‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed’, 400 BC–146 BC

I

While the war between Athens and Sparta for control of the Aegean was at its peak, other conflicts, further to the west, embroiled Greek cities in struggles for their life.

There were other, personal factors at work among the Carthaginian elite, for the city was at this time controlled by a group of powerful dynasties that dominated its Senate.

Then in 407 the Carthaginians embarked 120,000 troops on 120 triremes, if Xenophon’s rather incredible figure is to be believed, and invaded western Sicily; even with such a large force it took seven months to starve Akragas into surrender. The city was plundered of its fine works of art, which included a brazen bull inside which a sixth-century tyrant of Akragas was said to have roasted his victims.⁵ These acquisitions turned the taste of the Carthaginians towards Greek styles; certainly, by the third century Greek art and architecture had gained a hold on Carthage.

One victim of the conflict was democracy. Syracuse once again fell under the control of a long-lived tyrant, Dionysios I (d. 367), the first of a much-feared dynasty. The story is told of one Sicilian tyrant who knew he was detested and was therefore amazed to find that an old woman regularly offered prayers for his safety in a city temple. He summoned her and asked why she did this. She fearlessly replied that she thought him a terrible despot. But she remembered the tyrant during her distant youth; he had been dreadful, but was succeeded by someone even worse, and after him came someone worse still. So she prayed for the life of this tyrant, knowing that, were he to die, he would be succeeded by someone of unimaginable ghastliness. The tyrant was so impressed by her honest answer that he gave her a bag of gold. These tyrants relied on brute force and made no pretence to act as constitutional monarchs. But they were also men of taste and culture; an earlier generation of Sicilian tyrants had earned the praises of the poet Pindar, and the new generation cultivated philosophers such as Plato, who visited Syracuse in 388 or 387, and is said to have returned several times, in the hope of guiding the successors of Dionysios I towards policies properly informed by Platonic principles.⁶ Although most of the remarkable correspondence between Plato and the Syracusan rulers is now discounted as later invention, the story of Plato’s ties to the Syracusan court serves as a reminder that not just Greek goods but Greek ideas were travelling across the Mediterranean at this period.

It was Dionysios I who made peace with Carthage; but it was also Dionysios who revived the conflict with Carthage in 398, capturing the prize possession of the Phoenicians in western Sicily, Motya. The inhabitants were massacred, and not even the women and children were spared for the slave markets; those Greek traders who lived there were crucified as traitors.⁷ That was the end of the history of Motya, but it was the beginning of a bitter conflict that brought a massive Carthaginian fleet to the harbour of Syracuse in 396. Once again the city was threatened with destruction; once again the Syracusans took advantage of the layout of their port to pick off the enemy fleet while also attacking the enemy land forces. Himilco, the Carthaginian commander, staring at defeat, made a secret deal with Dionysios and evacuated as many native Carthaginian soldiers as he could, abandoning his Iberian, Sikel and Libyan allies. The hairy Iberians, professional mercenaries, were absorbed into the Syracusan armed forces. More seriously still, there was uproar in the Carthaginian possessions in North Africa, and for a time it seemed that Carthage itself would be overwhelmed by a mass of slaves and rebels who gathered on the site of Tunis, hard by Carthage itself. The rebels dispersed, but Carthage had experienced a political earthquake. The only solution was to cede the Greek cities won under the earlier treaty to the tyrant of Syracuse, though the humiliation was not complete: the Punic settlements remained under Carthaginian control. Dionysios distracted himself with ambitious raids elsewhere in the Mediterranean – in 384 he raided Pyrgoi, the outport of Etruscan Caere, carrying away a vast treasure valued at 1,500 talents, which would pay for a substantial army. He probably needed the prestige this brought, because his envoys at the Olympic Games that year were mocked as the representatives of a tyrant no better than the Persian king. He did not seek to found a Syracusan empire but ruthlessly to establish his personal power, a point the Athenians tacitly recognized when they addressed him as ‘archon [ruler] of Sicily’.⁸ He had every intention of renewing the struggle for control of all Sicily, and a series of conflicts between Syracuse and Carthage in 375 culminated in the loss of a Carthaginian army of 15,000 – two-thirds dead, one-third enslaved.

Despite the hostility that had marked Carthaginian relations with Syracuse, the result of these wars was to tie Carthage more closely into the Greek world. The city was now to all intents detached from Phoenicia; it is doubtful how important trade with Tyre and Sidon was to late fourth-century Carthage, compared to the renewed intensity of contact between Carthage and the Greek cities of Hellas, Sicily and Italy. The Carthaginian god Melqart was identified with Herakles. The Carthaginians were convinced that they had offended Demeter by sacking one of her temples in Sicily, so they imported her cult into Carthage, even attempting to conduct the temple rituals according to the Greek liturgy, with the aid of Greek residents.⁹ Carthaginians learned Greek – at one point when relations were particularly bad they were banned from learning or speaking the language, which is the surest proof that Greek had become the second language of the local elites. These elites actively exploited the fertile coastline of North Africa, often owning prosperous estates some distance away, abundant in grain, fruits and wine. The lesser towns that the Phoenicians had founded along the African coast were now subject cities. There was increased intermarriage with the local population, a trend that included the leading families of Carthage, who sometimes had family ties to local Berber kings, or indeed to prominent Greeks in Sicily. Carthage had become a cosmopolitan city numbering perhaps 200,000 inhabitants, with extensive suburbs and merchant and naval ports.

