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THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.
The progress of nations was much slower in ancient days than now, and
these two rival empires continued their gradual growth and extension,
each on its own side of the great sea which divided them, for five
hundred years, before they came into collision. At last, however, the
collision came. It originated in the following way:
By looking at the map of Italy, the reader will see that the island of
Sicily is separated from the main land by a narrow strait called the
Strait of Messina. This strait derives its name from the town of
Messina, which is situated upon it, on the Sicilian side. Opposite
Messina, on the Italian side, there was a town named Rhegium. Now it
happened that both these towns had been taken possession of by lawless
bodies of soldiery. The Romans came and delivered Rhegium, and punished
the soldiers who had seized it very severely. The Sicilian authorities
advanced to the deliverance of Messina. The troops there, finding
themselves thus threatened, sent to the Romans to say that if they, the
Romans, would come and protect them, they would deliver Messina into
their hands.
The question, what answer to give to this
application, was brought before the Roman senate, and caused them great
perplexity. It seemed very inconsistent to take sides with the rebels of
Messina, when they had punished so severely those of Rhegium. Still the
Romans had been, for a long time, becoming very jealous of the growth
and extension of the Carthaginian power. Here was an opportunity of
meeting and resisting it. The Sicilian authorities were about calling
for direct aid from Carthage to recover the city, and the affair would
probably result in establishing a large body of Carthaginian troops
within sight of the Italian shore, and at a point where it would be easy
for them to make hostile incursions into the Roman territories. In a
word, it was a case of what is called political necessity; that is to
say, a case in which the interests of one of the parties in a contest
were so strong that all considerations of justice, consistency, and
honor are to be sacrificed to the promotion of them. Instances of this
kind of political necessity occur very frequently in the management of
public affairs in all ages of the world.
The coo test for Messina was, after all, however,
considered by the Romans merely as a pretext, or rather as an occasion,
for commencing the struggle which they had long been desirous of
entering upon. They evinced their characteristic energy and greatness in
the plan which they adopted at the outset. They knew very well that the
power of Carthage rested mainly on her command of the seas, and that
they could not hope successfully to cope with her till they could meet
and conquer her on her own element. In the mean time, however, they had
not a single ship and not a single sailor, while the Mediterranean was
covered with Carthaginian ships and seamen. Not at all daunted by this
prodigious inequality, the Romans resolved to begin at once the work of
creating for themselves a naval power.
The preparations consumed some time; for the Romans
had not only to build the ships, they had first to learn how to build
them. They took their first lesson from a Carthaginian galley which was
cast away in a storm upon the coast of Italy. They seized this galley,
collected their carpenters to examine it, and set woodmen at work to
fell trees and collect materials for imitating it. The carpenters
studied their model very carefully, measured the dimensions of every
part, and observed the manner in which the various parts were connected
and secured together. The heavy shocks which vessels are exposed to from
the waves make it necessary to secure great strength in the construction
of them; and, though the ships of the ancients were very small and
imperfect compared with the men-of-war of the present day, still it is
surprising that the Romans could succeed at all in such a sudden and
hasty attempt at building them.
They did, however, succeed. While the ships were
building, officers appointed for the purpose were training men, on
shore, to the art of rowing them. Benches, like the seats which the
oarsman would occupy in the ships, were arranged on the ground, and the
intended seamen were drilled every day in the movements and action of
rowers. The result was, that in a few months after the building of the
ships was commenced, the Romans had a fleet of one hundred galleys of
five banks of oars ready. They remained in harbor with them for some
time, to give the oarsmen the opportunity to see whether they could row
on the water as well as on the land, and then boldly put to sea to meet
the Carthaginians.
