Destroy Carthage Read online

  Either the war had to be abandoned or won at sea.

  * * *

  Rome's first ambitious naval venture after the Camarina disaster was a raid on the coast of North Africa. It proved a fiasco. The newly-built ships ran aground and had to discard equipment to refloat. Worse, bad weather on the return voyage to Italy brought tragedy. Half the fleet went down in the Tyrrhenian; a fresh blow to Roman hopes of sea mastery.

  For some time, they restricted their naval effort to the at­tempt to seal Lilybaeum. Still success eluded them. Amid the shoals and islands which surrounded the harbour, the block­ading fleet was outwitted by better-handled and faster Carth­aginian ships. Standing off until the wind was favourable, the blockade-runners would sweep under full sail through the dangerous channels straight into harbour, leaving the Romans fumbling in shoal waters.

  Once, a complete convoy of 50 ships gained Lilybaeum in this manner.

  Among the most celebrated of the blockade-runners was a brilliant seaman known as Hannibal the Rhodian. Every at­tempt to intercept him failed until a particularly fast Carth­aginian vessel fell into Roman hands, enabling the blockaders to overhaul their quarry and capture him.

  Not only did the Carthaginians outsail their opponents, they engaged them with new success. By now, counter-tactics had evolved against Rome's unorthodox naval techniques. The poor performance of Roman ships and crews in tricky waters, es­pecially conspicuous since Camarina, invited exploitation. Claudius presented a perfect opportunity.

  In 249, the consul resolved to destroy the Punic fleet at Drepana. The method was to be a surprise attack. Sailing directly into the harbour, Claudius would catch the enemy beached or at anchor. Chickens or no chickens, he might well have succeeded had not the Carthaginian admiral, Adherbal, reacted faultlessly.

  Claudius sailed by night, was off Drepana at first light, and, as planned, had entered the channel to the harbour before Adherbal could collect his fleet. But the Carthaginian kept a cool head. Waiting as long as he dared for his crews to muster, Adherbal led them to the open sea by a second channel. Claudius had now to extricate his own ships before they in turn were trapped.

  Neither his clumsy vessels nor their seamen were up to the manoeuvre. Some collided. Others lost their oars in the narrow channel. Emerging from the harbour in confusion, the Romans found Adherbal's fleet ranged to seaward, penning them in­shore. They had little chance. With every advantage of skill and disposition, the Carthaginians drove their enemies into the shallows where, one after another, they ran aground.

  'Seeing what was happening, Claudius slipped away, escap­ing along the coast with about 30 ships,' affirmed the ancient source. The rest of his fleet floundered. Ninety-three ships were captured.

  While Claudius faced trial in Rome for negligence, his suc­cessor, Junius, sailed from Syracuse with a large convoy of supplies for his western troops. Near fateful Camarina, the convoy was intercepted by one of Adherbal's lieutenants, Carthalo. The promised action was forestalled by an approach­ing storm.Carthalo, noting the weather-signs, immediately ran for Cape Pachynus, which he doubled to escape catastrophe. The Romans, too slow or complacent to follow, were caught on the lee-shore where they suffered the fate of their ill-starred com­patriots of 255. 'Scarcely a plank remained intact,' Polybius wrote of the wrecked fleet. It was too much for the Roman authorities. Fleet after fleet had met destruction at enormous cost. From now on, treasury expenditure on naval construction was ruled out.

  Ironically, the best Roman fleet of the war was launched in the face of such obstruction, built in the winter of 243-242 by the subscription of private enthusiasts. Comprising 200 quinqueremes modelled on the ship seized from Hannibal the Rhodian, it transferred to Sicily under the consul Lutatius Catulus, a forceful leader who took pains to recruit and train good crews. The arrival of Catulus off western Sicily sur­prised the Carthaginians, again accustomed to freedom of the sea-lanes.

