A COMPANION TO THE PUNIC WARS

BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD

This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises between twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

ANCIENT HISTORY

Published

A Companion to the Roman Army
Edited by Paul Erdkamp

A Companion to the Roman Republic
Edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx

A Companion to the Roman Empire
Edited by David S. Potter

A Companion to the Classical Greek World
Edited by Konrad H. Kinzl

A Companion to the Ancient Near East
Edited by Daniel C. Snell

A Companion to the Hellenistic World
Edited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Late Antiquity
Edited by Philip Rousseau

A Companion to Ancient History
Edited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Archaic Greece
Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees

A Companion to Julius Caesar
Edited by Miriam Griffin

A Companion to Byzantium
Edited by Liz James

A Companion to Ancient Egypt
Edited by Alan B. Lloyd

A Companion to Ancient Macedonia
Edited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington

A Companion to the Punic Wars
Edited by Dexter Hoyos

In preparation

A Companion to Sparta
Edited by Anton Powell

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Published

A Companion to Classical Receptions
Edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography
Edited by John Marincola

A Companion to Catullus
Edited by Marilyn B. Skinner

A Companion to Roman Religion
Edited by Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Greek Religion
Edited by Daniel Ogden

A Companion to the Classical Tradition
Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf

A Companion to Roman Rhetoric
Edited by William Dominik and Jon Hall

A Companion to Greek Rhetoric
Edited by Ian Worthington

A Companion to Ancient Epic
Edited by John Miles Foley

A Companion to Greek Tragedy
Edited by Justina Gregory

A Companion to Latin Literature
Edited by Stephen Harrison

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought
Edited by Ryan K. Balot

A Companion to Ovid
Edited by Peter E. Knox

A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language
Edited by Egbert Bakker

A Companion to Hellenistic Literature
Edited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss

A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition
Edited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam

A Companion to Horace
Edited by Gregson Davis

A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds
Edited by Beryl Rawson

In preparation

A Companion to the Latin Language
Edited by James Clackson

A Companion to Greek Mythology
Edited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone

A Companion to Sophocles
Edited by Kirk Ormand

A Companion to Aeschylus
Edited by Peter Burian

A Companion to Greek Art
Edited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos

A Companion to Tacitus
Edited by Victoria Pagán

A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
Edited by Daniel Potts

This edition first published 2011
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

Editorial Offices
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at .

The right of Dexter Hoyos to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the priorpermission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product orvendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher isnot engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to the Punic Wars / edited by Dexter Hoyos.

p. cm. – (Blackwell companions to the ancient world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-7600-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Punic wars. I. Hoyos, B. D. (B. Dexter), 1944–

DG241.C66 2011

937′.04–dc22

2010033794

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Tables

  4.1 Census figures for Rome in the third century BC

17.1 Major engagements involving Hannibal's army

23.1 Military mortality 200–168 BC as reported by the ancient sources

23.2 Census Returns, 204–124

Maps

1 Carthage

2 Rome, third and second centuries, BC

3 The Mediterranean, third century BC

4 Punic North Africa

5 Italy and islands

Notes on Contributors

Walter Ameling took his doctorate at the University of Würzburg. From 1996 to 2008 he taught and researched ancient history at the University of Jena, and since 2008 has held the Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach professorial Chair at the Universität zu Köln. His books include a major study of early Carthage, Karthago: Studien zu Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft (München, 1993).

Pedro Barceló holds the Chair of Ancient History at the Universität Potsdam, after previous Chairs in Eichstätt, Heidelberg, and Erfurt. He is cofounder of the international research group “Potestas,” based at Universität Potsdam and the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and is a member of the Real Academia de la Historia de España. His works embrace many fields of antiquity, and include studies of Constantine's dynasty, Greek kingship and tyranny, Roman Spain, andmany books on Carthage, most recently Hannibal: Stratege und Staatsmann (2008).

Hans Beck is John MacNaughton Professor and Director of Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He has published widely on the Roman Republic, including a two-volume edition of the early Roman historians, co-authored with Uwe Walter, and abook on the Republican nobility, Karriere und Hierarchie (2005). Other research interests include the history of Greek government and federalism,ancient historiography, and cross-cultural approaches toward ruling elites. He is the editor of Blackwell's forthcoming Companion to Ancient Greek Government.

