The Mediterranean in the Ancient World

by Fernand Braudel

  Rome now embarked on a long and testing struggle, but also enjoyed its first major triumph. By deciding to fight against the mountain people, the city was asserting its leadership over the lowlands, which it helped preserve from harassing threats. Victory was the reward of perseverance, since conflicts broke out several times, in 343–341, 326–304 and 298‘I290. A war waged in the hills meant that troops were constantly at the mercy of ambushes, supply failures, a missed rendez-vous, or the rash overstretching of the marching columns. Indeed, the Roman legions were humiliated at the Caudine Forks in 321. But Rome very quickly learned to use mobile units and to blockade the enemy in the mountain regions (as used to happen in pre-war French North Africa). This was a war of attrition, with each side scoring indirect victories. With the occupation of Apulia in 320 BC, not only did Rome acquire the last great plain in the peninsula, but also the area into which, in winter, all the herds would come down from the Abruzzi, the very heart of Samnite country.

  These were major successes then, but progress was sufficiently slow for the hopes of Rome’s enemies to be regularly rekindled. In the end Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans joined forces. But their coalition was defeated by the Roman legions at Sentium in Umbria in 295. The war was now virtually over, with Etruria more or less subjugated, the Po valley reached, and the Adriatic coast occupied. The Greek coastal cities would shortly have fallen too, had it not been for the brilliant rearguard action led by Pyrrhos on behalf of the Tarentines. Once this episode was over, however, the town acknowledged defeat in 272. The Romans soon afterwards occupied Rhegium (Reggio di Calabria) on the Straits of Messina, opposite Sicily.

  ‘Italy’, a geographical term originally applied to what we today call Calabria, and later extended to all of southern Italy, would soon come to mean the whole peninsula. Words too can be a form of imperialism.

  Why was Rome so successful?

  In this process of conquest, Rome benefited from its central location, which gave it the advantage of overland communications. Roads built outwards from Rome helped to reinforce this natural advantage. In 313 BC the censor Appius Claudius opened the Appian Way which ran to Capua and eventually to Brindisi; the Via Salaria and the Via Flaminia ran to the Adriatic, and the Via Cassia crossed Etruria.

  Rome also had the good sense, in the light perhaps of its comparative weakness, to treat its conquered peoples leniently, deliberately adopting a policy of patience and to some extent fair dealing. Those populations seen as ethnically and linguistically close to Rome were eventually admitted to full Roman citizenship. Tusculum was the first to receive this privilege from the quasi-legendary dictator Camillus. To those less close, a sort of half-citizenship, under Latin law, was sometimes offered. On the sites of former cities, or on land not yet settled, colonies were created, either Roman (in which case they were peopled with Roman citizens), or Latin (with some autonomy but fewer rights than the former). Another possible status was that of ally, sociuSy with or without treaties granting equal rights.

  As I suggested above, though with some hesitation, this might be described as a ‘fair’ policy. But was Roman bona fides perhaps a myth invented after the event? Rome certainly made a point of respecting the letter of the treaties, putting morality and legality on its side. But hypocrisy was never entirely absent from a strategy which, after dividing Rome’s enemies, now set about devising different levels of status for its new associates.

  A central location and a common-sense policy would nevertheless not have amounted to much without the backing of military might. Forged in the course of the Latin wars, the Roman legion was the instrument of victory. The first citizens belonging to the five ‘Servian’ classes fought in the heavy armour of the Greek hoplites: helmet, breastplate and round shield; other classes adopted lighter armour, with pectorals instead of breastplates, and long oval shields. Legionaries with low incomes, and therefore poorly equipped, had been granted pay since the siege of Veii (Isola Farnese). The Roman foot-soldier borrowed from the Samnites the use of the javelin (pilum, a long slender blade set in a wooden shaft). The practice became established of disposing the legionaries according to social status. The most lightly armed, the misleadingly named hastati (misleading because in fact they did not carry spears) formed the front lines; then came the principes and finally the triarii, a reserve army of heavy infantry in the third line. This order was more flexible than that adopted by the Greeks. Roman soldiers did not fight in close formation: a gap separated each man from his neighbour and successive lines were drawn up in quincunxes, so that in retreat one line could fill the gaps in another without difficulty. Discipline was strict, even though this was not a regular army. Every night, the men had to pitch camp to protect themselves against surprise attacks. Cavalrymen were as a rule supplied by the allies, but were few in number.

