The First Punic War
Update: 2025-03-20
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The First Punic War put Rome on the map as a major power in the Mediterranean. For 23 grueling years, the war between Rome and Carthage dragged on and on, causing immense destruction and tens of thousands of deaths, but in the end the Republic emerged victorious.
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00:00:00
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00:00:04
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00:00:15
Marcus Dentilegus sat, stiff-backed on an uncomfortable stool.
00:00:23
He was now 52 years old and could barely remember the vitality of his prime years when he had smashed Greek pikemen, Sam Knight warriors, and gollish mercenaries with sword and shield.
00:00:33
His left knee ached constantly.
00:00:36
It had twisted painfully during a fall from a horse in Sicily as he was trying to ride down a running carthaginian.
00:00:42
Something had snapped at his right shoulder during the heat of a melee on the pitching deck of a warship.
00:00:47
The legacy of dozens of smaller war wounds scarred his flesh from his ankles to his forehead.
00:00:53
Ambition had once burned so brightly at him.
00:00:55
And to make a name for himself, to conquer Rome's enemies, to win election to the Pratership or even the Consulship, and secure his family's fortune for decades to come.
00:01:04
High office had eluded Marcus, and he figured it was too late now, but he had won his victories, bloodied his blade, and one respect from blue-blooded petitions and the humblest plebeian foot sluggers alike.
00:01:16
That was enough.
00:01:17
It had to be enough, though the pangs of that past fire still sometimes rose up to burn in.
00:01:23
Now, looking out at the fields of wheat and vines covering the grounds of his estate from a villa built in the latest popular style, Marcus could say that he had done well for himself.
00:01:32
He could hear the work gangs, most of them men enslaved during the war, calling out to each other as they weeded and tended the grapes.
00:01:39
He couldn't understand the goals of the Carthaginians, though he could make sense of the Greeks.
00:01:43
The things had gone differently, he reflected, and might have been him on an estate outside of Carthage, laboring among other Roman and Italian prisoners for some aging punic aristocrat with scars and stories of his own.
00:01:54
Plenty of the Republic's soldiers had suffered precisely that fate, and only the gods knew why he had been spared.
00:02:00
Marcus's thoughts turned to his son, his dear and only son, serving as a military tribute for the fifth time at the age of 22.
00:02:08
The boy, Publius, he couldn't help but think of him that way, was a strong supporter of the new consul, Lutatius.
00:02:15
Publius was just like me at that age, Marcus thought, a fire with ambition and dreams of praise and glory.
00:02:21
If Lutatius was right about this new fleet, then the war would soon be over, and Publius might win the office that had eluded his father for so long.
00:02:29
If Lutatius was right, if Publius survived the battle, if a storm didn't wreck the fleet on its way home, if, if, if.
00:02:38
It was in the hands of the gods, capricious though they might be.
00:02:42
He remembered the crossing from regium to misana, so many years before, and how he had prayed to solace them, the god of safety.
00:02:50
Solace had kept him safe and perhaps he would do the same for Publius now.
00:02:53
Painfully, slowly, Marcus pushed himself up off his stool and walked inside the villa.
00:03:00
The sounds of the enslaved workers in the fields faded to nothing.
00:03:03
There was the altar.
00:03:05
Marcus would offer some wine, good wine from his own vines.
00:03:08
"Keep Publius safe," he prayed.
00:03:11
He hoped Solace would notice.
00:03:15
The first Punic War raged for 23 years, long enough for whole generations to grow to adulthood during the conflict.
00:03:22
Sons fought their father's war.
00:03:25
Tens of thousands of people perished, and the Mediterranean world would never be the same.
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00:04:33
Hi, everybody.
00:04:35
I'm Wanderie, welcome to another episode of Tides of History, I'm Patrick Wyman, thanks so much for joining me today.
00:04:41
When the first Punic War broke out between Rome and Carthage in 264 BC, it took both states by surprise.
00:04:48
Neither had been planning for a conflict with the only other major power left in the Central Mediterranean.
00:04:54
Neither particularly wanted a war with the other, so far as the surviving sources tell us.
00:04:59
The Romans sent an army to Sicily to support their new allies in the city of Masana, knowing that the Carthaginians wouldn't be happy about it, but they almost certainly assumed that their primary opponent would be the city of Syracuse,
00:05:10
not Carthage.
00:05:11
And yet Romans and Carthaginians did clash in that fateful year.
00:05:15
The Roman army drove the Syracuse and so away from Masana, inflicted a defeat on the Carthaginians, and then proceeded towards Syracuse.
00:05:22
The next year, 263 BC, the Romans returned to bring Syracuse to heal and then raided the Carthaginian-dominated western half of the island.
00:05:31
The city of Sugesta, a longtime Carthaginian ally, defected to the Romans.
00:05:36
If they had been concerned before with the entry of a new and aggressive power into their sphere of influence, now the Carthaginians felt like they had to respond with massive force or be overrun altogether.
00:05:48
The ancient Mediterranean was a brutal environment for states.
00:05:52
It was anarchic, with no binding international law or governing body to arbitrate disputes.
00:05:58
It was also zero sum, in the sense that territory or resources under the control of one state were not available to another.
00:06:05
If one lost land, it was a gain for the winner.
00:06:08
In that environment, it's not surprising that every single state, from the very largest like Roman Carthage, down to the tiniest Greek polis in the Sicilian countryside or the Peloponnese, fought wars with alarming regularity.
