Hoyos - Mastering the West: a history of the Punic Wars

Ancient Warfare and Civilization

In this series, leading historians offer compelling new narratives of the armed conflicts that shaped and reshaped the classical world, from the wars of Archaic Greece to the fall of the Roman Empire and the Arab conquests.

Dividing the Spoils

The War for Alexander the Greats Empire

Robin Waterfield

By the Spear

Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire

Ian Worthington

Taken at the Flood

The Roman Conquest of Greece

Robin Waterfield

In Gods Path

The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire

Robert G. Hoyland

Mastering the West

Rome and Carthage at War

Dexter Hoyos

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoyos, B. D. (B. Dexter), 1944
Mastering the West : Rome and Carthage at war / Dexter Hoyos.
ISBN 9780199860104 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
eISBN 9780199391745
1.Punic wars.
2.Command of troopsHistoryTo 1500.3.Mediterranean RegionHistory, Military.
4.Mediterranean RegionHistoryTo 476.5.RomeHistory, Military.
6.Carthage (Extinct city)History, Military.I.Title.
DG242.H69 2015
937.04dc23
2014015832

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All maps prepared by the Author

IT IS A SPECIAL pleasure to acknowledge the encouragement and advice that I have had over a long period of writing. Richard Alston and Robin Waterfield originated the suggestion of a study of the Punic Wars in the context of ancient warfare and civilization. Their vigilant and invariably helpful scrutiny has been matched by that of Stefan Vranka, Oxford University Presss senior editor in Classics, ancient history, and archaeology. I deeply appreciate too their unvarying patience with an author who found his progress slower than he had too-confidently forecast. It gives me immense pleasure to thank the copy editor and book editor for their keen-eyed vigilance with this title. I also thank Sarah Pirovitz at Oxford University Press (New York) for her invaluable help with the artworks in this title. I could not have written this book without the study facilities of Sydney University and Macquarie University, both of which have generously accorded me honorary research affiliateships. The work would not have been feasible, in turn, without the understanding and care of my wife, Jann; our daughter, Camilla; her husband, Anthony; and a tiny granddaughter named Scarlett.

IN THE THIRD AND second centuries BC the two leading states of the western Mediterranean, Rome and Carthageboth republics, closely linked by trade, and with political and military interests previously focused on differing regionsfought three wars, which decided the fate of their own lands and of those others in the West that were drawn into them. The First Punic War, from 264 to 241 BC, and the Second and most famous, from 218 to 201, were on a scale far beyond most other ancient conflictsa point made as early as their first surviving historian, the Greek Polybius, himself present during Romes operations against Carthage in the Third.

The First war ranged over a relatively narrow area of the central Mediterranean: Sicily and its waters and briefly Sardinia and North Africa. Yet the combatants put sometimes huge forces into actioneven if Polybius may exaggerate themand sometimes huge losses befell these. The Second, in its turn, was the most titanic Mediterranean struggle before the Roman civil wars of Julius Caesars day 200 years later. It was fought across Italy, Spain, the western Mediterranean islands, and North Africa; it also led to Romes first Macedonian war because Macedon chose to side with Carthage. The Third was more concentrated, this time in North Africa; but it drained far more resources in men, munitions, and money than either side foresaw.

The Punic Wars opened almost by accident, affected the lives and fortunes of millions (not all of them Carthaginians or Romans), destroyed one empire, and launched another. When they began in 264 BC Rome was a rising but middle-level power that had only just imposed her control over peninsular Italy; Carthage was a major state directly or indirectly ruling much of North Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia. When the Third war was launched just over a century later, the situations were almost exactly reversed. How it all happened is a story blended of calculation and (just as often) miscalculation, heroism, cruelty, stubborn resolve, and the unexpected.

The wars lasting fame rests above all on the renown of two men: Carthages general Hannibal and his Roman adversary Scipio Africanus, both in the Second. Hannibals blend of charismatic leadership, risk-taking dash, and tactical genius has always won admirationeven from Romans, once he had passed awayand, from time to time, imitators. If in the end he failed, it was a failure whose brilliance eclipsed most of the ancient worlds successful generals. Scipio Africanus was an even greater commander. No less charismatic and risk-taking, he never lost a battle or a campaign, in a career that put Rome on the path to mastery over the Mediterranean West. Ironically, both men died around the same time in self-imposed exile, estranged from their ungrateful homelands.

The conflicts produced a gallery of other notable figures whose memory too has endured. The First wars Marcus Regulus, in a pleasing legend, sacrificed himself rather than urge Rome to beg for peace; Hannibals father, Hamilcar Barca, saved Carthage in her worst crisis and created her second empire after Rome struck down the first. Against Hannibal, Fabius the Delayer by delaying restored our fortunes in the contemporary poet Enniuss proverbial paradox; Claudius Marcellus conquered Syracuse and lamented the slaughter of the scientist Archimedes (himself another figure of note). A young Carthaginian woman, Sophoniba, became queen of Numidia to meet a tragic fate that engrossed later romantic fancy. The Third war owed much to the old and unforgiving Cato the Censors strident pressure for it, remembered by later ages (inaccurately) as a cry that Carthage must be destroyed. Scipio Aemilianus, Africanuss adoptive grandson, proved himself another unforgiving enemy of Carthageas he would be of other accused transgressors, his own cousin among them.