  Finally and significantly, Rome benefited from division in the enemy ranks: internal quarrels kept Alexander’s successors, the Greek kings, at a distance, and the Carthaginians and Greeks were at each other’s throats in Sicily, oblivious to the world around. Rome took advantage of these distractions to embark on the conquest of Italy, patiently weaving its web, and constantly repairing any damage. In the end, it emerged strong and self-confident, a match for the Greeks and Carthage, greedily eying Sicily across the Straits of Messina and beyond it the rest of the Mediterranean, to which the island held the key.

  Rome versus Carthage: the war for mastery

  of the Mediterranean

  With the three Punic wars (264-241, 218-202 and 148-146 BC) Rome and Carthage became locked into a Hundred Years War. Control of the Mediterranean at once became the issue in a contest which would end only with the death of one of the adversaries. When Rome took Rhegium in 270, the Carthaginians placed a garrison across the water in Messina. The two political monsters – on one hand Italy, united from the Po valley to the Gulf of Tarentum; on the other North Africa, from northern Cyrenaica to present-day Morocco, backed up by southern Spain – eyed each other across the narrow straits. They were well-matched adversaries, capable in fact of coming to terms, as earlier treaties had demonstrated. It would, moreover, be inaccurate to describe their confrontation as one between a sort of gadfly (Carthage, the maritime power) and the heavy-footed soldier (the Roman legions). Carthage was no less expert than Rome at building roads and bridges, and its agriculture was well developed, while Rome had been interested in the Mediterranean since well before 264 b c. It had had dealings with the cities of Greater Greece, and merchant shipping was active along Italian coasts.

  As for Rome’s fleet, the normal components, triremes and quinqueremes, long vessels with three or five stepped rows of oarsmen, took only a short time to build. In 260, at the outset of the wars, Rome launched a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and thirty triremes, plus some other ships, all in the space of sixty days; in 254, the Romans launched 220 vessels in six months. We need not take these figures quite literally perhaps, but the ships were certainly assembled very rapidly, probably too quickly for their quality not to suffer, as had already been the case in Greece. As a result, these navies did not last long, sometimes only the space of a single campaign.

  Early in the war, some sources report, the Italian shipyards had copied a Carthaginian quinquereme which had fallen into Roman hands. That is not impossible. The quinquereme was a monstrous ship, developed in Cyprus or Phoenicia before Alexander’s campaigns. Of the western Greek cities, only Syracuse had built quinqueremes. But it was child’s play to copy the design. Supplies of timber were no problem for Rome: the peninsula still had many forests. The Greeks in the Gulf of Tarentum had timber for boatbuilding delivered from the Sila massif in Bruttium. The Romans had it floated down the Tiber to Ostia. In this respect, Carthage was at a disadvantage, since it had to look to Sardinia for timber supplies.

  These longships might be easy to build but they were costly to operate, particularly since they could be used only on calm summer seas and over short distances, such as between Italy, Sicily, Malta, the Lipa
ri Islands, the Egadi Islands and the nearest points on the North African coast. What was more, they required huge numbers of men: sailors, oarsmen, soldiers – as many as four hundred in each ship, according to Polybius. Overall, this was an extraordinarily expensive war: with both sides equally committed, it was bound to become a matter of attrition.

  In 264 BC, Rome had effortlessly occupied Messina, having been called upon by the then rulers of the city, the Mamertines, a rather remarkable band of adventurers who had betrayed the Carthaginian garrison. After imposing a peace settlement on Hieron of Syracuse, the Romans began the siege of the western cities: Agrigentum fell during the winter of 263-262, and 25,000 captives were sold into slavery. In 254, almost ten years later, it was the turn of Panormus (Palermo), another Carthaginian stronghold: here 10,000 of the inhabitants were reduced to slavery. At sea, in 260, one Roman fleet was defeated off the Lipari Islands, but a second one, under the command of the consul C. Duilius Nepos, was victorious off Mylae (Milazzo), thanks to the grappling irons and boarding planks which the Roman sailors used against the enemy. The Carthaginian vessels, which were easier to manoeuvre, were thus cheated of their advantage and boarded by force: the naval battle became hand-to-hand combat, just as if it were being fought on land (and this was to be the rule for centuries to come, in encounters between galleys). From now on, Rome felt sufficiently confident to confront Carthaginian vessels along the African coast. In 256, an expeditionary force was landed on Cape Bon. It wintered in Tunis, but was crushed the following year: the unfortunate commander was the consul Atilius Regulus.

