The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof from, the

nations of the ancient classical world. The true centre of the

former lay in the east, that of the latter in the region of the

Mediterranean; and, however wars and migrations may have altered the

line of demarcation and thrown the races across each other, a deep

sense of diversity has always severed, and still severs, the Indo-

Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations.

This diversity was no less marked in the case of that Semitic people

which spread more than any other in the direction of the west--the

Phoenicians. Their native seat was the narrow border of coast bounded

by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, and called Canaan,

that is, the "plain." This was the only name which the nation itself

made use of; even in Christian times the African farmer called himself

a Canaanite. But Canaan received from the Hellenes the name of

Phoenike, the "land of purple," or "land of the red men," and the

Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites Punians, as we

are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician or Punic race.

Their Commerce

The land was well adapted for agriculture; but its excellent harbours

and the abundant supply of timber and of metals favoured above all

things the growth of commerce; and it was there perhaps, where the

opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean

so rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all

its greatness upon man. The Phoenicians directed all the resources of

courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of commerce

and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and colonization,

and thus connected the east and the west. At an incredibly early

period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in

Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.

The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall

in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands

passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves,

ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa,

frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine

wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from

England, and iron from Elba. The Phoenician mariners brought to

every nation whatever it could need or was likely to purchase; and

they roamed everywhere, yet always returned to the narrow home to

which their affections clung.

Their Intellectual Endowments

The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the

side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a

fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the

development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided

character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of

intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong

primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith and knowledge in a certain

sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first

reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician

religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can

see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.

The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth,

and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to

restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in times

of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their

religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician

architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy,

to say nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient

seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical

purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It

was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it

was there that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the

sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time

and space and on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces

of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and

measures, point to that region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed

themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of

Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for

their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of

measures for their commerce, and distributed many an important germ

of civilization along with their wares; but it cannot be demonstrated

that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the

human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and

scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes

were scattered by them more after the fashion of a bird dropping

grains than of the husbandman sowing his seed. The power which

the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and

assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with

whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.

In the field of Roman conquest the Iberian and the Celtic languages

have disappeared before the Romanic tongue; the Berbers of Africa

speak at the present day the same language as they spoke in the times

of the Hannos and the Barcides.

Their Political Qualities

Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as

compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life

--the noble idea of self-governing freedom. During the most

flourishing times of Sidon and Tyre the land of the Phoenicians was

a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the

Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians,

sometimes to the Egyptians. With half its power Hellenic cities

would have made themselves independent; but the prudent men of Sidon

calculated that the closing of the caravan-routes to the east or of

the ports of Egypt would cost them more than the heaviest tribute, and

so they punctually paid their taxes, as it might happen, to Nineveh or

to Memphis, and even, if they could not avoid it, helped with their

ships to fight the battles of the kings. And, as at home the

Phoenicians patiently bore the oppression of their masters, so also

abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful career

of commerce for a policy of conquest. Their settlements were

factories. It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and

selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in

distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult work of

colonization. They avoided war even with their rivals; they allowed

themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of

Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles,

which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western

Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), it was the

Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the

struggle with the Greeks. If rivalry could not be avoided, they

compromised the matter as best they could; no attempt was ever made

by the Phoenicians to conquer Caere or Massilia. Still less, of

course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war.

On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on the

offensive--in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians

which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (274)--it

was simply as dutiful subjects of the great-king and in order to avoid

taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that

they entered the lists against the Hellenes of the west; just as their

Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share the

defeat of the Persians at Salamis(1).

This was not the result of cowardice; navigation in unknown waters

and with armed vessels requires brave hearts, and that such were to be

found among the Phoenicians, they often showed. Still less was it

the result of any lack of tenacity and idiosyncrasy of national

feeling; on the contrary the Aramaeans defended their nationality with

the weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the

allurements of Greek civilization and all the coercive measures of

eastern and western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-

Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals

seems to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human. It was the

result of that want of political instinct, which amidst all their

lively sense of the ties of race, and amidst all their faithful

attachment to the city of their fathers, formed the most essential

feature in the character of the Phoenicians. Liberty had no charms

for them, and they lusted not after dominion; "quietly they lived,"

says the Book of Judges, "after the manner of the Sidonians, careless

and secure, and in possession of riches."

Carthage

Of all the Phoenician settlements none attained a more rapid and

secure prosperity than those which were established by the Tyrians and

Sidonians on the south coast of Spain and the north coast of Africa--

regions that lay beyond the reach of the arm of the great-king and the

dangerous rivalry of the mariners of Greece, and in which the natives

held the same relation to the strangers as the Indians in America held

to the Europeans. Among the numerous and flourishing Phoenician

cities along these shores, the most prominent by far was the "new

town," Karthada or, as the Occidentals called it, Karchedon or

Carthago. Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians

in this region, and originally perhaps a dependency of the adjoining

Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, it soon

outstripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the

incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity

of its inhabitants. It was situated not far from the (former) mouth

of the Bagradas (Mejerda), which flows through the richest corn

district of northern Africa, and was placed on a fertile rising

ground, still occupied with country houses and covered with groves

of olive and orange trees, falling off in a gentle slope towards the

plain, and terminating towards the sea in a sea-girt promontory.

Lying in the heart of the great North-African roadstead, the Gulf of

Tunis, at the very spot where that beautiful basin affords the best

anchorage for vessels of larger size, and where drinkable spring water

is got close by the shore, the place proved singularly favourable for

agriculture and commerce and for the exchange of their respective

commodities--so favourable, that not only was the Tyrian settlement

in that quarter the first of Phoenician mercantile cities, but even

in the Roman period Carthage was no sooner restored than it became the

third city in the empire, and even now, under circumstances far from

favourable and on a site far less judiciously chosen, there exists and

flourishes in that quarter a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants.

The prosperity, agricultural, mercantile, and industrial, of a city

so situated and so peopled, needs no explanation; but the question

requires an answer--in what way did this settlement come to attain

a development of political power, such as no other Phoenician

city possessed?

Carthage Heads the Western Phoenicians in Opposition to the Hellenes

That the Phoenician stock did not even in Carthage renounce its policy

of passiveness, there is no lack of evidence to prove. Carthage paid,

even down to the times of its prosperity, a ground-rent for the space

occupied by the city to the native Berbers, the tribe of the Maxyes or

Maxitani; and although the sea and the desert sufficiently protected

the city from any assault of the eastern powers, Carthage appears to

have recognized--although but nominally--the supremacy of the great-

king, and to have paid tribute to him occasionally, in order to secure

its commercial communications with Tyre and the East.

But with all their disposition to be submissive and cringing,

circumstances occurred which compelled these Phoenicians to adopt a

more energetic policy. The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring

ceaselessly towards the west: it had already dislodged the Phoenicians

from Greece proper and Italy, and it was preparing to supplant them

also in Sicily, in Spain, and even in Libya itself. The Phoenicians

had to make a stand somewhere, if they were not willing to be totally

crushed. In this case, where they had to deal with Greek traders and

not with the great-king, submission did not suffice to secure the

continuance of their commerce and industry on its former footing,

liable merely to tax and tribute. Massilia and Cyrene were already

founded; the whole east of Sicily was already in the hands of the

Greeks; it was full time for the Phoenicians to think of serious

resistance. The Carthaginians undertook the task; after long and

obstinate wars they set a limit to the advance of the Cyrenaeans,

and Hellenism was unable to establish itself to the west of the desert

of Tripolis. With Carthaginian aid, moreover, the Phoenician settlers

on the western point of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks,

and readily and gladly submitted to the protection of the powerful

cognate city.(2) These important successes, which occurred in the

second century of Rome, and which saved for the Phoenicians the south-

western portion of the Mediterranean, served of themselves to give to

the city which had achieved them the hegemony of the nation, and to

alter at the same time its political position. Carthage was no longer

a mere mercantile city: it aimed at the dominion of Libya and of a

part of the Mediterranean, because it could not avoid doing so.

It is probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed

materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece

somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among

the Orientals and the Carians more especially it was far older, and it

was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it. By the system

of foreign recruiting war was converted into a vast pecuniary

speculation, which was quite in keeping with the character and

habits of the Phoenicians.

The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad,

that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their

occupation in Africa from a tenure of hire and sufferance to one of

proprietorship and conquest. It appears to have been only about the

year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent

for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the

natives. This change enabled them to prosecute a husbandry of their

own on a great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been

desirous to employ their capital as landlords as well as traders,

and to practise agriculture on a large scale by means of slaves or

hired labourers; a large portion of the Jews in this way served the

merchant-princes of Tyre for daily wages. Now the Carthaginians

could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil

by a system akin to that of the modern planters; slaves in chains

cultivated the land--we find single citizens possessing as many as

twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages

of the surrounding region--agriculture appears to have been introduced

among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the

Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt--were subdued by

force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into

fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the

soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting

for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were

constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (--nomades--)

on the borders; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory

enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the

deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian

supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents. About the

period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at

the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians. These

formed the "towns and tribes (--ethne--) of subjects," which appear in

the Carthaginian state-treaties; the former being the non-free Libyan

villages, the latter the subject Nomades.

Libyphoenicians

To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage over the other

Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby-phoenicians. These

included, on the one hand, the smaller settlements sent forth from

Carthage along the whole northern and part of the north-western coast

of Africa--which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic

seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists

--and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially

numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine

and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona),

Hadrumetum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa)--the second

city of the Phoenicians in Africa--Thapsus (in the same quarter), and

Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli). In what way all these

cities came to be subject to Carthage--whether voluntarily, for their

protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians,

or by constraint--can no longer be ascertained; but it is certain that

they are designated as subjects of the Carthaginians even in official

documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had

to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage. They were

not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but

contributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for

instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (90,000

pounds); moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with

the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms.(3)

Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence

preserved to it, less perhaps from its own power than from the pious

feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors;

in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations a remarkable

feeling of reverence presenting a thorough contrast to the

indifference of the Greeks. Even in intercourse with foreigners it is

always "Carthage and Utica" that stipulate and promise in conjunction;

which, of course, did not preclude the far more important "new town"

from practically asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the

Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North

-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the

Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and

Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of

a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present

districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the

interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the

south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly

expresses it, converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician

civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed

in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although

not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at

the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes

adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet;(4) to Phoenicise

them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor

the policy of Carthage.

