War and Game

The Romans landed in Africa, seized the coastal city of Aspis, and ravaged the neighboring area. Regulus advanced into the Carthaginian hinterland (apparently he intended to cut Carthage off from its allies and revenues and force it to come to terms). When he was confronted by a much larger Carthaginian army, well supplied with cavalry and elephants, he feigned retreat, lured the Carthaginian army after him into rugged terrain (where their cavalry could not operate), and smashed them. Regulus then went into winter quarters at Tunis, from which he ravaged Carthaginian territory and persuaded Carthage's Numidian allies (or subjects) to join him in ravaging Carthaginian territory. Regulus had every reason to be confident. The Romans outside Africa had won all but two (minor) engagements against the Carthaginians, he himself had defeated them in Africa, and he expected to defeat them again in the spring. Consequently, when he offered them terms, he named terms so harsh that he seemed to be goading them to further resistance rather than trying to settle the war.

During the winter, therefore, the Carthaginians sought, and found, help in a mercenary general, Xanthippus of Sparta; Xanthippus retrained and reorganized their army to fight the legion, and in the spring he met Regulus in battle. Xanthippus used 100 elephants to break the Roman formation and trample the soldiers while his cavalry encircled the Roman army and forced Regulus to surrender. The Carthaginian army killed or captured all but 2,000 Romans.

The defeat was severe but need not have been decisive; the Romans still held Aspis and their fleet of 350 ships defeated a Carthaginian fleet off Aspis and captured, or destroyed, over a hundred ships, but chance, and the Roman unfamiliarity with the sea, wrecked their plans. As their fleet was returning to Rome by way of the Messana strait, an enormous storm struck, hurled almost 300 of their ships on the rocks, strewed wreckage for fifty miles, and drowned the crews, perhaps as many as 100,000 freeborn Italians, a large number of whom were Roman citizens.

The Romans raised taxes and in three months built and manned 200 new quinqueremes, but in the next ten years the Romans suffered one disaster after another. In 253 they lost another 150 ships in a storm off Africa, and they abandoned the campaign there. In 249 the consul Claudius ignored bad weather and the consequent ill omen that the sacred chickens wouldn't eat ("let them drink, then," he said, and had them thrown overboard), and he lost 100 ships and 20,000 men in an attack on the Carthaginian fleet at Drepana.

Nonetheless, Roman tenacity, leadership, and their enormous resources drove the Carthaginian forces in Sicily to the westernmost reaches of the island where the Romans overcame storms, poor judgement, counterattacks, hunger, and the loss of naval support to cling to the siege of the great Carthaginian stronghold in the west, Lilybaeum. The Romans had suffered huge losses of men (the census of 247 B.C. shows a drop of 50,000 citizens) and materiel—a total of 1,500 warships and transports—and their treasury was depleted. The Carthaginians had suffered even more. They had lost their revenues from Africa and from their trading empire, they were about out of money to hire mercenaries (rumor had it that they had murdered Xanthippus because they could not afford to pay him), and they could no longer afford to man their fleet.

The Carthaginians sent a commission to Rome to discuss peace terms and a prisoner exchange. When the Romans rejected both, the Carthaginians attempted to put pressure on the Romans in Sicily. In 247 they send a new commander, Hamilcar Barca, to command the forces in Sicily. He was convinced that he could use his limited resources to force the Romans to agree to terms. Hamilcar Barca was a brilliant tactician, and the Romans did feel the pressure, but they responded with new determination. The Senate voted to lend money as individuals to the state to build a new fleet of 200 modern warships.

In 242 the consul Lutatius Catulus sailed the fleet to Drepana, there to confront the Carthaginians, but the Carthaginians did not have the money to pay their crews except in an emergency, and the Carthaginian fleet lay unmanned at home. They needed most of 242 to find the crews, and in March of 241 the fleet sailed—manned by raw crews—with the intention of picking up Hamilcar and his men to use as marines, but Catulus intercepted them at the Aegates Islands. The Romans sank fifty ships and captured seventy. The Roman victory totally isolated the Carthaginians in Sicily, and the Carthaginians were compelled to accept Roman terms—to evacuate Sicily, to return all prisoners, to pay an indemnity of 2,200 talents over ten years, and to make an immediate payment of 1,100 talents; each side was to hold its possessions without interference from the other.

The First Punic War was over.