Ed 's Reviews > The Fall of Carthage

In 272 BCE the Roman Republic had conquered all of Italy south of the Po River and was undisputed ruler from the Straits of Messina to the hills of Tuscany. The consolidation took about 250 years and was actually the result of many wars fought and won by the Romans against other city-states. Eight years after the end of these wars the consul Appius Claudius Caudex led an army across the straits to Sicily—this marked the beginning of the Punic Wars. These three wars against Carthage spanned over a century from the first clash in 265 down to the final destruction of Carthage in 146.

The First and Second Wars were fought on a continental scale, larger than any conflict until the modern era. More than 300 oared warships crewed by over 100,000 were deployed by both sides in the First War while armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands fought for each side in the Second War. The cost of building so many galleys and paying and equipping such large armies took the better part of the resources of the two richest states in the western Mediterranean and by the end of the Third (and final) War Carthage had been put to the torch and lie in ruins, it no longer was a functioning state and its culture was all but obliterated. Rome went from a regional power controlling Italy to unrivaled dominance across the Mediterranean basin and had laid the material, political and cultural basis for an empire that ruled Western Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East and that lasted for five centuries. Roman rulers and the Roman public became accustomed to waging war on an enormous scale, to sending large armies much farther than before and to fighting on several fronts simultaneously.

Goldsworthy’s book is a military history, concerned more with how the wars were fought than with why. He writes that it isn’t aimed at an academic audience—there isn’t much, if any, original research—and he doesn’t mention most of the theories or interpretation advanced by scholars in the past few hundred years but concentrates on some of the more or less original (or at least ancient) sources. He can do academic history with a First in ancient and modern history from Oxford (St. John’s) and a Ph.D. from the same school. His dissertation was “The Roman Army as a Fighting Force, 100 BC to 200 AD”. He has had several academic appointments but gave up teaching for writing full time.

I won’t try to summarize all the battles and campaigns that Goldsworthy covers—I couldn’t do them justice. His accounts are clear and not difficult to follow—no easy task. There are shelves full of military history that show how challenging it is to write understandable descriptions of warfare. My only caveat here is the usual one with Kindle books—the maps aren’t scalable and aren’t very useful given the small page size they are embedded in. Goldsworthy’s text is written for the interested layman although very little prior knowledge of ancient Rome on the part of the reader is assumed. If you have a couple of years of high school Latin and are—or were—able to read Julius Caesar’s “Commentaries on the Gallic Wars” (which I realized describes hardly anyone in the United States under the age of 65) you will be ahead of the game.

One real strength of the book is the accounts of how Rome, with no shipyards, no corps of naval officers, no experience with war at sea, with no one able to design and build a warship, no cadre of sailors and oarsmen, essentially no navy at all was able to transform itself into a maritime power defeat the Carthaginian navy which had ruled the western Mediterranean for centuries. Carthage depended on its navy to maintain supply lines from Sicily and Sardinia, to blockade enemies in coastal forts and force them to surrender and to flank land based armies by attacking from the sea. They had a productive hinterland in what is now Libya and Tunisia, but looked to the sea and their island possessions as the most important source of food. In addition to the Roman industrial mobilization to create a navy they were able to adapt their advantages in land fighting to naval battles, especially the corvus.

The corvus (a Latin word meaning “raven” even though it is a modern term and doesn’t appear in any ancient sources) was a boarding bridge the like of which had never been seen before. It was about four feet wide and 36 feet long that was raised by pulleys against a long pole in the prow of the Roman ship. Beneath the raised end of the bridge was a heavy, pointed spike, like a bird’s beak hence the name raven. When released it dropped to the deck of the enemy ship and the spike embedded itself in its planking. Once secured the bridge allowed Roman marines to swarm across and defeat the enemy crew their skill as swordsmen, their ferocity in combat and their weight of numbers. It was a simple, practical device that allowed the Romans to overcome their initial disadvantages in the quality of their galleys and more importantly the lack of skill and training of the crews by using engineering skill and land warfare techniques and expertise.

This is one example of how Goldsworthy uses the planning and execution of warfare to show how Roman ingenuity was a key to their ultimate victory over Carthage. There is also plenty of minutia—for example discussions of how many rowers per oar used by each of the different sizes of galleys deployed by either side for those who enjoy that level of granularity in historical narrative.

Highly recommended for Goldsworthy’s knowledge of the ancient sources and for his almost conversational writing style.