Throughout the fourth century the Carthaginians kept a close eye on Syracuse. They struggled for control over the seas between Africa and Sicily as well as over the island.

By the time of Plutarch, who died in AD 120, Timoleon was being hailed as the hero and favourite of the gods who had ‘cut the nerves of tyranny’ and had liberated Sicily from the power of the Punic barbarians. In reality, Timoleon was not very different from the tyrants who had preceded him. He had seized power with the help of mercenaries; and in suppressing petty tyrants across the island he was asserting the long-contested supremacy of Syracuse. One redeeming feature was that he had the good sense to resign office in old age, afflicted by cataracts and honoured by the Syracusan people. The other redeeming feature was that he presided over a period of economic recovery throughout much of Sicily. Cities were rebuilt, including several that had been devastated by the Carthaginian wars: Akragas and Gela revived; no less significantly, small centres of Greek settlement grew and prospered. Scornavacche in south-eastern Sicily is the site of a small Greek town that had been destroyed by a Sikel attack in 405; now it became a centre of the ceramics industry.¹² This revival was the work of new settlers as well as the old Siculo-Greek population. Timoleon may have brought as many as 60,000 settlers from Greece itself and from the Greek cities of southern Italy. The grain trade between Sicily and Athens became increasingly regular in the late fourth century; to judge from the large number of Corinthian coins of the same period found in Sicily, there were particularly intense commercial contacts across the Ionian Sea to Corinth, through which Sicilian agricultural goods were funnelled into Greece.¹³ It would be a mistake to attribute this new prosperity entirely to the efforts of Timoleon. The fourth century saw a wider revival of trade in the central Mediterranean. The plague that had erupted during the Peloponnesian War became less virulent and population revived. There were long enough stretches of peace for Carthage as well as the Greek cities of Sicily to rebuild trading contacts to east and west. Carthage enjoyed commercial ties with Athens and made the best use of its links to Spain as well.

The last major conflict between Carthage and Syracuse broke out in 311. Hamilcar, the Carthaginian commander in western Sicily, faced a formidable foe in Agathokles, who had managed to overturn Timoleon’s constitution and to establish himself as tyrant of Syracuse. Agathokles, like his predecessors, aimed to bring all or most of Sicily under Syracusan control. Hamilcar reasoned that the best interest of Carthage would be served by an understanding that Syracuse could dominate eastern and central Sicily; the Carthaginians were worried to see Agathokles taking an unhealthy interest in Akragas, which lay close to their own settlements in western Sicily. In 311 Agathokles marched with a large army towards Akragas, but a Carthaginian fleet of fifty or sixty ships arrived and Agathokles was thwarted. The next year, Hamilcar disembarked 14,000 men (only one in seven was actually a citizen of Carthage). He swept through Sicily, supported by local forces resentful of Agathokles’ ambitions. The tyrant of Syracuse realized that he had over-reached himself, and that he had lost the war in Sicily. His possessions were now confined to Syracuse itself. But what he also possessed was money and troops: 3,000 Greek mercenaries and another 3,000 Etruscan, Samnite and Celtic mercenaries lured from Italy. Adding another 8,000 men recruited locally, he fitted out a fleet of sixty warships and in August 310 the fleet headed through a Carthaginian naval barricade to the coast near Carthage. With outstanding temerity, Agathokles landed his men, burned his ships (because there were not enough men left to guard them) and marched his forces towards Carthage itself, camping nearby on the site of Tunis.¹⁴ This meant that Carthage was under siege from the Syracusans while Syracuse was under siege from the Carthaginians.

Carthage, with its easy access to the sea, was impossible to invest without massive naval forces, so even the conquest of swathes of the North African coastline by Agathokles did not secure the surrender of Carthage. Still, the loss of its rich fields and orchards must have hurt the city badly. The moment Agathokles disembarked and launched a land attack on the Carthaginians, his Libyan allies deserted – perhaps 10,000 men – and 3,000 of his Italian and Greek mercenaries were killed in battle. Agathokles, it has been well said, ‘was no Alexander either in genius or resources’.¹⁵ He did at least understand that he must now make peace, and, predictably, the map of Sicily returned to its old appearance, with Carthage ruling the western end and the Greeks retaining control of the east and the centre.¹⁶ Surprisingly, this defeat did not mark the end of Agathokles. He asserted his power as ‘king of Sicily’, taking this novel title in imitation of the Greek kings who, starting with Philip and Alexander of Macedon, had established themselves as rulers of the eastern Mediterranean. He now directed his imperial ambitions elsewhere, mainly towards the Adriatic, forging one marriage alliance with Pyrrhos of Epeiros, a cousin of Alexander the Great and a general of comparable talents, and another with the Ptolemies in Egypt. He took control of the islands of Kerkyra and Leukas in the Ionian Sea and extended his dominion into southern Italy, which he twice invaded. Yet he left no obvious legacy: he failed to establish a dynasty, as he had hoped, and his maritime empire did not outlive his assassination in 289 BC.¹⁷

The real legacy of Agathokles was the continued survival and prosperity of his bitterest enemy, Carthage. The Romans asked for a renewal of their commercial treaty with Carthage, first signed in 509 BC. Whereas in 509 the Carthaginians could see the Romans only as mildly useful neighbours of their Etruscan friends, they were now dealing with a significant power in Italy, which, within a few generations, would attempt to drive Carthage completely out of Sicily. To understand these developments it is necessary to step back in time once again. III

