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Dougherty 1 Connor Dougherty Bergen, Downer English 10, Latin II 27 October 2011 The First Punic War It was evident that Rome and Carthage would inevitably wage war, “what a field we are leaving to the Carthaginians and the Romans to exercise their arms” (Bagnall 15). Not only was conflict between these two great ancient influences inevitable, it also held great importance to the future of Europe. The First Punic war was waged between the Romans and the Carthaginians, the dominant power of their time; the fleets and their commander Hamilcar Barca posed a considerable threat to the Roman Army but the Romans used their ingenuity and perseverance to secure a victory and lead themselves to their future power and expansion. Long before the Romans had control over a wide expanse of Europe and all of the Mediterranean, there were another people, the Carthaginians, who had significant influence throughout the Mediterranean and surrounding countries. Founded in 814 BC by the sea-faring Phoenicians, the Carthaginians inherited great nautical skills and prowess from their predecessors. The Carthaginians had complete control over the Mediterranean. For example, their power extended from North Africa, where Carthage itself was located, as far away as Spain and Sicily. By the time the Roman Empire came in contact with Carthage, Carthage had become the dominant power of the Mediterranean area. As Cicero once stated, “Carthage could not have maintained her pre-eminent position for six hundred years had she not been governed with wisdom and Dougherty 2 statesmanship” (Bagnall 13). The position the Carthaginians were in proved that there was no way they were a weak nation led by weak leaders. Carthage was able to use its wealth through trade and mining in Spain to support themselves and stay in control. Carthage was not just another country - it was a great nation able to outlive the Phoenicians and attain a thalassocracy and keep it. Carthage had been around for centuries, they were very important to their era’s society because of how much their culture affected the rest of the Mediterranean. It was unlikely that such a weak nation as Rome could take Carthage, because to do so they would have to get past the Carthaginian naval force. The fleet of the Carthaginians that the Romans found themselves up against was one of the greatest ever known. As an offshoot of the Phoenician civilization, the Carthaginians retained many aspects of the Phoenician fleets in their own. They had two types of warships, the trireme and the quinquereme. The trireme and the quinquereme were very similar in both shape and size, with the quinquereme being the slightly larger of the two. The biggest difference of the two was that the trireme had room for four rowers on the same bench, while the quinquereme had room for five. The style of naval warfare during this time was to ram the enemy’s ship so they sink, and being able to pull back out to avoid sinking along with the enemy. The Carthaginians adopted this tactic from their Phoenician predecessors, so had nearly perfected the tactic, no one was better at it than them. The fleet was arranged as such: “The basic tactical unit consisted of 12 ships, which would be grouped together to form a fleet of 120 ships, or 10 tactical units, was the normal number” (24). This created a fleet of tri- and quinqueremes flexible enough to adapt to the techniques and mannerisms of the opposing fleet. This shows how Dougherty 3 the Carthaginians were able to fight off many enemies that would have had just as many naval strategies. The only other ancient military force as flexible as this fleet would be the Roman legion itself. The skill of the Carthiginian sailors allowed them to become as powerful as they did from their founding. It was said “the navy played a vital part in the Carthaginian war machine” (Bagnall 21). For a people who had so much power in a sea, this must have been true. This exposes a weakness in the Carthaginian military. They were reliant upon their navy, but they had an extremely good navy to be reliant upon. Carthage may not have had the best government, but this had little effect on their empire. During the First Punic War, however, Carthage and Rome were fighting on Sicily as well as in the ocean, but a skilled commander, Hamilcar Barca, was in command on land. Before the First Punic War, Hamilcar Barca was relatively unimportant, but once he was put in command in Sicily, his true military skill and brilliant strategies were revealed. Hamilcar introduced a strategy that the Romans had rarely seen before, guerilla warfare. He rarely faced the Romans head on as much as he weakened them and pillaged some resources with every strike before returning to his stronghold. Another bold strategy he took was to sacrifice Carthaginian territory in order to better protect what he could with the limited resources he was allowed. He held the port cities of Lilybaeum and Drepana to support his fleets fighting in the Mediterranean, and used elephants to blockade against the Roman advances. Hamilcar was able to hold out in Sicily for some 10 years defending against Roman attacks on land while commanding the rest of the Carthaginians throughout the Mediterranean. Hamilcar was strictly stuck to a small part of the island, “the mountain became his stronghold and a small bay at its foot his naval station for 3 years” (Hoyos, 495). This helps to prove the skill that Hamilcar possessed in Dougherty 4 battle. He had limited resources to work with and most of his forces in Sicily were mercenaries from Numidia, Spain, and Gaul who were vastly deprived of payment from Carthage. He found himself