The First Punic War
Page 2 of 4 — III. PRELUDE: 280-264 BC
The campaigns of King Pyrrhus of Epirus in Italy and Sicily are an article in themselves, but they are worthy of a mention in the context of the Punic War. Epirus was a small Kingdom on the Adriatic Coast of Greece, and in 295 BC Pyrrhus became its king. In 280, the Italian Hellenes, having become embroiled in a war with Rome, called for him to come to their aid. He defeated the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum, but the legendary costliness of his victories prevented him from ending the Roman threat to the Tarentines. In 278 he took up a new offer; the Sicilian Greeks would make him their king in exchange for driving out the Carthaginians. He managed to destroy Eryx, Carthage’s strongest fortress in Sicily, but was stalled by a staunch defense of Lilybaeum. In the meantime, his behavior towards the Sicilians was starting to wear their patience. Tired of his despotism and arrogance, the Syracusians decided that they would rather face the Carthaginians by themselves and they expelled him. He went back to Italy in 275, only to be defeated by the Romans at Beneventum. As he departed, he commented that he had just set up a perfect battleground for Rome and Carthage.
As for the two Western Mediterranean powers themselves, they had renewed their old alliance in 279 to deal with the Pyrrhian threat, and so thoughts of war were probably far from their minds. Sicily settled down, divided between the Carthaginians and Greeks in a rough two-thirds to one-third ratio, and in 275 BC Hieron II became Syracuse’ new tyrant. He may have entertained thoughts of carrying on the war with Carthage, but first, he had to deal with trouble of a different sort.
The Syracusians were in the habit of employing mercenaries from Southern Italy. It was not an especially wise strategy, as they found out when a band of them revolted, seized and sacked the northern town of Messina and, from there, established a bandit state in north-eastern Sicily. Hieron moved against them, and managed to drive them back and blockade them. Deciding that their situation had become only a few notches short of desperate, they appealed to Carthage for help. The local Carthaginian Admiral, Hanno, bought his fleet to Messina and occupied the fortress. Just as the Carthaginian banner was flying over the walls, the Messinans remembered their Italian origins and decided to call on the Romans instead.
Rome had made itself master of the Italian Peninsula with the final defeat of the Tarentines and Etruscans in 272 BC. Normally, the Consuls of Rome would be members of the Fabii family, or their allies or subordinates. They were conservative and moderate, and generally didn’t look outside Italy. However, due to reasons that we still don’t know, the contemporary generation or Fabii were rather apolitical. As a result, another major family, the Claudii, held influence. Luckily for the Messinans, the Claudii were expansionists, who had a great interest in Sicily, and had been pushing for Rome to build a fleet for 35 years now. It was to the Claudian administration that the Messinans appealed to. The debate in the Senate was bitter, but in the end, thanks in part to pressure from the assembly, Messina was let into the Italian Confederation; the first Roman expansion outside mainland Italy. The Roman rationale was probably fairly simple; Carthage seemed to be flexing her muscles, and so making a an impression of their own was needed. Of course, the Romans may have realized by now that there wasn’t room for the two of them, explaining their new real estate in Sicily. More importantly, two Legions were dispatched from Rhegium to Sicily to reflect the decision. The Punic War had begun.
IV. FIRST PHASE: 264-260 BC
Initially, the war focused on Sicily. The Romans landed and took a fort near Messina, and were lucky enough to capture Hanno along with it. He bought his freedom by withdrawing from the city, and returned to Carthage. As it turned out, he would have been better off in the company of the Romans as the Council of One Hundred and Four crucified him for treason. He was not the first Carthaginian commander to suffer that fate.
Before Rome and Carthage could start throwing armies at each other, another small matter needed to be dealt with. Heiron allied with the old enemy, Carthage, against the Romans, even though the latter were in a more powerful position in their area. It only took a year of fighting for Syracuse to recognize its error and switch sides, showing the sort of behavior that would later lead to its doom. Hieron, for his part, took no further part in the war, and remained in peace in the small part of his kingdom that he had left, a patron of arts and literature until his death 48 years later.