Prof. Dr. Bruno Bleckmann has been full professor of ancient history at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf since 2003. The various fields of his scholarship include studies in ancient historiography and source criticism, classic Greek history and the Roman republic, as well as the history of lateantiquity. Since his Habilitation in Göttingen in 1996 he has held professorships at the institute for Roman history of Strassbourg University in France, and at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Giovanni Brizzi is full Professor of Roman History at Bologna University. He has taught at Sassari and Udine Universities. He was official professor (1993/94 and 2005/06) at the Sorbonne, is Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques of the French Republic, and is a member of the Academy of the Sciences of the Istituto di Bologna. He is director of the Rivista Storica dell’Antichità, adjoint director of the Revue des Études Militaires Anciennes, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the review Kentron. Giovanni Brizzi is author of more than two hundred publications, in different languages, and is one of the leading scholars in ancient military history.

Craige B. Champion received his graduate training in Classics and Ancient History at Princeton University. He is Associate Professor of Ancient History and Classics in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and former Chair of the History Department at Syracuse University. He has published widely on ancient Greek and Roman history and historiography. He is the author of Cultural Politicsin Polybius's Histories (Berkeley, 2004), editor of Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources (Blackwell, 2004), co-editor (with A.M. Eckstein) of the forthcoming Landmark Edition of the Histories of Polybius, in two volumes (Pantheon Books), and one of the general editors of the forthcoming Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Ancient History.

Dr Peter Edwell lectures in Roman History and Late Antiquity at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the former holder of the Macquarie Gale Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2006/7) and is the author of Between Rome and Persia, published in 2008. Dr Edwell is currently working on a book on Roman Mesopotamia.

Paul Erdkamp is Professor of Ancient History at the Flemish Free University of Brussels. His fields of interests include the economy and demography of the Roman world, social and political aspects of army and warfare, and ancient historiography, in particular Polybius and Livy. His publications include The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005). He is editor of A Companion to the Roman Army (2007) and The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome (forthcoming).

Professor M’hamed Hassine Fantar is a Senator, Titulaire of President Ben Ali's Chair for the Dialogue of Civilizations and Religions at the University of Tunis, and PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology (Sorbonne, Paris). He is a specialist in western Semitic languages and Middle East civilizations and former General Director of the National Institute of Archaeology and Art of Tunis (1982–1987). Currently he is Research Director at the National Institute of Heritage of Tunis, Professor of Ancient History, Archeology and the History of Religions in the Tunisian universities. He is Lecturer in the Universities of Rome, Bologna, Cagliari, Tripoli, and Benghazi, as well as in the French schools and Belgium (Louvain). He is Doctor Honoris causa of the University of Bologna and the University of Sassari (Italy).

Michael P. Fronda is Associate Professor of Roman History in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. He is the author of Between Rome and Carthage: Southern Italy in the Second Punic War (Cambridge University Press, 2010) as well as several articles on Roman foreign policy and imperialism, Roman–Italian relations, and interstate politics during the middle and late Republic.

Dexter Hoyos read Roman History for the DPhil at Oxford (1967–71) and taught Latin and Roman history at the University of Sydney from 1972 until retiring as Associate Professor in 2007. He co-founded the Australian journal Classicum (1975–) and is on the editorial board of the online journal Teaching Classical Languages. He writes on Roman and Carthaginian history – most recently Truceless War (2007), Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy (2008), and The Carthaginians (2010) – and on issues of reading and comprehending Latin.

Sam Koon did his BA in Ancient History at the University of Nottingham and an MA in Classics at Durham University. He completed his PhD, on Livy's battle descriptions, in 2007 at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Dr A. Fear. Currently he is a Teaching Fellow in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester. This chapter was completed with the assistance of a scholarship from the Fondation Hardt, Geneva.

Claudia Kunze (Goodbrand) studied classics at Churchill College, Cambridge. She currently lives and works in England.

Yann Le Bohec was born in 1943 at Carthage, on the eastern slope of the hill of Byrsa. He studied at Paris; his career took him from the Université de Paris X–Nanterre to Grenoble II, then to Lyon III andfinally to the Université de Paris IV–Sorbonne. Currently Prof. Dr., hehas specialized in the history of Roman Gaul, Roman Africa, and the Roman army. He has published numerous works and very numerousarticles on these three subjects. He has never forgotten Carthage.

