The Disgraced Ancient Roman Admiral Who Did Not Heed The Sacred Chickens During The First Punic War

At the start of the First Punic War (264-241 BCE), Carthage had a pronounced naval advantage over Rome. Yet, in 260 BCE, the Romans utilized their wealth and engineering brilliance to quickly constructed a fleet of warships that could challenge Carthage. The Carthaginians, however, still arguably had better ships and more talented sailors. In response, the Romans devised clever tactics and contraptions to give themselves an advantage over the Carthaginians, such as hooked platforms that could allow Roman marines to attack the crews of Carthaginian ships as if it was a land battle.

Rome’s new fleet and naval tactics quickly proved effective. In 260 BCE, they defeated Carthage in a sea battle at Mylae. This victory allowed them to ferry troops to seize the island of Corsica in 259 BCE. After that, the fleet was confident enough to even sail to the Carthaginian homeland in North Africa, where Rome won two major sea battles, in 256 BCE and 255 BCE respectively, which took place off the coast of Tunisia. When the Roman army, which had followed the fleet to Tunisia, suffered a costly defeat at the hands of the Carthaginians in 255 BCE, the Roman fleet was able to ferry the survivors to safety.

Even though the invasion of Africa had not gone well, Rome’s campaigns in Sicily were coming along smoothly. By 250 BCE, Rome had won a devastating victory over the Carthaginian army in Sicily and besieged the Carthaginian strongholds of Lilybaeum (modern Marsala) and Drepanum (modern Trapani). The Roman navy assisted in these sieges by blockading the regions from the coast and launching raids against vulnerable targets.

Now, having mentioned some of the overwhelming successes of the Roman Navy thus far in the First Punic War, it is time to cue the unfortunate admiral, Publius Claudius Pulcher. He was a Roman consul who was in charge of the fleet in 249 BCE. At the time, the ships under his command allegedly numbered 123 vessels, in total. With this fleet, Claudius Pulcher cornered the Carthaginian navy in the harbor of Drepanum. With the enemy in his clutches, the admiral was faced with the choice between cautiously maintaining a blockade or launching a sudden attack on the Carthaginian ships.

As people from the ancient world often did, Claudius Pulcher watched for omens, or signs of the gods’ will. The biographer, Suetonius (c. 70-130+), wrote about Claudius Pulcher’s pre-battle attempt at divination in his brief history of the Claudii family in the section on Emperor Tiberius, from The Twelve Caesars. According to Suetonius’ account, Claudius Pulcher conveniently had some sacred chickens on his ship, and the behavior of these chickens was thought to reflect the pleasure or displeasure of the gods. Therefore, when the sacred chickens refused to eat their feed, it was interpreted as a bad omen for the battle. By this point, however, Claudius Pulcher, was apparently irreversibly eager to go forward with his assault on the harbor of Drepanum, despite the wise counsel of his sage chickens.

According to Suetonius’ likely-embellished account, Claudius Pulcher expressed his distaste for the sacred chickens’ verdict by allegedly shouting, “If they will not eat, let them drink!” and then impiously had the chickens tossed overboard (The Twelve Caesars, Tiberius, sec. 2). With that, the admiral signaled his ill-fated attack against the harbor of Drepanum. The battle turned out to be just as horrible as the sacred chickens had warned. Of the 123 ships under Publius Claudius’ command, only 30 survived the disastrous battle, including the admiral’s own ship. When Publius Claudius returned to Rome, he was promptly slapped with a huge fine and was even accused of treason. Fortunately, he is known to have lived for a few more years after the notorious incident.

As an interesting side note, Suetonius also wrote about another scandalous incident involving Claudius Pulcher’s sister. According to the tale, the disgraced admiral’s sister was traveling in a carriage through the streets of Rome, when she became thoroughly annoyed at the slow traffic in the city. In a fit of ancient road rage, she allegedly shouted, “If only my brother were alive to lose another fleet! That would thin out the population a little” (The Twelve Caesars, Tiberius, sec. 2). Suetonius claimed that Claudius Pulcher’s sister was consequently tried for treason because of her comments, though he neglected to record how the trial ultimately ended.

Publius Claudius’ blunder at Drepanum caused Rome to lose all of its momentum in the First Punic War. Following the destruction of their navy, the Romans had to scale back their assault on Lilybaeum and Drepanum. In 242 BCE, however, the Romans built a new fleet of a reported 200 ships, with which they were able to assert their naval superiority over Carthage and finally end the First Punic War in 241 BCE.

Written by C. Keith Hansely.