The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital

of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because

the change doubtless took place gradually. The author just mentioned

names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno is meant who

lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded

as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which

presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.

The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline

in the great cities of the Phoenician mother-country, in Sidon and

especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by

internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities,

particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor

in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble

families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to

the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their

intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when

the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly

the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the

Latin communities.

Naval Power of Carthage

But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage; its

maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period,

a not less powerful development.

Spain

In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian

settlement at Gades (Cadiz). Besides this they possessed to the west

and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of

the silver mines; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and

Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces. They made no

effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they

were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for

traffic and for shell and other fisheries; and they had difficulty in

maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes.

It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian

but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned among the cities tributary to

Carthage; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was

under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage

to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of

Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades. Ebusus and

the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at

an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts

against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged

from these stations.

Sardinia

In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of the second

century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was

utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya. While the

natives withdrew into the mountainous interior of the island to

escape from bondage as agricultural serfs, just as the Numidians in

Africa withdrew to the borders of the desert, Phoenician colonies

were conducted to Caralis (Cagliari) and other important points, and

the fertile districts along the coast were turned to account by the

introduction of Libyan cultivators.

Sicily

Lastly in Sicily the straits of Messana and the larger eastern half of

the island had fallen at an early period into the hands of the Greeks;

but the Phoenicians, with the help of the Carthaginians, retained the

smaller adjacent islands, the Aegates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra--the

settlement in Malta especially was rich and flourishing--and they kept

the west and north-west coast of Sicily, whence they maintained

communication with Africa by means of Motya and afterwards of

Lilybaeum and with Sardinia by means of Panormus and Soluntum.

The interior of the island remained in the possession of the natives,

the Elymi, Sicani, and Siceli. After the further advance of the

Greeks was checked, a state of comparative peace had prevailed in

the island, which even the campaign undertaken by the Carthaginians

at the instigation of the Persians against their Greek neighbours on

the island (274) did not permanently interrupt, and which continued

on the whole to subsist till the Attic expedition to Sicily (339-341).

The two competing nations made up their minds to tolerate each other,

and confined themselves in the main each to its own field.

Maritime Supremacy

Rivalry with Syracuse

All these settlements and possessions were important enough in

themselves; but they were of still greater moment, inasmuch as they

became the pillars of the Carthaginian maritime supremacy. By their

possession of the south of Spain, of the Baleares, of Sardinia, of

western Sicily and Melita, and by their prevention of Hellenic

colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of

the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their

sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits. In the

Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to

admit the rivalry of other nations. This state of things might

perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served

to counterbalance each other in these waters; with the former, as the

less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against

the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power--a fall

which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had

hardly exerted all her power to avert--and after the miscarriage of

the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably

the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse

naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy

and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the

Carthaginians also were compelled to adopt a more energetic policy.

The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between

them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius

of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the

intervening Sicilian states--a result which both parties had an

interest in accomplishing--and the division of the island between

the Syracusans and Carthaginians. The most flourishing cities in

the island--Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana--were

utterly destroyed by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy

conflicts: and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed

or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support on foreign

mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain, he might rule in

greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were

occupied by military colonies. The peace, which was concluded after

the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and

which subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae (the

ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus, and a part of the

territory of Agrigentum as far as the Halycus, was regarded by the two

powers contending for the possession of the island as only a temporary

accommodation; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their

attempts to dispossess each other. Four several times--in 360 in the

time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that of Timoleon; in 445 in

that of Agathocles; in 476 in that of Pyrrhus--the Carthaginians were

masters of all Sicily excepting Syracuse, and were baffled by its

solid walls; almost as often the Syracusans, under able leaders, such

as were the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally

on the eve of dislodging the Africans from the island. But more and

more the balance inclined to the side of the Carthaginians, who were,

as a rule, the aggressors, and who, although they did not follow out

their object with Roman steadfastness, yet conducted their attack with

far greater method and energy than the Greek city, rent and worn out

by factions, conducted its defence. The Phoenicians might with reason

expect that a pestilence or a foreign -condottiere- would not always

snatch the prey from their hands; and for the time being, at least at

sea, the struggle was already decided:(5) the attempt of Pyrrhus to

re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last. After the failure of

that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded without a rival the

whole western Mediterranean; and their endeavours to occupy Syracuse,

Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of their power and the

objects at which they aimed. Hand in hand with these attempts went

the endeavour to monopolize more and more the maritime commerce of

this region, at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own

subjects; and it was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from

any violence that might help forward their purpose. A contemporary

of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes, the father of geography (479-560),

affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards

the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians,

was thrown by them into the sea; and with this statement the fact

completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 (6) declared

the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading

vessels, whereas by that of 448,(7) it totally closed them, with

the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.

Constitution of Carthage

Council

Magistrates

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the commencement of the

first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having

changed from a monarchy to an aristocracy, or to a democracy inclining

towards oligarchy, for he designates it by both names. The conduct

of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council of

Ancients, which, like the Spartan gerusia, consisted of the two kings

nominated annually by the citizens, and of twenty-eight gerusiasts,

who were also, as it appears, chosen annually by the citizens. It was

this council which mainly transacted the business of the state-making,

for instance, the preliminary arrangements for war, appointing levies

and enlistments, nominating the general, and associating with him a

number of gerusiasts from whom the sub-commanders were regularly

taken; and to it despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether by

the side of this small council there existed a larger one; at any rate

it was not of much importance. As little does any special influence

seem to have belonged to the kings; they acted chiefly as supreme

judges, and they were frequently so named (shofetes, -praetores-).

The power of the general was greater. Isocrates, the senior

contemporary of Aristotle, says that the Carthaginians had an

oligarchical government at home, but a monarchical government in

the field; and thus the office of the Carthaginian general may be

correctly described by Roman writers as a dictatorship, although the

gerusiasts attached to him must have practically at least restricted

his power and, after he had laid down his office, a regular official

reckoning--unknown among the Romans--awaited him. There existed no

fixed term of office for the general, and for this very reason he was

doubtless different from the annual king, from whom Aristotle also

expressly distinguishes him. The combination however of several

offices in one person was not unusual among the Carthaginians, and it

is not therefore surprising that often the same person appears as at

once general and shofete.

Judges

But the gerusia and the magistrates were subordinate to the

corporation of the Hundred and Four (in round numbers the Hundred),

or the Judges, the main bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy.

It had no place in the original constitution of Carthage, but, like

the Spartan ephorate, it originated in an aristocratic opposition to

the monarchical elements of that constitution. As public offices were

purchasable and the number of members forming the supreme board was

small, a single Carthaginian family, eminent above all others in

wealth and military renown, the clan of Mago,(8) threatened to unite

in its own hands the management of the state in peace and war and the

administration of justice. This led, nearly about the time of the

decemvirs, to an alteration of the constitution and to the appointment

of this new board. We know that the holding of the quaestorship gave

a title to admission into the body of judges, but that the candidate

had nevertheless to be elected by certain self-electing Boards of Five

(Pentarchies); and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen

from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer

period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called

"senators" by the Greeks and Romans. Obscure as are the details, we

recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board

constituted by aristocratic cooptation; an isolated but characteristic

indication of which is found in the fact that there were in Carthage

special baths for the judges over and above the common baths for the

citizens. They were primarily intended to act as political jurymen,

who summoned the generals in particular, but beyond doubt the shofetes

and gerusiasts also when circumstances required, to a reckoning on

resigning office, and inflicted even capital punishment at pleasure,

often with the most reckless cruelty. Of course in this as in every

instance, where administrative functionaries are subjected to the

control of another body, the real centre of power passed over from

the controlled to the controlling authority; and it is easy to

understand on the one hand how the latter came to interfere in all

matters of administration--the gerusia for instance submitted

important despatches first to the judges, and then to the people

--and on the other hand how fear of the control at home, which

regularly meted out its award according to success, hampered the

Carthaginian statesman and general in council and action.

Citizens

The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as

in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of

the state, appears to have had but a very slight amount of practical

influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open

corruption was the rule; in the nomination of a general the people

were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by

proposal on the part of the gerusia; and other questions only went to

the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree.

Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in

Carthage. The powerlessness of the citizens probably in the main

resulted from their political organization; the Carthaginian mess-

associations, which are mentioned in this connection and compared

with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical

management. Mention is made even of a distinction between "burgesses

of the city" and "manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the

latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.

Character of the Government

On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian

constitution appears to have been a government of capitalists, such as

might naturally arise in a burgess-community which had no middle class

of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble

without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand

of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of

repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the

subjects, by despatching them as tax-assessors and taskwork-overseers

to the dependent communities--that infallible token of a rotten urban

oligarchy--was not wanting in Carthage; Aristotle describes it as the

main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution.

Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in

Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained

without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the

governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous

men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of

electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the

rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a

government to emerge; but at the time of the first Punic war it was

still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence

of the defeats which were sustained, its political influence appears

on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the

similar party at the same period in Rome; the popular assemblies began

to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down

the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination

of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of

Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office

for two consecutive years; and thereby a complete democracy was

introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only

means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This

opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm;

but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt

and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared

by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly

that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might

well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in

Carthage, the boys helped to make them.

Capital and Its Power in Carthage

From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect

the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the

Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony

of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all

the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the

great-king; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world.

The intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry--which, as was

the case subsequently in Rome, generals and statesmen did not disdain

scientifically to practise and to teach--is attested by the agronomic

treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by

the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational

husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also

in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended

to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close

connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of

capital: it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that

one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage.

The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats,

in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that

time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of

great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors

of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so

likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects; by

virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the "best

part of Europe," and of the rich--and in some portions, such as in

Byzacitis and on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive--region

of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage

as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which

commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of

things golden harvests annually to the settlers there; and we have

already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and evergrowing

system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland

commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade

between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that

single harbour.

Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been

mainly dependent on Hellenic influences, but they do not appear to

have been neglected. There was a respectable Phoenician literature;

and on the conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of

art--not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from

Sicilian temples--and considerable libraries. But even intellect

there was in the service of capital; the prominent features of its

literature were chiefly agronomic and geographical treatises, such

as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral

Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was

originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and

which is still extant in a translation. Even the general diffusion of

certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign

languages,(9) as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood

almost on a level with Rome under the empire, forms an evidence of the

thoroughly practical turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage. It

is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital

accumulated in this London of antiquity, but some notion at least may

be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in

spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and

in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state

property, the contributions of its subjects and the customs-revenue

completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were

levied from the citizens; and further, that even after the second

Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current

expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of 48,000

pounds could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat

stricter management of the finances, and fourteen years after the

peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six

remaining instalments. But it was not merely the sum total of its

revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration

at Carthage. The economical principles of a later and more advanced

epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable

states of antiquity. Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in

the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a

token-money having no intrinsic value--a species of currency not used

elsewhere in antiquity. In fact, if government had resolved itself

into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved

the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.

Comparison between Carthage and Rome

In Their Economy

Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome.

Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art

and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and

altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect

Carthage had made greater progress than Rome. But in Carthage the

moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this

time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while

the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords

and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the

burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the

population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative; the

majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible

to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for

reform. In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which

marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome

still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of

the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,

they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the

Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver

plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house

to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant

token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.

In Their Constitution

In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in

Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of

police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing

board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction

to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language

and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public

interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government

at Rome; but in comparison with the cruel harshness and the absolute

precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-

tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and

reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent

capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able

also to trust it, and had no need to fear the magistrates.

The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on a jealous

control of administration by the government, and represented

exclusively the leading families; its essence was mistrust of all

above and below it, and therefore it could neither be confident that

the people would follow whither it led, nor free from the dread of

usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course

of Roman policy, which never receded a step in times of misfortune,

and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or

indifference; whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle

when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or

forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed

building to fall to pieces, only to begin it in a few years anew.

Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on a good

understanding with his government; in Carthage he was frequently

at decided feud with his masters at home, and was forced to resist

them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the

opposing party of reform.

In the Treatment of Their Subject

Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of lineage kindred with

their own, and over numerous others of alien race. But Rome had

received into her citizenship one district after another, and had

rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities; Carthage

from the first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the

dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some day placed

upon an equal footing. Rome granted to the communities of kindred

lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired

domains; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and

noble, to gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other

subject states. Carthage not only retained for herself the produce

of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of

their freedom of trade. Rome, as a rule, did not wholly take away

independence even from the subject communities, and imposed a fixed

tribute on none; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and

loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her

subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves. In this way

there was not in the compass of the Carthagino-African state a single

community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been

politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the

Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than

to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid

injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme

measures challenged political opposition to conflict. If Carthaginian

statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage

her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt

and all the landholders by means of token-money, they transferred

mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply.

Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwithstanding its

seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus

like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a

gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil. It

was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in

the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated

by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their

ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage. In

Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule,

and to have attained on that account better results. They granted to

their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade,

and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the

outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency; far greater freedom

of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the

Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands,

their policy would doubtless soon have changed. But that result did

not take place; and so, owing to the well-calculated mildness of the

Carthaginian government and the unhappy distractions of the Sicilian

Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to

the Phoenicians; for example, even after the island had passed to the

Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in

a thoroughly Phoenician spirit. Nevertheless on the whole the

Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at

least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites

and Tarentines were to the Romans.

In Finance

In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless

far surpassed those of Rome; but this advantage was partly neutralized

by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue--tribute

and customs--dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed)

than those of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war

was far more costly than the Roman.

In Their Military System

The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians were very

different, yet in many respects not unequally balanced. The citizens

of Carthage still at the conquest of the city amounted to 700,000,

including women and children,(10) and were probably at least as

numerous at the close of the fifth century; in that century they were

able in case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites.

At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome had in similar

circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army equally strong;(11)

after the great extensions of the burgess-domain in the course of that

century the number of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at

least have doubled. But far more than in the number of men capable of

bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condition of the burgess-

soldier. Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its

citizens to take part in military service, it could neither furnish

the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the

husbandman, nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to

warfare. In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian

armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians as a guard for the

general; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted,

was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain.

The Roman farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-

roll, but also in the field of battle. It was the same with the

cognate races of both communities; while the Latins rendered to

the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Liby-

phoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and,

as may easily be supposed, still less desirous of it, and so they too

disappeared from the armies; the towns bound to furnish contingents

presumably redeemed their obligation by a payment of money. In the

Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only a

single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of

Liby-phoenicians. The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by

the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained

under able officers into good infantry, and whose light cavalry was

unsurpassed in its kind. To these were added the forces of the more

or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of

the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between

allied contingents and mercenary troops; and finally, in case of need,

the hired soldiery enlisted abroad. So far as numbers were concerned,

such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired

strength; and in the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with

arms, and in courage it might be capable of coping with that of Rome.

Not only, however, did a dangerously long interval elapse, in the

event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready,

while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but

--which was the main matter--there was nothing to keep together the

armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while

the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common

fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated

his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men

in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful

proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general

Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the

Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the

Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage experienced in full measure

all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon

a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous

than her foes.

The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects

of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by

every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests

and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip

mercenaries. They bestowed great care on those elements which among

the ancients represented the modern artillery--the construction of

machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to

the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in

warfare the earlier war-chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there

were stalls for 300 elephants. They could not venture to fortify the

dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the

towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army

that landed in Africa--a thorough contrast to the state of Italy,

where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a

chain of Roman fortresses commanded the whole peninsula. But on the

fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money

and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of its

walls saved the state; whereas Rome held a political and military

position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege.

Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which

they lavished the utmost care. In the building as well as in the

management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks; it was at

Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars,

and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this period mostly quinqueremes,

were ordinarily better sailors than the Greek; the rowers, all of them

public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were excellently

trained, and the captains were expert and fearless. In this respect

Carthage was decidedly superior to the Romans, who, with the few ships

of their Greek allies and still fewer of their own, were unable even

to show themselves in the open sea against the fleet which at that

time without a rival ruled the western Mediterranean.

If, in conclusion, we sum up the results of this comparison of

the resources of the two great powers, the judgment expressed by a

sagacious and impartial Greek is perhaps borne out, that Carthage and

Rome were, when the struggle between them began, on the whole equally

matched. But we cannot omit to add that, while Carthage had put forth

all the efforts of which intellect and wealth were capable to provide

herself with artificial means of attack and defence, she was unable in

any satisfactory way to make up for the fundamental wants of a land

army of her own and of a symmachy resting on a self-supporting basis.

That Rome could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only

in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to

perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such

an attack. Fleets were not yet in those times of the infancy of

navigation a permanent heirloom of nations, but could be fitted out

wherever there were trees, iron, and water. It was clear, and had

been several times tested in Africa itself, that even powerful

maritime states were not able to prevent enemies weaker by sea from

landing. When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general

could follow the same course; and while in Italy the entrance of an

invading army simply began the war, the same event in Libya put an

end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special

accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage

must finally succumb.

Notes for Chapter I

1. II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

2. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes

3. The most precise description of this important class occurs in

the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the

Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other,

they are called --ol Karchedonion uparchoi osoi tois autois nomois

chrontai--. Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied

(--summachides poleis--, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62;

Justin, xxii. 7, 3). Their -conubium- with the Carthaginians is

mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55; the -commercium- is implied in the

"like laws." That the old Phoenician colonies were included among

the Liby-phoenicians, is shown by the designation of Hippo as a

Liby-phoenician city (Liv. xxv. 40); on the other hand as to the

settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, it is said in the

Periplus of Hanno: "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail

beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Liby-phoenicians."

In substance the word "Liby-phoenicians" was used by the Carthaginians

not as a national designation, but as a category of state-law. This

view is quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name

denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to

the text of Polybius); in reality, at least in the institution of very

exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians

(Diod. xiii. 79; Cic. pro Scauro, 42). The analogy in name and legal

position between the Latins of Rome and the Liby-phoenicians

of Carthage is unmistakable.

4. The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was

and is employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language

--one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean

one--certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its

forms to the latter than is the Phoenician alphabet; but it by no

means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not

from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the

partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from

deriving these from the Greek. We must rather assume that the Libyan

alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the

latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician

language that have reached us were written.

5. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

6. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

7. II. VII. The Roman Fleet

8. II. IV. Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

9. The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according

to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i.

17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the

prologue of the "Poenulus" of Plautus, it is said of the hero of

the title:-

-Et is omnes linguas scit; sed dissimulat sciens

Se scire; Poenus plane est; quid verbit opus't-?

10. Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number,

and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account

the available space, has been reckoned at 250,000. Apart from the

uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city

with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is

doubtless to be understood in a political, not in an urban, sense,

just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all

Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city

or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other

lands. There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in

the case of Carthage; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for

the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher number

than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.

11. II. VII. System of Government, note

CHAPTER II

The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

State of Sicily

For upwards of a century the feud between the Carthaginians and

the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily.