There was one part of the arrangements made by the Romans in preparing
their fleets which was strikingly characteristic of the determined
resolution which marked all their conduct. They constructed machines
containing grappling irons, which they mounted on the prows of their
vessels. These engines were so contrived, that the moment one of the
ships containing then should encounter a vessel of the enemy, the
grappling irons would fall upon the deck of the latter, and hold the two
firmly together, so as to prevent the possibility of either escaping
from the other. The idea that they themselves should have any wish to
withdraw from the encounter seemed entirely out of the question. Their
only fear was that the Carthaginian seamen would employ their superior
skill and experience in naval maneuvers in making their escape. Mankinds
have always regarded the action of the Romans, in this case, as one of
the most striking examples of military courage and resolution which the
history of war has ever recorded. An army of landsmen come down to the
sea-shore, and, without scarcely having ever seen a ship, undertake to
build a fleet, and go out to attack a power whose natives covered the
sea, and made her the sole and acknowledged mistress of it. They seize a
wrecked galley of their enemies for their model; they build a hundred
vessels like it; they practice maneuvers for a short time in port; and
then go forth to meet the fleets of their powerful enemy, with grappling
machines to hold them, fearing nothing but the possibility of their
escape.
The result was as might have been expected. The
Romans captured, sank, destroyed, or dispersed the Carthaginian fleet
which was brought td oppose them. They took the prows of the ships which
they captured and conveyed them to Rome, and built what is called a
rostral pillar of 'hem. A rostral pillar is a column ornamented with
such beaks or prows, which were, in the Roman language, called rostra.
This column was nearly destroyed by lightning about fifty years
afterward, but it was repaired and rebuilt again, and it stood then for
many centuries, a very striking and appropriate monument of this
extraordinary naval victory. The Roman commander in this case was the
consul Duilius. The rostral column was erected in honor of him. In
digging among the ruins of Rome, there was found what was supposed to be
the remains of this column, about three hundred and fifty years ago.
The Romans nosy prepared to carry the war into Africa itself. Of course
it was easy, after their victory over the Carthaginian fleet, to
transport troops across the sea to the Carthaginian shore. The Roman
commonwealth was governed at this time by a senate, who made the laws,
and by two supreme executive officers, called consuls. They thought it
was safer to have two chief magistrates than one, as each of the two
would naturally be a check upon the other. The result was, however, that
mutual jealousy involved them often in disputes and quarrels. It is
thought better, in modern times, to have but one chief magistrate in the
state, and to provide other modes to put a check upon any disposition 1
.... might evince to abuse his powers.
The Roman consuls, in time of war, took command of
the armies. The name of the consul upon whom it devolved to carry on the
war with the Carthaginians, after this first great victory, was Regulus,
and his name has been celebrated in every age, on account of his
extraordinary adventures in this campaign, and his untimely fate. How
far the story is strictly true it is now impossible to ascertain, but
the following is the story, as the Roman historians relate it: At the
time when Regulus was elected consul he was a plain man, living simply
on his farm, maintaining himself by his own industry, and evincing no
ambition or pride. His fellow-citizens, however, observed those
qualities of mind in him which they were accustomed to admire, and made
him consul. He left the city and took command of the army. He enlarged
the fleet to more than three hundred vessels. He put one hundred and
forty thousand men on board, and sailed for Africa. One or two years had
been spent in making these preparations, which time the Carthaginians
had improved in building new ships; so that, when the Romans set sail,
and were moving along the coast of Sicily, they soon came in sight of a
larger Carthaginian fleet assembled to oppose them. Regulus advanced to
the contest. The Carthaginian fleet was beaten as before. The ships
which were not captured or destroyed made their escape in all
directions, and Regulus went on, without further opposition, and landed
his forces on the Carthaginian shore. He encamped as soon as he landed,
and sent back word to the Roman senate asking what was next to be done.
The senate, considering that the great difficulty and
danger, viz., that of repulsing the Carthaginian fleet, was now past,
ordered Regulus to send home nearly all the ships and a very large part
of the army, and with the rest to commence his march toward Carthage.
Regulus obeyed: he sent home the troops which had been ordered home, and
with the rest began to advance upon the city.
Just at this time, however, news came out to him that the farmer who had
had the care of his land at home had died, and that his little farm, on
which rested his sole reliance for the support of his family, was going
to ruin. Regulus accordingly sent to the senate, asking them to place
some one else in command of the army, and to allow him to resign his
office, that he might go home and take care of his wife and children.
