Destroy Carthage (20 page)
Ironically, the best Roman fleet of the war was launched in
the face of such obstruction, built in the winter of 243-242
by the subscription of private enthusiasts. Comprising 200
quinqueremes modelled on the ship seized from Hannibal the
Rhodian, it transferred to Sicily under the consul Lutatius
Catulus, a forceful leader who took pains to recruit and train
good crews. The arrival of Catulus off western Sicily surprised the Carthaginians, again accustomed to freedom of the
sea-lanes.
Indeed, when the Carthaginian navy sailed for the island at
the start of the 241 campaign season it was crammed with
provisions for Hamilcar's army. Learning of the enemy fleet,
the Punic admiral, Hanno, planned to outsail it, disembark the
supplies at Eryx, then, with marines provided by Hamilcar,
resume fighting trim. He underestimated the performance of
the new Roman warships. Despite heavy seas, they challenged
him off the Aegates islands.
It was scarcely a battle. Heavily laden, bereft of fighting
crews, the Carthaginian ships were virtually defenceless. Fifty
were sunk and 70 captured by the time the others turned tail.
Returning to Carthage with the survivors, Hanno was crucified : a characteristic but more than usually futile act of expiation since the war was practically over.
The once brimming coffers of Carthage were empty. Without money, there could be no replacements for the Punic fleet;
without a fleet, no provisions for Sicily. The action off the
Aegates obliged Carthage to acknowledge her position. For
some time Hamilcar's mercenaries had gone unpaid, held
together by exceptional generalship. It could not continue.
The struggle for Sicily was finished.
Abandonment of the island was a heavy blow to Carthage,
e
but Rome's own exhaustion made it bearable. When Hamilcar
insisted on removing his army with full war honours, the
Romans grudgingly acceded. Both sides needed peace, not
further argument.
With dramatic abruptness, the curtain fell. The conflict
had lasted twenty-four years, robbed Carthage of the cornerstone of her northern strategy, emptied her treasury. The
armistice terms included an indemnity of 3,200 talents payable
to Rome over twenty years. Rome, too, had been drained of
funds, but her greater loss was in human life. In two decades
her citizen population had decreased by something like seventeen per cent; an injury doubtless shared by many allied states.
Militarily, Carthage had performed well. Thanks to the continuity of command in her forces - as opposed to the annual
changes of leadership under the Roman consular system - her
commanders had repeatedly out-generalled their opponents.
Nor were her heterogeneous armies overwhelmed by their more
unified and disciplined enemies.
What defeated Carthage in the long run was not any lack of
martial ability but the immense numerical predominance of
Roman and Italian troop reserves: resources unmatched in the
world of the Mediterranean. A generation later, according to
Polybius, more than 750,000 men were liable to bear arms for
Rome. It is revealing of the recuperative capacity of Carthage
that she was yet to cast terror into such a power.
:
Hamilcar Barca
With
the conclusion of fighting in Sicily, Hamilcar relinquished his command leaving Hanno at Carthage to arrange
the disbandment of the mercenaries. As these tough veterans -
Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Balearians and various western
Greeks - arrived in Africa to receive their pay-arrears and discharge, the Carthaginian authorities faltered.
Hamilcar had buoyed his men amid the perils of Sicily
with promises of remuneration which, to a balked and impoverished government, seemed impossibly extravagant. In the
hope that the troops might accept less, or grow weary of waiting and leave for home, the treasury made a small payment
on account and camped the soldiers in the depths of the hinterland.
The ploy, already misconceived to the extent that it placed
the discontented Libyan mercenaries in contiguity with their
volatile blood-brothers of the interior, was further bungled by
Hanno, who personally advised the men to take what they
were offered. He was greeted angrily. Not only had he never
fought in Sicily, he was the architect of expansion at the expense of the Libyan tribes.
Increasing instead of reducing their demands, the mercenaries now marched ominously toward Carthage. At this, the
government panicked. The claims were promptly agreed, and
some new ones conceded. But the ethnic grievances of the
African troops persisted, the more vociferous for the collapse
of the authorities over pay.