On both sides the contest was carried on with the weapons of political

proselytism, for, while Carthage kept up communications with the

aristocratic-republican opposition in Syracuse, the Syracusan dynasts

maintained relations with the national party in the Greek cities that

had become tributary to Carthage. On both sides armies of mercenaries

were employed to fight their battles--by Timoleon and Agathocles, as

well as by the Phoenician generals. And as like means were employed

on both sides, so the conflict had been waged on both with a disregard

of honour and a perfidy unexampled in the history of the west. The

Syracusans were the weaker party. In the peace of 440 Carthage had

still limited her claims to the third of the island to the west of

Heraclea Minoa and Himera, and had expressly recognized the hegemony

of the Syracusans over all the cities to the eastward. The expulsion

of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (479) left by far the larger half of

the island, and especially the important Agrigentum, in the hands of

Carthage; the Syracusans retained nothing but Tauromenium and the

south-east of the island.

Campanian Mercenaries

In the second great city on the east coast, Messana, a band of foreign

soldiers had established themselves and held the city, independent

alike of Syracusans and Carthaginians. These new rulers of Messana

were Campanian mercenaries. The dissolute habits that had become

prevalent among the Sabellians settled in and around Capua,(1) had

made Campania in the fourth and fifth centuries--what Aetolia, Crete,

and Laconia were afterwards--the universal recruiting field for

princes and cities in search of mercenaries. The semi-culture that

had been called into existence there by the Campanian Greeks, the

barbaric luxury of life in Capua and the other Campanian cities,

the political impotence to which the hegemony of Rome condemned them,

while yet its rule was not so stern as wholly to withdraw from them

the right of self-disposal--all tended to drive the youth of Campania

in troops to the standards of the recruiting officers. As a matter of

course, this wanton and unscrupulous selling of themselves here, as

everywhere, brought in its train estrangement from their native land,

habits of violence and military disorder, and indifference to the

breach of their allegiance. These Campanians could see no reason why

a band of mercenaries should not seize on their own behalf any city

entrusted to their guardianship, provided only they were in a position

to hold it--the Samnites had established their dominion in Capua

itself, and the Lucanians in a succession of Greek cities, after

a fashion not much more honourable.

Mammertines

Nowhere was the state of political relations more inviting for such

enterprises than in Sicily. Already the Campanian captains who came

to Sicily during the Peloponnesian war had insinuated themselves in

this way into Entella and Aetna. Somewhere about the year 470 a

Campanian band, which had previously served under Agathocles and after

his death (465) took up the trade of freebooters on their own account,

established themselves in Messana, the second city of Greek Sicily,

and the chief seat of the anti-Syracusan party in that portion of

the island which was still in the power of the Greeks. The citizens

were slain or expelled, their wives and children and houses were

distributed among the soldiers, and the new masters of the city, the

Mamertines or "men of Mars," as they called themselves, soon became

the third power in the island, the north-eastern portion of which they

reduced to subjection in the times of confusion that succeeded the

death of Agathocles. The Carthaginians were no unwilling spectators

of these events, which established in the immediate vicinity of the

Syracusans a new and powerful adversary instead of a cognate and

ordinarily allied or dependent city. With Carthaginian aid the

Mamertines maintained themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely

departure of the king restored to them all their power.

Hiero of Syracuse

War between the Syracusans and the Mammertines

It is not becoming in the historian either to excuse the perfidious

crime by which the Mamertines seized their power, or to forget that

the God of history does not necessarily punish the sins of the fathers

to the fourth generation. He who feels it his vocation to judge the

sins of others may condemn the human agents; for Sicily it might be a

blessing that a warlike power, and one belonging to the island, thus

began to be formed in it--a power which was already able to bring

eight thousand men into the field, and which was gradually putting

itself in a position to take up at the proper time and on its own

resources that struggle against the foreigners, to the maintenance

of which the Hellenes, becoming more and more unaccustomed to arms

notwithstanding their perpetual wars, were no longer equal.

In the first instance, however, things took another turn. A young

Syracusan officer, who by his descent from the family of Gelo and

his intimate relations of kindred with king Pyrrhus as well as by the

distinction with which he had fought in the campaigns of the latter,

had attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens as well as of the

Syracusan soldiery--Hiero, son of Hierocles--was called by military

election to command the army, which was at variance with the citizens

(479-480). By his prudent administration, the nobility of his

character, and the moderation of his views, he rapidly gained the

hearts of the citizens of Syracuse--who had been accustomed to the

most scandalous lawlessness in their despots--and of the Sicilian

Greeks in general. He rid himself--in a perfidious manner, it is

true--of the insubordinate army of mercenaries, revived the citizen-

militia, and endeavoured, at first with the title of general,

afterwards with that of king, to re-establish the deeply sunken

Hellenic power by means of his civic troops and of fresh and more

manageable recruits. With the Carthaginians, who in concert with the

Greeks had driven king Pyrrhus from the island, there was at that time

peace. The immediate foes of the Syracusans were the Mamertines.

They were the kinsmen of those hated mercenaries whom the Syracusans

had recently extirpated; they had murdered their own Greek hosts;

they had curtailed the Syracusan territory; they had oppressed and

plundered a number of smaller Greek towns. In league with the Romans

who just about this time were sending their legions against the

Campanians in Rhegium, the allies, kinsmen, and confederates in crime

of the Mamertines,(2) Hiero turned his arms against Messana. By a

great victory, after which Hiero was proclaimed king of the Siceliots

(484), he succeeded in shutting up the Mamertines within their city,

and after the siege had lasted some years, they found themselves

reduced to extremity and unable to hold the city longer against Hiero

on their own resources. It is evident that a surrender on stipulated

conditions was impossible, and that the axe of the executioner, which

had fallen upon the Campanians of Rhegium at Rome, as certainly

awaited those of Messana at Syracuse. Their only means of safety lay

in delivering up the city either to the Carthaginians or to the

Romans, both of whom could not but be so strongly set upon acquiring

that important place as to overlook all other scruples. Whether it

would be more advantageous to surrender it to the masters of Africa

or to the masters of Italy, was doubtful; after long hesitation the

majority of the Campanian burgesses at length resolved to offer

the possession of their sea-commanding fortress to the Romans.

The Mammertines Received into the Italian Confederacy

It was a moment of the deepest significance in the history of the

world, when the envoys of the Mamertines appeared in the Roman senate.

No one indeed could then anticipate all that was to depend on the

crossing of that narrow arm of the sea; but that the decision, however

it should go, would involve consequences far other and more important

than had attached to any decree hitherto passed by the senate, must

have been manifest to every one of the deliberating fathers of the

city. Strictly upright men might indeed ask how it was possible to

deliberate at all, and how any one could even think of suggesting

that the Romans should not only break their alliance with Hiero, but

should, just after the Campanians of Rhegium had been punished by them

with righteous severity, admit the no less guilty Sicilian accomplices

to the alliance and friendship of the state, and thereby rescue them

from the punishment which they deserved. Such an outrage on propriety

would not only afford their adversaries matter for declamation,

but must seriously offend all men of moral feeling. But even the

statesman, with whom political morality was no mere phrase, might ask

in reply, how Roman burgesses, who had broken their military oath and

treacherously murdered the allies of Rome, could be placed on a level

with foreigners who had committed an outrage on foreigners, where

no one had constituted the Romans judges of the one or avengers of

the other? Had the question been only whether the Syracusans or

Mamertines should rule in Messana, Rome might certainly have

acquiesced in the rule of either. Rome was striving for the

possession of Italy, as Carthage for that of Sicily; the designs of

the two powers scarcely then went further. But that very circumstance

formed a reason why each desired to have and retain on its frontier an

intermediate power--the Carthaginians for instance reckoning in this

way on Tarentum, the Romans on Syracuse and Messana--and why, if that

course was impossible, each preferred to see these adjacent places

given over to itself rather than to the other great power.

As Carthage had made an attempt in Italy, when Rhegium and Tarentum

were about to be occupied by the Romans, to acquire these cities for

itself, and had only been prevented from doing so by accident, so in

Sicily an opportunity now offered itself for Rome to bring the city of

Messana into its symmachy; should the Romans reject it, it was not to

be expected that the city would remain independent or would become

Syracusan; they would themselves throw it into the arms of the

Phoenicians. Were they justified in allowing an opportunity to

escape, such as certainly would never recur, of making themselves

masters of the natural tete de pont between Italy and Sicily, and of

securing it by means of a brave garrison on which they could, for good

reasons, rely? Were they justified in abandoning Messana, and thereby

surrendering the command of the last free passage between the eastern

and western seas, and sacrificing the commercial liberty of Italy?

It is true that other objections might be urged to the occupation of

Messana besides mere scruples of feeling and of honourable policy.

That it could not but lead to a war with Carthage, was the least of

these; serious as was such a war, Rome might not fear it. But there

was the more important objection that by crossing the sea the Romans

would depart from the purely Italian and purely continental policy

which they had hitherto pursued; they would abandon the system by

which their ancestors had founded the greatness of Rome, to enter upon

another system the results of which no one could foretell. It was one

of those moments when calculation ceases, and when faith in men's own

and in their country's destiny alone gives them courage to grasp the

hand which beckons to them out of the darkness of the future, and

to follow it no one knows whither. Long and seriously the senate

deliberated on the proposal of the consuls to lead the legions to the

help of the Mamertines; it came to no decisive resolution. But the

burgesses, to whom the matter was referred, were animated by a lively

sense of the greatness of the power which their own energy had

established. The conquest of Italy encouraged the Romans, as that of

Greece encouraged the Macedonians and that of Silesia the Prussians,

to enter upon a new political career. A formal pretext for supporting

the Mamertines was found in the protectorate which Rome claimed the

right to exercise over all Italians. The transmarine Italians were

received into the Italian confederacy;(3) and on the proposal of

the consuls the citizens resolved to send them aid (489).

