Steinby - Rome Versus Carthage: The War at Sea

T he Punic Wars are a crucial period of ancient history. Rome and Carthage fought three wars that permanently changed the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Everyone is familiar with the outcome of these wars: that Carthage was sacked at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 and that Rome became a world power with Pax Romana and Mare Nostrum.

However, at that time, none of this could be taken for granted. The First Punic War (264241) was the first armed conflict in which Rome operated outside Italy, challenging the Punic fleet for the control of Sicily and other islands in the western Mediterranean. The Romans had the initiative and forced the Carthaginians into an arms race by constantly building new fleets a competition in which the Carthaginians could not keep up and thus had to give up Sicily. The contest for thalassocracy continued in the Second Punic War (218201), which did develop into a serious maritime conflict and which Carthage actually lost at sea. It can be seen as the world war of its time: battles took place everywhere in the western Mediterranean, and during this war Rome also became irretrievably involved in the matters of the eastern Mediterranean. At the end of the war, Rome ruled over the western Mediterranean; the Carthaginian fleet was reduced to ten warships and a new era began in RomanCarthaginian relations the Carthaginians paid indemnities to Rome for the next fifty years and were also obliged to send ships and grain, thus participating in the Roman war effort against the Macedonian and Seleucid kingdoms. The Third Punic War (149146) demonstrated the overwhelming power of the Romans and brings to an end a period in which the Romans had conquered all their enemies at sea, both in the west and in the east.

The year 146 thus marks the end of this story. It begins, however, many centuries before the Punic Wars. One of the objectives of this book is to demonstrate that it was not a case of the agrarian Rome vs. the seafaring Carthage, as has sometimes been presented, but the maritime history of both Rome and Carthage has its roots in the centuries preceding the wars, as do the causes that lead to the conflict. Rome and Carthage owe many of their characteristics to the Phoenician and Greek colonies founded from the ninth and eighth centuries onwards that brought trade, new wealth and new connections to the western Mediterranean. This is obviously the case with Carthage, which was founded by Tyrian settlers and gradually became the leading colony of the Phoenicians. Fifth-century Carthage was, alongside Syracuse and Athens, one of the largest states of its time in terms of wealth, power and maritime connections. Rome, on the other hand, was one of the cities on the Tyrrhenian coast where life was changed by the coming of the colonists trade and interaction with the colonies made Rome an important and prosperous city. In the centuries before the Punic Wars, the Romans operated at sea as did any other nation in the Tyrrhenian. Consequently, in the Punic Wars, there were two seafaring nations competing for power over the western Mediterranean.