The First Punic War

The first prize taken in the war was the city of Clypea, which juts out from the Carthaginian shore as a fortress or watch-tower.

Continuing Rome Versus Carthage,
our selection from Florus. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Rome Versus Carthage.

Time: 264-149 BC
Place: Western Mediterranean

In the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, when Sicily was become as a suburban province of the Roman people and the war was spreading farther, they crossed over into Sardinia and into Corsica, which lies near it. In the latter they terrified the natives by the destruction of the city of Olbia, in the former by that of Aleria; and so effectually humbled the Carthaginians, both by land and sea, that nothing remained to be conquered but Africa itself. Accordingly, under the leadership of Marcus Atilius Regulus, the war passed over into Africa. Nor were there wanting some on the occasion who mutinied at the mere name and dread of the Punic sea, a tribune named Mannius increasing their alarm; but the general, threatening him with the axe if he did not obey, produced courage for the voyage by the terror of death. They then hastened their course by the aid of winds and oars and such was the terror of the Africans at the approach of the enemy that Carthage was almost surprised with its gates opened.

The first prize taken in the war was the city of Clypea, which juts out from the Carthaginian shore as a fortress or watch-tower. Both this and more than three hundred fortresses besides were destroyed. Nor had the Romans to contend only with men but with monsters also; for a serpent of vast size, born, as it were, to avenge Africa, harassed their camp on the Bagrada. But Regulus, who overcame all obstacles, having spread the terror of his name far and wide, having killed or taken prisoners a great number of the enemy’s force and their captains themselves and having despatched his fleet, laden with much spoil and stored with materials for a triumph, to Rome, proceeded to besiege Carthage itself, the origin of the war and took his position close to the gates of it. Here fortune was a little changed; but it was only that more proofs of Roman fortitude might be given, the greatness of which was generally best shown in calamities. For the enemy applying for foreign assistance and Lacedaemon having sent them Xanthippus as a general, we were defeated by a captain so eminently skilled in military affairs. It was then that by an ignominious defeat, such as the Romans had never before experienced, their most valiant commander fell alive into the enemy’s hands. But he was a man able to endure so great a calamity; as he was neither humbled by his imprisonment at Carthage nor by the deputation which he headed to Rome; for he advised what was contrary to the injunctions of the enemy and recommended that no peace should be made and no exchange of prisoners admitted. Even by his voluntary return to his enemies and by his last sufferings, whether in prison or on the cross, the dignity of the man was not at all obscured. But being rendered, by all these occurrences, even more worthy of admiration, what can be said of him but that, when conquered, he was superior to his conquerors and that, though Carthage had not submitted, he triumphed over Fortune herself?

The Roman people were now much keener and more ardent to revenge the fate of Regulus than to obtain victory. Under the consul Metellus, therefore, when the Carthaginians were growing insolent and when the war had returned into Sicily, they gave the enemy such a defeat at Panormus that they thought no more of that island. A proof of the greatness of this victory was the capture of about a hundred elephants, a vast prey, even if they had taken that number, not in war but in hunting.* Under the consulship of Appius Claudius, they were overcome, not by the enemy but by the gods themselves, whose auspices they had despised, their fleet being sunk in that very place where the consul had ordered the chickens to be thrown overboard, because he was warned by them not to fight. Under the consulship of Marcus Fabius Buteo, they overthrew, near Aegimurus, in the African sea, a fleet of the enemy which was just sailing for Italy. But, oh! how great materials for a triumph were then lost by a storm, when the Roman fleet, richly laden with spoil and driven by contrary winds, covered with its wreck the coasts of Africa and the Syrtes and of all the islands lying amid those seas! A great calamity! But not without some honor to this eminent people, from the circumstance that their victory was intercepted only by a storm and that the matter for their triumph was lost only by a shipwreck. Yet, though the Punic spoils were scattered abroad and thrown up by the waves on every promontory and island, the Romans still celebrated a triumph. In the consulship of Lutatius Catulus, an end was at last put to the war near the islands named Aegates. Nor was there any greater fight during this war; for the fleet of the enemy was laden with provisions, troops, towers and arms; indeed, all Carthage, as it were, was in it; a state of things which proved its destruction, as the Roman fleet, on the contrary, being active, light, free from encumbrance and in some degree resembling a land-camp, was wheeled about by its oars like cavalry in a battle by their reins; and the beaks of the vessels, directed now against one part of the enemy and now against another, presented the appearance of living creatures. In a very short time, accordingly, the ships of the enemy were shattered to pieces and filled the whole sea between Sicily and Sardinia with their wrecks. So great, indeed, was the victory that there was no thought of demolishing the enemy’s city; since it seemed superfluous to pour their fury on towers and walls, when Carthage had already been destroyed at sea.

[* “A vast prey — not in war but in hunting.” The sense is, it would have been a considerable capture if he had taken these hundred elephants, not in battle but in hunting, in which more are often taken.]

Continued.

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