by Polybius
61. When the Carthaginians saw that the Romans were intercepting their passage across, they lowered their masts, and after some words of mutual exhortation had been uttered in the several ships, closed with their opponents. But the respective state of equipment of the two sides was exactly the converse of what it had been in the battle off Drepana; and the result of the battle was, therefore, naturally reversed also. The Romans had reformed their mode of shipbuilding, and had eased their vessels of all freight, except the provisions necessary for the battle: while their rowers having been thoroughly trained and got well together, performed their office in an altogether superior manner, and were backed up by marines who, being picked men from the legions, were all but invincible. The case with the Carthaginians was exactly the reverse. Their ships were heavily laden and therefore unmanageable in the engagement; while their rowers were entirely untrained, and merely put on board for the emergency; and such marines as they had were raw recruits, who had never had any previous experience of any difficult or dangerous service. The fact is that the Carthaginian government never expected that the Romans would again attempt to dispute the supremacy at sea: they had, therefore, in contempt for them, neglected their navy. The result was that, as soon as they closed, their manifold disadvantages quickly decided the battle against them. They had fifty ships sunk, and seventy taken with their crews. The rest set their sails, and running before the wind, which luckily for them suddenly veered round at the nick of time to help them, got away again to Holy Isle. The Roman Consul sailed back to Lilybaeum to join the army, and there occupied himself in making arrangements for the ships and men which he had captured; which was a business of considerable magnitude, for the prisoners made in the battle amounted to little short of ten thousand.
62. As far as strength of feeling and desire for victory were concerned, this unexpected reverse did not diminish the readiness of the Carthaginians to carry on the war; but when they came to reckon up their resources they were at a complete standstill. On the one hand, they could not any longer send supplies to their forces in Sicily, because the enemy commanded the sea: on the other, to abandon and, as it were, to betray these, left them without men and without leaders to carry on the war. They therefore sent a despatch to Barcas with all speed, leaving the decision of the whole matter in his hands. Nor was their confidence misplaced. He acted the part of a gallant general and a sensible man. As long as there was any reasonable hope of success in the business he had in hand, nothing was too adventurous or too dangerous for him to attempt; and if any general ever did so, he put every chance of victory to the fullest proof. But when all his endeavours miscarried, and no reasonable expectation was left of saving his troops, he yielded to the inevitable, and sent ambassadors to treat of peace and terms of accommodation. And in this he showed great good sense and practical ability; for it is quite as much the duty of a leader to be able to see when it is time to give in, as when it is the time to win a victory. Lutatius was ready enough to listen to the proposal, because he was fully aware that the resources of Rome were at the lowest ebb from the strain of the war; and eventually it was his fortune to put an end to the contest by a treaty of which I here give the terms. “Friendship is established between the Carthaginians and Romans on the following terms, provided always that they are ratified by the Roman people. The Carthaginians shall evacuate the whole of Sicily: they shall not make war upon Hiero, nor bear arms against the Syracusans or their allies. The Carthaginians shall give up to the Romans all prisoners without ransom. The Carthaginians shall pay to the Romans in twenty years 2200 Euboic talents of silver.”
63. When this treaty was sent to Rome the people refused to accept it, but sent ten commissioners to examine into the business. Upon their arrival they made no change in the general terms of the treaty, but they introduced some slight alterations in the direction of increased severity towards Carthage. Thus they reduced the time allowed for the payment of the indemnity by one half; they added a thousand talents to the sum demanded; and extended the evacuation of Sicily to all islands lying between Sicily and Italy.