Variance between Rome and Carthage

Carthaginians in Messana

Messana Seized by the Romans

War between the Romans and the Carthaginians and the Syracusans

Much depended on the way in which the two Sicilian powers, immediately

affected by this intervention of the Romans in the affairs of the

island, and both hitherto nominally in alliance with Rome, would

regard her interference. Hiero had sufficient reason to treat the

summons, by which the Romans required him to desist from hostilities

against their new confederates in Messana, precisely in the same way

as the Samnites and Lucanians in similar circumstances had received

the occupation of Capua and Thurii, and to answer the Romans by a

declaration of war. If, however, he remained unsupported, such a war

would be folly; and it might be expected from his prudent and moderate

policy that he would acquiesce in what was inevitable, if Carthage

should be disposed for peace. This seemed not impossible. A Roman

embassy was now (489) sent to Carthage, seven years after the attempt

of the Phoenician fleet to gain possession of Tarentum, to demand

explanations as to these incidents.(4) Grievances not unfounded, but

half-forgotten, once more emerged--it seemed not superfluous amidst

other warlike preparations to replenish the diplomatic armoury

with reasons for war, and for the coming manifesto to reserve to

themselves, as was the custom of the Romans, the character of the

party aggrieved. This much at least might with entire justice be

affirmed, that the respective enterprises on Tarentum and Messana

stood upon exactly the same footing in point of design and of pretext,

and that it was simply the accident of success that made the

difference. Carthage avoided an open rupture. The ambassadors

carried back to Rome the disavowal of the Carthaginian admiral who

had made the attempt on Tarentum, along with the requisite false

oaths: the counter-complaints, which of course were not wanting on

the part of Carthage, were studiously moderate, and abstained from

characterizing the meditated invasion of Sicily as a ground for war.

Such, however, it was; for Carthage regarded the affairs of Sicily

--just as Rome regarded those of Italy--as internal matters in which

an independent power could allow no interference, and was determined

to act accordingly. But Phoenician policy followed a gentler course

than that of threatening open war. When the preparations of Rome for

sending help to the Mamertines were at length so far advanced that the

fleet formed of the war-vessels of Naples, Tarentum, Velia, and Locri,

and the vanguard of the Roman land army under the military tribune

Gaius Claudius, had appeared at Rhegium (in the spring of 490),

unexpected news arrived from Messana that the Carthaginians, having

come to an understanding with the anti-Roman party there, had as a

neutral power arranged a peace between Hiero and the Mamertines; that

the siege had in consequence been raised; and that a Carthaginian

fleet lay in the harbour of Messana, and a Carthaginian garrison in

the citadel, both under the command of admiral Hanno. The Mamertine

citizens, now controlled by Carthaginian influence, informed the Roman

commanders, with due thanks to the federal help so speedily accorded

to them, that they were glad that they no longer needed it.

The adroit and daring officer who commanded the Roman vanguard

nevertheless set sail with his troops. But the Carthaginians warned

the Roman vessels to retire, and even made some of them prizes; these,

however, the Carthaginian admiral, remembering his strict orders to

give no pretext for the outbreak of hostilities, sent back to his good

friends on the other side of the straits. It almost seemed as if the

Romans had compromised themselves as uselessly before Messana, as the

Carthaginians before Tarentum. But Claudius did not allow himself

to be deterred, and on a second attempt he succeeded in landing.

Scarcely had he arrived when he called a meeting of the citizens; and,

at his wish, the Carthaginian admiral also appeared at the meeting,

still imagining that he should be able to avoid an open breach. But

the Romans seized his person in the assembly itself; and Hanno and the

Phoenician garrison in the citadel, weak and destitute of a leader,

were pusillanimous enough, the former to give to his troops the

command to withdraw, the latter to comply with the orders of their

captive general and to evacuate the city along with him. Thus the

tete de pont of the island fell into the hands of the Romans. The

Carthaginian authorities, justly indignant at the folly and weakness

of their general, caused him to be executed, and declared war against

the Romans. Above all it was their aim to recover the lost place. A

strong Carthaginian fleet, led by Hanno, son of Hannibal, appeared off

Messana; while the fleet blockaded the straits, the Carthaginian army

landing from it began the siege on the north side. Hiero, who had

only waited for the Carthaginian attack to begin the war with Rome,

again brought up his army, which he had hardly withdrawn, against

Messana, and undertook the attack on the south side of the city.

Peace with Hiero

But meanwhile the Roman consul Appius Claudius Caudex had appeared at

Rhegium with the main body of his army, and succeeded in crossing on

a dark night in spite of the Carthaginian fleet. Audacity and fortune

were on the side of the Romans; the allies, not prepared for an attack

by the whole Roman army and consequently not united, were beaten in

detail by the Roman legions issuing from the city; and thus the siege

was raised. The Roman army kept the field during the summer, and

even made an attempt on Syracuse; but, when that had failed and the

siege of Echetla (on the confines of the territories of Syracuse and

Carthage) had to be abandoned with loss, the Roman army returned to

Messana, and thence, leaving a strong garrison behind them, to Italy.

The results obtained in this first campaign of the Romans out of Italy

may not quite have corresponded to the expectations at home, for the

consul had no triumph; nevertheless, the energy which the Romans

displayed in Sicily could not fail to make a great impression on the

Sicilian Greeks. In the following year both consuls and an army twice

as large entered the island unopposed. One of them, Marcus Valerius

Maximus, afterwards called from this campaign the "hero of Messana"

(-Messalla-), achieved a brilliant victory over the allied

Carthaginians and Syracusans. After this battle the Phoenician army

no longer ventured to keep the field against the Romans; Alaesa,

Centuripa, and the smaller Greek towns generally fell to the victors,

and Hiero himself abandoned the Carthaginian side and made peace and

alliance with the Romans (491). He pursued a judicious policy in

joining the Romans as soon as it appeared that their interference in

Sicily was in earnest, and while there was still time to purchase

peace without cessions and sacrifices. The intermediate states in

Sicily, Syracuse and Messana, which were unable to follow out a policy

of their own and had only the choice between Roman and Carthaginian

hegemony, could not but at any rate prefer the former; because the

Romans had very probably not as yet formed the design of conquering

the island for themselves, but sought merely to prevent its being

acquired by Carthage, and at all events Rome might be expected to

substitute a more tolerable treatment and a due protection of

commercial freedom for the tyrannizing and monopolizing system that

Carthage pursued. Henceforth Hiero continued to be the most

important, the steadiest, and the most esteemed ally of the Romans

in the island.

Capture of Agrigentum

The Romans had thus gained their immediate object. By their double

alliance with Messana and Syracuse, and the firm hold which they had

on the whole east coast, they secured the means of landing on the

island and of maintaining--which hitherto had been a very difficult

matter--their armies there; and the war, which had previously been

doubtful and hazardous, lost in a great measure its character of risk.

Accordingly, no greater exertions were made for it than for the wars

in Samnium and Etruria; the two legions which were sent over to the

island for the next year (492) sufficed, in concert with the Sicilian

Greeks, to drive the Carthaginians everywhere into their fortresses.

The commander-in-chief of the Carthaginians, Hannibal son of Gisgo,

threw himself with the flower of his troops into Agrigentum, to defend

to the last that most important of the Carthaginian inland cities.

Unable to storm a city so strong, the Romans blockaded it with

entrenched lines and a double camp; the besieged, who numbered 50,000

soon suffered from want of provisions. To raise the siege the

Carthaginian admiral Hanno landed at Heraclea, and cut off in turn the

supplies from the Roman besieging force. On both sides the distress

was great. At length a battle was resolved on, to put an end to the

state of embarrassment and uncertainty. In this battle the Numidian

cavalry showed itself just as superior to the Roman horse as the Roman

infantry was superior to the Phoenician foot; the infantry decided

the victory, but the losses even of the Romans were very considerable.

The result of the successful struggle was somewhat marred by the

circumstance that, after the battle, during the confusion and fatigue

of the conquerors, the beleaguered army succeeded in escaping from

the city and in reaching the fleet. The victory was nevertheless of

importance; Agrigentum fell into the hands of the Romans, and thus the

whole island was in their power, with the exception of the maritime

fortresses, in which the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, Hanno's

successor in command, entrenched himself to the teeth, and was not to

be driven out either by force or by famine. The war was thenceforth

continued only by sallies of the Carthaginians from the Sicilian

fortresses and their descents on the Italian coasts.

Beginning of the Maritime War

The Romans Build a Fleet

In fact, the Romans now for the first time felt the real difficulties

of the war. If, as we are told, the Carthaginian diplomatists before

the outbreak of hostilities warned the Romans not to push the matter

to a breach, because against their will no Roman could even wash his

hands in the sea, the threat was well founded. The Carthaginian fleet

ruled the sea without a rival, and not only kept the coast towns of

Sicily in due obedience and provided them with all necessaries,

but also threatened a descent upon Italy, for which reason it was

necessary in 492 to retain a consular army there. No invasion on a

large scale occurred; but smaller Carthaginian detachments landed on

the Italian coasts and levied contributions on the allies of Rome,

and what was worst of all, completely paralyzed the commerce of Rome

and her allies. The continuance of such a course for even a short

time would suffice entirely to ruin Caere, Ostia, Neapolis, Tarentum,

and Syracuse, while the Carthaginians easily consoled themselves for

the loss of the tribute of Sicily with the contributions which they

levied and the rich prizes of their privateering. The Romans now

learned, what Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus had learned before,

that it was as difficult to conquer the Carthaginians as it was easy

to beat them in the field. They saw that everything depended on

procuring a fleet, and resolved to form one of twenty triremes and

a hundred quinqueremes. The execution, however, of this energetic

resolution was not easy. The representation originating in the

schools of the rhetoricians, which would have us believe that the

Romans then for the first time dipped their oars in water, is no doubt

a childish tale; the mercantile marine of Italy must at this time have

been very extensive, and there was no want even of Italian vessels of

war. But these were war-barks and triremes, such as had been in use

in earlier times; quinqueremes, which under the more modern system of

naval warfare that had originated chiefly in Cartilage were almost

exclusively employed in the line, had not yet been built in Italy.

