Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (22 page)

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ships, in its eagerness to overtake the Roman transports, ran aground, and the Romans quickly captured the ship and its crew. The Romans then used this ship as a model for building their first navy, which consisted of a hundred quinqueremes and twenty triremes (scholars dispute whether the numbers
quinque
, "five," and
tri
, "three," referred to the number of men per oar or the number of banks of oars). The Romans then had to train their rowers to row with the call of the
keleustes
, the "order giver."

The Raven

After one disastrous naval battle, in which they lost not only seventeen ships but also the ships' commander, the Romans quickly recognized their problems at sea. In ancient naval battles the goal was to ram and sink the enemy ship; the Roman ships, however, were clumsy and heavy in comparison to the light and quick Carthaginian vessels, and the Roman crews and commanders were inexperienced. It would be a very long time before the Roman navy would be able to win a traditional naval battle, especially against Carthage and its powerful navy.

Consequently, the Romans changed the rules of combat. On the prow of their ships they built something they called a raven. The raven consisted of three parts: a pole over 7 meters high, secured to the prow of the ship, with a pulley at the top; a long gangway, more than I meter wide and projecting from the base of the pole more than 7 meters off the prow; and a rope, connecting the gangway to the pulley. When an enemy vessel tried to ram a Roman ship, the sailors would pull the gangway up by means of the pulley and swing it to project over the enemy ship; then they would let it drop. A heavy spike on the end of the gangway would secure it to the deck of the enemy ship, allowing heavily armed Roman soldiers to board and defeat the enemy sailors, who certainly were not expecting hand-to-hand combat on board. Armed with the raven, the Romans would be a match for the excellent Carthaginian navy.

The Romans had their first opportunity to use the navy in 260
B.C.
One of the consuls that year, Gaius Duilius, sailed to Mylae on the northeastern tip of Sicily, after hearing that the Carthaginian

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navy was burning and pillaging the area. The Carthaginians, seeing the Roman fleet, had nothing but contempt for the upstart Romans, and immediately attacked without even getting into battle formation. They were taken by surprise when the Romans' ships latched onto theirs and the sea battle turned into hand-to-hand combat on board their ships. Unprepared for that type of battle, the Carthaginians lost fifty ships and almost lost their commander as well.

While the Romans, receiving aid from Hiero, fought to drive the Carthaginians from Sicily, the consul M. Atilius Regulus and his army sailed to Africa, to invade Carthaginian territory. At the Battle of Ecnomus, off the African coast, in 256, the Carthaginian navy failed to prevent Regulus and his army from landing on African soil. The Romans then began to overrun the African countryside. After various losses, Carthage asked Regulus for peace, but considering his terms too harsh, they resumed fighting.

Desperate, the Carthaginians called in a Spartan mercenary, Xanthippus, to help them against the Romans. He took control of the army, revived the soldiers' morale and confidence, and then crushed the Roman army in Africa, even capturing the consul Regulus. The Carthaginians again sought peace from the Romans, and sent Regulus to Rome to persuade the Romans to accept their peace proposal; they made him swear to return to Carthage if he failed to secure either peace or an exchange of prisoners.

While the Senate was deliberating the Carthaginians' proposal for peace, Regulus remained quiet, until the Carthaginians who had escorted him to Rome granted him permission to speak. "Senators," he said, "I am one of you, even if I should be captured ten thousand times. My body belongs to the Carthaginians, but my spirit belongs to you. . . . I am of the opinion that making peace will not help you in any way at all."

He then explained to the Senate why he thought it in Rome's best interests to reject the proposal, and added, "I am well aware of the destruction that plainly lies before me, since they will certainly learn what advice I have given. Yet I put that which is beneficial to the state before my own safety" (Zonaras VIII.15).

The Senate tried to make peace simply to protect Regulus, since they knew that upon his return to Carthage he would be tortured and killed for convincing them to reject the peace proposals.

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Regulus then falsely claimed that he had taken poison and would die soon; consequently, the Senate rejected the proposal and made no trade of prisoners. But Regulus, true to his oath, returned to Carthage, where he was tortured and killed.

The war continued, with the Romans suffering staggering losses in their navy through the inexperience of the commanders. For example, the Romans had just launched a new fleet of 200 ships, which promptly defeated the Carthaginian fleet at Hermaeum; the Roman fleet could not conquer the weather, however, and while returning to its base in Sicily encountered a storm that destroyed as many as 130 of those new ships. So the Romans built 220 more ships. Another storm destroyed 150 more Roman ships. The Carthaginian commanders knew how to avoid such storms. The Romans also lost 93 ships at Drepana when the commander, P. Claudius Pulcher, ignored the bad omen given by the sacred chickens' refusal to eat their food. In frustration, he flung the birds into the harbor, saying, ''Since they don't want to eat, let 'em drink!" and attacked the Carthaginian fleet. Of course, he lost the battle. After many such losses, the Romans gave up on their navyat least temporarilyand concentrated on the land war in Sicily.

On land the Romans were far superior to the Carthaginian forces. They had driven the Carthaginians from all Sicily except for Lilybaeum and Drepana, on the western side of the island. The Romans realized that they needed a navy once again, for the Carthaginians were sending reinforcements and supplies by sea to their soldiers in those two cities, who were trying to take another town. But the Roman treasury was empty; building another fleet seemed impossible until the Roman citizens voluntarily contributed money for a new fleet of two hundred ships. They appointed Gaius Lutatius Catulus commander of the new navy. Everyday he drilled his crews in preparation for the naval battle that the Romans simply had to win to bring the war to an end.

