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Quinqueremes, meaning "five-oarsmen", [57] provided the workhorses of the Roman and Carthaginian fleets throughout the Punic Wars. [58] So ubiquitous was the type that Polybius uses it as a shorthand for "warship" in general. [59] A quinquereme carried a crew of 300: 280 oarsmen and 20 deck crew and officers. [60]
The Carthaginians hoped to appease the Romans, but despite the Carthaginians surrendering all of their weapons, the Romans pressed on to besiege the city. The Roman campaign suffered repeated setbacks through 149 BC, only alleviated by Scipio Aemilianus, a middle-ranking officer, distinguishing himself several times. A new Roman commander took ...
The Romans, who had little experience in naval warfare prior to the First Punic War, managed to defeat Carthage in part by reverse engineering captured Carthaginian ships, aided by the recruitment of experienced Greek sailors from conquered cities, the unorthodox corvus device, and their superior numbers in marines and rowers. Polybius ...
Xanthippus, fearful of the envy of the Carthaginian generals he had outdone, took his pay and returned to Greece. Regulus died in Carthaginian captivity; later Roman authors invented a tale of him displaying heroic virtue while a prisoner. [91] The Romans sent a fleet to evacuate their survivors and the Carthaginians attempted to oppose it.
In his verses several Saguntine leaders and heroes stand out (Sicoris, Murrus, Theron), as well as a Libyan warrior princess fighting for Carthage , but very few historians give the tale any credit as a historical source. In 1727 the English dramatist Philip Frowde wrote a tragedy entitled The Fall of Saguntum which was based on Silius' poem.
The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa.
[note 5] [31] [32] [22] Scipio also reputedly learned details of how fordable the lagoon to the north was, in particular the effect of the tides and, possibly, the wind on it. [14] Once they reached New Carthage the Romans would only have a week or two to capture it before a Carthaginian army was likely to come to its aid.
A Carthaginian peace is the imposition of a very brutal peace intended to permanently cripple the losing side. The term derives from the peace terms imposed on the Carthaginian Empire by the Roman Republic following the Punic Wars .