The measure adopted by the Romans was therefore much as if a maritime

state of the present day were to pass at once from the building of

frigates and cutters to the building of ships of the line; and, just

as in such a case now a foreign ship of the line would, if possible,

be adopted as a pattern, the Romans referred their master shipbuilders

to a stranded Carthaginian -penteres- as a model No doubt the Romans,

had they wished, might have sooner attained their object with the aid

of the Syracusans and Massiliots; but their statesmen had too much

sagacity to desire to defend Italy by means of a fleet not Italian.

The Italian allies, however, were largely drawn upon both for the

naval officers, who must have been for the most part taken from the

Italian mercantile marine, and for the sailors, whose name (-socii

navales-) shows that for a time they were exclusively furnished by

the allies; along with these, slaves provided by the state and

the wealthier families were afterwards employed, and ere long also

the poorer class of burgesses. Under such circumstances, and when we

take into account, as is but fair, on the one hand the comparatively

low state of shipbuilding at that time, and on the other hand the

energy of the Romans, there is nothing incredible in the statement

that the Romans solved within a year the problem--which baffled

Napoleon--of converting a continental into a maritime power, and

actually launched their fleet of 120 sail in the spring of 494.

It is true, that it was by no means a match for the Carthaginian fleet

in numbers and efficiency at sea; and these were points of the greater

importance, as the naval tactics of the period consisted mainly in

manoeuvring. In the maritime warfare of that period hoplites and

archers no doubt fought from the deck, and projectile machines were

also plied from it; but the ordinary and really decisive mode of

action consisted in running foul of the enemy's vessels, for which

purpose the prows were furnished with heavy iron beaks: the vessels

engaged were in the habit of sailing round each other till one or the

other succeeded in giving the thrust, which usually proved decisive.

Accordingly the crew of an ordinary Greek trireme, consisting of about

200 men, contained only about 10 soldiers, but on the other hand 170

rowers, from 50 to 60 on each deck; that of a quinquereme numbered

about 300 rowers, and soldiers in proportion.

The happy idea occurred to the Romans that they might make up for

what their vessels, with their unpractised officers and crews,

necessarily lacked in ability of manoeuvring, by again assigning a

more considerable part in naval warfare to the soldiers. They

stationed at the prow of each vessel a flying bridge, which could be

lowered in front or on either side; it was furnished on both sides

with parapets, and had space for two men in front. When the enemy's

vessel was sailing up to strike the Roman one, or was lying alongside

of it after the thrust had been evaded, the bridge on deck was

suddenly lowered and fastened to its opponent by means of a grappling-

iron: this not only prevented the running down, but enabled the Roman

marines to pass along the bridge to the enemy's deck and to carry it

by assault as in a conflict on land. No distinct body of marines

was formed, but land troops were employed, when required, for this

maritime service. In one instance as many as 120 legionaries fought

in each ship on occasion of a great naval battle; in that case however

the Roman fleet had at the same time a landing-army on board.

In this way the Romans created a fleet which was a match for the

Carthaginians. Those err, who represent this building of a Roman

fleet as a fairy tale, and besides they miss their aim; the feat must

be understood in order to be admired. The construction of a fleet by

the Romans was in very truth a noble national work--a work through

which, by their clear perception of what was needful and possible, by

ingenuity in invention, and by energy in resolution and in execution,

they rescued their country from a position which was worse than at

first it seemed.

Naval Victory at Mylae

The outset, nevertheless, was not favourable to the Romans. The Roman

admiral, the consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, who had sailed for

Messana with the first seventeen vessels ready for sea (494), fancied,

when on the voyage, that he should be able to capture Lipara by a

coup de main. But a division of the Carthaginian fleet stationed at

Panormus blockaded the harbour of the island where the Roman vessels

rode at anchor, and captured the whole squadron along with the consul

without a struggle. This, however, did not deter the main fleet from

likewise sailing, as soon as its preparations were completed, for

Messana. On its voyage along the Italian coast it fell in with a

Carthaginian reconnoitring squadron of less strength, on which it

had the good fortune to inflict a loss more than counterbalancing

the first loss of the Romans; and thus successful and victorious it

entered the port of Messana, where the second consul Gaius Duilius

took the command in room of his captured colleague. At the promontory

of Mylae, to the north-west of Messana, the Carthaginian fleet, that

advanced from Panormus under the command of Hannibal, encountered the

Roman, which here underwent its first trial on a great scale. The

Carthaginians, seeing in the ill-sailing and unwieldy vessels of the

Romans an easy prey, fell upon them in irregular order; but the newly

invented boarding-bridges proved their thorough efficiency. The Roman

vessels hooked and stormed those of the enemy as they came up one

by one; they could not be approached either in front or on the sides

without the dangerous bridge descending on the enemy's deck. When the

battle was over, about fifty Carthaginian vessels, almost the half of

the fleet, were sunk or captured by the Romans; among the latter was

the ship of the admiral Hannibal, formerly belonging to king Pyrrhus.

The gain was great; still greater the moral effect of the victory.

Rome had suddenly become a naval power, and held in her hand the

means of energetically terminating a war which threatened to be

endlessly prolonged and to involve the commerce of Italy in ruin.

The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia

Two plans were open to the Romans. They might attack Carthage on the

Italian islands and deprive her of the coast fortresses of Sicily and

Sardinia one after another--a scheme which was perhaps practicable

through well-combined operations by land and sea; and, in the event of

its being accomplished, peace might either be concluded with Carthage

on the basis of the cession of these islands, or, should such terms

not be accepted or prove unsatisfactory, the second stage of the war

might be transferred to Africa. Or they might neglect the islands and

throw themselves at once with all their strength on Africa, not, in

the adventurous style of Agathocles, burning their vessels behind them

and staking all on the victory of a desperate band, but covering with

a strong fleet the communications between the African invading army

and Italy; and in that case a peace on moderate terms might be

expected from the consternation of the enemy after the first

successes, or, if the Romans chose, they might by pushing matters

to an extremity compel the enemy to entire surrender.

They chose, in the first instance, the former plan of operations.

In the year after the battle of Mylae (495) the consul Lucius Scipio

captured the port of Aleria in Corsica--we still possess the tombstone

of the general, which makes mention of this deed--and made Corsica a

naval station against Sardinia. An attempt to establish a footing in

Ulbia on the northern coast of that island failed, because the fleet

wanted troops for landing. In the succeeding year (496) it was

repeated with better success, and the open villages along the coast

were plundered; but no permanent establishment of the Romans took

place. Nor was greater progress made in Sicily. Hamilcar conducted

the war with energy and adroitness, not only by force of arms on sea

and land, but also by political proselytism. Of the numerous small

country towns some every year fell away from the Romans, and had to

be laboriously wrested afresh from the Phoenician grasp; while in

the coast fortresses the Carthaginians maintained themselves without

challenge, particularly in their headquarters of Panormus and in their

new stronghold of Drepana, to which, on account of its easier defence

by sea, Hamilcar had transferred the inhabitants of Eryx. A second

great naval engagement off the promontory of Tyndaris (497), in which

both parties claimed the victory, made no change in the position of

affairs. In this way no progress was made, whether in consequence

of the division and rapid change of the chief command of the Roman

troops, which rendered the concentrated management of a series of

operations on a small scale exceedingly difficult, or from the general

strategical relations of the case, which certainly, as the science

of war then stood, were unfavourable to the attacking party in

general,(5) and particularly so to the Romans, who were still on

the mere threshold of scientific warfare. Meanwhile, although the

pillaging of the Italian coasts had ceased, the commerce of Italy

suffered not much less than it had done before the fleet was built.

Attack on Africa

Naval Victory of Ecnomus

Weary of a course of operations without results, and impatient to put

an end to the war, the senate resolved to change its system, and to

assail Carthage in Africa. In the spring of 498 a fleet of 330 ships

of the line set sail for the coast of Libya: at the mouth of the river

Himera on the south coast of Sicily it embarked the army for landing,

consisting of four legions, under the charge of the two consuls Marcus

Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Volso, both experienced generals.

The Carthaginian admiral suffered the embarkation of the enemy's

troops to take place; but on continuing their voyage towards Africa

the Romans found the Punic fleet drawn up in order of battle off

Ecnomus to protect its native land from invasion. Seldom have greater

numbers fought at sea than were engaged in the battle that now ensued.

The Roman fleet: of 330 sail contained at least 100,000 men in its

crews, besides the landing army of about 40,000; the Carthaginian of

350 vessels was manned by at least an equal number; so that well-nigh

three hundred thousand men were brought into action on this day to

decide the contest between the two mighty civic communities.

The Phoenicians were placed in a single widely-extended line, with

their left wing resting on the Sicilian coast. The Romans arranged

themselves in a triangle, with the ships of the two consuls as

admirals at the apex, the first and second squadrons drawn out in

oblique line to the right and left, and a third squadron, having the

vessels built for the transport of the cavalry in tow, forming the

line which closed the triangle. They thus bore down in close order on

the enemy. A fourth squadron placed in reserve followed more slowly.

The wedge-shaped attack broke without difficulty the Carthaginian

line, for its centre, which was first assailed, intentionally gave

way, and the battle resolved itself into three separate engagements.

