Apart from Rome, there was in the western basin of the Mediterranean after 270 BC another great power: Carthage. This commercial city, once founded by the Phoenicians, had in the 5th and 4th centuries BC largely succeeded in keeping out Greek competitors and exploiting the trade with Etruria and the Iberian peninsula for her own enrichment. With the Greeks of Sicily, especially the city of Syracuse, it waged one war after another, sometimes conquering nearly the whole island, sometimes just holding on to its western tip. In the 3rd century BC, Carthage showed some features of a Hellenistic state with her coins in Greek style and an army of mercenaries after the Greek fashion. At the same time, the cultivation of Carthage’s North African hinterland was intensified with the introduction of a new type of large-scale plantation agriculture worked by slaves. Simultaneously, the possibility of recruiting the indigenous Libyan and Berber populations for the Carthaginian army was opened up. In Sicily in the 3rd century BC, Carthage expanded its territory steadily until only Syracuse and its near vicinity was left in Greek hands. Then came the clash with Rome.
Already in antiquity there were debates concerning the reasons and the legal grounds of the wars between Rome and Carthage. In part, that can be explained by the Roman anxiety to assure themselves of the support of the gods in their wars. The wars of the Romans, therefore, had always to be “just” wars, at least in their eyes. It is a fact, however, that in 264 BC, the Roman popular assembly eagerly agreed to a request for help from a band of Italian mercenaries who after the last war between Carthage and Syracuse had seized the town of Messina and called upon the Romans for protection against both Syracuse and Carthage. Offering help to them would entail a great war with Carthage that would not be easy to justify, in view of the recent treaty of friendship. But the war was certainly wished for by
Many an ambitious Roman nobilis. Thus started the First Punic War (264-241 BC), named after Puni or Poeni, the Roman name for both Phoenicians and Carthaginians.
In the field, the Roman legions appeared to be unbeatable, but they experienced the greatest difficulties against the Carthaginian fortified towns on the west coast of the island. So the war dragged on, and for a long time the conflict on the sea also hung in the balance. Carthage from the outset possessed a strong navy, but as soon as the war had broken out, Rome began building its own, to be rowed by crews from the allied Greek cities in Italy. Battles between these largest fleets of the time were either won by the Romans, albeit with enormous losses, or remained undecided. Storms destroyed whole fleets on both sides. Never before did the Romans suffer so much loss of life in one war. Finally, in 241 BC, they gained a decisive victory in a large sea battle off the west coast of Sicily. Peace was then concluded on Roman terms.
The peace treaty of 241 BC stipulated a war indemnity, to be paid by Carthage in ten yearly installments, as concrete proof of Carthaginian guilt for the war, and the surrender of the Carthaginian part of Sicily to Rome. Syracuse had been Rome’s ally in the war and remained independent; the rest of the island now came directly under Roman rule. Carthage had immediately after the war to deal with a ferocious uprising of her Libyan and mercenary soldiers, who had not been paid for a long time, a situation Rome exploited by forcing Carthage to surrender Sardinia as well, after which the Romans also occupied Corsica. The victor now was presented with the task of administering these newly won territories. During the war, Sicily had always been assigned to one of the two annual consuls, in Roman parlance: Sicily had been his provincia. That term remained in use after the war had ended and so came to denote a piece of territory outside Italy directly governed by a Roman magistrate. In 227 BC, it was arranged that henceforth two new praetores would be chosen each year to govern the two “provinces” outside Italy, the provincia Sicilia and the provincia Sardinia et Corsica. With this was created the provincial organization of the Roman Empire. The provincial governor ruled his province as an absolute monarch who did not have to answer to anyone and could only be called to account in Rome after his term of tenure had ended. His primary tasks were maintaining the peace and thus suppressing any stirrings against the new order, and collecting the taxes due to Rome. The inhabitants of the province became neither Roman citizens nor Roman allies, but subjects. The total number of annually chosen praetors had now been raised to four, since apart from the one praetor who was charged with administering civic law in Rome, in the 3rd century a second praetor had been introduced for handling law suits between Roman citizens and non-citizens.
