronius, too, made sure to establish himself at Placentia, after extricating his army from heavy Boian pressure and without pursuing the latter when they ‘recepere in intima finium sese’ (xxxiv 46-7; quotation from 47. 8), we may deduce that Flaccus' victory did not immediately bring about Insubrian agreement to peace. The tribe finally made peace by treaty (Cic, . pro Balbo 32Google Scholar) and no deditio is recorded: this suggests that, in spite of its defeat by Flaccus, it negotiated from a position of some strength. Frank, , CAH viii 327Google Scholar, unduly downgrades the resistance of the Insubres and dates their submission to 196 after Marcellus' victory at Comum. McDonald, 48, also assumes this date.

42 L. xxxiv 55. 6; Schlag, p. 48. L. goes on to describe the consuls as ‘nihil eo anno belli exspectantes’ (56. 1) when news arrived of a Ligurian attack on Pisa (ibid. 2): but this attitude is strange if – as he says – such provinciae had already been assigned. Has he perhaps misrepoited, or misunderstood, a source which said that the consuls were not expecting the enemy to begin the warfare? Operations in Liguria 193-190 were carried out by Thermus, Q. Minucius, cos. 193Google Scholar: see MRR i, pp. 346, 351, 354, 357Google Scholar; and above, n. 14a.

43 L. xxxv 8; cf. 6. 8 - 7. 1; see also Schlag, p. 63.

44 On these events see McDonald, 51-2; Toynbee ii, p. 271; Schlag, pp. 50-1; MRR i, pp. 346, 350, 352, 357Google Scholar.

45 Op. cit. pp. 42-4,51-5,61.

46 L. xxxi 49. 2; xxxiii 23. 7 and 9, 37. 1-2; xxxvi 40. 12-13.

47 Op. cit. pp. 40-1,51.

48 P. 51: those events ‘noch zum zweiten punischen Krieg gehörten’.

49 L. xxxi 10. 2, 21. 18 (erroneously reporting his death in battle, 200); xxxii 30. 12; xxxiii 23. 5. Cf. Walsh, P.G., Livy: his Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge, 1963), p. 285.Google Scholar

50 L. xxxvi 39. 3; xxxvii 2. 5.

51 Cic, . pro Balbo 32Google Scholar. By Pol.'s time – according to that historian – the Transpadane Gauls had largely been driven to the Alpine foothills by Italian immigration (ii 35. 4); this, if true, would suggest that their treaties had not in the long run saved them either. But Pol. is almost certainly incorrect (see Walbank, , Comm. i, pp. 211-12Google Scholar; Brunt, , Ital. Manp. pp. 197-8Google Scholar; cf. Toynbee ii, pp. 272-3, on Roman treatment of the Transpadani in the decades immediately after the peacemaking). The story of a Boian migration to Bohemia is probably false: see e.g. Walbank i, p. 211; Brunt, p. 192.

52 Bononia as a colony certainly throve: Brunt, p. 191. On Gallic landholding in Cisalpina, cf. his suggestion, p. 196.

53 These do not seem to have been created solely, or even chiefly, to provide opportunities for impoverished Italians: their size and positions, with the supporting network of viae, indicate a strategic purpose, and in general there seems to have been some difficulty in attracting men to colonies in the first decades of the second century. On the purpose of the Cisalpine colonies, see (e.g.) McDonald, A.H., ‘The History of Rome and Italy in the second century B.C.’, Cambr. Historical J. 6 (1939), 128Google Scholar; Antichthon 8 (1974), 52Google Scholar; Salmon, E.T., Roman Colonization under the Republic (London, 1969), pp. 101, 105-9Google Scholar. On the difficulties from time to time in attracting or keeping colonists, especially from among the Roman citizen body, see L. xxxii 2. 6-7 and xxxiii 24. 8-9; xxxiv 45. 1-5 (cf. xxxii 29. 3); xxxv 9. 7 (cf. xxxiv 53. 1); xxxvii 46. 9-10; cf. xxxvii 47. 2 and 57. 7-8 (two colonies voted, only one founded: on this see Ewins, op. cit. [n. 36 above], 56-7); Toynbee ii, pp. 147-9; Salmon, pp. 97-108.

54 Note L. xlii4. 3-4 (viritane allocation of Cisalpine land, 173).

55 On the enfranchisement of Cisalpina, see Sherwin-White, A. N., The Roman Citizenship2 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 157-9Google Scholar; Brunt, , Ital. Manp. pp. 166-72Google Scholar.