The First Punic War: A Clash of Cultures

The story of the Punic Wars is usually told from the perspective of the victors, the Romans, for whom it was the first step towards dominating the Mediterranean. For the Carthaginians, the conflict with Rome initially seemed like a third-party dispute that would be resolved through peace treaties, allowing the mercantile empire to continue its domination of the Mediterranean shipping routes. They underestimated Rome’s nascent imperialism and tenacity, which meant that the end of the First Punic War set the stage for further conflict rather than peace.

Before the War: Carthaginian Foreign Policy

Carthage began in the 9^th century BCE as a Phoenician colony on the North African coast. As its Phoenician mother city, Tyre, declined, Carthage rose to become the largest and wealthiest city in the western Mediterranean. It built a vast maritime empire, often referred to as the Punic Empire, extending its influence across southern Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, and western Sicily. The mercantile power relied heavily on trade, which generated immense wealth, enabling Carthage to employ vast mercenary armies.

By the 3rd century BCE, Carthage was the dominant naval power in the Western Mediterranean. Its expansion brought it into increasing contact and then conflict with the burgeoning Roman Republic, a rapidly expanding land power in Italy. Rising tension between the two powers would center on the island of Sicily.

Carthage had a history of conflict with the Sicilian Greeks as they tried to maintain control of the surrounding shipping lanes. To ensure these routes, they needed to control both lanes of traffic, which meant controlling the western tip of Sicily. Smaller Phoenician colonies had been established there centuries earlier and quickly fell under Carthaginian influence. Meanwhile, the Carthaginians blocked attempts by Greek colonists to settle in the western third of Sicily. They were particularly motivated by distrust of Siculo-Greek coalitions and the ambitions of unpredictable tyrants in Syracuse. This saw the Carthaginians regularly send waves of mercenaries to Sicily, securing territory to provide stability.

The Casus Belli 

According to Polybius, several treaties had been made between the Carthaginians and the Romans in the preceding centuries. These agreements demarcated their respective spheres of influence, enabling amicable trade relations. That all changed in 264 BCE.

The Mamertines were a group of mercenaries that had once been under the employ of the Syracusans. They now went rogue and seized the cities of Messana and Rhegium for themselves. Rhegium sat in the very toe of the Italian peninsula, and Messana sat just across the water in Sicily. Two cities, sitting on either side of a vital shipping lane, were now in the hands of unpredictable mercenaries. The Romans besieged Rhegium while, separately, the Syracusans crushed the devious Mamertines in battle.

In desperation, the Mamertines courted both the Romans and Carthaginians for support. The latter were the first to offer help, enticed by the Mamertines’ control of the Messenian Strait and their continuing conflict with Syracuse.

The Romans, on the other hand, were conflicted about how to respond. The consul of that year, Appius Claudius Caudex, called for direct intervention, seeking the glory associated with being the first man to lead a Roman army outside of Italy. Their willingness to fight the Mamertines of Rhegium, but aid them in Messana, was a glaring hypocrisy that did not go unnoticed by Polybius. The Romans were also aware that answering the call of the Mamertines could bring them into conflict with Carthage, and they were wary of Carthage gaining control over Sicily.

The Battle of Agrigentum 

The start of the war is dated to 264 BCE, though there was little fighting. Over the two decades of the conflict, pitched battles were rare, with Agrigentum (Akragas) as the exception.

The Romans did not yet have a navy large or competent enough to compete with the Carthaginians. Instead, they moved two consular armies, around 40,000 men, into Sicily and met a Carthaginian garrison at Agrigentum. Hannibal, son of Gisgo (not to be confused with Hannibal Barca), mustered an equitable force from the surrounding hinterlands and attacked the foraging Romans. Although overextended and unsuspecting, the Romans beat back the attack and began preparations for a siege.

Hannibal alerted the Carthaginians to the oncoming danger. With the Romans unable to blockade the port, a relief army was deployed to Sicily. The besiegers quickly turned into the besieged. Both sides were pressured into a confrontation as food was running low amongst the Carthaginian inhabitants of Agrigentum, as well as its Roman besiegers.

