Episode III.15 - The Second Punic War I: A Violent Interlude

0:00 Music. O Jupiter Ferretrius, be thou witness that I, a general, have slain a general. I, a consul, have slain a king with my own hand. Thus spoke Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consul of Rome, after slaying a king of the Gauls in hand-to-hand combat. Music.

0:49 Hello and welcome to the Western Traditions Podcast. My name is Rob Paxton, and this is the 15th episode in the Roman Empire Podcast series. In the last episode of this series, I concluded the history of the First Punic War, in which the upstart Romans, a regional power at best until that time, managed to fight their way through a 20-year conflict and found themselves recognized on the international stage at the end of it. So, in 241 BC, these Latin speakers from central Italy were now the up-and-coming power in the West, vying with ancient Carthage for control over the raw wealth of the West.

1:29 In the east, the great cities and their civilizations continued on as before. Many of them under Greek rulers, for at this time Alexander's conquests were less than a century old, and his successors warred among themselves for power and glory in the immortal lands once ruled by the likes of Gilgamesh, Sargon, Hammurabi, Ramses, and Xerxes. But peace had come in the west, and the conflict with Carthage abated for a time. For a little more than two decades, actually. In the meantime, both Rome and Carthage remained busy. Rome, as always, engaged in one war or another with their neighbors during each year.

2:12 The consuls were elected, the legions were formed, and they marched away to the frontiers to expand their dominion. And Carthage, whose interior had erupted with sedition and incursions during the war with Rome, now found itself quelling uprisings in Africa. This episode will address the violent interlude between the First and Second Punic Wars and the rise of the men who would fight to decide whose culture would achieve supremacy in the West. Now, before we dive into this fragile peace between Rome and Carthage, let me remind you to head over to the website at western-traditions.org. That's western-traditions.org.

2:52 There you can find all the episodes from every series of the podcast. You can also purchase some Western Traditions merchandise, like a t-shirt or a hat. You can directly support the podcast through the PayPal or Patreon options found at the bottom of the homepage. Patreon supporters get access to the Patreon page where I post updates and some behind-the-scenes material, as well as the occasional essay, resource, link, or personal rant. Now that I've plugged the website again, let's return to the Mediterranean in 241 BC. As Rome and Carthage retire from overseas warfare to focus on their own local issues with neighbors and to plot quietly against one another.

3:36 Music. Hemilcar Barca was not your stereotypical Carthaginian. The Romans, especially in post-war propaganda, often depicted their Semitic opponents as money-grubbing, dishonorable merchants, but they would not have been able to characterize Hamilcar that way, nor would they ever speak thus of his even more famous son, Hannibal. No, while Carthage's armies were mostly made up of foreign mercenaries, they were led by loyal men of the city.

4:16 Hamilcar was one of those chosen men. He had led his army, virtually unaided by his home city, for six years in the field against Rome, Disgusted by the failure of his political leadership, the Chofetes and the city council to support his army in Sicily and to counter the Roman threat He had refused to sign the peace treaty that concluded the war leaving it to a subordinate to do while he sailed home and retired to private life. Meanwhile, his masters made arrangements for the mercenaries to come back to Carthage, but they had no intention of doling out all those years of back pay. They removed the fighting men to a location 100 miles from the capital, and there they informed the army that Carthage was in no position to pay them their well-earned wages for years of warfare.

5:08 The enraged soldiers rebelled and marched on Tunis, the second city of Carthage, and they were only briefly deterred there by an offer of arbitration. And thus began the Libyan War, which was not handled well by the man that Carthage initially placed as general over their local forces. And now it should not be forgotten either that the army called together to defend the city and its empire was also simply another army of costly mercenaries. So Carthage's military budget increased significantly, even though the bean counters in their assembly had hoped to save money by not paying wages justly earned. And this at a time when the city was also expected to begin paying the heavy yearly indemnities to Rome, to which they had agreed in the treaty.

5:54 And since there were not enough loyal mercenary soldiers available, and we can only speculate how reluctant such forces might have been to fight for paymasters who had already publicly reneged on a contract, but native Carthaginians, completely unused to warfare, most likely had to be conscripted in order to stand a chance against the war-hardened veterans of the mutiny. To make matters worse, the entire countryside of Libya joined the cause of the mutinous mercenaries and gave them support. To the 20,000 rebel mercenaries were now added perhaps as many as 70,000 combatants from all of Carthage's subject lands. In 239 BC, the desperate city leaders reluctantly placed Hamilcar Barca in supreme command of the forces still loyal to Carthage.