Dr Kathryn Lomas is Honorary Senior Research Associateat the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She is the author of Rome and the Western Greeks and Roman Italy, 338 BC – AD 200, and has published numerous articles on Roman Italy, urbanism and colonization in the Greek and Roman world, and on ethnic and cultural identity. Her current research is on literacy in pre-Roman Italy.

Luigi Loreto (born in Rome, 1963), is Professor of Roman History at the Faculty of Law of the Seconda Università di Napoli, where he teaches also the History of International Relations. His several books include Un’epoca di buon senso. Decisione, consenso e stato a Roma nella Media Repubblica, 326–264 a.C. (Amsterdam, 1993); Guerra e libertà nella Repubblica romana. John R. Seeley e le radici intellettuali della Roman Revolution di Ronald Syme (Roma 1999), and Il bellum iustum e i suoi equivoci. Cicerone ed una componente della rappresentazione romana del Völkerrecht antico (Napoli 2001).

Richard Miles has been a Newton Trust Lecturer in Classics at Cambridge University and Director of Studies in Classics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2010 he took up an appointment as lecturer in Ancient History at Sydney University. He has directed archaeological excavations at Carthage and Rome and writes on Punic, Roman, and Vandal North Africa. He has recently published Carthage Must Be Destroyed: the Rise and Fall of an Ancient Mediterranean Civilization (London, 2010).

Bernard Mineo is Professor of Latin Literature at the Université de Nantes (Bretagne, France). He is author of a monograph on Livy entitled Tite-Live et l’histoire de Rome, and has published Book XXXII of Livy's Roman History in the Collection des Universités de France. He is working currently on the publication, in the same Collection, of Pompeius Trogus’ Philippic Histories in the abridgement by Justin.

Toni Ñaco del Hoyo (PhD 1996, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is a Research Professor in Ancient History at the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a specialist on Roman Republican history. His areas of research include taxation and finance, warfare and post-war strategies, and, lately, ancient disasters. He is a former Fulbright Visiting Scholar (UC Berkeley, 2004) and has held several postdoctoral fellowships (1998–2002), particularly at Wolfson College, Oxford, of which he remains a member, before holding a five-year Ramon y Cajal Research Fellowship until September 2009, when he finally joined ICREA.

Boris Rankov has taught in the United States and at the Universities of Oxford, Western Australia, and London. He has published several books and papers on the Roman Army, on ancient warships, and on ancient fleets and their infrastructures. He is currently Professor of Ancient History at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Dr Louis Rawlings is Lecturer and Head of the Ancient History Department at Cardiff University. He has published various articles on Punic, Italian, and Gallic warfare. He is the author of The Ancient Greeks at War, (2007, Manchester University Press) and co-editor (with H. Bowden) of Herakles and Hercules: Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity (2005, Classical Press of Wales).

John Richardson was Professor of Classics in the University of Edinburgh from 1987 to 2002 and is now Emeritus Professor there. He has produced several books on the Romans in Spain, and has also written on Roman imperialism and Roman law. His most recent book is The Language of Empire: Rome andthe idea of empire from the third century BC to the second century AD (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Nathan Rosenstein is Professor of History at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the political culture, economy, demography, andmilitary history of the middle and late Republic. He is the author of Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (1990), Rome At War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic (2004), numerous articles, and the editor (with Robert Morstein-Marx) of A Companion to the Roman Republic (2006, published by Wiley-Blackwell) and (with Kurt Raaflaub) of War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (1999).

Prof. Barbara Scardigli studied classical philology and ancient history at the Universities of Frankfurt, Vienna and Heidelberg, and from the 1960s has taught and pursued research in Italy at the Universities of Bari, Urbino, Siena, and Florence. She is the author of many articles and books, including Die Römerbiographien Plutarchs (München, 1979), I Trattati romano-cartaginesi (Pisa, 1991), and, as editor, Essays on Plutarch's Lives (Oxford, 1995).

John Serrati is a faculty member in the Department of History and Classics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He obtained his doctorate in 2001 at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Christopher Smith. He has published assorted chapters and articles concerning imperialism, Greek and Roman warfare, early Roman provincial administration, Roman diplomacy, Roman provincial government in Sicily, and Hieron II of Syracuse.