00:06:21
By modern standards, every one of these ancient societies was extraordinarily militarized and warlike, not just the Romans.
00:06:29
Carthaginian aristocrats led armies and suffered the consequences, including crucifixion when they lost.
00:06:35
Syracuse and citizens stood in the battle line armed with spear and shield as a regular part of their adult lives.
00:06:41
There was a good reason for this.
00:06:43
Only pure military force and the willingness to use it could ultimately guarantee safety.
00:06:48
Nor were their fears for their safety near paranoia.
00:06:51
Proud cities could lose their land, their armies, their city walls, and even ceased to exist altogether.
00:06:57
It happened with shocking regularity.
00:07:00
People knew this and they acted accordingly.
00:07:03
So even small disputes, which is what Missana's call for aid in 264 BC was in the grand scheme of things, could trigger a major war.
00:07:11
Even diplomacy was mostly focused around strong statements of deterrence, which turned the visit of an embassy into a fraught occasion and which a state's honor was publicly at stake.
00:07:21
An honor, a reputation for military power and effectiveness, wasn't some abstract quality, but a concrete force that kept an ancient society safe from invasion.
00:07:31
Neither Rome nor Carthage could afford to back down.
00:07:35
If they did, everything they had worked so hard to build over the preceding centuries could crumble in a heartbeat.
00:07:42
And that was how the first Punic War broke out.
00:07:44
The Romans suddenly thrust into a larger world of Mediterranean politics after securing hegemony over Italy, were threatened by the other big player in the game, Carthage, and took decisive action to secure their new holdings.
00:07:57
And Carthage, threatened by the equally sudden arrival of a powerful new foe, needed to send the message that they weren't to be trifled with.
00:08:05
This is where we left off last time, and it's where we'll pick things up today.
00:08:09
The Carthage Indians' new Rome's actions insistently demanded a response, but that doesn't mean decision-makers within the city were united about precisely what to do.
00:08:18
Unfortunately, the nature of our surviving sources means that we don't have much direct access to what must have been serious debates within Carthage about how to conduct this new and unexpected war.
00:08:28
In his book Mastering the West, which I'm drawing on throughout today's episode, the historian Dexter Hoyos points out that there were two clear priorities.
00:08:36
First, to prevent Syracuse, Carthage's long-time foe, from expanding its power to the point where it was an imminent threat.
00:08:42
And second, to prevent Rome from gaining a foothold in Sicily, just a few days sail away from Carthage itself.
00:08:49
But how were they to do this?
00:08:52
Especially after heroes settled with Rome in 263BC, effectively making Syracuse a client state, the correct course of action wasn't obvious.
00:09:00
The Romans had raided the west of Sicily, sure, and peeled away Suggesta from Carthage's sphere of influence, but there was no full-scale war, not yet.
00:09:09
Perhaps the two powers would just skirmish and reaffirm the Hallicus River as the dividing line between the Punic-dominated west and the Syracuse-dominated east of the island, and Rome would withdraw back to Italy.
00:09:20
If that were the case, then a small defensive force and a naval blockade would suffice.
00:09:25
But if the Romans were determined to bang it out, then the situation would demand a forceful response.
00:09:32
In 262BC, the third year of the war, the Romans again sent both consuls and what must have been a substantial army to Sicily.
00:09:40
The decision had seemed to have been made for the Carthaginians.
00:09:43
They responded by mustering a major force of their own, recruiting soldiers among the Gauls and the Gurians of Northern Italy and Iberians, and then sending them across the sea to the city of Acragus, or Agrigento,
00:09:54
today's Agrigento in southwest Sicily.
00:09:57
Acragus was not only a major port and wealthy city, but also the most important center in the Carthaginian-dominated west, making it the perfect place to use as an anchor for the upcoming campaign.
00:10:08
Brasping the strategic importance of Acragus, the two Roman consuls, Lucius Postumius Megalus and Quintus Mimilius Vitilus, marched their entire army straight to Acragus and put it under siege.
00:10:20
Polyvius gives us some interesting details.
00:10:23
The Romans encamped eight studies about a thousand paces or a mile from Acragus and built a stockade to hem in the besiege defenders.
00:10:31
After defeating a Carthaginian sortie, they added two fortified camps on either side of the city and a pair of trenches, one facing outward and the other toward Acragus to stave off both a breakout by the garrison or the intervention of a relief force.
00:10:45
Just such a force was already mustering at the nearby city of Heraclia, full of soldiers and war elephants recruited in Carthage itself and sent over to relieve the siege.
00:10:53
For months, the stragged on and on as both the defenders inside Acragus and the Romans suffered through a lack of food, disease, and all the other miseries that accompanied a siege.
00:11:03
After relieving Carthaginian General, Hanoi eventually judged that the Romans were ripe for an attack.
00:11:09
Once again, the two sides spent months staring at each other before battle was finally joined outside Acragus.
00:11:15
The Romans triumphed in the open field but the defenders inside Acragus were able to escape in the confusion, leaving the city open to the victors.
00:11:23
The Romans plundered Acragus and took thousands of prisoners.
00:11:28
This was a massive victory for the Romans.
00:11:31
They had won a pitched battle and taken one of the key cities of Western Sicily, and the consoles for 261 BC were set to continue the campaign in a spirit of massive enthusiasm.