6:40 In two years' time, this master of battlefield strategy completely quelled the rebellion, and Carthage was again at peace in Africa. Overseas, it was another matter altogether. The Romans honored their treaty with the Carthaginians, but in hindsight, it certainly could be argued that they honored the letter rather than the spirit of the agreement. While the Libyan war raged, Carthage's mercenary force on Sardinia also rebelled and took over the island. These rebels immediately sent envoys to the Romans, offering them control of another island possession of Carthage. Rome nobly refused to accept. The senators would not violate the treaty simply because Carthage was weakened and distracted.

7:25 As the Libyan War wound down, however, the populace of Sardinia rose up and expelled the mercenary army that had taken over the island. These mutineers, escaping, sailed to Rome and again suggested that Rome should take over Sardinia. Now, the Roman senators pondered the matter from a whole different angle. The populace having rebelled, the island of Sardinia seemed to them to be a whole new creature. This was no longer a territorial possession of Carthage. This was a new and independent power, and it was located just off the coast of Rome, at a critical strategic point which left Rome vulnerable to sea attack.

8:07 And there was no time to lose. Carthage was, at this point in 237 BC, mopping up the remnants of the insurrection in Africa and would soon be able to reach out and reclaim Sardinia. So the Roman Senate decided, on the spot, to forego being magnanimous anymore. They sent over Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus with a suitable force and assumed control of the island. This Gracchus was from another Roman family about whom we will hear much more in the coming episodes when the Punic Wars have passed. Now Carthage, enraged, prepared an expedition to retake the island. Rome considered this an act tantamount to war and immediately sent ambassadors to Carthage with their own angry terms.

8:52 They expected Carthage to stand down, to surrender the island of Sardinia formally to them, and to pay an additional 1,200 talents in indemnity, basically a bribe to keep the Romans from declaring an all-out offensive on Carthage again. Carthage accepted. She was in no shape to take Rome on head-to-head again. Not everyone on the African side of the matter, though, was willing to accept this ignominious result. Certainly not Hamilcar Barca, and certainly not his young son, Hannibal. Music.

9:38 It is not surprising, though, that Carthage had to back down. Monetarily strapped for cash, as we would say today, and morally exhausted by more than two decades of mostly disappointing military results, she was in no place to produce another full-scale war effort. She needed time to recover, to reinvigorate her trade network, and to defend herself at home. When the Treasury was as exhausted as the populace, sending an army overseas seemed like a bad idea all around. Now, Rome herself was not inactive. After the conclusion of the First Punic War, she was soon back to warring with the Cisalpine Gauls, that is, the Gauls who lived on the near side of the Alps in northern Italy.

10:20 And as the years passed, Rome began to exert her newfound strength at sea by venturing with her navy into the Adriatic. She sent a consular army against the aggressive Illyrians, who lived in the northwest of the Greek cultural sphere, essentially where Albania is now. Here, Rome assumed a protectorate over the coastline, denying the kingdom of Macedon access to the sea, and therefore winning favor with Macedonia's Greek enemies, such as Sparta and others. Rome was becoming recognized as a civilized power and a valuable potential ally in the East. So it was that the interwar years found Rome acclimating herself to a new international stage, flexing her diplomatic and her military muscles, while Carthage, feeling herself suddenly jilted from her usual place of honor among the nations, sought merely to survive, recuperate, and rise again.

11:16 At least some Carthaginians looked at it that way. Most of the ruling merchant class had its eye always on income rather than prestige or honor. There was a party in the government, though, remembered now as the Barkid party, or those that followed Hamilcar Barka, who desired to regain Carthage's public pride. Hamilcar, in the interwar years, after he overcame the Libyan rebellion and the Numidians and others, was sent away to Spain with his victorious veterans. Was this always his plan, or was it a scheme of his superiors to get rid of troublemakers at home? This move certainly served two important purposes for Carthage. Hamilcar and his blooded army could secure and expand Carthaginian control in the Iberian peninsula.

12:02 Here, through the old Phoenician and Greek port cities, they profited from trade and, very importantly, acquired silver from the various mines in the Spanish interior. Now, militarily as well as financially present, they could ensure control over this resource, this silver, which they needed primarily to manage all the payments that they now owed to Rome, under the protocols of the treaty. But also, without a doubt, Carthaginian powers that be were elated to get Hamilcar out of their hair and to remove the aggressive Libyans from their mist. Even those that had fought for the city were not entirely to be trusted. Thus, dangerous elements were removed from the homeland, and the merchant class could get back to making money.