Klaus Zimmermann read for his PhD at Bamberg with Prof. Werner Huss, then held appointments at Jena until 2009. In that year he took up a Chair in the Seminar für Alte Geschichte at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and the Directorship of its “Forschungstelle Asia Minor.” His main fields of research are Greek epigraphy, the history of religions, historical geography, and Carthage. His books include Libyen. Das Land südlich des Mittelmeers im Weltbild der Griechen (1995) and Rom und Karthago (2005; 2nd edn, 2009).

Abbreviations

Acta Tr.:	Fasti Triumphales
AHB:	Ancient History Bulletin
AJA:	American Journal of Archaeology
AJP:	American Journal of Philology
Anc. Hist. Bull.:	see AHB
Anc. Soc.:	Ancient Society
Ann.:	Annales
AntAfr:	Antiquités Africaines
ANRW:	Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt
Apol.:	see Apuleius
Appian, BC:	Bella Civilia
Hann.:	Hannibalica
Iber.:	Iberica
Ill.:	Illyrica
Lib.:	Libyca
Mac.:	Macedonica
Mith.:	Mithridatica
Samn.:	Samnitica
Sic.:	Sicelica
Syr.:	Syriaca
Aristotle, Pol.:	Politics
BAfr.:	Bellum Africum
BAlex.:	Bellum Alexandrinum
BIDR:	Bullettino dell’Istituto di Diritto Romano
ca.:	circa
Caesar, BCiv.:	Bellum Civile
BGall.:	Bellum Gallicum
CAH:	Cambridge Ancient History (1st edn.)
CAH 2 :	Cambridge Ancient History (2nd edn.)
cf.:	(= confer) compare
Cic.:	Cicero
2 Verr.:	Second Verrines
Amic.:	de Amicitia
Att.:	ad Atticum
Balb.:	pro Balbo
Cato Maior = de Senectute
Div.:	de Divinationes
Fin.:	de Finibus
Leg. Man.:	pro Lege Manilia (= de Imperio Cn. Pompei)
Nat. D.:	de Natura Deorum
Off.:	de Officiis
Rep.:	de Republica
Senect.:	de Senectute
CIG:	Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
CIL:	Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
CISA:	Contributi dell’Istituto di storia antica
Class. Philol.:	Classical Philology
cos.:	consul (with year of office)
CP:	Classical Philology
CQ:	Classical Quarterly
CR:	Classical Review
CUF:	Collections des Universités de France
D.H.:	Dionysius of Halicarnassus
DCPP:	Dictionnaire des Civilisations Phénicienne et Punique
de Vir. Ill.:	de Viris Illustribus
Diod.:	Diodorus
Dion. Hal.:	Dionysius of Halicarnassus
ed.:	editor, edited (by)
edn.:	edition
eds.:	editors
Ennius V3 :	Ennius, ed. Vahlen (3rd edn.)
Epist.:	Epistulae
Epit.:	Epitome
Eutr.:	Eutropius
F. Cap.:	Fasti Capitolini
FGrH:	Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker
Flor.:	Florus
fr., frg., frgs.:	fragment(s)
FRH:	Die Frühen Römischen Historiker (ed. Beck & Walter)
Front. Strat.:	Strategemata
FTr:	Fasti Triumphales
G&R:	Greece & Rome
Gell.:	Gellius
GRBS:	Greek, Roman & Byzantine Studies
HAAN:	see Gsell (Bibliography)
Hdt.:	Herodotus
HN:	see Pliny
Hor. Od.:	Horace, Odes
HRR:	Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae
HSCP:	Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
HZ:	Historische Zeitschrift
I Congr. di Studi Fen. e Pun.:	I Congresso di Studi Fenici e Punici
IG:	Inscriptiones Graecae
IGRR:	Inscriptiones Graecae AD Res Romanas pertinentes
ILLRP:	Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae
ILS:	Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
Inscr. It.:	Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italicae
JRS:	Journal of Roman Studies
Just.:	Justin
KAI:	H. Donner & W. Röllig (eds.), Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften, 3rd edn., 3 vols., Wiesbaden, 164
LCM:	Liverpool Classical Monthly
Livy, Per.:	Periochae
LTUR:	Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae
MDAI (R):	Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Römische Abteilung)
MEFRA:	Mélanges de l’École française à Rome (Antiquité)
Mél.:	Mélanges
Mél. École Fr. de Rome (Ant.):	see MEFRA
Mitteil. d. Deutsch Arch. Instituts (Röm. Abt.):	see MDAI (R)
MRR:	Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic
Mus. Afr.:	Museum Africum
n., nn.:	note(s)
Naevius, fr. com.:	fragmenta comica
NC:	Numismatic Chronicle
Nep. Hamil.:	Nepos, Hamilcar
Nep. Hann.:	Nepos, Hannibal
ORF:	Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta
Orig.:	Origines
Oros.:	Orosius
P, P2 (citations of Roman historians):	HRR ed. Peter
Paul. Diac., Hist. Lang.:	Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum
PCPS:	Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
Per.:	see Livy, Per.
PHamb.:	Hamburg Papyri
PRyl.:	Rylands Papyri
Pliny, HN & NH:	Historia Naturalis
Plut.:	Plutarch
Fab.:	Fabius
Flam.:	Flaminius
Lys.:	Lysander
Marc.:	Marcellus
Mor.:	Moralia
Pyrrh.:	Pyrrhus
Ti. Gr.:	Tiberius Gracchus
Pol.:	Polybius
praef. :	praefatio
Roman Praenomina:	A. (Aulus), Ap. (Appius), C. (Gaius), Cn. (Gnaeus), D. (Decimus), L. (Lucius), M. (Marcus), M’. (Manius), N. (Numerius), P. (Publius), Q. (Quintus), Ser. (Servius), T. (Titus), Ti. (Tiberius)
R&C:	Religioni e Civiltà
RE:	Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft
RÉA:	Revue des Études Anciennes
Rep.:	see Cicero
Rev. Afr.:	Revue Africaine
Rev. Ét. Anc.:	see RÉA
Rev. Hist.:	Revue Historique
RFC:	Rivista di Filologia Classica
RhM:	Rheinisches Museum für Philologie
RIDA:	Revue internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité
RIN:	Rivista italiana di numismatica e scienze affini
ROL:	Warmington, Remains of Old Latin
RSA:	Rivista Storica dell’Antichità
Sall. BJ:	Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum
Schol. Bob.:	Scholia Bobiensia
Sen. Ep(ist).:	Seneca, Epistula(e)
Serv. ad Georg., AD Aen.:	Servius on Georgics, Aeneid
Sil., Pun.:	Silius Italicus, Punica
SNG:	Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, numerous vols.
Stob. Flor.:	Stobaeus, Florilegium
Suet. Rhet.,
Gramm., Div. Iul., Tib.:	Suetonius, de Rhetoribus, de Grammaticis, Divus Iulius, Tiberius
SVA:	(Bengtson, Schmitt) Die Staatsverträge des Altertums, vols. 2 and 3
Syll. :	Sylloge
Tac.:	Tacitus
TAPA:	Transactions of the American Philological Association
Thuc.:	Thucydides
TLE:	(Pallotino) Testimonia Lingua Etruscae
tr.:	translator, translated by
Val. Max.:	Valerius Maximus
Varro, Rust.:	de Re Rustica (= de Agricultura)
LL:	de Lingua Latina
Vell. Pat.:	Velleius Paterculus
Zon.:	Zonaras
Zos.:	Zosimus
ZPE:	Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Introduction: The Punic Wars

