A Companion to the Punic Wars E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1226

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A Companion to the Punic Wars offers a comprehensive new survey of the three wars fought between Rome and Carthage between 264 and 146 BC.

• Offers a broad survey of the Punic Wars from a variety of perspectives
• Features contributions from an outstanding cast of international scholars with unrivalled expertise
• Includes chapters on military and naval techniques, strategies, logistics, and Hannibal as a charismatic general and leader
• Gives balanced coverage of both Carthage and Rome

Leseprobe

Contents

List of Tables

List of Maps

Notes on Contributors

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: The Punic WarsDexter Hoyos

PART I Background and Sources

1 The Rise of Rome to 264John Serrati

2 Early Relations between Rome and CarthageBarbara Scardigli

3 The Rise of Carthage to 264Walter Ameling

4 Manpower and Food Supply in the First and Second Punic WarsPaul Erdkamp

5 Phalanx and Legion: the “Face” of Punic War BattleSam Koon

6 Polybius and the Punic WarsCraige B. Champion

7 Principal Literary Sources for the Punic Wars (apart from Polybius)Bernard Mineo

PART II The First Punic War and Aftermath

8 The Outbreak of warDexter Hoyos

9 A War of Phases: Strategies and Stalemates 264–241Boris Rankov

10 Roman Politics in the First Punic WarBruno Bleckmann

11 Roman Politics and Expansion, 241–219Luigi Loreto

12 Carthage in Africa and Spain, 241–218Dexter Hoyos

PART III The Second Punic War

13 The Reasons for the WarHans Beck

14 Hannibal: Tactics, Strategy, and GeostrategyMichael P. Fronda

15 Hannibal and PropagandaRichard Miles

16 Roman Strategy and Aims in the Second Punic WarKlaus Zimmermann

17 The War in Italy, 218–203Louis Rawlings

18 War Abroad: Spain, Sicily, Macedon, AfricaPeter Edwell

19 Rome, Latins, and Italians in the Second Punic WarKathryn Lomas

20 Punic Politics, Economy, and Alliances, 218–201Pedro Barceló

21 Roman Economy, Finance, and Politics in the Second Punic WarToni Ñaco del Hoyo

PART IV The Last Half-Century of Carthage

22 Carthage and Numidia, 201–149Claudia Kunze

23 Italy: Economy and Demography after Hannibal's WarNathan Rosenstein

24 The “Third Punic War”: The Siege of Carthage (148–146 BC)Yann Le Bohec

PART V Conclusions

25 Death and Transfiguration: Punic Culture after 146M’hamed-Hassine Fantar

26 Spain, Africa, and Rome after CarthageJohn Richardson

27 Carthage and Hannibal in Roman and Greek MemoryGiovanni Brizzi

References

Index

A COMPANION TO THE PUNIC WARS

BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD

This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises between twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

ANCIENT HISTORY

Published

A Companion to the Roman ArmyEdited by Paul Erdkamp

A Companion to the Roman RepublicEdited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx

A Companion to the Roman EmpireEdited by David S. Potter

A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl

A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell

A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau

A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees

A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin

A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James

A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd

A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington

A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos

In preparation

A Companion to SpartaEdited by Anton Powell

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Published

A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola

A Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner

A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden

A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf

A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall

A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington

A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley

A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory

A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot

A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox

A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker

A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss

A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam

A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis

A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldsEdited by Beryl Rawson

In preparation

A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson

A Companion to Greek MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone

A Companion to SophoclesEdited by Kirk Ormand

A Companion to AeschylusEdited by Peter Burian

A Companion to Greek ArtEdited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos

A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Pagán

A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel Potts

This edition first published 2011© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to the Punic Wars / edited by Dexter Hoyos.

p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to the ancient world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-7600-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Punic wars. I. Hoyos, B. D. (B. Dexter), 1944–

DG241.C66 2011

937′.04–dc22

2010033794

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Tables

  4.1 Census figures for Rome in the third century BC

17.1 Major engagements involving Hannibal's army

23.1 Military mortality 200–168 BC as reported by the ancient sources

23.2 Census Returns, 204–124

Maps

1 Carthage

2 Rome, third and second centuries, BC

3 The Mediterranean, third century BC

4 Punic North Africa

5 Italy and islands

Notes on Contributors

Walter Ameling took his doctorate at the University of Würzburg. From 1996 to 2008 he taught and researched ancient history at the University of Jena, and since 2008 has held the Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach professorial Chair at the Universität zu Köln. His books include a major study of early Carthage, Karthago: Studien zu Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft (München, 1993).

Pedro Barceló holds the Chair of Ancient History at the Universität Potsdam, after previous Chairs in Eichstätt, Heidelberg, and Erfurt. He is cofounder of the international research group “Potestas,” based at Universität Potsdam and the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and is a member of the Real Academia de la Historia de España. His works embrace many fields of antiquity, and include studies of Constantine's dynasty, Greek kingship and tyranny, Roman Spain, andmany books on Carthage, most recently Hannibal: Stratege und Staatsmann (2008).

Hans Beck is John MacNaughton Professor and Director of Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He has published widely on the Roman Republic, including a two-volume edition of the early Roman historians, co-authored with Uwe Walter, and abook on the Republican nobility, Karriere und Hierarchie (2005). Other research interests include the history of Greek government and federalism,ancient historiography, and cross-cultural approaches toward ruling elites. He is the editor of Blackwell's forthcoming Companion to Ancient Greek Government.

