The Clash of Rome and Carthage: A Battle for Power in the Western Mediterranean
- The clash between Rome and Carthage for dominance in the western Mediterranean began long before Hannibal's time.
- The Punic Wars, a series of wars between Rome and Carthage, spanned over a century and was fought in various regions including Italy, Spain, Sicily, and North Africa.
- At the beginning of the First Punic War, Rome, lacking a navy, invented a grappling machine to make sea battles more like land battles.
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お願いします (6) Like two bullies on the same playground, Rome and Carthage both wanted to be the power in the western Mediterranean world. They both wanted to dominate the fertile island of Sicily and control trade at the Straits of Messina, between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Even before Hannibal's time, the clash between the two cities was brewing. Although both cities were strong and proud, they were very different. Rome's army had already conquered all of Italy. Yet Carthage was wealthier and had a much better navy. (7) A titanic struggle between Rome and Carthage began in 264 BCE―17 years before Hannibal was born. It started when the Sicilian city of Messina asked Rome to join its fight against Syracuse, another city in Sicily. Then Syracuse asked Carthage to join in its fight against Messina and Rome. A series of wars raged, on and off, for a century, with these two military alliances fighting against one another. These were called the Punic Wars, from the Latin word for Phoenica. The enemies fought one another in Italy, Spain, Sicily, and North Africa. (8) At the beginning of the First Punic War, the Romans had no navy, only trading ships. They didn't even know how to fight on the sea. They only knew how to fight on land, so they invented a grappling machine that made sea battles more like land battles. The machine had huge hooks with heavy ropes attached. The Roman soldier-sailors lobbed the hooks over the side of an enemy ship. The hooks bit into the other ship, holding ht while the Romans pulled it up beside their own. With the enemy's ship locked in place, the Romans scrambled aboard and fought hand-to-hand nn deck. This technique literally gave the Romans a“fighting chance”at sea.
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(6) 同じ遊び場にいる2人のいじめっ子のように、ローマとカルタゴは、双方が西地中海世界の覇権を望んでいました。彼らは、両国とも、シシリーの肥沃な島を支配し、シシリーとイタリア本土の間のメッシーナ海峡の交易を掌握したいと望んでいました。ハンニバルの時代以前でさえ、2つの都市の衝突は、醸成されていました。両方の都市は、強くて誇り高かったけれど、彼らは、非常に異なっていました。 ローマ軍は、イタリア全土をすでに征服していました。しかし、カルタゴは、より裕福で、ずっと優れた海軍を持っていました。 (7) ローマとカルタゴの大戦争は、紀元前264年に始まりました ― ハンニバルが生まれる17年前のことでした。メッシーナと言うシチリアの都市が、シシリーのもう一つの都市シラキュースとの戦いに加わるようローマに頼んだとき、その戦争は、始まりました。すると、シラキュースは、メッシーナとローマに対する戦いにカルタゴに参戦するよう頼みました。一連の戦争は、激しさを増し、 これらの2つの軍事同盟が相互に戦いながら、断続的に一世紀続きました。フェニキアに対するラテン語から、これらは、ポエニ戦争と呼ばれました。これらの敵対国は、イタリア、スペイン、シシリー、北アフリカで、お互いに戦い合いました。 (8) 第一次ポエニ戦争の初め、ローマ人は、海軍がなく、交易船しか持っていませんでした。彼らは、海上での戦い方さえ知りませんでした。彼らは、陸上での戦い方しか知らなかったのです、 それで、彼らは、海戦をより地上戦のようにした捕捉機械を発明しました。この機械は、重いロープの付いた、巨大な鉤を備えていました。ローマの兵士の船乗りは、敵の船の側面に、鉤を山なりに投げました。鉤は、相手の船に食い込んで、ローマ人が彼ら自身の船のそばに、それを引き寄せる間、それを離しませんでした。敵の船を適所に釘付けにすると、ローマ人は、相手の船にはい上がって、甲板で白兵戦を行いました。 この戦術は、文字通り、ローマ人に海上での「勝機」を与えました。
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お願いします (13) The Romans planned to invade Spain and fight Hannibal there. But Hannibal didn't wait around. He decided to surprise them and invade Italy first. The journey toward Rome took five months, beginning with a long march across France. Then Hannibal led his soldiers through the Alps. He lost one-third of his men during the icy mountain crossing. But still he marched on, with men, horses, and war elephants. These African elephants were decorated for battle and painted in bright colors. (Their trunks were usually red.) Swords were attached to their tusks. Some carried towers on their backs─small fortresses that protected the soldiers riding inside as they shot arrows and hurled stones at their Roman enemies. (14) The Romans first faced Hannibal's elephants at the Battle of Lake Trebia in northern Italy in 218 BCE. When Hannibal gave the signal, the elephant handlers jabbed the beasts with iron pokers─whips are not enough for elephants─and drove the trumpeting animals forward. Most Italians had never seen an elephant. Their size alone must have been terrifying. The Roman horses─and many soldiers too─panicked at the sight and smell of these monstrous creatures. (15) Pressing deeper into Italy, Hannibal showed his cleverness at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, in central Italy, in 217 BCE. Pretending to march against Rome itself, he lured the Romans into a narrow pass and ambushed them from the hills. His troops demolished the Roman army. (16) A year later, Hannibal conquered the Roman troops again at the Battle of Cannae, in southern Italy, thanks to his powerful cavalry and a brilliant battle plan. Hannibal commanded the soldiers fighting in the center to pretend to retreat─to move back, as if they were losing. The Romans fell for Hannibal's trick and followed. Then the Carthaginians fighting on the flanks closed in on the Romans and surrounded them. The Romans were trapped!
