The Sicilian Warlord Who Invaded Africa

A History of Mankind (153)

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Rome and Carthage had signed a friendship treaty in 348 BC, an indication that the African city was already exerting some form of rule in Southern Spain since it banned the Romans from “marauding, trading or colonizing” the modern region of Andalusia. By 339 BC, Carthage’s armies were strong and stable enough to try another large-scale campaign against Syracuse, and yet Timoleon of Corinth was there to stop them and defeat them at the Battle of the Crimissus.

The defeat at Crimissus, like that at Himera in 480 BC, marked another watershed for Carthage. Its armies had proved incapable of beating Greek hoplites on the field with any regularity, so the Carthaginian senate pushed for even more intensive reliance on mercenary forces raised in Iberia, Libya and Numidia, as well as the Greek lands of Sicily and elsewhere, to the point that Carthaginian infantry may have been entirely banned from serving in Sicily after around 311 BC – after all, many if not most of the Greeks who kept beating the Carthaginians in Sicily were mercenaries themselves.

This step limited the effect of defeats on Carthage’s manpower pool, as it allowed Carthage citizens to focus on more profitable trading activities, although it had a drawback: it also limited the number of Carthaginian military commanders with actual experience on the field, since fewer Carthaginian citizens exposed to battle meant fewer Carthaginian junior commanders rising through the ranks.