It was unusual for non-Greek states to have an established constitution, but Carthage and Rome were exceptions to the rule. To the Hellenic mind, this meant they were not altogether barbarians—that is to say, incomprehensible foreigners whose speech was pilloried as sounding like “bar bar”—and, at least in this regard, were allowed to become honorary members of the club of civilized nations. The philosopher Aristotle was a connoisseur of constitutions and found that the Carthaginians had “an excellent form of government.” He went on, “The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remain loyal to it. They have never had any revolution worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a popular dictator”—unlike many if not most Hellenic states, he might have added.
The Punic and Roman constitutions were in some ways similar, for they were both “mixed”—that is, they contained elements of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. It is unlikely that Carthage (pace Dido) was ever ruled by a king or queen, but at various times one leading family or clan dominated the government. In the third century, there were two chief officials, the sufets; this is the same word as the Hebrew shophet, usually translated as “judge,” as in the Book of Judges. So we may infer that sufets exercised a judicial as well as an executive role. Like Roman consuls, they were elected by an assembly of the People, held office for only a year, and probably shared power with one other colleague. Candidates for office had to be wellborn and wealthy.
A Council of Elders drawn from the upper class advised the sufets on the full range of political and administrative issues; there were several hundred members, and a standing committee of thirty dealt with pressing business and, as is the way with such groups, probably managed the council’s agenda. If council and sufets agreed on a course of action, there was no need for it to be submitted to the assembly. So far, so conventional. More constitutionally innovative was a special panel of 104 members of the Council of Elders. Called the Court of the Hundred and Four Judges, it controlled justice and the law courts and, like the Spartan ephors, looked after state security and supervised the activities of officials. It had something in common with a Ministry of the Interior in a police state.
Unlike Roman consuls, the sufets had no military duties. There was a separate post of general to which anybody could be elected. Carthage’s characteristic mode was one of peaceful commerce. When wars did occur, they were usually fought a long way from home and regarded as short-term upheavals best handled by short-term appointees. In times of peace, sufets could simultaneously serve as generals, too, but if Carthage was at war the door was opened wider to attract proven military ability.
Self-confidence was an essential qualification for Punic generals, for theirs was a dangerous job. Failure on the battlefield was completely unacceptable to the authorities, and often led to instant crucifixion. Success also brought negative consequences, for the home government feared that victorious commanders would return to Carthage with their mercenaries and seize power.
Of the three elements of the Punic constitution, there is no doubt that oligarchy had the upper hand. The Carthaginians’ main occupation was making money, and few objected to the wealthy being in charge of government. The mass of people failed to develop the solidarity and capacity for collective action that marked the Roman populus. In our terms today, Carthage was more of an international corporation than a nation-state.
Whatever reservations we may have about Punic politics and society, it is worth recalling Cicero’s remark: “Carthage would not have maintained an empire for six hundred years had it not been ruled with statesmanship and professionalism.”
THE GREEKS HAD largely been driven out of the western seas, but they had no intention of letting go of Sicily. With intermittent hostilities between them and Carthage for three hundred years, the island was still the flash point between the two halves of the Mediterranean world. And now a newcomer had arrived on the scene, Rome. A spark presented itself.
If ever evidence were required of the danger posed by mercenaries, the story of what happened to the city of Messana, guardian of the straits between Sicily and Italy, stood as a terrible example. A band of daredevils from Campania was hired by the ruler of Syracuse. On his death in 289, they found themselves unexpectedly out of work. They liked Sicily and the soldier’s life away from home, but what were they to do? Reluctantly en route back to Italy, they came upon wealthy, beautiful, pacific but gullible Messana. This was the mercenaries’ last chance to stay on the island, and they had a smart idea. They insinuated themselves into the city as friends and, betraying their unsuspecting hosts, one night took possession of it. According to Polybius:
They followed up this action by expelling some of the citizens, massacring others and taking prisoner the wives and families of their dispossessed victims, each man keeping those whom he happened to have found at the moment of the outrage. Lastly they divided among themselves the ownership of the land and all the remaining property.
This hijacking of a city went unpunished. The mercenaries, who named themselves Mamertines—after Mamers, the Sabellian version of the war god Mars—transformed Messana from a quiet trading emporium into a raiding base. They applied the only skills they were able to command: they made a living from plundering nearby towns, capturing unwary merchant ships, holding people they abducted for ransom, and generally disseminating mayhem. They impartially damaged Carthaginian and Greek interests.
Eventually, the greatest power in western Sicily, Syracuse, decided that enough was enough. In about 270, its young despot, Hiero, defeated the Mamertines in a pitched battle and arrested their leaders. This halted their depredations, although they still held Messana. A few years later, Hiero felt it was time to put an end to the Mamertines altogether and besieged Messana.
These superannuated and ageing hirelings made a fateful decision, or, rather, two decisions. Some of them appealed for help to a passing Carthaginian fleet, which accepted the commission and garrisoned the citadel. When he saw Punic ships in the harbor, Hiero did not want more trouble than he could handle and tactfully retired to Syracuse. Then another faction called on the Romans for support.