Prof. Dr. Bruno Bleckmann has been full professor of ancient history at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf since 2003. The various fields of his scholarship include studies in ancient historiography and source criticism, classic Greek history and the Roman republic, as well as the history of lateantiquity. Since his Habilitation in Göttingen in 1996 he has held professorships at the institute for Roman history of Strassbourg University in France, and at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Giovanni Brizzi is full Professor of Roman History at Bologna University. He has taught at Sassari and Udine Universities. He was official professor (1993/94 and 2005/06) at the Sorbonne, is Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques of the French Republic, and is a member of the Academy of the Sciences of the Istituto di Bologna. He is director of the Rivista Storica dell’Antichità, adjoint director of the Revue des Études Militaires Anciennes, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the review Kentron. Giovanni Brizzi is author of more than two hundred publications, in different languages, and is one of the leading scholars in ancient military history.

Craige B. Champion received his graduate training in Classics and Ancient History at Princeton University. He is Associate Professor of Ancient History and Classics in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and former Chair of the History Department at Syracuse University. He has published widely on ancient Greek and Roman history and historiography. He is the author of Cultural Politicsin Polybius's Histories (Berkeley, 2004), editor of Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources (Blackwell, 2004), co-editor (with A.M. Eckstein) of the forthcoming Landmark Edition of the Histories of Polybius, in two volumes (Pantheon Books), and one of the general editors of the forthcoming Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Ancient History.

Dr Peter Edwell lectures in Roman History and Late Antiquity at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the former holder of the Macquarie Gale Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2006/7) and is the author of Between Rome and Persia, published in 2008. Dr Edwell is currently working on a book on Roman Mesopotamia.

Paul Erdkamp is Professor of Ancient History at the Flemish Free University of Brussels. His fields of interests include the economy and demography of the Roman world, social and political aspects of army and warfare, and ancient historiography, in particular Polybius and Livy. His publications include The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005). He is editor of A Companion to the Roman Army (2007) and The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome (forthcoming).

Professor M’hamed Hassine Fantar is a Senator, Titulaire of President Ben Ali's Chair for the Dialogue of Civilizations and Religions at the University of Tunis, and PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology (Sorbonne, Paris). He is a specialist in western Semitic languages and Middle East civilizations and former General Director of the National Institute of Archaeology and Art of Tunis (1982–1987). Currently he is Research Director at the National Institute of Heritage of Tunis, Professor of Ancient History, Archeology and the History of Religions in the Tunisian universities. He is Lecturer in the Universities of Rome, Bologna, Cagliari, Tripoli, and Benghazi, as well as in the French schools and Belgium (Louvain). He is Doctor Honoris causa of the University of Bologna and the University of Sassari (Italy).

Michael P. Fronda is Associate Professor of Roman History in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Between Rome and Carthage: Southern Italy in the Second Punic War (Cambridge University Press, 2010) as well as several articles on Roman foreign policy and imperialism, Roman–Italian relations, and interstate politics during the middle and late Republic.

Dexter Hoyos read Roman History for the DPhil at Oxford (1967–71) and taught Latin and Roman history at the University of Sydney from 1972 until retiring as Associate Professor in 2007. He co-founded the Australian journal Classicum (1975–) and is on the editorial board of the online journal Teaching Classical Languages. He writes on Roman and Carthaginian history – most recently Truceless War (2007), Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy (2008), and The Carthaginians (2010) – and on issues of reading and comprehending Latin.

Sam Koon did his BA in Ancient History at the University of Nottingham and an MA in Classics at Durham University. He completed his PhD, on Livy's battle descriptions, in 2007 at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Dr A. Fear. Currently he is a Teaching Fellow in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester. This chapter was completed with the assistance of a scholarship from the Fondation Hardt, Geneva.

Claudia Kunze (Goodbrand) studied classics at Churchill College, Cambridge. She currently lives and works in England.

Yann Le Bohec was born in 1943 at Carthage, on the eastern slope of the hill of Byrsa. He studied at Paris; his career took him from the Université de Paris X–Nanterre to Grenoble II, then to Lyon III andfinally to the Université de Paris IV–Sorbonne. Currently Prof. Dr., hehas specialized in the history of Roman Gaul, Roman Africa, and the Roman army. He has published numerous works and very numerousarticles on these three subjects. He has never forgotten Carthage.

Dr Kathryn Lomas is Honorary Senior Research Associateat the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She is the author of Rome and the Western Greeks and Roman Italy, 338BC – AD200, and has published numerous articles on Roman Italy, urbanism and colonization in the Greek and Roman world, and on ethnic and cultural identity. Her current research is on literacy in pre-Roman Italy.

Luigi Loreto (born in Rome, 1963), is Professor of Roman History at the Faculty of Law of the Seconda Università di Napoli, where he teaches also the History of International Relations. His several books include Un’epoca di buon senso. Decisione, consenso e stato a Roma nella Media Repubblica, 326–264 a.C. (Amsterdam, 1993); Guerra e libertà nella Repubblica romana. John R. Seeley e le radici intellettuali della Roman Revolution di Ronald Syme (Roma 1999), and Il bellum iustum e i suoi equivoci. Cicerone ed una componente della rappresentazione romana del Völkerrecht antico (Napoli 2001).

