The aftermath of Hannibal in Cisalpine

[Vibius Tiberius Costa]

Imagine this:

 

You are a happy cisalpine gaul who in his one lifetime

You are born into a cosy rurally bound gaul family

Your village is torn aaprt and ruined by invading romans

You are beaten and your parents are killed

You are put into petty slavery in a roman villa

You are beaten and treated like filth

Your life does begin to settle but you burn with fury

You find a female/male slave and things are going fine

Your master gets rid of that slave

Your master and the villa is destroyed by invading Hannibal and you are free

 

I'll stop there. Now after Hannibal has done his thing and defeated most of Rome what happened to cisalpine. He must have marched through it and he must have had some resistance or done something it just doesn't make sense to leave your back exposed. The cisalpine people msut have now found freedom(ish). Did the romans just waltz back in and claim it again?

 

If i have made mistakes, errors, given a misguided fact or whatever plese tell me

 

cheers

Edited May 4, 2007 by Vibius Tiberius Costa

[Primus Pilus]

First, not all the Cisalpine Gauls were slaves. There were many freemen and allied tribes within the territory.

 

With that said though, the Romans had been colonizing the territory since the defeat of the Gauls at Lake Vadimanus in 283 BC. This was probably a slow trickle until the passage of the Lex Flaminia that gave land rights to Roman citizens in northern Italy. With the increased colonization many native Gauls (chiefly the Insubres and the Gaesatae) began to be pushed out of the region.

 

Eventually, the Gauls rose against this Roman transgression in or around 225 BC. A large army was gathered and it marched south as it's ancestors had done nearly 2 centuries prior. However, this army was stopped in separate events by Flaminius and by Marcus Claudius Marcellus (the same general that stymied Hannibal in Italy after his early victories). With the defeat of these Gauls, northern Italy was completely open to Roman colonization without resistance from the original inhabitants.

 

By the time Hannibal came marching through a few years later, there were certainly a good number of disaffected Gauls who joined his cause, but there were probably also a good number who remembered their own crushing defeat a short time before. My guess is that Hannibal stripped the region of any Gauls who were of a mind to fight Rome, and by the time his army was bled through attrition, those who remained in northern Italy wanted little to do with fighting the victorious Romans.

 

In short. Rome had already begun re-establishing control of northern Italy even before Hannibal's ultimate retreat to North Africa. Once he was gone, and the war ultimately spread to Illyria, Macedonia and Greece, resistance was minimal. For all practical purposes, the Romans did simply march back in.

[caldrail]

Imagine this:

 

You are a happy cisalpine gaul who in his one lifetime

You are born into a cosy rurally bound gaul family

Your village is torn aaprt and ruined by invading romans

You are beaten and your parents are killed

You are put into petty slavery in a roman villa

You are beaten and treated like filth

Your life does begin to settle but you burn with fury

You find a female/male slave and things are going fine

Your master gets rid of that slave

Your master and the villa is destroyed by invading Hannibal and you are free

 

Yes I see things like this, and in one sense, I understand because the situation offends modern sensibilities. However the world was like this back then, not simply because of the romans, though I admit they did some pretty horrendous things. In fact, the treatment of persian citizens was worse than the roman way of life, much closer to a sort of oriental serfdom.

 

Slaves bought for a roman villa are actually in a better position than most. Possibly their treatment might be a bit rough, depending on the character of the owner, but the slaves might also be well treated and rise to respected positions, even with responsibilities. There might be perks to working in a villa, such as good food (obtained without the masters knowledge perhaps?) However, in this case your master isn't so nice and treats his slaves badly. A bad master isn't likely to allow his slaves to find partners. You just might be allowed to have sexual intercourse occaisionally for the purposes of breeding, but only a decent owner would allow a slave to have a 'family', and even then your offspring belong to the master. Tough break about your partner getting sold off. Thats only business, but then if you'd paid more attention to your duties rather than mooning at someone else, that person would still be there - Roman masters could be very cruel and practical about such things. Your master regards you as a 'talking tool', not a person, unless you manage to achieve some sort of trust and relationship with your owner. If Hannibal returns and attacks the villa then you'd probably die too. Invading armies are none too fussy about who they kill and so what if this slave is begging for mercy because he's a captured slave?

[Kosmo]

Romans were pretty hard on those who opposed them, but generally they had a good relation with the conquered. Especially at the moment you mention they were not so violent.

Despite Hannibal long presence in Italy most subjects sided with Rome rather then rebel against her.

 

Imagine this:

 

You are a happy cisalpine gaul who in his one lifetime

You are born into a cosy rurally bound gaul family

Your village chief likes war and loot so you often fight other gauls

Because if you don't you will be seriously mistreated as a coward

He and other leaders decide to raid the romans

You go to war and you are lucky to survive the defeat

Romans come and take away the land of the chief

After loot and murder things settle and it's peace

Your life does begin to settle as you try to rebuild a life

You marry a widow and things are going fine

Trade is good on the new roads since raiding has stopped

The roman cities provide usefull things

Hannibal defeats the romans

The tribe leaders rebel and you must go to war for Hannibal

But you know that if he wins he will be your new master

And he does not look nice.

 

Gauls were one of the people that became romanized the fastest and more thoroughlly then others. Under roman rule they really floursihed.

[caldrail]

Gauls were in decline as a warrior people at the time of Caesars campaign. Those gauls who had spread across europe and sacked Rome three hundred years earlier were a dying breed. Your imaginative prose in the last post is possibly more accurate for the caesarian period. Gauls flourished under roman rule because they were ready for it. They had already been seduced by roman luxuries and taught a stark lesson of roman violence.