WEBVTT

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Hello, then welcome to Western CIV. As I do on occasion, I

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wanted to drop a bonus episode into
the feed from Western SIV two point zero.

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You can get access to this by
clicking the link in the show notes,

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and for a few dollars a month, you can get access to the

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total backlog of all the episodes that
I have. Essentially, Western SIV two

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point zero is a reboot of the
original podcast. I love ancient and classical

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history, as you've probably guessed right
now, but when I recorded a lot

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of those episodes many many moons ago, audio equipment wasn't as good and I

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didn't have a good sense of what
I was doing. So I decided to

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go back and have another crack at
it and really delve into some of the

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stories then kind of glossed over the
first time around. Today's episode is the

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bonus episode that I recorded on the
First Punic War, which I gave very

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short trift to in the original feed, But as you'll see, here goes

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into a lot greater detail as to
how the Romans ultimately come out on top

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over their Carthaginian opponents. So this
gives you a sense of what's available.

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This is episode sixty three, the
First Punic War. If you'd like to

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try out Western SIEV two point zero, you can get a seven day free

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trial by clicking the link and following
along. Now, of course, while

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this episode, because it's in the
main feed, does have ads, the

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paid episodes do not, And in
fact, if you would just like to

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access our regular episodes are regular weekly, but without ads, you can get

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that for one dollar a month or
twelve dollars a year. As usual,

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I very much appreciate any and all
support that I receive. So then,

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without further ado, let's take a
listen to Western Hip two point zero,

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episode sixty three, The First Punic
War. Once the Romans and Carthaginians had

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committed themselves to the aid or aggression
toward Syracuse, the die was cast.

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The First Punic War would be fought
on and over Sicily. Well, certainly,

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the fleet and the army for both
sides worked together. Most historians I

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have read break the various campaigns down
between the war on land and the War

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on sea. I, given that
I am not a historian and am in

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no way in a position to question
the wisdom of this approach, will do

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the same. You shall begin with
the land war on Sicily. Syracuse provided

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the Romans with a secure base of
operations on the island, while Masana was

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quickly taken, which was the whole
basis for the beginning of the conflict.

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There is no indication either side attempted
negotiations. Carthage saw no reason to negotiate.

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Its early losses could be easily reversed, and they saw Sicily as theirs.

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The Romans were upstarts and needed to
be pushed back off the island as

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soon as possible. The Romans,
for their part, believe the Carthaginians needed

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to understand that they had lost and
they had to come to terms favorable to

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Rome, just like Hero the Tyrant
of Syracuse had done. Plus, it

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certainly did not hurt that Sicily was
rich and they the Romans wanted it for

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the next several hundred years. Those
two factors, in fact, are going

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to justify quite a lot of conflicts. Carthage immediately went to work raising a

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mercenary army. Rome responded by dispatching
both consuls and four legions into sixty two.

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Carthage decided to use agrigentum about midway
along the coast of Sicily, on

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the southern side, as its base
is for operations. But the Roman consuls

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moved quickly, and by the time
the commander within the city had a chance

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to react, forty thousand Roman legionnaires
were bearing down upon him. This commander,

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named Hannibal, because of course,
pulled everyone back within the walls,

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which Romans took as a sign of
weakness. It happened to be harvest time,

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so the consuls sent their men out
to forage for food. Hannibal saw

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the chance, and he took it, launching a vigorous sally. The only

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thing that held back a complete Roman
disaster was their camp picket line, which,

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though badly outnumbered, put up a
stout defense. In the end,

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the Romans were able to regroup and
Hannibal suffered major losses. Both sides came

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away chastened. Hannibal knew that he
couldn't afford to keep taking such losses,

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and the Romans realized they needed to
stop underestimating their foe now. The easiest

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way to take a city during the
Punic Wars was by surprise or treachery.

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An attacker might launch a surprise offensive
at night and seize key defensive points before

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the defender knew what was going on. This was all the easier if there

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happened to be a disaffected group within
the city that might aid in the attack.

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In the Punic Wars, more cities
fell by treachery than by any other

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means, but that wasn't the case
here. Agrigentum would not be betrayed,

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so the Romans would need to resort
to their other options. Assault or blockade.

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Assault was the one aspect of ancient
warfare most affected by technological advances.

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It involved the attacker finding a way
over, through, or under the defender's

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fortifications. The simplest method was escalade, when the attacking infantry carried ladders up

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to the wall and attempted to scale
them, but this always involved heavy casualties

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and was rarely successful unless the walls
were virtually devoid of defenders. Mobile siege

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towers, which dropped a drawbridge onto
a rampart and allowed men to cross while

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providing covering fire from archers or artillery
on top, were essentially an extension of

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the same basic ladder principle. The
main alternative was to create a breach in

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the walls by battering rams or tunneling
underneath to what was called undermine them.

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But this all required extensive preparation,
scientific knowledge, and labor to create siege

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works, allowing engines such as a
battering ram to pass over any defensive ditches

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and then reach the wall. All
the time the defender would be employing artillery

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to hinder this activity, countermining to
thwart the attackers, tunneling and launching sallies

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to burn the siege engines. The
ingenuity of both sides was constantly tested as

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they struggled to find countermeasures like a
constant ping pong or a back and forth.

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We saw this a lot with Tire
in Alexander the grid. Once the

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defenders had been breached, then ingenuity
and technical skill went out the window as

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the assaulting infantry had to storm their
way inside. Casualties would still probably be

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heavy, and failure was a real
possibility even then. Such was the massive

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effort and uncertainty of the outcome that
assaults on major cities were not contemplated lightly.

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Convention decreed that a defender would normally
only be permitted on terms to surrender

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if he did so before the first
battering ram touched the wall. If they

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did not, then the city would
be subject to a sack. At this

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period, the Roman army lacked the
technical skill to undertake such a project on

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a city as large as Agragentum with
any real prospect of success, since the

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only choice available to the Romans at
Agrigentum was blockade, and they took it.

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Luckily for the consular armies, Agrigentum
was not on the coast, which

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is a rarity for a Carthaginian city. Without ships, the Romans never could

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have blockaded the city, but because
it was situated on a plateau several miles

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inland, the Romans were able to
construct a series of forts and ditches to

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effectively hem the city. In Sensing
that the situation was quickly becoming dire,

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Hannibal called for aid. After just
five months, The Carthaginians sent all the

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troops they had fostered, perhaps as
many as seventy thousand men, which would

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have given them a slight advantage over
the Romans, at least in terms of

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numbers. The Carthaginian army quickly cut
the Romans supply lines, and the weakened

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men began to fall sick in their
crowded camps. The Carthaginians followed up on

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this success with a lightning cavalry strike
that was also successful already in Sicily.

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The Romans were discovering that their cavalry
was just no match for the light numidian

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horse of Carthage, and we're going
to see that again, but much more

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decisively, in the Second Punic War. The Romans and then Carthaginians then started

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a sort of cat and mouse game, each offering battle in turn, only

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to have the other side to climb. Ultimately, forced by desperate messages from

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Agrigentum that the city was soon to
capitulate, the Carthaginians gave in and accepted

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the Roman offer to fight a pitched
battle. Olybyus gives few details of this

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battle, but it seems that the
Carthaginian army was deployed in more than one

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line, with a front line of
infantry supported by a second containing more infantry

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and the elephants. It is possible
that the intention was to tire out the

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Roman infantry, weakening their formation and
destroying the impetus of their advance, but

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this is no more than pure speculation. Presumably, the cavalry was on the

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wings and the Romans were in their
usual triple axis after a long struggle.

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It was the Romans who drove back
and routed the Carthaginian first line. As

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these mercenaries retreated, the panic spread
to the reserve formations, and these fled.

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The Romans captured the Punic camp and
most of the elephants. Theodorus claims

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that the Carthaginian commander Hanno lost three
thousand infantry and two hundred cavalry killed and

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four thousand men captured. Eight elephants
were killed outright and thirty three disabled,

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but this is included in the total
losses of the earlier cavalry battle. That

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being said, Deodorus also admits that
Roman losses in the siege and battle amounted

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to over thirty thousand infantry and five
hundred and fifty cavalry, but this is

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from an army of one hundred thousand, which he claims the besiegers were able

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to muster. Both the size of
the army and the casualties seemed too high,

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although the latter may well have been
substantial. Another historian, Zenarius,

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provides a different version of the battle, in which Hanna hoped to coordinate his

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attack with a sally by Hannibal's garrison
within agrigentum, but this was thwarted when

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the Romans learned of the plan and
ambushed the main force while easily defeating the

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garrison's raid with the outposts guarding the
camp and siege lines. Zenarius implies the

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battle began late in the day,
and the same thing is claimed by Frontotius,

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who attributes the council Postidimus the stratagem
of refusing battle and remaining close to

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the camp, as he had already
done for several days. When the Carthaginians

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decided that the Romans were unwilling to
fight and began to withdraw, satisfy that

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they had demonstrated their better fighting spirit, the Romans suddenly attacked and defeated them.

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It's just not possible to know how
accurate all of these different traditions are,

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but we can say and our sources
at least agree that the battle ended

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in a clear Roman victory. Hanno's
use of elephants has often been criticized given

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their failure to support the first line. It has been suggested that the Carthaginians

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at this point were not used to
employing elephants and unaware of correct tactics.

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This being the first recorded instance of
their use by a Punic army. However,

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lacking a more detailed narrative, we
cannot be certain what Hanno's battle plan

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act actually was, or if it
went wrong, precisely what went wrong.

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The failure of the different elements in
his army to support each other effectively may

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have been a reflection of its armies
composition. Most of these troops were recently

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raised and had not had much time
to maneuver as an army or to become

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familiar with their commanders. After the
loss, Hannibal was able to get the

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majority of his army out of the
city in the dead of night by secretly

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filling a section of the Roman ditch
with earth. The upshot of this,

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however, was that Aggregentum fell to
the Romans. While the campaign had tactically

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been a success, neither Roman Council
was awarded a triumph, suggesting some displeasure

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with how often and how close to
disaster the Romans had frequently come. Still,

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the Senate now voted to expand the
Roman War aim to include the complete

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ejection of Carthage from Sicily. What
had begun as a minor border dispute with

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Messana was now an all out war
of conquest. The defeat of Hanno outside

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Agrigentum was one of only four massed
battles fought on land throughout the twenty three

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years of the First Punic War,
which is incredible and a marked contrast with

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the Second Punic War, where as
we're going to see, pitched battles were

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by far more common, which I
suppose to an extent is what makes the

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Second Punic War a little bit more
interesting. And trust me, I'm very

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excited to break down any of these
battles. Now. Two of these four

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battles, so half of them,
occurred in the relatively brief African campaign of

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Regulus, and this is something I'm
going to get to later, and the

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only two in Sicily, despite the
deployment of large number of soldiers there by

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both sides for much of the war. Now, look, part of the

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reason that we don't have a lot
of pitch battles in the First Punic War

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is just the topography of Sicily.
There's a lot of rugged terrain in most

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of central Sicily and it just doesn't
favor the movements of large armies with so

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many good defensive positions. It was
difficult for a commander to force a battle

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on an unwilling adversary. More importantly, the bulk of the island's population lived

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in the numerous walled cities or in
their dependent villages. These were the key

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to Sicily, and only through controlling
these communities could the island be secured.

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The territories controlled by Syracuse and Carthage
had little unity, being composed of by

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a patchwork of these small city states, most of whom enjoyed almost unfettered local

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autonomy. From the earliest actions to
break the blisscade around a Messana, the

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operations of armies were dominated by the
need to secure each individual town and cities.

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So it's very much sort of a
plodding most World War One style warfare

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that we have going on here.
The outcome of a pitch battle was always

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uncertain, and a defeat might well
involve very high casualties and the demoralization of

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the rest of the army. Even
a victory merely left the successful army to

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pursue its main task of subduing cities
more freely, which might not actually be

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any easier depending upon the nature of
that victory. Under normal circumstances, the

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potential gains were insufficient for both sides
to be willing to risk joining battle.

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It is significant that both the major
battles to occur in Sicily were fought outside

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and for the control of cities.
A high proportion of the troops deployed in

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Sicily were probably dispersed in small garrisons
to hold the various cities. As always

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in siege warfare, the advantage remained
with the defender. It was extremely difficult,

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if not impossible, to keep armies
in the field in one location for

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very long. At the outset of
the Punic War, Rome lacked the technical

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expertise that it needed to take walled
and well defended cities. Hence, if

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a city fell, as I mentioned
before, it almost always fell after treachery,

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or more often, it just switched
sides after one side. Cartha Jerome

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won a pivotal battle. Treachery,
though, was also well treacherous. It

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was hard to determine how much to
trust a group willing to betray their fellow

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citizens. There were several times during
the First Punic War when a commander believed

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an offered to defect, only to
find himself and his advance guard surrounded and

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massacred. Frankly, given our sources, it's difficult to provide a chronological narrative

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of the First Punic War on land. There are a lot of sieges,

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surprise attacks, raids, and then
frequently long periods when absolutely nothing happened at

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all. What I can say is
that over time the Romans were willing to

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devote more and more resources to the
island. Well Carthage was not. Eventually

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00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:29.039
this tipped the scales in their favor
in such a way that there simply was

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00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:36.440
no coming back for Carthage. But
I guess it's important to note that throughout

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00:18:36.440 --> 00:18:40.559
the First Punic War, and maybe
this explains why there's a second Punic War,

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00:18:41.720 --> 00:18:48.200
Carthage never really loses a decisive battle
on land. They're going on sea,

205
00:18:48.359 --> 00:19:11.960
but not in land. There was
much more war of attrition. In

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00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:15.839
two fifty six PCE, the Romans
launched a full scale invasion of North Africa.

207
00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:22.880
This was as a result of the
massive naval victory at Econdomus, which

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00:19:22.920 --> 00:19:26.279
I will discuss in a minute.
The hero of the day was the Roman

209
00:19:26.319 --> 00:19:36.599
counsul Marcus Attilius Regolous. Many myths
came to be surrounding Regulus And, as

210
00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:41.440
was all other important figures of the
First Punic War, including Hero the Tyrant

211
00:19:41.440 --> 00:19:47.960
of Syracuse and hamilcar Barka. It
is now impossible to know what sort of

212
00:19:47.960 --> 00:19:52.839
a man he was. He was
clearly an able commander, and if he

213
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:57.119
was perhaps over regressive, this was
a common trait in Roman commanders and not

214
00:19:57.359 --> 00:20:04.480
considered a vice. One tradition claimed
that Regulus and was impoverished by senatorial standards,

215
00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:10.079
and it was only reluctantly, following
an assurance by the Senate that they

216
00:20:10.079 --> 00:20:14.160
would provide for his wife and children
at statics events, that he accepted the

217
00:20:14.240 --> 00:20:22.839
Africa command. However, that this
antecdote is highly moralistic and therefore almost certainly

218
00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:30.400
a later invention as part of the
myth surrounding Regulus. Regulus's army in Africa

219
00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:36.799
consisted of fifteen thousand infantry and five
hundred cavalry. It was probably a standard

220
00:20:36.799 --> 00:20:41.480
consular army, if maybe an understrength
one, since Polybius later mentions a first

221
00:20:41.599 --> 00:20:48.319
legion which implies that he had at
least two The disproportionately low number of cavalry

222
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:52.799
was, of course results the difficulty
of transporting the horses across the sea from

223
00:20:52.799 --> 00:21:00.519
Italy. Now, once Carthage realized
it could not prevent Regulus from landing nearby

224
00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:07.039
Cape Bam, it immediately looked to
its own defenses. Two generals were elected,

225
00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:11.799
and a third, Hamil Carbarka,
was recalled from Sicily, with five

226
00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:18.920
thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry together. We're not sure how large Carthage's army

227
00:21:18.079 --> 00:21:23.079
was, but no source indicates a
disproportionate advantage on either side, so it

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00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:29.480
was probably about as big as Rome's
army. While the Carthaginians were not about

229
00:21:29.480 --> 00:21:32.839
to risk a pitched battle, if
they lost, then Carthage would be totally

230
00:21:32.920 --> 00:21:37.279
undefended, they did their best to
shadow the Roman force so it could not

231
00:21:37.480 --> 00:21:44.240
pillage with impunity. However, the
Romans believed they had the advantage, so

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00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:48.920
in a somewhat surprising move, they
immediately advanced on the Carthaginian camp, though

233
00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:55.200
Carthage held the high ground. We
should remember here that the goal was probably

234
00:21:55.559 --> 00:22:00.359
to put enough pressure on Carthage to
force a surrender on terms favorable to Rome.