The prominence, indeed pre-eminence, of Rome in the Italian peninsula by 300 BC was the result of wars fought on land; Rome had no ambition to become a naval power, and the treaties with Carthage, renewed in 348 BC, indicate that those Romans who crossed the seas travelled as merchants, not as men of arms. These treaties ensured that they did not wander into areas that lay within the Carthaginian sphere of influence, notably Sicily, though in times of severe famine, for example in 493, grain was brought all the way from Sicily to Rome.¹⁸ The major preoccupation of the early Romans was the defeat of neighbouring peoples such as the Volscians who were percolating down from the Appenines in the hope of settling the broad spaces of Latium, to the south of Rome. The Romans also faced a severe threat in 390 BC from Gallic invaders, from whom they were famously saved at night-time by cackling geese. Relations with the Etruscans, with whose culture they shared a great deal, were much more complex, but the complete destruction of one of the largest Etruscan cities, Veii, in 396 BC, marked the first stage in the submission of the southern Etruscan lands.¹⁹ After the fall of Veii, which was within walking distance of Rome, the Etruscan cities were not destroyed but instead were drawn into a Roman web; wealthy Caere became a dependent ally following its defeat in 253, and lost control of part of its coastline, which included the port at Pyrgoi where in past times Greek and Carthaginian traders had gathered and settled. It is therefore no coincidence that, within a few decades of their expansion along the coast of southern Etruria, the Romans were able to launch massive fleets and defeat Carthaginian navies in the waters off Sicily. In addition to acquiring coastal stations in Etruria, the Romans began to develop their own outport at Ostia, though its original function was to channel goods from Greek Italy and Etruria into the Tiber and to supply Rome.²⁰

Merchant shipping came and went, but the Roman war fleet almost seems to emerge fully armed out of nothing. The Romans responded passively to threats from the sea: in 338 BC Volscian pirates from Antium (Anzio) on the Latin coast raided the mouth of the Tiber, but they were beaten back, and the Romans took back home as trophies the rostra or ‘beaks’ of the ships they had destroyed. These rostra were displayed on the stage used for speeches in the Roman Forum, which explains the continuing use of the term ‘rostrum’ to mean a speaker’s platform.²¹ A few years later, around 320 BC, a treaty with the southern Italian city of Taras, founded by Spartan colonists, stipulated that Roman ships should not sail into the Gulf of Taranto, thereby defining a Tarentine sphere of influence and protecting the trading interests of what had become the dominant Greek city in southern Italy and leader of the ‘Italiote League’ of cities.²² Although a treaty might be expected to bespeak amity, the more probable explanation for this agreement is that Roman land campaigns against the Samnites and other enemies were drawing Rome’s armies closer and closer to the Greek cities; lines therefore needed to be drawn on the map. Treaties, contracts and other legal documents often mention possibilities that are not immediate or even real, and there is still no evidence that Rome was seeking to arm large fleets, though in 311 the duumviri navales or ‘two naval men’ were appointed to construct a classis or ‘fleet’ and ensure that it was kept in repair.²³ But this fleet was probably tiny.

The Samnite war drew the Roman armies further and further south, as they tried to outflank the large and vigorous Samnite armies. When ten ships under Roman command sailed into the Gulf of Taranto in 282 BC they were attacked by the Greeks of Taras, and the Romans lost half their flotilla; undeterred, they established a garrison in the town of Thourioi (Thurii), which also lay in the Gulf of Taranto, and which had appealed to Rome for help against raids by the inhabitants of the Lucanian hinterland. Taras had not turned against Rome because it feared for its control of the sea, for ten ships were no match for the hundreds Greek maritime cities could mobilize; the real threat was that a Roman presence on land would unravel the Italiote League and set one Greek city in southern Italy against another.²⁴ Fear of Rome led the Tarentines to look across the Adriatic and invite the aid of Pyrrhos of Epeiros; he claimed descent from Achilles, so there were echoes of the Trojan War in his campaign against Rome, which was by now vaunting its foundation by the descendants of the Trojan Aeneas. Whether Pyrrhos saw himself as future master of the Mediterranean, creating a western empire as vast as that his cousin Alexander had briefly brought into being in the East, is doubtful; he may simply have craved the payments the western Greeks were prepared to offer such a formidable mercenary army, organized in phalanxes and equipped with elephants. As the Tarentines feared, south Italian cities opted to join Rome as well as to join Pyrrhos, and as Pyrrhos made headway in Italy some of those cities that had supported Rome now opportunistically changed their mind. Pyrrhos dominated the affairs of southern and central Italy between 280 and 275; his Pyrrhic victories brought him little advantage, and within a few years of his exasperated withdrawal Rome had taken charge of Taras. The Greek cities in southern Italy continued to run their own affairs with an occasional nod in the direction of Rome (such as a special issue of coins showing the goddess Roma).²⁵ The Romans had no desire or capacity to control the towns of the deep south so long as they saw themselves as a land power rooted in Latium. They established a few settlements: Paestum south of Naples, Cosa in Etruria and Ariminum (Rimini) were coastal stations intended to protect lines of communication by land and sea along the shores of Italy, but the emphasis lay on defending the interior, for instance the edges of Samnite country that would be tamed by the new colony of Beneventum (Benevento).²⁶

