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Authors: Richard Miles

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THE WAR ON SICILY
It was in part this tremendous inequality between respective naval strengths that lay behind Carthage’s bullish attitude, despite recent reverses. If a land war on Sicily went the way of all the other Sicilian campaigns, then it would prove bloodily inconclusive, but Carthage would continue with its control of the seas. Carthage could survive, indeed prosper, indefinitely while its merchant ships had the free run of the Mediterranean. As long as there was gold and silver to pay them, there would never be a shortage of military adventurers willing to enter service in the Carthaginian army. Hence Carthage’s confidence as a new army was hired and transported to Sicily after the defection of Syracuse in 263 BC.
Acragas was chosen as the new Carthaginian headquarters, owing to its strategic location as a transport hub, and the easy access that it offered to enemy-held eastern Sicily. Alert to the danger that a Carthaginian-held Acragas posed, the Roman commanders on the island quickly besieged the city. After five months, and with the defenders growing increasingly desperate, a substantial Carthaginian relief force, reported to have consisted of 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and 60 elephants, landed in Sicily. Its commander, Hanno, son of Hannibal, swiftly marched the army to Acragas.
However, any hope that the defenders of Acragas may have had of decisive action was quickly dashed. After a skirmish against the Roman forces, Hanno–who appears to have had little confidence in his as yet untried troops–simply camped on high ground nearby and waited. The ensuing stand-off dragged on for two months, until eventually even Hanno could procrastinate no longer, and prepared for open battle. In another clear sign of his lack of faith in his soldiers, he placed his elephants behind his infantry in the battle line. This meant that, when the Roman forces managed to drive the Carthaginians back, the elephants panicked and stampeded on to their own men. In the resulting rout, the Carthaginians lost not only a considerable number of men and elephants, but also the whole of their baggage train.
The commander of the Carthaginian garrison in Acragas was now left with little option but to attempt a breakout. The night after the battle, he and his mercenaries crept out of the city and escaped, according to Polybius and Diodorus, by coming up with the ingenious ruse of filling up the Roman trenches with either straw or earth so that they could safely cross. Most of the Carthaginians got away; however, the hapless citizens of Acragas were left to their collective fate. The Romans quickly took the undefended city and promptly sacked it, before selling its 25,000 citizens into slavery.
8
Diodorus would report that Hanno was eventually recalled to Carthage in disgrace for failing to relieve the city. In addition to losing his command, he was punished with the loss of his civil rights and a fine of 6,000 gold pieces.
9
ROME BUILDS A FLEET
For Polybius this was the real turning point in the conflict, for he later claimed that it was the capture of Acragas that first alerted the Roman Senate to the possibility of forcing the Carthaginians completely out of Sicily.
10
According to Polybius, it had been decided that this could be achieved only if the Carthaginian dominance of the sea was successfully challenged. In fact the Romans had already identified their lack of a navy as a significant weakness. By 260, four years into the war, it had been decided to build a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and 20 triremes. The catalyst had been the preceding year, when the Carthaginian fleet had started raiding the Italian coast, possibly from bases in Sardinia. There was also some suggestion that Carthage’s maritime dominance had discouraged many of Sicily’s coastal cities from siding with the Romans.
It appears that the Romans took as their model the Carthaginian quinquereme that ran aground and had been captured at the start of the war. New crews, made up of both poorer Roman citizens and Italian allies, were trained on land using unorthodox methods, described here by Polybius: ‘Making the men sit on rowers’ benches on dry land, in the same order as on the benches of the ships themselves, they accustomed them to fall back all at once bringing their hands up to them, and again to come forward pushing out their hands, and to begin and finish these movements at the word of command of the chief crewman.’
11
The boats themselves were constructed at breakneck speed, taking just sixty days to complete, perhaps by copying the Carthaginian method of construction by numbers.