Richard Miles has been a Newton Trust Lecturer in Classics at Cambridge University and Director of Studies in Classics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2010 he took up an appointment as lecturer in Ancient History at Sydney University. He has directed archaeological excavations at Carthage and Rome and writes on Punic, Roman, and Vandal North Africa. He has recently published Carthage Must Be Destroyed: the Rise and Fall of an Ancient Mediterranean Civilization (London, 2010).

Bernard Mineo is Professor of Latin Literature at the Université de Nantes (Bretagne, France). He is author of a monograph on Livy entitled Tite-Live et l’histoire de Rome, and has published Book XXXII of Livy's Roman History in the Collection des Universités de France. He is working currently on the publication, in the same Collection, of Pompeius Trogus’ Philippic Histories in the abridgement by Justin.

Toni Ñaco del Hoyo (PhD 1996, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is a Research Professor in Ancient History at the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a specialist on Roman Republican history. His areas of research include taxation and finance, warfare and post-war strategies, and, lately, ancient disasters. He is a former Fulbright Visiting Scholar (UC Berkeley, 2004) and has held several postdoctoral fellowships (1998–2002), particularly at Wolfson College, Oxford, of which he remains a member, before holding a five-year Ramon y Cajal Research Fellowship until September 2009, when he finally joined ICREA.

Boris Rankov has taught in the United States and at the Universities of Oxford, Western Australia, and London. He has published several books and papers on the Roman Army, on ancient warships, and on ancient fleets and their infrastructures. He is currently Professor of Ancient History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Dr Louis Rawlings is Lecturer and Head of the Ancient History Department at Cardiff University. He has published various articles on Punic, Italian, and Gallic warfare. He is the author of The Ancient Greeks at War, (2007, Manchester University Press) and co-editor (with H. Bowden) of Herakles and Hercules: Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity (2005, Classical Press of Wales).

John Richardson was Professor of Classics in the University of Edinburgh from 1987 to 2002 and is now Emeritus Professor there. He has produced several books on the Romans in Spain, and has also written on Roman imperialism and Roman law. His most recent book is The Language of Empire: Rome andthe idea of empire from the third century BC to the second century AD (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Nathan Rosenstein is Professor of History at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the political culture, economy, demography, andmilitary history of the middle and late Republic. He is the author of Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (1990), Rome At War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic (2004), numerous articles, and the editor (with Robert Morstein-Marx) of A Companion to the Roman Republic (2006, published by Wiley-Blackwell) and (with Kurt Raaflaub) of War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (1999).

Prof. Barbara Scardigli studied classical philology and ancient history at the Universities of Frankfurt, Vienna and Heidelberg, and from the 1960s has taught and pursued research in Italy at the Universities of Bari, Urbino, Siena, and Florence. She is the author of many articles and books, including Die Römerbiographien Plutarchs (München, 1979), I Trattati romano-cartaginesi (Pisa, 1991), and, as editor, Essays on Plutarch's Lives (Oxford, 1995).

John Serrati is a faculty member in the Department of History and Classics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He obtained his doctorate in 2001 at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Christopher Smith. He has published assorted chapters and articles concerning imperialism, Greek and Roman warfare, early Roman provincial administration, Roman diplomacy, Roman provincial government in Sicily, and Hieron II of Syracuse.

Klaus Zimmermann read for his PhD at Bamberg with Prof. Werner Huss, then held appointments at Jena until 2009. In that year he took up a Chair in the Seminar für Alte Geschichte at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and the Directorship of its “Forschungstelle Asia Minor.” His main fields of research are Greek epigraphy, the history of religions, historical geography, and Carthage. His books include Libyen. Das Land südlich des Mittelmeers im Weltbild der Griechen (1995) and Rom und Karthago (2005; 2nd edn, 2009).

Map 1 Carthage

Map 2 Rome, third and second centuries BC

Map 3 The Mediterranean, third century BC

Map 4 Punic North Africa

Map 5 Italy and islands

Introduction: The Punic Wars

It was a welcome opportunity to be invited to edit the Blackwell Companion to the Punic Wars and so to gather a body of specialist contributors who would illuminate not only the military aspects of these famous conflicts but also many other linked themes. The Companion aims to fit the warfare into its complex environment to illuminate the culture, background, demography and postwar fortunes of the two states that fought each other to the death over a hundred and twenty years.

The Punic Wars marked the beginning of Rome's imperial expansion and ended Carthage's. The issue was not a foregone conclusion until 201 BC: more than once, especially during the Second War, it could have turned the other way. Together with a range of Roman leaders celebrated in literature and tradition — Regulus, Fabius the Delayer, Marcellus the captor of Syracuse, Scipio Africanus, his adoptive grandson Scipio Aemilianus, and Cato the Censor — the conflicts made famous the only Carthaginian with as notable a name today, not always for accurate reasons, as in the ancient world, and two other great North African leaders who by contrast are undeservedly forgotten, Hannibal's father Hamilcar and Masinissa of Numidia.

