Destroy Carthage (24 page)
Carthaginian cavalry was mainly of lightly armed horsemen
in the Numidian style, fighting with small shields and javelins.
Effectiveness derived from equestrian dexterity, the fleetness
of the diminutive barbary mounts and the power and accuracy
with which the riders hurled their missiles. There was also a
corps d'elite
of heavy citizen cavalry, the mounted section of
the Sacred Band, more elaborately protected than the light
horse and apparently equipped with long cavalry swords.
Though archers appear to have played little part in Punic
warfare - bows and arrows are not listed among the items
produced in the crisis - the Carthaginians specialized in the
projection of various missiles, notably limestone shots hurled
from balistae, catapults and other contraptions. Thousands of
such munitions, weighing from twelve to more than thirty
pounds, have been found on the site at Carthage, produced at
the time of the final threat.
The machines employed to project them worked on several
principles, including propulsion by metal springs and centrifugal force. Those specifically mentioned as part of the 149
arms drive - probably the simplest to manufacture - were
operated by twisting elastic ropes. Such devices were useful
defensive weapons, particularly when mounted in elevated
positions: on walls and towers. Another Punic war machine,
the chariot, was mainly offensive in purpose, at its best in
desert fighting, and little use to a beleaguered force.
The most vital of these items now emerged from the
factories in a ceaseless flow. Men and women worked day and
night. Metal was stripped from houses and public places to
augment reserves. Matrons cut off their long hair, recounted
Appian, and twisted it into ropes for catapults.
Each day, the workshops produced 100 shields, 300 swords,
500 javelins, and 'as many catapults as they could.' Stone missiles were hewn by the thousand, some for mechanical projection, others to be thrown by hand from the ramparts. It
was a remarkable effort. Even so, it would have taken more
than eight months to arm the equivalent of the Roman army,
and that sketchily with a grave deficiency of protective gear.
Wisely, with walls to defend, the Carthaginians placed the
emphasis on missile weapons, strikingly javelins.
Meanwhile, the slaves of the city were freed to fight beside
the citizens; a measure wholly justified, for the emancipated
bondsmen gave brave and true service to the end. Hasdrubal, the general defeated by Masinissa and condemned
by the old government to appease the Romans, was pardoned
hastily and instructed to salvage what he could of the field
army. Rallying about 20,000 men, he established himself in
the interior, guarding the vital route to the grain lands and
discouraging Libyan insurrection.
Another Hasdrubal, prominent in the democratic party, initially held command within the city, but little is known of
him and he was soon removed by assassination - possibly
due to his relationship, through his mother, with Masinissa,
who was his grandfather. More conspicuous in the early stages
of the defence was a cavalry commander named Himilco
Phameas, operating in the country outside the walls.
Impressively, if belatedly, the consuls advanced in early
summer from Utica. A Roman army on the move was at any
time an awesome spectacle, and this was a force of unusual
strength. Typically, a consular army, comprising two Roman
legions, two allied legions, and auxiliaries, would have been
about 20,000 strong. With a total force of 80,000, Censorinus
and Manilius each commanded twice the number of troops
to be expected in less exceptional circumstances.
The Roman legion of the period, about 4,500 men, was
divided into ten cohorts, each of three maniples. In modern
terms, these compared roughly as tactical units with a division,
battalions and companies. Traditionally, the troops of the
cohort were represented in its maniples on an age basis, one
maniple containing the younger men (
hastati
), another somewhat older men (
principes
), and the third containing middle-
aged veterans (
triarii).
All were helmeted and armoured from the waist up. Of
the two younger groups, each man was armed with sword,
shield, lance and javelin. The veterans fought with swords and
pikes. In addition to these units, a company of light infantry
and a small troop of cavalry were attached to the cohort. In
each army, a force of 1,000 troops (including 200 cavalry) was
detached to form the reserve and provide the consul's bodyguard.
Unlike the heavy infantry of Carthage, which fought in a
solid phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, in the manner of Greek
hoplites, the Roman legionaries stood a pace or two apart,
with more room to swing their weapons, while spaces were
left between the maniples. The Romans were not outstanding
cavalrymen. The strength of their armies was in the part-time
but generally enthusiastic legionaries, and the highly-disciplined centurions, tough professional N.C.O.s who served
two to a maniple.