12:47 And the occupying force sent to Spain had to be a mercenary army. For many listeners, it might occur to them that Carthage could have utilized its native population, like the Romans did, to man its army. In emergencies, some native Carthaginians appear to have been conscripted, but we're not really sure about that or to what extent this measure may have been taken. No, the merchant government of Carthage was an exploiter. The same could be said of many or most governments, perhaps, but Carthage was an extreme case. The ruling class, like a parasite, sucked its nutritious wealth from the blood of trade and commerce. It oversaw the operations of a native population which helped it to garner this wealth, and only paid from its profits when absolutely necessary for the muscle to protect it.

13:35 During times of peace, unlike Rome, Carthage maintained no standing army. They did not want to keep the lower classes trained and drilling because that would lead to a greater pride and unity among commoners and increase the power of the popular assembly, as we've already seen happen in Rome. See, the lower house of the government functioned merely as a way to placate the population with the idea that it had representation. And to keep and maintain a mercenary army during peacetime would also be very expensive. So, truly, the empire of Carthage had entered into a strange period, coming off of the First Punic War. Never had they had to field an army for so long or spend so much on it.

14:16 And now, after the suppression of internal rebellions and the acquisition of much territory in Libya, which had previously just been sort of closely associated with Carthage, there were many in the government who wanted to focus future efforts and energy on maintaining and expanding their African dominions, on continuing the transition to become a landed aristocracy, rather than looking across the waves for some ambitious purpose. But there were others among the ruling classes of Carthage, like Hamilcar Barca, who insisted on pursuing a future for their nation on the ocean, as Carthage had done for centuries. Hamilcar, you see, was that rare thing among politicians. He was a patriot.

14:57 Naturally, he wanted personal power as well, but he was also oriented toward regaining the glory of Carthage. And he was not the only one. To Spain, he took with him Hasdrubal, his son-in-law and a high-ranking member of the government. Hasdrubal would become Hamilcar's admiral. And the warlord also brought his son with him, nine-year-old Hannibal. Hamilcar had taken his son, young as he was, to the altar of Baal-Hammond, god-king of Carthage, and there he had the young boy swear undying vengeance against Rome. Hannibal would grow up and be true to his word, and Rome would never forget his terror.

15:53 On the Roman side, there were up-and-comers as well. Fabius Maximus, who would become famously known as Fabius the Delayer in the war to come with Carthage, and as a controversial savior of Rome, probably had his first experiences as a soldier in the First Punic War. During the long interlude between the First and Second Punic Wars, he would be elected consul for the first time, and the army he led would drive the Cisalpine Gauls into the Alps and help secure Rome's control over northern Italy. Now, a little younger than Fabius was Marcus Claudius Marcellus. From his earliest days as a soldier in the First Punic War, he had been praised for his bravery.

16:35 Like Fabius, he was one of the men about whom Plutarch would come to say the following, quote, The chief Romans, who in their youth had war with the Carthaginians in Sicily, in their middle age with the Gauls in the defense of Italy itself, and at last, when now grown old, struggled again with Hannibal and the Carthaginians. As stated previously, the Romans had always engaged in conflicts, small or large scale, virtually every year since the founding of their city, and when the First Punic War came to an end, they did not hesitate to return to this habit. They had much work to do in quelling rebellion on their newfound possession, the island of Sardinia, whose inhabitants were notoriously unruly and prone to revolt.

17:20 Later, Rome would add the island of Corsica to her dominions as well and face the same challenges on that island. But the Romans seemingly relished such labor. Indeed, nothing seemed to tire them, neither massive and costly overseas expeditions nor drawn-out, low-intensity anti-insurgency conflicts. While they were keeping this up, they were also mopping up the last bits of resistance to Roman rule in central and southern Italy and moving against the Gauls in the north of the peninsula. And it was with the Gauls that the interwar years find their most critical juncture. By 232 BC, the Romans had pushed their way farther into northern Italy and seized much Gallic land.

18:03 They had expelled the former owners and permitted their citizens to colonize and farm this newfound land. To underline the significance of this conquest, I turn to Polybius, who details how incredibly inexpensive the wheat from that land was because it was produced in such abundance, as were other grains. And furthermore, forests of oak trees dotted the region, and here farmers pastured their pigs to eat the fallen acorns and grow fat to later be slaughtered to feed the army. Much of Italy was fertile, but the north was truly an agricultural cornucopia. Seen in this light, it becomes clear why there was a war between the Romans and the Gauls for possession of this territory.