It was a welcome opportunity to be invited to edit the Blackwell Companion to the Punic Wars and so to gather a body of specialist contributors who would illuminate not only the military aspects of these famous conflicts but also many other linked themes. The Companion aims to fit the warfare into its complex environment to illuminate the culture, background, demography and postwar fortunes of the two states that fought each other to the death over a hundred and twenty years.

The Punic Wars marked the beginning of Rome's imperial expansion and ended Carthage's. The issue was not a foregone conclusion until 201 BC: more than once, especially during the Second War, it could have turned the other way. Together with a range of Roman leaders celebrated in literature and tradition — Regulus, Fabius the Delayer, Marcellus the captor of Syracuse, Scipio Africanus, his adoptive grandson Scipio Aemilianus, and Cato the Censor — the conflicts made famous the only Carthaginian with as notable a name today, not always for accurate reasons, as in the ancient world, and two other great North African leaders who by contrast are undeservedly forgotten, Hannibal's father Hamilcar and Masinissa of Numidia.

The historical record of these figures and their world is variedly askew. Apart from a few quotations and papyrus fragments, the written accounts that survive are all by Greek and Roman authors, from Polybius who watched Carthage burn in 146 BC to sometimes uncomprehending summary-compilers of late Roman times. Roman tradition, and increasingly Greek, viewed the Carthaginians as quintessential fraudsters andwarmongers, memorably summed up by the philosopher-biographer Plutarch around AD 100:

bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to decisions, disagreeable and hard in their attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. (Moralia 799 D)

By contrast, Rome and the Romans of this era of conflict were largely held to be solidly virtuous and heroic, not to mention much put upon by their cunning adversaries: who, it followed logically, were entirely to blame for the wars. This bias forms one of the modern scholar's constant preoccupations when assessing any aspect of the Punic Wars, as this Companion illustrates in every chapter.

The ancient accounts are askew in other ways too. They survive unevenly, another scholarly cross to bear, for most detailed Greek and Roman historical works did not make it unscathed out of the Middle Ages. Those that treat of the three Punic Wars are in a particularly unfortunate state. Only Polybius’ first five books (out of 40) are complete, although we do have sizeable extracts from the rest; Livy's account of only the Second War has come through, though with short epitomes of his books on the others; Diodorus’ world history is down to excerpts for the centuries after 300 BC; and Dio's monumental history of Rome is represented solely in excerpts and in a Byzantine epitome for all the centuries before Cicero's and Caesar's. As a result our knowledge of the First Punic War and the Third is lopsided and almost monochrome: the only detailed information on the First comes in Polybius’ condensed version and, on the Third, in Appian's fairly short narrative which, in agreeable contrast to his treatment of the previous two, draws partly on Polybius’ lost account — but also devotes plenty of space to rather less admirable, Appian-composed speeches.

That Appian is the major source for a war fought three centuries before his own day illustrates another problem. Polybius alone was a contemporary of any war; Livy and Diodorus lived and wrote 100 to 150 years after him, and the rest still later. How all of them utilized earlier sources, including documents like the texts of treaties, what sources each chose to utilize, and how they organized the information they drew from these are among the most debated issues in Punic Wars studies. Livy, for example, used Polybius extensively and thus could read his verbatim quotation of Hannibal's treaty with Macedon, as we still can: why did he choose to offer without comment an improbably biased version, presumably found in an earlier Roman author?

A fourth source problem is compounded by the other three. Most Greek and Roman authors were inexpert or uninterested in technical matters, from military realities to topography and chronology, and their decided preference was for dramatic and psychological retellings. Polybius does offer some discussion, almost too compressed, of why the First Punic War broke out, whereas what we have of Diodorus and Dio on the outbreak of the First Punic War shows them interested mainly in the personal confrontations between Mamertines, Carthaginians, and Romans around the straits of Messina in summer 264 (Dio's efforts at explaining the background are merely a series of generalizations about mutual fear and territorial covetousness). Reporting how Scipio Africanus’ first peace treaty with Carthage, in 203, was received by the Senate at Rome, Livy supplies participants with plenty of oratory while insisting that the treaty was rejected, a striking contrast to Polybius’ evidence of ratification — which Livy himself soon afterwards assumes to have happened. His account of the climactic battle of Zama, in turn, is bizarrely at odds with Polybius’ which he seems not to understand fully (a Livian hazard also found elsewhere in his work); though it is not as bizarre as that of Appian, who like the epic poet Silius was determined to insert a hand-to-hand joust between the two great generals. Polybius himself, with all his disdain for careless armchair historiography, can be vague or simply wrong at times: as in his narrative, almost place-name-free, of Hannibal's passage over the Alps and his implausible account of Scipio's early political career.

The virtues of our ancient sources deserve acknowledgment, all the same. They provide names, details of places, and a huge range of military, political, diplomatic, administrative, social, and even (especially in Livy) economic and religious information. Predictably, there are enough discrepancies and sometimes contradictions between accounts to make the task of establishing a reasonably true picture of any topic a contentious one. Yet no study of Punic War themes, this Companion included, would be possible without the materials, expansive, concise, or fragmentary, in the varied writings that survive.