Such were the conditions on which the war was ended, after lasting twenty-four years continuously. It was at once the longest, most continuous, and most severely contested war known to us in history. Apart from the other battles fought and the preparations made, which I have described in my previous chapters, there were two sea fights, in one of which the combined numbers of the two fleets exceeded five hundred quinqueremes, in the other nearly approached seven hundred. In the course of the war, counting what were destroyed by shipwreck, the Romans lost seven hundred quinqueremes, the Carthaginians five hundred. Those therefore who have spoken with wonder of the sea-battles of an Antigonus, a Ptolemy, or a Demetrius, and the greatness of their fleets, would we may well believe have been overwhelmed with astonishment at the hugeness of these proportions if they had had to tell the story of this war. If, further, we take into consideration the superior size of the quinqueremes, compared with the triremes employed by the Persians against the Greeks, and again by the Athenians and Lacedaemonians in their wars with each other, we shall find that never in the whole history of the world have such enormous forces contended for mastery at sea.
These considerations will establish my original observation, and show the falseness of the opinion entertained by certain Greeks. It was not by mere chance or without knowing what they were doing that the Romans struck their bold stroke for universal supremacy and dominion, and justified their boldness by its success. No: it was the natural result of discipline gained in the stern school of difficulty and danger.
64. And no doubt the question does naturally arise here as to why they find it impossible in our days to man so many ships, or take the sea with such large fleets, though masters of the world, and possessing a superiority over others many times as great as before. The explanation of this difficulty will be clearly understood when we come to the description of their civil constitution. I look upon this description as a most important part of my work, and one demanding close attention on the part of my readers. For the subject is calculated to afford pleasure in the contemplation, and is up to this time so to speak absolutely unknown, thanks to historians, some of whom have been ignorant, while others have given so confused an account of it as to be practically useless. For the present it suffices to say that, as far as the late war was concerned, the two nations were closely matched in the character of the designs they entertained, as well as in the lofty courage they showed in prosecuting them: and this is especially true of the eager ambition displayed on either side to secure the supremacy. But in the individual gallantry of their men the Romans had decidedly the advantage; while we must credit the Carthaginians with the best general of the day both for genius and daring. I mean Hamilcar Barcas, own father of Rome’s future enemy Hannibal.
65. The confirmation of this peace was followed by events which involved both nations in a struggle of an identical or similar nature. At Rome the late war was succeeded by a social war against the Faliscans, which, however, they brought to a speedy and successful termination by the capture of Falerii after only a few days’ siege. The Carthaginians were not so fortunate. Just about the same time they found themselves confronted by three enemies at once, their own mercenaries, the Numidians, and such Libyans as joined the former in their revolt. And this war proved to be neither insignificant nor contemptible. It exposed them to frequent and terrible alarms; and, finally, it became a question to them not merely of a loss of territory, but of their own bare existence, and of the safety of the very walls and buildings of their city. There are many reasons that make it worth while to dwell upon the history of this war: yet I must give only a summary account of it, in accordance with the original plan of this work. The nature and peculiar ferocity of the struggle, which has been generally called the “truceless war,” may be best learnt from its incidents. It conveys two important lessons: it most conspicuously shows those who employ mercenaries what dangers they should fore
see and provide against; and secondly, it teaches how wide the distinction is between the character of troops composed of a confused mass of uncivilised tribes, and of those which have had the benefit of education, the habits of social life, and the restraints of law. But what is of most importance to us is, that we may trace from the actual events of this period the causes which led to the war between Rome and Carthage in the time of Hannibal. These causes have not only been a subject of dispute among historians, but still continue to be so among those who were actually engaged; it is therefore a matter of importance to enable students to form an opinion on this matter as nearly as possible in accordance with the truth.
