This was now a second blow for the Romans, and one from which they did not recover: they did not think of making peace, yet they tried to carry on the war at less expense. The Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and they made use of their superiority to lay waste the Italian coasts; but they managed the war in a wretched manner. The Romans remained unshaken in Sicily, and thus, although indeed they shunned a general engagement, they took several strong places under the very eyes of the enemy, and reduced the Carthaginians to the possession of the north-western part of Sicily. In the year 501 (according to Cato), fortune turned her back upon the Carthaginians: L. Cæcilius Metellus defeated Hasdrubal near Palermo. Hasdrubal had tried to take advantage of the great fear which the Romans had of the African cavalry, and to recover Palermo, very likely with the connivance of the inhabitants: he encamped in its beautiful plain about half a (German) mile from the town, and ravaged the fields. Metellus kept himself in his fortified camp ready to fight: he showed himself here to be a great general, and made it his particular object to render the elephants harmless. The Carthaginians advanced to attack the camp: Metellus drew up all his light troops on the edge of the ditch, with a good supply of missiles; the legions manœuvred on the flanks. The light infantry now sallied forth against the enemy, enticed them on, and then threw themselves into the ditch, and hurled an immense number of javelins and burning arrows against the Carthaginians and their elephants: the camp-followers were constantly bringing them fresh ammunition from the town, and at the same time, the soldiers from behind the breast-works discharged their pila. The Carthaginians now wished to sweep them down with one mighty onset; but the elephants were wounded, and thus became wild, and several of them plunged into the trenches, from whence the light-armed soldiers of the Romans jumped behind the fortified lines, and the maddened beasts turned against their own masters. This was the moment for which Metellus had waited all along: from the sidegates of the lines, the legions burst forth, routed the Carthaginian infantry, and put their whole army to flight. More than a hundred elephants were captured. These were brought to Rome on rafts built for the purpose, and killed by missiles in the circus, perhaps to give the people a representation of the battle in which they had been taken.
This victory restored the courage of the Romans; yet the conclusion of the war was extremely hard to bring about, as they did not again venture over to Africa, and the Carthaginians made no attempts to recover what they had lost in Sicily. The latter were now pent up quite at the western end of the island; all that they had still left were the towns of Lilybæum, Drepana, and Eryx. The year after (502), the Romans therefore began the siege of Lilybæum, which lasted till the close of the war, yet not as a siege in form, but as a blockade. The part of the war which follows, might with great propriety be called the Lilybæan one. This last act is the finest on the side of the Carthaginians; the Romans distinguish themselves in it only by their perseverance.
The victory of Metellus in the fourteenth year of the war, was the first pitched battle, with the exception of that near Adin in Africa, in which the Romans had conquered. The siege of Lilybæum was undertaken by them under very unfavourable circumstances. The Carthaginians were in fact masters of the sea; but owing to the tremendous expenses of the war, they had retrenched their naval armaments as much as they possibly could: the Romans had again a fleet off Lilybæum, which was likewise of limited force, and not intended for sea-fights, yet sufficient to make the communication difficult with that town. Lilybæum is a Punic name; it means, according to Bochart, the place which lies towards Libya (לְלֻבִּי); it was without doubt a mixed Punico-Libyan colony, and at that time the only Punic town in Sicily, having been founded by the inhabitants of Motye, which had been destroyed by Dionysius. As Lilybæum was the residence of the Carthaginian general, it had grown into a considerable town just as did Carthagena in Spain; Palermo, on the contrary, was a thoroughly Greek city, peopled by Greeks and Hellenized Siculians and Sicanians, although it had long been under the Punic rule. Lilybæum had a good harbour, which was yet safer from its being so difficult to get into it. The sand which the south winds bring thither from the Syrtes, had already accumulated there, and formed a sort of lagune; owing to this very cause, the whole harbour of Marsala is now no longer in existence. The fortifications of the place were very strong.
Besides Lilybæum, three German miles from it, the Carthaginians had Drepana (the present Trapani) with its noble harbour, which even now, in spite of the attempts of Charles V. to fill it up, is excellent; and besides Drepana, the town of Eryx with the mountain of that name. Within this district the war was concentrated for nine years; this gave rise to the utter wretchedness of the island, which was quite ruined by it.
