First Punic War (264-241 BC): Rome and Carthage Clash at Sea

The First Punic War (264–241 BC) was the first of three wars between the Roman Republic and Carthage, the great Phoenician trading city in North Africa. Fought mainly over Sicily and in the seas around it, the war forced Rome, until then a land power, to build a fleet from scratch and beat the leading naval power of the western Mediterranean. Its outcome gave Rome its first province outside Italy and set the stage for the far more famous struggle with Hannibal.

Background: two powers meet in Sicily

By the 260s BC Rome had brought the Italian peninsula south of the Po valley under its control, completing the process with the defeat of Pyrrhus of Epirus and the surrender of Tarentum in 272 BC. Carthage, founded by settlers from Tyre, controlled much of the North African coast, Sardinia, parts of southern Spain and the western half of Sicily. The two cities had signed several treaties and had even cooperated against Pyrrhus.

Sicily was rich in grain and divided between Carthaginian territory in the west and Greek cities in the east, led by Syracuse under Hiero II. At Messana (modern Messina), on the strait facing Italy, a band of Campanian mercenaries called the Mamertines (“sons of Mars”) had seized the city around 288 BC. When Hiero defeated them, the Mamertines asked for help, first from a Carthaginian squadron and then from Rome.

Outbreak of war in 264 BC

The Roman decision to accept the Mamertine appeal was controversial even in antiquity. Polybius says the Senate hesitated, and that the popular assembly voted for intervention, attracted by the prospect of plunder. In 264 BC the consul Appius Claudius Caudex crossed the strait. The Carthaginian garrison had already left Messana, but Carthage and Syracuse now joined forces against Rome.

Roman success came quickly on land. In 263 BC Hiero II changed sides, signing a treaty with Rome that kept Syracuse independent and loyal for the rest of his long life. In 262–261 BC the Romans besieged and captured Agrigentum (Greek Akragas), Carthage’s main base on the south coast, after a siege of about seven months. The city was sacked and many inhabitants were sold into slavery.

Rome takes to the sea

Victory on land could not win the war while Carthage ruled the sea, supplied its fortresses and raided the Italian coast. In 260 BC Rome made one of the most remarkable decisions in its history. Polybius records that it built 100 quinqueremes (large warships with oarsmen arranged in groups of five) and 20 triremes, and later writers such as Pliny the Elder say the work took about 60 days, using a stranded Carthaginian ship as a model. Rowers practised on benches set up on land.

The first encounter went badly: the consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio was trapped with 17 ships at Lipara and captured, earning the nickname Asina (“she-ass”). Weeks later his colleague Gaius Duilius won a striking victory at the Battle of Mylae, off north-east Sicily. His ships carried the corvus (“raven”), a hinged boarding bridge with an iron spike that locked onto an enemy deck and let Roman marines storm across.

Invasion of Africa and disaster

In 256 BC Rome decided to strike at Carthage itself. Its fleet of some 330 ships met an even larger Carthaginian fleet at the Battle of Cape Ecnomus, off southern Sicily, possibly one of the largest naval battles in history by number of men. The Romans won and landed in Africa near Aspis (Clupea).

The consul Marcus Atilius Regulus defeated a Carthaginian army at Adys and offered peace terms so harsh that Carthage refused them. Carthage hired a Spartan mercenary commander, Xanthippus, who reorganised its army around cavalry and war elephants. In 255 BC he crushed Regulus near Tunis; only about 2,000 Romans escaped and Regulus was taken prisoner. Later Roman tradition told that he was sent to Rome on parole, urged the Senate to reject peace and returned to Carthage to be tortured to death, a story many historians regard as patriotic legend.

Worse followed. The fleet that rescued the survivors was caught in a storm off Camarina in southern Sicily in 255 BC; Polybius says only 80 of 364 ships survived. Another fleet was wrecked in 253 BC. Rome’s inexperience in seamanship, and perhaps the top-heavy corvus, cost it far more men than enemy action did.