66. The course of events at Carthage subsequent to the peace was as follows: As soon as possible after it was finally ratified Barcas withdrew the troops at Eryx to Lilybaeum, and then immediately laid down his command. Gesco, who was commandant of the town, proceeded to transport the soldiers into Libya. But foreseeing what was likely to happen, he very prudently embarked them in detachments, and did not send them all in one voyage. His object was to gain time for the Carthaginian government; so that one detachment should come to shore, receive the pay due to them, and depart from Carthage to their own country, before the next detachment was brought across and joined them. In accordance with this idea Gesco began the transportation of the troops. But the Government — partly because the recent expenses had reduced their finances to a low ebb, partly because they felt certain that, if they collected the whole force and entertained them in Carthage, they would be able to persuade the mercenaries to accept something less than the whole pay due to them — did not dismiss the detachments as they landed, but kept them massed in the city. But when this resulted in the commission of many acts of lawlessness by night and day, they began to feel uneasy at their numbers and their growing licentiousness; and required the officers, until such time as arrangements for discharging their pay should have been made, and the rest of the army should have arrived, to withdraw with all their men to a certain town called Sicca, receiving each a piece of gold for their immediate necessities. As far as quitting the city was concerned they were ready enough to obey; but they desired to leave their heavy baggage there as before, on the ground that they would soon have to return to the city for their wages. But the Carthaginian government were in terror lest, considering the length of their absence and their natural desire for the society of wives or children, they would either not quit the city at all; or, if they did, would be sure to be enticed by these feelings to return, and that thus there would be no decrease of outrages in the city. Accordingly they forced them to take their baggage with them: but it was sorely against the will of the men, and roused strong feelings of animosity among them. These mercenaries being forced to retire to Sicca, lived there as they chose without any restraint upon their lawlessness. For they had obtained two things the most demoralising for hired forces, and which in a word are in themselves the all-sufficient source and origin of mutinies, — relaxation of discipline and want of employment. For lack of something better to do, some of them began calculating, always to their own advantage, the amount of pay owing to them; and thus making out the total to be many times more than was really due, they gave out that this was the amount which they ought to demand from the Carthaginians. Moreover they all began to call to mind the promises made to them by the generals in their harangues, delivered on various occasions of special danger, and to entertain high hopes and great expectations of the amount of compensation which awaited them. The natural result followed.
67. When the whole army had mustered at Sicca, and Hanno, now appointed general in Libya, far from satisfying these hopes and the promises they had received, talked on the contrary of the burden of the taxes and the embarrassment of the public finances; and actually endeavoured to obtain from them an abatement even from the amount of pay acknowledged to be due to them; excited and mutinous feelings at once began to manifest themselves. There were constant conferences hastily got together, sometimes in separate nationalities, sometimes of the whole army; and there being no unity of race or language among them, the whole camp became a babel of confusion, a scene of inarticulate tumult, and a veritable revel of misrule. For the Carthaginians being always accustomed to employ mercenary troops of miscellaneous nationalities, in securing that an army should consist of several different races, act wisely as far as the prevention of any rapid combinations for mutiny, or difficulty on the part of the commanders in overawing insubordination, are concerned: but the policy utterly breaks down when an outburst of anger, or popular delusion, or internal dissension, has actually occurred; for it makes it impossible for the commander to soothe excited feelings, to remove misapprehensions, or to show the ignorant their error. Armies in such a state are not usually content with mere human wickedness; they end by assuming the ferocity of wild beasts and the vindictiveness of insanity.
This is just what happened in this case. There were in the army Iberians and Celts, men from Liguria and the Balearic Islands, and a considerable number of half-bred Greeks, mostly deserters and slaves; while the main body consisted of Libyans. Consequently it was impossible to collect and address them en masse, or to approach them with this view by any means whatever. There was no help for it: the general could not possibly know their several languages; and to make a speech four or five times on the same subject, by the mouths of several interpreters, was almost more impossible, if I may say so, than that. The only alternative was for him to address his entreaties and exhortations to the soldiers through their officers. And this Hanno continually endeavoured to do. But there was the same difficulty with them. Sometimes they failed to understand what he said: at others they received his words with expressions of approval to his face, and yet from error or malice reported them in a contrary sense to the common soldiers. The result was a general scene of uncertainty, mistrust, and misunderstanding. And to crown all, they took it into their heads that the Carthaginian government had a design in thus sending Hanno to them: that they purposely did not send the generals who were acquainted with the services they had rendered in Sicily, and who had been the authors of the promises made to them; but had sent the one man who had not been present at any of these transactions. Whether that were so or not, they finally broke off all negotiations with Hanno; conceived a violent mistrust of their several commanders; and in a furious outburst of anger with the Carthaginians started towards the city, and pitched their camp about a hundred and twenty stades from Carthage, at the town of Tunes, to the number of over twenty thousand.