fighting the Romans while putting down rebellion among his own forces. Despite conditions working against him, he was still able to hold off the Romans for a majority of the entire First Punic War. Hamilcar was the most skilled of any of the other generals fighting in the war. His greatest importance was the identity of son, Hannibal, the greatest enemy of Rome. Hamilcar created this enemy when he made his son swear hatred upon Rome. The defeat that angered Hamilcar so much brought upon by the Romans’ ingenuity. The Romans were not likely to win the First Punic Wars; they were outnumbered and possessed little, if any, nautical skill or vessels capable of naval warfare. The Romans had been recently expanding within Italy; their land faring army was the top of its time. When they began to conflict with Carthage, in an early skirmish a quinquereme ran aground and the Romans reversed engineered it, in two months they had 20 triremes and 100 quinqueremes. The Romans had created a fleet and began to train men before clashing with the Carthaginians’ superior forces in the Mediterranean. It was not this display of ingenuity that led to the Romans’ victory; it was another known as the corvus, or the crow. The corvus had a design that was quite strange on a ship, “round the pole was put a gangway made of cross planks attached by nails, four feet in width and six fathoms in length. In this gangway was an oblong hole, and it went around the pole at a distance of two fathoms from its near end” (Workman-Davies 112). This is a description of the corvus a boarding device, used by the Roman Army. Using this, the Romans were able to avoid direct naval battles by hooking on to a Carthaginian ship as it rammed the Dougherty 5 Roman ship. Then they would cross it and defeat the Carthaginian sailors with a superior fighting force. The corvus was an invention that had a great effect on the outcome of the war. The corvus is one of the greatest militaristic creations to this day, and it greatly affected the outcome of the war, “the corvus boosted Rome’s fleet by allowing enemy ships to be captured, Rome could ferry troops across the straits to Sicily in safety; she could also now protect her own coast from enemy raids, and was now able to attempt an invasion of Africa itself” (Workman-Davies 169). In this quote the effects of this invention concocted by the Romans are clear. Through their ingenuity the Romans were able to turn the tides of the naval battle in the Mediterranean, the most important part of the First Punic War. Although the Romans could win on Sicily, the land battles were trivial in comparison with the effects of the naval encounters. And the Romans never would have won without the corvus. This was the first step in the Roman Empires path to prominence. After Rome successfully managed a victory over Carthage, her only competition, strict terms for Carthaginian surrender were put in place, strengthening Rome to become the Empire she would one day be. Victory in the First Punic War allowed Rome to crush Carthage in the second and third Punic Wars. Once that was accomplished there was no one in Rome’s way to conquer most of Europe. This had a profound effect on Rome as an empire: “With ruthless determination the Romans extended their boundaries to the Euphrates, Danube, Rhine, and Atlantic Ocean” (Bagnall 89). The ruthless determination comes purely from the Carthaginian Empire. The Carthaginians were a great danger and the Rome’s only rival to oppose her power. Without the Romans having faced the enormous threat posed by Carthage, they would not have conquered as much as they did, Dougherty 6 which they did only to prevent ‘another Carthage’ from coming into the world. Not only was Rome‘s personality affected but the rest of society felt a change, “Rome’s defeat of Carthage paved the way for Western civilization and the establishment of Christian Religion” (90). If Rome had lost the First Punic War, the difference in the rest of history after it would have been drastically different. Christian religion, which was made popular later in Rome and has since become the most popular religion throughout the world, would never have come into prominence if Rome had lost. Typical Western civilization also would have never come into existence and, if it had, would be much different and would likely have heavy Carthaginian influences, something that few modern civilizations possess. Rome’s defeat of Carthage was the foundation for the world as we know it It is true that the past is the past, but it should not be ignored: “rather than taking refuge in wishful thinking, to avoid wars we should investigate their causes, consider how they might be prevented and prepared to defend ourselves, in itself a powerful deterrent” (Bagnall 7). Rome and Carthage had no way of stopping their conflict; they were two growing powers that would inevitably clash. Through looking at the events of this First Punic War and its important points that affected society, we can prevent conflicts. The important attributes of this war were the Carthaginians’ dominance, their fleets, Hamilcar Barca and his strategies, the Romans’ ingenuity, and the future affects of this early Roman victory. Dougherty 7 Works Cited Bagnall, Nigel. The Punic Wars 264-146 BC. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002. Hoyos, Dexter. "Identifying Hamilcar Barca's Heights of Heircte." Historia: Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte (2001): 490-495. Polybius. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin Books, 1979. Workman-Davies, Bradley. Corvus: A review of the design and use of the Roman boarding bridge during the First Punic War 264 -241 B.C. Lulu.com, 2006.