  Indeed, when the Carthaginian navy sailed for the island at the start of the 241 campaign season it was crammed with provisions for Hamilcar's army. Learning of the enemy fleet, the Punic admiral, Hanno, planned to outsail it, disembark the supplies at Eryx, then, with marines provided by Hamilcar, resume fighting trim. He underestimated the performance of the new Roman warships. Despite heavy seas, they challenged him off the Aegates islands.

  It was scarcely a battle. Heavily laden, bereft of fighting crews, the Carthaginian ships were virtually defenceless. Fifty were sunk and 70 captured by the time the others turned tail. Returning to Carthage with the survivors, Hanno was cruci­fied : a characteristic but more than usually futile act of ex­piation since the war was practically over.

  The once brimming coffers of Carthage were empty. With­out money, there could be no replacements for the Punic fleet; without a fleet, no provisions for Sicily. The action off the Aegates obliged Carthage to acknowledge her position. For some time Hamilcar's mercenaries had gone unpaid, held together by exceptional generalship. It could not continue. The struggle for Sicily was finished.

  Abandonment of the island was a heavy blow to Carthage, e

  but Rome's own exhaustion made it bearable. When Hamilcar insisted on removing his army with full war honours, the Romans grudgingly acceded. Both sides needed peace, not further argument.

  With dramatic abruptness, the curtain fell. The conflict had lasted twenty-four years, robbed Carthage of the corner­stone of her northern strategy, emptied her treasury. The armistice terms included an indemnity of 3,200 talents payable to Rome over twenty years. Rome, too, had been drained of funds, but her greater loss was in human life. In two decades her citizen population had decreased by something like seven­teen per cent; an injury doubtless shared by many allied states.

  Militarily, Carthage had performed well. Thanks to the con­tinuity of command in her forces - as opposed to the annual changes of leadership under the Roman consular system - her commanders had repeatedly out-generalled their opponents. Nor were her heterogeneous armies overwhelmed by their more unified and disciplined enemies.

  What defeated Carthage in the long run was not any lack of martial ability but the immense numerical predominance of Roman and Italian troop reserves: resources unmatched in the world of the Mediterranean. A generation later, according to Polybius, more than 750,000 men were liable to bear arms for Rome. It is revealing of the recuperative capacity of Carthage that she was yet to cast terror into such a power.

  20: Hamilcar Barca

  With the conclusion of fighting in Sicily, Hamilcar relin­quished his command leaving Hanno at Carthage to arrange the disbandment of the mercenaries. As these tough veterans - Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Balearians and various western Greeks - arrived in Africa to receive their pay-arrears and dis­charge, the Carthaginian authorities faltered.

  Hamilcar had buoyed his men amid the perils of Sicily with promises of remuneration which, to a balked and im­poverished government, seemed impossibly extravagant. In the hope that the troops might accept less, or grow weary of wait­ing and leave for home, the treasury made a small payment on account and camped the soldiers in the depths of the hinter­land.

  The ploy, already misconceived to the extent that it placed the discontented Libyan mercenaries in contiguity with their volatile blood-brothers of the interior, was further bungled by Hanno, who personally advised the men to take what they were offered. He was greeted angrily. Not only had he never fought in Sicily, he was the architect of expansion at the ex­pense of the Libyan tribes.

  Increasing instead of reducing their demands, the mercen­aries now marched ominously toward Carthage. At this, the government panicked. The claims were promptly agreed, and some new ones conceded. But the ethnic grievances of the African troops persisted, the more vociferous for the collapse of the authorities over pay.

  Among the militants, a Libyan soldier named Matho assumed leadership, predicting the victimization of the Africans if the overseas mercenaries dispersed. His call for unity was backed by an opportunist
ic Italiot, Spendius. At a series of violent meetings of their followers, troops who wavered were coerced or murdered.

  When the Carthaginian paymaster, Gisco, and his assistants were made captive, sedition became open mutiny: a develop­ment quickly followed by Libyan insurrection as Matho's envoys stirred up the local tribes. Volunteers arrived in their thousands with provisions and silver to sustain the fight. It was now a major rising. The rebels even struck their own coins, some inscribed with the word 'Libyon.'