The historical record of these figures and their world is variedly askew. Apart from a few quotations and papyrus fragments, the written accounts that survive are all by Greek and Roman authors, from Polybius who watched Carthage burn in 146 BC to sometimes uncomprehending summary-compilers of late Roman times. Roman tradition, and increasingly Greek, viewed the Carthaginians as quintessential fraudsters andwarmongers, memorably summed up by the philosopher-biographer Plutarch around AD 100:

bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to decisions, disagreeable and hard in their attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. (Moralia 799 D)

By contrast, Rome and the Romans of this era of conflict were largely held to be solidly virtuous and heroic, not to mention much put upon by their cunning adversaries: who, it followed logically, were entirely to blame for the wars. This bias forms one of the modern scholar's constant preoccupations when assessing any aspect of the Punic Wars, as this Companion illustrates in every chapter.

The ancient accounts are askew in other ways too. They survive unevenly, another scholarly cross to bear, for most detailed Greek and Roman historical works did not make it unscathed out of the Middle Ages. Those that treat of the three Punic Wars are in a particularly unfortunate state. Only Polybius’ first five books (out of 40) are complete, although we do have sizeable extracts from the rest; Livy's account of only the Second War has come through, though with short epitomes of his books on the others; Diodorus’ world history is down to excerpts for the centuries after 300 BC; and Dio's monumental history of Rome is represented solely in excerpts and in a Byzantine epitome for all the centuries before Cicero's and Caesar's. As a result our knowledge of the First Punic War and the Third is lopsided and almost monochrome: the only detailed information on the First comes in Polybius’ condensed version and, on the Third, in Appian's fairly short narrative which, in agreeable contrast to his treatment of the previous two, draws partly on Polybius’ lost account — but also devotes plenty of space to rather less admirable, Appian-composed speeches.

That Appian is the major source for a war fought three centuries before his own day illustrates another problem. Polybius alone was a contemporary of any war; Livy and Diodorus lived and wrote 100 to 150 years after him, and the rest still later. How all of them utilized earlier sources, including documents like the texts of treaties, what sources each chose to utilize, and how they organized the information they drew from these are among the most debated issues in Punic Wars studies. Livy, for example, used Polybius extensively and thus could read his verbatim quotation of Hannibal's treaty with Macedon, as we still can: why did he choose to offer without comment an improbably biased version, presumably found in an earlier Roman author?

A fourth source problem is compounded by the other three. Most Greek and Roman authors were inexpert or uninterested in technical matters, from military realities to topography and chronology, and their decided preference was for dramatic and psychological retellings. Polybius does offer some discussion, almost too compressed, of why the First Punic War broke out, whereas what we have of Diodorus and Dio on the outbreak of the First Punic War shows them interested mainly in the personal confrontations between Mamertines, Carthaginians, and Romans around the straits of Messina in summer 264 (Dio's efforts at explaining the background are merely a series of generalizations about mutual fear and territorial covetousness). Reporting how Scipio Africanus’ first peace treaty with Carthage, in 203, was received by the Senate at Rome, Livy supplies participants with plenty of oratory while insisting that the treaty was rejected, a striking contrast to Polybius’ evidence of ratification — which Livy himself soon afterwards assumes to have happened. His account of the climactic battle of Zama, in turn, is bizarrely at odds with Polybius’ which he seems not to understand fully (a Livian hazard also found elsewhere in his work); though it is not as bizarre as that of Appian, who like the epic poet Silius was determined to insert a hand-to-hand joust between the two great generals. Polybius himself, with all his disdain for careless armchair historiography, can be vague or simply wrong at times: as in his narrative, almost place-name-free, of Hannibal's passage over the Alps and his implausible account of Scipio's early political career.

The virtues of our ancient sources deserve acknowledgment, all the same. They provide names, details of places, and a huge range of military, political, diplomatic, administrative, social, and even (especially in Livy) economic and religious information. Predictably, there are enough discrepancies and sometimes contradictions between accounts to make the task of establishing a reasonably true picture of any topic a contentious one. Yet no study of Punic War themes, this Companion included, would be possible without the materials, expansive, concise, or fragmentary, in the varied writings that survive.

Archaeological evidence and numismatics are in turn valuable in illuminating the societies, cultures, and religions involved in the wars, although they cannot to any great extent clarify the “action history” — politics, diplomacy, warfare, and individuals. The rather small number of inscriptions from those centuries is invaluable, from the epitaphs of some of the Scipio family, and a (possibly) third-century milestone on a road in western Sicily, to the broken text of Rome's treaty with the Aetolians in 212 and second-century BC memorials to royal Numidians, inscribed in the Punic language, in territories previously Carthaginian. Of all the epigraphic materials that once existed, the one that probably most historians wish had survived would surely be Hannibal's personal record, in Punic and Greek, of his campaigns in Italy down to 206 in the temple of Hera (Juno) on Cape Lacinium, today Capo Colonna, in southern Italy.

The Punic Wars created a “national” Roman story of almost Trojan War resonance, with its cast of heroic characters, figures flawed or tragic (such as Regulus and Flaminius), and the larger-than-life enemy — hateful yet also admired — personified by Hannibal. The dimensions of warfare were vast for the ancient Mediterranean world: Polybius describes the First as the greatest known to history until the Second surpassed it, while in the Second the proportions of Rome's and her loyal allies’ manpower that were called on for military and naval service approached those of twentieth-century Europe. Hannibal's tactical genius and the dramatic glamour of his crossing of the Alps have gripped the imagination of all eras, and have been esteemed as lessons valuable even to campaign-planners of recent times (notably Graf von Schlieffen and General Norman Schwarzkopf) — though the further lesson, that a sweeping victory does not invariably end one's problems, has always been less welcome. The ruthlessly imposed horrors of the Third war illuminated the realities of great-power hegemony that again could offer lessons to later eras.

