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The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

Defeat of the Roman Fleet before Drepana
Annililation of the Roman Transport Fleet

But the new consul Publius Claudius considered the task of maintaining
the investment of Lilybaeum too trifling: he preferred to change once
more the plan of operations, and with his numerous newly-manned
vessels suddenly to surprise the Carthaginian fleet which was waiting
in the neighbouring harbour of Drepana. With the whole blockading
squadron, which had taken on board volunteers from the legions, he
started about midnight, and sailing in good order with his right wing
by the shore, and his left in the open sea, he safely reached the
harbour of Drepana at sunrise. Here the Phoenician admiral Atarbas
was in command. Although surprised, he did not lose his presence of
mind or allow himself to be shut up in the harbour, but as the Roman
ships entered the harbour, which opens to the south in the form of
a sickle, on the one side, he withdrew his vessels from it by the
opposite side which was still free, and stationed them in line on the
outside. No other course remained to the Roman admiral but to recall
as speedily as possible the foremost vessels from the harbour, and to
make his arrangements for battle in like manner in front of it; but in
consequence of this retrograde movement he lost the free choice of his
position, and was obliged to accept battle in a line, which on the one
hand was outflanked by that of the enemy to the extent of five ships
--for there was not time fully to deploy the vessels as they issued
from the harbour--and on the other hand was crowded so close on the
shore that his vessels could neither retreat, nor sail behind the
line so as to come to each other's aid. Not only was the battle lost
before it began, but the Roman fleet was so completely ensnared that
it fell almost wholly into the hands of the enemy. The consul indeed
escaped, for he was the first who fled; but 93 Roman vessels, more
than three-fourths of the blockading fleet, with the flower of the
Roman legions on board, fell into the hands of the Phoenicians. It
was the first and only great naval victory which the Carthaginians
gained over the Romans. Lilybaeum was practically relieved on the
side towards the sea, for though the remains of the Roman fleet
returned to their former position, they were now much too weak
seriously to blockade a harbour which had never been wholly closed,
and they could only protect themselves from the attack of the
Carthaginian ships with the assistance of the land army. That single
imprudent act of an inexperienced and criminally thoughtless officer
had thrown away all that had been with so much difficulty attained
by the long and galling warfare around the fortress; and those war-
vessels of the Romans which his presumption had not forfeited were
shortly afterwards destroyed by the folly of his colleague.

The second consul, Lucius Junius Pullus, who had received the charge
of lading at Syracuse the supplies destined for the army at Lilybaeum,
and of convoying the transports along the south coast of the island
with a second Roman fleet of 120 war-vessels, instead of keeping his
ships together, committed the error of allowing the first convoy
to depart alone and of only following with the second. When the
Carthaginian vice-admiral, Carthalo, who with a hundred select ships
blockaded the Roman fleet in the port of Lilybaeum, received the
intelligence, he proceeded to the south coast of the island, cut off
the two Roman squadrons from each other by interposing between them,
and compelled them to take shelter in two harbours of refuge on the
inhospitable shores of Gela and Camarina. The attacks of the
Carthaginians were indeed bravely repulsed by the Romans with the help
of the shore batteries, which had for some time been erected there
as everywhere along the coast; but, as the Romans could not hope to
effect a junction and continue their voyage, Carthalo could leave
the elements to finish his work. The next great storm, accordingly,
completely annihilated the two Roman fleets in their wretched
roadsteads, while the Phoenician admiral easily weathered it on
the open sea with his unencumbered and well-managed ships.
The Romans, however, succeeded in saving the greater part
of the crews and cargoes (505).

Perplexity of the Romans

The Roman senate was in perplexity. The war had now reached its
sixteenth year; and they seemed to be farther from their object in
the sixteenth than in the first. In this war four large fleets had
perished, three of them with Roman armies on board; a fourth select
land army had been destroyed by the enemy in Libya; to say nothing of
the numerous losses which had been occasioned by the minor naval
engagements, and by the battles, and still more by the outpost
warfare and the diseases, of Sicily.