The Punic Wars drew Rome out of its Italian shell. Carthage had joined in the war against Pyrrhos, and won a great naval victory in 276 BC, sinking two-thirds of his fleet of over 100 ships.²⁷ The First Punic War was fought in Sicily and Africa, and for the first time extended Roman influence across the open sea; the Second Punic War (dominated by land campaigns) drew the Romans towards Spain, though the main theatre of action was Italy itself, following Hannibal’s invasion by way of the Alps; the brief Third Punic War drew Rome more deeply into African affairs and culminated in the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. What is curious is the lack, at least at the start, of clear Roman intentions. The Romans did not set out to make an end of Carthage; they had ancient treaties with the city and there was no obvious conflict of interest.²⁸ Between the first and second wars there intervened a period of peace during which relations, if not trust, were restored. And yet at the end of the cycle Rome emerged as a Mediterranean power, extending its mastery over not just the ruined site of defeated Carthage but, in the same year, over large tracts of Greece. This is, perhaps, another example of an empire acquired in ‘a fit of absence of mind’. Rome began to construct a large war fleet only when it became obvious that this was essential to the conduct of the First Punic War. Both cities were drawn into a series of conflicts that included the largest naval battles of antiquity and resulted in tens of thousands of casualties on land and sea. Not for nothing have historians compared the outbreak of these wars to the First World War, where a series of relatively small incidents lit a fuse that ignited vast regions.²⁹ Just as the First World War was much more than a conflict between Germany and the Anglo-French alliance, the Punic Wars were rather more than a conflict between Carthage and Rome, for other interests soon emerged: Iberian towns, North African kings, Sardinian chieftains and, during the First Punic War, the Greek cities of Sicily. The armies Hannibal set against Rome included Gallic, Etruscan and Samnite recruits; the fleets Rome sent against the Carthaginians included large numbers of vessels, probably the great majority, supplied by Greek and other allies in central and southern Italy. To term these wars ‘Punic’ is mistakenly to assume that the conflicts were dominated by a continuous history of rivalry to the death between Carthage and Rome.³⁰ IV

Ancient historians were astonished by the length, intensity and brutality of the Punic Wars. Polybios, the Greek historian of the rise of Rome, benefited from the patronage of one of the generals in the Punic Wars and opined that the First Punic War was the greatest war ever fought. Its time-span, from 264 to 241 BC, easily outlasted the Trojan War, and the Second Punic War (218–201) was also long and exhausting, leaving in its wake agricultural devastation.³¹ The war with Carthage originated in quarrels far from Rome, and it was far from clear to either great city that intervention was in their best interests. The crisis began with the seizure of Messana on the tip of Sicily by a group of Campanian mercenaries who had earlier served Agathokles, tyrant of Syracuse, and who were known as the Mamertines, or ‘men of Mars’. They arrived in the 280s and made thorough nuisances of themselves, raiding the towns of eastern Sicily; the Romans became involved because their own Italian campaigns had been proceeding so well that they had reached Rhegion (Reggio), the Greek city directly opposite Messana, which they occupied in 270. So Sicily was within the sights of the Romans; but that is not to say they intended to invade the island. When the new ruler of Syracuse, Hieron, defeated the Mamertines in battle the mercenaries panicked and sent messages both to Rome and to Carthage, asking for military help. Hieron was a power to be reckoned with; he had commercial and diplomatic ties to the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, and, following a great tradition, he not merely patronized the Olympic Games but competed in them.³² As it happened, there was a Carthaginian fleet nearby, in the Lipari islands, and its admiral prevailed on the Mamertines to let him install a Carthaginian garrison in Messana.³³

The Mamertines did not like to be under anyone’s thumb, and now had second thoughts; they turned to Rome, asking for help against the Carthaginians. But the Senate was not easily convinced that Rome should become involved in a conflict beyond the peninsula. Polybios says that many Romans were afraid the Carthaginians would gain complete control of Sicily, and that they would then begin to interfere in Italy itself.³⁴ According to one version, the Senate was unwilling to act, and a popular assembly voted to fight. Even so, this was not a war against Carthage. The Roman general sent to Sicily attacked Hieron as well as the Carthaginians. His mission was to defend Messana against the enemies of the Mamertines. The idea that he intended to conquer Sicily and clear the island of Punic forces is preposterous. The aim was to restore the balance of power in the region. In the event, the Mamertines managed on their own to expel the Carthaginian garrison from Messana; back home, the Carthaginian commander was crucified pour encourager les autres. The Romans found it difficult to make headway across the Straits of Messina while there were substantial Carthaginian fleets in the Lipari islands, and the Roman general had no experience of the stormy waters between Italy and Sicily; so, not surprisingly, direct Roman help to the Mamertines was spasmodic. When it did arrive, it only forced Hieron of Syracuse and Carthage into an unholy alliance. The Romans were hampered by a severe lack of ships. Their commander Appius Claudius turned to Taras, Velia, Naples and other Greek cities for a fleet, made up of triremes and fifty-oared pentekonters.³⁵ The Carthaginians are said to have thrashed the Roman fleet, after which they sent a haughty message to Rome: come to terms or else you will not even be able to wash your hands in the sea.³⁶ Even so, Carthage was hoping for peace.