Rome's victory in the Second established her domination of the western Mediterranean lands, and freed her to intervene in the east. This was done with a speed and success that stunned observers. Thirteen years after the peace of 201 with Carthage, she had struck down the great-power pretensions of both Alexander the Great's homeland Macedon and the greatest of his successor states, the Seleucid empire, and reduced the entire eastern Mediterranean potentially to satellite status. By 167 Macedon itself had ceased to exist and Rome had reinforced her eastern hegemony. It prompted Polybius’ famous introductory question:

Who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what political system the Romans in less than fifty-three years [to 167 BC ] have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole rule [ arche ] — something not to be found in all previous history? (Pol. 1.1.5)

The ultimate result, after his time, was the Roman empire bounded by the Atlantic, the Sahara, and the great rivers of central Europe and Mesopotamia, remembered and sometimes envied down the ages. Polybius was more prescient than even he knew.

One might wonder what the result would have been had Hannibal and Carthage been victorious instead of Scipio and Rome. With Rome, Italy, and the western lands under Carthage's arche, subjection of the east would nothave been long in coming (especially if Hannibal continued in control; in 201 he was only 46). An empire speaking Punic and Greek, or Punic, Greek, and also Latin, might ultimately have stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates — if not beyond.

Our Companion to the Punic Wars does not attempt parafactual history, but explores as wide a range of topics and questions as possible that arise from the perennially challenging subject of the three wars. An internationally collaborative volume, it does not aim at uniform viewpoints or follow any ideology. It does not impose artificially strict bounds on each chapter's topic either, for one strength of a broad spectrum of scholarly contributors is that differing interpretations of the same or a similar issue will be presented, appropriate to the healthy diversity of views in current historiography: as a notable instance, the variety of modern scholarly views about the reasons why the wars occurred at all.

The chapters contributed by scholars writing in other languages have been translated by language specialists whose work the Editor takes much pleasure in acknowledging: Dr Tomas Drevikovsky (German), Dr Diana Modesto (Italian), and Mrs Robyn Rihani (French). Dr Ñaco del Hoyo's chapter was translated by the Editor. Throughout the long gestation of the Companion the support of Wiley-Blackwell's editorial team, especially Galen Smith and Haze Humbert, has been constant and is deeply appreciated. The learned collaboration, and the patience, of the Editor's fellow contributors are also deeply appreciated: he hopes that the Companion will satisfy them as fully as, he also hopes, it will our readers.

DEXTER HOYOS

Sydney: June 2010

PART I

BACKGROUND AND SOURCES

CHAPTER ONE

The Rise of Rome to 264 BC

John Serrati

Now I will set forth the glory that awaits the Trojan race, the illustrious souls of the Italian heirs to our name. I will teach you your destiny … Under [Romulus’] auspices, my son, Rome's empire will encompass the Earth, its glory will rival Olympus … This will be your destiny, Roman, to rule the world with your power. These will be your arts: to establish peace, to spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud.

By the time Vergil put these words into the mouth of Anchises as he showed his son Aeneas the glories that awaited his lineage, Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean and had already established itself as one of history's leading imperial states. In the last decades of the first century, though in all likelihood going back to Cicero, there was a belief among some Romans that it was their destiny to rule an empire, that they had not become so powerful simply by happenstance but because conquest was somehow part of their psyche, and that early on in their history they were marked out as different, even gifted, when it came to the art of war. It has recently been argued that at no point in its history was the Roman Republic ever markedly more aggressive or imperialistic than contemporary states, yet it is unlikely that Rome owed the empire of Cicero or Vergil's times merely to the might of its legions.1

By the fourth century Rome was almost certainly militarized to a far greater extent than any of its neighbors, and within a short time a hypercompetitive, aggressive, and warlike nobility would emerge as leaders of the state, while the classes that made up the common soldiery themselves favored war due to the plunder which it provided. These elements fused with Latin manpower in 338 in a settlement that gave the Romans unmatched resources of human capital. It should therefore be seen as no coincidence that serious conquest and warfare began in the fourth century; this was the era that laid the foundations of the large-scale conquests that were to come post-264. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say that by the dawn of the third century, warfare must be seen as a binding force in Roman society, and Rome itself had become a state socialized to make war.

Yet what is equally clear is that it was not always this way. The city that existed prior to the fourth century appears in no way extraordinary in comparison to many of its peers on the peninsula. It likely began around the forum Boarium area as an emporion for salt from the mouth of the Tiber. Several hilltop villages developed in the area (tenth to ninth centuries) and in the eighth century began to coalesce into one settlement that centered on the Palatine, Capitoline, and the new common area of the Forum. At some point the region fell under the dominance of a series of warlords or tyrants, whom the later Romans called kings, but these fell eventually to an aristocracy that had been gaining power for some time and established an oligarchy in the late sixth century. Even at this stage, there appears to have been nothing atypical about Rome, beyond the fact that it was by now the largest urban centre in Latium. Nevertheless within a little more than a hundred years Rome did emerge as a highly aggressive military state. The process by which the city went from village to the brink of empire forms the central theme of this chapter.