The senate sent back orders that he should go on with his campaign, and
promised to provide support for his family, and to see that some one was
appointed to take care of his land. This story is thought to illustrate
the extreme simplicity and plainness of all the habits of life among the
Romans in those days. It certainly does so, if it is true. It is,
however, very extraordinary, that a man who was intrusted, by such a
commonwealth, with the command of a fleet of a hundred and thirty
vessels, and an army of a hundred and forty thousand men, should have a
family at home dependent for subsistence on the hired cultivation of
seven acres of land. Still, such is the story.
Regulus advanced toward Carthage, conquering as he
came. The Carthaginians were beaten in one field after another, and were
reduced, in fact, to the last extremity, when an occurrence took place
which turned the scale. This occurrence was the arrival of a large body
of troops from Greece, with a Grecian general at their head. These were
troops which the Carthaginians had hired to fight for them, as was the
case with the rest of their army. But these were Greeks, and the Greeks
were of the same race, and possessed the same qualities, as the Romans.
The newly-arrived Grecian general evinced at once such military
superiority, that the Carthaginians gave him the supreme command. He
marshaled the army, accordingly, for battle. He had a hundred elephants
in the van. They were trained to rush forward and trample down the
enemy. He had the Greek phalanx in the center, which was a close,
compact body of many thousand troops, bristling with long, iron-pointed
spears, with which the men pressed forward, bearing every thing before
them. Regulus was, in a word, ready to meet Carthaginians, but he was
not prepared to encounter Greeks. His army was put to flight, and he was
taken prisoner. Nothing could exceed the excitement and exultation in
the city when they saw Regulus, and five hundred other Roman soldiers,
brought captive in. A few days before, they had been in consternation at
the imminent danger of his coming in as a ruthless and vindictive
conqueror.
The Roman senate were not discouraged by this
disaster. They fitted out new armies, and the war went on, Regulus being
kept all the time at Carthage as a close prisoner. At last the
Carthaginians authorized him to go to Rome as a sort of commissioner, to
propose to the Romans to exchange prisoners and to make peace. They
exacted from him a solemn promise that if he was unsuccessful he would
return. The Romans had taken many of the Carthaginians prisoners in
their naval combats, and held them captive at Rome. It is customary, in
such cases, for the belligerent nations to make an exchange, and restore
the captives on both sides to their friends and home. It was such an
exchange of prisoners as this which Regulus was to propose.
When Regulus reached Rome he refused to enter the but he appeared before
the senate without the walls, in a very humble garb, and with the most
subdued and unassuming demeanor. He was no r-:t r. he said, a Roman
officer, or even citizen, but Carthaginian prisoner, and he disavowed
all right to direct, or even to counsel, the Roman authorities in
respect to the proper course to be pursued. His opinion was, however, he
said, that the Romans ought not to make peace or to exchange prisoners.
He himself and the other Roman prisoners were old and infirm, and not
worth the exchange; and, moreover,
had no claim whatever on their country, as they could only have been
made prisoners in consequence of -,aunt of courage or patriotism to die
in their country's cause. He said that the Carthaginians were tired of
the war, and that their resources were exhausted, that the Romans ought
to press forward in it with renewed vigor, and leave himself and the
other prisoners to their fate.
The senate came very slowly and reluctantly to the
conclusion to follow this advice. They, however, earnestly joined in
attempting to persuade Regulus that he was under no obligation to return
to Carthage. His promise, they said, was extorted by the stances of the
case, and was not binding. Regulus, however, insisted on keeping his
faith with his enemies. He sternly refused to see his family, and,
bidding the senate farewell, he returned to Carthage. The Carthaginians,
exasperated at his having himself interposed to prevent the success of
his mission, tortured him for some time in the most cruel manner, and
finally put him to death. One would think that he ought to have
counseled peace and an exchange of prisoners, and he ought not to have
refused to see his unhappy wife and children; but it was certainly very
noble in him to refuse to break his word.
The war continued for some time after this, until, at
length, both nations became weary of the contest, and peace was made.
The following is the treaty which was signed. It shows that the
advantage, on the whole, in this first Punic war, was on the part of the
Romans:
"There shall be peace between Rome and Carthage. The Carthaginians shall
evacuate all Sicily. They shall not make war upon any allies of the
Romans. They shall restore to the Romans, without ransom, all the
prisoners which they have taken from them, and pay them within ten years
three thousand two hundred talents of silver."
The war had continued twenty-four years. |
