resupply Hamilcar’s forces, take on board some of his best mercenaries as marines, and return to the open sea to face the Romans. Because of a lack of transports, the warships were weighed down with freight.
Unluckily for the Carthaginians, the commanding consul, Gaius Lutatius Catulus, learned that they were approaching and lay in wait for them at the island of Aegusa off Lilybaeum. He warned his crews that a battle would probably take place the following day. With dawn, though, the weather deteriorated. A strong breeze blew and it would be difficult for the Romans to beat up against the wind. However, they dared not wait and risk the Carthaginian fleet’s linking with Hamilcar’s land forces, so an attack was decided. The fleet was marshaled in a single row facing the enemy.
The Carthaginians stowed their masts and, cheering one another on, advanced toward the enemy. Their confidence was ill-placed: the heavily laden ships were clumsy to maneuver; the new crews were poorly trained; and such marines as there were were raw recruits. They were swiftly put to flight. Fifty ships were sunk outright and seventy captured. The poor remainder raised their sails and ran before the wind, which had swung to an easterly, to make their escape. The victorious Roman consul sailed to the army at Lilybaeum and busied himself with disposing of the men and ships he had captured. This was a considerable task, for he had in his possession nearly ten thousand prisoners.
Carthage had shot its bolt. No longer in control of the seas, it could not supply its forces in Sicily and had none at home with which to continue the war. Hamilcar was given full powers to take what steps he deemed necessary. All his instincts were to continue the fight, but he was too prudent a commander not to see that this was impossible. He sued for peace.
Catulus’s opening position was that he would not agree to a cease-fire until Hamilcar’s army handed over its arms and left Sicily. Hamilcar replied, “Even though my country submits, I would rather perish on the spot than go back home under such disgraceful conditions.” The Romans conceded the point and, in the event, agreed to fairly lenient terms. The two warring states were to be friends and allies; Carthage should evacuate Sicily and not make war on Hiero, return all prisoners without ransom, and pay substantial reparations in annual installments over twenty years.
The authorities in Rome took a sterner view and refused to ratify the draft treaty. Ten commissioners were sent to Sicily to renegotiate it. They raised the indemnity and reduced the repayment period to ten years. Perhaps as a compensating concession to Hamilcar, a new clause stated that the allies of both parties should be secure from attacks by the other.
SUDDENLY, THE WAR was over. It had lasted twenty-three years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives (most of them Romans or their allies). As Polybius wrote in the second century, it was “the longest, the most continuous and the greatest conflict of which we have knowledge.” Nevertheless, it had not been a struggle
In essence, the quarrel had been over who was to control Sicily. That question was now settled, for the island was to become Rome’s first province. A
The loss of Sicily was a setback, a bad one, but not a mortal blow. In fact, it seems that Carthage had already been contemplating expansion elsewhere. For some time it had been fighting on two fronts, battling with local tribes to enlarge its lands in Africa while simultaneously trying to fend off the Romans.
Rome showed that, in addition to stamina, it had a killer instinct, and was beginning to imagine for itself an imperial destiny. By contrast, its Punic opponents were willing enough to endure but they did not have a hunger for victory, nor did they ever come close to achieving it. They did not want the war, they did not choose the war, and if only the war would go away they could concentrate on their peaceful habit of wealth creation.
And, in spite of defeat, that was what the peace allowed them to do. Carthage remained a great mercantile power and still dominated the trade routes of the Western Mediterranean. The voyages of Hanno and Himilco had pointed the way long ago to a prosperous future in corners of the world free from the aggressive interference of their new “friends and allies.”
12
“Hannibal at the Gates!”
THE ELDERLY GENERAL WAS A VISITOR AT COURT. NO longer in command of any armies, he was a wandering exile. He was hoping to be military adviser to Antiochus the Great, lord of many of the Asian lands conquered a century before by Alexander the Great. The king was pondering a war with that annoying new Mediterranean power, Rome, and was uncertain of his guest’s loyalty.
In response, the old man told a story to prove his bona fides:
I was nine years old and my father was about to set off on a military expedition to Spain. I was standing beside him in the temple of Baal Hammon where he was conducting a sacrifice. The omens proved favorable, and my father poured a libation to the gods and performed the usual ceremonies. He then ordered all present to stand back a little way from the altar and called me to him. He asked me affectionately if I would like to come on the expedition. I was thrilled to accept and, like a boy, begged to be allowed to go. My father took me by the hand, led me up to the altar and made me place my hand on the victim that had been sacrificed and swear that I would never become a friend to the Romans.
The king was convinced and put the old man on his payroll.
For the little boy, the oath he swore that day was a defining, emotionally purifying moment. It remained a vivid memory and guided his actions all his life. He was Hannibal the Carthaginian—a military genius and, in all its long history, the Roman Republic’s most formidable enemy.
When, as commander of a great army, he camped outside Rome’s walls, it was a monstrous, never-to-be- forgotten image of nightmare; in future, if Roman children were boisterous their parents would calm them by uttering the worst threat imaginable:
HANNIBAL’S FATHER WAS the energetic Hamilcar Barca, who had commanded Carthage’s armed forces in Sicily during the final years of the First Punic War. His arrival on the island in 247 coincided with his son’s birth. Barca was not a family or clan name but a nickname meaning “lightning” or “sword flash” (the word is related to the Hebrew
This was a quality Hamilcar appears to have asserted in his private as well as his public life. As well as siring three sons and at least one daughter, he became besotted with an attractive young male aristocrat, Hasdrubal (nicknamed the Handsome). Since Hamilcar was a leading politician and general, this gave rise to much critical comment (indeed, his rivals may have invented the story) and the authorities charged with oversight of morals banned the two men from seeing each other. Nothing daunted, Hamilcar married his lover to a daughter of his, on the grounds that it would be illegal to prevent a father-in-law and his son-in-law from meeting.
Once Hamilcar had negotiated the peace that brought the war in Sicily to a close, he sailed back to Carthage, leaving to others the thankless task of repatriating the multiethnic Punic mercenary army. Being an agile tactician, he wanted to distance himself as far as possible from the humiliating capitulation to Rome and the problem of how a bankrupt state could pay off its soldiery. He also had to deal with charges of maladministration brought by his political enemies.
The return of twenty thousand mercenaries proved to be a mistake of truly disastrous proportions and nearly
