The Sword of Rome

by Jeremiah McCall

  It seems, if anything, that the testimony of these three sources compared more strongly suggests late 213 or early 212 was the time when the Cannae legions petitioned Marcellus. It is not enough, however, to compare the sources and establish a simple majority. The question is this: Does stipulating that, firstly, the petition took place in late 213 or early 212, and, secondly, the Cannae legions were not allowed to serve in anything other than a garrison capacity before this, allow a plausible reconstruction of the military operations before the end of 213? Quite simply, no.31 Consider that the two Cannae legions were the only legions, historians generally believe, stationed in Sicily in 215. Traditionally, Sicily was protected by two legions, and when the Cannae legions were penalized and sent to Sicily, the two legions already there were transferred to back to Italy for operations against Hannibal.32 Marcellus presumably brought two legions and the accompanying allied troops with him to the island, the normal army for a consul. One of those legions, however, apparently did not arrive for months after Marcellus did, perhaps late in 213.33 Essentially, then, Marcellus seems to have brought only one legion and its allied complement with him initially to Sicily, so perhaps 10,000 men.

  If the Cannae legions were prohibited from active duty and Marcellus did not use them until late 213 or early 212, two more solid points of evidence become very difficult to reconcile. The first is that Marcellus planned to assault Syracuse with only 10,000 troops at his disposal for the landward attack. Consuls normally had two legions and their allies with them, double the size of the force Marcellus had. It is more than a bit incredible to think that Marcellus would estimate this force to be sufficient to attack one of the great walled cities of the ancient Mediterranean, and be willing to let an additional 10,000 to 16,000 soldiers sit idly by. The second point of evidence that is difficult to reconcile comes from a campaign after the assault on Syracuse. This episode will be treated in more detail later. For now, what is important is that Marcellus, after failing to take Syracuse by storm, left two thirds of the army under Appius’ command and took one third with him into the field. He declined to engage a Carthaginian force of 28,000 but surprised, engaged, and defeated a Syracusan army of 10,500. If Marcellus did not draw on the Cannae legions at all, his army would have numbered perhaps 3,000 or 4,000 men at this point, and it becomes improbable, even with the element of surprise, that Marcellus accomplished this deed. Assuming the Cannae legions were part of his total available forces soon after he landed on the island, however, provides a reasonable figure for Roman troops available. The total army would be more than 30,000, and the detachment Marcellus used to rout the Syracusan force somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 – still small enough to explain why Marcellus dared not challenge a Carthaginian army of 28,000.

  So while the testimony of Livy is clear about when these events happened, Plutarch is equally clear. The ramifications of each date for the rest of the evidence are the deciding factors. Though there can be no certainty in these matters, the requirement that all the known military operations of the year in Sicily be plausibly explained suggests that Plutarch was correct and the legions petitioned Marcellus in late 214 or early 213, before he began the attack on Syracuse. Marcellus was still consul then, which would make Frontinus’ reference accurate. Of course, this leaves unsolved the problem of why he dated the event to a later consulship, but Frontinus clearly made an error one way or another, and we have to choose which chronological marker was erroneous, the reference to Marcellus being consul, or the reference to Appius Claudius being consul. If Plutarch’s version is to be preferred, the prohibition on the Cannae legions can be accepted, Marcellus’ request to use the troops from time to time and the senate’s reluctant acquiescence fit, and all in a way that does not require us to believe that Marcellus thought it better to assault Syracuse without these troops, but then added them to his forces for a siege only at their request.