12
The new fleet was tested at sea as soon as it was completed, so that its crews could gain some experience on water before they were called on to fight. However, the new admiral, the consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, anxious like all Roman aristocrats for military glory, was in no mood to wait around. In 260 BC, while at Messana with an advance guard of seventeen ships, he got news that the citizens of Lipara, the main town on the Aeolian Islands, were ready to surrender their city to the Romans. However, the Carthaginians soon received intelligence of the plot and sent a force to the city, where they trapped Scipio and his ships in the harbour. The panic-stricken Roman crews quickly showed their inexperience by deserting their ships and fleeing to the shore, where they were promptly captured, along with their commander.
13
Unlike his Carthaginian counterparts, who would have been severely reprimanded or worse for presiding over such a debacle, Scipio’s career seems to have been unaffected. After he was ransomed, a story was put about that he had actually been a victim of treachery rather than his recklessness, and he went on to hold the consulship for a second time in 254. While public honours continued, however, the more cynical members of the Roman population privately bestowed on him a mischievous new nickname–Asina, or She-Donkey.
14
For the Carthaginian admiral, yet another Hannibal, this was clearly a good start. However, as he sailed with a reconnaissance squadron of fifty ships to locate the remainder of the Roman fleet, he suffered the misfortune of encountering it head on as it sailed towards Messana. Heavily outnumbered, many of the Carthaginian ships were lost, although Hannibal himself managed to escape.
15
The victory over the impetuous Scipio now looked like less of a triumph. Not only had he been replaced by his more competent consular colleague, Gaius Duilius, but the wait for Duilius’ arrival at Messana had given the novice Roman fleet more time to train.
While they prepared for active service, the fleet became increasingly conscious of the poor construction and unwieldy nature of their hastily built ships. Polybius describes how, in order to counter these shortcomings, an ingenious new device called the
corvus
(‘the crow’) was developed. The crow was a type of boarding bridge 1.2 metres wide and 11 metres long with a low parapet on either side. The first 3.6 metres of the bridge was made up of two prongs separated by a channel into which slotted a tall vertical pole on the deck such that the bridge could be raised up at an angle against the pole by a pulley system. When in battle, the bridge could then be released so that it fell on the enemy ship’s deck. A heavy pointed spike on the underside of the bridge would pierce the timber of the deck, so that the ships were now effectively fixed together, and the Roman marines could then use the bridge to board the enemy. The beauty of this system was that it negated the Roman fleet’s manifold disadvantages, particularly its lack of manoeuvrability, its slowness and the inexperience of its crews.
In a clear sign of Roman recognition that Carthage would be completely defeated only if the war at sea were won, Duilius handed over control of the Roman land forces in Sicily to his lieutenants and took personal command of the fleet. Knowing that the Romans possessed the element of surprise through their new invention, he now risked a full-scale confrontation. The Roman fleet caught up with the Carthaginians off Mylae, on the northern Sicilian coast. Polybius vividly recounts what happened next:
The Carthaginians on sighting him put to sea with 130 ships, quite overjoyed and eager, as they despised the inexperience of the Romans. They all sailed straight towards the enemy, not even considering it even worthwhile to maintain order in the attack, but just as if they were falling on a prey that was obviously theirs . . . On approaching and seeing the crows nodding aloft on the prow of each ship, the Carthaginians were at first nonplussed, being surprised at the construction of the engines. However, as they entirely gave the enemy up for lost, the front ships attacked daringly. But when the ships that came into collision were all held fast by the machines, and the Roman crews boarded by means of the crows and attacked them hand-to-hand on deck, some of the Carthaginians were cut down and others surrendered from dismay at what was happening, the battle having become just like a fight on land. So the first thirty ships that engaged were taken with all their crews, including the commander’s galley, Hannibal himself managing to escape by a miracle in a rowing boat. The remainder of the Carthaginian fleet was mustering as if to charge the enemy, but seeing, as they approached, the fate of the advanced ships they turned aside and avoided the blows of the engines. Trusting in their swiftness, they veered round the enemy in the hope of being able to strike him in safety either on the broadside or on the stern, but when the crows swung round and plunged down in all directions and in all manner of ways so that those who approached them were of necessity grappled, they finally gave way and took to flight, terror-stricken by this novel experience and with the loss of fifty ships.