What a multitude of human lives the war swept away may be seen from
the fact, that the burgess-roll merely from 502 to 507 decreased by
about 40,000, a sixth part of the entire number; and this does not
include the losses of the allies, who bore the whole brunt of the war
by sea, and, in addition, at least an equal proportion with the Romans
of the warfare by land. Of the financial loss it is not possible to
form any conception; but both the direct damage sustained in ships and
-materiel-, and the indirect injury through the paralyzing of trade,
must have been enormous. An evil still greater than this was the
exhaustion of all the methods by which they had sought to terminate
the war. They had tried a landing in Africa with their forces fresh
and in the full career of victory, and had totally failed. They had
undertaken to storm Sicily town by town; the lesser places had fallen,
but the two mighty naval strongholds of Lilybaeum and Drepana stood
more invincible than ever. What were they to do? In fact, there was
to some extent reason for despondency. The fathers of the city became
faint-hearted; they allowed matters simply to take their course,
knowing well that a war protracted without object or end was more
pernicious for Italy than the straining of the last man and the last
penny, but without that courage and confidence in the nation and in
fortune, which could demand new sacrifices in addition to those that
had already been lavished in vain. They dismissed the fleet; at the
most they encouraged privateering, and with that view placed the war-
vessels of the state at the disposal of captains who were ready to
undertake a piratical warfare on their own account. The war by land
was continued nominally, because they could not do otherwise; but
they were content with observing the Sicilian fortresses and barely
maintaining what they possessed,--measures which, in the absence
of a fleet, required a very numerous army and extremely
costly preparations.

Now, if ever, the time had come when Carthage was in a position to
humble her mighty antagonist. She, too, of course must have felt
some exhaustion of resources; but, in the circumstances, the
Phoenician finances could not possibly be so disorganized as to
prevent the Carthaginians from continuing the war--which cost them
little beyond money--offensively and with energy. The Carthaginian
government, however, was not energetic, but on the contrary weak and
indolent, unless impelled to action by an easy and sure gain or by
extreme necessity. Glad to be rid of the Roman fleet, they foolishly
allowed their own also to fall into decay, and began after the example
of the enemy to confine their operations by land and sea to the petty
warfare in and around Sicily.

Petty War in Sicily
Hamilcar Barcas

Thus there ensued six years of uneventful warfare (506-511), the most
inglorious in the history of this century for Rome, and inglorious
also for the Carthaginian people. One man, however, among the latter
thought and acted differently from his nation. Hamilcar, named Barak
or Barcas (i. e. lightning), a young officer of much promise, took
over the supreme command in Sicily in the year 507. His army, like
every Carthaginian one, was defective in a trustworthy and experienced
infantry; and the government, although it was perhaps in a position to
create such an infantry and at any rate was bound to make the attempt,
contented itself with passively looking on at its defeats or at most
with nailing the defeated generals to the cross. Hamilcar resolved to
take the matter into his own hands. He knew well that his mercenaries
were as indifferent to Carthage as to Rome, and that he had to expect
from his government not Phoenician or Libyan conscripts, but at the
best a permission to save his country with his troops in his own way,
provided it cost nothing. But he knew himself also, and he knew men.
His mercenaries cared nothing for Carthage; but a true general is able
to substitute his own person for his country in the affections of his
soldiers; and such an one was this young commander. After he had
accustomed his men to face the legionaries in the warfare of outposts
before Drepana and Lilybaeum, he established himself with his force on
Mount Ercte (Monte Pellegrino near Palermo), which commands like a
fortress the neighbouring country; and making them settle there with
their wives and children, levied contributions from the plains, while
Phoenician privateers plundered the Italian coast as far as Cumae. He
thus provided his people with copious supplies without asking money
from the Carthaginians, and, keeping up the communication with Drepana
by sea, he threatened to surprise the important town of Panormus in
his immediate vicinity. Not only were the Romans unable to expel
him from his stronghold, but after the struggle had lasted awhile at
Ercte, Hamilcar formed for himself another similar position at Eryx.
This mountain, which bore half-way up the town of the same name and
on its summit the temple of Aphrodite, had been hitherto in the hands
of the Romans, who made it a basis for annoying Drepana. Hamilcar
deprived them of the town and besieged the temple, while the Romans
in turn blockaded him from the plain. The Celtic deserters from the
Carthaginian army who were stationed by the Romans at the forlorn post
of the temple--a reckless pack of marauders, who in the course of this
siege plundered the temple and perpetrated every sort of outrage
--defended the summit of the rock with desperate courage; but Hamilcar
did not allow himself to be again dislodged from the town, and kept
his communications constantly open by sea with the fleet and the
garrison of Drepana. The war in Sicily seemed to be assuming a turn
more and more unfavourable for the Romans. The Roman state was losing
in that warfare its money and its soldiers, and the Roman generals
their repute; it was already clear that no Roman general was a
match for Hamilcar, and the time might be calculated when even the
Carthaginian mercenary would be able boldly to measure himself
against the legionary. The privateers of Hamilcar appeared with ever-
increasing audacity on the Italian coast: already a praetor had been
obliged to take the field against a band of Carthaginian rovers which
had landed there. A few years more, and Hamilcar might with his fleet
have accomplished from Sicily what his son subsequently undertook by
the land route from Spain.