The Senate was at a loss. The Mamertines were the most disreputable of victims. Across the narrow water from Messana some other Campanians, this time serving in the Roman army, had been sent to Rhegium as a garrison during the war against Pyrrhus. Inspired by the Mamertines, they had committed a copycat massacre of its citizens and taken over the town. Rome refused to tolerate such a scandalous breach of faith and sent an army to take the city. This it did, killing most of the renegades. Three hundred survivors were sent to Rome, where they were marched into the Forum, flogged, and beheaded.
How could the Senate conceivably go to the rescue of men who had committed exactly the same crime? But this was what happened, and the explanation was reason of state. The undeceived Hiero observed that the Romans were using “pity for those at risk as a cloak for their own advantage.” The Carthaginians already dominated much of Sicily, and might very well cast a predatory eye northward across the narrow straits if they won Messana.
From the Senate’s point of view, as Polybius noted, “they would prove the most vexatious and dangerous of neighbors, since they would hem Italy in on all sides and threaten every part of the country. This was a prospect that Rome dreaded. It was obvious that they would soon be masters in Sicily, if the Mamertines were not helped.” The anxiety was not misplaced, for Sardinia and Corsica were already Punic possessions and the Etruscan port of Caere was so full of Carthaginian traders that it had been nicknamed Punicum. What was more, the cities of Greater Greece would expect their new master to consult their interests; the loss of Sicily to the “barbarian” African power would be a terrible symbolic blow to the Hellenic cause.
Opinion in the Senate was finely balanced and, most unusually, the matter was referred to a popular Assembly without a recommendation. Despite the fact that the Republic was worn down by years of nonstop fighting, a
resolution in favor of sending help was carried. A consul was sent to Messana at the head of an army. He managed to slip through a sea blockade. The Carthaginian commander, lacking instructions, was finessed into withdrawing his troops from the city. The authorities in Carthage promptly had him crucified “for want of judgment and courage.”
Both the Carthaginians and the Syracusans were shocked by the turn of events and, despite their long enmity, entered into an improbable mariage de convenance with the common aim of expelling the Romans. However, the consul picked off each of their armies in separate engagements before they could join forces. The astute Hiero had second thoughts; judging that it was in Syracuse’s long-term interest to switch sides, he agreed to an alliance with Rome, from which he never strayed during the rest of a long life. In the coming years he remained an invaluable friend, offering the legions a base and local supplies.
The parties had slipped into war without altogether intending to do so or being fully conscious of the consequences. But once full-scale hostilities had opened, the true reasons for the conflict emerged like a mountain out of mist. Dio explains that Messana was no more than a pretext:
The truth is otherwise. As a matter of fact, the Carthaginians, who had long been a great power, and the Romans, who were now growing rapidly stronger, looked on each other with jealousy. They were drawn into war partly by the desire of continually acquiring more possessions—in accordance with the principle that people are most active when they are most successful—and partly by fear. Both sides alike thought that the one sure salvation for their own possessions lay in also obtaining those of the others.
Messana and the Mamertines faded into the background. (In fact, we never learn what was the Mamertines’ final fate; they simply vanish and one can only hope they came to a bad end.)
The Senate cannot have had firm war aims. To secure Messana as a Rome-friendly outpost may have been enough at the outset. But once Hiero’s friendship had been won and Syracuse became, in effect, a client kingdom, it was possible to be a little more ambitious and attempt to push the Carthaginians back eastward into their traditional zone of influence. Rome could then gather the Greek settlements in central Sicily under its security umbrella. It soon became clear, though, that Carthage would not tolerate a Roman presence in Sicily, and it followed that conquest of the entire island was the only rational response.
Campaigning went well for the Romans, who captured Acragas, an important Greek city and the Punic headquarters. Nevertheless, the Senate realized that however well the war went on land, it would be impossible to expel the Carthaginians as long as they commanded the seas, transporting reinforcements, blockading harbors, and raiding Italy. Rome, which had never been much interested in maritime matters, would have to build a fleet.
THE SEA WAS busy but perilous. For hundreds of years sailors, Phoenicians and Greeks especially, had crisscrossed the Mediterranean, ferrying wheat from the Black Sea, boat timber from Berytus, woolen fabrics from Miletus. Heavy goods such as oil and wine were much more easily transported by ship than on carts lumbering along unmetaled roads. Merchant vessels could carry from one hundred tons of cargo to a maximum of about five hundred tons. Their hulls were broad and well rounded, and they were equipped with a single low, rectangular sail (sometimes with additional triangular sails). They had no rudders, and one or two steering oars fastened to the stern were used instead.
Warships were very different creatures—sleek, fast death machines. They were galleys with rows of oars to supplement sails. By the third century, the quinqereme was the craft of choice. It carried a crew of some three hundred oarsmen. It might be about forty meters long and, at sea level, five wide. The deck stood about three meters above the water. A metal beak was attached to the keel and projected from the bow, and the main tactic of attack was to ram an enemy midships and sink or, at least, swamp it. A quinquereme at action stations could attain more than ten knots an hour, but only in spurts. Five knots was a more likely average.
