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The First Punic War, by John Lazenby
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First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
- Sales Rank: #2862963 in Books
- Published on: 1996-01-31
- Released on: 1996-01-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x .51" w x 6.14" l, .70 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 224 pages
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Caveat Emptor...
By John P. Jones III
There seems to be an unfortunate trend in the publishing industry lately, of apparently obtaining a copyright which has lapsed, then re-issuing the book, usually at an exorbitant price, and with quality that is substantially inferior to the original. I noticed this trend occurring with two other wildly disparate books, And Quiet Flows the Don and One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding: Author Corrected Text. Other reviewers have posted the relevant details on each of these books. Frankly I am surprised that Stanford University Press has gotten into this game. Fortunately I purchased my copy, issued by UCL Press Ltd., shortly after it was originally issued in 1996, which has the much more evocative cover, a copy of JMW Turner's painting, "Regulus." What alerted me to the problem was ET Veal's excellent review, in which he complained about the lack of maps. My version contains eight maps, properly correlated to the text, enabling the reader to better understand "the action," as well as a drawing of the "corvus," the boarding mechanism which greatly facilitated the Roman victories. So, if I was buying again, I'd make sure to purchase the 1996 version, some copies of which are currently available, used, at almost a tenth of the price of a new hardcover edition from Stanford.
The First Punic War occurred in the middle 3rd Century B.C., lasted more than 20 years, and was fought between the two principal economic and military powers of the Mediterranean world, Rome and Carthage. There are parallels, though certainly not exact, with World War I and II, since after a little more than a couple of decades, the Second Punic War commenced, which would ultimately lead to the utter destruction of Carthage, with Rome triumphant. It is the latter war that is far better known, due to the ancient historians, whose work is preserved, and the fact that the dynamic and charismatic Hannibal plays much better on the `big screen,' and has generated numerous movies. Professor Lazenby has performed an admirable task, however, of making the First war, the prelude, much more accessible to the modern reader, despite the paucity of accurate sources, mainly Polybius.
Lazenby draws the concerned reader of history into the story on page 1, with, to me, the astonishing fact that the naval battle at Ecnomus, in 256 BC, involved more men that the battle of Leyte Gulf, in the Second World War, which I had always thought was the largest. Supposedly, there were 285,000 men, and 680 ships at Ecnomus, compared to 200,000 men and 282 ships at Leyte. A couple of other books that seem to confirm both large numbers, and the savagery of battles in the ancient world are (The Histories, Revised (Penguin Classics) and The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic
Overall, I appreciated Lazenby's approach, carefully weighing the facts in terms of their reliability (confirmed by more than one source) and plausibility (what we know of overall life in the ancient world.) Still, I found the book a bit of a slog, with far more details that I'm likely to retain, and perhaps one equivocation too many due to poor original sources, so overall, I'd give it 4-stars, and leave a higher rating to the true aficionados of this period.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
More than a scene-setter for Hannibal
By Harry Eagar
J.F. Lazenby claims his book is the first history of the First Punic War in English. The story, of course, as been told before, but usually as a scene-setter for the more dramatic career of Hannibal in the Second War.
However, the first war was even more important. Not only was it "the longest war in ancient history," it was Rome's first war outside Italy. It was, Lazenby says, by no means certain that Rome would be the victor in any, much less all three, of its wars with Carthage. Therefore, he judges the victory ending the first war in 241 BC one of the most important in all history. He also labels the naval battle of Ecnormus the greatest in all history, at least in terms of numbers of sailors engaged.
It should be remembered that this started just a century before the revolt of the Maccabees, in an out-of-the-way place. Carthage was big and strong, Rome an emerging regional power.
Since my primary interest is the role of sea power, the First Punic War is of special interest. Throughout history, in situations where sea power could be decisive, it almost always has been. Not here. At least, not in the way anyone would have expected.
At the start, Carthage was the sea power, with better ships, better sailors. It should have had better captains, but perhaps it did not. Rome had no navy at all, although its recently absorbed southern Italian allies (Greeks) had maritime experience.
Carthage ought to have been able to use the flexibility of sea power to quickly end Rome's entry into Sicily. As it happened, Rome won every sea battle but one. In part this was due to advances in technology (the corvus or boarding ramp) and tactics (use of shore artillery to defend an inferior fleet).
However, these victories, until the last one, did not count for much in the campaign because three times Rome's navy was destroyed by storms, twice just after important victories.
Lazenby tentatively identifies the difference as strategic: Rome was bent on conquest (though not at the outset), while Carthage, a trading power, preferred peace, business and compromise of differences. Rome would not settle for less than total victory.
