These were unrealistically harsh and had the opposite of the intended effect. The Carthaginians were to withdraw from Sicily and Sardinia; all Roman prisoners of war were to be released, while Punic captives were to be ransomed. Rome’s war costs were to be paid and an annual tribute levied. Carthage would be allowed to go to war only with Rome’s permission. These conditions were tantamount to unconditional surrender, but while the situation of the Punic state was critical, it was by no means terminal. The talks foundered.
Meanwhile, the Carthaginian high command recognized that its generals were incompetent and, in the spring of 255, sought advice from a Spartan military expert on the best way of dealing with the invaders. Firm discipline and training were introduced, and the soldiers’ morale rose. The Punic army marched out and trounced the complacent Romans. The victory was won by cavalry outflanking the legions and destroying them. Regulus and five hundred others were captured, and of the rest of his force only two thousand made their escape from the field of slaughter.
Regulus’s fate is uncertain. He most probably died of natural causes in captivity. A tradition grew that he was released on his honor to negotiate a treaty at Rome. He advised the Senate to reject the Punic proposals and, keeping his word, returned to Carthage. According to a first-century historian, an acquaintance of Cicero:
They locked him in a dark and deep dungeon, and a long time later brought him out into the bright light of the sun, held him in its direct rays and forced him to look up at the sky. They even pulled his eyelids apart up and down and sewed them fast, so that he could not close his eyes.
Others report that he died from sleep deprivation.
The disaster put an end to the invasion, but it was not yet complete. The Senate had intended to send out a fleet to blockade Carthage while Regulus attacked from the city’s landward side. News of the debacle arrived before the fleet set out, but some 210 vessels were dispatched to rescue what was left of the expeditionary force. This they accomplished, brushing off a Carthaginian fleet and raiding the countryside for provisions. On their way home, though, they sailed into a tremendous storm. Hampered by their
It is hard to know how much these catastrophes owed to bad luck. No doubt, something, but it seems that Rome’s admirals understood fighting better than they did seamanship. Whatever the explanation, the public in Italy was shocked by the losses at sea and even Rome could not stand this human hemorrhage. The decision to fight Carthage by sea had failed. The Carthaginians were exhausted, too, not only by the struggle with Rome but also by a long-standing insurgency by the Numidians, their African neighbors. The war had reached a stalemate. For the next two years, there was a lull in hostilities.
A NEW CLAUDIUS now arrived on the political scene at Rome. Grandson of Claudius Caecus, the Blind, Publius possessed a full share of the clan’s awkward, arrogant genes (or else was typecast by later disobliging historians). He was given the cognomen of Pulcher, meaning beautiful or pretty, so good looks can be inferred—or perhaps merely vanity about his looks.
The campaign in Sicily remained a long, hard slog, but Rome made some progress, capturing the Punic city of Panormus (today’s Palermo). Lilybaeum, on the island’s western tip, was one of Carthage’s last two strongholds. In 250, it was decided that a further effort should be made to clear Sicily of Carthaginians. A consular army and a new fleet of two hundred ships was sent out from Italy and invested the highly defensible port.
Consul for the following year, Claudius decided to launch a surprise attack on nearby Drepana (close to modern Trapani), the only other Punic base. Before battle commenced, he took the auspices in his capacity as admiral. An auspice was an omen as revealed through the observed behavior of birds—how they flew, sang, or ate. On this occasion, some sacred chickens were given food. They refused to touch it, a very bad sign, and Claudius ought to have aborted his enterprise, at least for that day. Instead, he lost his temper and threw the fowls into the sea, with the words “Let them drink, if they won’t eat!”
The raid was an embarrassing failure. Apparently the Roman ships were not equipped with the
But a fresh disaster quickly followed. A consular fleet of 120 ships accompanying 800 transports sailed from Syracuse to resupply the army outside Lilybaeum. It was outsmarted by the enemy and driven without a battle onto the rocky coastline of southern Sicily. The Carthaginian admiral, an experienced sailor, detected a change in the weather and withdrew behind a promontory, Cape Pachynus (today’s Cape Passero), leaving the Romans to face a tempest that blew unforgivingly at the shore. The entire fleet was wrecked, except for twenty ships.
Claudius was recalled and put on trial. He was accused of impiety as well as of commanding without due care and attention. A thunderstorm, a bad omen, halted the trial, but he was impeached a second time and found guilty. He was heavily fined and only just escaped the death penalty. He did not long survive his disgrace and may have killed himself. Not long after his death, one of his sisters, another chip off the old block, was returning home from the Games in her litter and was held up by large numbers of people in the street. “If only my brother were alive,” she exclaimed, “he might lose another fleet and thin out these crowds!”
ROME WAS NOW without a navy and was too exhausted to raise another one. Carthage also was content to let sleeping dogs lie. It was running out of money and had to debase its coinage. It was reduced to asking its North African neighbor Ptolemy II of Egypt for a large loan. The king was too wily to intervene in a quarrel between two states, both of which he wanted to be on good terms. He explained, dryly, “It is perfectly proper to assist one’s friends against one’s enemies, but not against one’s friends.” Meanwhile, the Senate had relatively few financial worries, for Hiero was minting large quantities of silver and bronze coinage and helped finance his ally’s war effort.
Although nothing much was happening to relieve the Sicilian stalemate, the Romans were in much the stronger position, for the enemy had only a toehold on the island. Lilybaeum and Drepana remained under siege. In 247, an energetic young Punic commander, Hamilcar Barca, arrived in Sicily after raiding southern Italy. He was probably too much of a realist to suppose he could win the war, but he aimed to at least wear the enemy down. He mostly avoided pitched battles and adopted guerrilla tactics. He made a permanent camp on a mountain not far from Panormus and later at the high-altitude city of Eryx, although the temple sacred to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of fertility and sexual relations, which was perched on a mountaintop above Eryx, remained in Roman hands. From these bases, he launched hit-and-run attacks. He scored many successes, although they were more spectacular than of strategic importance.
The weary years passed. Both sides were being driven to despair by the strain of an unbroken succession of hard-fought Sicilian campaigns. Polybius writes:
In the end the contest was left drawn; … but they left the field like two champions, still unbroken and unconquered. What happened was that before either side could overcome the other … the war was decided by other means and in another place.
This was because Hamilcar’s efforts did achieve something, for they persuaded Rome, not for the first time, that it would not win the war on land.
So the Senate braced itself for one last life-and-death effort. It would launch another fleet and, for the third time, try its fortunes at sea. It raised a loan, repayable in the event of victory, and no doubt the wealthy and the well-to-do were pressed for “voluntary” patriotic contributions. Individuals and syndicates each promised to pay for a quinquereme. Two hundred warships were built and fitted out in short order, on the more technically advanced and lighter model of a Punic galley captured off Lilybaeum. These vessels were not equipped with
The arrival of a new Roman fleet in Sicilian waters in the summer of 242 astonished the enemy. The Carthaginians’ own ships were laid up at home, for the crews were needed for continuing wars in Africa. By March of the following year, they managed to man about 170 ships, recruiting sailors mostly from citizens. The plan was to