00:11:41
A war that Rome hadn't particularly wanted seemed to be opening up new horizons for Roman power, perhaps even including control of all of Sicily.
00:11:49
But all of that was happening on land and the problem was the sea.
00:11:54
Coastal cities in Sicily, Polybius, tells us, were more afraid of the Carthaginian fleet than Roman armies.
00:12:00
To make matters more pressing, Carthaginian ships had been raiding the Italian coastline ceaselessly for months.
00:12:06
To win the war, the Romans realized they would have to build a fleet.
00:12:10
This was no small undertaking.
00:12:12
There was no point in building just a few ships and launching them only to have them be destroyed or captured by superior Carthaginian naval forces.
00:12:19
It was either commit fully or do nothing.
00:12:22
And the Romans, as was their habit, committed fully.
00:12:26
Polybius underlines just how novel this was.
00:12:28
When they first crossed the strait of Messina in 264 BC, he says, the Romans didn't possess a single vessel that could be called a warship.
00:12:36
Their allies in southern Italy, namely Tarantum, certainly did, but the Romans themselves were complete novices at sea.
00:12:42
They nevertheless decided to build 100 Quencarems, the cutting edge warships of the Mediterranean world.
00:12:49
That's despite the fact that not a single Quencarem had been built in Italy to that point, if Polybius is to be believed.
00:12:56
There's a story that the Romans knew so little of naval warfare that they even had to base their design on a captured Carthaginian Quencarem, taken during that first campaign in 264 BC.
00:13:07
This is effective rhetoric, but it's probably untrue?
00:13:10
Their new allies and Syracuse could tell the Romans everything they needed to know about building Quencarems, though it's possible there was something novel about the Carthaginian design that the Romans wanted to copy.
00:13:20
As for what these warships were and looked like, we know that they were or driven warships that focused on ramming, but the rest isn't entirely certain.
00:13:28
The five, Quenque, probably didn't mean five separate decks of rowers as historians used to believe, but these weren't nevertheless enormous ships with probably two separate decks of wars and hundreds of oarsmen.
00:13:41
The Romans do seem to have added one innovation of their own, a boarding ramp called in Latin a "coldvus" or "raven" that could be dropped from the bow of the ship onto an enemy vessel to allow Marines to easily board it.
00:13:54
As soon as it was finished, the Romans wasted no time in taking their new fleet out for a spin.
00:13:59
This was in 260 BC.
00:14:01
The consul Nias Cornelia Scipio went ahead to Missana with 17 ships while the rest were finishing their training for their north, and then attempted an assault on the Carthaginian held port of Lepada.
00:14:12
Before he got to Lepada, however, Scipio and his 17 ships were all captured.
00:14:17
This earned Scipio the nickname Asina, As, which he retained for the rest of his long political career.
00:14:23
In Bolden by their success, the Carthaginian Admiral Hano sought out battle with the rest of the Roman squadron, only to be defeated in the first naval victory in Rome's history.
00:14:33
Hano lost most of his 50 ships, including a massive flagship that had been captured from Pyrrhus of Epirus.
00:14:38
Now, it was the Romans' turn to project their power at sea.
00:14:42
The next year, 259 BC, they narrowly avoided destruction in a storm on the way to capture the city of Aladia on the island of Corsica, which was one of the bases from which the Carthaginians had been raiding Italy.
00:14:54
The same fleet moved south and made some progress at attacking Sardidia as well, though it was forced to withdraw soon after in the face of a superior Carthaginian force.
00:15:02
So, by 258 BC, the Romans had not only established a strong foothold in Sicily, they had also built a navy capable of challenging the foremost maritime power in the Central Mediterranean.
00:15:14
Despite not actively seeking out a war with Carthage, it was clearly going well for Rome, the least for now.
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00:16:33
While the Romans had built a fleet and were clearly growing more confident in using it, including naval raids of Sardinia, Corsica, and even Malta, the war in Sicily had more or less reached a stalemate.
00:16:44
Aside from a few captors of less important cities, including Camarina on the southern coast and Ena in the interior, the Romans had shown no ability to make a dent in Carthaginian control.
00:16:54
Lily Bayam, Carthage's major port in the western half of the island was in no immediate danger.
00:17:00
More worrisome was the fact that the Carthaginians showed no sign of wanting to settle with Rome.
00:17:05
That would inevitably involve giving up Carthage's centuries-long interests in Sicily, as well as leaving the city's African homeland shockingly vulnerable to invasion.
00:17:14
A fleet could leave Syracuse and be close enough to land troops near Carthage within a week.
00:17:19
That was plainly unacceptable to Carthage's elite, even leaving aside issues of prestige and the material benefits of influence in Sicily.
00:17:28
So in 256 BC, the 8th year of the war, the Romans decided on a new approach.
00:17:34
They would invade Africa itself.
00:17:37
Back numbers are elusive, but the impression our sources give is that the forces Rome assembled for the campaign were monstrous in scale.
00:17:45
Far larger than any the city had ever put into the field before.
00:17:49
Both consoles went with the invasion force, which would include hundreds of freshly-built ships, soldiers and sailors recruited in Italy, and the army already stationed in Sicily.
00:17:59
The historian Dexter Hoyos argues for a total of 140,000 rowers, sailors, and soldiers in the Armada.
00:18:06
That's based on the numbers Polybyus provides, 330 quencremes, and even the most conservative modern estimates assume the Romans had at least 250 ships of that immense size.