A Fleet Built by the Romans
Victory of Catulus at the Island Aegusa

The Roman senate, however, persevered in its inaction;
the desponding party for once had the majority there. At length a
number of sagacious and high-spirited men determined to save the state
even without the interposition of the government, and to put an end to
the ruinous Sicilian war. Successful corsair expeditions, if they had
not raised the courage of the nation, had aroused energy and hope in
a portion of the people; they had already joined together to form
a squadron, burnt down Hippo on the African coast, and sustained a
successful naval conflict with the Carthaginians off Panormus. By a
private subscription--such as had been resorted to in Athens also,
but not on so magnificent a scale--the wealthy and patriotic Romans
equipped a war fleet, the nucleus of which was supplied by the ships
built for privateering and the practised crews which they contained,
and which altogether was far more carefully fitted out than had
hitherto been the case in the shipbuilding of the state. This fact
--that a number of citizens in the twenty-third year of a severe war
voluntarily presented to the state two hundred ships of the line,
manned by 60,000 sailors--stands perhaps unparalleled in the annals of
history. The consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, to whom fell the honour
of conducting this fleet to the Sicilian seas, met there with almost
no opposition: the two or three Carthaginian vessels, with which
Hamilcar had made his corsair expeditions, disappeared before the
superior force, and almost without resistance the Romans occupied
the harbours of Lilybaeum and Drepana, the siege of which was now
undertaken with energy by water and by land. Carthage was completely
taken by surprise; even the two fortresses, weakly provisioned, were
in great danger. A fleet was equipped at home; but with all the haste
which they displayed, the year came to an end without any appearance
of Carthaginian sails in the Sicilian waters; and when at length, in
the spring of 513, the hurriedly-prepared vessels appeared in the
offing of Drepana, they deserved the name of a fleet of transports
rather than that of a war fleet ready for action. The Phoenicians had
hoped to land undisturbed, to disembark their stores, and to be able
to take on board the troops requisite for a naval battle; but the
Roman vessels intercepted them, and forced them, when about to sail
from the island of Hiera (now Maritima) for Drepana, to accept battle
near the little island of Aegusa (Favignana) (10 March, 513). The
issue was not for a moment doubtful; the Roman fleet, well built and
manned, and admirably handled by the able praetor Publius Valerius
Falto (for a wound received before Drepana still confined the consul
Catulus to his bed), defeated at the first blow the heavily laden and
poorly and inadequately manned vessels of the enemy; fifty were sunk,
and with seventy prizes the victors sailed into the port of Lilybaeum.
The last great effort of the Roman patriots had borne fruit; it
brought victory, and with victory peace.

Conclusion of Peace

The Carthaginians first crucified the unfortunate admiral--a step
which did not alter the position of affairs--and then dispatched
to the Sicilian general unlimited authority to conclude a peace.
Hamilcar, who saw his heroic labours of seven years undone by the
fault of others, magnanimously submitted to what was inevitable
without on that account sacrificing either his military honour, or
his nation, or his own designs. Sicily indeed could not be retained,
seeing that the Romans had now command of the sea; and it was not
to be expected that the Carthaginian government, which had vainly
endeavoured to fill its empty treasury by a state-loan in Egypt,
would make even any further attempt to vanquish the Roman fleet He
therefore surrendered Sicily. The independence and integrity of the
Carthaginian state and territory, on the other hand, were expressly
recognized in the usual form; Rome binding herself not to enter into
a separate alliance with the confederates of Carthage, and Carthage
engaging not to enter into separate alliance with the confederates
of Rome,--that is, with their respective subject and dependent
communities; neither was to commence war, or exercise rights of
sovereignty, or undertake recruiting within the other's dominions.(8)
The secondary stipulations included, of course, the gratuitous return
of the Roman prisoners of war and the payment of a war contribution;
but the demand of Catulus that Hamilcar should deliver up his arms and
the Roman deserters was resolutely refused by the Carthaginian, and
with success. Catulus desisted from his second request, and allowed
the Phoenicians a free departure from Sicily for the moderate ransom
of 18 -denarii- (12 shillings) per man.