The Romans were too proud to pay attention, and by 263–262 they had at least 40,000 men under arms in Sicily. Hieron of Syracuse was impressed and decided to back the likely winner, switching sides from Carthage to Rome (for which he would eventually be handsomely rewarded). Even more significantly, the Romans had worked out how to transport large numbers of men by sea, not that all were Romans or Latins – many were confederate allies from Italy, while the Carthaginians encamped large numbers of Iberian, Gallic and Ligurian mercenaries at Akragas.³⁷ Rome prevailed, sacked the city, sold its 25,000 inhabitants into slavery, and embarked on what now seemed a realistic plan to remove the Carthaginians from Sicily.³⁸ Yet this is not to say that Rome saw itself as master of a colonial Sicily. Its ambitions were more modest. Rome would have been happy with guaranteed access to Sicilian grain, as its population grew prodigiously. Much as Roman optimates might, in later generations, scorn a life of commerce, there were sound commercial reasons for pursuing this war, once it began to look as if it could actually be won.³⁹

Rome needed a proper war fleet. Polybios stated that it was only now that the Romans began to build a fleet of their own.⁴⁰ There was an important shift away from heavy reliance on ships provided by Greek allies or Etruscan clients, towards a war fleet much vaster than the ten or dozen vessels maintained by the ‘two naval men’. How this was achieved is an even greater mystery than in the Spartan case. Sparta could draw on the expertise of neighbouring Greek cities, several of which were within its sphere of control. Now, in 261 or 260, it was resolved that Rome should construct 100 quinquiremes and twenty triremes. The Romans had captured a Carthaginian quinquireme and used it as a model.⁴¹ How the Romans manned the fleet they built, how they acquired the essential navigational skills that would enable the vessels to be steered through the treacherous waters of the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas, how they managed to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of beams and shaped timbers, how, indeed, they managed to achieve this in sixty days from the cutting of the timber (as the Elder Pliny would later assert), is a mystery – the use of such fresh, unweathered wood would have generated hideous problems as it dried out and shrank. Polybios credibly remarked that the ships were ‘poorly constructed and hard to move’.⁴² Pitch and rigging had to be obtained or manufactured. Roman crews are said to have trained intensively on land, learning their oarsmanship in dry conditions before daring to set out on the sea. Evidence that adds plausibility to the story of the rapid building of the fleet is the discovery of the remains of a Carthaginian warship whose timbers bore letters of the Punic alphabet (which also functioned as numbers), so it seems that in Carthage ships were assembled by numbers. Whether the Roman assembly lines were at Ostia or in the Greek cities of southern Italy is unknown, but this was an enormously expensive operation. After its initial doubts, Rome had committed itself fully to the war with Carthage; and yet the Romans were still unclear about their objectives. Fighting the war had become a matter of honour.

How efficient this fleet was is also an open question. The first attempt to use it, at Lipari, was a disaster; the Roman commander was blockaded within the harbour of Lipari, and his crew were so alarmed that they ran away. Still, this was soon followed by a success in the same waters, at Mylai, enhanced by the invention of a short-lived but famous grappling device known as the korax or ‘crow’. This device contained a raisable ramp that could swing in different directions, compensating for the lack of manoeuvrability of Roman ships; under the ramp was a heavy pointed spike made of iron, which would not merely grip an enemy ship but slice into its deck.⁴³ The aim was to enable Roman marines to board Carthaginian ships and do there what they did best, hand-to-hand fighting. The Romans still mistrusted the sea, and sought to transform sea battles conducted by ships with rams into ersatz land battles in which the boats provided platforms for men-at-arms. The fleets each side launched became bigger and deadlier year by year. Polybios says that at the great sea battle of Eknomos in western Sicily, in 256, 230 Roman ships faced about 350 (more probably 200) Carthaginian vessels and 150,000 men; it was ‘possibly the biggest naval battle in history’.⁴⁴ Later in the war, at a crucial battle fought off the Egadian islands west of Sicily in 241, numbers were only a little smaller, indicating that, amid the awful destruction wreaked by battle and by storms, and the natural deterioration of ships kept too long at sea, the shipyards were working at full stretch to replace what had been lost. The figures of hundreds of ships are certainly very impressive, unmatched in later centuries, and yet the constant confusion about the figures among the classical authors suggests how easy it was for numbers to become inflated. Modern historians too have been seduced by figures that make sense only if they are totals for all vessels, not just the sleek triremes and quinquiremes – adding in the transport ships carrying marines, horses and, crucially, supplies, for the warships could not last more than a couple of days without fresh water and generous food supplies (further quantities of which were generally available from studiously neutral merchants who parked themselves on shore within sight of a battle, in the hope of quick profits).

Thanks in significant measure to the korax the battle of Eknomos was a great Roman triumph. The Roman fleet also learned very quickly how to form for battle in closely packed squadrons; the difficulty they then faced was that of holding the line together in the heat of battle. These formations were surely intended to follow the pattern of the Roman battle formations regularly employed on land. They gave the Romans an advantage over the more thinly spread Carthaginian navy, for what the Punic admirals counted on was the ease with which their ships could be manoeuvred and give chase. They had the advantage of speed and they preferred to descend rapidly on the side or even stern of enemy shipping, ramming and sinking their foes; at Eknomos the Punic fleet probably intended to surround the Roman fleet and to stab lethally at its sides and rear.⁴⁵ In other words, the battle of Eknomos is important in the history of naval strategy not simply because of the number of ships and sailors; it is also an intriguing example of a clash between navies with very different conceptions of how to fight a battle at sea.⁴⁶