00:18:17
Even 250 quencremes would still involve 100,000 men, making this one of the biggest military operations in the ancient world to this point.
00:18:26
Now, for its part, Carthage hadn't been idle during these years.
00:18:30
They embarked on an enormous military buildup of their own, so that the Carthaginian Admiral Hamelcar is said to have had 350 ships and 150,000 men at his disposal.
00:18:41
Hamelcar had no intention of allowing the Romans to cross unopposed, and he sailed east along the Sicilian coast from Lillibam looking for a fight.
00:18:50
The two fleets met at a headland called Echnomas.
00:18:53
The Carthaginians deployed in a long line of breast, hoping to draw the Romans forward into their center and then outflank them, while the Romans were in a rough triangle with their vulnerable transport station at the rear.
00:19:04
In one of the largest naval battles in history to that point, the Romans very nearly met disaster when the Carthaginians outflanking plants seemed to work.
00:19:13
Only fierce fighting managed to drive back the Carthaginians with great loss of life.
00:19:18
The Romans got the better of it, they lost 24 ships to the Carthaginians 94, but they still had to return to Missonna to refit before continuing on to Africa.
00:19:27
Why the Admiral Hamelcar didn't make another attempt to stop the Romans is unclear, and the two consoles and their gigantic force landed unopposed on the Capban Peninsula.
00:19:37
They took a port, Aspis, called Cloupéa by the Romans, and set about devastating the extraordinarily rich surrounding countryside.
00:19:45
This land, far more so than Carthagin's potent fleet or its network of overseas colonies, was the real source of the city's power and its wealth.
00:19:54
Dozens of lavish aristocratic residences, commercial agriculture for local consumption and export on an enormous scale, tens of thousands of inhabitants whose labor could be tapped for public works or for war.
00:20:07
Attacking Carthagin's ability to support itself was the quickest path to winning the war for Rome.
00:20:12
They took enormous amounts of plunder and enslaved thousands of people, and freed large numbers of Roman and Italian prisoners who had been stuck there.
00:20:21
Yet here we run into a serious puzzle.
00:20:24
The two consoles, Manlius and Regulus, dug in, but didn't advance on Carthagin despite what must have been a vast edge and available manpower not to mention the psychological advantage of invading the enemy homeland.
00:20:36
They simply sat and waited for further instructions from the Senate back in Rome.
00:20:40
When those instructions came, the contents were shocking.
00:20:44
Manlius was to return home with the fleet, the freed Italians and the enslaved prisoners, leaving Regulus behind with 15,000 men to continue prosecuting the campaign.
00:20:54
Why not press their advantage immediately and take Carthagin itself?
00:20:58
Why not leave the Roman fleet to maintain a blockade and ward off a potential Carthaginian naval intervention?
00:21:03
We simply don't know.
00:21:05
It could have been simple overconfidence, but if anything, the Romans had been quite conservative in their prosecution of the war thus far.
00:21:11
I think it's more likely that there were factors at play we just can't see in the surviving sources.
00:21:17
Our access to internal disputes within Rome and its alliance network is extremely limited and it's safe to assume that there was some dissension.
00:21:25
Members of the Roman elite who had been left out of the spoils of war, allies who were tired of providing soldiers and ships, the economic strain of removing tens of thousands of adult men from the labor pool for years at a time,
00:21:37
things of that nature.
00:21:38
Whatever the case, the end result was the same.
00:21:41
Regulus stayed in Africa to continue the war with a much-reduced army.
00:21:46
The Carthaginians panicked.
00:21:48
They appointed two generals to lead their local forces and recalled a third from Sicily, meaning that they had three separate military leaders rather than a single unified command.
00:21:57
Again, why they did this is unclear, but it was an established pattern.
00:22:01
The Carthaginians had done the same when the Syracuse and Tyrant Agathocles invaded Africa a little more than 50 years earlier than this.
00:22:08
The results were the same this time.
00:22:10
Disaster.
00:22:12
The three generals marched out when Regulus besieged a town about 50 kilometers or 30 miles south of Carthage.
00:22:18
The Carthaginians took possession of a steep ridge despite the prevalence of strong cavalry and elephants in their army, which would have been far more effective on open ground.
00:22:26
Even their strong defensive position proved to be useless when Regulus launched an uphill attack from both sides of the ridge at dawn.
00:22:33
The Carthaginian cavalry and elephants retreated to safety, but the infantry guarding the hilltop camp was eventually surrounded and cut to pieces.
00:22:41
This army plundered the camp and then the surrounding countryside.
00:22:45
They set up a new camp at Tunis, just 18 kilometers or 12 miles west of Carthage.
00:22:50
The city had been in serious trouble before this Roman victory.
00:22:53
Now, it was on the verge of outright defeat.
00:22:56
To make matters worse, the new Midians, who lived to the west of Carthage and had long had a difficult relationship with the city, were raiding and taking Carthaginian territories.
00:23:05
So when Regulus offered to negotiate terms, the Carthaginians accepted.
00:23:11
The terms Regulus offered were extraordinarily harsh.
00:23:14
Polybius gives no details, but other sources of varying reliability tell us that the consul demanded Carthage leave Sardinia and Sicily altogether, along with releasing all their prisoners and paying a huge indemnity.
