A History of Sea Power. Allan F. Westcott
2: General History, Polybius, Bk. III, chap. 3.]
A second and a third treaty emphasized even mare strongly the Carthaginian dictatorship over the Mediterranean.
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| SCENE OF THE PUNIC WARS |
It was inevitable, therefore, that as Rome expanded her interests should come in collision with those of Carthage. The immediate causes of the Punic wars are of no consequence for our purpose; the two powers had rival interests in Sicily, and the clash of these brought on the war in the year 264 B.C. There followed a mortal struggle between Rome and Carthage that extended through three distinct wars and a period of aver a hundred years.
When the two nations faced each other in arms, Carthage had the advantage of prestige and the greatest navy in the world. Her weaknesses lay in the strife of political factions and the mercenary character of her forces. Her officers were usually Carthaginians, but it was considered beneath the dignity of a Carthaginian to be a private. The rank and file, therefore, were either hired or pressed into service from the subject provinces. In the case of Xanthippus, who defeated Regulus in the first Punic war, even the commanding officer was a Spartan mercenary. These troops would do well so long as campaigns promised plunder but would became disaffected if things went wrong.
The Romans, on the other hand, had only a small navy and no naval experience; their strength lay in their legionaries. And in further contrast with their enemy they had none but Romans in their forces, or allies who were proud of fighting on the side of Rome. Consequently they fought in the spirit of intense patriotism which could stand the moral strain of defeat and even disaster. On land there was no better fighter than the Roman soldier. At sea, however, all the advantage lay with the Carthaginian, and it soon became clear that if the Romans were to succeed they would have to learn to fight on water.
For the first three years Carthaginian fleets raided the coasts of Sicily and Italy with impunity. Finally, in desperation, Rome set about the creation of a fleet, and the story is that a Carthaginian quinquereme that had been wrecked an the coast was taken as a model, and while the ships were building, rowers were trained in rowing machines set up an shore. The first contact with the enemy was not encouraging. The new fleet, which was constructed in two months, consisted of 100 quinqueremes and 30 triremes. Seventeen of these while on a trial cruise were blockaded in the harbor of Messina by twenty Carthaginian ships, and the Roman commander was obliged to surrender after his crews had landed and escaped.
The next encounter was a different story. The Romans, realizing their ignorance of naval tactics and their superiority in land fighting, determined to make the next naval battle as nearly as possible like an engagement of infantry. Accordingly the ships were fitted with boarding gangways with a huge hooked spike at the end, like the beak of a crow, which gave them their name, "corvi" or "crows."[1]
[Footnote 1: The following is the description in Polybius of what they were like and how they were worked.
"They [the Romans] erected on the prow of every vessel a round pillar of wood, of about twelve feet in height, and of three palms breadth in diameter, with a pulley at the top. To this pillar was fitted a kind of stage, eighteen feet in length and four feet broad, which was made ladder-wise, of strong timbers laid across, and cramped together with iron: the pillar being received into an oblong square, which was opened for that purpose, at the distance of six feet within the end of the stage. On either side of the stage lengthways was a parapet, which reached just above the knee. At the farthest end of this stage or ladder was a bar of iron, whose shape was somewhat like a pestle; but it was sharpened at the bottom, or lower point; and on the top of it was a ring. The whole appearance of this machine very much resembled those that are used in grinding corn. To the ring just mentioned was fixed a rope, by which, with the help of the pulley that was at the top of the pillar, they hoisted up the machines, and, as the vessels of the enemy came near, let them fall upon them, sometimes on their prow, and sometimes on their sides, as occasion best served. As the machine fell, it struck into the decks of the enemy, and held them fast. In this situation, if the two vessels happened to lie side by side, the Romans leaped on board from all parts of their ships at once. But in case that they were joined only by the prow, they then entered two and two along the machine; the two foremost extending their bucklers right before them to ward off the strokes that were aimed against them in front; while those that followed rested the boss of their bucklers upon the top of the parapet on either side, and thus covered both their flanks." GENERAL HISTORY, Book 1.]
Armed with this new device, the Consul Duilius took the Roman fleet to sea to meet an advancing Carthaginian fleet and encountered it off the port of Mylæ (260 B.C.). The Carthaginians had such contempt for their enemy that they advanced in irregular order, permitting thirty of their ships to begin the battle unsupported by the rest of the fleet. One after the other the Carthaginian quinqueremes were grappled and stormed, for once the great corvus crashed down on a deck all the arts of seamanship were useless. Before the day was over the Carthaginians had lost 14 ships sunk and 31 captured, a total of half their fleet, and the rest had fled in disorder towards Carthage.
The unexpected had happened, as it so frequently does in history. The amateurs had beaten the professionals, not by trying to achieve the same efficiency but by inventing something new that would make that efficiency useless. Thus, as we nave seen, the Syracusans, who were no match for the Athenians in the open sea, destroyed the sea power of Athens by bottling up her fleet in a harbor and bombarding it with catapults. It is an instance such as we shall see recurring throughout naval history, in which the power of a great fleet is largely or completely neutralized by a new or device in the hands of the nation with the smaller navy.
The significance of Mylæ lay in the fact that a new naval power had arisen, that henceforth Rome must be reckoned with on the sea. The victory served to encourage the Romans to enlarge their navy, and with it to press the war into the enemy's territory. Soon after Mylæ they gained possession of the greater part of Sicily, and in the year 256 they dispatched a fleet to carry the offensive into Africa. This Roman fleet of 330 ships met, just off Ecnomus, on the southern coast of Sicily, a Carthaginian fleet of 350, and a great battle took place, interesting for the grand scale on which it was fought and the tactics employed.
The Romans, an seeing their enemy, assumed a formation hitherto unknown in tactics at sea. Their first and second squadrons formed the sides of an acute-angled triangle; the third squadron formed the base of the triangle, towing the transports, and the fourth squadron brought up the rear, covering the transports. The whole formed a compact wedge, pushing forward like a great spear head to pierce the enemy's line.
Admirable as this formation was, the Carthaginians were no less skillful in their tactics for destroying it. Instead of keeping an unbroken line to receive the attack, they stationed their left wing at same distance from the center so as to overlap the Roman right, and their right wing in column ahead, so as to overlap the Roman left. As the Romans advanced, the Carthaginian center purposely gave way, drawing the advance wings of their enemy away from the transports and the two squadrons in the rear. Then they faced about and attacked. Meanwhile the two Carthaginian squadrons on the flanks swung round the Roman wedge, the left wing engaging the Roman third squadron, which was hampered by the transports, and driving it toward the shore. At the same time the Carthaginian right wing attacked the fourth, or reserve, squadron from the rear and drove it into the open sea. Thus the battle went on in three distinct engagements, each separated by considerable distance from the others. The outcome is thus narrated by Polybius:
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| ROMAN FORMATION AT ECNOMUS |
"Because in each of these divisions the strength of the combatants was nearly equal, the success was also for some time equal. But in the progress of the action the affair was brought at last to a decision: a different one, perhaps, from what might reasonably have been expected in such circumstances. For the Roman