020a - The First Punic War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, Episode 20A, The First Punic War. As a way to set up today's episode and recap last week's topic, I would like to start with an extended quote from Sir Nigel Bagnell's The Punic Wars, which sums up the events that led to the First Punic War with perfect brevity. A gang of ex-mercenaries turned brigands seized Masana to exploit its people and its natural resources for their own enrichment. Faced with the threat of falling under the domination of Hyrule of Syracuse and losing their privileged status, the Mamertines turned to the Carthaginians for help. Soon finding their arrangement unsatisfactory, they invited the Romans to help them instead. The Romans had recently recovered one of their own cities, Regium, from a similar band of adventurers whom they considered so reprehensible that they had taken them to Rome for public execution. But in spite of this, they accepted the Mamertines' invitation and occupied Masana. The temptation to acquire a foothold in Sicily and secure the straits in the face of Carthaginian unpreparedness clearly overcame all moral considerations. It was an example of blatant opportunism. Though they gravely underestimated the consequences, the Romans had the muscle and they used it.

In 264 BC, Rome had dispatched one of its consuls for the year, Appius Claudius, along with two legions to Sicily with the understanding that they were to quickly secure the city of Masana in the northeast corner of the island and then take what further territory they could. Claudius had been a vocal supporter of invading Sicily and was positively licking his lips at the thought of the riches and glory he was about to win for himself. He managed to slip by the Carthaginian fleet stationed in the straits between Italy and Sicily and marched two legions to Masana, where he joined the small expeditionary force led by his cousin that was already holding the city for Rome. Upon his arrival, Claudius immediately set about fortifying his position, knowing that despite his claims of easy victory to the Senate, the Syracusans who controlled the southeast quadrant of the island and the Carthaginians who controlled the western half were not going to simply let Rome waltz onto their turf without a fight.

He did not have to wait long for a reaction from the two major established powers on the island. Upon hearing the news that the Romans had arrived in Sicily, Carthage immediately concluded a treaty with Hyrule, the king of Syracuse, and they launched a joint effort to dislodge the interlopers. Hyrule marched his army north from Syracuse and the Carthaginians marched east from their strongholds on the western edge of the island. They met at Masana and made preparations to lay siege to the city.

Claudius was outnumbered by the two armies, but as he watched his opponents set up their camps it was obvious they had not yet coordinated their armies. Seizing the initiative, Claudius marched out and attacked Hyrule's force first, driving them off with little difficulty. Hyrule had no incentive to put up stiff resistance to the Romans. The treaty with his longtime nemesis Carthage was nominal at best, sort of a, well, if you're going to fight the Romans, go ahead, I've got your back. But he had no intention of actually leading the attack, and so, facing the brunt of the Roman offensive with the Carthaginians standing by watching, Hyrule prudently withdrew. Better to let the Romans and Carthaginians duke it out than overcommit and risk losing his kingdom if the Romans emerged victorious and came looking for revenge.

The quickness of Hyrule's defeat allowed Claudius to wheel his army around and attack the Carthaginians immediately. In the first major engagement between the two powers, Rome got the upper hand and the Carthaginians were forced back, but it was an orderly, tactical retreat, not the mad chaotic dash of outright defeat. The victorious Romans followed up their victory by marching south on Syracuse. Claudius knew it was essential to neutralize the powerful Greek city-state, and after Hyrule's poor showing outside Massana, Claudius was confident he could spook the king into a treaty, at the very least ensuring his neutrality in the fight that was sure to come against the Carthaginians.

Claudius began setting up for a siege of Hyrule's city, but it is likely that the entire operation was pure theater. Two legions with no naval support was not nearly enough manpower to take a city as strong as Syracuse, but Claudius was hoping that Hyrule would deal anyway. Though he had no real desire to fight the Romans, and every reason to align himself with them against the Carthaginians, the king of Syracuse was not about to capitulate to a few thousand soldiers who may be gone by winter, never to return. So Hyrule remained secure in his city, refused to negotiate, and waited for the Romans to withdraw. Knowing that the legions were vulnerable out in the open to a Carthaginian attack, Claudius satisfied himself that Hyrule would not bargain, and marched his two legions back to Massana where they would remain for the winter.

The next year, 263 BC, the Romans decided to commit themselves more fully to the Sicilian invasion. The operation of the previous year had essentially been a private campaign waged by Appius Claudius. He had raised the two legions himself, and conducted the campaign without any input from the Senate. But now, what had been a personal adventure authorized by the Senate, was about to become state policy. Recognizing that the quick and easy road to victory in Sicily had been a mirage all along, the Senate now made their plans with a broad, long-term strategy in mind.