00:23:27
The fact that Regulus' term of office would soon be over, and he himself would be replaced by the next year's magistrate, probably played a major role in his thinking.
00:23:36
He had the Carthaginians on the ropes, and he would either secure a crushing peace settlement or finished them off once and for all in another battle.
00:23:43
The Carthaginians couldn't accept this, and so they resolved to keep fighting.
00:23:48
And as dire as their situation seemed, Regulus' army was small, it was maybe 15,000 men, and no reinforcements were due to arrive soon.
00:23:56
So far as we know, the consul made no effort to link up with the new Midians, or to secure support from the indigenous Libyans, who were always ready to revolt against Carthaginian rule.
00:24:06
Moreover, Carthage's own forces were growing, as mercenaries arrived from across the Mediterranean and the citizen body mobilized for all-out war.
00:24:14
One of those mercenaries, Polybius Telsus, was a Spartan named Zanthipus, who had been recruited in Greece.
00:24:20
The Spartans were more than a century past their glory days as the Hegemon of Greece, but the city still had an outstanding collective military culture.
00:24:28
They had fought and defeated periods of Epirus only a couple of decades earlier, and individual Spartans could be found throughout the Mediterranean, fighting in the ranks and serving as expert trainers and generals.
00:24:38
Zanthipus was one of these.
00:24:42
According to Polybius, Zanthipus took charge of the Carthaginian forces, improving their previously woeful training, and coming up with innovative tactics when the moment for open battle came.
00:24:51
We're probably dealing with a fair bit of pro-Greek exaggeration here on Polybius' part.
00:24:57
The Carthaginians were hardly amateurs in war, and their weaknesses in the moment are better explained by genuine panic and internal instability in a massive crisis than some inherent lack of capability.
00:25:09
Perhaps they just needed a boost, and a Spartan's reputation was enough to restore some confidence.
00:25:14
Still, the results spoke for themselves, whatever Zanthipus's actual role in training the army and planning the battle.
00:25:20
The Carthaginians tied up the Roman center with elite mercenaries and an elephant charge while their cavalry put the Roman horsemen on the wings to flight.
00:25:28
Then, they encircled the entire Roman formation and cut them down by the thousands.
00:25:33
Of Regulus's 15,000 men, only 2,000 escaped while 500 were captured.
00:25:39
It was the worst battlefield defeat in Rome's history since the Gauls crushed a Roman army and then sacked the city in 390 BC.
00:25:46
Regulus himself was among those taken, making him the first consul to be captured in more than 60 years.
00:25:53
Perhaps fearing his influence on a still unstable city, the Carthaginians thanked Zanthipus for his service and then cut him loose.
00:26:00
The Spartan went to work for the colonies in Egypt.
00:26:02
Clearly, his skills were still a demand, albeit not in Carthage.
00:26:07
There was a massive Roman Armada, perhaps 350 ships already assembling for its voyage to Africa to relieve Regulus.
00:26:15
In the aftermath of the defeat, however, all they could do was rescue the few pitiful survivors and head back to Sicily.
00:26:21
The fleet did defeat a much smaller Carthaginian naval force sent to block their passage, sinking or capturing a hundred ships by any measure a crushing victory, but the Romans suffered far worse in the aftermath.
00:26:33
Whatever they had learned about naval warfare in the past decade, their seamanship still left something to be desired.
00:26:39
The two consuls leading the fleet ignored their navigator's advice to avoid the summer storms in the seas between Africa and southwestern Sicily.
00:26:47
Unsurprisingly, to everyone but the Romans, a massive tempest struck their Armada.
00:26:52
Only 80 of 364 ships reportedly survived the storm.
00:26:57
If those numbers were accurate, then that would suggest that more than a hundred thousand soldiers, sailors, and Carthaginian prisoners died in the disaster.
00:27:04
The vast majority of them drowned in the unforgiving Mediterranean.
00:27:09
The consuls were among the survivors, and both were awarded a triumph for their naval victory despite the staggering loss of life in the tempest.
00:27:17
Whether they were fully aware at the time or not, the Carthaginians had effectively lost the war for Sicily.
00:27:23
They occasionally sent over reinforcements during the next several years into the late 250's BC, but year after year, the Romans ravaged Western Sicily and picked off Carthaginian allies one by one.
00:27:34
One of the two key cities of Punic Sicily, Pandormus, fell to a massive Roman force in a lightning attack.
00:27:39
The later historian Dia Doris Siculus tells us that 14,000 prisoners were allowed to pay a ransom and return for their release, while another 13,000 poorer residents were sold into slavery.
00:27:50
The Roman fleet managed to ruin a profitable raid on Africa by sailing into yet another storm, losing more than 100 ships and tens of thousands more crew in 253 BC.
00:28:00
Their seamanship had not yet improved.
00:28:03
It's likely that the Carthaginians tried around this time to negotiate a piece.
00:28:07
A later story almost certainly embellished tells us that they sent the captured consul Regulus home to bring their offer of terms.
00:28:14
Regulus, the story goes, told the Senate not to negotiate and then returned to Carthage to face the consequences for his actions.
00:28:21
He died soon after of privation, and his widow returned the favor by starving a high-ranking Carthaginian prisoner to death in her home.
00:28:29
Whether it's true or not, this tale does tell us a great deal about how the Romans viewed themselves.
00:28:34
Others might see an easy piece, but not Rome.
