First Punic War (264–241 BC)

The empire of Carthage was a union of Phoenician cities and trading posts against Greek expansion into the western Mediterranean. Particularly contested was the island of Sicily, the western part of which Carthage was able to hold against all Greek attacks. On the eve of the conflict with Rome, the core territory of the Carthaginians included the northern coast of Africa in the area of the present-day states of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco, as well as western Sicily, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and the southeastern coast of present-day Spain. Characteristic was the strong orientation towards the sea with weak control over the hinterland. Jochen Bleicken describes Carthage's elite with the older research as a "merchant aristocracy"; the army had consisted to a considerable extent of mercenaries (Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Greeks). Walter Ameling challenges this thesis: mainly as rowers in the fleet, but also as noble foot-soldier elite troops and as chariot fighters, numerous Carthaginians had themselves been involved in the wars waged by their empire. This implies military training even in peacetime and a military ethos of Carthaginian society.

The question of which treaties existed between Rome and Carthage before the beginning of the First Punic War is controversially discussed in research and is also influenced by the overall picture that the respective historian draws of the Carthaginian or Roman elite: Were the Carthaginian nobility, as a "merchant aristocracy", mainly concerned with opening up new markets and trading advantages, or did they have a military self-image? Was the Roman nobility a meritocracy, in which consuls had to legitimize themselves through military successes, and therefore inclined to adventures? In contrast, what role did legal considerations play in the decisions of the Senate?

The first Carthaginian-Roman treaty (circa 508/507 BC) and the second treaty between the two empires (348 BC) were not agreements of equals; rather, Carthage was clearly in the stronger position. In the first treaty, Rome accepted a ban on its warships sailing off the North African coast, while Carthaginian ships were allowed to operate freely off the coast of Latium, and only Latin cities under Roman suzerainty were protected from their piratical actions. The west of Sicily, controlled by Carthage, appears to be a kind of free trade zone; Carthage encouraged Roman trade here. The second treaty, according to Klaus Zimmermann, came about at Rome's request. It reflected the situation of Rome, which was tied up in struggles for supremacy in central Italy. It was apparently desired that Carthage, as a foreign power, become active in Latium in a way that harmed Rome's opponents. Rome abandoned Latium, so far as it was not directly under Roman control, to Carthaginian attack, thus weakening the independent cities of Latium, which were not safe from Carthaginian piracy even by a peace treaty with Rome. Carthage, on the other hand, opened only its own metropolis and western Sicily to Roman trade, thus excluding any kind of Roman presence in much of its dominion. Rome had to be interested in replacing the terms of this treaty with a better agreement once it extricated itself from its military predicament. This apparently happened in the late 4th century. Titus Livius wrote that the alliance with Carthage was renewed for the third time in 306 B.C., but he seems to count the treaty of 348 as the first treaty, so that between 348 and 306 another treaty would have to be assumed, the contents of which are not known.

Since the end of the 4th century, there was probably an agreement between Rome and Carthage that defined the Strait of Messina as the border of both spheres of influence. According to this, Sicily belonged to Carthage. The existence of this so-called Philinos Treaty (306 BC) was disputed by the basically pro-Roman ancient historian Polybios with the argument that he had not seen such a treaty in the Roman archives (Aerarium); however, Polybios also mentioned that he did not research the archives independently, but that documents were presented to him. It seems reasonable that a treaty that so blatantly wronged the Roman intervention in Messana might have later disappeared from the archives. On the other hand, for those historians who doubt the existence of the Philinos treaty (and thus follow Polybios' account), a treaty fixing the spheres of influence of Rome and Carthage was "too good to be true" (Dexter Hoyos).

In 279/78 there was another treaty between Rome, by now a regional power in central Italy, and Carthage. Pyrrhos of Epirus had defeated two Roman armies in lower Italy; now he was asked by Syracuse to intervene in Sicily. A pact between Pyrrhus and Rome would have given Pyrrhus a free hand to intervene in Sicily in favor of the Greeks. To dissuade Rome from such a separate peace, Carthage offered Rome the support of its fleet. Rome agreed and in this way avoided having to make peace on Pyrrhos' terms after two defeats of her own. What is remarkable about the Treaty of Pyrrhos is that it reaffirmed the terms of a previous treaty. If the treaty of 306 had been a fiction of Philinos, Rome would have agreed to the terms of 348 in 279/78 - hard to imagine given Rome's now increased importance. The treaty of 279/78 presupposes that Rome and Carthage had already agreed on a boundary between their spheres of interest, another indication of the historicity of the Philinos treaty.