  Dividing their forces, the insurgents besieged Utica and Hippo Acra, and cut the roads to Carthage. Hanno, taking the field in 240 with citizen troops and newly-raised mercenaries, did nothing to abate the crisis to which he had contributed. The Carthaginians then recalled Hamilcar to service, creating a second army, smaller than Hanno's, for his command.

  Hamilcar swiftly showed his brilliance. Twice he beat sub­stantially larger armies under the renegade Spendius, partly by enlisting the support of a Numidian chief named Navaras, to whom he betrothed his daughter as a premium. But he needed a larger force for definitive victory, and Hanno controlled most of the loyal troops. Implacably hostile, the Punic generals disagreed on joint action and merely quarrelled at their meet­ings.

  At last the senate, convinced of the need for a supremo, left the choice to the army. It voted for Hamilcar.

  The decision was fatal for the rebels, who resorted increas­ingly to barbaric practices. Hamilcar, respected if feared by his former troops, had begun by appealing to old loyalties. He showed no vindictiveness, inviting his prisoners to join his army or, alternatively, offering them safe conduct to leave the land. The rebel leaders stood in danger of losing a psycho­logical struggle.

  Conscious of Hamilcar's magnetism, they took desperate steps to prevent the mass defection of their followers. Seven hundred Carthaginian prisoners, including Gisco and his offi­cers, were atrociously mutilated by order of the leaders and thrown alive into an open grave. Those among the rebels who protested were also butchered. Henceforward, it was insisted, all captives should be tortured and murdered.The measure achieved its purpose. Implicated in a crime be­yond pardon, the wavering mutineers had no choice but to fight on. The Carthaginians in their fury showed no mercy, trampling their own prisoners now beneath elephants. Hamilcar's 'hearts and minds' campaign was forgotten. He pursued his erstwhile soldiers with grim intent.

  First he stalked Spendius, trapping his force in the interior where it was reduced to such pitiful hunger that its members resorted to cannibalism. Tricking Spendius himself into captiv­ity, Hamilcar wiped out the starving and leaderless rebels. He now turned to Matho, who was near Tunis with the rest of the mercenaries. The savagery continued. Spendius was cruci­fied; Matho responded with atrocities.

  The last hundred years of Carthaginian history was opening on a note of horror surpassed only by the terror of the final days. Polybius condemned the so-called War of the Mercen­aries as unique in his knowledge of human cruelty. The out­come was in little doubt. After a last retreat toward the east coast, Matho was lured into a defile, ambushed, his force annihilated. It was 239 - within a generation of Zama.

  Though the rebellion confirmed the Romans in their view of Punic cruelty, Carthaginian excesses were much provoked, and confined to the hour itself. The punishment of African towns which had joined the rebels seems not to have been severe.

  * * *

  While the Mercenary War raged, another group of troops mutinied: the garrison of Carthaginian Sardinia. In 238, frightened by the fate of the rebels in Africa, the Sardinian force invited the Romans to the island. The chance to secure the Tyrrhenian and her own shores was more than Rome could resist. Despite opposition from the native Sardinians, the island was occupied. Rome then legalized her position by forcing Carthage to relinquish her Sardinian rights under threat of renewed war.This blatant display of power politics, condemned even by Roman apologists, stirred Carthaginians to passionate resent­ment. Patriotic sentiments based on the tradition of mercantile empire flourished, and with them the Barcids, whose policies recalled better days. Hanno had lost ground through the Truceless War. His party, disinclined to tread on Roman toes, continued to lose support, while Hamilcar, outstanding among the Barcids, rose to fresh heights.

  Appointed sole general of Carthage in 237, he promptly demonstrated his commitment to bold enterprise.

  Economic and military debility ruled out an immediate Punic challenge to Rome, but there was still a region of the Mediterranean, believed Hamilcar, in which Carthage might recoup wealth and strength without unduly alarming the Romans. Spain, the original magnet of the westering Phoenic­ians, remained largely uncolonized. Here, in mines, manpower and timber, were virtually limitless resources.