Consular command was less reliable. The system still operating by which generals were changed annually - a precaution
against military dictatorship - worked against the accretion of
martial experience and made coherent strategy difficult for
any length of time. The expedition against Carthage was not
exempt from this failing.
But to the legions heading southeast for their boasted destination, the prowess of their generals must have seemed irrelevant. The richest city in the world lay before them,
ostensibly helpless. The men had enlisted not for the fighting
this time, but the pickings, and events so far had buoyed their
confidence.
The legionary marched laden. In addition to his weapons
and armour, he carried digging tools, cooking pot, rations of
corn and meat, and two palisades to contribute to field fortifications. To the legionaries of Censorinus and Manilius, the load
was slight discouragement. It would, they hoped, be increased
soon with Punic loot.
Coiling inland of the Sebka er Riana, the great lagoon then
open to the sea, the invading column swung east on to the
isthmus. The heights of Carthage smudged the skyline, straggling south from Catacomb to the Byrsa. To the left of the
Romans sparkled the gulf they had skirted; to the right, the
lake of Tunis and its marshes. Ahead, spanning the neck between the waters, stretched the city's celebrated landward
ramparts, the triple fortifications studded with massive four-
storey towers. Inconsequential to an army which expected the gates to be
surrendered, the populace unarmed, these became a different
proposition when report indicated the inlets barred and the
walls manned by defiant citizens, many of whom possessed
newly-forged weapons. They may have seemed to the consuls
a contemptible garrison, but they meant that the operation
was not to be bloodless.
Deploying their divisions, the Romans prepared to sweep
aside the mob.
Repulse
Maniuus
threw his troops against the land wall. Since he can
scarcely have expected to carry such bulwarks against serious
defence, he must have reckoned on the Carthaginians abandoning their posts as the attack commenced. It was, perhaps, a fair
assumption. The purposeful and disciplined approach of 40,000
efficiently-equipped soldiers in battle order was a sight to test
the resolution of any force, let alone an extemporary levy.
The fighting formation of the Roman army was led by the
youngest men. The maniples of
hastati
advanced in twelve
files, ten men deep. Between each maniple in the line was a
gap equal in distance to the frontage of a maniple. In the
second line, composed of the next in age, the maniples were
positioned behind the spaces in the line ahead. The third line,
of veteran troops, contained smaller maniples (six files, ten
men deep) again covering the gaps of the preceding line.
As the youths of the vanguard surged toward the broad ditch
and earthwork fronting the great wall, the Carthaginian
bombardment would have started. It is not difficult to imagine
the effect of the missiles on the advancing ranks. Stones the
size of pumpkins hailed on the Romans. Any one of the shots
could flatten a man's head, or smash his ribs through his
thorax, but the principle purpose of the barrage was to scatter
formations and confuse the foe.
Groups of men braving the unexpected pounding were met
with showers of smaller shots and javelins from the ramparts.
No force could surmount forty-foot walls without siege-
machines while the heights were manned. Neither the professional centurions nor the
triarii,
placed to steady the
younger troops, can have failed to observe the futility of the
assault when the Carthaginians stood their ground.
Carrying their wounded, the legions of Manilius pulled back
to encamp, with some humiliation, on the isthmus.
Censorinus directed his own attack against the water-
bounded wall which encircled Carthage on her other fronts.
Though in itself less forbidding than the triple landward barrier, this gained defensively from the paucity of ground (in
some places there was almost none) on which an enemy could
manoeuvre between beach and fortification. Censorinus in fact
chose the only region with any tactical elbow-room.
At the southeastern point of the city, near the outlet of the
harbours to the bay of Kram, a tongue of land protruded outside the wall toward what is now Goletta (Halk el Wad), at the
mouth of the channel to Tunis. This tongue, washed on one
side by the sea, on the other by the lake of Tunis, was known
to the Romans as the
taenia,
the ribbon. It provided an adequate, though not generous, beach-head from which Censorinus could hammer a relatively weak portion of the
wall: a portion, moreover, adjacent to the Byrsa, the city's
heart.