The Romans blockaded Lilybæum on the land side, and at the same time cruised before the harbour: they battered the wall, and pulled down part of it; but Himilco, the commander of the Carthaginians, withstood them with the most unflinching steadfastness. A disposition to treachery often showed itself among the troops of the Carthaginians; for they scarcely ever employed their citizens as soldiers, but only as officers, and some also in the cavalry; the main body therefore consisted of mercenaries, so that it is the more to be wondered at that the Carthaginians had distinguished generals. For this reason, they had now much trouble to secure the attachment of these soldiers, who were gathered together from all quarters, most of them being Greeks, Gauls and Spaniards; they could scarcely manage them by any other means than by the hope of gain. Hamilcar and Hannibal alone knew how to bind to themselves even these mixed masses by their own personal qualities; at all other times, these men were ready to commit every sort of treachery for money. Into a plot of this kind some of them now entered with the Roman consul; but an Achæan, Alexo, discovered it, and tried to counteract it; and so the rest were gained over by promises and sacrifices, and the traitors cast out. The Romans here, for the first time, betook themselves to the Greek method of besieging: before the Punic wars, there is nothing like a real siege, but only blockading and storming.[7] They made great progress, and threw down six towers (unless Polybius dates this circumstance too early). The Carthaginians communicated with the besieged by means of a bold seaman, who in a swift ship ventured to pass through the midst of the Roman fleet, and repeated the same feat several times. They ascertained that without speedy assistance, the town must be lost; and so they determined to send ten thousand men to its relief, who, to the great dismay of the Romans, made their way through their guardships. Just at first, the Carthaginians made a sally, which indeed led to no advantage; but soon afterwards, during a dreadful hurricane, they ventured upon a new and successful attack with every possible sort of contrivance for setting fire: as all the Roman machines were made of wood, they were every one of them burnt. It was high time, as six towers had already fallen (for to this period of the siege the notice in Polybius seems in fact to belong). The Romans must have felt convinced that after the loss of their battering engines, they could no longer do any harm to the town by merely blockading it; they tried therefore to throw up a mole across the entrance of the harbour. In this, however, they only succeeded so far, as in some measure to obstruct the communication of the Carthaginians with the town, which had hitherto been too free.
In the course of so long a war as this, some distinguished Carthaginian generals had already been formed; but not a single one among the Romans, whose advantage lay only in their troops. In 503, the Romans, without the enemy’s being aware of it, received reinforcements under the command of the consul P. Claudius, the son[8] of Ap. Claudius Cæcus, who had all the faults of his father, but none of his great qualities. He was a reckless, unprincipled man. On account of the great expense, Rome seems to have confined herself to one army. It is uncertain, whether Claudius had already come out as consul to Sicily before the sally of Himilco, or only after it. The Roman fleet was lying near Lilybæum, most of the vessels being drawn up on the strand, while only single ships rode out at sea to keep up the blockade; the sailors had been armed, and made to fight on shore. But infectious diseases had broken out to some extent, as might be expected, the small island of Sicily being quite exhausted by the war; many also had perished in the engagements, so that seamen were scarce. To remedy this defect, sailors were enlisted at Rome; they were, however, people of the lowest rank, whose property was under four hundred asses, and who had certainly never been at sea. Claudius now proposed in a council of war, to make an attempt to surprise by sea the port of Drepana, where the enemy’s fleet was stationed. The council, according to Polybius, seems to have approved of it. This writer indeed is himself of opinion that the undertaking was practicable; yet we can hardly believe it, when we see that it was so easily foiled. Claudius then set sail about midnight with the newly manned fleet; at the dawn of day, the Carthaginians beheld from their watch-towers that part of the Roman ships were already in the harbour. The fleet was sailing in a single line along the coast. The Carthaginian general Adherbal knew that, if he confined himself to the defence of the town, his ships in the harbour would be in great danger of being taken; he therefore ordered the ships to be quickly manned, and to sail out on the other side of the haven. His object was, to drive the Romans quite into the harbour along the coast, which was lined by the Carthaginian soldiers. The Roman consul now gave the signal for retreat; but this, owing to the narrow entrance of the harbour, occasioned the greatest confusion: the thronging of the ships which turned back, and of those, which, having received no counter order, were still coming in, was very great, and they were severely damaged. Outside the harbour, they found the Carthaginian fleet, which had better ships and better crews, already drawn up; and these now advanced to attack the Romans. The consul then placed his ships along the coast, with the πρύμνα towards the land, in a long line; the Carthaginians, having behind them the open sea, had the advantage of being able freely to manœuvre: it seems that the Romans made no more use of the boarding-bridges. Ninety-three Roman ships were taken, many were destroyed, not more than about thirty reached Lilybæum: with them was the consul Claudius. He was recalled: fierce reproaches were made against him that he was the cause of the disaster; that he had impiously scorned the auspices; that the birds of the augurs had refused to eat, and that