  The tide did not yet turn in Carthage’s favour. However, the city had found in Hamilcar Barca a commander of genius, who had dughimself in on two fortified and impregnable mountain tops in Sicily: Mount Heircte, near Palermo and Mount Eryx near Drepanon (Trapani). His troops launched raid after raid, and the Punic ships also engaged in some fruitful piracy. This low-key war worked against Rome’s interests. The Republic lost 700 ships to storms, pirates and the enemy navy. Carthage now launched a massive fleet, but Romans and Greeks combined in a stupendous effort and crushed it in 240 off the Aegates Insulae (Egadi), off the western tip of Sicily.

  The disaster brought Hanno and the peace party to power in Carthage. Rome was able to impose draconian peace terms. Sicily was now in Roman hands and Rome took immediate advantage of Carthage’s grave internal problems to lay hands on Sardinia and Corsica. Weakened by an uprising in Libya and a savage revolt by its own mercenaries (who were owed large sums in back pay), Carthage was obliged to accept Rome’s conditions; it managed to retain the rights only to levy soldiers and load grain in Italy.

  After the Sicilian disaster, however, and the crushing of the mercenaries’ revolt in 238, Hamilcar Barca had gone to Spain with the remnants of his army in 237. Thus began the conquest of Spain, effected by the powerful and proud Barca dynasty. The operation meant capturing the Guadalquivir valley and the high plain of Castulo, forcing a passage to the Mediterranean (the later route of the Via Augusta) and establishing a stronghold in eastern Spain where New Carthage (Cartagena) was founded by Hamilcar’s son-in-law, Hasdrubal. In c. 225, Rome made the Carthaginians promise not to cross the Ebro or disturb the Roman colonies which had been settled from Marseille along what is now the littoral of Catalonia. But the occupation of the Iberian peninsula along its two major axes, the Guadalquivir and the eastern seaboard, gave Carthage direct access to the precious Spanish silver mines and the possibility of cornering their production. A few years later the mint in Cartagena was turning out 300 silver pounds a day. In Carthage itself, beautiful coins stamped with fine images of animals – horses and elephants – testify to this age of prosperity.

  Hamilcar had, however, been killed in 231, in an encounter with local forces. Ten years later Hasdrubal was assassinated. His nephew Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, was acclaimed commander of the army: a breathtaking career was about to begin.

  Neither Rome nor Carthage had in fact abandoned the struggle. Each side spied on the other, fearing its might. Rome had to deal with severe unrest in Sardinia and Corsica, where the local tribes were as recalcitrant as the Samnites. There was an even graver threat in northern Italy, where, after some inconclusive campaigning, Rome had struck at the Gauls in 225. Six years later, the Latin colonies of Piacenza and Cremona were founded, but these were fragile outposts. The colonies themselves provoked the uprising of the Boii. And all the while, war was once more brewing between Rome and Carthage.

  Which would strike first? Hannibal, who had taken Saguntum and crossed the Ebro in April 218? Or the Roman fleet stationed at Lilybaeum, which, after a pre-emptive occupation of Malta, was pre-paring to sail to Africa? In September 218, Hannibal crossed the Alps – his exact route is still unknown – and descended with fewer than 30,000 men into the Po Valley. In December that year, he was victorious in the battle of the Ticino. In January 217, on a snowy day, he triumphed at Trebbia; on 23 June, he crushed a Roman army at Lake Trasimene in Etruria. Then, although delayed by the tactics of the dictator Fabius Cunctator, he had the good fortune to win his greatest victory yet, at the battle of Cannae on 2 August 216. But for reasons that remain obscure (not enough men, not enough siege equipment?) he failed to march on Rome, lingering among the fleshpots of Capua, that other Rome, which had ‘abandoned itself’ to him. The following years brought him some successes (he held Tarentum from 213 to 209), but once hemmed in in southern Italy, he was not well supported by Carthage. The defeat on the banks of the Metaurus in 207 of his brother Hasdrubal, who was bringing substantial reinforcements from Spain, sealed his fate.