The word quinquereme derives from the Latin for “five oars.” This is misleading, for it seems it was oarsmen not oars that were arranged in groups of five. They controlled three oars set one above another. Two men rowed with each of the top two oars and one with the bottom oar. The team occupied a wooden box, or frame, that jutted out of the ship’s side.
Ships of every kind were vulnerable to bad weather and tended to hug the coast for safety. Few ventured out in the winter months. This was not only to avoid storms but also because of the increased cloudiness. In the daytime, mariners navigated by the sun and landmarks, and by the stars at night. Without clear skies, they were lost.
The Carthaginians had the most technically advanced navy, and for Rome to create a fleet from a standing start that could compete with them was a bold, some must have said foolhardy, enterprise. But just as the serendipitous capture of an Enigma code machine helped the British win the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War, so chance came to the Republic’s rescue. Apparently, quinqueremes were unknown in Italy and Roman shipbuilders were completely inexperienced at building them. Polybius observes:
It was not a question of having adequate resources for the project, for they in fact had none whatsoever, nor had they ever given a thought to the sea before this. But once they had conceived the idea, they embarked on it so boldly that without waiting to gain any experience in naval warfare they immediately engaged the Carthaginians, who had for generations enjoyed an unchallenged supremacy at sea.
At the beginning of the war, Rome had no warships of any kind and borrowed some small secondhand vessels from Tarentum and other Italiote cities to guard the transport of troops to Messana. Luckily, all went well, and, even more luckily, a Punic quinquereme ventured too close to shore, ran aground, and fell into Roman hands.
We know from the discovery of the remains of a third-century military craft off the port of Lilybaeum that each part of it was marked with different letters, enabling speedy “flat pack” assembly. So it cannot have been a difficult or lengthy task to produce copycat versions of the captured ship. Within two months, despite the inexperience of their shipwrights, the Romans were the proud owners of a brand-new fleet, comprising one hundred quinqeremes and twenty triremes (galleys rowed by oarsmen in groups of three).
While the ships were being built, sailors—more than thirty thousand of them—were recruited. Their training had to be undertaken on dry land, however foolish those taking part must have felt. Polybius records what happened:
[The trainers] placed the men along the rowers’ benches on dry land, seating them in the arrangement as if they were on those of an actual vessel, and then stationing the keleustes [time-caller] in the middle, they trained them to swing back their bodies in unison bringing their hands up to them, then to move forward again thrusting their hands in front of them, and to begin and end these movements at the keleustes’ word of command.
As soon as the ships were completed, they were launched and the crews went aboard for some “real-life” practice. Under the command of a consul-admiral, they then set sail for the high seas.
To have established a maritime arm in so short a space of time was an extraordinary achievement. In its wars with the Samnites and the campaigns against Pyrrhus, Rome had shown a capacity to hang on, to bear disaster, and to return grimly to the fray. Here was evidence now of a less reactive, more purely aggressive energy. The creation of a new fleet almost out of thin air revealed Rome’s unremitting enthusiasm for new challenges. It had learned how to upgrade itself into a more expansive, more irresistible state of being.
WOULD THIS UNTESTED fleet win victories against the marine superpower of the age? An instant setback and the consul’s humiliating capture by the enemy gave pause for thought. However hard the shipbuilders tried, the fact was that the Roman ships were heavier and clumsier than their Punic counterparts. The Carthaginians were masters of maneuver. They knew how to sink their opponents by ramming, and they avoided having to fight hand to hand.
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Some creative but now anonymous Roman came up with a very clever idea that restored the balance of advantage. He invented a device called a corvus, or “raven.” This was a wooden bridge with low railings attached to a vertical pole. Probably fixed near a ship’s bow, it could swivel around and be raised or lowered by a system of pulleys. A spike was attached to its underside. A Roman warship would approach an enemy quinquereme and drop the bridge down onto its deck. The spike pierced the deck and held the bridge in place. Then a team of between seventy and a hundred marines, experienced soldiers all, crossed over to the other vessel and captured it.
In effect, the corvus transformed a sea battle into a land battle on water, and took the Carthaginians completely by surprise. In the summer of 260, the Romans received intelligence that the enemy was ravaging the countryside near Mylae (today’s Milazzo), not far from Sicily’s northeastern tip, and sent their entire fleet there. As soon as the Carthaginians sighted them, they sailed ahead without hesitation. They were full of scorn for these Italian amateurs and did not trouble to keep any formation. They were puzzled by the ravens but rowed on regardless.
To their dismay, the first thirty ships to engage were grappled and boarded. The rest of the Punic fleet saw what was happening and sheered off to encircle and ram the Romans. But they simply swung their gangways around to meet attacks from any direction. The Carthaginians, unnerved, turned and fled, having lost 50 ships out of a total of 130.
The Punic commander avoided execution because he had prophylactically sought and won advance permission from the authorities in Carthage to fight the battle. But when the cock-a-hoop Romans successfully extended their field of operations to Corsica and Sardinia his men mutinied and put him to death, perhaps by stoning.
The Rise of Rome Page 23