Deploying in their characteristic triplex acies (triple battle line), the Romans met the frontline of the Carthaginians, who were supported by war elephants, in 261 BCE. By way of Pyrrhus, the Romans may have been more experienced with fighting war elephants than the Carthaginians were in using them. The Carthaginian line was routed, and the advantage they held in elephants and Numidian cavalry was quickly negated by the aggressive Roman infantry. The Punic camp was captured, and soon, the Romans walked into the town of Agrigentum unopposed.

In typical Carthaginian form, they had been quite conciliatory in the first two years of the war, hoping that their immense wealth and resources would discourage the Romans from seeking actual battle. The Battle of Agrigentum marked the first significant meeting between the two powers and ensured that the conflict would escalate.

The Battle of Cape Ecnomus 

The ground war in Sicily descended into a stalemate. The rugged, mountainous terrain ensured progress was slow. Just as the Spartans realized in the Peloponnesian War, the Romans, Polybius tells us, realized there would be no decisive victory without a navy.

A Carthaginian shipwreck was confiscated by the Romans and reverse-engineered. Soon, one hundred quinqueremes and twenty triremes were constructed and put to sea. They could now seek a decisive end to the war by taking the fight to the Carthaginian homeland: Africa.

In 256 BCE, the Roman fleet, numbering 350 warships and transports, commanded by both consuls, anchored outside the settlement of Ecnomus in Sicily. Each ship carried 300 rowers and 120 marines. To counter the threat of Roman invasion, the Carthaginians mustered their armada, numbering 150,000 men.

Relying on the superior speed of their vessels, the Carthaginians were arrayed in a long, linear formation. The Romans’ arrangement was much more condensed: three lines with the transports in the middle and the famed triarii serving as the rear reserve.

The Punic vessels quickly gained the edge, flanking the Romans, while they ordered an attack on the Roman center to lure and separate the Roman frontline from their densely packed formation. Three separate “theaters” of the battle were formed.

But the Carthaginians underestimated the Roman ability to effectively turn what was a naval battle into a fight between infantry. The famed corvus (Latin for “raven” or “beak”) was a spiked gangway that the Romans could lower onto the decks of enemy ships. Under this pressure, the Carthaginian center did not hold. Their line broke, was penetrated by the Roman ships, which wheeled around to attack the flanks. It was a rout. The Carthaginians were broken, and the road to Africa now lay open.

The Invasion of Africa  

The victors of Ecnomus, the consuls Marcus Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Vulso, sailed on to Africa, landing their armies on the Cape Bon peninsula and laying siege to the town of Aspis. It soon fell, and 20,000 prisoners of war were taken.

Having recently been recalled from Sicily, Hamilcar, the Carthaginian commander, along with Hanno and Bostar, shadowed Regulus’ force and, much like at Agrigentum, they built a fort opposite the besieging Roman force. Polybius maligns the Carthaginians’ decision. The high ground they occupied did not allow them to use their superiority in numbers or the mobility of their units to the best effect. Noticing this error, Regulus immediately mounted an attack on the Carthaginian position. The hastily assembled Carthaginian army, under the command of three different generals, was not able to mount a sufficient defense against the dawn attack.

Using the momentum from his victory, Regulus seized Tunis and now threatened the walls of Carthage itself. Dejected by yet another defeat on African soil, the Carthaginians now sued for peace. However, Regulus’ terms for a peace treaty were so harsh that the Carthaginians had no other choice but to fight on.

Buoyed by the arrival of Spartan mercenaries in the spring of 255 BCE, the Carthaginians were able to field another army. Led by the Spartan Xanthippus, this force met the Romans at the Bagradas River where the Spartan utilized his cavalry and war elephants on open ground to overwhelm and annihilate the Romans. The consular army was completely wiped out, and Regulus himself was captured. The Carthaginians would live to fight another day.