After her defeat, Carthage sought compensation in the west. Hamilcar, the general who had defended the western part of Sicily against the Romans until the very end, now crossed over to Spain with plenipotentiary powers in order to create a new territorial empire for Carthage. He had great success. Many Iberian tribes were subjugated and Carthaginian bases established. His successor concluded a treaty with Rome in which the river Ebro was designated the northern border of the Carthaginian sphere of influence. Rome, in the meantime, subjugated the Celtic tribes in the Po valley and extended the Via Flaminia north of the Apennines toward the Alps.
Figure 29 Carthaginian coins with war elephants (3rd c. BC). These are two Carthaginian coins from the collection of the British Museum. Left, a silver coin (a double shekel) from New Carthage (modern Cartagena) in Spain, with the head of the god Melqart, the Carthaginian Heracles, and like Heracles recognized by his club. It is supposed that Melqart’s profile here was modeled on Hamilcar Barcas. Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, was a Carthaginian general, who after Carthage lost Sicily started building a new empire in Spain. On the reverse side is a war elephant. On the right, another silver double shekel of New Carthage, of a slightly later date. The god Melqart now almost certainly has been given the looks of Hannibal. On the reverse side is another war elephant. The use of elephants in warfare is first attested for India. The Persians were inspired by the Indian example to include some squadrons of war elephants in their army, and next Seleucus I introduced the war elephant in the Hellenistic world. King Pyrrhus of Epirus crossed from Greece to Italy in 280 with an army that included 20 Indian elephants, which at first installed much fear into the Roman troops. After some time, the effect wore off, and the practical use of the elephants in battle turned out to be rather limited. Still, the Carthaginians imitated Pyrrhus; only, their elephants were from North Africa (where the elephant would only become extinct in Roman imperial days). Hannibal took a number of elephants on his journey across the Alps, probably to impress Celtic tribes along his route and thus encourage them to join forces with Carthage. Most elephants did not survive their Alpine adventure. In his first battle against the Romans in 218, Hannibal used his remaining elephants. For another year he had only one elephant left, on which Hannibal himself rode alongside his troops, until this animal succumbed as well, in 217 BC. Photos: © The Trustees of the British Museum
The Second Punic War (218-201 BC) broke out because Rome decided to come to the assistance of a city in Spain south of the Ebro that was besieged by the Carthaginians, on the basis of an alliance that Rome had concluded with that city either before or after the conclusion of the Ebro Treaty with the Carthaginians. The facts of the matter, and thus the questions of “war guilt,” are not clear. But it is most likely that Rome, worried by the growing power of Carthage in Spain, was anxious for war. The aristocratic council that governed Carthage probably had wished to avoid war, but the new Carthaginian commander in Spain, Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, was eager for an opportunity to take revenge for the defeat of his father and the loss of Sicily and the other islands. He had already made his plans for the war that he had seen coming. While Rome in 218 BC sent one of the consuls with an army to Sicily, with the possible intention of attacking North Africa, and the other over land in the direction of Spain, Hannibal was too quick for his Roman opponents. In a surprising maneuver, he marched with his whole army of some 50,000 Spanish and African infantry and 9000 cavalry, as well as a small number of war elephants, to the north. He subdued the tribes on the other side of the Ebro, made his way across the Pyrenees and through the south of Gaul, reaching the river Rhone before consul Scipio on his way to Spain could arrive there. While the latter hastily retreated to the north
Of Italy, the Carthaginian army moved on toward the Alps. The crossing, made in haste, was disastrous: just about half of the army that had left Spain made it safely to Italy, and most of the war elephants perished.