If the continuance of the war appeared to the Carthaginians
undesirable, they had reason to be satisfied with these terms. It may
be that the natural wish to bring to Rome peace as well as triumph,
the recollection of Regulus and of the many vicissitudes of the war,
the consideration that such a patriotic effort as had at last decided
the victory could neither be enjoined nor repeated, perhaps even the
personal character of Hamilcar, concurred in influencing the Roman
general to yield so much as he did. It is certain that there was
dissatisfaction with the proposals of peace at Rome, and the assembly
of the people, doubtless under the influence of the patriots who had
accomplished the equipment of the last fleet, at first refused to
ratify it. We do not know with what view this was done, and therefore
we are unable to decide whether the opponents of the proposed peace in
reality rejected it merely for the purpose of exacting some further
concessions from the enemy, or whether, remembering that Regulus had
summoned Carthage to surrender her political independence, they were
resolved to continue the war till they had gained that end--so that it
was no longer a question of peace, but a question of conquest. If the
refusal took place with the former view, it was presumably mistaken;
compared with the gain of Sicily every other concession was of little
moment, and looking to the determination and the inventive genius of
Hamilcar, it was very rash to stake the securing of the principal
gain on the attainment of secondary objects. If on the other hand
the party opposed to the peace regarded the complete political
annihilation of Carthage as the only end of the struggle that would
satisfy the Roman community, it showed political tact and anticipation
of coming events; but whether the resources of Rome would have
sufficed to renew the expedition of Regulus and to follow it up as far
as might be required not merely to break the courage but to breach the
walls of the mighty Phoenician city, is another question, to which
no one now can venture to give either an affirmative or a negative
answer. At last the settlement of the momentous question was
entrusted to a commission which was to decide it upon the spot in
Sicily. It confirmed the proposal in substance; only, the sum to be
paid by Carthage for the costs of the war was raised to 3200 talents
(790,000 pounds), a third of which was to be paid down at once, and
the remainder in ten annual instalments. The definitive treaty
included, in addition to the surrender of Sicily, the cession also of
the islands between Sicily and Italy, but this can only be regarded as
an alteration of detail made on revision; for it is self-evident that
Carthage, when surrendering Sicily, could hardly desire to retain the
island of Lipara which had long been occupied by the Roman fleet,
and the suspicion, that an ambiguous stipulation was intentionally
introduced into the treaty with reference to Sardinia and Corsica,
is unworthy and improbable.

Thus at length they came to terms. The unconquered general of a
vanquished nation descended from the mountains which he had defended
so long, and delivered to the new masters of the island the fortresses
which the Phoenicians had held in their uninterrupted possession for
at least four hundred years, and from whose walls all assaults of the
Hellenes had recoiled unsuccessful. The west had peace (513).

Remarks on the Roman Conduct of the War

Let us pause for a moment over the conflict, which extended the
dominion of Rome beyond the circling sea that encloses the peninsula.
It was one of the longest and most severe which the Romans ever waged;
many of the soldiers who fought in the decisive battle were unborn
when the contest began. Nevertheless, despite the incomparably noble
incidents which it now and again presented, we can scarcely name any
war which the Romans managed so wretchedly and with such vacillation,
both in a military and in a political point of view. It could hardly
be otherwise. The contest occurred amidst a transition in their
political system--the transition from an Italian policy, which no
longer sufficed, to the policy befitting a great state, which had not
yet been found. The Roman senate and the Roman military system were
excellently organized for a purely Italian policy. The wars which
such a policy provoked were purely continental wars, and always rested
on the capital situated in the middle of the peninsula as the ultimate
basis of operations, and proximately on the chain of Roman fortresses.
The problems to be solved were mainly tactical, not strategical;
marches and operations occupied but a subordinate, battles held the
first, place; fortress warfare was in its infancy; the sea and naval
war hardly crossed men's thoughts even incidentally. We can easily
understand--especially if we bear in mind that in the battles of that
period, where the naked weapon predominated, it was really the hand-
to-hand encounter that proved decisive--how a deliberative assembly
might direct such operations, and how any one who just was burgomaster
might command the troops. All this was changed in a moment. The
field of battle stretched away to an incalculable distance, to the
unknown regions of another continent, and beyond a broad expanse of
sea; every wave was a highway for the enemy; from any harbour he
might be expected to issue for his onward march. The siege of
strong places, particularly maritime fortresses, in which the first
tacticians of Greece had failed, had now for the first time to be
attempted by the Romans. A land army and the system of a civic
militia no longer sufficed. It was essential to create a fleet, and,
what was more difficult, to employ it; it was essential to find out
the true points of attack and defence, to combine and to direct
masses, to calculate expeditions extending over long periods and great
distances, and to adjust their co-operation; if these things were not
attended to, even an enemy far weaker in the tactics of the field
might easily vanquish a stronger opponent. Is there any wonder that
the reins of government in such an exigency slipped from the hands of
a deliberative assembly and of commanding burgomasters?

