Total War History: The First Punic War (Part 2/4)

This is going to be part two of my series on the first Punic War. This chapter is going to be entitled The Land War Commences. So we're going to be picking up in 263 BC where the current consuls of Rome are Marcus Filarius Maximus and Manius Octicilius Crassus. Now as I mentioned in the last part, what we said is when Romans achieve the pinnacle of their political career, which is going to be the position of consul, they're going to look to just aggrandize their political reputation. They're going to try and make the most of their power, and that's going to be in seeking out gold and glory. And the primary way to get that is going to be through a spectacular conquest of a new nation, of a new territory. And especially important is going to be this campaign, because it's going to be the first major campaign that's actually going to be fought outside the Roman peninsula. So these consuls can say they're going to be the ones who first led Rome outside the peninsula, and that's going to lead to the expansion, of course, of Rome overseas, which is a pretty large feat. So both consuls are going to be eager. They're going to ask for 40,000 soldiers, and they're going to receive it. This army is going to make a rapid advancement into Sicily, and because they already have a beachhead, the Romans are going to be able to start rolling and moving. It's essentially a blitz. The Romans move very, very quickly heading south towards Syracuse, the hotbed of the opposition. Essentially the only stronghold, the major stronghold, that is going to be present on the eastern side of the island. The Carthaginians don't have enough forces mustered, and so it's going to be Syracuse that is going to be the main direction that the Romans are going to be pushing. Now, as they advance, there's going to be many small engagements and skirmishes throughout this initial stage of the campaign. Many of the sieges, however, in the towns are going to be relatively uneventful. They're going to be taken by surprise attacks, or more predominantly, they're actually going to just defect the Carthaginian cities and towns. There's going to be a lot of them in Sicily, a lot of small villages that have walls and stuff like that. They're not huge, but they are still sort of independent communities that have some small defenses. But in the face of 40,000 Roman soldiers bearing down on the territory, burning and moving their way through, many of these cities are going to defect to Rome. So at the face of it, it seems like Rome is just having an easy time, and they're kind of steamrolling, going towards Piero and Syracuse to the south. Now, the problem, however, is the Romans on the inside are marching on an empty stomach. They're starving. And so the reasons for this are going to be twofold. First, as I said, this is going to be the first Roman military campaign outside of the peninsula. It's going to be them engaging overseas, and so that means their supply lines have to come either from forging or come overseas from Rome. Now, the problem of them traveling overseas is Carthage still has the naval edge, and the Carthaginians, while they don't have a land force that can match the Romans, their navy is definitely going to be very strong, and they're going to impose a tight blockade on Sicily, and that's going to prevent the Romans from being reinforced with more supplies. So even though the Romans are doing a lot in terms of military action, as I said, they're marching on an empty stomach. This is fine as long as they can do a blitz, but the second they have to stop and settle down, that's going to be a problem. And that's going to be the exact case once they march on Syracuse. Now, as I said, Syracuse is going to be the main center of opposition. Syracuse, historically, as I said, was a Greek city ruled by tyrants, and each tyrant would seek to make his defenses more impenetrable. And so Syracuse is going to have a whole host of defenses, long lines of walls, very thick walls, all sorts of defenses that'll make it very hard to storm. And so the Romans have two choices, or three choices, actually. They could either, one, wait out the siege and try and starve out Syracuse, but the problem with the supplies makes that option basically not even an option. The second option would be to storm the city. However, this would result in major losses because of the fact that I said Syracuse is a very, very heavily defended city. Now, the third option would be to seek someone inside Syracuse to betray the city to the Romans. The problem with this is the Romans don't have much influence in Sicily yet. They aren't, they're still sort of seen as the outsiders, and so they don't have any real connections to the people inside of Syracuse in order to have someone defect and sort of open the gates to them. So the Romans are at a standstill, but they still have this mighty show of force. Now, as I said, Yarrow is going to be in charge of Syracuse. He's going to be a smart politician, and he sees this as an opportunity to reach out to Rome. He seeks peace, and immediately the Romans are going to accept this. Now, this is going to be beneficial for both sides. The Romans, all of a sudden, are going to be sort of gaining access to Syracuse and ending that part of the conflict without having to face a long siege that they can't win. And on the other side, Yarrow is going to gain sort of an alliance with Rome. Officially, he's going to become a, and I put this in quotes, friend and