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The war had started when Rome sent aid to the Mamertines, a group of discharged Italian mercenaries from Campania—really a gang of disreputable bandits. These “Sons of Mars” had twenty years earlier captured the city of Messana, the key Sicilian port in the strait between Sicily and the toe of Italy, from which base they blackmailed and plundered eastern Sicily.

They did, however, finally run into a Sicilian leader, Hiero of Syracuse, who would stand against them. Defeating the Mamertines in the field, Hiero confined them to Messana.

The Mamertines appealed first to Carthage, which supplied a force whose presence persuaded Hiero to back away. Then, when the Mamertines were unable to dislodge their new Punic friends—dinner guests who refused to go home—a Mamertine emissary had gone to Rome.

Supporting the Mamertines would be a risky policy for Rome, which had until that time kept hands off Sicily despite her attractiveness. Also, Hiero was a Roman friend and ally. On the other side of the balance, unfortunately, Carthage posed a real threat to Rome, for Carthage held Sardinia, Corsica, and the islands of Lipara, all in Italy’s front yard, and they threatened to seize the key port of Messana as well. They might soon own all of Sicily. Might Carthage then establish colonies, as she had done all over the western Mediterranean—even on the coast of Italy herself?

So Roman aid to the Mamertines—sent amid acrimonious debate—had sparked a war that lasted twenty-three years. The Romans called it the Punic war, using their word for ‘Phoenician.’ Carthage called it the war for Sicily.

* * *

When Varus had achieved a state of tranquility, thinking of nothing more than the bees in the meadow, Sempronius spoke again.

“I know Regulus—the father—fell captive to the Carthaginians. Do you know what happened to him? I’ve heard things, but I never knew what to believe.”

Indeed, Regulus had failed utterly. He sought to glorify himself by achieving a victory over the winter, before a new fleet could arrive with more legions—led by next year’s consuls, shoving Regulus aside. But he pushed too hard, too soon. Carthage brought in a Spartan general named Xanthippus who trounced Regulus and took him prisoner.

Varus had gone home from Africa with the consul Vulso and so was spared Regulus’s fate. But any time Regulus’s name was mentioned, Varus had naturally pricked up his ears. So it was that he knew the rest of the story.

“After he was some five years in captivity, Carthage sent Regulus home.”

“He returned to Rome?”

“Oh, yes, but not to stay.”

“Where did he go, then?”

“Marcus Atilius Regulus went back to Carthage, voluntarily, and was murdered there under the most vicious torture, a fate he fully expected.”

“Why in the name of Jupiter Best and Greatest did he go back?” Sempronius asked.

“Carthage dragged Regulus out of his cell and sent him to Rome with an embassy, seeking favorable terms to end the war. Regulus gave his word that he would return to Carthage. And so the embassy sailed to Rome. But when they tied up at Ostia and boated up the Tiber to approach the city, Regulus wouldn’t enter the gate.

“The leader of the embassy asked him why.

“Regulus responded that he was not worthy to enter Rome, as he had failed her in battle.

“Of course, word of the embassy reached the Senate, in session at that moment, and all of the senators trooped out to the gate and spoke with Regulus there. Meanwhile, they sent for Regulus’s wife and children. Would that they hadn’t!

“Before the senators, Regulus stood on weaving legs, thin as the slats they use in a vineyard to support the vines. He had no color, his eyes dull surfaces deep within great hollows.

“But this wraith spoke firmly, telling the senators they should not receive the embassy nor listen to anything the ambassadors said.

“A ruckus ensued, of course, as the ambassadors struggled with Regulus to compel him to honor his word and speak to Rome on Carthage’s behalf. But Regulus refused.

“About that time, Regulus’s family arrived at the gate. I was already there, as I happened to be in Rome at the time, though not yet in the Senate, and heard the commotion. When he saw his wife, Regulus greeted her, took her in his arms, gathered in his sons and his daughter. They wept, of course, joyful that husband and father had come home to them, even the father who had executed his own son.