Picture Attribution: (1882 illustration of Publius Claudius Pulcher consulting the sacred chickens during the Punic War, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves and edited by James B. Rives. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
• https://www.britannica.com/event/Punic-Wars#ref1247437
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Publius-Claudius-Pulcher 

The Sibylline Books Are One Of The Most Important Topics of Roman History, But Remain One Of Rome’s More Obscure Mysteries

(Woodcut of Sibyl Almathea from a German translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Giovanni Boccaccio, c. 1474,via Creative Commons 2.0 (CC 2.0)

Thankfully for us, ancient Romans were avid writers. Poets wrote of Roman mythology and legends. Historians detailed the events of the Roman Republic, the empire and the numerous emperors. Julius Caesar wrote an elaborate autobiography. Emperor Marcus Aurelius left us his book of insightful meditations, and Emperor Julian the Apostate published his learned attacks against Christianity in favor of the traditional gods of Rome. Yet, with all of the abundant information available about the Roman Empire, one subject of immense importance remains infuriatingly mysterious—the Sibylline Books.

The Sibylline Books were a well-guarded collection of cryptic and poetic prophetic riddles, in which the Romans would search for answers in times of crisis. One of the known examples of when the Sibylline Books were consulted was when Italy was ravaged by the military genius, Hannibal of Carthage, during the Second Punic War. The Roman Republic surveyed the Sibylline Books and deduced that their fortunes would change if they invited a goddess from Phrygia into the Roman pantheon of gods. They took the prophecy to heart and brought the cult of Cybele, the Magna Mater (Great Mother), into Rome with great honors around 204 BCE.

That, however, is one of the few facts we know about the Sibylline Books.  Along with the Punic Wars story, scholars have very loosely deduced that one to twelve Sibyls, or prophetesses, wrote the Sibylline Books. Only one particular Sibyl can be considered historical-ish. A prophetess only known as the Cumaean Sibyl (sometimes named Almalthea) reportedly sold a collection of prophetic books to King Tarquinius Superbus (c. 6^th century BCE), the last king of the Romans. She tried to sell nine books of prophecy to the Roman King, but when he refused to pay her price, she burned six books before the king was convinced to buy remaining three (for the price of all nine). The Cumaean Sibyl is even thought to be the sibyl featured in Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid.

Regardless of where the Sibylline Books came from, they stayed safe in their guarded temple until they were required in times of crisis. They reportedly were heavily damaged by fire, or completely destroyed, in 83 BCE. That was the tumultuous year when the dictator, Sulla, took Rome by force for a second time in his life, this time against a man named Cinna (who was Julius Caesar’s father-in-law). Nevertheless, it is thought that the Sibylline Books were repaired, or replaced, and lasted until the 5^th century CE. What remained of the Sibylline Books, however, is thought to have been completely destroyed by General Flavius Stilicho around the year 407, when he seized or destroyed pagan objects and properties in an attempt to gain new, anti-pagan, allies—it did not work, for he was assassinated a year later.

Despite this, another collection of ‘prophesies’ called the Sibylline Oracles has managed to survive until the present day. These, however, are not the original Books, but are forgeries of the originals, combined with heavy doses of history, mythology and even Jewish and Christian religious teachings. These hoax Sibylline works have been loosely dated to between the 2^nd and 6^th centuries CE.

To close this on a fun note, here is a vivid description of a Sibyl in a god-inspired craze from Virgil’s Aeneid:

“But the Sibyl, still not broken in by Apollo, storms

with a wild fury through her cave. And the more she tries

to pitch the great god off her breast, the more his bridle

exhausts her raving lips, overwhelming her untamed heart,

bending her to his will. Now the hundred immense

mouths of the house swing open, all on their own,

and bear the Sibyl’s answers through the air.”

• From The Aeneid by Virgil (Book Six), translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics edition)

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.  
• http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/ancient-history-late-roman-and-byzantine-biographies/flavius-stilicho 
• http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Sa-Sp/Sibyls.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sibyl-Greek-legendary-figure 
• http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/ 
• http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Sibylline_Books  

In The 5th And 4th Centuries BCE, Dionysius I Made Syracuse One Of The Strongest Powers Of Sicily And Italy

(“Dion Presents Plato to Dionysius,” an colored engraving print from Hermann Göll, Die Weisen und Gelehrten des Alterthums, Leipzig (Otto Spamer) 1876, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

For Hellenistic history, Dionysius I (or Dionysius the Elder) is a bittersweet figure. On the one hand, he led Syracuse, a Sicilian city-state of Greek descent, to be a regional power that could defeat the empire of Carthage in multiple wars. On the other iron-fisted hand, however, Dionysius’ authoritarianism and inhospitable expansion throughout Sicily and lower Italy gained him the label of ‘tyrant.’