18:49 By 226 BC, therefore, a massive invasion from the north was looming, and Rome was gearing up for another major conflict that would absorb all its efforts and focus. Naturally, this could be seen as a moment of opportunity for the Carthaginians like Hamilcar Barca, but a few things prevented Carthage from acting against the Romans while they were distracted by the Gauls. For one, Helmucar was dead by then. He had spent the remaining years of his life very industriously. By the time of his death in 228 BC, he had expanded Carthaginian power in the Iberian Peninsula, renewed his people's fame, and secured a stream of life-giving wealth for his city.

19:32 Accounts differ as to how he died, but it was likely in some petty engagement aimed at seizing another piece of real estate in Spain. And in this way, his death reminds me very much of those deaths suffered by so many Greek heroes, who fought and won glorious battles only later to die in accidents or during minor ignominious scuffles. The best-attested stories about the death of Hamilcar say that he fell from his horse while crossing a river during a retreat and drowned. Hamilcar left behind him a son, Hannibal, still too young to command, and his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who took the reins in Spain.

20:13 Now, Hasdrubal, while thoroughly a follower of Hamilcar, was not as aggressive as his father-in-law. He was more of a statesman and eager to solidify Carthaginian power in the Iberian Peninsula before thinking beyond that. So when Rome approached Hasdrubal, seeking an assurance of neutrality during the coming engagement with Gaul, he happily signed an agreement which stated that he would not cross the River Ebro in arms. This was an easy proclamation to make, since his forces were still nowhere near that river. But this diplomatic accord was not the only thing that kept Carthage from acting against Rome in 226 BC, when the Gauls seemed poised to invade their mutual enemy.

20:55 There was also the simple deterrent of geographical reality. While Carthaginian power had grown in Spain, it was still located mostly in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. An alliance between Carthage and Gaul might have sounded good, but there were many miles separating any possible conjunction of their forces, and a pretty serious mountain range known today as the Pyrenees. After that, there was a march across southern France and another march over the Alps before any such army from Carthaginian Spain could threaten Italy. As for a seaborne invasion, that was out of the question. The rulers of Carthage would not make that venture at this time. Rome had proved too capable an enemy at sea, and regardless, the expense was just too much.

21:40 Hannibal, when he came of age, would have to find his own way around all these obstacles and impediments. And he would. Music. The Gauls of northern Italy formally declared war on Rome in 225 B.C. There had been conflict between these two opponents for many years off and on, even before the Punic Wars. Recall that the Gauls had invaded and even sacked Rome as far back as 390 BC. And at first, they threatened to do just that, sack Rome again.

22:23 The invading army, composed of several different tribes of Gauls, quickly came within just a few days' march of the city itself. These invaders even pushed aside the Roman army sent to stop them. But fortune and Roman fortitude saved the day for Rome. Aemilius Paulus, in command of the other Roman army, which was stationed closer to the Adriatic, was by then already on the move He arrived on the battlefield without knowledge of the whereabouts of the other army, which had already been defeated and pushed back once By chance, these two Roman armies came into contact with the Gauls at the same time, The invaders were forced to face in two opposite directions to meet the simultaneous attacks of the Romans, who only appeared to have coordinated the assault.

23:10 Memory of this battle was burned into Roman memory. One of the tribes of Gauls, the Gassete, were so eager to demonstrate their valor against the hated Romans, they stripped off all their clothes and went into battle bearing only their weapons and their courage, and thus bringing to life one of the great images of ancient warfare, the naked, fanatically screaming Gauls throwing themselves against the stolid Roman ranks. But the sturdy Romans overcame Gallic ferocity. Polybius tells us that some 40,000 Gauls were killed in the battle. Another 10,000 were taken prisoner, he says, as well as one of their kings.

23:50 In the next few years, the Gauls would be pushed back farther than ever. Roman legions crossed over into the lands of modern-day France for the first time. They drove the Gauls into the Alps as well, and there were pleas for peace from them, but these were ignored. One of the Romans urging continuation of the war was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, whom we will see more of in the Second Punic War to come. And it was during one of the following engagements that this Marcellus led a small force of cavalry and light foot against the Gallic army which happened to be led by one of their kings in person. During this savage battle, the Gallic king, Viridomarus, spotted Marcellus amid the fighting and shouted a challenge to meet him in single combat.