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お願いします (20) Carthage never again threatened Rome, but many Romans continued to fear it. In 146 BCE, a half-century after the victory of Scipio Africanus, his grandson's troops finished the destruction of Carthage, Rome's last opponent in the western Mediterranean. Rome had become the dominant power on land and sea. It remained so for more than five hundred years.
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お願いします (9) In 241 BCE, a Roman commander attacked a Carthaginian fleet of 170 ships. Despite stormy seas, Rome sank 50 enemy ships and captured 70 more. What was left of the Carthaginian fleet sailed home, defeated. When the ships arrived in their home port, the commander was executed. (10) After 23 years of battle, the First Punic War was over. Rome controlled Sicily and dominated the western Mediterranean. The Roman army had broken Carthage's grip. The memory of this shameful defeat tortured Hannibal's father. (11) As part of the peace treaty, Rome demanded that Carthage pay 80 tons of silver─equal to a year's pay for 200,000 Roman soldiers. The city had to find some way to pay this huge bill. Carthage sent its top general, Hamilcar Barca, to Spain. His assignment was to conquer the region and develop the silver and copper mines there. Hamilcar took his son Hannibal to Spain with him, and he did his job well. He sent money and goods back to Carthage. (12) When Hamilcar died, the 26-year-old Hannibal took over the job. Like his father, Hannibal considered Spain to be his territory. He believed Carthage must be the only power there. So when Rome made an alliance with the Spanish city of Saguntum, Hannibal fought back and fulfilled the promise he had made as a boy: to be the sworn enemy of Rome. He laid siege to Saguntum, cutting off all supplies of food and military aid. After eight months, Saguntum fell to Hannibal's warriors. And in 218 BCE, Rome declared war on Carthage─again. The Second Punic War had begun.
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(9) When the herdsman found Romulus and Remus, he took them home. He and his wife raised the boys their own. The twins grew to be brave, manly, and noble. They roamed the countryside like ancient Robin Hoods, often saving innocent people from danger and persecution. (10) Romulus and Remus eventually discovered who they really were and decided to found a new city near the Tiber River, where they had been rescued as babies. But the brothers didn't get along very well, and they disagreed about where the city should be built. They tried to settle their argument through divination, using the path of birds in the sky to figure out the wishes of the gods. They decided to watch some vultures flying overhead. Romulus tried to trick Remus, pretending to have spotted more vultures than he actually saw, and then Remus made fun of Romulus. The brothers got into a fight, and Romulus killed Remus. (11) Romulus buried his brother and then, with his followers, built a new city on the Palatine Hill and circled it with strong, stone walls. As the city grew, it eventually enclosed seven hills and took the name of its founder, Romulus―or Rome. The Romans dated everything that happened after that “frod the founding of the city”in 753 BCE. For more than a thousand years, they used a calender that began in that year. (12) Some Romans claimed that Romulus and Remus were the sons of Mars, the god of war. Later Romans believed that this connection to Mars explained Romulus's cruel attack on the Sabines, a tribe that lived in small, unprotected villages near Rome. Romulus was convinced that Rome would become great through war, so he pretended to invite his Sabine neighbors to a festival. But then he led the Romans in a sudden attack. The soldiers seized 30 unmarried women and ran off―taking the Sabine women home as their wives.