00:28:46
Wow, what's up, I just bought and financed a car through Carvana in minutes.
00:28:50
You?
00:28:51
The person who agonized four weeks over whether to paint your walls eggshell or off-white bought and financed a car in minutes?
00:28:57
They made it easy!
00:28:58
Transparent terms, customizable down and monthly.
00:29:00
Didn't even have to do any paperwork.
00:29:02
Wow.
00:29:03
Mm-hmm.
00:29:04
Hey, have you checked out that spreadsheet I sent you for a dinner options?
00:29:08
Finance your car with Carvana and experience total control.
00:29:12
Getting subject to credit approval.
00:29:18
Despite their lack of success in blunting Roman attacks in Sicily, the Carthaginians weren't entirely idle after their setbacks in the 250s B.C.
00:29:26
I mentioned earlier that Numidian raids had been a major issue while Regulus was active outside Carthage.
00:29:33
Once the Romans were gone from Carthage's core territory, the Carthaginians turned their attention to stifling Numidian pressure to their west and southwest, and even extended their control into the rich agricultural lands of eastern Numidian.
00:29:45
That was further than Carthage had ever gone before in terms of holding African territory, and was presumably coupled with reasserting control over the devastated areas nearer to Carthage itself.
00:29:55
All of that makes good sense.
00:29:57
There was no reason to expend resources on doomed campaigns against overwhelming Roman land and naval forces in Sicily.
00:30:03
An invasion of Italy was out of the question without both dominance over the seas and willing to factors among Rome's Italian allies, and the lost revenue from Sicily could perhaps more easily be made up closer to home.
00:30:15
Africa was always Carthage's greatest asset and its greatest liability, and any whisper of weakness in the city's immediate environs had to be crushed as soon as possible to keep the city's economy and social fabric intact.
00:30:27
Rebellions among the Libyans had plagued Carthage many times, and its imperialism began not in Sicily, but right next door.
00:30:36
For their part, the Romans might have been victorious in the battles, but they were hardly facing an unqualified string of successes.
00:30:43
Year after year in the late 250s, Roman armies and fleets set out for the south, only to spend their time doing some light-rating or sitting in garrisons without accomplishing much.
00:30:52
By 251, Rome's forces in Sicily were half the size they'd been a few years before.
00:30:57
The following year, with the consul Lucius Caequilius Methilus in charge of the Roman force of the Normus, the Carthaginians finally decided to send over an army to see if some good might come of a new confrontation.
00:31:08
It did not.
00:31:09
The Carthaginian general launched a fruitless attack on Methilus, safely in sconce behind the walls of the Normus.
00:31:15
The Roman soldiers pelted the Carthaginian elephants with missiles, driving them into a frenzy before emerging from the defenses to cut the Carthaginians to shreds.
00:31:24
All 100 elephants were captured, later to be taken to Rome and slaughtered, and the Carthaginian fleet arrived too late to do anything.
00:31:31
In the aftermath of yet another crushing defeat, the Carthaginian general responsible was crucified for his failure.
00:31:38
Now seemed to be a good time to launch a major offensive and finish the war by taking the last two major Carthaginian strongholds in Sicily, the extensively fortified port cities of Lillibayam and Drapana.
00:31:49
With those two cities in their hands, another invasion of Africa would be made viable, hastening the end of a war that had now dragged on for 15 years.
00:31:58
The Roman sent both consul south, with a substantial force of 200 ships and four legions, perhaps 20,000 soldiers and all.
00:32:05
Now, the Carthaginians knew was the time to invest fully in a defense of their remaining Sicilian possessions.
00:32:12
If they lost Lillibayam in particular, the next campaign would be outside the walls of Carthage, and this time they might not emerge victorious.
00:32:20
Lillibayam already had a garrison of between 7 and 10,000 mercenary troops, and the Carthaginians appointed able, aggressive generals to command, particularly a man named Himmiko.
00:32:30
Himmiko was given Lillibayam itself, and even without a gifted commander, taking the city was a herculean task.
00:32:35
It had a massive wall with a deep motive in front of it on the landward side.
00:32:40
The harbor also became extremely shallow near the shore, necessitating expert pilots to avoid running aground.
00:32:46
Pyrrhus's Sicilian ambitions had broken against the walls of Lillibayam 25 years earlier, and now it was the Romans' turn to throw themselves at the defenses.
00:32:56
To their credit, the Romans approached the task with skill and experience.
00:33:00
They built catapults and battering rams and mined underneath the walls to bring down its imposing defensive towers.
00:33:06
Slowly but surely, the besiegers destroyed towers and segments of wall while the defenders counter-mind and counter-attack the siege works.
00:33:14
At any time of day or night, Polybius tells us, "the siege works might become the scene of desperate fighting, and sometimes there were more casualties in these encounters than they usually are in pitched battles."
00:33:25
The Romans also tried another attack attempting to bribe the mercenaries defending Lillibayam to get them to open the gates.
00:33:31
At the last moment, following a tentative agreement between the mercenaries and one of the consuls, a Sicilian Greek in Carthaginian service discovered the plot and reported it to Himmiko.
00:33:40
The mercenaries who had struck the deal with the Romans were driven away from the walls and not allowed to re-enter the city, and Lillibayam survived another day.
00:33:48
Another Greek among the defenders took advantage of a timely win to set fire to the Roman siege engines, lessening that particular threat for a while.