Stalemate in western Sicily

The war became a long struggle for the Carthaginian strongholds of western Sicily. Rome captured Panormus (Palermo) in 254 BC and in 250 BC Lucius Caecilius Metellus defeated a Carthaginian army outside the city, capturing many of its elephants. Rome then besieged Lilybaeum (Marsala), Carthage’s main fortress, for nearly a decade without taking it.

In 249 BC the consul Publius Claudius Pulcher attacked the Carthaginian fleet at Drepana (Trapani) and lost most of his ships. Later writers said he had thrown the sacred chickens overboard when they refused to eat, a bad omen, saying “let them drink”. In the same year a second Roman fleet was destroyed by storm. For several years Rome effectively abandoned the sea.

From 247 BC Carthage’s commander in Sicily was Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal. From bases on Mount Heircte near Panormus and later at Eryx (Erice), he waged a skilful war of raids and harassment. He was never defeated in the field, but he could not drive the Romans out.

Victory at the Aegates Islands

By 242 BC the Roman treasury was exhausted. Wealthy citizens privately funded a new fleet of about 200 quinqueremes, built to a lighter design copied from a captured fast Carthaginian ship, on the understanding that they would be repaid if the war was won. Under the consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus the fleet blockaded Lilybaeum and Drepana.

Carthage sent a relief fleet under Hanno, heavily loaded with supplies for Hamilcar’s army. On 10 March 241 BC Catulus intercepted it near the Aegates Islands off western Sicily and won a decisive victory. With its army in Sicily cut off and its finances drained, Carthage authorised Hamilcar to negotiate peace. The story of this final battle, and the bronze warship rams found on the seabed there, is told in the Battle of the Aegates Islands.

The peace of 241 BC

The Treaty of Lutatius required Carthage to evacuate Sicily, not to make war on Hiero or his allies, to return all Roman prisoners without ransom and to pay an indemnity. The Roman assembly hardened the original terms: Carthage had to pay 3,200 talents of silver, 1,000 immediately and the rest over ten years. A talent was a weight of roughly 26 kg, so the total was more than 80 tonnes of silver.

By the numbers

Key people

• Hiero II of Syracuse: first Rome’s enemy, then from 263 BC its loyal ally and supplier.
• Gaius Duilius: consul who won Rome’s first naval victory at Mylae in 260 BC.
• Marcus Atilius Regulus: commander of the invasion of Africa, captured in 255 BC.
• Xanthippus: Spartan mercenary who reorganised the Carthaginian army and defeated Regulus.
• Hamilcar Barca: Carthaginian commander in Sicily from 247 BC, who negotiated the peace.
• Gaius Lutatius Catulus: consul whose fleet won the decisive battle in 241 BC.

Consequences

Sicily, apart from Hiero’s kingdom, became Rome’s first overseas territory. From 227 BC it was governed by a praetor, the beginning of the Roman provincial system. Rome emerged as a naval power, a role it would never give up.

Carthage could not pay the mercenaries who had fought for it, and they rose in the savage Mercenary War (241–237 BC). While Carthage was weakened, Rome seized Sardinia and then Corsica in 238–237 BC and demanded a further 1,200 talents, an act Polybius himself thought unjust. The resentment it caused, and Hamilcar Barca’s new empire in Spain, fed directly into the Second Punic War.

Timeline

• 264 BC: Rome intervenes at Messana; the war begins.
• 263 BC: Hiero II of Syracuse makes peace and allies with Rome.
• 262–261 BC: Romans besiege and sack Agrigentum.
• 260 BC: Rome builds its first large fleet; Duilius wins at Mylae.
• 256 BC: Roman victory at Cape Ecnomus; invasion of Africa.
• 255 BC: Regulus defeated near Tunis; Roman fleet wrecked off Camarina.
• 250 BC: Metellus defeats the Carthaginians at Panormus; siege of Lilybaeum begins.
• 249 BC: Roman naval defeat at Drepana.
• 247 BC: Hamilcar Barca takes command in Sicily.
• 241 BC, 10 March: Roman victory at the Aegates Islands; peace follows.

Why it matters

The First Punic War turned Rome from an Italian power into a Mediterranean one. It created a Roman navy, the first Roman province and a rivalry with Carthage that would shape the next century. Polybius began his history with it because he saw it as the start of Rome’s rise to world power.