Pre-Republican Rome

The belief that Rome was predestined to rule an empire perhaps goes back even further than Cicero to Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century, who more than anyone else is responsible for the canonization of early Roman history. But he was not the first to look into Rome's distant past: the earliest writers to mention the city are, perhaps unsurprisingly, Greek. Hellanicus in the fifth century first seized upon the lines from the Iliad (20.302–305) that predicted the survival of Aeneas; he then had the Trojan hero go west and eventually found Rome. Other Greek writers, such as Damastes, repeated the story, while Alcimus in the fourth century first connected it with Romulus, the native eponymous founder of Rome, whom he made Aeneas’ son. Timaeus, Antigonus, and finally the Roman historian Fabius Pictor expanded greatly on these themes in the third century; by the second century, Roman antiquarians were at pains to establish a legitimate connection between the Trojan Aeneas and the Roman Romulus. The former became the distant ancestor of the latter, who went on to found Rome—according to Varro, whose date became the most accepted—in 753.2

Remus does not seem to have been part of the early narrative — indeed, amongst ancient cities Rome is quite unique in having two founders — and only makes an appearance in the late fourth or early third century when the Greek chronicler Diocles incorporated the twins into his work on the foundation of Rome, and when, in 296 specifically, the brothers Ogulnii as curule aediles set up the very first statue in Rome of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf.3 Various reasons have been speculated for his late arrival. For example, the philological: “Rumlnas” and “Remne” as the names of two Etruscan gentes who once dominated the area that was to become Rome and ruled over the Latins there. Their names were rendered into Latin as Romilius and Remmius (a fifth-century gens Romilia Vaticana does appear to have existed). The Romilii either defeated or absorbed the Remmii, hence Romulus killing Remus, and therefore gave their name to the entire area. The political: Romulus’ murder of Remus illustrates the early Roman dominance of the Sabines. Or the imperial: Romulus and Remus symbolize Rome and Capua in their joint rule of Italy in the fourth and third centuries.4

However, it is far likelier that the twins represent either patricians and plebeians or the joint consulship perhaps created in 367 (see below), or indeed both, for from 342 onwards plebeians began to hold at least one consulship regularly. Much evidence supports this: first, a tradition in some sources that Remus was a self-sacrificing hero whose blood, albeit spilt by his brother or onRomulus’ order, purified the city walls to make Rome hallowed ground. Furthermore, fourth-century and early third-century objects depicting both being suckled by a she-wolf confirm that in some versions Remus survived and ruled with Romulus; some literary sources also imply this.5

By Varro's time, the mid first century, the myth of Romulus and Remus and the latter's murder was believed to have happened in 753. It is unsurprising that Varro arrived at this date; as with the Olympic Games beginning in 776, oral history and memory only appear to have gone back to the mid eighth century by the time the first histories were being written. The Varronian date, however, is not borne out by archaeology, which has revealed activity from the fifteenth century and permanent occupation from the tenth. On a natural bend in the Tiber, the area featured well-irrigated agricultural lands and nearby salt flats, probably the main reason that people permanently settled the place at the outset. The easily fordable Tiber made the location also a way-station for trade between the Etruscan north and the Campanian south. Thus, at anearly date the settlement came into contact with a host of foreign peoples and influences, from Phoenicians to Etruscans, Campanians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.6

The site was supposedly chosen by Romulus because it featured seven hills, although the local topography has to be quite generously manipulated – and undoubtedly was by antiquarians – in order to arrive at this number. Nonetheless, earliest Rome perhaps did encompass seven villages, as remembered via the Septimontium (Festival of the seven mounts) that took place annually on 11 December in historical times when ceremonies were held not on each of the canonical seven hills, but at the sites of the seven prehistoric villages that existed on just three: Germalus and Palatium on the Palatine; Velia at the foot of the Palatine, near one entrance to the future forum Romanum; Querquetulanus on the Caelian; and Oppius, Fagutal, and Cispius on the Esquiline. This festival as a whole, and its recognition of the Palatine's two villages, likely originated in and represents a proto-urban phase in the development of Rome; a time before the eighth century. The existence of a wall between Germalus and Palatium may indicate that these places at times even fought one another.7

As with the number seven, later Romans may also have been onto something with the date 753. While it certainly does not represent the city's foundation, in the eighth century the first hints of a synoecism are found and the villages apparently coalesce gradually into a single urban settlement. This period sees a greater amount of luxury goods, many of them Greek, coming into the area. Rome's first aristocracy are now displaying their wealth and beginning to utilize chamber tombs. In the decades to come, the first permanent houses, undoubtedly belonging to this same upper class, would be built. By the third quarter of the eighth century the settlement was probably united by the construction of an earthen wall, making it likely that the villages first came together for collective defence.