  It is worth making one additional point in favour of Plutarch’s dating – or at least consistent with it – that has generally been overlooked. Though historians have generally assumed, based on the petition Livy describes, that the Cannae legions were prohibited from active service, none of the sources actually says any such thing. Consistently, when the Cannae legions are mentioned, the only punishment stated is that they had to serve continuously until the war in Italy ended.34 None of the sources directly states that the legions were barred from actively serving in field operations. That that was the case is inferred from Livy’s grand, and assuredly embellished rendition of the soldiers’ petition:

  We should have approached you, Marcellus, when you were consul, in Italy, as soon as that severe if not unjust resolution of the senate was passed concerning us, had we not hoped that after being sent into a province thrown into confusion by the death of its kings, to take part in a serious war against Sicilians and Carthaginians combined, we should have made reparation to the senate by our blood and our wounds in the same way that those who were taken by Pyrrhus at Heraclea, within the memory of our fathers, made reparation by fighting against Pyrrhus afterwards.... But we, against whom no charge can be brought except that it is through our fault that a single Roman soldier is left alive after the battle of Cannae – we, I say, have not only been sent far away from our native soil and from Italy, but we have been placed out of reach of the enemy, we are to grow old in exile, with no hope, no chance, of wiping out our shame, or of appeasing our fellow citizens, or even of dying an honourable death. We are not asking for an end to our ignominy or for the rewards of valour, we only ask to be allowed to prove our mettle and to show our courage. We ask for labours and dangers, for a chance of doing our duty as men and as soldiers. This is the second year of the war in Sicily with all its hard-fought battles. The Carthaginians are capturing some cities, the Romans are taking others, infantry and cavalry meet in the shock of battle, at Syracuse a great struggle is going on by land and sea, we hear the shouts of the combatants and the clash of their arms, and we are sitting idly by, as though we had neither weapons nor hands to use them. The legions of slaves have fought many pitched battles under Tiberius Sempronius; they have as their reward freedom and citizenship, we implore you to treat us at least as slaves who have been purchased for this war, and to allow us to meet and fight the enemy and so win our freedom. Are you willing to make proof of our courage by sea or by land, in the open field or against city walls? We ask for whatever brings the hardest toil and the greatest danger, if only what ought to have been done at Cannae may be done as soon as we can do it, now. For all our life since has been but one long agony of shame.35

  It is important to remember first of all that this speech is assuredly in no way an attempt to capture verbatim what was said, even if Livy had that information available. Second, Livy almost assuredly was mistaken in his dating of the soldiers’ petition, since it makes little sense that the Cannae legions stayed out of the battle for Syracuse, given what is known about the numbers of the forces involved. So, focusing only on the expressed complaints of the soldiers, strictly speaking, all that Livy really suggests they claimed is that they had been stationed far away from the main theater of war and wanted to play an active part, not that the senate had forbidden them to play such a part. This fabricated speech is the closest Livy comes to any suggestion that the senate had forbidden the troops to fight anymore, and even here he does not actually say this. Once again, every reference elsewhere in Livy and the other relevant sources states that the punishment for the legions, the mark of disgrace, was that they would be forced to remain in service until the war was over, not that they would be prevented from serving in battle. Plutarch’s account in this regard fits very well within this context; Marcellus arrived on the island and was asked by the Cannae legions if they could play a significant role in the attack on Syracuse. He agreed, wrote a letter to the senate, asking if he could draw on these troops, and the senate agreed, while maintaining the stigma it had laid on those troops. The practical issue at stake may have been simply
that soldiers who fell under Marcellus’ command could potentially, if not clearly identified as members of the disgraced Cannae legions, leave the island as members of Marcellus’ army before the war was over and their sentence completed.

  Assuming, then, that the Cannae legions were part of the total Roman force at Marcellus’ disposal, Marcellus had approximately 30,000 troops available in addition to a fleet of some ships. With these forces at hand, he planned a combined attack by land and sea to take Syracuse by storm. This was in late 214 or, more likely, early 213. Appius Claudius’ land forces made for the Hexapylon, the strong gate complex on the north wall of the city. At the same time Marcellus commanded an amphibious attack against the seaward wall of Achradina first.36 The latter was certainly an ambitious undertaking. Amphibious assaults were rare enough in antiquity, and the Romans, in general, were far more experienced at fighting on land than at sea. Still, the core idea of using a large army to apply pressure to disparate points along a city wall was sound enough. But why not simply attack multiple points on land? Perhaps because breaching the Epipolae defences would still have left the Roman army facing the walled Achradina quarter, effectively a second city requiring besieging, and the location of most of the population. If the Romans were confident about their chances in taking the city quickly, it certainly was most expedient to seize both Epipolae and Achradina simultaneously, reducing the largest of the two city quarters at once.