68. The Carthaginians saw their folly when it was too late. It was a grave mistake to have collected so large a number of mercenaries into one place without any warlike force of their own citizens to fall back upon: but it was a still graver mistake to have delivered up to them their children and wives, with their heavy baggage to boot; which they might have retained as hostages, and thus have had greater security for concerting their own measures, and more power of ensuring obedience to their orders. However, being thoroughly alarmed at the action of the men in regard to their encampment, they went to every length in their eagerness to pacify their anger. They sent them supplies of provisions in rich abundance, to be purchased exactly on their own terms, and at their own price. Members of the Senate were despatched, one after the other, to treat with them; and they were promised that whatever they demanded should be conceded if it were within the bounds of possibility. Day by day the ideas of the mercenaries rose higher. For their contempt became supreme when they saw the dismay and excitement in Carthage; their confidence in themselves was profound; and their engagements with the Roman legions in Sicily had convinced them, that not only was it impossible for the Carthaginians to face them in the field, but that it would be difficult to find any nation in the world who could. Therefore, when the Carthaginians conceded the point of their pay, they made a further claim for the value of the horses they had lost. When this too was conceded, they said that they ought to receive the value of the rations
of corn due to them from a long time previous, reckoned at the highest price reached during the war. And in short, the ill-disposed and mutinous among them being numerous, they always found out some new demand which made it impossible to come to terms. Upon the Carthaginian government, however, pledging themselves to the full extent of their powers, they eventually agreed to refer the matter to the arbitration of some one of the generals who had been actually engaged in Sicily. Now they were displeased with Hamilcar Barcas, who was one of those under whom they had fought in Sicily, because they thought that their present unfavourable position was attributable chiefly to him. They thought this from the fact that he never came to them as an ambassador, and had, as was believed, voluntarily resigned his command. But towards Gesco their feelings were altogether friendly. He had, as they thought, taken every possible precaution for their interests, and especially in the arrangements for their conveyance to Libya. Accordingly they referred the dispute to the arbitration of the latter.
69. Gesco came to Tunes by sea, bringing the money with him. There he held a meeting first of the officers, and then of the men, according to their nationalities; rebuked them for their past behaviour, and endeavoured to convince them as to their duty in the present: but most of all he dwelt upon their obligation in the future to show themselves well-disposed towards the people whose pay they had been so long enjoying. Finally, he proceeded to discharge the arrears of pay, taking each nationality separately. But there was a certain Campanian in the army, a runaway Roman slave named Spendius, a man of extraordinary physical strength and reckless courage in the field. Alarmed lest his master should recover possession of him, and he should be put to death with torture, in accordance with the laws of Rome, this man exerted himself to the utmost in word and deed to break off the arrangement with the Carthaginians. He was seconded by a Libyan called Mathos, who was not a slave but free, and had actually served in the campaign. But he had been one of the most active agitators in the late disturbances: and being in terror of punishment for the past, he now gave in his adhesion to the party of Spendius; and taking the Libyans aside, suggested to them that, when the men of other races had received their pay, and taken their departure to their several countries, the Carthaginians would wreak upon them the full weight of the resentment which they had, in common with themselves, incurred; and would look upon their punishment as a means of striking terror into all the inhabitants of Libya. It did not take long to rouse the men by such arguments, nor were they at a loss for a pretext, however insignificant. In discharging the pay, Gesco postponed the payment of the valuations of rations and horses. This was enough: the men at once hurried to make a meeting; Spendius and Mathos delivered violent invectives against Gesco and the Carthaginians; their words were received with every sign of approval; no one else could get a hearing; whoever did attempt to speak was promptly stoned to death, without the assembly so much as waiting to ascertain whether he intended to support the party of Spendius or no.