Victory at Eknomos opened the Sicilian Straits to the Roman fleet and gave Rome access to Africa. The great plan was now to invade the heartlands of the Carthaginian empire. But in attacking Carthage the Romans did not assume that they would capture the city, let alone destroy it. In 256 a Roman fleet landed more than 15,000 men at Aspis, a little to the east of Carthage, and raided the farms and townlets nearby, reportedly taking 20,000 slaves, though many were captive Romans and Italians who could now be released. But the Romans were unable to hold their position in Africa, and sailed away dejected in July 255, taking at least 364 ships back to Sicily.⁴⁷ Here inexperience with the seas brought the Romans a disaster far greater than anything the Carthaginian navy could have inflicted. The Roman commanders overruled their steersmen, evidently not Roman, who insisted that it was unsafe to sail close to the Sicilian shore at a time of the year famous for its sudden and violent storms. But the Romans wanted to show the flag and intimidate the towns along the south coast of Sicily into submission. Heavy storms swept water over the gunwales of the low-slung vessels and sank all but eighty of this great fleet, and up to 100,000 men drowned, maybe 15 per cent of Italy’s manpower: ‘a greater disaster than this has never been recorded as happening at sea at one time’, according to Polybios.⁴⁸

The final act of the war was the naval battle off the Egadian islands, west of Sicily, in 241 BC, in which the Roman navy, now rebuilt, sank or captured about 120 Carthaginian ships; Carthage realized it had to come to terms. Rome imposed heavy penalties, without suggesting that Carthage had no right to exist. The defeated city was required to pay an indemnity of eighty tons of silver (3,200 talents), spread over a period of ten years and, more importantly, Carthage had to renounce its interests in Sicily and Sicily’s offshore islands. Carthage promised not to send warships into Italian waters, nor to attack Hieron of Syracuse, the turncoat who was now a firm ally of Rome.⁴⁹ Indeed, the main beneficiary was Hieron, who was entrusted by the Romans with the day-to-day supervision of Sicilian affairs. Rome had no appetite for extending direct dominion over Sicily. The aims of the war had developed slowly, but even at the end Rome foresaw no more than the neutralization of Carthage. Its merchant fleet could continue to ply the Mediterranean; indeed, it would have to do so if the vast sums in silver due to Rome were ever to be paid. V

It has been necessary to dwell on the First Punic War because that conflict marks the moment when a Roman fleet emerged. The Second Punic War, ancient historians agreed, was a natural consequence of the First. Following its defeat, Carthage found itself under increasing pressure from Numidian rulers in the North African hinterland, and it also faced a serious mutiny among its mercenary army based in Sardinia. The mercenaries killed the Carthaginian commander as well as all the Carthaginians they could find on the island, and when new troops were sent to Sardinia to suppress the revolt, they joined the mutiny as well. In due course, though, the mercenaries were expelled, arrived in Etruria, and appealed to Rome for help, which the Senate was inclined to offer. The Romans were irritated that Carthage had arrested 500 Italian merchants who had been surreptitiously supplying the mutineers. Carthage would have preferred to restore its authority over the parts of Sardinia it had ruled, but, in the face of Roman determination, the Carthaginians buckled, and in 238 they offered the Romans not merely 1,200 talents of silver but Sardinia itself.⁵⁰ Rome had therefore rapidly established its claim to the two largest islands in the Mediterranean, and had acquired Sardinia merely through threats. Carthage was too exhausted to argue. Whether Rome could activate a claim to any more than a few harbours and coastal stations frequented by Punic merchants is doubtful. Sardinia was unconquerable, with its thousands of communities gathered under independent warlords around the nuraghi. The Sards were no more cooperative towards the Romans than towards the Carthaginians; Rome had to wait until 177 BC before it secured a major victory over the Sards.⁵¹ Rome was mainly interested in Sardinia’s strategic position, which would guarantee control of Tyrrhenian waters; it was not the island they craved, but its coastline with secure harbours free from pirates and Punic warships, from which their fleet could be supplied. Thus Rome had begun to develop a Mediterranean strategy consciously based on the principle of controlling the seas. VI

The Roman acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia – or rather, the exclusion of Carthage from those islands – diverted Carthaginian ambitions westwards. All Carthage had been left with was Malta, Ibiza and some trading-posts in North Africa and southern Spain. It was in Spain that Hamilcar Barca built an empire that greatly surpassed in scale and ambition the network of trading settlements created by the Phoenicians many centuries earlier. Hamilcar sought a land dominion; the question, posed by the ancient historians themselves, is whether he saw it as his personal dominion or as a new theatre for Carthaginian expansion, which would include mastery of the silver mines of ancient Tartessos. Probably it was a mixture of both. Hamilcar’s family, the Barcids, was exceptionally powerful within Carthage, even though its republican system of government meant that their influence did not go unchallenged. There is some debate whether the coins in the Greek style issued in Carthage’s Spanish dominions show an image of a god such as Melqart or a wreathed ruler in the Hellenistic style; the Barcids were tempted to project themselves as new Alexanders who were creating a territorial monarchy in the west.⁵² That Hamilcar was determined to emancipate Carthage from Roman shackles is made plain in a famous but possibly legendary tale: before leaving for Spain in 237 BC, Hamilcar prepared a sacrifice to the god Baal Hamon and, calling to his side his young son Hannibal, he told him to place his hand on the sacrificial beast and to swear ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’.⁵³

Not surprisingly, Hamilcar first concentrated his attention on winning control of the silver-bearing areas of southern Spain. As in Sardinia, the idea of ‘control’ must be handled with care. He made alliances with Iberian and Celtiberian chieftains, and he gradually increased his armies so that by 228 BC he had perhaps 56,000 men in the field. The other means of control adopted by the Barcids (for Hamilcar was succeeded in Spain first by his son-in-law Hasdrubal and then, after Hasdrubal’s assassination, by his own son Hannibal) was city-foundation. Hamilcar was responsible for the foundation of Akra Leuke, generally agreed to lie under modern Alicante, and around 227 BC Hasdrubal was inspired to found a city further south along the coast and even closer to the sources of silver. The Carthaginians were strangely uncreative when naming people and places; there were countless Hannibals and Hasdrubals. Hasdrubal named his new city just that: ‘New City’, Qart Hadasht, now known as Cartagena, though, since the time of Polybios, historians, to avoid confusion with the mother-city, have often called it New Carthage, ‘New New City’.⁵⁴ Hasdrubal ensured that his presence was felt by building a great palace for himself at the top of one of the hills on which this city stood. More importantly, Cartagena was easily accessible from North Africa, making it an essential link in the chain of ports and garrisons tying Carthage to Spain.