  The strategy may have been overly confident, but Marcellus certainly was not rash in his planning. Quite pragmatically – indeed, one might almost say in a Roman fashion – Marcellus planned a naval assault that in its essence was a land assault. He had sixty quinqueremes at his disposal, warships with five rowers per oar that were the core of the Roman fleet. Eight of these ships were lashed in pairs side-by-side so that they could provide catamaran-like stability for the construction of assault towers known as sambucae. These were so called because they resembled those ancient stringed musical instruments. One can hardly do better than to paraphrase Polybius’ description of these devices. Each sambuca consisted of a ladder four feet wide and as high as needed to reach the ramparts of the Achradina walls. The base of the ladder was attached near the prow of the ship, perhaps with some sort of pin. On each side of the ladder at the front of the ship was a tower, presumably to protect both the ladder and climbers. The top of the ladder was suspended by cables through pulleys attached to the masts of the ship. Finally, the top of the ladder had screens on the sides and front to offer some protection. In practice, four soldiers rode at the head of the ladder as the ships approached the walls. When the ship came sufficiently close, the four jumped onto the top of the wall. Though Polybius does not explicitly say so, it is reasonable to suppose the task of the first four, other than to fight off the defenders at the wall, was to secure the top of the ladder for the subsequent assault troops that climbed it.37 While the four sambucae tried the walls, the remaining quinqueremes held back, their decks full of missile troops whose job was to keep the seaward walls clear of defenders.38 While the navy assaulted the sea walls, Appius Claudius executed a landward assault west of the Hexapylon gate with ladders to mount the walls and screens to protect the Roman soldiers as they brought and placed the ladders.39

  The ancient authors agree, however, that Archimedes’ defences stopped the Roman assault cold. There were several components to the defence systems constructed by the famous Greek engineer. First, he had positioned stone throwers and ballistae along the seaward walls of Achradina. The heaviest of these were capable of harrying the Roman ships at a distance, and the smaller engines kept up the attack when the ships passed under the minimum range of the large engines. According to Polybius, these defences alone were sufficient to halt the Roman advance and persuade Marcellus to try an attack at night. They were hardly the only tools Archimedes had placed at the Syracusans’ disposal. Arrowloops along the base of the wall also allowed archers and small missile engines to harass the Roman soldiers as their quinqueremes closed with the city walls.40

  By far the most spectacular countermeasures, however, were those used against the Roman ships and sambucae. These were of two types. The first were wooden beams with boulders or heavy weights of lead at the end. These were pivoted out and over the walls and their weights dropped on the Roman sambucae as they approached. More dramatic still were the beams with grappling devices, which, once affixed to the prow of any Roman ship, used counterweights to draw the prow straight into the air then released, dashing the ship down and stunning the crew when not capsizing the boat outright.41 Through these combined defensive measures, the Roman seaward assault was simply crushed. Indeed, Polybius, who was not overly inclined to make jokes in his work, attributed a moment of levity to Marcellus amidst the destruction. The commander was said to have quipped after the horrendous refusal, ‘Archimedes uses my ships to ladle sea water into his wine cups, but my sambuca band is flogged out of the banquet in disgrace.’42 Claudius, meanwhile, fared no better on the landward side. There, Archimedes’ engines rained stones and bolts onto the advancing Roman soldiers, preventing them from reaching the walls. Claudius, too, was forced to call off the attack. Syracuse, it appeared, would not be taken by storm. The Roman commanders shifted to siege preparations.43 Essentially, this meant encircling the city with a set of outposts and guards in order to prevent anyone or anything, especially food supplies, from getting in or out. A city as large as Syracuse, however, would not fall quickly to siege, as Marcellus no doubt knew well.