235
00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:08.039
It was not to conquer North Africa, not yet at least. Olybius

236
00:22:08.079 --> 00:22:12.720
tells us that the Romans attacked the
Hilltop camp at dawn, but another historian

237
00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:18.119
says the assault occurred at night,
although his claim that many Carthaginians were killed

238
00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:22.400
in their beds seems unlikely. It
is possible that a nighttime approach march was

239
00:22:22.440 --> 00:22:26.480
followed by a dawn attack, for
it seems that the Carthaginians did not have

240
00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:33.279
a significant enough warning to deplore more
than a part of their army. Two

241
00:22:33.359 --> 00:22:37.920
Roman columns assaulted from opposite sides of
the camp. A group of mercenaries did

242
00:22:37.960 --> 00:22:42.519
manage to form up and drive back
the first legion in considerable disorder, but

243
00:22:42.559 --> 00:22:47.480
then it pursued too rashly. They
were attacked from the rear by the other

244
00:22:47.559 --> 00:22:52.200
Roman force and themselves routed. Their
defeats seemed to have marked the end of

245
00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:55.920
an effective resistance, and the rest
of the army abandoned the camp in a

246
00:22:55.960 --> 00:23:00.039
panicked flight, although the cavalry at
Elephants escaped with few casualties once they reached

247
00:23:00.039 --> 00:23:04.680
the level ground. The bold attack
had been an outstanding success, but the

248
00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:10.960
repulse of the first legion emphasized the
risks involved. The twin attack does not

249
00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.440
appear to have occurred simultaneously, perhaps
as a result of the nighttime approach March,

250
00:23:15.079 --> 00:23:19.119
although in the event that this resulted
in the fortuitous appearance of the second

251
00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:25.279
Roman force in the mercenaries rear.
Had the Romans been detected during their approach,

252
00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:30.119
they risked having to fight a deployed
Carthaginian army attacking down from high ground.

253
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:36.039
However, it is worth noting once
again that a recently created Carthaginians force

254
00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:42.319
failed to coordinate its different elements effectively, and successful Mercenary counterattack was never supported.

255
00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:47.039
The Romans followed up their success by
taking Tunis, using it as a

256
00:23:47.079 --> 00:23:52.039
base to mount raids in the area
around Carthage itself. Carthaginians at this point

257
00:23:52.400 --> 00:23:57.079
were depressed. In the last year, their proud navy, which had put

258
00:23:57.119 --> 00:24:03.079
to sea with more ships than ever
before, had been decisively defeated at Econmus,

259
00:24:03.680 --> 00:24:07.640
and now their army tasked with defending
the capitol itself had been beaten with

260
00:24:07.799 --> 00:24:12.279
eats by Regulus. At the same
time, they were involved in bitter fighting

261
00:24:12.519 --> 00:24:18.359
with the Numidian kingdoms resulting from attempts
to expand Carthaginian territory in Africa, a

262
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:25.599
policy which had been pursued alongside the
struggle with Rome. Refugees from areas raided

263
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:30.960
by the Numidians as well as the
Romans flooded into Carthage itself, spreading panic

264
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:36.599
and creating some food shortages. According
to Polybius, it was at this point

265
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:40.599
that Regulus guess that the enemy might
be willing to negotiate to end the war,

266
00:24:41.079 --> 00:24:45.119
and sent peace envoys, which were
welcomed at first by the Carthaginians.

267
00:24:45.079 --> 00:24:49.759
He was said to be nervous that
his first year of office had nearly expired,

268
00:24:51.119 --> 00:24:53.480
and that he might not have finished
the war before a successor arrived to

269
00:24:53.480 --> 00:25:00.440
gain an easy victory. Similar motivation
clearly did influence the behavior of the other

270
00:25:00.519 --> 00:25:04.920
Roman magistrates. All our other sources
agree that it was the Carthaginians who actually

271
00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:11.720
began the negotiations after their recent defeats. Only Dio of all of our historians

272
00:25:12.119 --> 00:25:18.359
claims to preserve the details of the
terms dictated by regulars, but their absence

273
00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:23.680
from all earlier sources can only make
their authenticity unlikely to dubious. For what

274
00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:30.400
they're worth, these were that the
Carthaginians should give up both Sicily and Sardinia,

275
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.240
release all Roman prisoners freely, while
ransoming their own pay. The Romans

276
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:40.440
and indemnity and amual tribute, only
make war and peace on the approval of

277
00:25:40.519 --> 00:25:45.240
Rome, and only retain one warship
for their own use, but to provide

278
00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:51.880
fifty to serve under the Romans whenever
they requested. In several respects, notably

279
00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:56.519
the inclusion of Sardinia. These terms
are harsher than the treaty, which actually

280
00:25:56.559 --> 00:26:02.839
does conclude the war into forty one
BCE. Whatever the precise details, it

281
00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:07.160
is clear that Regulus sought to impose
a treaty which forced the Carthaginians to admit

282
00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:15.000
defeat of his total defeat their war
with Rome. All our sources state that

283
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:18.720
the Carthaginians felt the terms were far
harsher than their actual fortunes in the war.

284
00:26:19.599 --> 00:26:25.640
Despite its recent setbacks, the cities
was by no means out of resources.

285
00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:30.440
Faced with a Roman refusal to grant
any concession, the talks failed.

286
00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:36.880
During the winter of two fifty five, the Carthaginians reformed their army. According

287
00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:41.519
to our sources, most of the
actual reforming was done by a Spartan mercenary

288
00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:48.640
named Xanthipius. To an extent,
this is probably our sources waxing romantically about

289
00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:55.720
the glorious Spartan military prowess of old, but Xanthipius was critical of Carthage's prior

290
00:26:55.759 --> 00:27:00.599
decision to fight the Romans on unfavorable
ground where their cavalry and elephants could not

291
00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:08.319
be brought to bear. Regardless,
Carthaginian morale improved, and by spring Carthage

292
00:27:08.359 --> 00:27:14.640
had assembled a new army of twelve
thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and

293
00:27:14.799 --> 00:27:21.720
one hundred elephants, all prepared to
fight using Spartan techniques. The scene was

294
00:27:21.759 --> 00:27:26.160
now set for the only true land
battle of the First Punic War that resembles

295
00:27:26.200 --> 00:27:32.039
anything like those of the second.
This is referred to in our sources as

296
00:27:32.079 --> 00:27:37.960
the Battle of Tunis, though no
one knows exactly where it was really fought.

297
00:27:37.319 --> 00:27:42.599
The Romans eagerly accepted Carthage's offer of
battle because they wanted to inflict the

298
00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:51.440
decisive crushing blow. Xanthipius is credited
for the Carthaginian battle formation, which placed

299
00:27:51.680 --> 00:27:55.200
the citizen failings in the center,
with mercenaries on the right, and left

300
00:27:55.559 --> 00:27:57.720
the cavalry on the wings and the
elephants out in front of the inventory in

301
00:27:57.759 --> 00:28:04.279
a single line. We're told that
Regulus lined up the legions in deeper maniples

302
00:28:04.319 --> 00:28:10.359
than usual. What this means remains
a matter of conjecture, but the most

303
00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:15.000
likely interpretation is that the Romans still
lined up in the triple axis, but

304
00:28:15.039 --> 00:28:19.440
that each line was a little deeper, not that they abandoned or substantially modified

305
00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:26.759
their usual battle formation. The Romans
consequently wouldn't actually abandon the triple axis until

306
00:28:26.799 --> 00:28:33.119
the first century BCE. The main
advantage of deeper lines was that it would

307
00:28:33.279 --> 00:28:37.599
make it harder for panicking men to
turn and run at the side of the

308
00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:41.640
elephants. But because the lines were
deeper, they couldn't be as long,

309
00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:49.279
leaving both flanks vulnerable and possibly enveloped. After a delay of the type that's

310
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:55.039
so common before these sorts of pitch
battles, Xanphipius ordered the Elephants to attack,

311
00:28:55.079 --> 00:28:57.920
and the Romans move forward to meet
them, raising a battle cry and

312
00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:04.079
rhythmically their weapons against their shields in
what Polybius describes as their usual custom.

313
00:29:04.799 --> 00:29:10.079
The Roman cavalry, facing odds of
at least four to one, were almost

314
00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:14.960
immediately routed. The two thousand men
on the left flank of the Roman infantry

315
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:19.559
line, who normally would have been
allied troops actually achieved considerable success. Eager

316
00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:25.599
to avoid the elephants and contemptuous of
the mercenaries again we're quoting Polybyas here,

317
00:29:25.799 --> 00:29:30.119
who had been defeated in the previous
battle, they just charged the units on

318
00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:33.559
the enemy right flank, routed them
immediately and chased them back to their camp.

319
00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:41.000
Elsewhere. The Roman infantry didn't do
quite as well. They reeled under

320
00:29:41.039 --> 00:29:47.000
the onslaught of a mass of elephants
and took heavy casualties, though to be

321
00:29:47.119 --> 00:29:52.640
fair, the depth of their formation
prevented them from breaking. A few manipoles

322
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:56.519
and small groups fought their way past
the animals, and, after reforming,

323
00:29:56.839 --> 00:30:02.519
moved against the Carthaginian failings. Low
were now gone and greatly outnumbered. However,

324
00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:07.119
they were easily defeated. In the
meantime, the Carthaginian cavalry had swept

325
00:30:07.119 --> 00:30:11.559
in against the flanks of the Roman
infantry. Their attacks robbed the Roman formation

326
00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:17.480
of what forward impetisit had left,
as flanking manipolds had to turn to face

327
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:22.359
the new threat. Struck by missiles
from cavalry or trampled by the elephants,

328
00:30:22.599 --> 00:30:27.599
the Romans were destroyed. Whether they
stood their ground or turned to flee Regulus,

329
00:30:27.640 --> 00:30:33.519
and five hundred men initially made their
escape but were quickly captured. Only

330
00:30:33.559 --> 00:30:37.160
the two thousand men who had broken
through the mercenaries were able to retire in

331
00:30:37.240 --> 00:30:41.519
decent order, eventually making their way
back to Aspes, which, with the

332
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:45.880
troops left there, they successfully defended
until evacuation by a Roman fleet later that

333
00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:52.279
year. This was the only substantial
portion of the Roman army to escape,

334
00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:56.920
though Polybias records losses of eight hundred
men amongst the routed mercenaries, but it

335
00:30:56.920 --> 00:31:00.359
doesn't give us a figure for the
casual he suffered by the rest of the

336
00:31:00.519 --> 00:31:07.279
army. This was the most striking
success achieved by Elephants throughout the course of

337
00:31:07.319 --> 00:31:11.640
the Punic Wars, and had a
great moral effect on the Roman armies in

338
00:31:11.680 --> 00:31:15.319
Sicily, who for the next few
years didn't dare to try to contest control

339
00:31:15.400 --> 00:31:21.720
of open ground with the Carthaginians for
fear of being attacked by elephants. However,

340
00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:25.400
it's important to note that the victory
had not been achieved by the elephants

341
00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:30.160
alone, and it owed a great
deal of successful cavalry actions which had allowed

342
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:33.640
the envelopment of the Roman infantry,
which is kind of what I warned was

343
00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:37.440
the problem with the Roman formation in
the first place. If Regulus's plan had

344
00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:42.519
been to use his superior infantry to
break the enemy's main line before the numerically

345
00:31:42.640 --> 00:31:47.359
superior cavalry could come into play,
it had simply failed, and in part

346
00:31:47.400 --> 00:31:52.400
it had failed, probably because of
the elephants at Trivia in two eighteen a

347
00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:56.440
future battle, a substantial part of
another Roman army, which had been defeated

348
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:59.799
on both wings, was able to
burst through the Carthaginian line. In his

349
00:31:59.799 --> 00:32:05.359
Sisape, however, Regulus's army was
about one third the size of that later

350
00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:09.519
force, which made it much easier
for the Punic cavalry to envelop the infantry

351
00:32:09.599 --> 00:32:15.720
center, even more so as its
deeper formation could only have reduced the front

352
00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:22.240
of the lines. Xanthipius, interestingly
enough, departed after his success, aware

353
00:32:22.359 --> 00:32:25.519
and this is according to Polybius,
of the jealousy of the Carthaginian nobility,

354
00:32:25.960 --> 00:32:31.039
and subsequently he actually served under the
ptolemise in Egypt. Later, there was

355
00:32:31.079 --> 00:32:37.359
this deeply romantic tradition that developed around
Regulus, claiming that the Carthaginians sent him

356
00:32:37.359 --> 00:32:42.839
as an ambassa to Rome to negotiate
for the ransom of Roman prisoners, but

357
00:32:43.119 --> 00:32:46.559
he, again this is romantic and
famous, advised the Roman senate against making

358
00:32:46.559 --> 00:32:52.519
the agreement bound an oath to return
to Carthage. Regulus nobly kept his faith

359
00:32:52.559 --> 00:32:55.960
and refused to stay in Rome in
spite of the fact that he knew that

360
00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:02.000
if he went back he would suffer
a cruel death by and guess what he

361
00:33:02.079 --> 00:33:07.400
did. One source says that his
eyelids were first cut off, and then

362
00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:12.640
he was finally trampled to death by
an enraged elephant. Another tradition told how

363
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:16.440
his wife was given two eminent Carthaginian
captives, and, in vengeance for her

364
00:33:16.519 --> 00:33:22.200
husband, had them brutally maltreated until
one died. Sometimes scholars have been tempted

365
00:33:22.240 --> 00:33:27.039
to accept this part of the account
and claim that the Regulus story was invented

366
00:33:27.240 --> 00:33:30.799
to excuse his family's cruelty, but
it's probably safer for us to honestly just

367
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:36.720
reject the whole thing, especially because
absolutely none of this is mentioned by Polybius.

368
00:33:37.160 --> 00:33:40.359
The African campaign was one of the
most dramatic events of the First Punic

369
00:33:40.359 --> 00:33:46.920
War. It ultimately revived Carthage's confidence. Rome made no further attempts to invade

370
00:33:47.119 --> 00:33:52.880
after Regulus's defeat. The question has
actually been ever since, why did the

371
00:33:52.960 --> 00:33:59.160
Romans invade North Africa in the first
place. The most logical response is that

372
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:07.079
to put pressure on the Carthaginians to
force the city's ultimate captitulation. But I

373
00:34:07.079 --> 00:34:14.880
think there's another reason here. Opportunity. Regulars had the opportunity, and aggressiveness

374
00:34:15.199 --> 00:34:19.840
was what Roman commanders were supposed to
be. Some later writers blamed Regulars for

375
00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:23.320
trying to get treaty terms that were
too harsh after his first victory, but

376
00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:30.400
it's difficult to imagine another Roman general
doing anything else. Rome always fought until

377
00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:37.199
its enemy admitted total defeat and a
subservient status. Carthage fought wars like they

378
00:34:37.239 --> 00:34:43.400
were part of a business strategy.
Rome fought to the death to a large

379
00:34:43.400 --> 00:34:47.000
extent, it explains why they won. By the late two fifties, Carthage's

380
00:34:47.039 --> 00:34:53.079
Sicilian possessions were reduced to the northwest
corner of the island. When Penorius fell,

381
00:34:53.480 --> 00:34:58.880
one of the few large cities still
loyal to Carthage, it seemed like

382
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:02.559
Carthage's time on the island was over. In late two point fifty, a

383
00:35:02.679 --> 00:35:07.280
Roman army routed at Carthaginian one at
Lillibaum, which had fallen to the Romans

384
00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:14.119
years earlier and had subsequently traded hands
quite a few times. Essentially, in

385
00:35:14.159 --> 00:35:16.840
this case, the Carthaginian commander allowed
himself to be drawn closer and closer to

386
00:35:16.880 --> 00:35:22.559
the walls until the Roman reinforcements poured
forth from the gate and destroyed their opponent.