While the admirals with the two squadrons drawn up on the wings

pursued the Carthaginian centre and were closely engaged with it, the

left wing of the Carthaginians drawn up along the coast wheeled round

upon the third Roman squadron, which was prevented by the vessels

which it had in tow from following the two others, and by a vehement

onset in superior force drove it against the shore; at the same time

the Roman reserve was turned on the open sea, and assailed from

behind, by the right wing of the Carthaginians. The first of these

three engagements was soon at an end; the ships of the Carthaginian

centre, manifestly much weaker than the two Roman squadrons with which

they were engaged, took to flight. Meanwhile the two other divisions

of the Romans had a hard struggle with the superior enemy; but in

close fighting the dreaded boarding-bridges stood them in good stead,

and by this means they succeeded in holding out till the two admirals

with their vessels could come up. By their arrival the Roman reserve

was relieved, and the Carthaginian vessels of the right wing retired

before the superior force. And now, when this conflict had been

decided in favour of the Romans, all the Roman vessels that still

could keep the sea fell on the rear of the Carthaginian left wing,

which was obstinately following up its advantage, so that it was

surrounded and almost all the vessels composing it were taken. The

losses otherwise were nearly equal. Of the Roman fleet 24 sail were

sunk; of the Carthaginian 30 were sunk, and 64 were taken.

Landing of Regulus in Africa

Notwithstanding its considerable loss, the Carthaginian fleet did not

give up the protection of Africa, and with that view returned to the

gulf of Carthage, where it expected the descent to take place and

purposed to give battle a second time. But the Romans landed, not on

the western side of the peninsula which helps to form the gulf, but on

the eastern side, where the bay of Clupea presented a spacious harbour

affording protection in almost all winds, and the town, situated close

by the sea on a shield-shaped eminence rising out of the plain,

supplied an excellent defence for the harbour. They disembarked the

troops without hindrance from the enemy, and established themselves

on the hill; in a short time an entrenched naval camp was constructed,

and the land army was at liberty to commence operations. The Roman

troops ranged over the country and levied contributions: they were

able to send as many as 20,000 slaves to Rome. Through the rarest

good fortune the bold scheme had succeeded at the first stroke, and

with but slight sacrifices: the end seemed attained. The feeling of

confidence that in this respect animated the Romans is evinced by the

resolution of the senate to recall to Italy the greater portion of the

fleet and half of the army; Marcus Regulus alone remained in Africa

with 40 ships, 15,000 infantry, and 500 cavalry. Their confidence,

however, was seemingly not overstrained. The Carthaginian army, which

was disheartened, did not venture forth into the plain, but waited to

sustain discomfiture in the wooded defiles, in which it could make no

use of its two best arms, the cavalry and the elephants. The towns

surrendered -en masse-; the Numidians rose in insurrection, and

overran the country far and wide. Regulus might hope to begin the

next campaign with the siege of the capital, and with that view he

pitched his camp for the winter in its immediate vicinity at Tunes.

Vain Negotiations for Peace

The spirit of the Carthaginians was broken: they sued for peace.

But the conditions which the consul proposed--not merely the cession

of Sicily and Sardinia, but the conclusion of an alliance on unequal

terms with Rome, which would have bound the Carthaginians to renounce

a war-marine of their own and to furnish vessels for the Roman wars

--conditions which would have placed Carthage on a level with Neapolis

and Tarentum, could not be accepted, so long as a Carthaginian army

kept the field and a Carthaginian fleet kept the sea, and the capital

stood unshaken.

Preparations of Carthage

The mighty enthusiasm, which is wont to blaze up nobly among Oriental

nations, even the most abased, on the approach of extreme peril--the

energy of dire necessity--impelled the Carthaginians to exertions,

such as were by no means expected from a nation of shopkeepers.

Hamilcar, who had carried on the guerilla war against the Romans in

Sicily with so much success, appeared in Libya with the flower of

the Sicilian troops, which furnished an admirable nucleus for the

newly-levied force. The connections and gold of the Carthaginians,

moreover, brought to them excellent Numidian horsemen in troops,

and also numerous Greek mercenaries; amongst whom was the celebrated

captain Xanthippus of Sparta, whose talent for organization and

strategical skill were of great service to his new masters.(6) While

the Carthaginians were thus making their preparations in the course of

the winter, the Roman general remained inactive at Tunes. Whether it

was that he did not anticipate the storm which was gathering over his

head, or that a sense of military honour prohibited him from doing

what his position demanded--instead of renouncing a siege which he was

not in a condition even to attempt, and shutting himself up in the

stronghold of Clupea, he remained with a handful of men before the

walls of the hostile capital, neglecting even to secure his line of

retreat to the naval camp, and neglecting to provide himself with

--what above all he wanted, and what might have been so easily

obtained through negotiation with the revolted Numidian tribes

--a good light cavalry. He thus wantonly brought himself and

his army into a plight similar to that which formerly befell

Agathocles in his desperate adventurous expedition.

Defeat of Regulus

When spring came (499), the state of affairs had so changed, that now

the Carthaginians were the first to take the field and to offer battle

to the Romans. It was natural that they should do so, for everything

depended on their getting quit of the army of Regulus, before

reinforcements could arrive from Italy. The same reason should have

led the Romans to desire delay; but, relying on their invincibleness

in the open field, they at once accepted battle notwithstanding their

inferiority of strength--for, although the numbers of the infantry on

both sides were nearly the same, their 4000 cavalry and 100 elephants

gave to the Carthaginians a decided superiority--and notwithstanding

the unfavourable nature of the ground, the Carthaginians having taken

up their position in a broad plain presumably not far from Tunes.

Xanthippus, who on this day commanded the Carthaginians, first threw

his cavalry on that of the enemy, which was stationed, as usual, on

the two flanks of the line of battle; the few squadrons of the Romans

were scattered like dust in a moment before the masses of the enemy's

horse, and the Roman infantry found itself outflanked by them and

surrounded. The legions, unshaken by their apparent danger, advanced

to attack the enemy's line; and, although the row of elephants placed

as a protection in front of it checked the right wing and centre of

the Romans, the left wing at any rate, marching past the elephants,

engaged the mercenary infantry on the right of the enemy, and

overthrew them completely. But this very success broke up the Roman

ranks. The main body indeed, assailed by the elephants in front and

by the cavalry on the flanks and in the rear, formed square, and

defended itself with heroic courage, but the close masses were at

length broken and swept away. The victorious left wing encountered

the still fresh Carthaginian centre, where the Libyan infantry

prepared a similar fate for it. From the nature of the ground and the

superior numbers of the enemy's cavalry, all the combatants in these

masses were cut down or taken prisoners; only two thousand men,

chiefly, in all probability, the light troops and horsemen who were

dispersed at the commencement, gained--while the Roman legions stood

to be slaughtered--a start sufficient to enable them with difficulty

to reach Clupea. Among the few prisoners was the consul himself, who

afterwards died in Carthage; his family, under the idea that he had

not been treated by the Carthaginians according to the usages of war,

wreaked a most revolting vengeance on two noble Carthaginian captives,

till even the slaves were moved to pity, and on their information the

tribunes put a stop to the shameful outrage.(7)

Evacuation of Africa

When the terrible news reached Rome, the first care of the Romans was

naturally directed to the saving of the force shut up in Clupea. A

Roman fleet of 350 sail immediately started, and after a noble victory

at the Hermaean promontory, in which the Carthaginians lost 114 ships,

it reached Clupea just in time to deliver from their hard-pressed

position the remains of the defeated army which were there entrenched.

Had it been despatched before the catastrophe occurred, it might have

converted the defeat into a victory that would probably have put an

end to the Punic wars. But so completely had the Romans now lost

their judgment, that after a successful conflict before Clupea they

embarked all their troops and sailed home, voluntarily evacuating

that important and easily defended position which secured to

them facilities for landing in Africa, and abandoning their

numerous African allies without protection to the vengeance of the

Carthaginians. The Carthaginians did not neglect the opportunity of

filling their empty treasury, and of making their subjects clearly

understand the consequences of unfaithfulness. An extraordinary

contribution of 1000 talents of silver (244,000 pounds) and 20,000

oxen was levied, and the sheiks in all the communities that had

revolted were crucified; it is said that there were three thousand of

them, and that this revolting atrocity on the part of the Carthaginian

authorities really laid the foundation of the revolution which broke

forth in Africa some years later. Lastly, as if to fill up the

measure of misfortune to the Romans even as their measure of success

had been filled before, on the homeward voyage of the fleet three-

fourths of the Roman vessels perished with their crews in a violent

storm; only eighty reached their port (July 499). The captains had

foretold the impending mischief, but the extemporised Roman admirals

had nevertheless given orders to sail.

Recommencement of the War in Sicily

After successes so immense the Carthaginians were able to resume their

offensive operations, which had long been in abeyance. Hasdrubal son

of Hanno landed at Lilybaeum with a strong force, which was enabled,

particularly by its enormous number of elephants--amounting to 140

--to keep the field against the Romans: the last battle had shown

that it was possible to make up for the want of good infantry to some

extent by elephants and cavalry. The Romans also resumed the war in

Sicily; the annihilation of their invading army had, as the voluntary

evacuation of Clupea shows, at once restored ascendency in the senate

to the party which was opposed to the war in Africa and was content

with the gradual subjugation of the islands. But for this purpose

too there was need of a fleet; and, since that which had conquered at

Mylae, at Ecnomus, and at the Hermaean promontory was destroyed, they

built a new one. Keels were at once laid down for 220 new vessels

of war--they had never hitherto undertaken the building of so many

simultaneously--and in the incredibly short space of three months

they were all ready for sea. In the spring of 500 the Roman fleet,

numbering 300 vessels mostly new, appeared on the north coast of

Sicily; Panormus, the most important town in Carthaginian Sicily,

was acquired through a successful attack from the seaboard, and the

smaller places there, Soluntum, Cephaloedium, and Tyndaris, likewise

fell into the hands of the Romans, so that along the whole north coast

of the island Thermae alone was retained by the Carthaginians.

Panormus became thenceforth one of the chief stations of the Romans

in Sicily. The war by land, nevertheless, made no progress; the two

armies stood face to face before Lilybaeum, but the Roman commanders,

who knew not how to encounter the mass of elephants, made no attempt

to compel a pitched battle.

