Hamilcar Barca

Hamilcar Barca fought Rome to a standstill in Sicily without ever losing a battle, lost the war anyway when the fleet was destroyed, and then built the empire in Spain that his son used to invade Italy. He took command in Sicily in 247 BC, in the eighteenth year of the first Punic war, and conducted a campaign from Mount Ercte and then Mount Eryx that was mostly raiding and manoeuvre, holding positions the Romans could not take with forces far smaller than theirs. Carthage lost the war at sea at the Aegates Islands in 241 while he was undefeated on land, and he was ordered to negotiate the surrender of the island he had held. What followed at home was worse: the unpaid mercenary army revolted, and the Mercenary War of 240 to 237 was fought with a savagery that shocked even ancient writers, ending with Hamilcar crucifying the survivors. Rome used the crisis to seize Sardinia, which he regarded as robbery and which the ancient sources treat as the real cause of the next war. He went to Spain in 237 and spent nine years conquering the south and its silver mines, building a Carthaginian power base independent of the merchant oligarchy at home. He drowned crossing a river in 228 while covering the retreat of his army. Livy and Polybius both record that he made his nine-year-old son swear at an altar never to be a friend to Rome. The son was Hannibal. Two other sons, Hasdrubal and Mago, commanded armies in the same war, and a son-in-law governed Spain after him. Whether the family was building a private empire or serving Carthage was argued in Carthage at the time and has been argued ever since. The Barcid position in Spain is what made a war of invasion possible at all.

• Lived: 275 BCE – 228 BCE
• Nationality: Carthaginian
• Roles: military_leader