thereupon he had ordered them to be thrown into the sea. He had to appoint a dictator: in mockery he named the son of a freedman, a client of his, one M. Claudius Glycia: the name of the grandfather is not mentioned in the Fasti. Since the curies had lost their power, it had become the right of the consul to appoint a dictator; whereas formerly he merely proclaimed him. P. Claudius was put on his trial: according to Polybius, and to judge from an expression of Cicero’s, he was condemned to a severe punishment; according to others, the comitia were dispersed by a thunderstorm, whereupon the matter was dropped, which seems to betoken the influence of a powerful party. When he was already dead, his sister likewise brought upon herself a severe punishment by her genuine Claudian insolence. Annoyed by the crowd in a procession, in which she took a part as a Vestal, she loudly exclaimed, it was a pity that her brother was no more alive to get rid of some of the rabble at sea. This also proves, that at that time the sailors were levied from the capite censi. She was prosecuted for a crimen majestatis before the plebeian ædiles, and condemned to pay a heavy fine. The dictator Claudius Glycia was of course induced by the senate and the people to resign his dignity. The conduct of Claudius is quite in keeping with the many acts of wanton insolence which were displayed by all his family; they may be traced from the middle of the fourth century down to the emperor Tiberius: the character for insolence is nearly hereditary in them. Immediately afterwards, another misfortune befalls the Romans. They had still kept up their spirits; for they already sent again eight hundred ships with provisions to Lilybæum, without doubt escorted by a considerable fleet, a proof of the importance of the commerce in the Mediterranean; but the ships of war were not sufficient to protect them. With this fleet the consul L. Junius sailed again through the straits of Messina to Syracuse, as the commissariat was chiefly dependent on the latter town; he there took in his full cargo, and very imprudently sent part of the fleet with some ships of war in advance. The Carthaginians under Carthalo put to sea to meet them, and so frightened them, that they laid to in a very bad roadsted among breakers, off the southern coast (between Agrigentum and Camarina), so that even Carthalo shrank from attacking them. L. Junius was very late before he set out from Syracuse, and when he found that Carthalo was lying between him and the other convoy, he likewise went to a bad roadsted. Then arose one of those terrific gales, which in Italy are always southerly winds. The Carthaginians, experienced seamen as they were, had the foresight to double Pachynus in time, and there they got into a safe harbour; the Romans, on the contrary, were driven by the Scirocco on the breakers off the coast, and were so completely wrecked that not a plank of their ships remained serviceable; out of the whole fleet, two ships only were saved. A great number of lives also were lost; the consul escaped, and retreated with the survivors by land towards Lilybæum. An opportunity now offered itself to him of doing something after all, even of surprising Eryx, a town, which lay on the slope of the mountain of the same name, at the top of which was the temple of Venus as an Acropolis. He made himself master of the town by means of bribery. This was the only advantage which the Romans gained this year.
The Romans now gave up the sea, with the exception of a few ships, and the war was hopeless for them: it required Roman perseverance, not to despair altogether. No doubt it was also somewhat earlier than this that the Carthaginians tried to get a loan from Ptolemy, 15,000,000 dollars, I believe; but he declared to them, that he would thus break his neutrality. The Romans helped themselves in every possible way by war-taxes; yet this struggle ate away their strength as well as that of the Carthaginians.
Now appeared the great Hamilcar Barcas. Whether he sprang from a high family, is unknown to us. Barcas, Barak (ברק), seems to mean lightning, even as the Scipios in Lucretius are called fulmina belli: Barka is the Syriac form. He enters upon the stage at once. His undertakings are not dazzling, he makes no conquests; but he retrieved the affairs of Carthage in Sicily by his indefatigable activity (unus illis restituit rem). Hamilcar, to my mind, is almost greater than his son; the whole of history does not know another instance of a father and son who were so eminently great in an art, as these two were: one must be born a general as well as a painter, or indeed any other kind of artist. Had Hamilcar guided the councils of the senate of Carthage earlier, the war would have ended to the disadvantage of Rome. Hamilcar began his career with an undertaking, which in boldness surpasses everything that we know. Near Palermo is Hercte, a mountain of considerable extent; from its name, there must have been there a state-prison; by its side is a harbour which was quite sufficient for the wants of the ships of war of those times. Here Hamilcar landed unexpectedly with a squadron; gained possession of the height by surprise or treachery; established himself in it, and remained in connexion with the fleet, which, at every opportunity, devastated from thence the coast of Italy as far as Cumæ, perhaps also with the intention of driving the allies into defection. He was himself just returned from a foray into Bruttium when he took up his position there, and he maintained himself, as in a fortress; he got reinforcements from time to time, but as for provisions, he had often barely enough to keep body and soul together. By his appearance in the field, the attention of the Romans was turned from the siege of Lilybæum. Battles were of daily occurrence; men fought from sheer exasperation. At the end of three years, he managed to get into communication with the town of Eryx, and made himself master of it quite unexpectedly. The Romans, however, still held the arx on the top of the mountain; and he now encamped between it and the town below, that by blockading