387
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:28.320
According to our sources, Carthage suffered
between twenty to thirty thousand men lost,

388
00:35:28.559 --> 00:35:34.159
but this is clearly a gross exaggeration. Regardless, this was one of

389
00:35:34.199 --> 00:35:38.320
the last masked land actions of the
war. The last few years of the

390
00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:46.519
conflict only saw various blockades and siege
actions as the Romans painstakingly took city after

391
00:35:46.639 --> 00:35:51.280
city. It is in the last
years of the war in Sicily that the

392
00:35:51.320 --> 00:35:55.199
most famous of all Carthaginian generals of
the conflict appeared on the scene, hamilcar

393
00:35:55.559 --> 00:36:00.840
Barkup. His name was a suitably
dramatic one, derived from the Semitic word

394
00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:06.480
for lightning, or perhaps sword,
like the flashing of a sword. But

395
00:36:06.559 --> 00:36:10.960
his greatest achievements were to come after
the war with Rome, and it's doubtful

396
00:36:10.960 --> 00:36:15.199
whether or not he would have gotten
as much tension as he has in history.

397
00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:19.880
Were he not the father of Hannibal
and this time yes, I'm talking

398
00:36:19.880 --> 00:36:27.679
about the Hannibal. Nevertheless, Bolibius
considered him the ablest commander on either side

399
00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:31.360
throughout the First conflict. By the
time that he landed in Sicily in two

400
00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:37.199
forty seven, the Carthaginians had been
hemmed into a small enclave. He established

401
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:43.360
himself on a hill called Herkit,
not far from Honorius, a secure base

402
00:36:43.639 --> 00:36:46.960
with command of a good anchorage.
For three years, he skirmished with the

403
00:36:47.039 --> 00:36:52.559
Roman forces near the city, winning
minor victories but not achieving anything in the

404
00:36:52.599 --> 00:36:58.280
long term. Then in two forty
four he withdrew at night and sailed to

405
00:36:58.360 --> 00:37:02.800
Ierks near Dapana. The Romans had
captured the abandoned town in two forty eight,

406
00:37:04.280 --> 00:37:08.280
installing a garrison there on the mountain
summit. Hamilcar captured the town in

407
00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:13.320
a surprise attack, cutting off the
force on the summit, which was occupying

408
00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:15.559
the Temple of Venus, from the
main Roman forces at the foot of the

409
00:37:15.559 --> 00:37:22.079
mountain. He managed to maintain this
position and besiege the force for the remaining

410
00:37:22.159 --> 00:37:28.079
years of the war, again winning
minor successes in the frequent raiding and skirmishing

411
00:37:28.119 --> 00:37:32.440
that was pursued by both sides.
Hamilcar didn't have the resources, though,

412
00:37:32.719 --> 00:37:37.639
to do anything. More. Certainly, he could not face the Romans in

413
00:37:37.679 --> 00:37:44.320
an open pitched battle. We do
not know this for certain, but historians

414
00:37:44.360 --> 00:37:49.119
now believe that it's highly likely that
Carthage was dealing with internal revolts back in

415
00:37:49.159 --> 00:37:53.280
North Africa and could no longer afford
to devote the men or money, really

416
00:37:53.320 --> 00:37:59.840
money, to what looked like a
losing cause in Sicily. Again, for

417
00:38:00.039 --> 00:38:05.480
Carthage, the war was really a
business decision regardless. The land action in

418
00:38:05.519 --> 00:38:10.679
the First Punic War was all practical
purposes irrelevant. The First Punic War,

419
00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:38.320
as we will turn to now,
was decided at sea. The First Punic

420
00:38:38.360 --> 00:38:45.159
War was the greatest naval conflict of
antiquity. The resources both sides lavished on

421
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:50.599
their fleets were truly enormous, and
their losses in men and material staggering.

422
00:38:51.480 --> 00:38:55.159
If our sources are correct, then
the Battle of Encomis in two fifty six

423
00:38:55.840 --> 00:39:01.880
may have involved more people than any
other sea battle in history. Sea battles

424
00:39:02.079 --> 00:39:07.440
were more common than major land actions
during the war and ultimately proved decisive.

425
00:39:07.559 --> 00:39:13.000
Bolibyas marveled at the scale of the
Naval War, but even more at the

426
00:39:13.039 --> 00:39:16.559
speed with which the Romans, who
he claims had never before built a warship,

427
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:22.320
adapted to the sea, and created
a navy able to defeat Carthage with

428
00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:29.760
its long maritime tradition. The early
years of the naval conflict witnessed a spectacular,

429
00:39:30.119 --> 00:39:35.519
almost unbroken string of Roman successes over
an enemy whose ships were better constructed

430
00:39:35.960 --> 00:39:40.239
and whose crews far more skillful.
When the war ended in two forty one,

431
00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:47.119
Rome will have replaced Carthage as the
unchallenged sea power in the Western Mediterranean.

432
00:39:49.599 --> 00:39:54.039
The navies created during the war made
possible all the later victories over Carthage

433
00:39:54.039 --> 00:39:59.880
again in the second Third Punic Wars, and then in the Eastern Mediterranean against

434
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:07.320
of various Hellenistic kingdoms. Polybius's assertion
that the Romans had no experience at all

435
00:40:07.559 --> 00:40:12.280
at sea prior to the First Punic
War is hyperbole, but not by much.

436
00:40:13.320 --> 00:40:17.239
The Romans had not needed sea power
to conquer Italy. Only in three

437
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:23.519
eleven had the Romans created two posts
responsible for the construction and maintenance of warships.

438
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:30.760
Even in the early third century,
Rome continued to rely upon its Italian

439
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:35.679
allies for its fleet. Indeed,
in the early stages of the First Punic

440
00:40:35.719 --> 00:40:39.519
War, it was Allied ships,
not Roman ships per se, that transported

441
00:40:39.519 --> 00:40:45.960
the legions to Sicily and provided naval
support. Bolybyus was not wrong in his

442
00:40:45.039 --> 00:40:50.599
assertion that, however small it was, the Roman navy truly developed in the

443
00:40:50.599 --> 00:40:57.400
First Punic War. Regardless, So
in two sixty one BCE, the Roman

444
00:40:57.480 --> 00:41:02.880
Senate voted to construct a fleet of
one hundred quin quareems and twenty triremes capable

445
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:10.360
of directly confronting the Carthaginians. It's
very possible that this vote mirrored a change

446
00:41:10.360 --> 00:41:15.199
in war aims resulting from the fall
of Agrigentum, but we can't be certain

447
00:41:15.239 --> 00:41:22.559
of that. There is one record
of a council arguing for the construction of

448
00:41:22.599 --> 00:41:28.519
a fleet as early as two sixty
three. Either way. Honestly, given

449
00:41:28.519 --> 00:41:32.920
the reality that Sicily was and still
is an ireland, I cannot see how

450
00:41:32.960 --> 00:41:37.880
the Romans ever thought that they would
be able to claim it using land power

451
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:44.239
alone. Hence, whenever the idea
came about with the construction of a fleet,

452
00:41:44.880 --> 00:41:49.360
it was an inevitability. If the
Romans truly wanted to win the war.

453
00:41:51.239 --> 00:41:57.880
Now recounting just how naval combat functioned
in the ancient and classical world,

454
00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:02.880
it's extremely difficult. In general,
the ancient sources are far less informative about

455
00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:07.480
operations in sea than they are on
land. The problem is made worse by

456
00:42:07.480 --> 00:42:15.199
the essentially alien nature of or warships. To the modern age, maritime archaeology

457
00:42:15.400 --> 00:42:20.519
has started to provide some information,
although RECs of warships rather than merchantmen are

458
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:27.559
exceptionally uncommon, and much less has
been learned by reconstruction. Therefore, nevertheless,

459
00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:31.119
there are numerous gaps in our understanding
of the construction and maintenance of classical

460
00:42:31.159 --> 00:42:36.599
galleys, which is what we imagine
when we imagine classical maritime warfare, and

461
00:42:36.679 --> 00:42:42.039
especially of the strategic and tactical uses
of these fleets. An indication of all

462
00:42:42.079 --> 00:42:46.519
of this is our uncertainty as the
precise design of what was the standard warship

463
00:42:46.599 --> 00:42:53.480
of the Punic wars the Quinquerim,
the great naval battles of the fifth century,

464
00:42:53.760 --> 00:42:59.280
when the Greeks had defeated the Persian
invaders and Athens and Sparta had vied

465
00:42:59.320 --> 00:43:04.199
for dominance, were fought in one
by trirems. The evidence for this type

466
00:43:04.199 --> 00:43:07.679
of ship is actually pretty good,
much of it coming from the literature of

467
00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:14.960
classical Athens and excavations of shipyards in
the Piraeus Harbor. The full scale reconstruction

468
00:43:15.039 --> 00:43:20.159
of an Athenian Triyrem in the nineteen
eighties and its extensive sea trials vastly increased

469
00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:23.559
our knowledge. The Trirem, or
three as I'm going to call it,

470
00:43:23.599 --> 00:43:29.679
derived its name from the basic growing
group of three men. Each man sat

471
00:43:29.719 --> 00:43:32.679
on a different level and operated an
or of about fourteen feet or so in

472
00:43:32.800 --> 00:43:39.159
length, those of the upper row
projecting from an outrigger. Considerable skill was

473
00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:45.000
required in each oarsman for the successful
functioning of the ship. It was long

474
00:43:45.039 --> 00:43:47.679
and sleek. In fact, the
Athenian Triyrem was about one hundred and twenty

475
00:43:47.679 --> 00:43:55.000
feet in length, but just under
twenty feet across its widest. It carried

476
00:43:55.039 --> 00:44:00.079
a crew of about two hundred,
around thirty of who were deck crew officers

477
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:04.639
and marines, and the remainder of
which were all rowers, so about one

478
00:44:04.719 --> 00:44:10.039
hundred and seventy rowers. In trials, the reconstructed version reached speeds of eight

479
00:44:10.119 --> 00:44:15.360
knots and could maintain a steady four
knots for hours on end, with half

480
00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:20.159
the rowers resting in any one given
time, turns through one hundred and eighty

481
00:44:20.159 --> 00:44:22.320
degrees were completed in a distance equivalent
to two and a half shipped lengths.

482
00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:28.800
These speeds were achieved despite the comparative
inexperience of the modern crew and their use

483
00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:32.639
of ores, which were probably heavier
than the originals. Under sail, the

484
00:44:32.679 --> 00:44:37.440
Trirem was able to achieve eight knots
in a favorable breeze. All in all,

485
00:44:37.679 --> 00:44:43.880
the performance of the reconstructed Trirem was
remarkably good and challenged many past assumptions

486
00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:51.239
about ancient naval warfare. In the
fourth century, several Hellenistic states began to

487
00:44:51.280 --> 00:44:57.679
construct larger warships than the Trirem.
The Carthaginians were the first to build fours

488
00:44:57.840 --> 00:45:02.280
or quadririms, while Dionysus, the
first the tyrant of Syracuse in the early

489
00:45:02.320 --> 00:45:07.960
fourth century, was responsible for the
design of the five. This is called

490
00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:14.280
the panius in Greek or the quininquirm
in Latin. The kingdoms which emerged in

491
00:45:14.280 --> 00:45:19.119
the Hellenistic world in the late fourth
century were able to lavish huge resources on

492
00:45:19.159 --> 00:45:22.159
the construction of their fleets. Some
of the largest ships were built by the

493
00:45:22.159 --> 00:45:29.159
Tallamac Kingdom of Egypt, including according
to legend, such massive ships as Ptolomae

494
00:45:29.239 --> 00:45:35.039
the seconds, thirties and forties,
but there's no record of anything actually larger

495
00:45:35.119 --> 00:45:40.079
than a ten seeing real combat.
The realization that although the Trirem had three

496
00:45:40.119 --> 00:45:45.239
banks of ores, its name derived
in fact from the number of each team

497
00:45:45.320 --> 00:45:49.760
of rowers, goes a long way
towards understanding the design of these ships.

498
00:45:51.000 --> 00:45:55.000
Clearly, galleys with four or five
banks of oars would have been incredibly impractical,

499
00:45:55.719 --> 00:46:00.639
and ones with ten or more impossible. In fact, there's no evidence

500
00:46:00.679 --> 00:46:05.199
for any warship in the classical world
ever, having more than three banks of

501
00:46:05.239 --> 00:46:12.000
ores. Therefore fours and larger ships
like quein Kareems fives who might call them,

502
00:46:12.199 --> 00:46:15.920
at least some of these ores had
to have been operated by more than

503
00:46:15.960 --> 00:46:22.039
one rower. The quin Kaream had
a basic team of five rowers, but

504
00:46:22.119 --> 00:46:25.519
how are they arranged? Did it
have one level of ores rowed by five

505
00:46:25.559 --> 00:46:29.559
men each two levels, one road
by three, one road by two,

506
00:46:30.559 --> 00:46:35.280
or three levels with two ores operated
by a pair of rowers and one by

507
00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:38.880
a single man. There were navies
of the Mediterranean powers in the late Middle

508
00:46:38.920 --> 00:46:44.599
Ages, including many galleys, and
all of these had a single bank of

509
00:46:44.599 --> 00:46:50.519
ores, regardless as to how many
rowers operated each one. Two men can

510
00:46:50.559 --> 00:46:53.199
sit side by side and they can
operate an or effectively. But if there

511
00:46:53.199 --> 00:46:58.119
are more than two rowers per ore, that's necessary for them to rise to

512
00:46:58.159 --> 00:47:00.960
their feet and dip the blade and
then hurl themselves back to the bench when

513
00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:06.000
they deliver the stroke. Now,
this was the method that was employed in

514
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:08.239
the Middle Ages. It must also
have been used in some of the larger

515
00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:15.519
galleys in the classical world of necessity. This design required a somewhat broader and

516
00:47:15.559 --> 00:47:21.119
heavier hull to accommodate the rowers,
which probably made them slower and less maneuverable

517
00:47:21.280 --> 00:47:25.840
than the sleeker types like trireams.
There has been a suggestion by different historians

518
00:47:27.360 --> 00:47:31.840
that this system of having multiple rowers
per or was actually more effective, and

519
00:47:31.880 --> 00:47:37.440
the reason is is because you actually
only need one skilled rower as long as

520
00:47:37.480 --> 00:47:40.239
the other two could just simply follow
the instructions of that man, then you

521
00:47:40.320 --> 00:47:45.280
don't need quite as many. And
this was the basis on which historians have

522
00:47:45.360 --> 00:47:51.639
assumed that Carthage came into the conflict
with the superior navy now that they had

523
00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:55.800
tens of thousands of expertly skilled rowers, but that they may have had ten

524
00:47:55.840 --> 00:48:00.440
thousand that were then spread out across
all the various ships at different points.

525
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:07.639
This might explain why the Punic ships
were individually faster and more maneuverable than their

526
00:48:07.719 --> 00:48:15.719
Roman counterparts. However, Polybius tells
us explicitly that the Roman ships were copied

527
00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:20.199
from a captured design of a Carthaginian
five, and there seems no good reason

528
00:48:20.239 --> 00:48:23.760
to reject this evidence. The superior
performance of the Carthaginian ships for most of

529
00:48:23.800 --> 00:48:29.000
the war was a reflection of their
more highly trained crews and at the very

530
00:48:29.039 --> 00:48:34.639
beginning, better construction, not from
a fundamentally different design. On the whole.

531
00:48:34.679 --> 00:48:37.960
It's more likely that the queen quareams
of this period had more than one

532
00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:43.519
bank of ores. Two levels of
ores with three and two rowers respectively would

533
00:48:43.519 --> 00:48:47.239
have meant an uneasy combination of two
different designs, and it's more probable that

534
00:48:47.239 --> 00:48:52.199
the quin kerriam had three levels,
the lowest with a single rower and the

535
00:48:52.199 --> 00:48:57.840
others with a pair. This would
make the quinquerream a more logical development from

536
00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:01.480
the Trirem. Directly, levels of
ores in a trirem were mounted in an

537
00:49:01.480 --> 00:49:07.519
outrigger and this has sometimes been perceived
as a weakness. Even if that's true,

538
00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:10.519
it would have remained a failing in
similarly designed fives, and it's distinctly

539
00:49:10.559 --> 00:49:16.480
possible that the quin quareems of the
Punic Wars were constructed differently. There were

540
00:49:16.519 --> 00:49:23.199
two main tactical options open to ancient
galleys, ramming and boarding. Given the

541
00:49:23.239 --> 00:49:28.719
limitations of technology at the time,
there simply was no amount of projectiles that

542
00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:35.119
could be launched by any one ship
to incapacitate another. Missiles were useful to

543
00:49:35.159 --> 00:49:39.119
clear an enemy deck before boarding,
but any decisive result, just like on

544
00:49:39.239 --> 00:49:44.960
land, required two opposing ships to
close with one another and fight it out.

