HistoryMemes.com

Making Sense of History

First Punic War: A Visual History

Get My 10 Best History Memes:

Visual history of a war

Twenty-three years of war over Sicily in which Rome, a land power, built fleets from scratch, lost 700 ships to storms and won at sea anyway.

Fought
264 BC to 241 BC
Duration
23 years
Dates
264 to 241 BC
Deaths
Perhaps 400,000, mostly at sea; Rome lost some 500 warships to storms and 200 in battle
Rome
Consular armies and fleets; Duilius, Regulus, Lutatius Catulus; Hiero of Syracuse (from 263)
Carthage
Hanno, Hamilcar Barca, Adherbal; the mercenary Xanthippus
Result
Roman victory; Sicily Rome's first province

The First Punic War (264-241 BC) began when Rome intervened in Messana in Sicily against Carthage, the naval power of the western Mediterranean. Rome copied a captured Carthaginian warship, built a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and, using the corvus boarding bridge, won at Mylae (260) and Cape Ecnomus (256), then invaded Africa, where Regulus was defeated by the Spartan Xanthippus. Storms destroyed Roman fleets in 255 and 253; Hamilcar Barca held western Sicily for years while Rome besieged Lilybaeum and lost at Drepana (249). A fleet paid for by private citizens won the decisive battle off the Aegates Islands in March 241; Carthage ceded Sicily and paid 3,200 talents. It was the longest continuous war of antiquity and made Rome a naval power.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is First Punic War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

1,000 BC800 BC600 BC400 BC200 BC0200400600First Punic War (264 BC to 241 BC)Open: Ancient CarthageAncient Carthage (814 BC to 146 BC)Open: Macedonian EmpireMacedonian Empire (359 BC to 323 BC)Open: Seleucid EmpireSeleucid Empire (312 BC to 63 BC)Open: Ptolemaic KingdomPtolemaic Kingdom (305 BC to 30 BC)Open: Second Punic WarSecond Punic War (218 BC to 201 BC)Open: Roman-Greek warsRoman-Greek wars (214 BC to 148 BC)Open: Third Punic WarThird Punic War (149 BC to 146 BC)Open: Roman EmpireRoman Empire (27 BC to 476)

Roman warships lost

062.5125187.5250Storm 255: 250250Storm 255Storm 253: 150150Storm 253Drepana 249: 9393Drepana 249Storm 249: 100100Storm 249ships (ancient figures, approximate)

Timeline of the First Punic War

  1. 264 BC
    Rome crosses to Sicily
  2. 262 BC
    Agrigentum falls
  3. 260 BC
    MylaeFirst Roman naval victory.
  4. 256 BC
    Cape Ecnomus; invasion of Africa
  5. 255 BC
    Regulus defeated; fleet wrecked
  6. 249 BC
    Drepana
  7. 241 BC
    Aegates Islands; peace
  8. 238 BC
    Rome seizes Sardinia and Corsica

Messana and the first fleet

The Mamertines, Campanian mercenaries holding Messana, appealed to both Carthage and Rome; Rome sent an army across the strait in 264 and, with Hiero of Syracuse switching sides, took Agrigentum in 262 after a siege. To fight at sea Rome copied a beached Carthaginian quinquereme, trained rowers on land and fitted the corvus, a spiked gangplank that turned sea fights into infantry battles; Duilius won at Mylae in 260 and set up a rostral column in the Forum.

Africa and the storms

After the huge battle of Cape Ecnomus in 256, perhaps 300 ships a side, Regulus landed in Africa, won at Adys and offered such harsh terms that Carthage hired the Spartan Xanthippus, who beat him at Tunis with elephants and cavalry in 255. The fleet sent to rescue the survivors was wrecked in a storm off Camarina with 250 ships and up to 100,000 men, the worst maritime disaster in history; another storm in 253 cost 150 ships. Rome abandoned the corvus.

Sicily and the Aegates

Panormus fell in 254 and Metellus beat the elephants there in 251; Rome besieged Lilybaeum and Drepana from 250, but Claudius Pulcher lost 93 ships at Drepana in 249 after throwing the sacred chickens overboard, and another storm destroyed the supply fleet. Hamilcar Barca held out on Mount Eryx from 247. Exhausted, Rome built a last fleet of 200 with private loans; Lutatius Catulus caught the Carthaginian relief fleet, laden and untrained, off the Aegates on 10 March 241 and sank or took 120. Carthage sued for peace, ceded Sicily and, after its mercenaries revolted, Sardinia and Corsica in 238; Hamilcar took his grudge and his son Hannibal to Spain.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Wars of the same era and region

8 surprising things about the First Punic War

  1. Rome had almost no navy in 264 and by 256 had fleets of over 300 ships; ancient sources say the crews learned to row on benches on dry land.
  2. The corvus boarding bridge won battles but made ships top-heavy and may have caused the storm losses.
  3. The 255 BC storm off Camarina killed perhaps 100,000 men, still the deadliest shipwreck event in history.
  4. Claudius Pulcher, told the sacred chickens would not eat before Drepana, said 'let them drink' and threw them into the sea; he lost.
  5. Regulus, according to Roman legend, was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate, advised against peace, returned to Carthage and was tortured to death.
  6. Bronze rams from the Aegates battle have been recovered from the seabed since 2004, some inscribed with Roman magistrates' names.
  7. The war lasted 23 years, the longest continuous war of the ancient Greco-Roman world.
  8. Rome's seizure of Sardinia in 238, in breach of the peace, was called by Polybius the true cause of the Second Punic War.

Sources

Back to all empires and wars