ally of Rome. So that's going to be an official title. And so in the exchange that ensues, Yarrow is going to have to return all prisoners and pay 100 talents. But in return, he's able to control an independent Syracuse and the surrounding territories. So this proves to be beneficial, as I said, to the Romans, but also to Yarrow. He's going to be able to keep control of his city and the surrounding territory, and it's going to strengthen his bond to Rome, who is actually going to be a big power in this. And the mutual relationship between both of these powers is going to be very good, especially because Yarrow is going to be able to secure, he's going to be essentially a supply base for Rome. So now continuing on, Marcus Valerius Maximus is going to gain primary credit for ending the war with Yarrow. He's going to go forth next year to celebrate a triumph. And so this is going to conclude Rome's initial war aims, which were to come into the peninsula, interfere in the activities of what was going on in the east, and then they got involved with the Syracusans. And so they ended that conflict. However, there is kind of an awkward moment at this point. Rome sends back half her expeditionary force, but in terms of Rome and Carthage, neither of them seek peace. They're in an awkward position. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you why that is. So when Rome seeks peace with someone, when it makes a settlement, usually what happens is Rome is going to essentially ask for the unconditional surrender of the other party. Rome is going to expect that the party it's making peace with is going to have to no longer pose a threat to Rome. Rome is only going to accept peace when you are basically ground to a pulp and you can't offer any resistance. However, that's going to be very hard for Rome to do with Carthage because Carthage, even though it hasn't been able to offer any resistance, still is a huge power, huge Mediterranean power. And so Roman is actually in no way, has in no way diminished Carthage's ability to seek revenge on Rome. And so Rome is not going to seek peace at this time. Similar when you look at Carthage, Carthage has no incentive to seek peace. It has seen that it was unprepared for this war. It was caught sort of unprepared. It didn't have many land forces for this battle. But again, it's seen a lot of these back and forth conflicts in the island of Sicily. And so they know that in the past, they've been able to wait out these conflicts. And in the end, they end up winning because of their naval supremacy. So Carthage is going to say that this is an initial setback and then we have to fight back. So neither of these grand powers are going to seek out peace. Now let's move forward. So Carthage, as I said, is going to see Roman intrusion as sort of a pretext for more war. And they're going to begin to mobilize. They're going to intend to use Aggregantum, which is on the other side of Sicily as their main base. Rome is going to see this as an escalation of the conflict. And they're going to use that as a pretext for more war. So in 262, both consuls are going to be sent to Italy again on a quest for more gold and glory. The consuls this year are going to be Lucius Postumius Magellus and Quintus Mamilius Vitalis. And they're going to be invading again with a force roughly comprising 40,000 men. They're going to move on Aggregantum and they're going to arrive at harvest time around July before significant numbers of the Carthaginians can muster and arrive at the city where they're intending to have sort of their main concentration of forces. However, at this city, at Aggregantum, is going to be Hannibal. He's going to be the son of Gisco. So there's going to be multiple Hannibals on the Carthaginian side. And he's going to be, as I said, the commander of the city. The city does not have a large military force. But what it does, however, have is a swelled population from refugees. It's going to have about 50,000 of those in the city. So if it's able to man the defenses and have the citizens sort of join the side of the defenders, that means that this defensive force is actually going to have comparable or even more numbers than the Romans. That's going to make an assault very difficult. So as the Romans approach, they're going to move forward. However, what's surprising is that the defenders refuse to contest the area outside the city walls. Now, normally this is something that a defender of a city would do. It's a show of strength. A lot of stuff in ancient combat has to do with posturing, with morale, and it's different ways to display how confident you are. So usually a defender, even if you're outnumbered, is going to try and put up some sort of fight outside the city walls before retreating and allowing the defenders to settle in for a seat. However, interestingly enough, the Carthaginians don't do that. And so they retreat into the city. The Romans see this as a sign of weakness. However, as I said, they do note that the defenses have a lot of people in them. They have heard that the population has swelled. And so what they're going to do is they're going to try and camp out around the city. The Romans are going to build a camp a mile outside the city and they're going to start building walls. And at this point, they're going to send a large proportion of their forces into the surrounding fields. As I said, they're arriving at a time of harvest. And so because of Roman supply problems, they're going to have to disperse a large number of