The Roman Empire dominated lower Italy since the victory over Pyrrhos in 275 BC. Initially, Rome, a land power, had no conflict of interest with Carthage, a naval power with which it had been allied against the Greeks on several occasions, including in the Pyrrhic War. Rome's suzerainty over the Greek cities of Lower Italy, however, tended to lead Rome to take over the interests of these cities and thus to antagonize Carthage.

Messana between Syracuse, Carthage and Rome

The cause of the First Punic War was that the Romans came to the aid of the Mamertines living in Messana (Messina) in 264 BC. The Mamertines were former Italic mercenaries who had gained control of the city by killing or expelling the previous inhabitants. Later they got into a regional conflict with Syracuse, the most important city of the Greeks living in eastern Sicily. The ruler of Syracuse at this time was Hieron II, who defeated the Mamertines in 270/269 at the Battle of Longanos. The most important ancient source on the Punic Wars, Polybios, describes the consequences thus:

Five years lay between the defeat and the request for help; the causality suggested by Polybios is therefore questionable. Polybios writes in the quoted passage that there were two parties among the Mamertines ("partly ... partly"), one of which surrendered the acropolis of Messana to the Carthaginians, while the other offered the Romans control of the city. However, it is hard to imagine that the Mamertines sent two legations to Carthage and to Rome at the same time in their time of need, and so there is a tendency in research to correct Polybios.

Carl Neumann's solution has been adopted by many historians: According to it, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal persuaded the Mamertines to accept a Carthaginian garrison, which deprived Hieron II of the fruits of his victory at Longanos. No sooner had Hieron retreated to Syracuse and Hannibal left the port of Messana than the Mamertines "by cunning or force ... disposed of the weak garrison," and Hieron thereupon resumed the siege of Messana. After wild internal strife, the Mamertines decided to ask Rome for help. But while the Senate in Rome was still debating, the pro-Carthaginian party in Messana entered into negotiations with the Carthaginian admiral Hanno, and the latter "knew how to thwart the annexation of the city to Rome": Messana received a Carthaginian garrison for the second time, and the pro-Roman party among the Mamertines, cowed, complied. Neumann thus made two successive Carthaginian occupations of the Acropolis without any clue in the ancient tradition.

Alternatively, Matthias Gelzer and Johannes Hendrik Thiel argue that two simultaneous Mamertine legations to Carthage and to Rome were a fiction with which Polybios, or his source Quintus Fabius Pictor, exonerated the Roman nobility. For if Messana was under Carthaginian control, a request for help from the Mamertines in 264 meant that the Romans were being used to rid themselves of the Carthaginian occupation, and Rome intervened not to repel Syracuse and forestall the Carthaginians, but "to oust Carthage from its position as the protecting power of Messana, which it had held since 269."

Another solution is proposed by Jochen Bleicken: After the defeat at Longanos, the Mamertines requested a Carthaginian garrison, which they later urged to withdraw. As a result, Messana was besieged jointly by Syracuse and Carthage in 264 and now requested Roman help. Accordingly, there was no Carthaginian garrison at Messana when Roman troops arrived there.

Senate, consuls and popular assembly as political actors of Rome

According to Polybios, the Roman decision to accept the request for help and to intervene in Sicily came about in an unusual way. The senate had discussed for a long time without any result.

Historians interpret this passage differently. For Klaus Zimmermann, the Senate was the political actor that had to decide on an intervention in Sicily, and if Rome intervened, a majority in the Senate was in favour. The legal dubiousness of this military undertaking (emphasized by the minority in the Senate critical of the war) was the reason why the people's assembly was brought into play:

• Either the senate had a suitably prepared popular assembly decide on the war.
• Or the Roman historian Quintus Fabius Pictor, in view of the loss of the war, had attributed the responsibility for it to the plebs and their desire to make booty; an account which Polybios uncritically followed.