With Syracuse out of the way, the Romans turned their attention to the rest of Sicily, and the Punic town of Segesta joined their confederation. The Carthaginians had so far sat back and counted on Hieron holding off the Romans, and so they were given a rude shock when the Greeks threw in the towel and their own cities began defecting. The Council of One Hundred and Four decided that war was inevitable, and sent a certain Hannibal, son of Gisco, to Sicily with an army of Spanish, Gaulish and Liguarian Mercenaries. This Hannibal is of course not the Hannibal who would later win fame for bringing Rome to her knees in the Second Punic War, but the Carthaginians didn’t seem to make use of a wide selection of names. For its part, the S.P.Q.R sent the remaining Roman forces under both Consuls. By 262 BC, both sides were in place, with Sicily as their chessboard.
The Romans, as usual, made the first move, attacking the Carthaginian army at Arigentium, Sicily’s second largest city after Syracuse. After a seven month siege, they managed to take it, although Hannibal and most of his army managed to escape. Even so, many more Sicilian cities flocked to join the Romans. At this point, the Carthaginians realized that defeating the Legions in battle in the hilly country of Sicily would be very difficult, if not impossible. Hannibal had no elephants and limited cavalry, and his light infantry stood little chance against the Romans. As such, he shut his remaining forces in fortresses, and from then on the Carthaginians took the offensive at sea. The Romans, as yet, had no real navy, and so the Carthaginians were able to land raiding parties around the coast, attacking supply lines, isolated groups of Italian soldiers, or members of the Punic Alliance who had deserted to the enemy.
On the whole, the Carthaginians were starting to claw their way back up. The Roman Consuls were replaced every spring, and they often took their armies back home with them. By contrast, the Carthaginian commanders stayed in the field and became better and better at countering the Romans. A few cities returned to the Punic Alliance. A Carthaginian general named Hamilicar (not to be confused with the later and greater Hamilicar Barca) defeated an Italian army at Paropus in 259 BC. He then concentrated a large population in the town of Drepanum, turning it into a mighty fortress. Rome’s allies, often undisciplined, were starting to question the war. Things might have gone in favor of the Carthaginians then, if not for the two brothers Scipio.
V. SECOND PHASE: 260-256 BC
Following the land war becoming bogged down, the conflict shifted to the seas. In 260 and 259 BC, two brothers, Cnaeus and Lucius Cornelius Scipio, sons of a certain Scipio Barbatus who distinguished himself in the Samnite Wars, were Consuls. Under them, the Romans finally built the navy that they had been putting off for forty years. Rumor has it that they found a beached Carthaginian Galley and built 200 identical copies, but it is more likely that they simply went down to the shipyards of Tarentum and used Greek expertise to build the largest fleet in the Western Mediterranean in less than a year. The type of ship was the quinquareme, with a single bank of oars pulled by five oarsmen. With this fleet, they intended to stop the Punic raids once and for all.
Of course, even with helpful Tarentines building and manning your ships, sailing is no easy business. I, myself, when setting sail in a small sailboat from the Michigan coast of Lake Michigan, nearly ended up setting a course for Wisconsin when I realized I didn’t know how to turn the boat around. For the Romans, it was even harder; in order to make maximum use of their infantry, they had built grappling bridges, called ‘corvi’ (ravens) built on their galleys to let them hook onto and board Carthaginian ships. These made the Roman galleys somewhat unstable.
Cnaeus Scipio set out against the Carthaginians, but he, along with seventeen ships, were captured. The Roman citizenry, unimpressed, gave him the nickname ‘donkey’. Fortunately for the Romans, the other Consul, Gaius Dulius, inflicted a crushing naval defeat on Hannibal off Mylae (260 BC). He returned to Carthage and was promptly condemned and crucified by the council of One Hundred and Four. Despite the glory that Dulius gained from his victory, it wasn’t decisive. The war in Sicily remained deadlocked in sieges and skirmishes, and the Carthaginians were able to fall back on fresh reserves of ships. It would take a new and exciting plan to make the war get interesting again. Continued...