545
00:49:45.039 --> 00:49:50.519
Ram started out as pointed, but
even by the fifth century they've been

546
00:49:50.559 --> 00:49:57.960
refashioned into blunt objects. Why well, a pointed ram just ran too much

547
00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:00.800
of a risk of being stuck to
the end enemy hull. This is why

548
00:50:01.159 --> 00:50:07.599
rams were built onto but were never
part of the ship's keel. Likewise,

549
00:50:08.119 --> 00:50:13.920
ships never tried to ram each other
head on. That is to say,

550
00:50:13.960 --> 00:50:16.519
you would never aim for the bow
of an opposing ship. That was the

551
00:50:16.559 --> 00:50:22.159
strongest part of both ships and would
almost certainly result in major damage to both

552
00:50:22.519 --> 00:50:29.519
should it have been attempted. Instead, any decent captain would try to ram

553
00:50:29.559 --> 00:50:34.280
a ship's side. Ideally you would
actually strike the side at an angle,

554
00:50:34.880 --> 00:50:39.559
puncturing not just one hole, but
a series of holes. In reality,

555
00:50:40.400 --> 00:50:47.639
what this meant was that ancient naval
warfare devolved into a series of one on

556
00:50:47.639 --> 00:50:54.679
one duels, much like aerial combat
during the First World War. There were

557
00:50:55.079 --> 00:51:01.519
some larger strategies, likely employed by
squadrons of ships, but it's highly unlikely

558
00:51:02.079 --> 00:51:08.559
whole naval squadrons worked in tandem somehow, and certainly not an entire navy.

559
00:51:08.920 --> 00:51:16.079
That's just not possible given the limitations
of communication. Such seems just unbelievable.

560
00:51:17.480 --> 00:51:22.480
Now, the likely are scenario wasn't
ramming, it was boarding. This is

561
00:51:22.519 --> 00:51:28.119
for a few reasons. Ramming requires
a lot of technical skill, and not

562
00:51:28.199 --> 00:51:31.599
just for the commander either. All
the rowers needed to be highly trained and

563
00:51:31.679 --> 00:51:38.000
needed to spend hundreds of hours learning
how to row together. This worked in

564
00:51:38.039 --> 00:51:44.599
a state like classical Athens, which
had manpower, resources and a willingness to

565
00:51:44.679 --> 00:51:50.079
devote the time to developing these skills, but Rome needed to fill the legions,

566
00:51:50.880 --> 00:51:55.760
not the rowers benches. Boarding,
on the other hand, required a

567
00:51:55.800 --> 00:52:01.639
lot less skill. You just had
to get osen off to grapple the enemy's

568
00:52:01.639 --> 00:52:06.159
ship, and then it basically turned
into a land battle on the water.

569
00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:09.480
That was what the Romans wanted to
do, and by and large it was

570
00:52:09.519 --> 00:52:17.559
what all Hellenistic kingdoms sought to do
as well. It's worth remembering that all

571
00:52:17.639 --> 00:52:24.519
of these vessels were powered by oarsmen, thus their crews were huge by comparison,

572
00:52:24.559 --> 00:52:29.119
of course, to later sailing ships. As a result, it was

573
00:52:29.199 --> 00:52:32.679
both only common to take on marines
directly before a major combat, and also

574
00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:37.559
impossible for these sheeps to spend long
periods of time on the water since they

575
00:52:37.679 --> 00:52:44.000
couldn't carry many supplies. The majority
of the ships that the Romans constructed for

576
00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:49.840
the First Punic War were fives so
Quentin Quarnes with five rows for oarsmen.

577
00:52:50.719 --> 00:52:54.039
Bolivias tells us that the designs for
these ships were modeled on a Carthaginian craft

578
00:52:54.320 --> 00:52:59.280
that ran aground during the initial phase
of the conflict. I mentioned that two

579
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:02.320
episodes ago. Actually, whether it's
completely true or not as pure speculation,

580
00:53:02.880 --> 00:53:07.199
but it is interesting to think that
an incident of pure happenstance might have altered

581
00:53:07.239 --> 00:53:14.159
the course of history. Certainly,
Southern Italian Roman allies have been making fives

582
00:53:14.159 --> 00:53:17.400
for decades. However, it has
long been thought that this particular design for

583
00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:22.360
a five was different, specifically Carthaginian
design, that it was superior to at

584
00:53:22.440 --> 00:53:27.599
least have been or thought to have
been superior to anything else presently in construction.

585
00:53:28.639 --> 00:53:31.199
Regardless, what we do know that
the Romans used the same template for

586
00:53:31.320 --> 00:53:37.000
all the fives they constructed throughout the
wars. We know this because the remains

587
00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:42.119
of these ships have markers still present
on the beams showing the workmen where and

588
00:53:42.239 --> 00:53:45.639
how to cut them. This allowed
the Romans to fit together multiple beams using

589
00:53:45.719 --> 00:53:51.880
joints which were much longer than the
natural wood. Using a template for consistent

590
00:53:51.920 --> 00:53:57.840
designs is something that had hitherto been
thought impossible before the Industrial Revolution. As

591
00:53:57.880 --> 00:54:01.440
with many things, the Romans were
a bit head of the curve. These

592
00:54:01.519 --> 00:54:06.639
huge ships took not only massive crews
of workmen to build, but also would

593
00:54:06.639 --> 00:54:10.159
have required in total thirty thousand rowers
if we multiplied out for all the ships.

594
00:54:12.159 --> 00:54:15.079
Certainly some of these would have been
provided by Roman allies. However,

595
00:54:15.119 --> 00:54:19.599
I think it's certain, despite Roman
attitudes at the time toward naval warfare,

596
00:54:19.920 --> 00:54:22.280
that a good number of these oarsmen
were the urban poor from Rome itself.

597
00:54:23.519 --> 00:54:27.960
These men would not have met the
property qualifications for service in the legions.

598
00:54:29.599 --> 00:54:31.679
Now. One of the earliest engagements
of the naval war in the First Punic

599
00:54:31.719 --> 00:54:37.320
War was a painful setback for Rome. One of the two Roman consuls for

600
00:54:37.400 --> 00:54:42.000
two sixty BCE Nya. Scipio,
received word that Lepara, a crucial town

601
00:54:42.079 --> 00:54:45.880
not far from Masana, wanted to
defect the Roman side. Scipio believed them

602
00:54:46.119 --> 00:54:52.440
and took seventeen ships and occupied the
harbor. What happened next is still a

603
00:54:52.480 --> 00:54:55.440
matter of debate whether this was all
a ruse. From the beginning were not

604
00:54:55.480 --> 00:55:00.760
sure, but regardless, Hannibal sent
twenty ships of his and blockaded the Romans

605
00:55:00.760 --> 00:55:07.280
in Their crews panicked and quickly surrendered, and Scipio found himself in captivity.

606
00:55:07.519 --> 00:55:10.719
Don't worry too much about him,
though. He won the consulship again into

607
00:55:10.800 --> 00:55:16.039
fifty four. But soon after this
success, Hannibal managed to stumble upon a

608
00:55:16.079 --> 00:55:22.440
major Roman fleet while his fleet was
scattered and unprepared. Our reports for this

609
00:55:22.599 --> 00:55:25.119
are murky, but he seems to
have lost at least twenty five ships as

610
00:55:25.159 --> 00:55:30.559
a result. What these two events
highlight is just how difficult it was to

611
00:55:30.599 --> 00:55:35.559
maneuver a large fleet in the classical
world when no one really knew where the

612
00:55:35.639 --> 00:55:40.639
enemy was. The Romans remained eager
for a major confrontation. However, their

613
00:55:40.679 --> 00:55:45.679
desire for such was only heightened when
probably one of their best commanders of the

614
00:55:45.840 --> 00:55:52.239
entire First Punic War arrived, Caius
Julius. The Romans realized that their ships

615
00:55:52.239 --> 00:55:57.199
were neither as fast nor as maneuverable
as their Punic counterparts. They'd copied the

616
00:55:57.199 --> 00:56:00.159
methods of their construction, but as
of yet they couldn't implicate the skill of

617
00:56:00.199 --> 00:56:06.360
the Carthaginian shipwrights, and even more
importantly, Roman crews were far inferior.

618
00:56:07.280 --> 00:56:09.880
It was clear that they could anticipate
little success if they relied on ramming to

619
00:56:09.880 --> 00:56:14.000
defeat the enemy, and that therefore
they have to depend on getting close to

620
00:56:14.039 --> 00:56:16.960
boarding. To this, someone put
forward the idea of a new type of

621
00:56:16.960 --> 00:56:22.159
boarding bridge, known to modern historians
by the Latin word corvus, which means

622
00:56:22.239 --> 00:56:29.000
raven, although no ancient author employs
the term, and Polybiates uses the equivalent

623
00:56:29.119 --> 00:56:32.599
Greek word korvacs. The name of
its inventor has not been recorded, so

624
00:56:32.679 --> 00:56:37.559
some have suggested that the man was
a Sicilian Greek, a foreigner with whom

625
00:56:37.679 --> 00:56:40.960
the Romans had no wish to share
the glory of the subsequent success the corvus

626
00:56:42.039 --> 00:56:45.400
brought, or even that the inventor
may have been the young Archimedes, but

627
00:56:45.440 --> 00:56:51.599
of course this is just conjecture.
Later sources view the corvus as some sort

628
00:56:51.639 --> 00:56:57.280
of grapnel, which encouraged historians to
doubt Polybius's description, but the reliability of

629
00:56:57.280 --> 00:57:01.719
his account was finally confirmed when later
on a constructed, viable, working model

630
00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:07.760
of the engine was made in the
early twentieth century. The corvas was a

631
00:57:07.800 --> 00:57:12.639
boarding bridge. It was four feet
wide and thirty six feet long, with

632
00:57:12.639 --> 00:57:16.480
a knee high parapet on either side. The last third of its length formed

633
00:57:16.679 --> 00:57:22.320
the two prongs, separated by a
long groove slotted around a twenty foot four

634
00:57:22.679 --> 00:57:25.760
high pole erected on the deck of
the ship. Pullies allowed the bridge to

635
00:57:25.800 --> 00:57:30.119
be raised at any angle against the
pole. Underneath the raised end of the

636
00:57:30.119 --> 00:57:36.239
bridge was a heavy pointed spike resembling
a bird's beak, from which the device

637
00:57:36.360 --> 00:57:39.519
probably got its name. When released, the corvs fell onto the deck of

638
00:57:39.559 --> 00:57:45.320
an enemy ship. The spike embedded
itself into the planking. The groove allowed

639
00:57:45.320 --> 00:57:49.400
the bridge to be swung around in
a wide arc to fall ahead or on

640
00:57:49.440 --> 00:57:52.960
either side of the ship's bow,
depending on the direction of the approaching enemy.

641
00:57:52.719 --> 00:57:57.800
Once the bridge was securely fixed in
the other vessel, the Roman marines

642
00:57:57.920 --> 00:58:02.000
could swarm across and overwhelm the enemy
crew with their skill as swordsmen. It

643
00:58:02.039 --> 00:58:07.119
was a simple practical device allowing the
Romans to extend their advantages in land fighting

644
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:13.360
to naval battles, and it enjoyed
spectacular success during its relatively brief career.

645
00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:19.199
Soon after his arrival with the fleet, Dulius received a report that the Carthaginian

646
00:58:19.199 --> 00:58:22.320
fleet had been raided around an area
called Malai, a city situated on a

647
00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:28.599
peninsula on the northern coast of Sicily. The entire Roman fleet put to sea

648
00:58:28.840 --> 00:58:31.679
and moved around the coast towards Malai, and soon as this was reported to

649
00:58:31.719 --> 00:58:37.760
Hannibal, he prepared his fleet to
meet them. Polybius tells us that the

650
00:58:37.800 --> 00:58:43.400
Carthaginians mustered one hundred and thirty ships, which seems more likely than Deodorus's figure

651
00:58:43.400 --> 00:58:49.039
of two hundred. Hannibal himself led
the action from a Heptaris or seven,

652
00:58:49.119 --> 00:58:52.920
which might have actually been captured from
Peris way back in two seventy six.

653
00:58:53.199 --> 00:58:58.639
The Romans had what was left of
their original one hundred and twenty ships,

654
00:58:58.679 --> 00:59:02.880
minus the seventeen that were lost with
a Scipio plus. However, many Punic

655
00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:07.079
ships were captured in the earlier engagement, they had been able to salvage and

656
00:59:07.480 --> 00:59:12.559
man, as well as any other
vessels provided by their naval allies. The

657
00:59:12.639 --> 00:59:17.199
bulk of ships on both sides were
presumably quin Querim's fives, and it's improbable

658
00:59:17.400 --> 00:59:23.280
that either fleet was markedly bigger than
the other. Polybius tells us that the

659
00:59:23.320 --> 00:59:29.119
Carthaginians were confused by the strange appearance
of the tall corvas near the prow of

660
00:59:29.159 --> 00:59:34.840
each Roman ship, but remained supremely
confident of their own superiority over their inexperienced

661
00:59:34.920 --> 00:59:38.639
enemy. It was extremely difficult for
the commander of an ancient fleet to exercise

662
00:59:38.760 --> 00:59:44.920
much control over his squadrons during a
battle, but Hannibal appears to have allowed

663
00:59:44.920 --> 00:59:49.079
his fleet to just get out of
hand. Out the gate, Punic ships

664
00:59:49.239 --> 00:59:52.199
surged toward the enemy, with the
Great Seven in the front. Some of

665
00:59:52.199 --> 00:59:57.199
the Roman ships were rammed, but
each was able to drop its corvs,

666
00:59:57.320 --> 01:00:00.559
whose beakspeared through the deck of the
enemy vessel and held them tight. Thirty

667
01:00:00.599 --> 01:00:05.400
Punic warships, all those who had
first engaged, were grappled and held fast.

668
01:00:06.039 --> 01:00:09.559
Amongst them was Hannibal's flagship, attacked
by a trirene according to his Zenorius,

669
01:00:09.880 --> 01:00:14.400
although he tends to use that word
as a generic term for a warship,

670
01:00:14.679 --> 01:00:16.800
and was more likely that the ship
was a Roman five, since the

671
01:00:16.800 --> 01:00:22.239
difference in height between a seven and
five would have been just unbelievable. In

672
01:00:22.239 --> 01:00:25.440
each case, the Roman marines poured
across the boarding bridges and swiftly defeated the

673
01:00:25.519 --> 01:00:30.400
enemy crews. Hannibal abandoned his flagship
and escaped in a small rowing boat.