The existence of such a defensive work, however, has yet to be proven. The first site that we know with certainty to have been communal is the Forum, lying between the Velia, the Palatine and the Capitoline. Votive deposits on the latter indicate that it too came into communal religious use within a few decades of the Forum area being cleared in the mid seventh century, and within the same period was perhaps home to a wooden temple. The Forum itself probably first served as a central meeting place and market. Within a few decades it was expanded to create the first comitium, most likely for the comitia calata (called assembly) which, as the name suggests, was a gathering of all citizens to hear proclamations from the government as well as the announcement of the kalendae and the coming festival days.8

Though it is impossible to say with certainty, early Roman society appears to have been organized on the basis of clans or gentes (singular gens); units comprising multiple families who were not necessarily related to the wealthier families in control at the top. All Romans seem to have belonged to this structure and, like Scottish clans, each gens member, whether related or not, took the name of the top family. Thus by the eighth century each Roman had two names, his own and that of his gens, and within a couple of hundred years, as the gentes grew in size, larger units began to break away forming new clans, until by the sixth century most aristocrats had three names. Moreover, high-ranking members of a gens would have large groups of retainers (sodales; singular sodalis; archaic suodalis, suodales); not only is this almost certainly the origin of the later patron-client system in Rome, but is also likely to have been that of several, if not all, of Rome's kings as many of these groups acted as war-bands. While some of these formed Rome's earliest armies, others appear to have aggressively engaged in raiding and at times even conquest. The phenomenon of war-bands was frequently found in Etruscan society as well. Therefore, the “monarchical” period, which later Romans believed lasted from the mid eighth until the late sixth century, in all likelihood represents a time of rule by a series of local and foreign leaders heading gens -based war-bands who had either taken the city by force or reached a concordat with the population where their rule was exchanged for protection.9

This theory is buttressed by several points. Firstly, the kingship in Rome was not in any way hereditary, and, even if we are generous and add the other leaders of whom we know from this period — Titus Tatius, the brothers Vibenna, Mastarna, and Lars Porsenna — to the canonical list of seven Roman kings, 250 years is far too long a period for 12 men to have ruled in unbroken succession, and thus large gaps are likely to have existed between reigns. Moreover, Mastarna is not an actual name but an Etruscan title meaning magister or leader, in all likelihood in a military context: perhaps merely the title of either Caeles or Aulus Vibenna, brothers who certainly headed war-bands and probably conquered and ruled Rome at some point in the sixth century, or of the Roman king Servius Tullius, who one tradition claims was a suodalis of Caeles. Finally, these roving war-bands continued to exist well into the fifth century, fighting private wars and attempting to conquer small settlements, including Rome.

Therefore, while later Romans pictured their early kings more along the lines of Hellenistic rulers, and while the deeds of certain monarchs are doubtless mythological, there does appear to have been a significant period in Rome's early history where the city was under the rule of a succession of individuals at the head of powerful war-bands. Some of these certainly, as the legends state, did build up the settlement to the point where it might be described as a city, and were probably responsible for many of Rome's earliest permanent structures. This situation would last until the local aristocracy, following a well-established pattern that had long ago played itself out in Greece and other parts of Italy, felt strong enough to seize power and found what came to be called the Res Publica.

The Sixth Century and the Fallof the Monarchy

War-bands are also likely to have been responsible for the early Romans’ reputation as raiders and cattle rustlers, reflected both in the legend of Romulus and Remus and in stories of how the former populated early Rome with criminals and brigands. The raiding and pillaging of neighbors is ubiquitous in Livy's and Dionysius’ accounts of early Roman warfare. The rape of the Sabine women fits this context: as in many Indo-European traditions cattle and women are both seen as movable property. Indeed, the oldest version, from Fabius Pictor (fr. 9 (Beck and Walter) ) and repeated by Cicero (Rep. 2.12–14), sees the women as wholly passive; only Livy (1.9.6–10.1, 11.5–13.5), Ovid (Fasti 3.167–258), and Dionysius (2.30–47) later inject them with a personality. Dionysius, in fact, has the Romans carry off women from several different Italian peoples, as they had been doing for some time with neighbors’ livestock. The incident may equally reflect early conubium between the Romans and the Sabines of the nearby Quirinal hill, which may have ushered in a period of Sabine dominance as our next three kings, Titus Tatius, Numa Pompilius, and Ancus Marcius, are all Sabine. This time also saw the Sabine god Quirinus amalgamated into a divine triad with the Roman Jupiter and Mars, and from pre-literate times all Roman citizens were equally referred to as Romani or Quirites. Therefore it would appear as though some form of synoecism did take place in the eighth century between the Romans and their Sabine neighbors, perhaps brought about via the conquest of Rome by a series of Sabine warlords and their suodales.

Although on the surface the early leaders of Rome might have been clan warriors, some of them nevertheless must have come to act as kings in some way, embodying military, civil, judiciary, and religious authority, for the city did move beyond its belligerent gens -based roots. The archaic Latin inscription found under the Lapis Niger in the Forum, and to a lesser extent the fourth-century Etruscan tomb at Vulci (often known as the François Tomb), illustrate that Rome was indeed ruled by individuals exercising some sort of legitimate authority. While the tomb features a painting of Mastarna and the brothers Vibenna, proving only that people in the early Republican period believed the kings to have existed, the Lapis Niger inscription is more conclusive as it is possibly as early as 600 and clearly mentions a recs, archaic for rex (king). This is highly significant: the Lapis Niger is a small sacred area in the Forum that at one point served as a shrine for a king. It contained an altar and the columnar inscription — much of which is lost — and very likely a statue. Votive objects found in and around the site date from 575–550, confirming a slightly earlier construction date. This coincides with the building of the Regia as the king's residence just east of the Forum (a cup from 625–600, inscribed with the word rex, has been found nearby). In the Republican period, this building served as the home of the pontifex maxumus.10