their men just to gather supplies for a day-to-day feeding of the army. 40,000 men is going to require a lot of scavenging. So the Romans decide to disperse most of their forces. Hannibal, however, seizes on the opportunity and sallies out. This catches the Romans by surprise. The Romans are going to be mostly unarmed and the forgers are going to be dispersed. This turns into a large-scale flight of the Romans, a panicking of the Romans. All of them are caught in disarray. The Romans had initially seen the Carthaginians as timid because they sort of retreat into their city. And this sudden attack is going to catch them completely by surprise. The impending Roman disaster is seeming to just propagate. The more and more Romans are caught unawares. They start retreating. Carthaginians in response get more and more morale. They're getting more and more bloodlust from this. They're thinking, okay, we can kick back the Romans. So Carthaginians are going to keep pushing. The only guard that the Romans have is going to be the picket guard surrounding the camp. And this is going to be the only effective resistance. The pickets that were positioned around the Roman camps were always stationed there and they were under oath to never leave their post otherwise they would be killed. So these are the only guys who are going to be offering us a resistance. And they're oath bound not to leave their position. So they're going to actually put up a heroic defense even though being heavily outnumbered. The Roman losses at this point are going to be staggering. They're going to lose more and more men and the camp is going to start to be penetrated. However, the pickets are going to be able to bring the advance to a halt. And as more and more Romans retreat and see that the battle is coming to a standstill they're going to turn around, pick up their weapons and there's going to be more mustering of forces. And the defenders are actually going to start being pushed back. So the Carthaginians are going to be driven all the way back to the city. At this point in history, however, the Romans are going to lack the technical skill to assault a city as large as Agragentum. They've got no opportunity to push the Carthaginians in sort of push past the walls once the Carthaginians retreat into their walls. So the Romans are going to be left to licking their wounds. I'm going to talk a bit about Romans at this point. So of course we know that Romans in later times were able to field great siege craft capabilities. They're going to take large cities. If you look down the road, the huge seed works that they have when taking cities like Masada or in the campaigns around Jerusalem and all those things in the war in Judea, they're going to be very effective. But here earlier in their history, it's actually going to be the Greeks that have siege craft superiority. Romans are pretty basic at this point. And so they're not going to have the skills or the know-how to directly assault the Carthaginians who have retreated back inside the city. As I said, they're also licking their wounds. So they also have no opportunity to take the city by surprise or treachery because of the fact this is a staunch Carthaginian city and they can't really blockade the city by sea. But what's interesting about Aggregentum is unlike most Carthaginian cities, this is actually located on a plateau inland. It's not going to have direct access to the sea. So this is going to be a weird position where the Romans can actually fully surround the city without having a navy. And so the Romans are going to start building walls around the city. The Romans are going to start setting up a system of ditches, small forts. And basically, they're going to have an inner wall of circumvelation. And then they're going to have a second line of contravelation. And that's going to be a wall that's facing outwards to halt any relief forces. So Rome is going to start amassing grain and cattle. And her allies in Syracuse are going to start setting aside a lot of supplies at a supply dump at Herbesus. So after five months, Hannibal is going to be one other Carthaginian leader who lands troops 20 miles from Aggregentum. And he's going to have an army consisting of 60 elephants, 6,000 cavalry, and 50,000 infantry. And he's going to quickly launch an attack on Herbesus, which, as I said, was the supply dump of the Romans. The Carthaginians come in, they siege it. And in a quick surprise attack, they're able to take over the supply dump, capture all those supplies. So Hannibal is going to seize on this opportunity. And he's going to keep moving forward towards Aggregentum to relieve the besiegement of his fellow Carthaginian general, Hannibal. On the way, the Numidian cavalry is sent ahead. And they're told to engage with the Romans and feign a retreat. The Romans are overconfident. And they follow up on the Numidians. The cavalry of the Carthaginians is sort of toying with them. They pull them back. The Romans are going to pursue carelessly. They're going to be dispersed, disorganized. And they're going to be kind of tired. All of a sudden, once the Carthaginians retreat all the way back to their main force, they're going to turn on the Romans. And they're going to start slaughtering them. The Romans are going to be routed with heavy losses. And they're going to basically be chased all the way back towards their camp. The Carthaginian main force is going to keep moving up. Their main body is going to basically establish a fortified camp within just a mile