674
01:00:30.960 --> 01:00:35.800
The remainder of the Carthaginian fleet then
took advantage of the superior speed of their

675
01:00:35.880 --> 01:00:39.079
vessels and swung around outflanking the Roman
line and attacking it from a stern,

676
01:00:39.440 --> 01:00:44.880
hoping in this way to avoid the
corvas. Somehow, we don't know how

677
01:00:45.079 --> 01:00:47.719
the Romans were able to maneuver to
meet this new onslaught, and once again

678
01:00:49.000 --> 01:00:52.199
any Punic ship which came within the
range was pinned and held tight by the

679
01:00:52.239 --> 01:00:59.639
corvas. Polybius describes how boarding bridges
quote swung around and plunged down in all

680
01:00:59.639 --> 01:01:04.239
directtions end quote, but were not
clear what he means by this. A

681
01:01:04.320 --> 01:01:07.880
corvus mounted near the prow of a
ship would have been able to be dropped

682
01:01:07.880 --> 01:01:10.559
ahead and for a short distance to
the port of starboard, but clearly it

683
01:01:10.679 --> 01:01:15.880
could not have reached the stern.
Evidently, a Roman ship, seeing an

684
01:01:15.960 --> 01:01:19.079
enemy vessel approaching, would have tried
to turn to bring the enemy within the

685
01:01:19.199 --> 01:01:22.559
arc. Many historians have suggested that
the Roman ships may have been formed into

686
01:01:22.559 --> 01:01:27.079
two lines, and that it was
the second line which turned to face the

687
01:01:27.119 --> 01:01:31.079
second Punic attack, But while this
is certainly plausible, our sources are simply

688
01:01:31.079 --> 01:01:36.280
too brief for us to be able
to confirm or deny it. These with

689
01:01:36.320 --> 01:01:40.480
which Carthaginians were able to subsequently disengage
and retreat, once again confirm the superior

690
01:01:40.519 --> 01:01:45.320
speed of their ships, but they
had failed to achieve anything positive Because of

691
01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:50.559
this advantage. It was a spectacular
success for the new Roman fleet, owed

692
01:01:50.599 --> 01:01:55.599
almost exclusively to the ingenuity of whoever
designed to the corvus. According to Polybius,

693
01:01:57.000 --> 01:02:00.679
fifty Punic ships were lost, although
our later soores give thirty three one

694
01:02:00.760 --> 01:02:06.960
captured and thirteen to fourteen sunk figures, which may derive from the inscription that

695
01:02:07.079 --> 01:02:10.760
was later erected by Julius himself in
commemoration of his victory. It's called the

696
01:02:10.880 --> 01:02:15.920
Kolomna Rustra, although this has survived
in fragmentary form, so only the first

697
01:02:16.199 --> 01:02:21.679
X of a numeral can be read. The tone of the surviving text is

698
01:02:21.760 --> 01:02:25.760
very typical of the Roman aristocracy self
promotion, with its emphasis on having been

699
01:02:25.800 --> 01:02:30.920
the first Roman to ever defeat a
Punic navy, claiming in his land operations,

700
01:02:30.159 --> 01:02:37.079
Julius defeated all the greatest of the
Carthaginian forces. This text actually mentions

701
01:02:37.199 --> 01:02:43.079
only trirems, and is being reconstructed
as also mentioning quinquarems, which might offer

702
01:02:43.119 --> 01:02:49.239
additional confirmation for our suspicion that the
fleets of this conflict were not exclusively quinqueramines

703
01:02:49.320 --> 01:02:55.800
or fives. The new Man Julius
celebrated Rome's first naval triumph ever, decorating

704
01:02:55.840 --> 01:03:00.320
the speaker's platform in the Forum with
the prows or raw ustra cut off from

705
01:03:00.400 --> 01:03:07.159
captured ships from which the speaker's platform
would later derive its name. When Dulius

706
01:03:07.199 --> 01:03:09.559
went out to dine at Rome,
he was accompanied to and from his host's

707
01:03:09.599 --> 01:03:15.239
house by a procession of musicians.
But interestingly enough, in spite of all

708
01:03:15.280 --> 01:03:17.719
these great honors, he never went
on to accomplish much more later in his

709
01:03:17.800 --> 01:03:22.960
career. Now, Hannibal survived the
disastrous defeat, but not for long.

710
01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:29.000
He was put to death by his
own officers not long afterwards. There were

711
01:03:29.000 --> 01:03:34.159
no other major sea confrontations until two
fifty seven, when the Roman consul Caius

712
01:03:34.199 --> 01:03:38.199
Regulus managed to inflict a relatively significant
defeat on the main fleet, capturing ten

713
01:03:38.239 --> 01:03:43.880
ships and sinking eight. The main
Punic force, however, withdrew not interested

714
01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:47.639
in fighting a full scale battle at
that point. In two fifty six,

715
01:03:47.679 --> 01:03:52.400
the Romans made their bold but characteristic
decision to escalate the conflict by mounting the

716
01:03:52.440 --> 01:03:58.480
invasion of North Africa I talked about
before. To accomplish this, they amassed

717
01:03:58.519 --> 01:04:01.840
an enormous fleet of hundred and thirty
vessels, which moved along the Italian coast

718
01:04:02.119 --> 01:04:09.360
and crossed to Messana before sailing south
along the Sicilian shore, pasted Syracuse and

719
01:04:09.400 --> 01:04:13.320
then linking up with the main army. The pick of the Roman infantry were

720
01:04:13.360 --> 01:04:16.880
taken on board to serve as marines
and provide an invasion force, so that

721
01:04:17.000 --> 01:04:20.880
now each queen quareim had a complement
of around one hundred and twenty marines.

722
01:04:21.760 --> 01:04:27.000
Polybius claimed that the combined total of
the cruise at marines and the Roman fleet

723
01:04:27.239 --> 01:04:30.840
was around one hundred and forty thousand
men. The Carthaginians had managed to put

724
01:04:30.840 --> 01:04:34.840
together a grand total of three hundred
and fifty ships, which sailed from Africa

725
01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:41.559
to Lillibayum before moving around to the
southern coast of Sicily. Polybius gives us

726
01:04:41.599 --> 01:04:45.880
their strength in men is more than
one hundred and fifty thousand, presumably calculated

727
01:04:45.880 --> 01:04:49.280
on the assumption that their crews were
roughly the same size as those of the

728
01:04:49.400 --> 01:04:56.880
Romans. Certainly, most modern historians
believe that Plybeus's numbers are inflated, but

729
01:04:57.000 --> 01:05:01.159
it's impossible to say by how much. So. For the purposes of the

730
01:05:01.199 --> 01:05:06.639
Battle of Encomness, the only major
battle of the war, frankly, I'm

731
01:05:06.679 --> 01:05:13.199
going to assume the numbers are roughly
accurate. Essentially, the Roman fleet set

732
01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:17.360
sail with two intentions. Either there
would be a major engagement or they would

733
01:05:17.360 --> 01:05:24.000
continue on to North Africa, but
it seems that the Carthaginians had resolved that

734
01:05:24.079 --> 01:05:29.079
a battle off the coast of Sicily
offered them the best chance of protecting their

735
01:05:29.119 --> 01:05:32.519
capital city. Such was the importance
of this venture that both of that year's

736
01:05:32.599 --> 01:05:41.559
consuls Lucius Manlius Vulso and Marcus Attilis
Rigolus, were present. They divided the

737
01:05:41.599 --> 01:05:46.079
fleet into four divisions, numbered one
to four and labeled as either squadrons or

738
01:05:46.239 --> 01:05:51.039
legions. This was simply a nickname
and bore no relation to their actual size,

739
01:05:51.199 --> 01:05:56.400
and it seems that the four divisions
were not equal in numbers. The

740
01:05:56.480 --> 01:06:00.559
first two groups were led by the
consuls themselves, who's two two sixes headed

741
01:06:00.599 --> 01:06:05.719
the Roman formation. The other ships
from these squadrons took station from the flagships

742
01:06:05.719 --> 01:06:12.199
in line echelon back to either side, so that each ship's prow lay behind

743
01:06:12.280 --> 01:06:16.119
and to the side of the ship
in front. So imagine now in effect,

744
01:06:16.199 --> 01:06:21.480
these squadrons formed the tip of a
triangle. The base was then composed

745
01:06:21.519 --> 01:06:26.400
of the third squadron, which was
arrayed in a line of breast, each

746
01:06:26.559 --> 01:06:30.840
ship towing one of the horse transports. The fourth squadron was behind this group

747
01:06:31.159 --> 01:06:35.880
and probably more numerous than the third
because its ships overlapped its line on either

748
01:06:35.920 --> 01:06:42.599
flank, protecting the rear of the
formation and acting as the ultimate reserve.

749
01:06:43.159 --> 01:06:49.039
This fourth squadron was also nicknamed the
Triari. The Roman formation was praised by

750
01:06:49.039 --> 01:06:56.360
Polybius for its practicality, being relatively
dense and keeping the fleet together, but

751
01:06:56.599 --> 01:07:01.159
also permitting it to turn and face
a threat from direction. It was a

752
01:07:01.199 --> 01:07:05.880
sign of the improved quality of Roman
crews and the greater experience of their commanders

753
01:07:06.119 --> 01:07:11.679
that they were able to adopt such
a plan, and there's no good reason

754
01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:16.280
to doubt Polybius's account or assume that
he had misunderstood but was no more than

755
01:07:16.280 --> 01:07:24.280
an accidental formation. Macarthaginians made some
changes to their deployment once the Roman fleet

756
01:07:24.320 --> 01:07:29.239
came into view, having apparently advanced
in a normal battle formation in simple line

757
01:07:29.280 --> 01:07:32.760
abreast, the Carthaginian line was formed
with the coast of Sicily to its left.

758
01:07:33.599 --> 01:07:38.440
The left wing, one quarter of
the fleet ships reached forward towards the

759
01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:43.000
shore. Angled away from this was
the remainder of the fleet to the extreme

760
01:07:43.079 --> 01:07:45.760
right, which was commanded by Hanno. He's the same general who had failed

761
01:07:45.960 --> 01:07:50.760
to relieve Argagentum back in two sixty
one. This was made up as the

762
01:07:50.760 --> 01:07:57.800
fastest ships and extended beyond the flank
of the Roman formation. The center was

763
01:07:57.880 --> 01:08:01.760
led by the overall commander in Sicily, Hamilcar, who had instructed the captains

764
01:08:01.920 --> 01:08:05.760
of his division to begin by withdrawing
in the face of a Roman attack.

765
01:08:06.840 --> 01:08:13.480
Hamil Carr's plan appears to have been
to break up the compact Roman formation so

766
01:08:13.519 --> 01:08:17.520
that his divisions on the right and
left could sweep in and attack the enemy

767
01:08:17.720 --> 01:08:24.279
from the flank or, best case
scenario, the rear. This would produce

768
01:08:24.600 --> 01:08:30.079
a series of smaller encounters between parts
of each fleet, in which the Carthaginians

769
01:08:30.159 --> 01:08:34.359
might hope to exploit their skill in
ramming tactics and avoid frontal attacks on the

770
01:08:34.479 --> 01:08:41.319
corvus equipped Roman ships. Some historians
have made efforts to suggest a far more

771
01:08:41.359 --> 01:08:45.479
complicated Carthaginian battle plan, but to
be honest with you, those are speculative

772
01:08:45.560 --> 01:08:51.640
and not convincing. The battle began
just as Hamilcar had hoped. The Romans

773
01:08:51.640 --> 01:08:55.880
saw the large gaps between the Punic
ships and the center, and they drove

774
01:08:55.920 --> 01:09:01.800
straight at them as instructed. Hamilcar's
ships withdrew and the Roman compact formation began

775
01:09:01.880 --> 01:09:06.800
to spread out as those ships towing
the horse convoys couldn't keep up. When

776
01:09:06.920 --> 01:09:12.159
enough of a gap opened up,
hamil Kart gave the signal and his ships

777
01:09:12.159 --> 01:09:16.760
wheeled around. Both sides engaged,
and a series of individual duels developed,

778
01:09:17.000 --> 01:09:23.920
with fierce fighting up and down the
lines. Meanwhile, Hanno's right wing was

779
01:09:23.960 --> 01:09:29.119
successful in enveloping the third Roman line, which had to cast the horse convoys

780
01:09:29.159 --> 01:09:33.960
adrift to effectively take part in the
action. Hence, what we have here

781
01:09:34.119 --> 01:09:41.960
is actually three separate battles within a
battle. You would expect that this would

782
01:09:42.039 --> 01:09:48.279
probably favor Carthage, but it didn't. Why well, there's a few reasons.

783
01:09:49.159 --> 01:09:53.880
First, the Romans were just much
better trained than they had been back

784
01:09:53.920 --> 01:10:00.359
in two sixty. Second, Carthage's
own naval expansion watered down the effectiveness of

785
01:10:00.399 --> 01:10:03.760
its cruise. Third, and,
by far and away, most importantly,

786
01:10:03.800 --> 01:10:10.079
at least in my view, Carthage
still had no answer for the deadly Corvus.

787
01:10:11.439 --> 01:10:16.359
The Romans quickly defeated the Carthaginian center
after Hamilcar's ships gave up the fight

788
01:10:16.439 --> 01:10:20.800
and fled. This allowed the Roman
consuls to wheel back and help the third

789
01:10:20.880 --> 01:10:28.159
line. There Carthage had actually been
winning, but now the Romans closed on

790
01:10:28.239 --> 01:10:32.600
their rear and effectively sandwiched to the
remaining Punic fleet between them. The battle

791
01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:40.720
was over. Rome had triumphed.
Before this war, no one would have

792
01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:47.119
thought it even conceivable that Rome would
defeat Carthage in a major naval engagement,

793
01:10:48.000 --> 01:10:55.039
and it is a testament to Rome's
willingness to adapt and change. In the

794
01:10:55.159 --> 01:11:00.239
end, the Romans lost twenty four
ships, all sunk. Carthage lost sixty

795
01:11:00.239 --> 01:11:04.279
four ships by boarding, plus another
thirty that sunk to the bottom of the

796
01:11:04.319 --> 01:11:11.119
sea. A total disaster. It
was the largest clash of the war and

797
01:11:11.439 --> 01:11:15.880
might even still to this day have
been the largest naval battle in history in

798
01:11:15.920 --> 01:11:18.479
terms of the number of people who
took part, which is saying something.

799
01:11:19.600 --> 01:11:26.399
Afterwards, the Carthaginian fleets retreated in
three different directions. The Romans returned to

800
01:11:26.399 --> 01:11:30.119
Sicily and made repairs before continuing their
voyage to North Africa, the result of

801
01:11:30.159 --> 01:11:36.800
which I discussed earlier. In two
fifty five, after Regulus was finally beaten

802
01:11:36.840 --> 01:11:43.159
in North Africa, two new Roman
consuls sailed to North Africa. There they

803
01:11:43.199 --> 01:11:47.359
gathered the survivors and even defeated another
Punic fleet on their way, but their

804
01:11:47.399 --> 01:11:53.000
success was short lived. A massive
storm struck the fleet as it made its

805
01:11:53.000 --> 01:11:58.359
way back to Sicily. According to
Polybius, all but sixty ships were lost.

806
01:11:59.600 --> 01:12:02.960
If this is true, that Rome
might have suffered a loss ratio in

807
01:12:03.000 --> 01:12:12.399
this storm of nearly eighty nine percent. We have no idea if these numbers

808
01:12:12.399 --> 01:12:18.479
were one hundred percent accurate, but
clearly it's a huge loss. Some scholars

809
01:12:18.680 --> 01:12:24.600
have argued that the corvus actually made
the galley more susceptible to sinking in a

810
01:12:24.680 --> 01:12:28.800
storm. That's saying something. Galleys
are already really susceptible to sinking in the

811
01:12:28.880 --> 01:12:33.600
storm because they just kind of ride
so low on the water. Modern recreations

812
01:12:33.920 --> 01:12:39.039
suggest that this was highly likely,
though how much of a role that played

813
01:12:39.079 --> 01:12:43.560
in the catastrophe is hard to say. The following year two fifty four,

814
01:12:44.039 --> 01:12:47.119
two hundred and twenty ships new ships
were built and floated in just three months,

815
01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:53.880
an incredible achievement which shows just how
Rome didn't so much always win in

816
01:12:54.079 --> 01:13:00.399
combat. Is it just simply refused
to lose. It was this fleet in

817
01:13:00.439 --> 01:13:05.880
two point fifty that then blockaded and
took enormous perhaps the last major Carthaginian city

818
01:13:05.880 --> 01:13:13.319
on Sicily, so from this point
forwarding the First Punic War, most of

819
01:13:13.319 --> 01:13:17.640
the engagements are quite minor. Rome
continued to raid the North African coast,

820
01:13:18.479 --> 01:13:21.439
but in two fifty three it lost
another one hundred and fifty ships in a

821
01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:26.760
storm, suggesting that Carthage would have
been better off never engage at the Romans

822
01:13:27.039 --> 01:13:30.600
and just letting the sea do its
work for it. In two forty nine,

823
01:13:30.880 --> 01:13:35.159
one of the two consuls for the
year, Publius Claudius Polkar, decided

824
01:13:35.199 --> 01:13:40.880
to launch a surprise attack on the
last Punic naval depot on Sicily, Japana.

