Battles are won or lost by the side that makes the fewest mistakes. But what if the battle was for mastery of the entire world? And what if the generals on both sides, each brilliant beyond criticism, should sink into obscurity, so that knowledge of the battle itself is known only to the most consummate scholars of military history?

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Just such a battle was fought on the swollen banks of Italy’s Metaurus River, on a warm, muggy day in late spring, 207 bc. It would determine whether Carthage or Rome would bring the entire ancient world under its control.

That the two greatest powers of the Mediterranean should come into mortal conflict was inevitable. Both were vigorous, aggressive, exceptionally organized and well-led. As each expanded its boundaries, ultimately there was no way that a clash of arms could be avoided. The titanic struggle between the two superpowers of the ancient world lasted more than 60 years before one side emerged the indisputable victor.

Carthage — Kardt-Hadash, or the New City — was an outpost of Phoenicia, sited on a magnificent harbor near what is now Tunis, on the northern coast of Africa. Over time it grew far mightier than its mother country.

Punic civilization was ancient. The New City, according to ancient chronology, was founded in 814 bc, three centuries before the Roman republic came into existence. The Carthaginians, to some extent justifiably, looked down their noses at the Romans, who were still living in pitiful mud huts on their seven hills by the Tiber when Phoenician civilization had been flourishing for centuries.

As were their Phoenician ancestors in their own times, the Carthaginians were the finest seafarers in the world. The Punic navy, much like Britain’s in a later era, ruled the waves. Trade made Carthage fabulously wealthy, and the Carthaginians needed their money because Carthage had a serious weakness. Although the city was rich and rapidly expanding, compared to Rome its population was small, perhaps one-fifth that of its adversary. Further, Rome had followed an enlightened policy with the peoples of Italy that it had conquered. It was so advantageous for them to be allied to Rome that their loyalty was firm and grounded in solid self-interest. Carthage, on the other hand, treated its conquered African provinces like cash cows to be milked dry. Carthage well knew that should a powerful enemy ever land an army on African shores, its subject peoples would instantly rise in revolt.

Beyond that, Carthage was unabashedly mercantile. It saw no reason to shed the blood of its sons in combat when there were men who, for a fee, would do their fighting for them. The Carthaginian armies were led by Punic officers, but the men themselves were’silver spears’ — mercenaries. As the French historian Jules Michelet wrote, ‘the life of an industrious merchant, of a Carthaginian, was too precious to be risked, as long as it was possible to substitute for it that of a barbarian from Spain or Gaul. Carthage knew, and could tell to a drachma, what the life of a man of each nation came to….’

Part of the fascination of this 60-plus years of struggle between these two great adversaries is how close Carthage came to total victory despite being outnumbered (taking Rome’s allies into consideration) on the order of 10-to-1. This is even more impressive considering that all the critical engagements save the last were fought on Italian soil, and that Carthage was sending paid mercenaries against the finest, best-trained and best-equipped citizen-soldiers in the world.

The showdown came over fair, fertile and rich Sicily, which stood in the path of Rome’s expansion toward the south and that of Carthage toward the north. In 264 bc the two mighty empires collided, and for nearly a quarter century, they tore Sicily apart in inconclusive combat. Gradually, Rome gained the upper hand, but several years before the end of the struggle a military genius arose on the Punic side: Hamilcar, surnamed Barca — ‘the thunderbolt.’ His brilliant tactics restored the military balance, and the war slowly ground down to an exhausted stalemate.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to