00:33:56
Reinforcements soon arrived from Carthagin, slipping past the blockade into the harbor despite Roman efforts to block the entrance by sinking hulks in the shallows.
00:34:04
There were now 20,000 defenders in Lillibayam, enough to ward off even the most forceful direct assault.
00:34:11
Other force, mostly cavalry, set itself up in Dropana and used the city as a base to harass the Roman besiegers by land.
00:34:17
A Carthaginian squadron also based in Dropana launched raids against the Italian coastline, complicating supply and undermining Roman prestige among the city's allies.
00:34:26
The precise chronology of all these events is unclear, but they probably took place in the summer and fall of 250 BC and into the winter.
00:34:34
By that point, the besiegers were in trouble themselves.
00:34:37
Soldiers of food, casualties, and outbreaks of disease all took a major toll.
00:34:43
Both newly elected consuls went south again in 249 BC.
00:34:47
They decided on a two-pronged plan.
00:34:49
Publius Claudius Polkair would take most of the warships to assault Dropana from the sea, while Lucius Junius Polus would take the troop transports and supply ships via Syracuse to reinforce the beleaguered besiegers.
00:35:01
Claudius, as a Roman consul had to do, brought chickens on his ships to provide omens for the upcoming battle.
00:35:07
If the chickens ate when offered food, then the omens were good.
00:35:10
If they didn't, the omens were bad.
00:35:13
The chickens refused to eat, so Claudius is reported to have said, quote, "If they won't eat, let them drink, and through the birds overboard."
00:35:21
The gods soon punished Claudius for his sacrilege in hubris.
00:35:25
The Carthaginian fleet caught the consul's ships between some offshore eyelids in the shore, capturing or destroying 93 vessels and leading to the death of a capture of 20,000 Romans.
00:35:35
Claudius, as aristocratic bungalers are so good at doing, managed to get away with 30 ships.
00:35:40
His colleague, Junius, ferried no better, impatient to get supplies and reinforcements to Lillibam, Junius sent half of his 800 transports ahead from Syracuse along the southern coast of Sicily with only a small escort.
00:35:52
Another Carthaginian fleet, fresh from a successful attack on Claudius' defeated vessels, intercepted the transports as they sailed west.
00:36:00
So alarmed were the Romans by the appearance of this Carthaginian fleet that both halves of the convoy put into shore to avoid battle.
00:36:07
When a summer storm promptly blew up, the Carthaginians made for open water and safety while the Roman transports and warships broke up on the rocky shoreline.
00:36:16
All but two quencremes were destroyed in the tempest, and while most of the troops still made it ashore, the fleet was effectively done, as was the campaign.
00:36:24
Things didn't improve for Junius and Claudius after their naval disasters either.
00:36:29
Junius seized a temple on some high ground outside panoramas but was immediately captured by the Carthaginians.
00:36:34
He committed suicide in Rome two years later after returning home in a prisoner exchange.
00:36:39
Claudius was ordered to appoint a dictator to clean up his and his colleagues' messes, but tried to choose an unqualified friend of his family for the role.
00:36:46
He was prosecuted either for that or for his failures and paid an enormous fine.
00:36:53
Both sides were now effectively exhausted.
00:36:55
According to the census of 246 BC, Rome now had a little more than 241,000 citizens.
00:37:02
That was a 17% drop from 265 BC, just prior to the outbreak of the war.
00:37:07
Carthaginian finances were at the breaking point, especially after an attempt to borrow a large sum from the Tolemies of Egypt was summarily rejected.
00:37:14
In Africa, the campaigns against the new Midians and Libyans continued with some success, extending the city's reach as much as 120 miles, or 180 km west of Carthage.
00:37:25
Not everything was going their way in Africa, however, as Roman and Italian privateers repeatedly raided the coastline, sometimes quite close to Carthage itself.
00:37:33
Yet in Sicily, despite continued fighting, the result was essentially stalemate.
00:37:37
The commander of Lillibem's garrison, Gisco, maintained the city against an ongoing low-intensity Roman siege, and Carthaginian ships continued to raid Italy, though to little effect.
00:37:48
Console after console went south, some of them seriously able and accomplished figures and got absolutely nowhere.
00:37:54
The Carthaginians did find one particularly gifted new commander.
00:37:58
The young Hamilkar nicknamed Barka, meaning Thunderbolts.
00:38:02
If the word Barka sounds familiar to you, that's because Hamilkar's son also bore it, along with a name by which he's better known.
00:38:09
Hannibal.
00:38:10
Yes, that Hannibal.
00:38:11
For years, Hamilkar Barka occupied the Romans through raiding, fortifying key places, and generally harassing his enemies at every turn.
00:38:19
But the strategic calculus of the war remained fundamentally unchanged.
00:38:23
For six years, up to 243 BC, nothing really changed.
00:38:28
The Carthaginians couldn't win a major battle, and minor defeats clearly weren't enough to bring the Romans to the negotiating table.
00:38:34
The historian Dexter Hoyos puts it like this, and I think he's exactly right.
00:38:38
"It looks as though each side was waiting for something to turn up, or for the other side to collapse in simple exhaustion."
00:38:46
Late in 243 BC, two brothers, Gaius Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Lutatius Kerco, spearheaded a new program designed to bring the war to an end.
00:38:56
The city needed a new fleet, but Rome's public finances were in no better shape than those of Carthage.