  Once the siege had begun, there was little to do at the city but wait. In an effort to demoralize Syracuse and strengthen the Roman position in the region, Marcellus left Appius Claudius with the task of monitoring Syracuse with two thirds of the Roman army while he took the remaining third and campaigned against several cities in Syracuse’s sphere of influence that had supported the Carthaginian cause. His exact route is not clear; Livy only provides us a list of his successes. The citizens of Helorus, a coastal town south of Syracuse, surrendered, as did Herbesus, a town west of Syracuse between it and Leontini. Marcellus took Megara by storm, no more than 10 miles north-east from Syracuse, and gave it to his soldiers to plunder and destroy as an object lesson to the rebellious Syracusans.44

  Whatever effect Marcellus’ victories may have had on persuading the Syracusans to surrender, it vanished almost immediately as news arrived that a Carthaginian force had landed in western Sicily near the important southern city of Agrigentum. The commander, Himilco, had brought a force, according to Livy, of 25,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, and twelve elephants.45 Livy provides numbers for the Carthaginian force that are large but certainly within the realm of plausibility. Marcellus attempted to head off the Carthaginian invasion and marched westward. By the time the Roman army arrived, however, the Carthaginians had already seized control of Agrigentum. Apparently judging that his forces were insufficient for the task of ousting the much larger Carthaginian army, Marcellus ordered his army to march back to Syracuse.46

  The return of a Carthaginian army to the island spurred on the many cities opposed to Roman control, including Syracuse. Somehow, Hippocrates managed to leave Syracuse and run the Roman cordon with 10,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. With this portion of Syracuse’s forces, he marched west toward the town of Acrillae, presumably planning to join his forces with the Carthaginians. As it happened, however, Marcellus had adopted a cautious stance for his army on the return march to Syracuse and managed to catch the Syracusan soldiers as they had dispersed to pitch camp. The Roman force seized the upper hand and quickly defeated the Syracusan infantry. The cavalry held out slightly longer, but eventually Hippocrates retreated with them to Acrae, several miles to the east.47 Soon, Hippocrates made his way to join Himilco’s forces as they approached Syracuse, apparently in pursuit of Marcellus. Himilco was unable to close with Marcellus’ force before he reached the safety of the Roman fortifications and the bulk of the army near Syracuse; by then, it was too late.48 Still, it appeared that the
Roman position around Syracuse was in danger. Not only was Himilco’s army positioned only a few miles away at the River Anapus, but also a fleet of fifty-five Carthaginian quinqueremes managed to enter the Great Harbour of Syracuse. The Romans received reinforcements of their own, however, as Marcellus’ second legion finally landed on the island and made its way to the Roman camps.49

  Himilco opted – and there is no reason to second guess his estimates – not to challenge the siege of the city directly but to destabilize Roman control of the island by encouraging cities that hoped to revolt against Rome. The citizens of Murgantia, perhaps 50 miles inland from Syracuse, ousted the Roman garrison and took control of the supplies and food the Romans had stored there.50 In Henna, however, a city in the center of Sicily with a citadel on a high cliff that dominated the surrounding countryside, the Roman garrison preemptively slaughtered the men of the city rather than risk falling prey to rebellion. When word was sent to Marcellus of the deed, he condoned the act by authorizing the garrison to plunder Henna. This may have been another of Marcellus’ object lessons to intimidate the Sicilians into submission, but it apparently had the effect of only further fanning the flames of revolt in Sicily and removing any psychological advantage gained from his recent victory over Hippocrates.51 By the end of the campaign season, a number of towns had joined the Carthaginian cause. With winter closing in (late 213), Himilco returned with his forces to Agrigentum, and Hippocrates traveled to Murgantia to join the rebellion there. Marcellus, meanwhile, had his soldiers construct a new fortified winter camp several miles from the Hexapylon gate on the north side of Syracuse. With the election season approaching, Marcellus discharged his legate Appius Claudius, who was intent on running for consul; Titus Quinctius Crispinus assumed the role of Marcellus’ new legate in charge of the fleet and the soldiers stationed at the old camp, near the Temple of Jupiter south of the city and approximately one mile from the Great Harbour.52 From these positions the Roman forces settled in to focus completely on the siege of Syracuse.