Bruno Bleckmann, on the other hand, considers it historical that the Senate was reluctant to intervene in Sicily. He reconstructs the political processes as follows: The two consuls, and here especially Appius Claudius Caudex, prevailed against the Senate with the help of the popular assembly that Rome accepted the Mamertines' request for help. The second consul Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, in fact, was besieging Volsinii, and Appius Claudius was seeking for himself a command equally rich in prestige and spoils. The people's assembly-so it may be supposed-established in 264 that the Mamertine aid was the official duty (provincia) of one of the two consuls. That the senate hesitated was understandable, because a large part of the Roman army was tied up in the siege of Volsinii.

The consuls' striving for prestige, a recurring motif in the further course of the war, is a consequence of the political system of the (middle) Roman Republic, which can be characterized as a "meritocracy": Rule is justified by merit. According to Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, the consuls did not act out of personal vanity, but as representatives of their family; they drew on the merits of their ancestors, which were attributed to them quasi as "credit", but they were expected to contribute to the prestige of their family through their own great deeds. A good name could fade if the "symbolic capital" was not renewed by countable honors. Members of the political ruling class (nobility) competed for these honors.

Hans-Joachim Gehrke points out that in the case of a triumph not only the triumphator and the soldiers involved were celebrated, but the entire society celebrated itself and religiously assured itself that Rome's wars always ended victoriously. This was a strong motive for the population to continue the war even after heavy defeats, because it was already anticipated that Rome would triumph in the end.

Ancient war guilt discussion

Eberhard Ruschenbusch asks behind the report of Polybius how his two sources Quintus Fabius Pictor and Philinos evaluate the question of war guilt. He emphasizes that for ancient understanding the question of guilt was not decided by how the Roman intervention in Sicily proceeded in detail, but whether it was fundamentally legitimate. Philinos thus leveled a double charge against Rome: crossing the Straits of Messina was a breach of treaty, for Sicily was stipulated by treaty as Carthage's sphere of interest, and (a subsidiary argument) Roman aid to the Mamertine robber state was immoral. Fabius did not dispute the authenticity of the Philinos treaty, Ruschenbusch argues, but claimed that Carthage had broken the treaty first and that Rome was therefore no longer bound by it. Against the moral argument of Philinos, Fabius used the strategic argument that Rome's existence had been threatened by Carthage's alleged expansion and therefore had to prevent Carthage's control over all of Sicily.

Ruschenbusch concludes from these considerations that there was no interest in clarifying the guilt of war by describing the military actions. The description of the course of the war was rather uniform in the drafts of all ancient authors (Dio-Zonaras, Polybios, Diodorus) in broad outlines, not in the details. While Dio-Zonaras offers a coherent course of events, Polybios has tightened the course of the First Punic War, which was only a secondary topic in his work of history, to such an extent that his account is misleading. Here the comparison with Dio-Zonaras and Diodorus helps.

Roman expansionism

Polybios followed his source Quintus Fabius Pictor and presented Carthage as a threat to Rome on the eve of the First Punic War. Accordingly, a Rome that was actually defensive defended itself with a pre-emptive strike against the encirclement by Carthage. But neither did the Carthaginians dominate large parts of the Iberian peninsula in 264, as Polybios claims at this point, nor did they control almost all of Sicily. Rather, the Iberian Peninsula was a region in which Carthage expanded after its defeat in the First Punic War in order to compensate for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia. That Carthage would have controlled much of both the territory of modern Spain and Sicily on the eve of the First Punic War is therefore an anachronistic combination of territories that Carthage controlled at different times. Nor did Carthaginian policy give the Senate of Rome any reason to feel threatened; on the contrary, Carthage signaled that it accepted the Roman expansion of power in lower Italy.

Bruno Bleckmann sees Rome after the conquest of Lower Italy in an expansion movement that developed a momentum of its own; the fact that this expansion from Lower Italy spread to Sicily and not, for example, to Upper Italy, can be explained partly by historical coincidence, partly by the expectation of rich booty. The intervention in favour of the Mamertines could have appeared as a locally limited military measure without great risk.

Klaus Zimmermann also sees Roman expansionism as the cause of war, since war successes brought "career building blocks" to the upper class and booty to the common soldier. Rome, however, wanted to wage just wars and attribute the responsibility for its own defeat and the resulting consequences to the enemy.