Archaeological evidence and numismatics are in turn valuable in illuminating the societies, cultures, and religions involved in the wars, although they cannot to any great extent clarify the “action history” — politics, diplomacy, warfare, and individuals. The rather small number of inscriptions from those centuries is invaluable, from the epitaphs of some of the Scipio family, and a (possibly) third-century milestone on a road in western Sicily, to the broken text of Rome's treaty with the Aetolians in 212 and second-century BC memorials to royal Numidians, inscribed in the Punic language, in territories previously Carthaginian. Of all the epigraphic materials that once existed, the one that probably most historians wish had survived would surely be Hannibal's personal record, in Punic and Greek, of his campaigns in Italy down to 206 in the temple of Hera (Juno) on Cape Lacinium, today Capo Colonna, in southern Italy.

The Punic Wars created a “national” Roman story of almost Trojan War resonance, with its cast of heroic characters, figures flawed or tragic (such as Regulus and Flaminius), and the larger-than-life enemy — hateful yet also admired — personified by Hannibal. The dimensions of warfare were vast for the ancient Mediterranean world: Polybius describes the First as the greatest known to history until the Second surpassed it, while in the Second the proportions of Rome's and her loyal allies’ manpower that were called on for military and naval service approached those of twentieth-century Europe. Hannibal's tactical genius and the dramatic glamour of his crossing of the Alps have gripped the imagination of all eras, and have been esteemed as lessons valuable even to campaign-planners of recent times (notably Graf von Schlieffen and General Norman Schwarzkopf) — though the further lesson, that a sweeping victory does not invariably end one's problems, has always been less welcome. The ruthlessly imposed horrors of the Third war illuminated the realities of great-power hegemony that again could offer lessons to later eras.

Rome's victory in the Second established her domination of the western Mediterranean lands, and freed her to intervene in the east. This was done with a speed and success that stunned observers. Thirteen years after the peace of 201 with Carthage, she had struck down the great-power pretensions of both Alexander the Great's homeland Macedon and the greatest of his successor states, the Seleucid empire, and reduced the entire eastern Mediterranean potentially to satellite status. By 167 Macedon itself had ceased to exist and Rome had reinforced her eastern hegemony. It prompted Polybius’ famous introductory question:

Who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what political system the Romans in less than fifty-three years [to 167 BC ] have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole rule [ arche ] — something not to be found in all previous history? (Pol. 1.1.5)

The ultimate result, after his time, was the Roman empire bounded by the Atlantic, the Sahara, and the great rivers of central Europe and Mesopotamia, remembered and sometimes envied down the ages. Polybius was more prescient than even he knew.

One might wonder what the result would have been had Hannibal and Carthage been victorious instead of Scipio and Rome. With Rome, Italy, and the western lands under Carthage's arche, subjection of the east would nothave been long in coming (especially if Hannibal continued in control; in 201 he was only 46). An empire speaking Punic and Greek, or Punic, Greek, and also Latin, might ultimately have stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates — if not beyond.

Our Companion to the Punic Wars does not attempt parafactual history, but explores as wide a range of topics and questions as possible that arise from the perennially challenging subject of the three wars. An internationally collaborative volume, it does not aim at uniform viewpoints or follow any ideology. It does not impose artificially strict bounds on each chapter's topic either, for one strength of a broad spectrum of scholarly contributors is that differing interpretations of the same or a similar issue will be presented, appropriate to the healthy diversity of views in current historiography: as a notable instance, the variety of modern scholarly views about the reasons why the wars occurred at all.

The chapters contributed by scholars writing in other languages have been translated by language specialists whose work the Editor takes much pleasure in acknowledging: Dr Tomas Drevikovsky (German), Dr Diana Modesto (Italian), and Mrs Robyn Rihani (French). Dr Ñaco del Hoyo's chapter was translated by the Editor. Throughout the long gestation of the Companion the support of Wiley-Blackwell's editorial team, especially Galen Smith and Haze Humbert, has been constant and is deeply appreciated. The learned collaboration, and the patience, of the Editor's fellow contributors are also deeply appreciated: he hopes that the Companion will satisfy them as fully as, he also hopes, it will our readers.

DEXTER HOYOS

Sydney: June 2010

PART I

BACKGROUND AND SOURCES