Rome by the sixth century had emerged as a state with some form of organized government that went far beyond a simple rule of the sword. What caused, and accompanied, this shift was the growing power of the upper class in Rome to influence, and eventually to oppose, the monarch. The Roman people too reorganized in the same period. It is likely that these were simultaneous responses from both monarch and subjects to each other's growing power. What little organization the very early Roman state had was probably based on pagi, small districts or communities. As the villages gradually merged, political activity came to be based on the curia and the tribe, both ofwhich, supposedly instituted by Romulus himself, served as the basis for thecity's earliest military levies. There eventually came to be three tribes eachsubdivided into ten curiae. The latter, however, were heavily tied to the gentes — indeed, they almost certainly evolved out of the clan-based warrior bands described above — as membership was hereditary and each tended to be dominated by one particular family, whose head served as the leader of the curia. By the sixth century, just as the king was starting to operate out of the Regia, so too did the aristocracy begin to move away from the gentilician system and to reorder themselves.

In what clearly appears to be an early power-sharing agreement, the heads of the curiae organized themselves into a single body with the right to advise the reigning monarch. Membership was confined to men over 50; it was clearly envisioned as a council of elders, as is apparent from its name: senatus or senate, derived from senex (elderly man). That the curiae formed the basis of the earliest senate is plain from the fact that their chamber was called the Curia. Later Romans believed that it was built by the king Tullus Hostilius, and hence this building was often referred to as the Curia Hostilia, but his reign (672–641) is too early, as the foundations of the building go back only to around 600: a chronological symmetry exists between the new epicenter of aristocratic power, the Curia, and the seat of royal power in the Regia, constructed roughly at the same time.11

In between the Regia and the Curia stood the Comitium and within it the Lapis Niger. In this area the earliest voting assembly, the comitia curiata — with citizens divided, as the name suggests, by curiae — was by now meeting on a regular basis and had begun to vote upon issues that affected the entire community: war, peace, law, and, so we are told, the granting of formal power to a new king. The curiae probably evolved out of older clan-based war-bands, and this perhaps explains the Roman propensity for voting in blocks when in an organized assembly. That monarchs by the sixth century had to be formally confirmed in power by at least some citizens speaks volumes about the upper classes’ new potency.

In fact the Lapis Niger itself may be the greatest symbol of this potency: it defined the Comitium as public as opposed to royal space. And the king in its inscription may well have been Servius Tullius, who reorganized Rome's political and military structures midway through the sixth century. By this time the city certainly had a large enough population to make reforms necessary. And while some later constitutional changes are falsely ascribed to him (see below), it has been postulated that during his reign the comitia curiata was either created or reformed to introduce the hoplite phalanx. Other innovations involved new tribes still based on the gentes but tied increasingly to location rather than family.

The city was also now asserting its pre-eminence in Latium, and this necessitated using its army more frequently. Thus the new system should probably be seen as primarily military. This entire process, from institutionalizing the monarchy to strengthening aristocratic wealth and political power and organizing the citizenry for military levies, illustrates that Rome was now a fully-fledged state well beyond its roots as clan-based settlements ruled by warlords. These developments culminated with the fall of the monarchy sometime in the late sixth century. While this event was remembered by Romans through the mythological rape of Lucretia, in reality it repeated a phenomenon that had already played itself out around the Mediterranean. With the absence or death of a king around 509, the aristocracy at last felt powerful enough to take full control of the government. Although Lars Porsenna probably forced monarchy on the city one more time, until 504, the process had by then become unstoppable. Expelling Porsenna may have required military action, but really a revolution along the lines of the one led by Lucius Iunius Brutus is not necessary to understand the disappearance of the kingship. The sixth century thus marks a watershed in the history of early Rome.12

The Beginnings of the Republicand Rome's Early Wars

Unquestionably, whether the Republic was founded in 509, 508, or 504, the period was accompanied by a degree of strife and chaos. Despite the advances towards organized government, gens-based bands of warriors were still common in central Italy and the Romans found themselves frequently at war. More than one warlord attempted to take the city and install himself as its leader (n. 8). This new warfare had several effects: firstly famine, forcing the senate to seek a treaty with Carthage in order to allow grain be imported. This treaty, which Polybius (3.22.3–13) claims to have seen himself and is certainly historical, also gave the Republic a degree of legitimacy in that its government had been recognized by Carthage, the leading power in the western Mediterranean at the time. The concordat itself, furthermore, illustrates that outsiders were not always on the defensive at the end of the sixth century, as it makes clear that Rome, as well as Carthage, had territorial ambitions in central Italy, making this our first concrete evidence for both Roman and Carthaginian imperialism.

The second effect of this period of endemic warfare was civil strife, as we are told that as early as the mid-490s the citizens of Rome clamored for more political representation in return for their increased military responsibilities. This was the beginning of the so-called Struggle of the Orders, a conflict that supposedly continued down to 287. While some have dismissed the earliest accounts of stasis as unhistorical, and while two centuries of unabated political turmoil are unlikely, it is nonetheless possible that the “Struggle” was actually a series of independent political standoffs that were conflated into one by later Roman historians. The episodes by and large center on relations between the plebeians and the patricians. The latter, the patres of the state, evolved out of those wealthy families who had the right to send one of their members to the earliest form of the senate during the monarchical period. By the late sixth century this had become a closed caste, and in the early Republic they exercised a lock on political and religious offices.