825
01:13:42.159 --> 01:13:45.359
It was an audacious move, but
Claudius was an audacious man. This

826
01:13:45.479 --> 01:13:50.039
is the man who, famously,
when told that the auspicious signs for a

827
01:13:50.079 --> 01:13:56.680
battle were poor because the sacred chickens
wouldn't eat, grabbed them and hurled them

828
01:13:56.680 --> 01:14:00.039
overboard, proclaiming that if they would
not eat, then he would let them

829
01:14:00.079 --> 01:14:06.439
drink. However, despite his reputation
for arrogance, Claudius's initial preparations were careful

830
01:14:06.520 --> 01:14:11.319
enough. He put to sea at
night to avoid being spotted, and news

831
01:14:11.319 --> 01:14:15.000
of his departure being carried by land
to Jirpana and sailed along the coast.

832
01:14:15.079 --> 01:14:18.439
However, and in the darkness,
it was difficult for the Romans ships to

833
01:14:18.479 --> 01:14:23.640
remain in a close formation, especially
since they were crewed by a mixture of

834
01:14:23.640 --> 01:14:28.119
experienced rowers and brand new draftees.
The route was simple to follow since it

835
01:14:28.199 --> 01:14:31.119
hugged the coast, but throughout the
night the Roman fleet straggled, and by

836
01:14:31.119 --> 01:14:34.920
the morning it was a long,
scattered line as it approached the enemy base.

837
01:14:35.680 --> 01:14:41.920
Claudius's flagship was somewhere, not sure
where, near the rear the Romans

838
01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:46.000
were spotted and word brought to ad
Herbal actually someone not named Hannibal or Hamilcar,

839
01:14:46.600 --> 01:14:49.600
the Punic admiral, who then took
the bold decision to put to sea

840
01:14:49.640 --> 01:14:54.800
and confront the enemy. He didn't
want to permit himself to be plockaded into

841
01:14:54.800 --> 01:14:59.399
the harbor. He gathered his crews
and collected large numbers of mercenaries to act

842
01:14:59.399 --> 01:15:02.239
as marines. It now became a
matter of time as to whether or not

843
01:15:02.479 --> 01:15:06.199
the Carthaginian fleet would escape from the
harbor and gain the sea room before the

844
01:15:06.279 --> 01:15:12.119
Roman ships were able to block the
entrance. The disordered and scattered formation of

845
01:15:12.119 --> 01:15:15.279
the Roman fleet and the poorer quality
of their crews proved decisive, but honestly

846
01:15:15.600 --> 01:15:20.000
only in the narrowest of margins.
The entrance to the harbor at Tripana was

847
01:15:20.079 --> 01:15:24.920
wide, and as the first Roman
ships were entering its southernmost edge, o

848
01:15:25.079 --> 01:15:29.039
her Ball's flagship was rowing out past
the long spit of land which formed the

849
01:15:29.079 --> 01:15:31.720
northern edge. He signaled the rest
of the fleet to follow him. So

850
01:15:31.760 --> 01:15:36.520
the Carthaginian ships proceeded in line astern, rounded the two small islands opposite the

851
01:15:36.520 --> 01:15:41.960
harbor mouth, and then turned southward
parallel to the coast, but further out

852
01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:45.039
to the sea than the Roman fleet. Claudius knew he had just missed his

853
01:15:45.199 --> 01:15:48.800
chance and sought to signal to bring
some sort of order to his fleet,

854
01:15:48.960 --> 01:15:55.199
which was now spread over a wide
area. Dreadful confusion resulted as the ships

855
01:15:55.199 --> 01:15:59.239
which had entered the harbor tried to
turn around and escaped back into the open

856
01:15:59.279 --> 01:16:04.880
sea. Some ships collided and ships
had oars sheared off by friendly vessels.

857
01:16:05.880 --> 01:16:11.079
Eventually, the Romans managed to form
a rough line of ships close in the

858
01:16:11.119 --> 01:16:15.920
shore, with their rams facing out
to the sea, the flagship now being

859
01:16:15.960 --> 01:16:20.399
on the extreme left of the Roman
line. In the meantime, odd Herball

860
01:16:20.640 --> 01:16:25.479
had outflanked the left of the Roman
line with five ships, angled forward and

861
01:16:25.520 --> 01:16:29.479
placed his own ship facing the Roman
line. As the rest of the fleet

862
01:16:29.560 --> 01:16:32.479
came up, he ordered them to
form a line on his vessel, subordinate

863
01:16:32.520 --> 01:16:38.880
officers regulating the deployment, presumably in
smaller boats. After this delay, the

864
01:16:38.920 --> 01:16:43.000
two fleets formed up, ad her
Ball signaled his ships to attack. It

865
01:16:43.039 --> 01:16:47.399
would prove the only significant defeat suffered
by the Roman navy throughout the war.

866
01:16:48.720 --> 01:16:54.399
Ninety three Roman ships were captured in
the disaster. Many more were sunk.

867
01:16:55.399 --> 01:17:00.000
This was the only time when Carthage
was able to use its skill advantage to

868
01:17:00.039 --> 01:17:06.279
bring about a decisive victory. The
Romans were evidently no longer using the corvus,

869
01:17:06.680 --> 01:17:12.680
which had protected them from ramming Claus. With their sterens firmly to the

870
01:17:12.720 --> 01:17:17.359
coast, the Romans just simply had
no room to maneuver. Had the battle

871
01:17:17.439 --> 01:17:21.760
been fought on the open sea,
things might have been different, but Claudius

872
01:17:21.760 --> 01:17:28.439
had gotten himself into a really difficult
situation from which he was at a significant

873
01:17:28.479 --> 01:17:32.319
disadvantage. From the word go.
Carthage just had much more room to maneuver

874
01:17:32.560 --> 01:17:39.479
than the Roman ships. Did.
The next year, Rome lost another one

875
01:17:39.640 --> 01:17:45.399
hundred strong fleet to a storm,
but this time was different the storm I

876
01:17:45.479 --> 01:17:48.800
mean because it came after a defeat, not a victory, so things seemed

877
01:17:48.960 --> 01:17:56.039
a lot more serious. Rome could
not afford to build yet another fleet and

878
01:17:56.159 --> 01:18:00.560
abandoned for the moment the war at
sea. Roma had taken a lot of

879
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:06.279
losses in this war so far.
The census in two fifty one showed that

880
01:18:06.319 --> 01:18:12.520
there were two hundred and ninety seven
thousand, seven hundred and ninety seven registered

881
01:18:12.880 --> 01:18:17.359
Roman male citizens, but in two
forty seven, four years later, that

882
01:18:17.479 --> 01:18:21.960
number had fallen to two hundred thousand, forty one seven to twelve. That's

883
01:18:23.000 --> 01:18:30.840
a loss of over fifty thousand men. But once again Rome refused to give

884
01:18:30.880 --> 01:18:34.880
in. In two forty three,
the Romans realized that if they were going

885
01:18:34.920 --> 01:18:41.600
to win the war, then they
had no choice but to build another fleet.

886
01:18:41.920 --> 01:18:45.159
This one, however, two hundred
quinquoreems strong, would need to be

887
01:18:45.199 --> 01:18:50.439
financed by wealthy individuals who would be
paid back after the war. The Senate,

888
01:18:50.560 --> 01:18:56.760
you see, was broke. One
of the consuls for two forty two,

889
01:18:57.079 --> 01:19:00.960
Ulius Posthumus Albinus, held the priest
shood known as the Flamen Martalus and

890
01:19:01.000 --> 01:19:05.239
was forbidden by religious taboo from leaving
the city, so the fleet was entrusted

891
01:19:05.279 --> 01:19:11.199
to the command of his colleague Caius
Lutellus Catullus, backed by the senior Prietor.

892
01:19:12.279 --> 01:19:15.920
The Romans immediately renewed their pressure on
the enemy's last major strongholds in Sicily,

893
01:19:16.359 --> 01:19:20.560
moving to capture finally the harbor at
Drepana, and tried to cut off

894
01:19:20.640 --> 01:19:26.520
Lily Bayham from the sea. Hamilcar
Barca, who is now the major commander

895
01:19:26.560 --> 01:19:30.640
on Sicily, was now cut off
from resupply by the sea. Olybyas tells

896
01:19:30.720 --> 01:19:35.039
us explicitly, the main Roman objective
in these operations was to provoke a major

897
01:19:35.119 --> 01:19:40.239
encounter with the Carthaginian fleet, since
they felt its defeat would be a greater

898
01:19:40.279 --> 01:19:45.640
blow than any successes might have achieved
in Sicily. To this end, Katullus

899
01:19:45.760 --> 01:19:48.439
took a lot of care to exercise
his ships at sea each day, training

900
01:19:48.479 --> 01:19:54.560
the crews to the highest level efficiency
that he could achieve. His sailors were

901
01:19:54.600 --> 01:19:58.840
never allowed to waste away in heavy
labor, but were kept healthy and provided

902
01:19:58.840 --> 01:20:01.479
a good diet of food, and
by two forty one the Roman fleet was

903
01:20:01.520 --> 01:20:06.199
in superb condition, its crews experienced
and skilled, Its ships built to a

904
01:20:06.239 --> 01:20:10.960
far better design than in the past. The number of ships constructed in the

905
01:20:10.960 --> 01:20:16.239
preceding twenty years and the Roman's practical
experience of naval operations only refined the skills

906
01:20:16.479 --> 01:20:21.279
of their ship rights. The Carthaginians
were far less well prepared for the upcoming

907
01:20:21.319 --> 01:20:26.600
encounter, for they hadn't made little
use of their naval superiority, which they

908
01:20:26.640 --> 01:20:30.800
achieved after Japana and the Roman losses
to weather. The Punic navy had done

909
01:20:30.800 --> 01:20:35.000
little in the years since then,
and it appears that relatively viewships had actually

910
01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:40.399
even been kept in commission. It
took them time to muster the crews for

911
01:20:40.479 --> 01:20:43.720
the fleet of two hundred and fifty
or so ships, which they ultimately gathered

912
01:20:43.720 --> 01:20:47.640
to send to Sicily. For probably
the first and maybe only time in the

913
01:20:47.680 --> 01:20:54.640
war, the average Carthaginian crew was
less well trained than its Roman counterpart.

914
01:20:55.720 --> 01:21:00.920
It's also possible that many crews were
under strength, although certain tea is impossible.

915
01:21:00.960 --> 01:21:05.159
Their objective was twofold. In the
first instance, the priority was to

916
01:21:05.199 --> 01:21:11.359
load the ships with supplies of grain
for Hamilcar's army and the remaining Punic garrisons

917
01:21:11.359 --> 01:21:15.800
in Sicily. The Roman pressure on
these troops made it difficult for them to

918
01:21:15.800 --> 01:21:19.880
survive by foraging. Once the supplies
had been offloaded, the idea was that

919
01:21:19.920 --> 01:21:25.000
the fleet would then take on board
the pick of Hamilcar's soldiers to serve as

920
01:21:25.039 --> 01:21:30.359
marines, and then seek out and
destroy the Roman fleet. Command in this

921
01:21:30.439 --> 01:21:33.439
operation was given to another guy named
Hanno, and we actually don't know.

922
01:21:33.680 --> 01:21:39.399
He might have been the same guy
who had presided over the defeats at Agrigantum

923
01:21:39.399 --> 01:21:42.600
in two sixty one and in Commness
in two fifty six, if so,

924
01:21:42.920 --> 01:21:47.880
bad choice. The Carthaginians followed the
same route as the fifty ships carrying reinforcements

925
01:21:48.079 --> 01:21:53.239
and supplies which Hannibal, son of
Hamilcar, had sailed into Libeium in two

926
01:21:53.399 --> 01:21:58.760
fifty Crossing to the Agates Islands,
which are just to the west of Sicily.

927
01:21:59.359 --> 01:22:01.319
They stopped the westernmost of these,
which then was known as the Holy

928
01:22:01.359 --> 01:22:05.880
Island, and waited for a favorable
breeze to carry them all the rest of

929
01:22:05.920 --> 01:22:11.760
the way. The Romans were not
aware of their presence yet. However,

930
01:22:11.840 --> 01:22:15.680
Katulus received a report of their arrival
and immediately took on board extra marines drawn

931
01:22:15.720 --> 01:22:19.840
from the army and crossed to another
of the islands in this same Agattes group.

932
01:22:21.000 --> 01:22:25.279
That next day, this is now
the tenth of March two forty one,

933
01:22:25.960 --> 01:22:30.000
the wind brew strongly from the west
in just the direction that Hanno had

934
01:22:30.000 --> 01:22:34.479
hoped for. The Punic ships raised
their sails and begun to run in line

935
01:22:34.600 --> 01:22:41.000
to link up with their land forces. Katulus now had a tough choice to

936
01:22:41.079 --> 01:22:45.720
make. The heavy swell was really
against the Romans. The rowers would have

937
01:22:45.760 --> 01:22:49.680
to battle hard against the wind if
they were going to move and intercept the

938
01:22:49.720 --> 01:22:55.880
Punic fleet. In the past,
Roman commanders, who had treated the elements

939
01:22:55.880 --> 01:23:00.439
and storms in a cavalier manner,
had presided over the largest disaster of the

940
01:23:00.479 --> 01:23:06.119
war. However, if Katullus delayed, then he was unlikely to stop the

941
01:23:06.159 --> 01:23:14.199
Carthaginians joining Hamilcar and taking on board
large numbers of experienced soldiers. Katulus took

942
01:23:14.239 --> 01:23:19.000
the risk and put to sea.
This time, though the Punic fleet stood

943
01:23:19.079 --> 01:23:26.640
little chance. It was overburdened with
grain and had few marines. The Romans

944
01:23:26.840 --> 01:23:30.520
crashed straight into them, and by
the end of the day the Punic losses

945
01:23:30.560 --> 01:23:36.760
were one hundred and twenty ships.
Either lost or sunk. The Romans suffered

946
01:23:36.800 --> 01:23:42.239
losses as well. Actually, nearly
thirty ships sank and another fifty were crippled.

947
01:23:43.560 --> 01:23:45.359
Luckily for Carthage, the wind picked
up and allowed the remainder of the

948
01:23:45.399 --> 01:23:48.680
fleet to escape, but that counted
for very little. The Battle of the

949
01:23:48.720 --> 01:23:55.640
Agatees Islands decided the war. Hamilcar
Barka was now totally isolated in Sicily.

950
01:23:57.000 --> 01:24:04.000
Carthage made no effort to rebuild on
other fleet and instead conceded defeat. The

951
01:24:04.079 --> 01:24:09.800
resources expended in the naval campaigns in
the war had been massive, Bolibya's claiming

952
01:24:09.960 --> 01:24:14.720
that the Romans had lost about seven
hundred warships and the Carthaginians near five hundred,

953
01:24:15.159 --> 01:24:18.760
although the accuracy of these figures has
been doubted. The heaviest Roman losses

954
01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:24.479
all occurred in storms, and this
ensured that the casualties suffered by the crews

955
01:24:24.479 --> 01:24:29.680
were disproportionately high. Many of the
crews of the Punic ships were saved,

956
01:24:29.920 --> 01:24:34.640
although this sometimes meant going into captivity. It was the victors, ironically who

957
01:24:34.680 --> 01:24:40.960
suffered the greatest losses at sea.
Ultimately, the Romans won because of their

958
01:24:41.039 --> 01:24:45.880
ruthless determination and the pursuit of victory
made them willing to accept its high price

959
01:24:45.880 --> 01:24:49.960
in men and ships. The initial
decision to create a Roman fleet may have

960
01:24:50.039 --> 01:24:55.159
at least been motivated in part by
a desire to defend the Roman coast from

961
01:24:55.199 --> 01:25:00.640
the Punic navy, but the Romans
used their naval power in a consistently aggressive

962
01:25:00.880 --> 01:25:05.479
manner. The support of the navy
allowed the Roman landforces in Sicily to press

963
01:25:05.520 --> 01:25:12.039
on more successfully with the task of
subduing Punic strongholds there, And of course

964
01:25:12.359 --> 01:25:16.399
we can never forget the ingenuity of
the Corvus, which really swung the naval

965
01:25:16.399 --> 01:25:21.920
theater in Rome's direction for those first
crucial years when we might have expected the

966
01:25:21.960 --> 01:25:28.560
Punic naval tradition to carry the day. Carthage, however, never displayed the

967
01:25:28.600 --> 01:25:34.039
aggressiveness that allowed the Romans to win. They had naval advantages in two sixty

968
01:25:34.039 --> 01:25:38.920
four to sixty three and again briefly
in two forty one, but they never

969
01:25:39.039 --> 01:25:45.479
used them. Punic commanders in Sicily
only lost territory, they never even attempted

970
01:25:45.479 --> 01:25:49.119
to win any back. The Roman
approach to the war was very different from

971
01:25:49.119 --> 01:25:54.119
what Carthage had encountered before, and
it seemed not to know what to make

972
01:25:54.159 --> 01:25:59.199
of it. If you ask me
what one Rome the First Punic War came

973
01:25:59.239 --> 01:26:05.079
down to one word attitude. Okay, fine, maybe two words attitude and

974
01:26:05.159 --> 01:26:34.399
corvus. After the disastrous defeat at
the Agatas Islands, the Carthaginians gave Hamilcar

975
01:26:34.520 --> 01:26:40.600
barka full authority to negotiate a peace
with Rome. In fact, Hamilcar,

976
01:26:41.159 --> 01:26:45.640
eager to disassociate himself from any admission
of defeat, acted through one of his

977
01:26:45.720 --> 01:26:51.079
subordinate officers, gus Go, the
consul. Catullus's year of office had almost

978
01:26:51.119 --> 01:26:57.319
expired, and the desire to gain
credit for completing such a major war before

979
01:26:57.359 --> 01:27:00.880
his successors arrived to steal the glory
may have made him actually a little bit

980
01:27:01.000 --> 01:27:10.039
more conciliatory. An initial Roman demand
that Hamilcar's Sicilian army should immediately surrender its

981
01:27:10.079 --> 01:27:15.640
weapons and hand over for punishment all
Roman and Italian deserters was swiftly rejected.