00:39:01
So, the city's wealthiest citizens sponsored the construction of new ships with the promise of repayment after the war's end.
00:39:08
It was, in effect, a voluntary series of loans.
00:39:12
The program proved popular.
00:39:13
Catulus was elected consul for the following year, and a preacher was elected as their ally.
00:39:18
They also probably had the support of Kaikilius Metalus, who had won the victory at a panoramist and was now Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest.
00:39:26
Metalus conveniently declared Catulus' colleague, who wasn't in favor of bold action, ineligible for service abroad because of his membership in the priesthood of Mars.
00:39:36
The fleet did make itself safely, and promptly tightened the blockade around the remaining Punic Strongholds.
00:39:42
Whether they didn't yet realize the seriousness of the situation, or simply didn't have the resources to do anything, I think the latter is probably more likely, the Carthaginians founded no response in 242 BC.
00:39:54
The final battle came the following year, 241 BC.
00:39:58
Carthagin had a fleet probably freshly built, but for reasons that are unclear to us, seems to have lacked the experienced crew to man those 250 new ships.
00:40:07
Their orders were simple, but reflected the desperation of the circumstances.
00:40:11
The fleet would sail to Sicily with holds full of supplies, embark as many soldiers as possible from the garrisons, and then seek battle with their Roman counterparts.
00:40:20
Before they could land, the Romans found them near the Agateus Islands off Sicily's west coast.
00:40:26
Seeing that the enemy fleet intended to join forces with the garrisons, the Romans had an agonizing choice to make.
00:40:31
The wind was blowing directly against them, and a heavy swell cut across their course to the Carthaginian fleet.
00:40:37
But if they waited, the Carthaginians would dump their heavy cargo and take on thousands of experienced soldiers.
00:40:44
Gaius Lutatius Catulus was in charge.
00:40:46
He led the Roman ships and made the decisive decision to fight immediately.
00:40:51
Unburdened by cargo, crewed by skill sailors, and loaded with crack marines, unlike the Carthaginians, the Romans made short work of their opponents.
00:41:00
50 Carthaginians shipped sank, according to Polybius, and another 70 were captured.
00:41:04
The remainder slunk away, while the victorious Lutatius Catulus sailed to Lilibeamp with more than 10,000 prisoners in tow.
00:41:12
For all intents and purposes, the war was over.
00:41:16
Hamilkar Barkas saw this right away and immediately set about negotiating whatever piece he could get.
00:41:21
Polybius seems to quote to us from the first draft of the treaty, perhaps kept in an archive in Rome that he saw, which specified the Carthaginian evacuation of Sicily, the return of all Roman prisoners,
00:41:32
and the payment of a huge indemnity over the next 20 years.
00:41:35
That was not harsh enough for the Roman people.
00:41:38
They wanted an even larger indemnity paid over 10 rather than 20 years, and Carthagin had no real choice but to accept.
00:41:46
Three centuries of Carthaginian involvement in Sicily and Affairs came to an abrupt end.
00:41:51
Just three decades after completing its long road to hegemony in Italy, Rome was now the unquestioned master of the Central Mediterranean.
00:41:58
Still, Carthagin was hardly a spent force.
00:42:02
It was an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful city, now with an even larger African territory at its disposal.
00:42:08
Its trade networks in the Western Mediterranean were untouched, and in Hamel-Carbacca, Carthagin had at last found a leader capable of the long-term vision and decisiveness necessary to compete with Rome.
00:42:20
It's fitting to end this with a quote from Polybius.
00:42:24
The Romans went on to conquer the world, he tells us, quote, "Because of the training they had received in the course of this critical and colossal war, and it was this training that enabled them to attain their objective."
00:42:35
I don't think he's wrong about that.
00:42:37
The first punic war was fought far from Rome's traditional theatres of engagement.
00:42:42
Its scale went far beyond anything the Republic had ever before attempted, and as Polybius points out, that scale was not any smaller than what contemporary Hellenistic kings were doing for their east.
00:42:53
Long before Rome's interests clashed directly with the powerful monarchies of the Hellenistic world, the city was already prepared for the wars to come.
00:43:02
Next time on Tides of History, we'll take a brief step back from accounts of wars, battles, and political intrigue to focus on Rome but its people during this critical time.
00:43:10
Rome and the Republic were changing in revolutionary ways.
00:43:14
Rome was becoming a slave society, not just a society that happened to have slaves, while the city itself was shedding its humble visage and becoming an imperial centre to rival any in the known world.
00:43:24
The outlines of a future Rome that became the centre of everything were coming into view.
00:43:31
If you like Tides of History, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondering Plus in the Wondering app or on Apple Podcasts.
00:43:42
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
00:43:46
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondering.com/survey.
00:43:54
Tides of History is written and narrated by me Patrick Weinmann, Sound Assigned by Gabriel Gold for Airship.
00:44:01
The sound engineer is Sergio Enriquez.
00:44:02
Tides of History is produced by Morgan Chaffee.
00:44:04
From Wondering, the executive producers are Jennie Lower Beckman and Marshall Louie.
00:44:08
Thanks again for listening.
00:44:10
Until next time, from Wondering, this has been Tides of History.
00:44:13
Tides of History.
00:44:17
Tides of History is written and narrated by Gabriel Gold for Airship.
00:44:31
The story of Tides of History is written and narrated by me Patrick Weinmann.
00:44:51