The first step was to eliminate Hyrule as a threat. If Syracuse could not be made into an ally, then at the very least he had to agree to stay out of the fight. With this in mind, both consuls for the year, each in command of two legions, were sent to Sicily with instructions to march on Syracuse and force Hyrule to the table. As the four legions moved south from Massana, for now the Roman home base on the island, they attacked towns allied with Syracuse. None of these cities were a match for Rome, and after forcing a few to capitulate under arms, the rest quickly announced their surrender without a fight.

When the Romans arrived at the gates of Syracuse this time, they brought with them a much better hand than the inside strait Claudius had bluffed the year before. Isolated, cut off from his supply lines, and facing four full legions, eternally pragmatic Hyrule agreed to meet with the consuls and talk terms. The king was delighted by what the Romans offered. He was to keep his existing kingdom intact and even be granted control of a few additional cities, in exchange for aiding Rome in their impending showdown with Carthage. Hyrule jumped at the deal. He had long wanted the North Africans expelled from his island, and the Romans stood a very good chance of doing just that. Plus, if he helped the Romans now, he would secure the territorial integrity of his kingdom, which even neutrality might cost him if Rome won without his help. There was always the possibility the Romans may renege down the road, but that was for another day. For now, he pledged himself fully and completely to Rome.

In the end, the Romans did not renege on their deal, and Hyrule was allowed to keep his Sicilian kingdom intact. The alliance between Hyrule and Rome would last for fifty years until the old king's death in 215 BC, and proved to be decisive as the Romans transitioned from an Italian to a Mediterranean power. Hyrule essentially midwifed the birth of the wider Roman Empire, forever standing by Rome's side as it fought its decades-long war against Carthage, and forever there with aid and comfort after every Roman setback. Without the support of Hyrule, the Romans would never have been able to accomplish what they did, and the king was rewarded with the gift of unchallenged sovereignty over his kingdom.

There was a lesson implicit in the pact with Hyrule that the Romans followed to great success and ignored at their peril, which is neatly captured by the aphorism, you can attract more bees with honey than vinegar. The Roman road to global empire was always smoothest when they effected a generous and honorable stance, and rockiest when they acted with deceit and cruelty. They were capable of both, but with Hyrule they got it exactly right. However, in their attempt to win the rest of Sicily, they displayed far less wisdom and protracted the conflict longer than necessary by driving cities to the Carthaginian side with acts of unnecessary brutality, as was with the case of the sack of Aggregentum.

By 262 BC, the year after securing the alliance with Hyrule, the Romans were now free to prosecute their greater war with Carthage. The Carthaginians were assembling a mercenary army at Aggregentum, a Greek city on the southern coast of Sicily, which was both geographically and culturally disposed to an alliance with Carthage. The Romans were intent on preventing this force from spreading out onto the island beyond their port of entry, and raised an army 40,000 strong to bottle up the city. Despite persistent skirmishes, the Romans were able to build a double wall around the city, one facing in, pinning the Carthaginian army down, and one facing out, to prevent any relieving force from coming to Aggregentum's aid. This was a risky strategy in that the Romans themselves were now open to a siege. The Carthaginians, well aware of this vulnerability, rerouted their incoming troops to a nearby port and decided to exploit the situation and besiege the besiegers.

The siege of Aggregentum was the first opportunity for the new Roman friendship with Hyrule to bear fruit, as the king of Syracuse spared no expense to keep the Roman army, trapped now between their two walls, well supplied. The Carthaginian commander of the relieving force had every intention of simply starving the Romans out, as his own troops were raw and undisciplined, but after failing to cut the Roman supply lines, and recognizing that the situation inside Aggregentum was becoming desperate, decided to risk an open confrontation. He challenged the Romans to come out and fight, and the challenge was accepted. The resulting battle lasted all day, but in the end, just as the Carthaginian commander had feared, the experience and discipline of the Roman soldiers proved decisive and the Carthaginians were beaten.

In the aftermath of the fighting though, that discipline broke down as the Roman soldiers got caught up scavenging for spoils. The Carthaginian army trapped inside Aggregentum was able to slip out of the city, and it wasn't until the last Carthaginian company was leaving that the escape was finally noticed. The legions briefly mustered to give chase, but then realized that with the Carthaginian army gone, Aggregentum was ripe for the taking. The soldiers wheeled around and charged headlong into the city they had spent months sitting outside of. In their lust for plunder, all hell broke loose, and no distinction was made between civilian and combatant. Women and children were slaughtered along with the men, and the city was stripped of its wealth.