Among the militants, a Libyan soldier named Matho assumed
leadership, predicting the victimization of the Africans if the
overseas mercenaries dispersed. His call for unity was backed
by an opportunistic Italiot, Spendius. At a series of violent
meetings of their followers, troops who wavered were coerced
or murdered.
When the Carthaginian paymaster, Gisco, and his assistants
were made captive, sedition became open mutiny: a development quickly followed by Libyan insurrection as Matho's
envoys stirred up the local tribes. Volunteers arrived in their
thousands with provisions and silver to sustain the fight. It
was now a major rising. The rebels even struck their own
coins, some inscribed with the word 'Libyon.'
Dividing their forces, the insurgents besieged Utica and
Hippo Acra, and cut the roads to Carthage. Hanno, taking the
field in 240 with citizen troops and newly-raised mercenaries,
did nothing to abate the crisis to which he had contributed.
The Carthaginians then recalled Hamilcar to service, creating
a second army, smaller than Hanno's, for his command.
Hamilcar swiftly showed his brilliance. Twice he beat substantially larger armies under the renegade Spendius, partly by
enlisting the support of a Numidian chief named Navaras, to
whom he betrothed his daughter as a premium. But he needed
a larger force for definitive victory, and Hanno controlled
most of the loyal troops. Implacably hostile, the Punic generals
disagreed on joint action and merely quarrelled at their meetings.
At last the senate, convinced of the need for a supremo, left
the choice to the army. It voted for Hamilcar.
The decision was fatal for the rebels, who resorted increasingly to barbaric practices. Hamilcar, respected if feared by
his former troops, had begun by appealing to old loyalties. He
showed no vindictiveness, inviting his prisoners to join his
army or, alternatively, offering them safe conduct to leave
the land. The rebel leaders stood in danger of losing a psychological struggle.
Conscious of Hamilcar's magnetism, they took desperate
steps to prevent the mass defection of their followers. Seven
hundred Carthaginian prisoners, including Gisco and his officers, were atrociously mutilated by order of the leaders and
thrown alive into an open grave. Those among the rebels who
protested were also butchered. Henceforward, it was insisted,
all captives should be tortured and murdered.The measure achieved its purpose. Implicated in a crime beyond pardon, the wavering mutineers had no choice but to
fight on. The Carthaginians in their fury showed no mercy,
trampling their own prisoners now beneath elephants. Hamilcar's 'hearts and minds' campaign was forgotten. He pursued
his erstwhile soldiers with grim intent.
First he stalked Spendius, trapping his force in the interior
where it was reduced to such pitiful hunger that its members
resorted to cannibalism. Tricking Spendius himself into captivity, Hamilcar wiped out the starving and leaderless rebels. He
now turned to Matho, who was near Tunis with the rest of
the mercenaries. The savagery continued. Spendius was crucified; Matho responded with atrocities.
The last hundred years of Carthaginian history was opening
on a note of horror surpassed only by the terror of the final
days. Polybius condemned the so-called War of the Mercenaries as unique in his knowledge of human cruelty. The outcome was in little doubt. After a last retreat toward the east
coast, Matho was lured into a defile, ambushed, his force
annihilated. It was 239 - within a generation of Zama.
Though the rebellion confirmed the Romans in their view
of Punic cruelty, Carthaginian excesses were much provoked,
and confined to the hour itself. The punishment of African
towns which had joined the rebels seems not to have been
severe.
* * *
While the Mercenary War raged, another group of troops
mutinied: the garrison of Carthaginian Sardinia. In 238,
frightened by the fate of the rebels in Africa, the Sardinian
force invited the Romans to the island. The chance to secure
the Tyrrhenian and her own shores was more than Rome
could resist. Despite opposition from the native Sardinians, the
island was occupied. Rome then legalized her position by
forcing Carthage to relinquish her Sardinian rights under threat
of renewed war.This blatant display of power politics, condemned even by
Roman apologists, stirred Carthaginians to passionate resentment. Patriotic sentiments based on the tradition of mercantile
empire flourished, and with them the Barcids, whose policies
recalled better days. Hanno had lost ground through the
Truceless War. His party, disinclined to tread on Roman toes,
continued to lose support, while Hamilcar, outstanding among
the Barcids, rose to fresh heights.