of the Romans. Hanno is then going to form up his army and challenges the Romans to battle. The Romans, however, at this point are just swayed. As I said before, they tried to attack the city. They couldn't. They were then beaten in an assault surprise attack or surprise sally. They lost many forces. They just lost their supply dump. And all of a sudden, they lost their cavalry. So when this huge army with, as I said again, 60 elephants, 6,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry all of a sudden comes up, the Romans are not all ready to initiate an assault. They don't form up. And as I said before, that's going to be a symbol of their sort of lower morale. And so what the Carthaginians are able to say at this point is that, hey, we have the morale superiority. You would say, okay, then why don't the Carthaginians go ahead and attack? The problem in this day is that each army is going to set up its camp on a hill. And it's very hard to get them off the hill. If you were to assault the hill, it would give huge advantage to the defender. And so neither of these armies is going to be able essentially to force out the opponent from a hill. They're going to have to wait till both sides sort of agree to a conflict. And this is kind of one of the weird intricacies of conflicts in this day. So what we're going to have is actually a standstill at this point. And it's going to last for two months with minor skirmishes and missile exchanges, but no major engagements. What changes though is that Hannibal on the inside of the city and the inhabitants are going to be desperately low on supplies. And he's going to send out some signals to Hanno asking him to seek decisive confrontation with the Romans in order for them to relieve the city and give them more supplies. The Romans are also close to starvation themselves. They're not going to be able to effectively forage. And the fact that they lost their supply dump is going to be very problematic. So the Romans are going to decide to form up and engage in the fight. Both sides are going to be forced to fight because of problems with supplies. Our sources differ on what happened next. And we have relatively few details of the battle. However, I've chosen to follow Polybius's account because he's generally a more reliable historian. And just for consistency's sake, I'm going to go with his retelling of events. So if we were to believe Polybius, the Romans advance in their triplex axis. So if you guys aren't familiar with this battle formation, go ahead and check out this video right here where I explain it in more detail. Anyway, the triple axis is going to be three lines that are going to support and relieve each other. And on the wings is going to be the cavalry. The Carthaginians on the other side are going to deploy in two lines. The first line is going to be front of infantry. And their main goal is going to be to tire out the Romans. Then they're going to have a second line with elephants and even more men. The thinking that we are supposed to get from this is sort of similar to what Hannibal would have done at Zama where he has a couple lines and it's meant to tire out the Romans. However, the deployment of the elephants in the second line is going to be something of interest. It's not going to be the way that we saw Hannibal use them in which he would put them in the front lines and how some of the other factions would use them which was deploying in the front, charging forward, disrupting the enemy. And this is going to lead to some consequences. But let's get into the battle. So both forces are going to move forward and there's going to be a prolonged fight that's going to develop in the front lines. Romans are going to commit their front line. The Carthaginians are going to deploy their massive front line. The Romans are going to start reinforcing with their manipular system. And actually the Romans and their superior way of reinforcing and some of the discipline of the troops is going to allow them to break through in a couple places. And this is actually going to start to lead to more and more cracks in the front line. And finally, it's going to shatter this line of mercenary troops. The mercenaries are going to retreat and it's going to spread panic throughout their rear army. At this point, we are led to believe that the second line failed to support the first. The panic that ensued from the first line, running into them, running past the elephants, the chaos that ensued essentially led to a mass rout. And so the Romans are able to move forward, In this engagement, we're supposed to believe that Hanno may have lost around 3,000 infantry who were killed and 4,000 were captured. 200 of his cavalry were killed, 8 elephants were killed and then 33 of them were disabled. During the course of the entire siege, however, and the final battle, some numbers, although these may be rough and subject to propaganda, the Romans were thought to have lost 15,000 foot and 540 horsemen. So this is going to be a combination of lack of supplies, the initial sally, back and forth skirmishing for four months, and the final battle. So Roman losses were pretty heavy and we're probably going to think because of this that they were reinforced over the course of this time because a 15,000 foot loss from their initial 40,000 would have been huge and so they would have been probably cycling in and out reinforcements. So this leads us to the question of why did Carthage fail? Well, as I said before, the Carthaginian forces are