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お願いします (10) Aulus Gellius, a Roman lawyer of the second century CE, writes about Vesta's priestesses. A girl chosen to be a Vestal Virgin must...be no younger than six and no older than ten years old.... As soon as a girl is chosen, she is taken to the House of Vesta and handed over to the priests. She immediately leaves her father's control. (11) The chief duty of the Vestal Virgins was to keep Vesta's flame burning. If the flame went out, it meant that one of the Vestal Virgins had been careless in her sacred duties or had broken her vow of chastity. Either way, the Romans believed that the city was in great danger and could be destroyed. They dressed the offending priestess in funeral clothes and carried her to an underground cell, leaving her to die. (12) The earliest Romans were farmers who saw the gods in all the forces of nature. They believed that gods ruled the sun, the moon, and the planets and that gods lived within the trees, in wind, and in rivers. These early, simple beliefs played a part in Rome's later religion as well. But as Rome became more connected with other peoples through war and trade, its religion became more complex. (13) The Romans were as quick to borrow language and inventions. If they encountered a new god that they thought might be useful, they adopted him or her. For example, when the Romans attacked the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BCE, they begged Juno, their enemy's goddess, to help them in battle. “To you, Juno Regina, who now lives in Veii, I pray that after our victory you will accompany us to our city─soon to be your city─to be received in a temple worthy of your greatness.” When the Romans conquered Veii, they assumed that Juno had helped them. To thank the goddess, they built a temple in her honor in Rome.
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お願いします (17) Rome lost nearly 60,000 soldiers. Another 10,000 were captured. Fewer than 6,000 Carthaginians fell in the battle. The Romans had never suffered a worse defeat and they were terrified. Whenever a watchman thought he spotted an army approaching the city, his cry, “Hannibal ad portas”(“Hannibal at the gates”) would echo through the streets. But the stunning defeat at Cannae became a turning point. More and more men joined the Roman military, and wealthy citizens gave generously to the war effort. The leaders in the Senate decided not to meet HaHannibal in fixed battles, but to let him wear himself out in smaller battles in the countryside. (18) Rome's new battle plan worked. The Carthaginian troops became exhausted. Hannibal's soldiers had been in Italy for more than 10 years, and Carthage refused to send fresh troops. When the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio took charge of the Roman forces in Spain, he cut off Hannibal's supplies of food and equipment. The Romans finally drove the Carthaginians out of Spain in 206 BCE. Then they invaded North Africa and the town of Zama, to the southwest of Carthage. Hannibal faced Scipio in the fierce Battle of Zama in 202 BCE. (19) At Zama, Scipio ordered his soldiers to attack Hannibal's frontline elephants with spears and arrows. The elephants panicked and turned back, crashing into the soldiers behind them. Scipio's army killed almost all of the Carthaginians, but Hannibal survived. Under Roman pressure he fled Carthage and spent his last 15 years in exile. In the peace settlement between the two cities, Carthage surrendered all its possessions outside Africa. Rome gave Scipio the honorary title “Africanus,” which means “conqueror of Africa.”
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お願いします (19) Cincinnatus immediately went to the city and set to work. Although he could have ruled as dictator for six months, Cincinnatus assembled an army, defeated the Aequi, and than laid down his power to return to his plow─all in just 15 days. (20) For two more centuries the Romans fought against the other people of Italy. Scholars follow the Romans in calling these non-Romans Italians. The Romans saw them as enemies to be conquered, even though some of them also spoke Latin. (21) By 266 BCE, Rome controlled the entire Italian peninsula. Roman writers used the stories of Cincinnatus and Horatius to show how courage and determination helped Rome conquer all of Italy and eventually the rest of the Mediterranean world.