The Battle of the Aegates Islands 

Despite the Carthaginians’ desperate victory over Regulus and the end of the immediate threat, the war would drag on for 14 more years.

The command of Carthaginian land forces would in the interim be turned over to Hamilcar Barca. Demonstrating his ability to competently lead a campaign, Hamilcar fought the Romans to a stalemate on land. But the Romans were now convinced that the war would be won on the waves. Hamilcar was trapped, and he could do little more than watch as the climactic battle of the war would be waged just off the coast of Sicily.

Growing short of manpower and funds to build a new fleet, Carthage mustered 250 more ships with the intention of first re-supplying Hamilcar and then collecting some of his men to serve as marines.

Fighting against strong winds, the Roman consul Gaius Catalus moved to intercept them before they were able to link up with Hamilcar. Sails raised and laden down with supplies, the Carthaginian fleet was unprepared for an attack. The Roman fleet, 200-300 ships strong, crashed into their adversaries, ramming, boarding, and out-maneuvering them until over half of the Carthaginian ships sank into the sea.

It was a crippling defeat. Not only was Hamilcar’s prospect of continuing the war on land dashed, but so too was Carthage’s ability to defend at sea. The Carthaginian government was destitute from over two decades of war. Unwilling and unable to realistically carry on the war effort, Carthage ordered Hamilcar to begin the negotiation of a treaty.

A Carthaginian Peace

Carthage ordered Hamilcar to begin the negotiation of a treaty. Incensed at the idea of capitulation and eager to avoid blame and prosecution at the hands of the Court of 104, he quickly distanced himself from the proceedings.

Rome, too, was nearly broke from the conflict. To finance the construction of another fleet and continue the war, they were forced to take loans from private citizens after the Battle of Drepana. These needed to be repaid, but Rome still held all the leverage.

According to Polybius, the terms of the Treaty of Lutatius forced the Carthaginians to vacate Sicily, agree not to make war on Hiero or the Syracusans, return all Romans without ransom, and pay an indemnity of 2,200 Euboic silver talents.

For Rome, which typically annexed its defeated enemies, the treaty was an admission of Carthage’s power, as well as its lack of solvency. While not as harsh as the terms following the Second and Third Punic Wars, it did firmly establish Rome’s control over Sicily, a region Carthage had spent an innumerable sum of money and lives protecting over the past five centuries.

For Carthage, and particularly Hamilcar, it was seen as an insult, and in practical terms, an admission that they no longer dominated the central Mediterranean or retained the commercial benefits that came with it. This “Carthaginian Peace” would lead Polybius to relay the perhaps apocryphal story of Hamilcar forcing his son Hannibal to swear an oath upon an altar of Baal Hammon that he would always be an enemy of Rome.

First Punic War: A Precursor to Further Conflict

To the Carthaginians, a conflict with the Romans began after answering the call of a third party. It would have felt very similar to the Sicilian Wars, conflicts which often ended in a peace treaty after a single battle or campaign.

When the Romans lost their fleet after the Battle of Drepana in 249 BCE, the Roman aristocracy responded by providing the funds, interest-free, to the state to raise 200 new ships; an act which, according to British historian Adrian Goldsworthy, “should be interpreted as a gesture of genuine patriotism.” It was certainly a sign that Roman imperialism was on the rise and that they were willing to take risks, such as the invasion of Africa, to expand their influence.

Similarly, disastrous military affairs in Sicily over a century earlier had prompted Carthage’s aristocracy to form the Court of 104, which would prosecute and crucify many of their own commanders for lack of competence, disavowing duty, or treason. Their response to adversity was factionalism, pointing fingers, and prosecution. Whereas the Romans, like Winston Churchill in 1940, would “never surrender.”

For one man, the mistakes the Carthaginians had made during the First Punic War were apparent. He had learned how his enemy fought, and he knew that if he were ever to beat them, he needed to fight like them. His name was Hannibal Barca, and his course was set for Italy.