  Taking refuge in Bruttium (Upper Calabria) he remained there for years, his escape route cut off by Roman legions, just as his father had been cornered on the slopes of Mount Eryx. Rome meanwhile struck a series of telling blows: Cartagena was taken in 209 and Scipio landed in Africa. Hannibal was recalled and the battle of Zama (202) finally marked the end of the second Punic war.

  A historical debate

  The conflict which broke out for the third time in 148 BC, ending two years later with the destruction of Carthage, raises too many questions not to have become the subject of fierce polemic.

  The key witness in the case is one of the best historians to have come out of Greece, Polybius. Born in Megalopolis in Arcadia in 210 or 205 BC, he was still only a child at the time of the battle of Zama (202) but he witnessed the fall of Carthage in 146 at the side of his friend P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. It was a strange twist of fate for this son of an influential politician of Megalopolis. In his youth, he had campaigned against Rome and for the freedom of the Hellenes, along with Philopoemen, ‘last of the Greeks’. It was as a result of this that Polybius had arrived in Rome in 167 as one of the thousand Achaean hostages deported to Italy after Pydna. But this exiled rebel was not only captured but captivated by the great city where he lived for sixteen years, being a frequent guest at the house of the Scipio family, whose devoted friend he became.

  His Histories provide a narrative of events from 264, the date of the outbreak of the first Punic war (which figures in the introduction) to the catastrophe of 146. The account is all the more valuable, firstly since this well-informed writer was a man of great intelligence, anxious to take the broad view, and secondly since his experiences in Greece had led him to reflect on the phenomenon of Roman expansion. For him, the triumph of Rome was somehow decreed by destiny, the result of a kind of law of nature. So instead of opposing it, it would be more sensible to associate the destiny of Greece with it. He tried to convince both his compatriots and the Scipios, descendants of a glorious dynasty which was moreover already converted to Greek culture and its teachings.

  Polybius’ work concentrates therefore on explanations for Rome’s imperial destiny. Among today’s western historians, with their increased sensitivity to the evils of imperialism and unjust wars, the debate is seen more in terms of apportioning responsibility for the long conflict from which Rome emerged thoroughly transformed. If
the collapse of earlier agreements in 218 was Hannibal’s doing, was Carthage thereby guilty of starting the war? Was Roman imperialism merely a reply to Carthaginian imperialism? Let us agree with Polybius that by laying siege to Saguntum, in an area from which his treaty with Rome ought really to have excluded him, Hannibal knowingly provided a casus belli. But the Barca dynasty did not represent the whole of Carthage; while for all the prudence of Roman policy, there had been hawks in Rome pressing for action since before the first Punic war. Was the fleet assembled at Lilybaeum there for purely defensive purposes? If it had set sail before Hannibal had attacked, would Rome then be the guilty party? In any case, war was nothing new in 218, it was simply breaking out afresh. When the Romans occupied Messina in 264, they had done so in spite of their treaty of friendship signed with Carthage in 306. In short, is it reasonable to single out any one act of hostility as carrying unilateral responsibility, when this conflict was so clearly predestined on the map of the known world?

  We may conclude that the sea was simply not big enough to hold both Rome and Carthage: that they were on an inevitable collision course, fuelled by mutual distrust. The Barca dynasty, who seem to have hesitated, might possibly have consented to remain masters of Spain, without further aggression, if Rome had been willing to live with that. For Hannibal, the war was a risky, even a desperate throw of the dice. It was a miracle that his family in Spain had succeeded, in the short space of fifteen years, in creating an army of 60-70,000 men. But Rome had more than twice as many at its command. To dispatch the Punic army overland to distant Italy was an act of folly. Before it ever got there, it had lost half its men. After Trebbia, Hannibal’s soldiers had had to take to the hills to escape, ending up strung out along thirty kilometres or so of difficult mountain passes in the Apennines.