It was plain, that at the beginning of the war the Romans did not
know what they were undertaking; it was only during the course of the
struggle that the inadequacies of their system, one after another,
forced themselves on their notice--the want of a naval power, the
lack of fixed military leadership, the insufficiency of their
generals, the total uselessness of their admirals. In part these
evils were remedied by energy and good fortune; as was the case with
the want of a fleet. That mighty creation, however, was but a grand
makeshift, and always remained so. A Roman fleet was formed, but it
was rendered national only in name, and was always treated with the
affection of a stepmother; the naval service continued to be little
esteemed in comparison with the high honour of serving in the legions;
the naval officers were in great part Italian Greeks; the crews were
composed of subjects or even of slaves and outcasts. The Italian
farmer was at all times distrustful of the sea; and of the three
things in his life which Cato regretted one was, that he had travelled
by sea when he might have gone by land. This result arose partly out
of the nature of the case, for the vessels were oared galleys and the
service of the oar can scarcely be ennobled; but the Romans might at
least have formed separate legions of marines and taken steps towards
the rearing of a class of Roman naval officers. Taking advantage
of the impulse of the nation, they should have made it their aim
gradually to establish a naval force important not only in numbers
but in sailing power and practice, and for such a purpose they had a
valuable nucleus in the privateering that was developed during the
long war; but nothing of the sort was done by the government.
Nevertheless the Roman fleet with its unwieldy grandeur was the
noblest creation of genius in this war, and, as at its beginning, so
at its close it was the fleet that turned the scale in favour of Rome.

Far more difficult to be overcome were those deficiencies, which could
not be remedied without an alteration of the constitution. That the
senate, according to the strength of the contending parties within it,
should leap from one system of conducting the war to another, and
perpetrate errors so incredible as the evacuation of Clupea and the
repeated dismantling of the fleet; that the general of one year should
lay siege to Sicilian towns, and his successor, instead of compelling
them to surrender, should pillage the African coast or think proper to
risk a naval battle; and that at any rate the supreme command should
by law change hands every year--all these anomalies could not be done
away without stirring constitutional questions the solution of which
was more difficult than the building of a fleet, but as little could
their retention be reconciled with the requirements of such a war.
Above all, moreover, neither the senate nor the generals could at once
adapt themselves to the new mode of conducting war. The campaign of
Regulus is an instance how singularly they adhered to the idea that
superiority in tactics decides everything. There are few generals who
have had such successes thrown as it were into their lap by fortune:
in the year 498 he stood precisely where Scipio stood fifty years
later, with this difference, that he had no Hannibal and no
experienced army arrayed against him. But the senate withdrew half
the army, as soon as they had satisfied themselves of the tactical
superiority of the Romans; in blind reliance on that superiority the
general remained where he was, to be beaten in strategy, and accepted
battle when it was offered to him, to be beaten also in tactics.
This was the more remarkable, as Regulus was an able and experienced
general of his kind. The rustic method of warfare, by which Etruria
and Samnium had been won, was the very cause of the defeat in the
plain of Tunes. The principle, quite right in its own province, that
every true burgher is fit for a general, was no longer applicable;
the new system of war demanded the employment of generals who had a
military training and a military eye, and every burgomaster had not
those qualities. The arrangement was however still worse, by which
the chief command of the fleet was treated as an appanage to the chief
command of the land army, and any one who chanced to be president of
the city thought himself able to act the part not of general only, but
of admiral too. The worst disasters which Rome suffered in this war
were due not to the storms and still less to the Carthaginians, but
to the presumptuous folly of its own citizen-admirals.