  There were other attractions. The shores of Spain were far enough from both Rome and Carthage to allow development without interference. In Spanish bases, Barcid leadership might prevail irrespective of the vagaries of metropolitan politics. Iberian projects would be explained to the Romans as a means of raising wealth to pay the war indemnity.

  Hamilcar's vision roamed. Though remote, Spain presented great strategic potential. On her eastern coast were fine natural harbours from which, in conjunction with Balearic and African bases, an important part of the western Mediterranean might still be controlled for Carthage. Even without naval power, it would be possible for Punic arms to operate offensively against Rome from the peninsula by way of Gaul.

  In short, the loss of Sicily could be made good by the acqui­sition of an asset which gave Carthage precisely those military advantages which had served the Romans so well: a vast and accessible reserve of fighting men, and an overland route to their objectives.There were two problems. With the Punic navy in tatters, Hamilcar had to get his army to Spain without the use of a fleet. Once there, he would have to contend with hostile tribes prepared to defend their lands tenaciously. The first obstacle was overcome by marching west along the north shore of Africa and crossing the straits at Gibraltar with the few ships available as ferries. Hamilcar reached Gades, the old Phoenic­ian depot, in 236, consolidating Carthaginian interests there.

  The problem of tribal opposition was less tractable. For some eight years, Hamilcar fought his way tirelessly east then north as far as Alicante, which he founded as Acra Leuce (Lucentum). Intimidated by his brilliance, and won by cajolery, an increasing number of native chiefs, the caudillos, joined him as the campaigns proceeded. Fittingly, Hamilcar died an heroic death, saving his companions from drowning in a swollen stream.

  The presiding genius in Spain for the next few years was his lieutenant, Hasdrubal Pulcher. Diplomatically talented, Hasdrubal married a Spanish girl, cemented the loyalty of many tribes, and raised New Carthage (Cartagena) as the capital of the dominion at the best harbour on the east coast. From here, with customary industry, the Carthaginians exploited the resources of the territory.

  At Cartagena itself, at Huelva on the Gulf of Cadiz, and elsewhere, they worked mines which are still in existence. They cultivated saltings and established a fish-curing industry. They produced and exported esparto grass. Militarily, they recruited and trained Spaniards as mercenaries, and formed alliances with Spanish chiefs.

  So far, Rome had accepted the proposition that Carthage needed the new commercial field to pay her war debt. The Romans had no Spanish or Gallic territories, and such concern as they felt at the development probably centred on Massalia, across the Pyrenees from Iberia, the Greek colony through which they imported tin. Without northern tin to add to their copper, it was impossible to make bronze, the rustproof alloy essential to armaments.

  By 226, positive misgivings had been stirred by Hasdrubal's expansion toward northern Gaul. Gaul was hostile to Rome. If, in alliance with Carthage, she marched east, Massalia and Rome's tin supplies would be endangered. An understanding was demanded with Hasdrubal. Accordingly, a treaty was negotiated by which the Carthaginians agreed to confine their forces south of the river Ebro. The quid pro quo is unknown, but
most likely the Romans, too, accepted the river as the limit of their martial sphere. Certainly, recognition of Punic privilege to its south was implicit.

  Such was the position in the year 221, when Hasdrubal's death brought a Barca to power again in Punic Spain. Hannibal, the eldest of Hamilcar's four sons, had been too young to take command on his father's death. Now twenty-five, he was the choice of the army in the peninsula and the popular assembly at Carthage. According to Livy, Hannibal had been made to swear undying enmity to Rome by his father. Be that as it may (and it does not seem improbable), no man was to kindle more hatred in the Romans; none more nearly eradicate the Roman state.

  21: Beyond the Alps

  Long after the destruction of Carthage the memory of Hannibal haunted the Romans. To Horace he was 'the perfid­ious,' the 'dread Hannibal,' likened to a wrecking storm or a forest fire. Neither calumny nor the belittlement of his skills exorcized the ghost. Little wonder that the generation of Cato, which fought him, or the children who absorbed its tales, were apprehensive of the city which produced his kind.