The conflict between Carthage and Rome actually resumed further north in Spain, at Saguntum, along the coast from modern Valencia. Following a lengthy siege, at the end of 219 Hannibal sacked this town, which had placed itself under Roman protection. That the Romans should take an interest in a place so remote from their political and commercial sphere suggests that they had become worried by eighteen years of Carthaginian consolidation in Spain. Once again, the real issue was strategic: the Romans did not want to be outflanked by the Carthaginians, and refused to allow them to strengthen their position to the point where they could re-establish themselves in Sardinia or Sicily. Hasdrubal had earlier entered into an understanding between Rome and Carthage about Punic control of parts of Spain, to the effect that the Carthaginians would remain south of the river Ebro, which lay a good way to the north of Saguntum.⁵⁵ Rome felt it had to act to prevent a resurgence of Carthaginian power. The decision by Hannibal to take his army across the Alps and bring the war to the gates of Rome was an inspired attempt to divert the conflict away from either Barcid Spain or the waters in which Carthage had been defeated twenty-three years earlier. This did not prevent a Roman attack on Spain, led by Cnaeus Publius Scipio, who had as many as 25,000 men under his command, and who reached Spain by sea, arriving at the ancient commercial station of Emporion. He managed to win a naval engagement against the Carthaginians, but the fleets were tiny by comparison with those that had fought in the first war: about thirty-five vessels under Roman command. Before long, though, the defection of their Celtiberian allies left the Romans floundering.

Another new theatre of war was northern Greece. The ruler of Macedon, Philip V, was so impressed by Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans at Cannae in southern Italy (216 BC) that he took up arms against Rome. Rome found it impossible to fight on so many fronts at once, and Philip scored successes in the waters off the Albanian coast. Once again, the Romans viewed the Macedonian problem from the perspective of their strategy in Italy. They were seriously worried that they might lose control of the southern Adriatic coast, and sent an army to Brundisium (Brindisi) to head off the danger of a Macedonian landing.⁵⁶ The Macedonians stood their ground and Rome was unable to bully them into submission. Rome was learning that its growing Mediterranean dominions brought it into contact and even conflict with neighbours who had not previously been in their line of sight.

Cicero wrote of Sicily: ‘it was the first jewel in our imperial crown, the first place to be called a province’. For the Romans began to think that the exercise of informal empire in areas such as Sicily no longer met their needs. Hieron of Syracuse was treated with honour, and was permitted to make a state visit to Rome in 237; significantly, he presented the Romans with 200,000 bushels of Sicilian grain. He was welcome to control the south and east of Sicily, but by 227 the north and west, which had been the scene of several of the most bitter naval engagements with Carthage, were placed under the authority of Roman praetors; military garrisons and fleets stood by on the island, but they needed to be fed, and the navies that patrolled the central Mediterranean also needed to be supplied with tack. Accordingly the Romans decided to set in place more formal systems of grain taxation. Trouble flared in 215 following the death of the aged Hieron, and the outbreak of turmoil in Syracuse.⁵⁷ Factions in the city hostile to Rome dreamed of a Punic alliance that would, improbably, ensure Syracusan domination over the entire island, as if Carthage would expect no prizes.⁵⁸ Carthage impressively managed to re-establish itself on the island, with tens of thousands of troops; Akragas became a major Punic base. But it was against Syracuse that the Romans unleashed the full force of their armies and navies in 213. It was by far the largest city on the island, and the source of the new difficulties Rome faced. When the Romans tried to blockade the port their ships stood so far apart that the Carthaginian fleet was able to sail past them with impunity, although in 212 a Carthaginian attempt to sail a massive convoy of 700 merchant ships into Syracuse under the protection of 150 warships not surprisingly proved too ambitious. Still, naval blockades were almost impossible to enforce in this period, especially against a city with a wide harbour mouth and extensive sea walls. The Syracusans and Carthaginians made mincemeat of the Roman fleet, benefiting from the advice of the great Archimedes, who took delight in designing new machines that lifted Roman vessels right out of the water, shaking them so hard that the crew fell into the sea, or mirrors that reflected the burning rays of the Sicilian sun on to the timbers of enemy ships, setting them alight. In the end, though, Roman tenacity resulted in the capture of Syracuse in 212, and Archimedes is said to have been slaughtered as he was sketching another of his ingenious designs in the dust.⁵⁹ The next year Akragas was prised from the Carthaginians, and Rome boasted the year after that that not a single free Carthaginian could now be found in Sicily.⁶⁰ The dividends were not just military and political but cultural: Syracuse was despoiled of its treasures, and Greek sculptures were carried in triumph to Rome, stimulating the growing taste of the Romans for the superior culture of the Hellenes.