Dionysius’ life before his ascension to power remains obscure.  He likely held some sort of public office, possibly the position of a clerk, but he began his rise to power in a war against Carthage around 409 BCE. Dionysius distinguished himself as a leader during the war, and by 405 BCE, he managed to seize power in Syracuse. The war that allowed him to rise to power ended—or a ceasefire was put in place—giving Dionysius approximately eight years to strengthen his hold over Syracuse and grow his influence to encompass other Greeks residing in Sicily.

Around 397 BCE, Dionysius was able to rally the Sicilians to attack Carthage. Dionysius’ army sieged the Carthaginian city of Motya, spurring Carthage to send an army to siege Syracuse. While they were encamped near Syracuse, the Carthaginian force may have picked up a plague, sapping their strength and crushing their morale. Dionysius pressed his advantage against his opponent’s weakness and relentlessly struck at the Carthaginian army. Harassed by Sicilian arms, and weary from plague, the Carthaginians conceded defeat around 396 BCE. Another war between Syracuse and Carthage broke out within the same decade, but Syracuse, again, emerged victorious near 392 BCE. With his two wars in the 390s, Dionysius pushed Carthage out of Sicily, and made Syracuse the master of the Sicilian island.

Shortly after expelling Carthage from Sicily, Dionysius set his sights on Italy. By 390 BCE, he moved into lower Italy, conquering Thurii, Croton, Locri and Rhegium, the last of which fell to Dionysius around 388 BCE. It is even thought that he established a colony in northern Italy around Illyria. Even though he had brought all of these places (Sicily and parts of Italy) under the control of a Hellenistic state, the Greek descendants living in Dionysius’ territory did not necessarily prosper. Like most other armies of the time, the military of Dionysius had a large contingent of mercenaries, and mercenaries require payment and gifts. Unfortunately for the Greeks living under Dionysius, one of the easiest gifts for the tyrant to give to the mercenaries was Greek lands and slaves.

In 383 BCE, Dionysius began a third war with Carthage that would end his laudable winning streak. Dionysius the Tyrant continued to fight Carthage until his death in 367 BCE, but he lost control of everything west of the ancient Halycus River (around 1/3 of Sicily). Nevertheless, Dionysius I brought himself, and Syracuse, on a tremendous rise to power. Unfortunately, as his power grew he only became more and more tyrannical, and will always be remembered as a tyrant.

 

(Image of Dionysius I of Syracuse, by Guillaume Rouille (1518?-1589), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dionysius-I  

• http://www.heritage-history.com/?c=read&author=church&book=helmet&story=dionysius

When Ancient Romans Needed To Rule the Mediterranean, They Turned Their Infantry Into Marines

(Roman Quinquereme, from James Bikie c. 1925, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

In the middle of the 3^rd century BCE, Rome and Carthage, two superpowers of the ancient Mediterranean, began their fateful Punic Wars, which would decide which country and culture would come to dominate the classical world. At the onset of the wars, Carthage was the undisputed naval power of the Mediterranean. Rome, in contrast, was a battle-hardened infantry power, with almost no experience in naval warfare, except small campaigns against piracy. Nevertheless, Rome would win a great victory over a larger Carthaginian navy at the battle of Mylae in 260 BCE. They were able to win by using their renowned engineering capabilities, and a simple strategy—turn the naval battle into an infantry charge.

The first step for Rome was to build a fleet. To do this, Roman engineers studied a captured quinquereme (a ship with five stories of rowers) and quickly mass-produced over one hundred of their own quinqueremes, which would serve as the core of their Punic War navy. With their fleet mass-produced, Rome still had to nullify Carthage’s superiority in naval skill.

Ancient naval warfare was often a battle of opposing crews on their ships rowing up momentum and ramming their armored bows against enemy ships. In an orthodox naval battle, Carthage’s sailing skill would give them greater mobility and maneuverability over Rome’s fledgling navy. To counteract the skill of Carthage, Rome installed a device called a corvus on their ships, which was basically a ramp attached securely to the bow of the ship. The ramp made the Roman ships unstable, but it ultimately tipped the balance of power in Rome’s favor. With the corvus, the Roman marines could row up to the Carthaginian ships, drop their ramps, and bring their formidable infantry might to the seas.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Source

• See our article on the Punic Wars, HERE.