Lazenby says of the Romans, "they thought they had to finish anything they began, nothing they had once decided to do being impossible." That used to be the American way of war, too, but no longer.
"The First Punic War" is one of the oddest history books I have ever read. The sources are few and contradictory, and while archaeology, numismatics and geography are some help, the word "uncertain" appears scores of times. "It is difficult to know what to make of all this," Lazenby says over and over.
He makes an excellent effort, nevertheless.
Although I usually avoid commenting on other reviews, I am mystified by the reviewer who complained that Lazenby does not give a strategic view. He does, and in an epilogue recapitulates his strategic conclusions.
35 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Rome's First Great War
By E. T. Veal
Polybius begins his history of Rome's rise to domination of the Mediterranean with the First Punic War (264-241 B.C.), and he was no doubt right about its significance. For the first time, Roman forces ventured outside of Italy, fought at sea and invaded another continent. By war's end, the City had added Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica to its sphere of influence and could no longer be ignored by other Mediterranean states. It had also acquired a relentless enemy in defeated Carthage and, especially, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca. For two decades after peace was declared, the Barcids devoted their energies to building a new Punic dominion in Spain to support their dreams of revenge, dreams that were almost fulfilled by Hamilcar's son, Hannibal.
One would like to, but cannot, trace so important a conflict in at least moderate detail. Polybius, our fullest source, merely summarizes events as a prelude to the Second Punic War, and his narrative is a blend of two lost authors of uncertain reliability, without the eyewitness evidence that undergirds the main portion of his work. To fill the gaps in Polybius, all that survive are fragments, epitomes and the summaries of late compilers like the 5th Century Orosius and 12th Century Zonaras.
The patchiness of the sources is frustratingly apparent in the last period of the war. In 249 Rome lost virtually its entire fleet to a battle and a storm, just at the moment when Carthage's handful of remaining strongholds in Sicily seemed on the verge of collapse. At that point fog descends. We are told that Hamilcar Barca conducted a brilliant guerilla campaign for the next eight years. Polybius calls him the best general on either side, and the Carthaginians awarded him their most important post-war commands. But what he did to earn that reputation is a mystery. Equally mysterious is the apparent passivity of both combatants. Carthage devoted its military energies to subduing its African neighbors, making little effort to regain its Mediterranean position, while Rome waited seven years to construct another navy. What was going on, and why? We will never know.
Incidents are not all that the record lacks. The institutional background is hazy; both cities changed between the first and second wars, but we do not know how or how much. The statesmen and generals are little more than names. Motives and strategies are largely guesswork.
At the most basic level, it is hardly possible to form a clear notion of how battles were fought. Professor Lazenby remarks that "we do not even know exactly what a quinquereme was". He is too optimistic. We do not even know _approximately_ what a quinquereme was, except that it was the principal warship on both sides and had a name derived from five somethings having to do with oars. Obscure in a different way is the "crow", a Roman invention that combined boarding bridge and grappling hook. Polybius credits this "wonder weapon" with negating Carthaginian superiority in seamanship, enabling the inexperienced Roman navy to sweep all of its early battles. Yet the device looks easy to counter; strong men with poles should have been able to fend it off while their vessel backed oars and slipped out of reach. Moreover, the Romans, after supposedly using the crow successfully for 15 years, abruptly gave it up, and no one ever employed it again.
For undertaking what many would call an impossible feat of reconstruction, Professor Lazenby deserves kudos. He assembles a lucid outline by sifting and comparing the ancient sources, laying out his reasoning in meticulous but rarely exhausting detail. His operating assumption is that virtually all of the recorded facts go back to something that really occurred rather than just to imagination. There are some limits to this principle. He rejects out of hand the romantic story of the consul Regulus' self-sacrifice. But he defends Polybius' enormous figures for the numbers of ships and men engaged at the Battle of Ecnomus (256 B.C.) and lost in the storm off Camarina (255 B.C.). Many readers will probably be more skeptical, but at least they are given a fair accounting of the data.
The product of this effort is not vivid and exciting, but that is not the author's fault. Only fiction could hope to bring the dry bones to life. What can be faulted is the absence of good maps of the theater of war. Roads, topography and ethnic allegiances of Sicilian towns would all be welcome, though they may have fallen victim to budget constraints.
The reader does not need to bring to this book any specialized background knowledge, but the specialist should not find it superficial. More could probably not be said in twice the pages. As the only modern English history of the First Punic War, it will be appreciated by those interested in either ancient military affairs or the development of the Roman Republic.
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