7th Grade Zoom Meeting at 9am
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Read in The Book of the Ancient Romans by Dorothy Mills, Section II of Chapter 9 “The First Punic War” pages 134-140.
As we learned before Spring Break, the Punic wars are so-called because of the Phoenecian heritage of the Carthaginians that the Romans fought in these wars. The Romans pronounced Phoenecian as “Punician” and their historians began calling these wars the Punic wars and it stuck.
These wars were so important because prior to this, Rome was just a regional power there on the Italian peninsula. They had a powerful and loyal army of citizens, but they had never had a need to develop their navy. Carthage, however, had mastered the Mediterranean with its powerful navy, but it didn’t really have an army to speak of, they mostly used mercenaries. These wars would determine the ultimate power in the Mediterranean would be moving forward.
The First Punic War was a long war, beginning in 264 BC and not ending until 241 BC. Most of the conflict took place on the island of Sicily, or in the waters surrounding Sicily. Rome attacked Carthaginian lands in Africa, at one point, but this campaign was not successful.
Carthage, at the start of the war, controlled most of Sicily, except for the city-state of Syracuse in the south-eastern corner of the island. Since Rome controlled the entire Italian peninsula, and Sicily is less than two miles from Italy, it was only a matter of time before these two empires clashed.
The Mamertines were a group of Italian mercenary fighters originally hired by the king of Syracuse. They had taken over the city of Messana around 20 years before the onset of the war, but there was still a Carthaginian presence in the city. They asked Rome for help in pushing the Carthaginians out and Rome was ready to help because Messana was the closest city on Sicily to the mainland of Italy. They didn’t want the Carthaginians to get any ideas about invading Italy.
In 264 BC, they came to the aid of the Mamertines and formed an alliance with Syracuse and pretty quickly showed their power in pushing the Carthaginians almost completely out of Sicily. But you can bet that Carthage would be returning with more troops and the full force of its navy to try and retake the island.
This was Rome’s first war outside of their peninsula and Rome knew that in order to be successful in this war, they would have to develop their navy. Fortunately for them, a Carthaginian warship had run ashore in Italy and they were able to reverse-engineer it and within just four years since the beginning of the war, they had made nearly 200 ships. That’s what happens when you have a strong government and lots of slaves doing the work for you.
But having boats wasn’t enough. You have to know how to fight at sea. However, they didn’t have the time or the resources to learn how to fight a proper naval battle, so they brought their army strategies to the sea. The Romans added a corvus to the front of their warships. This was essentially a bridge with a hook at the end that could be dropped down onto the deck of an enemy ship and then 120 soldiers would rush across and take the enemy ship.
In 260 BC, the Romans met the Carthaginian navy in battle off the coast of sicily at the battle of Mylae. With the use of the corvus, they won this battle and many of the Carthaginian ships were captured and added to their fleet.
Seeing as they had the upper hand on land and now had shown some prowess at sea, the Romans decided to push their luck by taking the fight to Carthage and invading Africa. The Romans won a great naval battle at Cape Ecnomus in 256 BC, and then invaded Africa with a large army, commanded by Regulus. This army, however, was defeated by Xanthippus, a Spartan, who was hired by the Carthaginians to improve their army.
After this humiliating defeat in Africa, the new Roman navy lost a battle in 249 BC and nearly 100 ships and many soldiers were lost. Carthage was a very rich empire and with this enemy on the ropes, they were poised to retake Sicily and push Rome back to Italy. One Carthaginian commander was very successful fighting the Roman army, his name was Hamilcar Barca.
After the generosity and patriotism of the Roman citizens rallied to rebuild much of their lost naval fleet, Rome was eventually able to cut off supplies coming into Sicily from Africa. Hamilcar was angry and frustrated and in 241 BC, he was forced to seek a peace agreement. Hamilcar had to agree to leave Sicily with his mercenary army and return to Africa, Carthage had to pay for war damages, and Rome took control of all of the Carthaginian lands on the island of Sicily.
This was the end of the First Punic War, but Hamilcar Barca was determined to seek revenge against the Romans. To make matters worse, three years after the end of the first war, Rome attacked and took the islands of Sardinia and Corsica as well. This was a message to the world that a new empire was in control of the Mediterranean but the rivalry between these two powers had just begun.
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Kyra says, “I never knew that Rome didn’t have a navy even though it had a powerful army.”
hamilcar barca was good at fighting the romans did he get prais for that?
I think it was smart that Rome added the corvus. They could jump on enemy ship and take it over.
I like how the Romans set up benches on the beach and learned how to row that way.
I love how it worked out perfectly Rome has all the power on land and Carthage has all the power in the sea. Rome was so smart to reverse the process and rebuild the warships with their own twist on it.
I thought that the Romans had been at war with Carthage for a while and that the war had been going on for a while not starting then. I never knew that the Romans were getting better at fighting at sea. I never knew that the Romans advanced the models of their ships to take control of enemy ships.
i think its pretty interesting how the Romans knew how to build boats with there bare hands
That’s a good point. They weren’t building these boats in a factory.
the romans worked hard
i didnt know the italian fighter were hired by the king of syracuse
they did evan