Mercenary War
Carthage's own army revolted in 241 BC over unpaid wages, and the war that followed nearly destroyed the city that the Romans had just failed to. The First Punic War had lasted twenty-three years and ended in Carthaginian defeat and a large indemnity. Its army in Sicily was a mercenary force — Iberians, Celts, Ligurians, Balearic slingers, Greeks and Libyans — shipped home in batches with the arrears owed to them. Carthage let them accumulate at Tunis in one body of some 20,000 rather than paying each detachment off as it landed, and then tried to negotiate the sum downward. The revolt spread to the Libyan subject population, whose taxes had been doubled to pay for the war and whose grievances were older, and the rebels put perhaps 70,000 men in the field. It was fought without quarter on either side. Polybius, who is the main source, calls it the Truceless War and says it exceeded in cruelty anything he knew of, with Carthaginian envoys tortured to death and prisoners trampled by elephants. Hamilcar Barca, who had commanded in Sicily, won it by manoeuvre and by trapping the main rebel force in a defile known as the Saw, where they starved and were destroyed. Rome exploited the crisis by seizing Sardinia and demanding a further indemnity, on no pretext at all. Polybius names that seizure as a principal cause of the Second Punic War, and Hamilcar took his son Hannibal to Spain and, by tradition, made him swear an oath.
- Year: 241 BCE
- Category: Military