24:36 The challenge was accepted, and Marcellus slayed the king of the Gauls right there on the field of battle. After this victory, Marcellus became only the third and the last Roman to ever be rewarded with the Spolia Opima, the triumph awarded to a Roman general who kills an enemy general in single combat. The war with the Gauls came to an end not long after this. It was now 221 BC. The Romans had survived another cataclysmic confrontation. And all this time, the tyrant in Syracuse, Hierro, about whom we heard so much at the beginning of the First Punic War, he had remained quietly loyal to Rome.

25:17 He resisted any ideas of treachery as he guarded the backdoor to Italy. And for this, Rome was not ungrateful and sent him many of the treasures taken in the war against the Gauls. Once the Second Punic War started a few years later, Hierro's loyalty to Rome would be remembered less than favorably by his political enemies. Music. Also striking in this segue to the Second Punic War, though perhaps not as dramatic as the tales of battle, is the societal transformations underway on both sides of the Mediterranean.

26:01 The Carthaginians, once a Phoenician city of traders and merchants, was accelerating its conversion into a realm ruled by a landed aristocracy, and they were producing men of war like Hamilcar and his son Hannibal, who thought less of finance and more of conquest and glory. Roman society was also changing. I mentioned the colonization of northern Italy after the expulsion of the Gauls. The opening of that land to the common people of Rome was not the idea of the aristocracy in Rome, which would have surely rather divided the land up between themselves. Instead, this was brought about through the rising class of the Novus Homo, the new man. These were men whose closest ancestors had probably been from the middle classes, maybe from the knights, the equites, but whom fortune and intelligence had elevated to high power in the state.

26:52 Gaius Flaminius was one of these new men. He was the first in his family to hold high office in Rome, a newcomer to the sainted ranks of senators who had held such offices now for centuries. In 232 BC, he had been the tribune who had moved the government to make land grants in northern Italy. He would go on to become consul in future years, in particular during the Second Punic War. Not everyone would appreciate this societal change. The historian Polybius, among others, sides with the patricians and labels this moment in Roman history, in which men from lower classes were granted access to the high offices of Rome, as a demoralization of the body politic.

27:35 Even as their societies transformed, however, the Romans and the Carthaginians retained significant distinctions. Whether the Romans were forming an army to carry out aristocratic schemes or sharing conquered lands with the plebeian class, they were doing these things either with or for their own people, their own citizens. A Carthaginian hero, like Hamilcar or Hannibal, accomplished what he accomplished with mercenaries, with foreigners. When Hamilcar began to subdue Spain, he did so with mercenaries, and the conquered lands would become sources of trade for the merchant class, not locations to which needy Carthaginians would come to settle and farm. And it would not really be a Carthaginian army that crossed the Alps with Hannibal and invaded Italy in the years to come.

28:22 It would be an army of foreigners, of Greeks and Gauls and Libyans and Iberian Celts and many more cultures, all led by a Carthaginian. The classes of Roman society, high and low, contentious as they were, worked together on the battlefield, the patricians risking their necks just as the plebs did, though, yes, the potential rewards for victory were certainly greater for those captains of war. And though there was division in Roman society regarding the status and opportunities for those of the lower classes, there was at least debate and change. The new men did rise up, even against the wishes of some dissatisfied patricians.

29:04 I have tried my hardest throughout this Roman series to be fair to the Carthaginians to refrain from the name-calling and the slurs that are typically hurled at these transplanted Phoenicians. But I have also averred that I am a proud Westerner and a proud descendant of Roman culture, and I think that this is where I can drop the even-handedness a little bit with regard to culture and state again without hesitation that history makes me glad that the Romans came out supreme in this conflict. Whatever faults ancient Roman society may have had, it was a society in which common people had some sort of chance, in which there was a stratification of the classes certainly, but not a class divide which required worship or groveling.

29:47 So there is something to admire here, even if I deplore the frequent manipulation of the lower classes into wars that were not always to their benefit. At least in that far-off age and civilization of Rome, the upper classes risked their lives alongside the rest of us, and shared many burdens of life with commoners when compared to the upper classes of societies like those in Carthage or the Near East. Those Roman senators also just don't seem so bad when you compare them to the leadership we possess today in the West. The next episode will describe the beginning of the Second Punic War and the early reversals that shook the very foundations of the Roman Republic.

30:28 Until then, I thank you for listening to the Western Traditions Podcast. Music.