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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The First Punic War is a record of a dismal wastage of human life and of strategic ineptitude. Briefly the Roman mistakes may be summed up as follows. First, the popular assembly which accepted the alliance with Messana seems to have failed to realize that the Carthaginians were bound to try to eject them from Sicily; to fight Carthage Rome needed a navy; she had none of her own and even in the treaty with Hiero asked for no naval assistance. Secondly, Rome made her struggle in Sicily much harder because she alienated all the Greeks by her ungenerous treaty with Hiero and by the massacre of non-combatants at Agrigentum. Thirdly, she was very slow to realize that the only way to get the Carthaginians out of Sicily was to strike at Africa; Agathocles in 310 had already pointed the way. Fourthly, Regulus failed to enlist willing Numidians in his cavalry, although a strong cavalry was essential on the plains of Africa. Fifthly, Regulus was left with far too small a force. Lastly, Rome continued to change the command and appoint inexperienced men, though few were quite so incompetent as Regulus who, when faced by the elephants and phalanx of Xanthippus, massed his legionaries, thus making them an easy prey to the Carthaginian battering ram.
page 8 note 1 C.A.H. vii. 689.Google Scholar
page 10 note 1 C.A.H. viii. 41.Google Scholar
page 11 note 1 C.R. xlv. 124.Google Scholar
page 12 note 1 For Cannae I follow in general the account in C.A.H. viii. 53.Google Scholar
page 12 note 2 Compare the similar pocket in the Franco-British line in 1914, where the ‘horns’ were Paris and Verdun (the Battle of the Marne).
page 12 note 3 Tarn, W. W., Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments (a small but brilliant book).Google Scholar
page 13 note 1 For the danger of concentrating large numbers of troops in a restricted area where difficulties of provision are great, compare the way in which Napoleon encouraged the Austrians in 1796 to cram troops into Mantua. Similarly T. E. Lawrence made excellent use of the Turkish concentration of troops in Medina.
page 13 note 2 We might compare the similar situation in the Thirty Years War when Wallenstein refused to attack Gustavus in Nuremberg. Gustavus himself was forced to attack Wallenstein in a strong position, and his repulse, though militarily unimportant, had considerable political effects in destroying the prestige of Gustavus.
page 14 note 1 For the Spanish and African campaigns Scullard's, Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War (1930)Google Scholar is indispensable. Hart, Liddell, A Greater than Napoleon (1926), is also good.Google Scholar
page 18 note 1 The Romans had little fear of elephants now. At the Trebia they had learnt that, provided they could get out of the elephant's way, a prod in its hindquarters would ensure that it went straight onwards and so off the field.