982
01:27:15.640 --> 01:27:23.079
The mercenaries would leave the army with
their arms and honor intact. Yet this

983
01:27:23.159 --> 01:27:27.399
seems to have been the only concession
that the Carthaginians were able to gain,

984
01:27:27.760 --> 01:27:30.039
and as we'll find out in a
minute, it wasn't much of a concession.

985
01:27:31.119 --> 01:27:34.199
In other respects. The peace terms
made it clear that they had been

986
01:27:34.199 --> 01:27:41.399
defeated and that Rome was not negotiating
with an equal Peace was declared between Roman

987
01:27:41.479 --> 01:27:47.239
Carthage, provided that all the following
conditions were matt hey. The Carthaginians were

988
01:27:47.279 --> 01:27:53.760
to evacuate all of sicily be Neither
side was to make war on the other's

989
01:27:53.800 --> 01:27:59.119
allies, nor seek to subvert their
allegiance by allying with them directly or becoming

990
01:27:59.159 --> 01:28:03.039
involved in their internal affairs. They
were not to recruit soldiers or raise money

991
01:28:03.159 --> 01:28:09.159
for the construction of public buildings in
the territory of the other. See.

992
01:28:09.359 --> 01:28:14.359
The Carthaginians were to give up all
Roman prisoners freely, while paying a ransom

993
01:28:14.520 --> 01:28:19.079
for their own. And finally,
deep the Carthaginians were to pay an indemnity

994
01:28:19.079 --> 01:28:25.399
to the Roman states of twy two
hundred Eubuoyan talents over a twenty year period.

995
01:28:27.159 --> 01:28:31.039
Now, Roman council did not have
the authority to make a final peace

996
01:28:31.079 --> 01:28:38.960
treaty himself. The Roman people had
devoted in their centuries to ratify any treaty.

997
01:28:39.000 --> 01:28:44.720
Thus Catullus had to take these terms
back to Rome. The Roman people

998
01:28:44.800 --> 01:28:49.680
in this case felt that the terms
were too lenient The indemnity was therefore increased

999
01:28:50.039 --> 01:28:55.319
from two thousand, two hundred to
three thousand, two hundred talents, with

1000
01:28:55.680 --> 01:29:02.600
the one thousand increase payable immediately.
The only other change was a minor clause

1001
01:29:03.119 --> 01:29:11.079
requiring Carthage to evacuate all the small
islands between Sicily and Africa. The Romans

1002
01:29:11.079 --> 01:29:19.039
had clearly accomplished their war aim.
Carthage was completely expelled from Sicily. Moreover,

1003
01:29:19.720 --> 01:29:28.319
Carthaginian naval power had been broken.
Yet for the moment, Carthage had

1004
01:29:28.399 --> 01:29:32.800
lost no territory in Spain or North
Africa, and it even held on to

1005
01:29:32.880 --> 01:29:40.039
Sardinia for a time. The Romans
recognized that Carthage was different from the sam

1006
01:29:40.159 --> 01:29:45.640
Nights or any other Italian community they
had subdued. It couldn't simply annex all

1007
01:29:45.680 --> 01:29:53.560
of Carthage, not yet at least. The war also brought an administrative change

1008
01:29:53.760 --> 01:30:00.720
for Rome, its first province.
Historians are not sure exactly when the change

1009
01:30:00.760 --> 01:30:06.000
happened, but by two twenty seven
BCE, Western Sicily got its first Roman

1010
01:30:06.039 --> 01:30:14.079
governor and became the first Roman province
as we understand the term today. With

1011
01:30:14.159 --> 01:30:18.239
hindsight, it's honestly difficult to pinpoint
any point during the war, when the

1012
01:30:18.279 --> 01:30:24.279
Carthaginians came close to victory, the
most serious Roman losses were due to bad

1013
01:30:24.279 --> 01:30:29.680
weather and not to enemy action.
Perhaps in the earliest phases, if Carthage

1014
01:30:29.720 --> 01:30:32.720
had been able to prevent the Roman
expedition from crossing the Straits of Messina,

1015
01:30:33.239 --> 01:30:38.920
or had defeated Claudius's army after it
landed, then they might have dissuaded the

1016
01:30:39.000 --> 01:30:44.039
Romans from further adventures in Sicily,
or at least in the short term.

1017
01:30:44.319 --> 01:30:47.159
But that in fact would have been
to prevent the crisis from developing into a

1018
01:30:47.239 --> 01:30:50.680
war in the first place, so
that when count is winning the war.

1019
01:30:51.960 --> 01:30:57.239
Yet it was extremely difficult for squadrons
of galleys to block a stretch of water,

1020
01:30:57.560 --> 01:31:00.600
and the Punic forces in Sicily in
two sixty four were totally inadequate to

1021
01:31:00.680 --> 01:31:05.720
achieve such a quick victory over a
Roman consular army. Apart from the decision

1022
01:31:05.720 --> 01:31:10.560
to continue the struggle and send a
large army to Sicily after Rome's defeat of

1023
01:31:10.600 --> 01:31:16.720
Syracuse, the Carthaginian war effort was
basically passive. They were always reacting to

1024
01:31:16.840 --> 01:31:24.800
Roman moves, all intended to protect
their existing positions in Sicily, never expand

1025
01:31:24.840 --> 01:31:30.560
them, even when they sought to
harass the enemy by raiding the Italian coast.

1026
01:31:30.880 --> 01:31:35.000
The main objective was to draw Roman
forces away from Sicily on the island

1027
01:31:35.000 --> 01:31:41.840
itself. Their strategy followed the traditional
Carthaginian pattern of enduring an enemy onslaught and

1028
01:31:41.920 --> 01:31:46.359
trying to maintain and control over as
many strongholds as possible, waiting for the

1029
01:31:46.439 --> 01:31:51.800
enemy to weakend so that eventually the
lost ground could be regained. Carthage had

1030
01:31:51.840 --> 01:31:58.960
been involved in sporadic conflict in Sicily
for centuries before the Romans arrived, and

1031
01:31:59.560 --> 01:32:02.279
if car Which had never gained full
control of the island, neither had Carthage

1032
01:32:02.279 --> 01:32:08.600
ever been completely expelled. The Romans
were not like Peris, though, who

1033
01:32:08.600 --> 01:32:12.920
would abandon his offensive when he failed
to gain widespread support from the Greek communities

1034
01:32:12.960 --> 01:32:18.399
of Sicily. Nor was their power
as precarious as that of all the tyrants

1035
01:32:18.399 --> 01:32:26.199
of Syracuse over the years. Roman
persistence was at least the equal of Carthages,

1036
01:32:27.039 --> 01:32:31.199
but it was married to an extremely
aggressive mode of war making, applying

1037
01:32:31.439 --> 01:32:38.920
continuous pressure on an enemy in an
effort to force capitulation. Throughout the conflict,

1038
01:32:39.199 --> 01:32:45.439
they consistently assumed the offensive methodically expanding
their territory which they controlled in Sicily,

1039
01:32:45.840 --> 01:32:49.479
continuing to do so even when their
armies morale reached a low EBB after

1040
01:32:49.520 --> 01:32:56.079
the defeat of Rigolus. More importantly, they were willing to escalate the conflict

1041
01:32:56.399 --> 01:33:00.760
in an effort to defeat the enemy
invading africast of all, deciding to create

1042
01:33:00.840 --> 01:33:05.239
a fleet and pursue the war at
sea. In spite of their colossal losses.

1043
01:33:06.760 --> 01:33:12.960
Rome's huge reserves of manpower made it
possible to absorb appalling losses, but

1044
01:33:13.439 --> 01:33:17.119
this in and of itself doesn't explain
the willingness with which the population continued to

1045
01:33:17.119 --> 01:33:21.880
be ready to serve in the war. Another change in Roman behavior during the

1046
01:33:21.880 --> 01:33:28.039
war was the election of consuls based
on ability and experience rather than pure political

1047
01:33:28.039 --> 01:33:32.960
connections. After Durpana in two forty
nine BCE, there was a market change

1048
01:33:32.960 --> 01:33:38.439
and who was elected. In fact, after Dripana, the Romans appointed a

1049
01:33:38.439 --> 01:33:43.079
military dictator to control the operations in
Sicily for a period, the only time

1050
01:33:43.119 --> 01:33:47.000
in the war that that happened.
Still, Rome continued its practice of appointing

1051
01:33:47.000 --> 01:33:51.520
two consuls by and large, and
they still rotated command went in the field

1052
01:33:51.520 --> 01:33:57.399
together. The only reason The weakness
in this system was not more apparent during

1053
01:33:57.399 --> 01:34:01.800
the First Punic War was because there
weren't more pitched battles, but that is

1054
01:34:01.880 --> 01:34:09.720
soon to change. True. Carthaginian
commanders may have been more quote unquote professional

1055
01:34:09.880 --> 01:34:14.199
than the Roman counterparts, and certainly
remained in their posts for much longer periods,

1056
01:34:14.800 --> 01:34:18.600
but few would have had much experience
of commanding such large forces as frequently

1057
01:34:18.600 --> 01:34:25.119
employed during the war. This was
totally true of the admirals appointed to the

1058
01:34:25.119 --> 01:34:30.880
control of the operations of what were
unprecedentedly large fleets, which were formed on

1059
01:34:30.880 --> 01:34:35.439
several occasions. Their inexperience of command
at this level added to the already major

1060
01:34:35.479 --> 01:34:42.840
practical difficulties in coordinating the movements of
hundreds of ORed warships, and was perhaps

1061
01:34:42.920 --> 01:34:47.199
another factor in denying the Carthaginian Navy
the advantages it ought to have derived from

1062
01:34:47.239 --> 01:34:54.840
the superior skill of its crews.
Several Punic generals were crucified in the aftermath

1063
01:34:54.880 --> 01:34:58.720
of military failures during the war,
usually it seems, by order of their

1064
01:34:58.720 --> 01:35:03.279
own immediate subordinates. Yet other defeated
leaders escaped punishment and went on to hold

1065
01:35:03.279 --> 01:35:09.720
for their commands, which suggests that
political influence as much as actual responsibility determined

1066
01:35:09.720 --> 01:35:15.359
their fate. The Romans were considerably
more lenient toward their magistrates, who presided

1067
01:35:15.359 --> 01:35:19.720
over disasters, awarding triumphs to successive
admirals who had lost most of their fleets

1068
01:35:19.800 --> 01:35:26.319
to bad weather. Only Claudius was
prosecuted on the charge of what they called

1069
01:35:26.520 --> 01:35:30.159
perdulio. In a sense, it
meant sort of like bringing the state into

1070
01:35:30.159 --> 01:35:35.159
disrepute, and that was for his
behavior at Rohana. But he even narrowly

1071
01:35:35.279 --> 01:35:42.039
escaped condemnation and was instead found guilty
of a lesser charge than fined. After

1072
01:35:42.079 --> 01:35:45.720
the war, Carthage faced another conflict
that nearly saw the complete destruction of the

1073
01:35:45.720 --> 01:35:50.800
city itself, the Mercenary War.
This was one hundred percent a self inflicted

1074
01:35:50.840 --> 01:35:57.960
wound. Normally, mercenaries were returned
to Carthage by nationality, paid and then

1075
01:35:57.960 --> 01:36:01.399
sent back to their country of origin, but this time Carthage decided that no

1076
01:36:01.399 --> 01:36:05.359
one would be paid until all the
mercenaries were present, a huge mistake.

1077
01:36:06.520 --> 01:36:12.720
Compounding this mistake, Carthage decided that
it would try to renegotiate the amounted ode

1078
01:36:12.840 --> 01:36:17.720
to the very men whould risk their
lives and served Carthage well for years yikes.

1079
01:36:20.039 --> 01:36:24.720
As a result, and after numerous
disturbances on the streets of Carthage,

1080
01:36:24.800 --> 01:36:28.399
the mercenaries were sent to the town
of Sika, were they encamped without a

1081
01:36:28.399 --> 01:36:32.479
commander and with no duties to maintain
their discipline. Understandably, the mercenaries,

1082
01:36:32.479 --> 01:36:36.520
who had fought loyally and well for
their masters and according to their contracts,

1083
01:36:36.520 --> 01:36:42.399
were reluctant to accept any payment less
than their due. They felt totally betrayed.

1084
01:36:44.079 --> 01:36:48.319
They were especially bitter towards Hamilcar,
who had made lavish promises of future

1085
01:36:48.319 --> 01:36:51.840
rewards during the operations in Sicily,
only to abandon them to the whims of

1086
01:36:51.840 --> 01:36:58.680
a government and the generals they did
not know. The Carthaginians soon realized the

1087
01:36:58.720 --> 01:37:02.560
negotiations were not succeeding, and aware
that they would have the difficulty in controlling

1088
01:37:02.560 --> 01:37:06.880
twenty thousand well equipped veteran soldiers,
agreed to pay the full amounts the men

1089
01:37:06.880 --> 01:37:12.399
were due, But it was too
late. The disfrontled mercenaries had become aware

1090
01:37:12.399 --> 01:37:15.279
of their own strength, and they
steadily increased their demands, forcing one concession

1091
01:37:15.319 --> 01:37:21.039
after another out of Carthage. Resentment
at their unfair treatment gradually turned into deep

1092
01:37:21.079 --> 01:37:27.720
hostility toward the Carthaginians. Like all
Punic armies, the veterans for Sicily were

1093
01:37:27.720 --> 01:37:31.720
a mixture of many different peoples Libyans, Gaulls, Spaniards, Ligurians, Sicilian

1094
01:37:31.760 --> 01:37:38.760
Greeks, runaway slaves, disorters from
Rome. Lacking a common language and without

1095
01:37:38.760 --> 01:37:43.800
a unifying force of a Carthaginian command
structure, the mercenaries at Sicca had fragmented

1096
01:37:43.840 --> 01:37:47.279
into groups along ethnic lines. The
Libyans were the largest of these, and

1097
01:37:47.319 --> 01:37:51.680
it was they who finally turned mutiny
into open revolt when they seized and imprisoned

1098
01:37:51.680 --> 01:37:57.199
the unfortunate Gezgo, the man the
mercenaries themselves had chosen to deal with as

1099
01:37:57.239 --> 01:38:00.640
the only Punic officer that they trusted. It was the presence of this Libyan

1100
01:38:00.680 --> 01:38:04.840
element within the army which was to
make the rebellions so serious, because they

1101
01:38:04.880 --> 01:38:10.920
were able to swiftly rally most of
the countrymen to their cause. Carthaginian rule

1102
01:38:11.039 --> 01:38:15.000
had always been harsh and unpopular for
the Libyan peasantry, but during the war

1103
01:38:15.039 --> 01:38:19.479
with Rome, the burdens of taxation
and conscription had grown far worse. With

1104
01:38:19.600 --> 01:38:25.279
very few exceptions, the Libyan communities
declared for the rebels and swelled the size

1105
01:38:25.279 --> 01:38:29.479
of their forces. They were joined
by many of the Numidian princes, whom

1106
01:38:29.479 --> 01:38:32.640
the Carthaginians had been fighting to control
over the last decade, and who now

1107
01:38:32.680 --> 01:38:38.920
saw an opportunity for revenge. Soon, an army many times the size of

1108
01:38:38.960 --> 01:38:44.039
the one Regulus had led began a
blockade of Carthage. The main rebel leaders

1109
01:38:44.239 --> 01:38:48.279
were Mathos, a Libyan, and
Spendius, an escaped Campanian slave who feared

1110
01:38:48.319 --> 01:38:54.560
being returned to his former master for
execution. These were supported by a gall

1111
01:38:54.840 --> 01:38:59.880
A torriatas, a chieftain of remarkably
unreliable band of warriors in the war,

1112
01:39:00.079 --> 01:39:03.039
or, if we were being fair, some of his followers had actually deserted

1113
01:39:03.039 --> 01:39:06.960
to the Romans during the war and
later went on to betray them as well.

