The Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy Page A

to that point in the line, although all along the line tribunes, allied prefects and the general's immediate subordinates or le gati were usually stationed to cover each section of the front. It was a style of command which made great demands on senior officers and put them at considerable risk, for their close proximity to the fighting line put them at risk from missiles and the attacks of lone enemies. Roman commanders needed to be mobile, moving from one crisis point to the next or riding back to fetch reserves in person when these were required quickly and there was not time to send a message. For this reason it was normal for Roman commanders to lead their armies on horseback, and even the dictator, who was banned from riding by archaic taboo, by this period automatically sought permission to ride. Roman soldiers fought better when they believed that their general was with them, able to observe and either reward or punish their behaviour. 41
    The Roman army was well suited to formal pitched battles, where it could form up against an enemy to its front and attack straight forward, throwing in men from the reserve lines to reinforce the main attack, to plug a breakthrough in their own line or exploit a penetration of the enemy's. Until well into the war with Hannibal Roman commanders were indeed inclined to seek such a confrontation as swiftly as possible. Hannibal in particular was to prove far more skilful in the careful manoeuvring before a battle, exploiting the instinctive desire of his Roman opponents to meet him as soon as possible to, ensure that the battle was in fact fought in a situation and place of his own choosing. Yet it was a striking feature of the Romans, especially in their military enterprises, that they were willing and able to learn from their opponents and adapt.
    PART ONE
    THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 264-241 BC
    CHAPTER 2
    The Outbreak of War
    T
    HE LONG-TERM CAUSES of great wars have fascinated historians since Thucydides attempted to explain the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by tracing Athenian ambition in the years after the victory over Persia, but they are seldom easy to isolate. 1 This is especially true of conflicts in the ancient world, when we rarely know when, by whom and acting under what information and preconceptions the decisions were taken which eventually led to war. It is tempting but highly dangerous to employ hindsight and attempt to reconstruct the causes of a war from its course. No Roman or Carthaginian could have dreamed in 264 that their states were about to embark on a twenty-four-year struggle which would involve huge casualties, still less that it would be the first of three wars between the two peoples. It is extremely unlikely in the case of the First Punic War that either side believed that they were even about to begin a full-scale conflict with the other. Prior to 264 relations between Rome and Carthage had generally been good.
    However difficult it may be to trace the deeper causes of a conflict, the incidents which provide the sparks to ignite the greater conflagration are usually more obvious, as with Princip's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in AD 1914 which plunged Europe into a World War. In the case of the war between Carthage and Rome these events occurred at Messana (modern-day Messina) in Sicily and had their origins in the career of the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles, who had captured the city sometime around 315-312. Agathocles had relied heavily on mercenary soldiers to fight his long conflict with the Carthaginians and in his efforts to expand his city's dominion. Amongst his forces was a band of soldiers recruited from Campanians, Oscan-speaking descendants of the hill tribesmen who had overrun that fertile plain in the last quarter of the fifth century. After Agathocles' death in 289 this group failed to find an employer in the

    confused political situation at Syracuse. At some point in the next few years the Mamertines were admitted freely