The commanders, whether they approved of the horror or not, justified it after the fact by singing the familiar refrain that they needed to make an example of Aggregentum to teach other Carthage-allied cities a lesson about resisting Rome. The only lesson the Carthage-allied cities learned, however, was that the Romans were sadistic barbarians who had to be resisted at all costs. The sack of Aggregentum did nothing to dissuade future resistance, and in fact did everything to promote it. A more humane victory lap may have convinced the rest of Sicily that they had nothing to fear from the ascendant Romans, but in the end, the dose of Roman vinegar at Aggregentum attracted no bees.

After taking Aggregentum, the Romans now effectively controlled two-thirds of Sicily, but the Carthaginian strongholds on the west coast were impregnable. Their walls were almost impossible to breach, and no prolonged siege would work as long as the cities could be supplied from the sea. It was the same dilemma the Spartans had faced during the Peloponnesian War. The Spartan phalanx could not be beaten on land, but the Athenians dominated the water. Neither side risked total defeat by challenging the other on their home field, but after essentially talking past each other for thirty years, the Spartans finally decided to force the issue and built a navy to compete. A decisive Spartan victory at sea finally put an end to the long war.

In the First Punic War, the Romans were dominant on land, but the Carthaginians controlled the sea, and so, with typical Roman confidence and audacity, they decided to follow Sparta's example and take the fight on to the other guy's turf. While Appius Claudius was initially crossing over to Masana, a Carthaginian ship had charged too aggressively and run aground on the Italian mainland. Roman engineers studied the ship, and in 261 BC the Senate, deciding to take the plunge into a world they knew nothing about, ordered a fleet built based on the Carthaginian design. The Romans knew nothing about shipbuilding or seamanship, but in two months they built 120 ships and raised the 30,000 troops necessary to man them, training them on rowing techniques on the beach while the ships were completed. With minimal real practice at sea, the new Roman fleet sailed off to challenge Carthaginian naval supremacy. How hard could it really be?

Leading the new Roman fleet was Cornelius Scipio, the first Scipio to appear in our narrative, but I can assure you he won't be the last. The forebearer of two of the greatest generals in Roman history, however, did not get the famous name off to a good start. Scipio led a squadron of 17 ships to Massana to make sure there was no Carthaginian presence in the area. The main fleet was to follow a few days later under the capable hands of Scipio's consular colleague, Gaius Dullius. But Scipio got greedy and decided to attack a small coastal city while he waited for the rest of the fleet.

The Carthaginians got wind that the Romans were trying to launch a navy and decided to come have a look for themselves, knowing it would be good for a few laughs, if nothing else. They watched with amusement as Scipio foolishly led all 17 of his ships into a harbor the Carthaginians could easily trap him in. Night fell and the Carthaginians did just that. And when the morning came, Scipio's little fleet was bottled up by a much larger Carthaginian force. As the Carthaginians advanced, the newly minted Roman sailors lost their nerve and abandoned the ship. The 17 ships were all lost and Scipio himself was taken prisoner. The blunder earned Scipio the famous moniker Acina, which roughly translates as the Ass. Scipio Acina, as history now remembers him, would eventually be handed over in a prisoner exchange and resume his career, but he never shook the memory of presiding over Rome's first naval battle and consequently Rome's first naval disaster.

Scipio Acina's collie, however, fared much better. The Carthaginian naval commander, confident that every victory would be so easy, headed off to find the rest of the Roman fleet. Rounding the northeast corner of Sicily, the 50 Carthaginian ships plundered into the 100 Roman ships, and this time the Romans held their own. The Carthaginian fleet was soon driven back and was lucky to escape without greater losses than they did.

After these two skirmishes, the stage was set for the first real, full-on naval battle of the war. The Carthaginians sent 145 ships to meet the Romans, who by now had a fleet of 130 anchored off the north coast of the island near Milea. Carthage was intent on using their superior seamanship to devastate the Romans and put them back where they belonged, which is to say, the land. The Romans, however, had a secret weapon. They knew they were no match for the Carthaginians in terms of nautical skill, so they devised a way of leveling the playing field and turning the battle into nothing more than an infantry fight at sea.