16
Duilius was rewarded for Rome’s first major naval victory with a triumph and the construction of a monument, the Columna Rostrata, on which his achievements were listed.
17
According to Diodorus, the defeated Carthaginian admiral, Hannibal, escaped punishment for defeat by sending a post-battle message back to Carthage, pretending to ask if he should engage the Roman fleet. When the affirmative answer came back, he was able to claim that he was merely following orders.
18
The victory at Mylae, although by no means decisive, emboldened the Romans to extend their field of operation to Sardinia and Corsica, where they launched a number of raids. It was one of these operations that led to Hannibal, the defeated Carthaginian admiral, being executed by his own subordinates. Zonaras, citing the historian Cassius Dio, claims that Hannibal was tricked into open water by the Roman admiral, who had planted false reports of an invasion of Africa. Hannibal had rashly chased after the Roman fleet, only to be ambushed in the fog, and with the majority of his ships sunk he took refuge with the remainder of his forces in the Sardinian city of Sulcis. According to the same source, however, his disaffected men then turned on their commander and crucified him.
19
CARTHAGINIAN ‘HIT-AND-RUN’ IN SICILY
Although the sea war had been a disaster for the Carthaginians, their land forces on Sicily were doing surprisingly well. The defeat at Acragas had convinced the Carthaginian high command that they should stick to the strategy of attrition that had been such a feature of their wars against the Syracusans. Sicily’s hilly terrain favoured such tactics, and the endemic violence and instability on the island meant that most of its population lived in heavily fortified towns. Indeed, the Sicilian wars between Carthage and Syracuse had mainly consisted of sieges interspersed by lightning raids.
This type of warfare did not suit the Romans. Their political system meant that their consuls/generals held their commands for only one year, so that there was considerable reason to force the pace of conflicts by decisive action. The Carthaginian generals, who were often kept in post for years, could afford to play a waiting game. Thus, in the land war at least, Carthage was able to dictate the pace and style of the conflict, and the Romans could do little about it.
A protracted campaign of attrition began with the Romans having to fight for each fortified town, sustaining heavy losses along the way. Indeed, a number of long sieges ended in defeat–that of Mytistraton, for example, which had to be abandoned after seven months. As had always been the case in Sicily, both sides found themselves favoured by different political factions within each city, which led to frequent changes of allegiance (the town of Enna, for example, changed hands three times in five years). Furthermore, frustration led to the harsh treatment of captured populations, which no doubt helped the Carthaginian cause. Although smaller towns such as Camarina and Enna did fall, the larger and more strategically important urban centres, such as Panormus and Lilybaeum, stayed in Carthaginian hands. The Carthaginian forces were also able to conduct a number of hit-and-run raids. The most successful of these, at Thermae Himerae in 260, led to the slaughter of 4,000 unsuspecting Syracusan troops, who were caught completely by surprise.
20
In the war at sea, however, the much-vaunted Carthaginian navy chronically underachieved. After its unexpected victory at Mylae, the Roman fleet continued to perform well. Successful raids were launched against targets on Malta and the Aeolian Islands, and it scored another notable victory over the Carthaginians off Cape Tyndaris, on the northern coast of Sicily. Once more a Carthaginian admiral was at fault, underestimating the number of ships that the Romans had in reserve.
21
REGULUS AND THE ASSAULT ON AFRICA
The lack of progress in Sicily, coupled with their surprising naval success, in 256 BC led the Romans to decide to bypass the island and attack North Africa itself. It was an extremely risky enterprise, especially as the initial crossing to Sicily marked their only previous overseas campaign. Carthage was over 600 kilometres from Rhegium (where the troops would embark), meaning that supply lines would be stretched to the limit. Throughout the voyage the fleet, especially the animal transporters, was extremely vulnerable to attack.

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