Hannibal was a brilliant strategist and tactician, and the campaign in which he so unexpectedly invaded Italy from Spain and across the Alps already made his name immortal. That he was able, in the difficult years that followed, to hold an army of such a heterogeneous composition together and stay assured of its loyalty, proves that he must have had the qualities of a great leader as well as considerable charisma. On the battlefield, he was nearly invincible. He was the only commander in antiquity to be compared with Alexander, and as long as he lived his name alone would terrorize the Romans. He descended into northern Italy in 218 BC and there defeated first Scipio and then the other consul who had marched his army all the way from Sicily to the Po valley to try to stop the invasion. The Celtic tribes of the region, only recently subjugated by Rome, now joined Hannibal, bringing welcome reinforcements for his army that had suffered so much and that in the Po valley also lost its few remaining elephants. The following year Hannibal crossed the Apennines and surprised and annihilated a Roman army on the shores of Lake Trasimene. In Rome, now the first panic struck. The senate decided to appoint a dictator. He for the rest of the year avoided any contact with the invaders, hoping to wear them out. Meanwhile, another Roman army had arrived in Spain to open a second front against Carthage there. The next year, 216 BC, again two consuls held command in Italy and opinion in Rome shifted back toward an offensive strategy. This, Hannibal exploited to his advantage. At Cannae, in the southeast of the peninsula, he lured the Roman army, more than 70,000 strong, into a huge battle. They were encircled and slaughtered. When night fell, some 40,000 men on the Roman side had been killed, the largest loss in battle on a single day suffered by any European army until the First World War.
After Cannae, there was truly panic in Rome. A new dictator immediately raised as many new legions as possible, even slaves being freed for that purpose. At the same time, another strategy was decided upon: an encounter with Hannibal’s army had to be avoided at all costs, while all efforts were henceforth directed at maintaining the Roman alliances in Italy and carrying on the war against the Carthaginians in Spain. In the end, this strategy indeed would yield the victory to Rome. For Hannibal’s strategy rested on the expectation that the cities and peoples of Italy that were subject to Rome would defect, but even after the crushing defeat at Cannae only very few of Rome’s allies were prepared to do so. After 216 BC, Hannibal would traverse Central and South Italy for 13 years, always followed hard on his heels by the Romans, without a pitched battle being fought. In those years, though, large tracts of the countryside, especially in the south, were ravished, but Rome’s system of alliances nevertheless held steady. After Cannae, the city of Syracuse imprudently chose Hannibal’s side: after a long and hard-fought siege it was taken by the Romans in 212 BC, plundered, and assigned to the province of Sicily. In that period, the Roman army in Spain also booked some successes; after 210 BC, it was led by Publius Cornelius Scipio, the son of the unfortunate consul of 218 BC. A young man who had not yet held any public office, he had been chosen to be proconsul, mainly on the grounds of his prestigious name, by a special popular vote. A proconsul was not a consul but had all the powers of a consul. It seemed as if Rome in these years of crisis needed a strong and charismatic leader.
Thus, Hannibal’s success in the years after Cannae slowly melted away. Reinforcements were either not sent or were intercepted and defeated by the Romans. Meanwhile, Rome tapped its reservoir of manpower and raised ever more legions. By 204 BC, Scipio had conquered the whole of Carthaginian Spain and crossed over to North Africa. A little later, Hannibal was called back, now to defend Carthage itself. In 202 BC, his army of veterans and newly mobilized militias confronted Scipio’s more numerous and better trained troops and was finally defeated. A year later, in 201 BC, Carthage for the second time concluded a peace treaty with Rome on Roman terms. It had to surrender the remnants of its fleet, pay a huge indemnity in 50 yearly installments and formally give up its possessions in Spain and in North Africa. Hannibal had already fled to the east to escape Roman revenge, and a little later Scipio, now surnamed Africanus, could celebrate his triumph in Rome.
As a result of the Second Punic War, Rome established her dominance in the western Mediterranean. It was a dearly bought victory, for especially southern Italy and Sicily were in many places destroyed and partly depopulated. On the other hand, Spain now became part of the Roman sphere of influence and provided two more provinces: the provincia Hispania Citerior, that is “nearer” Spain in the east of the peninsula, and the provincia Hispania Ulterior, or “farther” Spain in the south, roughly modern-day Andalusia. These provinces too were governed by praetores, so that the number of annual praetores was raised to six. Both provinces occupied mainly the coastal areas; the Roman conquest of the whole peninsula would be a long and laborious process lasting almost two centuries.
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