The standard tactic of ancient naval battles was the subtle and refined art of ramming. One ship would try and swing around and head full speed at the broad side of an enemy vessel and crash into it with their armored prow, sinking the ship or at least taking it out of the fight. The Romans lacked the skill set necessary to compete on this level, so they developed a device called the corvus, which functioned like a narrow drawbridge. Each Roman ship had a wooden column outfitted with a pulley mounted on its prow. Attached to the pulley was a narrow plank with a large metal spike protruding from its bottom. When the Romans got near enough to an enemy vessel, they dropped the corvus, which crashed into the enemy deck and held the ship in place. The Roman soldiers then used the corvus as a bridge, running onto the other ship and fighting the Carthaginian sailors hand to hand, the kind of fighting the Romans excelled at.

At Milea, the corvus was used to great effect. An initial foray of 30 Carthaginian ships were all caught up and their crews slaughtered. The rest of the Carthaginian fleet, charging on their heels, saw what was happening to the lead group and tried to peel off, but another 20 were caught up anyway. Just like that, the Carthaginians had lost a third of their fleet. Having taken the Carthaginians completely by surprise with their new toy, Rome won its first major naval battle handily.

The corvus, however, was never again so effective, the Carthaginians learning quickly to avoid the trap. Once the secret weapon was no longer secret, its effectiveness disappeared. For the next four years, the First Punic War bogged down into a series of intermittent and indecisive battles on land and at sea. The Romans diverted forces from Sicily in an attempt to dislodge the Carthaginians from Sardinia and Corsica, which they were using as bases to harass the Italian coast. No major push was made by Rome on the Carthaginian strongholds on the west coast of Sicily, and the Carthaginians were content, for now, to hold what possessions they could, unable to raise a large enough force to end the now permanent Roman presence on the island.

In 255 BC, however, the Senate decided that its muddled and incoherent strategy of having forces spread across multiple islands would leave them at war forever and initiated a much bolder strategy that would change the whole dynamic of the war. They would invade North Africa. For this mission, the Romans built a massive fleet of 330 ships, 250 ships of war, and 80 troop transports to ferry the standard ground legions into Africa. Once there, the infantry would disembark, march on Carthage itself, and put an end to this war once and for all. That was the plan, anyway.

The Carthaginian Senate was alarmed at what the Romans were obviously up to, and ordered a massive fleet of their own to intercept the invasion force before it could be launched from Sicily. The Carthaginian fleet waited for the Romans to load up their 80 transport vessels, which had to be towed behind road ships of war. The Carthaginians knew they didn't necessarily have to win the battle to end the threat of invasion. They simply had to sink the helpless transport vessels. No invasion force, no invasion.

The two fleets met in the shadow of Mount Ecnomus, on the southern coast of Sicily. If the ancient sources are to be believed, then the Battle of Ecnomus was one of the largest naval battles in the history of the world, with something like 600 ships and 200,000 sailors and soldiers taking part. The Romans set off in a well-planned triangle formation, placing the troop transport at the base of the triangle for maximum protection. But the Carthaginians managed to bait the lead ships out of formation by feinting or retreat. The lead ships of the wedge headed off in pursuit of the Carthaginians, and the back Roman line was unable to keep up. The feint successful, the Carthaginians then whipped around and locked up the advancing Romans, leaving the transport sitting ducks for another squadron of Carthaginian ships.

However, despite thoroughly outmaneuvering the Romans, the Carthaginians were unable to seal the deal, and the Roman line towing the transports were able to fend off the attack. The lead Roman ships then got the better of their opponents and were able to swing back around to relieve the beleaguered back line. At the end of the day, the Roman fleet was still essentially intact. The Carthaginians had done nothing more than delay the invasion, and after the Romans repaired their damaged vessels, they set out again, this time without meeting any resistance at all. The Carthaginians pulled back to their home city, where they made preparations to fend off the Roman invasion.

The dynamic of the war was indeed about to change, as the Romans landed troops in Africa for the first, but certainly not the last time. Next week, the Romans will encounter a Carthaginian army revitalized under the brilliant command of a hired Spartan general named Xanthippus. Despite his brilliant generalship though, Rome will come a hair's breadth away from ending the war, but an overinflated ego will blow the opportunity, forcing the war back to Sicily, where Carthage will wage a decade-long guerrilla war against the inevitable tide of Roman domination. In the final years of the war, a young Carthaginian boy will swear eternal hatred for Rome, starting him on the path to becoming nightmare boogeyman A number one in the Roman psyche, Hannibal.