The war continued for another decade and was decided by events beyond Sicily, although without these successes in Sicily much of what Rome achieved would have been impossible. In the west, Publius Cornelius Scipio captured New Carthage in 209 by realizing that a great lagoon bordering the town could be forded by a Roman army. The conflict was increasingly focused on Africa, however, where the Romans finally defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 BC; he had failed to achieve his aims in Italy, after prowling around and wreaking havoc up and down the peninsula for many years. The ability of the Romans to transport thousands of men from Sicily to Africa was crucial, though alliances with the Numidian kings also ensured Roman success. The fact was that Rome had won command of the sea, and this was confirmed by the final humiliating treaty in which Carthage was allowed to retain only ten triremes – not even the big quinquiremes for which it was famous. Five hundred warships, Livy recounted, were taken out of the great round harbour of Carthage to be burned. A massive fine was once again levied and Carthage was deprived of all its possessions outside Africa, as well as some African lands which were assigned to the Numidians. The Spanish lands so carefully accumulated by Hamilcar Barca were lost to Rome. Carthage was forbidden to fight wars outside Africa, and effectively reduced to the status of a client state of Rome. Such terms had often been imposed on Italian neighbours, but for Carthage this amounted to emasculation.⁶¹ Once again Rome found itself in a commanding position, without having set out to achieve quite this degree of pre-eminence. VII

The victory over Hannibal still left Rome facing many unresolved problems in the central Mediterranean. Two more wars were fought against the Macedonians, who were forced to accept Roman protection; further south, Rome battled the Aetolian League in central Greece; further east, it fought the armies of the Seleucids, the Greek generals who had gained power in Syria after the death of Alexander the Great.⁶² By 187 BC the reach of Rome stretched from the ex-Barcid lands in Spain right across the Mediterranean to the Levant. There were still potential rivals, such as the Ptolemies in Egypt, with their massive fleets, but, for the first time, the entire Mediterranean felt the powerful political influence of a single state, the Roman Republic. Amid these conflicts Carthage stayed quiet and was loyal to the humiliating terms of its treaty with Rome. The Carthaginians willingly supplied their few remaining warships to serve in their distant ancestors’ waters during the Syrian War. They provided grain to the Roman armies and navies from the broad estates that stretched across the horizon away from Carthage.⁶³ In 151 BC the Carthaginians completed payment of the indemnity they owed to Rome. It was just at this moment that they found themselves in conflict with the octogenarian king of Numidia, Masinissa. The Carthaginians had no doubt that they were by now free from Roman shackles, and could make their own decision to attack Masinissa. The mood in Rome was different. A prosperous, resurgent Carthage that conducted its own policies was now seen as an indirect threat to Roman dominion over much of the Mediterranean, even if there was no direct threat to Rome’s possessions in Sicily, Sardinia or Spain. After a visit to Carthage, as an official mediator between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, the arch-traditionalist Cato became obsessively convinced that the future of Rome could be secured only by the city’s annihilation. He constantly denounced Carthage in his speeches to the Roman Senate, and made sure that he ended every speech, even if it had nothing to do with Carthage, with the words: ‘in addition, it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed’.⁶⁴ The bullying began. Carthage was first ordered to supply hostages, which it did, and next ordered to hand over its stock of arms, including 2,000 catapults, which once again it did. But the third demand made by Rome was simply unacceptable. The Carthaginians were ordered to abandon their city entirely and to migrate at least ten miles into the interior to a place of their own choosing.⁶⁵ If the Romans thought they were being generous in allowing the Carthaginians to choose where to live, they were deceiving themselves. The Carthaginians refused and war broke out; as the final demand made plain, this was now a war for the survival of Carthage, as neither of the previous wars had been. Under the command of Scipio Aemilianus, stepson of the great Scipio who had faced Hannibal, the Roman forces headed straight for North Africa. This time there was no shadow-boxing in Sicily or Spain, which were well outside the greatly constrained Carthaginian sphere of influence. Although the Carthaginians managed with extraordinary energy to construct a new war fleet, the city was blockaded by sea and besieged by land, and eventually fell to the Romans in spring 146. Scipio enslaved the inhabitants, and razed great parts of the city (though it is not actually clear whether he sowed salt into the ground as a sign that Carthage must never rise again).

The Punic Wars had stretched across nearly 120 years. Their significance extended far beyond the western and central Mediterranean: the year Carthage fell, Rome consolidated its hold on Greece, opening up the prospect of vigorous competition with the rulers of Egypt and Syria for mastery over the eastern Mediterranean. More than two decades of struggle with the Macedonians and then with Greek city-leagues culminated in the capture of Corinth, also in 146 BC. Corinth was seen as the focus of opposition to Rome, but its commercial attractions, with its two ports, were undeniable. The whole city was ruthlessly treated as booty. The entire population was enslaved. Its magnificent and often ancient works of art were auctioned. Shiploads of sculptures and paintings were despatched to Rome, resulting in a further surge of aristocratic interest in Greek art. The cultural effects of the destruction of a city thus varied enormously. Punic civilization lingered as the demotic culture of North Africa after the fall of Carthage, but Greek civilization was diffused westwards after the fall of Corinth.⁶⁶ These wars entered the Roman consciousness in other ways. Writing under Augustus Caesar, Virgil described the fateful entanglement between Dido, foundress queen of Carthage, and Aeneas the Trojan refugee. It was a tumultuous relationship that could be resolved only if Dido’s Carthage was destroyed on the funeral pyre:

The groans of men, with shrieks, laments, and cries

Of mixing women, mount the vaulted skies.

Not less the clamour, than if – ancient Tyre,

Or the new Carthage, set by foes on fire –

The rolling ruin, with their loved abodes,

Involved the blazing temple of their gods.⁶⁷