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お願いします (22) Caesar then restored Cleopatra to her throne and defeated her brother in battle. On his way back to Rome, Caesar passed through Asia. There, he squashed a rebellion in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). In a letter to a friend, he made light of the victory. The letter had only three words: “Veni, vidi, vici.” (“I came, I saw, I conquered.”) Plutarch says that this brief message matched “the sharpness and speed of the battle itself.” Caesar's fans later made placards with these three words written on them, which they carried in his triumphal procession into Rome. (23) When Caesar returned to Rome, he was proclaimed dictator. Then he began the work of healing Rome's terrible war wounds. He gave 100 denarii to every citizen and pardoned his own enemies, even those who had supported Pompey against him, including Cicero and Brutus. (Caesar was especially fond of Brutus. In his youth, Caesar had been in love with Brutus's mother, and he always looked out for her son. Brutus did not return the favor.) (24) During four years of almost absolute power, Caesar passed many laws to control debt, reduce unemployment, and regulate traffic in Rome. He levied taxes on foreign imports to boost Rome's economy. He put unemployed Romans to work building a new Forum and a large public building named in his family's honor: the Basilica Julia. He planned the first public library and built embankments along the Tiber to protect the city against floods. He revised the old Roman calendar, replacing it with the one that we use today, beginning with January. (25) Julius Caesar was perhaps the most extraordinary of all ancient Romans─a senator, military leader, and dictator of Rome. But he was also a poet, a brilliant historian who wrote about his military victories, and the only orator of his day who could compete with Cicero. His personal charm brought him the loyalty of men and the love of women.
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お願いします (5) Brutus kept his promise. He and Lucretia's husband won the loyalty of the army and drove out Sextus's father, the tyrant Tarquin the Proud―Rome's third Etruscan king. They condemned him and his whole family to life in exile, never again to see Rome. And that was the end of kingship in Rome. From this point on, kingship became so unpopular that rex (king) became a term of hatred and dishonor. The arrogant king Tarquin had always been unpopular. But the Romans prized high morals above all, and his son's attack on a woman's honor was the last straw. (6) The story of Lucretia is one explanation for how kingship ended in Rome. But how had it begun? The Romans believed that Romulus became Rome's first king when he founded the city in 753 BCE. They believed that six more kings ruled Rome until Brutus forced Tarquin the Proud from his throne in 509 BCE. According to tradition, the first three kings who followed Romulus to the throne were Romans. But Roman kingship was not passed down in a royal family, as it is in Great Britain, for example. Instead, when a Roman king died, the Senate―a group of wealthy men who owned land―elected the next ruler. Even a foreigner could rule if he could gather enough support among the senators. And that's exactly what happened when the Senate elected an Etruscan, as the fifth king of Rome. Tarquinius Priscus, later known as Tarquinius the Elder, ruled well and brought Etruscan engineering and artistry to Rome. But his grandson Lucius Tarquinius, also called Tarquin the Proud, was another story. He was the tyrant who ruled as Rome's seventh and last king.
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お願いします (1)“Hannibal, then about nine years old, was...pestering Hamilcar to take him along to Spain. His father, who was sacrificing to the gods before crossing over into Spain with his army, led the boy up to the altar and made him touch the offerings.” (2) What would these offerings have been? Hamilcar Barca, a powerful North African general, would probably have sacrificed a black dog whose body he had split in two with his sword, along with a white bull and a ewe whose throats he had slit. After killing the animals, he would have burned them on an altar so the gods could enjoy the smell of meat roasting in the flames. Military leaders made such sacrifices to persuade the gods to give them victory over their enemies. Livy tells us that as Hannibal touched the bodies of the slaughtered animals, Hamilcar made him“solemnly swear...that as soon as he was able, he would become the declared enemy of the Roman people.” (3) Hannibal kept the promise that he had made to his father. He became a great general. And in 217 BCE, he took war elephants from Carthage (in modern Tunisia), his hometown in North Africa, and marched to the gates of Rome. Rome had never faced a more dangerous enemy in all of its long history. (4) Who were these Carthaginians who hated the Romans so much? They were seafaring people who left their homeland in Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon) around 800 BCE. They set up colonies in North Africa and Spain, and also on the island of Sicily―the ball that the Italian boot seems to be kicking. (5) The most powerful Phoenician colony was the North African city of Carthage. It became a busy trading post for merchants from all over the Mediterranean world. In time, Carthage gained independence from its mother country, conquered other Phoenician colonies, and founded colonies of its own. By the 3rd century BCE, this thriving and wealthy city controlled trade across the western Mediterranean.
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