1114
01:39:09.239 --> 01:39:13.479
Though veteran soldiers, Spendius had an
especially distinguished record during the war with

1115
01:39:13.560 --> 01:39:16.760
Rome. None of these men had
experience of high command, and the movement

1116
01:39:16.800 --> 01:39:21.520
of the rebel armies were clumsy and
poorly coordinated. This is one of the

1117
01:39:21.520 --> 01:39:26.520
few advantages that the Carthaginians enjoyed in
the conflict. It was always difficult for

1118
01:39:26.560 --> 01:39:30.199
them to raise large armies quickly,
but the situation worsened when their own mercenaries

1119
01:39:30.199 --> 01:39:34.800
turned against them, in addition to
the rebellion in Libya. This denied them

1120
01:39:34.840 --> 01:39:40.399
access to revenue and resources of manpower
in which they could normally rely. The

1121
01:39:40.439 --> 01:39:45.279
forces which were able to raise,
composed of some still loyal mercenaries who felt

1122
01:39:45.399 --> 01:39:50.680
no particular bond with unfamiliar Sicilian veterans
and newly raised citizen soldiers, were heavily

1123
01:39:51.000 --> 01:39:57.520
outnumbered. Further problems were caused by
a divided command, similar to the appointment

1124
01:39:57.600 --> 01:40:00.399
of three generals to lead the operations
back in the Punic War in two fifty

1125
01:40:00.439 --> 01:40:04.880
six to fifty five. Hamilcar,
Barka, and Hanno, who was better

1126
01:40:05.000 --> 01:40:09.800
organizer than commander, didn't get along
with each other, and the operations of

1127
01:40:09.840 --> 01:40:14.119
their armies were hindered by the sort
of disputes which were normally actually more typical

1128
01:40:14.359 --> 01:40:17.960
of the Romans. Hannah was later
forced to resign by a vote of the

1129
01:40:18.039 --> 01:40:24.720
army or probably just the senior officers, and replaced by a more amenable Hannibal,

1130
01:40:25.079 --> 01:40:29.760
son of Hamilcar. It is in
these campaigns, far more than in

1131
01:40:29.760 --> 01:40:32.359
the war in Sicily, that we
see evidence of Hamilcar's skill as a general.

1132
01:40:32.720 --> 01:40:39.399
Consistently out maneuvering the larger rebel forces. He combined force with diplomacy.

1133
01:40:40.079 --> 01:40:44.079
For instance, when Navaras, a
Numidian prince, offered to defect with his

1134
01:40:44.119 --> 01:40:49.399
followers, he was rewarded with a
marriage to Hamilcar's daughter. Both sides mide

1135
01:40:49.439 --> 01:40:56.880
extensive and ever escalating use of horror
and atrocity, Hamilcar ordering captured mercenaries to

1136
01:40:56.920 --> 01:41:01.840
be trampled to death by his elephants. Eventually, the two commanders, Mathos

1137
01:41:01.840 --> 01:41:08.760
and Spendius were both captured and crucified. Well, the unfortunate Gezgo and the

1138
01:41:08.800 --> 01:41:12.399
other hostages were dismembered and tossed into
a ditch where they bled to death.

1139
01:41:13.399 --> 01:41:16.279
Eventually, by two thirty seven,
the rebel armies had finally been defeated and

1140
01:41:16.319 --> 01:41:23.000
the Libyan community surrendered and the mercenary
revolt collapsed. Yet in the end,

1141
01:41:23.079 --> 01:41:28.720
the message is clear, guys,
just pay your mercenaries now. I mentioned

1142
01:41:28.760 --> 01:41:32.479
that Carthage would hold on to Sardinia, but only for a time. In

1143
01:41:32.520 --> 01:41:38.319
two forty Punic officers and their soldiers
on the island mutinied. They called to

1144
01:41:38.399 --> 01:41:42.640
Rome for aid, promising them land
in Sardinia if they allied against Carthage.

1145
01:41:43.279 --> 01:41:46.239
Someone. Surprisingly, Rome said no, it would abide by the treaty,

1146
01:41:47.439 --> 01:41:51.520
but by two thirty seven, when
the same thing happened again, the Romans

1147
01:41:51.560 --> 01:41:57.560
lost their scruples and sent a force
to take the island. Carthage objected,

1148
01:41:57.800 --> 01:42:00.720
but it was in no position to
do anything about it, so Rome got

1149
01:42:00.760 --> 01:42:06.560
another province that being said I should
mention. Sardinia proved a tough nut to

1150
01:42:06.600 --> 01:42:12.399
crack, and Rome had to fight
until two thirty one to subdue the resistance

1151
01:42:12.439 --> 01:42:16.960
there. Sicily and Sardinia were lost, and in the aftermath of the Mercenary

1152
01:42:17.000 --> 01:42:25.000
Rebellion, Africa was too unstable for
further expansion to be contemplated, so Carthage

1153
01:42:25.039 --> 01:42:30.159
turned its attention increasingly to Spain.
In two thirty eight to thirty seven,

1154
01:42:30.399 --> 01:42:33.960
Hamilcar Barka was sent at the head
of an army to take charge of the

1155
01:42:34.000 --> 01:42:39.720
province there, and the choice of
such an experienced and aggressive commander for a

1156
01:42:39.760 --> 01:42:43.439
region which does not appear to have
faced a major threat can only mean that

1157
01:42:43.479 --> 01:42:50.079
the objective was expand For the next
nine years, Hamilcar fought almost continuously securing

1158
01:42:50.119 --> 01:42:56.199
Punic control of the coastal stirrup of
southern Spain and pushing up the Valley of

1159
01:42:56.239 --> 01:43:00.560
Guadalavie until he was killed in an
ambush by a Celtic Tiberian tribe known as

1160
01:43:00.600 --> 01:43:09.439
the Orentai in two twenty nine.
One source actually claims that he deliberately sacrificed

1161
01:43:09.520 --> 01:43:14.920
himself to save his sons. He
was succeeded in his command by his son

1162
01:43:14.960 --> 01:43:17.840
in law and second in command at
the time, Hasdrubal, who continued the

1163
01:43:17.880 --> 01:43:24.680
program of expansion, achieving more through
diplomacy than war, even marrying a Spanish

1164
01:43:24.720 --> 01:43:30.479
princess to cement one alliance. The
succession seems to have been voted for first

1165
01:43:30.479 --> 01:43:35.279
by the army in Spain and subsequently
approved back in Carthage. This was certainly

1166
01:43:35.319 --> 01:43:42.199
the case when Hasdrubal himself was assassinated
in two twenty one, and the army

1167
01:43:42.319 --> 01:43:45.920
or at least its officers, gave
the command then to Hamilcarr's eldest son,

1168
01:43:46.680 --> 01:43:55.960
Hannibal, a decision later ratified by
the popular Assembly in Carthage. So the

1169
01:43:56.000 --> 01:44:00.680
basic story of Punic expansion in Spain
under the Barque family is pretty straightforward,

1170
01:44:00.720 --> 01:44:05.039
and it's not controversial at all,
even if our sources sometimes contradict each other.

1171
01:44:05.079 --> 01:44:12.000
On minor points. Still, many
important questions remain unanswered. It's unclear

1172
01:44:12.039 --> 01:44:15.319
how and why Hamilcar was given Spanish
command in the first place, and to

1173
01:44:15.319 --> 01:44:20.880
what extent his activities once there were
supervised. One extreme view is to see

1174
01:44:20.880 --> 01:44:26.960
this period as a triumph of a
sort of popular maybe even populist party in

1175
01:44:27.000 --> 01:44:31.520
Carthage. Hamilcar the demagogue, winning
the support of ordinary citizens or tired of

1176
01:44:31.560 --> 01:44:36.399
the incompetence displayed by the old aristocracy
during the First Punic War with Rome and

1177
01:44:36.439 --> 01:44:43.840
then subsequently in the Mercenary Rebellion.
This allowed him to secure an unlimited command

1178
01:44:43.880 --> 01:44:46.279
in Spain, with the freedom to
wage war and enrich himself for his own

1179
01:44:46.319 --> 01:44:51.920
purposes. There may be a few
indications of political change at Carthage, since

1180
01:44:51.960 --> 01:44:57.479
the Council of one oh four seems
far less important during this period, and

1181
01:44:57.520 --> 01:45:01.600
the importance of two annually elected Sioux
fights may have increased. However, it

1182
01:45:01.720 --> 01:45:06.359
must always be remembered that any evidence
that we have for this constitution and internal

1183
01:45:06.399 --> 01:45:13.279
politics of Carthage is exceptionally poor and
sometimes non existed completely. Most of our

1184
01:45:13.319 --> 01:45:17.600
sources do portray the Barkeet family as
facing strong opposition from rivals who feared their

1185
01:45:17.600 --> 01:45:21.520
growing power and from those who objected
to their policies, but it's unclear how

1186
01:45:21.560 --> 01:45:27.399
strong and consistent such opposition was.
In one tradition, Hamilcar used the booty

1187
01:45:27.399 --> 01:45:30.560
from his Spanish campaigns both to secure
the loyalty of his soldiers and to buy

1188
01:45:30.640 --> 01:45:35.640
himself political support at home. It
is equally possible to interpret the same evidence

1189
01:45:35.680 --> 01:45:40.640
as showing Hamilcar as nothing more than
a servant of the state, appointed with

1190
01:45:40.680 --> 01:45:44.800
the general approval of the elite at
Carthage, and frankly, my guess is

1191
01:45:44.840 --> 01:45:49.439
the truth is somewhere in between.
The Second Punic War really begins in Spain,

1192
01:45:50.199 --> 01:45:54.159
making the activity of the Barquet family
there in the years after the first

1193
01:45:54.199 --> 01:45:59.000
war especially important, But our sources
awareness of this only makes it more difficult

1194
01:45:59.000 --> 01:46:03.520
to understand sort of regime they created, How significant was it and why did

1195
01:46:03.520 --> 01:46:09.479
it matter that command was always exclusively
held by members of one family. It's

1196
01:46:09.520 --> 01:46:14.560
not entirely clear whether the Carthaginians just
ratified the army's choice of leader because they

1197
01:46:14.560 --> 01:46:17.239
felt they were powerless to change this, or because that was always the plan.

1198
01:46:18.159 --> 01:46:21.279
There may have been practical benefits from
this, since it was far easier

1199
01:46:21.279 --> 01:46:26.640
for the Spanish tribes and leaders to
focus their loyalty on an individual general and

1200
01:46:26.720 --> 01:46:30.359
on his family rather than a distant
Carthage a concept, and these are emotions

1201
01:46:30.399 --> 01:46:34.920
which the Romans would later exploit.
The activities of the bar Kids in Spain

1202
01:46:35.399 --> 01:46:40.560
may simply be seen as an effective
way for the Carthaginian state to expand its

1203
01:46:40.640 --> 01:46:45.319
territory, there allowing them more easily
to exploit the resources of both mineral wealth

1204
01:46:45.479 --> 01:46:50.039
and military manpower. For other historians, these years saw the creation of what

1205
01:46:50.239 --> 01:46:56.920
was in effect a semi independent principality
ruled by the bark And family for their

1206
01:46:56.960 --> 01:47:01.039
own ends. Our evidence, however, isterly inadequate to resolve this debate.

1207
01:47:02.159 --> 01:47:08.119
The same series of coins produced in
Punic Spain in this period have been interpreted

1208
01:47:08.159 --> 01:47:15.399
as showing hamilcar and Hasdrubal depicted as
Hellenistic kings even with divine associations. Hasdrubald,

1209
01:47:15.760 --> 01:47:19.319
definitely, we know, founded a
major city called New Carthage, which

1210
01:47:19.359 --> 01:47:24.520
is modern Cartagena. But whether this
should be seen as a seat of provincial

1211
01:47:24.600 --> 01:47:28.520
government or a capital of a semi
independent kingdom depends on the view that you

1212
01:47:28.560 --> 01:47:34.000
take of the Barkheads themselves. The
Romans certainly kept a weary eye on the

1213
01:47:34.039 --> 01:47:40.039
Carthaginian activity in Spain, although as
of yet there was no direct involvement from

1214
01:47:40.119 --> 01:47:44.600
Rome in the area. In two
thirty one, a delegation of some owners

1215
01:47:44.840 --> 01:47:48.399
went to Hamilcar to ask him about
the motives for his aggressive campaigns, and

1216
01:47:48.520 --> 01:47:53.319
was told that these were necessary if
Carthage was to pay that massive indemnity that

1217
01:47:53.359 --> 01:47:57.840
it owed to Rome. Later,
sometime around two twenty six, another set

1218
01:47:57.880 --> 01:48:00.760
of envoys went to Hasdrbal who formerly
agreed not to expand me on the River

1219
01:48:00.800 --> 01:48:04.239
Ebro. And this is of course
going to be the spark later that's going

1220
01:48:04.279 --> 01:48:10.000
to start off the Second Punic War. As possible that Rome's interest in Spain

1221
01:48:10.039 --> 01:48:15.239
was encouraged by her longtime ally Messia. That's modern day man say in Spain

1222
01:48:15.479 --> 01:48:18.600
or in France. Excuse me,
but the concern over growing Carthaginian power may

1223
01:48:18.640 --> 01:48:24.399
well have been genuine. As yet, Rome had no direct connection at all,

1224
01:48:24.840 --> 01:48:29.359
to be clear, with the Spanish
peninsula. Latin traders were certainly active

1225
01:48:29.399 --> 01:48:33.399
there, but they didn't have any
government influence. In fact, between two

1226
01:48:33.520 --> 01:48:38.880
forty one and two eighteen, Rome
found itself mostly occupied around the Po River.

1227
01:48:39.000 --> 01:48:43.439
In modern northern Italy. This is
the region around Milan, but referred

1228
01:48:43.439 --> 01:48:47.159
to in our Roman sources as Cisalpine
Goal. It took the Romans until two

1229
01:48:47.239 --> 01:48:53.159
eighteen to finally subdue the people there
and continue what had turned into a lengthy

1230
01:48:53.199 --> 01:48:58.479
process of colonization. Spain and northern
Italy would see much activity when the war

1231
01:48:58.560 --> 01:49:02.000
was finally renewed between Rome and Carthage. In addition, many of the individuals

1232
01:49:02.000 --> 01:49:06.000
on both sides were prominent in the
campaigns in the two twenties and would later

1233
01:49:06.039 --> 01:49:11.760
play a significant role in the war
with Hannibal. For a generation of Roman

1234
01:49:11.800 --> 01:49:15.119
commanders who grew up between the wars
with Carthage the First and Second Punic War,

1235
01:49:15.880 --> 01:49:20.159
their military experience was in Sardinia,
Illyria and as I mentioned, most

1236
01:49:20.199 --> 01:49:26.119
of all Ssalpine Gaul, and they
got accustomed to warfare against armies which were

1237
01:49:26.199 --> 01:49:32.680
tactically unsophisticated. Though the individual soldiers
were skilled and very brave, it was

1238
01:49:32.800 --> 01:49:41.960
though poor preparation for confronting a general
as skilled as Hannibal at the head of

1239
01:49:41.960 --> 01:49:50.199
a well trained army. Next time
discussed the beginnings of the Second Punic War,