In the ensuing year (501) the consuls, instead of pursuing sure

advantages in Sicily, preferred to make an expedition to Africa, for

the purpose not of landing but of plundering the coast towns. They

accomplished their object without opposition; but, after having first

run aground in the troublesome, and to their pilots unknown, waters of

the Lesser Syrtis, whence they with difficulty got clear again, the

fleet encountered a storm between Sicily and Italy, which cost more

than 150 ships. On this occasion also the pilots, notwithstanding

their representations and entreaties to be allowed to take the course

along the coast, were obliged by command of the consuls to steer

straight from Panormus across the open sea to Ostia.

Suspension of the Maritime War

Roman Victory at Panormus

Despondency now seized the fathers of the city; they resolved to

reduce their war-fleet to sixty sail, and to confine the war by sea

to the defence of the coasts, and to the convoy of transports.

Fortunately, just at this time, the languishing war in Sicily took a

more favourable turn. In the year 502, Thermae, the last point which

the Carthaginians held on the north coast, and the important island of

Lipara, had fallen into the hands of the Romans, and in the following

year (summer of 503) the consul Lucius Caecilius Metellus achieved

a brilliant victory over the army of elephants under the walls of

Panormus. These animals, which had been imprudently brought forward,

were wounded by the light troops of the Romans stationed in the moat

of the town; some of them fell into the moat, and others fell back

on their own troops, who crowded in wild disorder along with the

elephants towards the beach, that they might be picked up by the

Phoenician ships. One hundred and twenty elephants were captured, and

the Carthaginian army, whose strength depended on these animals, was

obliged once more to shut itself up in its fortresses. Eryx soon fell

into the hands of the Romans (505), and the Carthaginians retained

nothing in the island but Drepana and Lilybaeum. Carthage a second

time offered peace; but the victory of Metellus and the exhaustion

of the enemy gave to the more energetic party the upper hand

in the senate.

Siege of Lilybaeum

Peace was declined, and it was resolved to prosecute in earnest the

siege of the two Sicilian cities and for this purpose to send to sea

once more a fleet of 200 sail. The siege of Lilybaeum, the first

great and regular siege undertaken by Rome, and one of the most

obstinate known in history, was opened by the Romans with an important

success: they succeeded in introducing their fleet into the harbour

of the city, and in blockading it on the side facing the sea.

The besiegers, however, were not able to close the sea completely.

In spite of their sunken vessels and their palisades, and in spite of

the most careful vigilance, dexterous mariners, accurately acquainted

with the shallows and channels, maintained with swift-sailing vessels

a regular communication between the besieged in the city and the

Carthaginian fleet in the harbour of Drepana. In fact after some

time a Carthaginian squadron of 50 sail succeeded in running into

the harbour, in throwing a large quantity of provisions and a

reinforcement of 10,000 men into the city, and in returning

unmolested. The besieging land army was not much more fortunate.

They began with a regular attack; machines were erected, and in a

short time the batteries had demolished six of the towers flanking

the walls, so that the breach soon appeared to be practicable. But

the able Carthaginian commander Himilco parried this assault by giving

orders for the erection of a second wall behind the breach. An

attempt of the Romans to enter into an understanding with the garrison

was likewise frustrated in proper time. And, after a first sally

made for the purpose of burning the Roman set of machines had

been repulsed, the Carthaginians succeeded during a stormy night

in effecting their object. Upon this the Romans abandoned their

preparations for an assault, and contented themselves with blockading

the walls by land and water. The prospect of success in this way was

indeed very remote, so long as they were unable wholly to preclude the

entrance of the enemy's vessels; and the army of the besiegers was in

a condition not much better than that of the besieged in the city,

because their supplies were frequently cut off by the numerous and

bold light cavalry of the Carthaginians, and their ranks began to be

thinned by the diseases indigenous to that unwholesome region. The

capture of Lilybaeum, however, was of sufficient importance to induce

a patient perseverance in the laborious task, which promised to be

crowned in time with the desired success.

Defeat of the Roman Fleet before Drepana

Annililation of the Roman Transport Fleet

But the new consul Publius Claudius considered the task of maintaining

the investment of Lilybaeum too trifling: he preferred to change once

more the plan of operations, and with his numerous newly-manned

vessels suddenly to surprise the Carthaginian fleet which was waiting

in the neighbouring harbour of Drepana. With the whole blockading

squadron, which had taken on board volunteers from the legions, he

started about midnight, and sailing in good order with his right wing

by the shore, and his left in the open sea, he safely reached the

harbour of Drepana at sunrise. Here the Phoenician admiral Atarbas

was in command. Although surprised, he did not lose his presence of

mind or allow himself to be shut up in the harbour, but as the Roman

ships entered the harbour, which opens to the south in the form of

a sickle, on the one side, he withdrew his vessels from it by the

opposite side which was still free, and stationed them in line on the

outside. No other course remained to the Roman admiral but to recall

as speedily as possible the foremost vessels from the harbour, and to

make his arrangements for battle in like manner in front of it; but in

consequence of this retrograde movement he lost the free choice of his

position, and was obliged to accept battle in a line, which on the one

hand was outflanked by that of the enemy to the extent of five ships

--for there was not time fully to deploy the vessels as they issued

from the harbour--and on the other hand was crowded so close on the

shore that his vessels could neither retreat, nor sail behind the

line so as to come to each other's aid. Not only was the battle lost

before it began, but the Roman fleet was so completely ensnared that

it fell almost wholly into the hands of the enemy. The consul indeed

escaped, for he was the first who fled; but 93 Roman vessels, more

than three-fourths of the blockading fleet, with the flower of the

Roman legions on board, fell into the hands of the Phoenicians. It

was the first and only great naval victory which the Carthaginians

gained over the Romans. Lilybaeum was practically relieved on the

side towards the sea, for though the remains of the Roman fleet

returned to their former position, they were now much too weak

seriously to blockade a harbour which had never been wholly closed,

and they could only protect themselves from the attack of the

Carthaginian ships with the assistance of the land army. That single

imprudent act of an inexperienced and criminally thoughtless officer

had thrown away all that had been with so much difficulty attained

by the long and galling warfare around the fortress; and those war-

vessels of the Romans which his presumption had not forfeited were

shortly afterwards destroyed by the folly of his colleague.

The second consul, Lucius Junius Pullus, who had received the charge

of lading at Syracuse the supplies destined for the army at Lilybaeum,

and of convoying the transports along the south coast of the island

with a second Roman fleet of 120 war-vessels, instead of keeping his

ships together, committed the error of allowing the first convoy

to depart alone and of only following with the second. When the

Carthaginian vice-admiral, Carthalo, who with a hundred select ships

blockaded the Roman fleet in the port of Lilybaeum, received the

intelligence, he proceeded to the south coast of the island, cut off

the two Roman squadrons from each other by interposing between them,

and compelled them to take shelter in two harbours of refuge on the

inhospitable shores of Gela and Camarina. The attacks of the

Carthaginians were indeed bravely repulsed by the Romans with the help

of the shore batteries, which had for some time been erected there

as everywhere along the coast; but, as the Romans could not hope to

effect a junction and continue their voyage, Carthalo could leave

the elements to finish his work. The next great storm, accordingly,

completely annihilated the two Roman fleets in their wretched

roadsteads, while the Phoenician admiral easily weathered it on

the open sea with his unencumbered and well-managed ships.

The Romans, however, succeeded in saving the greater part

of the crews and cargoes (505).

Perplexity of the Romans

The Roman senate was in perplexity. The war had now reached its

sixteenth year; and they seemed to be farther from their object in

the sixteenth than in the first. In this war four large fleets had

perished, three of them with Roman armies on board; a fourth select

land army had been destroyed by the enemy in Libya; to say nothing of

the numerous losses which had been occasioned by the minor naval

engagements, and by the battles, and still more by the outpost

warfare and the diseases, of Sicily.

What a multitude of human lives the war swept away may be seen from

the fact, that the burgess-roll merely from 502 to 507 decreased by

about 40,000, a sixth part of the entire number; and this does not

include the losses of the allies, who bore the whole brunt of the war

by sea, and, in addition, at least an equal proportion with the Romans

of the warfare by land. Of the financial loss it is not possible to

form any conception; but both the direct damage sustained in ships and

-materiel-, and the indirect injury through the paralyzing of trade,

must have been enormous. An evil still greater than this was the

exhaustion of all the methods by which they had sought to terminate

the war. They had tried a landing in Africa with their forces fresh

and in the full career of victory, and had totally failed. They had

undertaken to storm Sicily town by town; the lesser places had fallen,

but the two mighty naval strongholds of Lilybaeum and Drepana stood

more invincible than ever. What were they to do? In fact, there was

to some extent reason for despondency. The fathers of the city became

faint-hearted; they allowed matters simply to take their course,

knowing well that a war protracted without object or end was more

pernicious for Italy than the straining of the last man and the last

penny, but without that courage and confidence in the nation and in

fortune, which could demand new sacrifices in addition to those that

had already been lavished in vain. They dismissed the fleet; at the

most they encouraged privateering, and with that view placed the war-

vessels of the state at the disposal of captains who were ready to

undertake a piratical warfare on their own account. The war by land

was continued nominally, because they could not do otherwise; but

they were content with observing the Sicilian fortresses and barely

maintaining what they possessed,--measures which, in the absence

of a fleet, required a very numerous army and extremely

costly preparations.

Now, if ever, the time had come when Carthage was in a position to

humble her mighty antagonist. She, too, of course must have felt

some exhaustion of resources; but, in the circumstances, the

Phoenician finances could not possibly be so disorganized as to

prevent the Carthaginians from continuing the war--which cost them

little beyond money--offensively and with energy. The Carthaginian

government, however, was not energetic, but on the contrary weak and

indolent, unless impelled to action by an easy and sure gain or by

extreme necessity. Glad to be rid of the Roman fleet, they foolishly

allowed their own also to fall into decay, and began after the example

of the enemy to confine their operations by land and sea to the petty

warfare in and around Sicily.