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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
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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.