the citadel, he might always give the Romans plenty to do, and thus draw them away from Lilybæum and Drepana, and wear them out. He fully attained his object; and so he remained four years in this position, without the Romans making any progress. This struggle shows what dogged resolution can do; and therefore Polybius himself, who had much experience in war, expresses the highest admiration for it. The communication with the sea was more difficult here, than even at Hercte. Hamilcar found himself there with an army of mercenary soldiers, hundreds of whom would certainly have sold their father and mother for a hundred pieces of gold; but such was the awe with which he inspired them, that not an attempt was made to practise any treachery against him. He now carried on the war in the most simple manner; Polybius says that it was not possible to relate its history, on account of the sameness of the incidents; we therefore know but very little of it. The engagements were often most bloody; yet they never afforded any decisive advantage to the Romans, not even when the Carthaginians were beaten. The newly discovered fragments of Diodorus contain an interesting anecdote. The year before the war was brought to a close, C. Fundanius, an obscure general, was fighting against Hamilcar, whose troops suffered a defeat, owing to the fault of Vodostor, a commander of the infantry. Hamilcar sought for a truce, that he might fetch the dead bodies and bury them; but the consul answered, that he ought rather to take care of the living, and to capitulate to him. A very short time afterwards, the Romans in their turn were soundly beaten; but Hamilcar told them, that as far as he was concerned, they might freely take away their dead, as he made war against the living only. This story, like others of the same kind, is no doubt from Philinus, who always represents the Carthaginians as generous.
The peculiar character of the war in Sicily impressed the Romans with the conviction, that without an immense effort they would not be able to bring it to an end. They therefore resolved upon building a third fleet, and had recourse to a very remarkable way of raising a loan. The property-tax, which had hitherto defrayed the expense of building the fleet,—it was so much per thousand,—could no more be levied, because the poor could not now pay it: it must until then have been a dreadful burthen upon the people. The state may have in the meanwhile sold much of the ager publicus; the cost besides of the administration of the republic was almost nothing, and indeed the allies also may have contributed much to the building of the former fleets. Of permanent loans the ancients had no idea: once, in the second Punic war, we meet with one which was more in the style of our own. The wealthy Romans now undertook to build two hundred ships at their own expense, on condition that the money was to be repaid to them should matters turn out well. This implies that in the event of a failure they renounced their claims. The fleet was built quite on a different plan from the former ones; for the Romans had got hold near Lilybæum of a very fine Carthaginian galley, and all the quinqueremes were constructed after its model. These were manned with particular care from the best sailors of all Italy; as marines, the best soldiers of the legions were employed. This time also, the Romans made no more use of the boarding-bridges. It is possible that the ships were better built owing to the very circumstance of their having been taken in hand by private individuals: all the public works were done by contract, and of course the censor could not always have his eye upon the way in which they were executed.
Upon the Carthaginians, the news of this building came quite unexpectedly. They too had broken up their fleet on account of the expense, and had confined themselves merely to what was strictly necessary; nor had they at Carthage any notion of making extraordinary sacrifices, as was done at Rome. They therefore equipped in all haste what ships they had, in order to convey reinforcements and provisions to Lilybæum, Drepana, and Eryx. These vessels, even those which were ships of war, laden with corn, and manned with marines who were by no means picked, arrived at the Ægatian islands, from whence they were to cross over to the coast, along which the Roman fleet was then cruising. The plan of the Carthaginians was, after having landed, to take in the best troops of Hamilcar as marines, and then to risk a sea-fight. The Roman fleet was under the command of the consul C. Lutatius Catulus, and of the prætor Q. Valerius Falto. They also had their doubts. A battle could not be avoided; it was therefore best to attack at once, while the Carthaginian ships were still heavily laden. Corn, when it is only pitched in loosely, and not put into sacks, is a very bad cargo, as it shifts with every wind. If then these were allowed to land, they would return with lightened ships, and with marines from Hamilcar’s army who were not afraid of fighting the Romans; yet the true advantage of the latter was indeed in the lightness of their galleys and the excellence of their troops. There was only this objection, that the Carthaginians had the wind in their favour, whilst the Romans would have with great difficulty to bear up against them with their oars,—a circumstance which among the ancients was very unfavourable in a sea-fight, as a ship which was going against the wind, offered a much greater surface to the stroke of the enemy. Hanno, the Carthaginian general, tried to cross over with full sails, and perhaps also with oars (the ancients had latteen sails); thus they came upon the Romans with double force, and it seemed a great risk for the latter to accept the battle. Nevertheless they did not shrink from it. The Carthaginians were hardly able to move their ships, and the bad condition of their troops gave the Romans such an advantage, that they won a complete victory. Both had played their last stake, so that the Carthaginians were ruined. The Romans took seventy of their ships, sank a number of them, and scattered the rest.