“Shortly, however, Regulus held his wife at arm’s length. ‘Be strong, wife,’ he told her. ‘I’ve given my word and must return to Carthage.’

“His wife cried out at this. ‘Return? Return? Damn your word! Stay! Let them think what they like!’

“But Regulus only said, ‘I gave my word. My word. Have I anything left but that? Goodbye, wife. Goodbye, my sons.’

“And he turned and led the Carthaginians back to their ship, his wife and children straggling after them along the Tiber, gradually falling behind the boat until they were lost to his sight—the last thing he saw was his grown sons weeping and calling to him, his wife and daughter tearing their hair. Regulus boarded the ship at Ostia and sailed away.”

“Jupiter!” Sempronius whispered after a moment’s silence. Then: “I’ve heard of the ‘Lesson of Regulus.’ Never invade Africa. But I’d never heard this amazing tale.”

“Yes,” Varus said, chuckling. “Regulus was a man of his word—he broke his word only once, and that for the honor of Rome herself—when he refused to keep his promise to speak for the Carthaginians.

“And you know how the rest of the war went, as it ended only five years ago. I suppose you were at least a cadet by then yourself—right at the end?”

“Oh, yes,” Sempronius said.

* * *

Indeed, Sempronius knew the rest of the history.

The war, already eight years old at the time of Regulus’s invasion, went on for another fifteen years.

Sempronius had been a boy five years old when the second invasion fleet, under the new consuls Servius Fulvius Paetinus Nobilior and Marcus Aemilius Paullus, turned into a rescue fleet on news of Regulus’s failure. The fleet managed only to rescue the few Roman survivors who clung to a small stronghold on the African coast near where they had originally landed. On their way home the consuls trounced what was left of the Carthaginian fleet, but then the Roman ships ran into a great storm off the southern coast of Sicily. They lost many ships, many lives. Start tape 2 here.

After that, Rome concentrated on Sicily, and the battle swung back and forth for years. It was during this period that Hiero of Syracuse taught the Romans the craft of siege warfare, a craft that would contribute mightily to their later successes and to the building of their great war machine. Still, in many ways they were yet neophytes.

One occurrence in particular seemed to bode ill for the Roman cause. Before the Battle of Drepanum during the siege of Lilybaeum, when Sempronius was eleven, the consul Publius Claudius Pulcher disregarded the auspices. Told that the sacred chickens, carried on the campaign for use in divining the will of the gods, would not eat (the pattern of their eating being the source of the divination), Claudius Pulcher impiously—and inexplicably—drowned them. “Then let them drink,” he said. In the battle that followed, Claudius Pulcher lost three-quarters of his fleet of 123 warships. Although not convicted of treason, he was fined heavily.

But Rome did prevail at long last, in a final sea battle under Gaius Lutatius Catulus in very unfavorable weather near the Aegates Islands, northwest of Lilybaeum. The Carthaginians sued for peace after this—for during the prolonged fighting in Sicily, they had imprudently mothballed most of what remained of their fleet!

When the Carthaginians finally sued for peace, Sempronius was a senior cadet. By this time, he was fully aware of events as Rome imposed two primary terms. First, Carthage renounced all claims on Sicily.

Rome had her first overseas province.

Second, she was to pay Rome an indemnity of 3,200 silver talents over ten years.

In the last years of the war, Carthage appointed a brilliant young commander over all of Sicily—just eleven years before this lazy, elegant day in Italian Gaul—one Hamilcar Barca. It had been Hamilcar given the task of negotiating the ignominious settlement with Rome.

The negotiating done at last, Hamilcar’s next task was removing Carthaginian troops and ships from Sicily, surrendering Mount Eryx and the other precious toe-holds he had carved in her with the point of his bloody sword, the gains he had made in the last desperate years of the long, long war against Roman superiority—in men, in money, in ships, in sheer staying power.

Bitter? Yes. But not finished.

After the war, Sempronius knew, Hamilcar had gone on to Spain, much of which he’d begun conquering for Carthage while he trained his “lion cubs” to hate Rome.

Next section of I. Hannibal, Spain, 221 - 218 B.C.