Appointed sole general of Carthage in 237, he promptly
demonstrated his commitment to bold enterprise.
Economic and military debility ruled out an immediate
Punic challenge to Rome, but there was still a region of the
Mediterranean, believed Hamilcar, in which Carthage might
recoup wealth and strength without unduly alarming the
Romans. Spain, the original magnet of the westering Phoenicians, remained largely uncolonized. Here, in mines, manpower
and timber, were virtually limitless resources.
There were other attractions. The shores of Spain were far
enough from both Rome and Carthage to allow development
without interference. In Spanish bases, Barcid leadership might
prevail irrespective of the vagaries of metropolitan politics.
Iberian projects would be explained to the Romans as a means
of raising wealth to pay the war indemnity.
Hamilcar's vision roamed. Though remote, Spain presented
great strategic potential. On her eastern coast were fine natural
harbours from which, in conjunction with Balearic and African
bases, an important part of the western Mediterranean might
still be controlled for Carthage. Even without naval power,
it would be possible for Punic arms to operate offensively
against Rome from the peninsula by way of Gaul.
In short, the loss of Sicily could be made good by the acquisition of an asset which gave Carthage precisely those military
advantages which had served the Romans so well: a vast and
accessible reserve of fighting men, and an overland route to
their objectives.There were two problems. With the Punic navy in tatters,
Hamilcar had to get his army to Spain without the use of a
fleet. Once there, he would have to contend with hostile tribes
prepared to defend their lands tenaciously. The first obstacle
was overcome by marching west along the north shore of
Africa and crossing the straits at Gibraltar with the few ships
available as ferries. Hamilcar reached Gades, the old Phoenician depot, in 236, consolidating Carthaginian interests there.
The problem of tribal opposition was less tractable. For
some eight years, Hamilcar fought his way tirelessly east then
north as far as Alicante, which he founded as Acra Leuce
(Lucentum). Intimidated by his brilliance, and won by cajolery,
an increasing number of native chiefs, the
caudillos,
joined
him as the campaigns proceeded. Fittingly, Hamilcar died an
heroic death, saving his companions from drowning in a
swollen stream.
The presiding genius in Spain for the next few years was his
lieutenant, Hasdrubal Pulcher. Diplomatically talented, Hasdrubal married a Spanish girl, cemented the loyalty of many
tribes, and raised New Carthage (Cartagena) as the capital
of the dominion at the best harbour on the east coast. From
here, with customary industry, the Carthaginians exploited
the resources of the territory.
At Cartagena itself, at Huelva on the Gulf of Cadiz, and
elsewhere, they worked mines which are still in existence.
They cultivated saltings and established a fish-curing industry.
They produced and exported esparto grass. Militarily, they
recruited and trained Spaniards as mercenaries, and formed
alliances with Spanish chiefs.
So far, Rome had accepted the proposition that Carthage
needed the new commercial field to pay her war debt. The
Romans had no Spanish or Gallic territories, and such concern
as they felt at the development probably centred on Massalia,
across the Pyrenees from Iberia, the Greek colony through
which they imported tin. Without northern tin to add to their
copper, it was impossible to make bronze, the rustproof alloy
essential to armaments.
By 226, positive misgivings had been stirred by Hasdrubal's
expansion toward northern Gaul. Gaul was hostile to Rome. If, in alliance with Carthage, she marched east, Massalia and
Rome's tin supplies would be endangered. An understanding
was demanded with Hasdrubal. Accordingly, a treaty was
negotiated by which the Carthaginians agreed to confine their
forces south of the river Ebro. The
quid pro quo
is unknown,
but most likely the Romans, too, accepted the river as the
limit of their martial sphere. Certainly, recognition of Punic
privilege to its south was implicit.