The new fleet surprised the Carthaginians, who did not expect the Romans to try the sea again. At the Aegates Islands, off the western coast of Sicily, the new Roman fleet defeated the Carthaginian fleet, which was trying to bring supplies to its soldiers in Sicily. The consuls then moved to besiege Lilybaeum; Carthage was broken, and sued for peace. A settlement was reached in 241
B.C.

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The terms of the treaty had Carthage abandon Sicily and pay a war indemnity. The Romans later went one step further and took Corsica and Sardinia, a betrayal of trust that enraged the Carthaginians, leaving them bitter and hateful of the Romans. That hatred and bitterness erupted in another terrible war with Carthage twenty years later.

Whatever peace Rome saw did not last long. First, pirates from Illyricum were causing problems for Italian merchants in the Adriatic Sea. The Romans sent ambassadors to ask Teuta, the Illyrian queen, to stop the piracy, but she gave a noncommittal response. Unfortunately, one ambassador answered her rather bluntly, which prompted her to have him murdered. After the murder, the previous piracy, and the problems that the Illyrians were causing for the Italian merchants and nearby Greek cities and islands, the Romans sent an army against the pirates in 229
B.C.
and seized control of the pirate islands. Rome's power in the Adriatic Sea now included the islands of Pharos and Corcyra, and the cities of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. (The Greek name for Dyrrhachium was Epidamnus, a name the Romans avoided using, as it was a bad omen:
epi
in Greek means "to, toward" and
damn
-in Latin means "destruction.")

Second, the Gauls in northern Italy, south of the Alps, were a constant source of trouble for the Romans. After losing one battle with the Gauls, the Romans defeated them at Telamon, in Etruria, in 225
B.C.
To prevent the Gauls from troubling Italy again, the Romans decided to conquer northern Italy. In 224 they subdued Transpadane Gaul, and advanced to the Alps. To safeguard their conquests, they built the via Flaminia, a road to the north, and established colonies along the Po River (in Latin, Padus), to check the Gauls in the future.

During one of those battles, M. Claudius Marcellus, the consul of 222, defeated Viridomarus, leader of a Gallic tribe, in hand-to-hand combat, and thus became eligible to offer
spolia opima
. Only two Roman generals, Romulus and A. Cornelius Cossus, had accomplished that before Marcellus, and nobody accomplished it after him.

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Chapter 14
The Second Punic War

After the end of the First Punic War, the Carthaginians recovered from their losses in Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia by extending their power in Spain. Suspicious of the Carthaginians' reasons for fighting in Spain, the Romans made a treaty with them, by which Carthage would not advance its power beyond the Ebro River in Spain. Rome also promised help to the people of the Spanish town Saguntum, which lay on the Carthage' side of the Ebro, if the Carthaginians attacked them.

In 221
B.C.
Hasdrubal, the general of the Carthaginian army, died and his brother-in-law Hannibal succeeded him. Hannibal's father Hamilcar had been a general in the first war with Rome and was very bitter about Rome's victory and double-dealing over Corsica and Sardinia. Hannibal inherited the hatred that his country and father felt for Rome.

"They say that when he was almost nine years old, Hannibal, seeing his father Hamilcar giving a sacrifice before taking his army to Spain, tried, like a child, to sweet-talk his father into taking him along; after being taken to the altar, Hannibal touched the sacred objects there and was made to swear an oath that he would be an enemy of the Roman people as soon as he could" (Livy XXI.1.4). Hannibal did not disappoint his father.

Hannibal continued Carthage's conquests in Spain, moving ever closer to Saguntum and the Ebro River. Finally, in 219 he attacked Saguntum itself. The Roman Senate protested to the Carthaginian government, but the Carthaginian nobles supported their general, and the Senate's inaction let Hannibal conquer and enslave the

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town. Before the town was stormed, many of the townspeople built a huge fire and threw their riches in it, rather than let Carthage have them; then they threw themselves into the fire. While his soldiers were subduing the town, Hannibal ordered them to kill all Saguntine men of military age. He gained an enormous amount of loot from the city, in spite of the citizens' sacrifices.

The Senate sent another embassy to Carthage to ascertain whether or not the city still supported its general. When the Carthaginians maintained that Hannibal had acted legally and with their support, the Roman ambassador, Q. Fabius, gathered together the folds of the part of the toga covering his chest, so that they appeared to contain something, and said, "Here we offer you peace or war. Take which you will."

"You can give whichever you want!" shouted the Carthaginian senate. Fabius let the folds of his toga drop and said that he brought war. The Carthaginians roared, "We accept! You can be sure that we'll fight the war as courageously as we declared it!" (Livy XXI.18.13).

Hannibal Crosses the Alps

With his army of perhaps fifty thousand men, which had bonded into a tight and cohesive force through the many years of fighting in Spain, Hannibal seized the initiative and marched on Italy. An advance Roman force under P. Cornelius Scipio sailed to Massilia (modem Marseille), in southern Gaul, to await Hannibal, but Hannibal fooled the Romans by moving much more quickly than they expected. When Scipio arrived at Massilia, Hannibal had passed by three days earlier and was already approaching the Alps. Scipio then returned to Italy to meet Hannibal there. Then Hannibal fooled the Romans again: They expected him to cross the Alps in the easy places, close to the sea, but he headed toward the part of the Alps closer to central Gaul. He lost some soldiers and many elephants in his legendary crossing of the Alps, but he achieved his goal: He surprised the Romans, who had not had enough time to prepare for the upcoming war. Before him lay an open path into Italy.

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