going to be arrayed with mostly a mercenary army, armies drawn up from troops that are going to be given to Carthage from her various allies. And so Carthage is going to basically have to put these all together. We're to believe that at this point, the Carthaginians did not have much time to train together. They didn't have a very coherent structure of deployment. The forces may have spoken many different languages, had different tactics, and so they were not very effective at supporting each other. And that's something we see right here with the infantry, the second line is not able to support the first. But more puzzling, however, is the fact that the elephants were deployed in the second line. The reasoning for this and why we think this may have happened is at this point, the Carthaginians were still not very adept with using elephants, even though we basically know of the Carthaginians for using elephants. At this point, they hadn't really developed an effective strategy for using them. They didn't quite know how to use them, especially in these numbers with 80 elephants in the entire army. They weren't really sure how to use them, and so I guess the reasoning of the commander was saying, hey, let's hold them back in reserve and our men can retreat behind them. Any Romans that break through are going to face these beasts and they're not going to want to advance any further. However, the mass routing, basically, and the lack of cohesion in the force made it such that it just melted. And so this leads to the Roman victory that we see here. It's not a total loss for Carthage, even though the army is defeated here. Inside Aggregentum, Hannibal was actually able to evacuate with the garrison of the force. The garrison is basically able to escape in a night breakout. In the following day, the Romans realize that they've been duped and they go ahead and they now plunder the un-garrisoned city of Aggregentum and they're going to sell the inhabitants into slavery. However, Rome came very, very close to disaster. They only just barely survived because Syracuse was able to get them the minimal amount of supplies just to survive. Had it not been for Syracuse, the seizing of Rome's supply dump at Hervesus, basically, would have led to the end of the Roman campaign that would have been forced to retreat. They couldn't have had their siege and the Romans would have lost. But Syracuse, as I said earlier, was very crucial in this stage of the campaign. It supplied the Romans. Because of this near loss and because of the fact that the Carthaginians inside the city were able to escape, neither of the consuls are going to be granted a triumph. The fall of Aggregentum, however, encourages the Senate to expand their war aims. They decide that they're not just going to be content with sort of an equalization of power. They're going to try and expulse all of the Carthaginians from Syracuse. However, to do this, they're going to need a fleet. So let's turn to the question now, why did Rome need a fleet in order to continue its campaign? You might think that this is kind of obvious. First, let's look at the facts. So Rome, of course, as we saw in the early stages of the campaign, had a lot of difficulty in supplying her forces. And so, of course, she needed ships. Rome, in the past, had dealt with lots of conflicts on the peninsula. And no matter the strength of her enemy, no matter how good they were at sailing ships and having a huge fleet, I'm thinking maybe Tarentum, which was more skilled with ships and stuff like that. No matter how strong they were as a naval power, Rome could always reach them by marching her legions across the peninsula. This changed, however, as soon as they extended their reach outside the peninsula. And that's exactly the case in their expedition into Sicily. Sicily has no direct land bridge to the main peninsula, the Italian peninsula. And so Rome has to have some way to ferry men, horses, supplies back and forth between both land masses. And so this is going to require them to have a fleet. As we saw earlier with the campaign, they are able to do this with some of their naval allies. Roma herself barely has any ships and she has to rely on her allies. So these rudimentary forces can come together and they can shuttle some forces. But that was early in the conflict. As soon as Carthage turns her armada to bear, where she has hundreds of highly equipped, highly trained ships, Rome and her allies are going to be no match. So in order for Rome to be able to even supply her forces, she's going to need some sort of naval force in order to secure the transport of her men and vessels. Now, additional reason why you need a strong navy in order to secure Sicily is because of the way the cities are positioned. As I said earlier, Rome is not very effective at taking out cities in direct assault. She hasn't developed that capacity yet. And so the main option left to Rome is going to be either treachery or starving out a city. Now, starving out a city, of course, was a viable option when you look at Aggregentum. But Aggregentum was sort of an oddball when it came to Carthaginian cities. It was actually located inland, whereas most of Carthage's cities in Sicily are actually going to be by the coast with access to the sea. So if Rome doesn't have a way to seal off that seafront, she has no way to starve out those cities. And the cities are going to be the key to holding Sicily. Sicily is going to be a very rough terrain where basically the only strategic points that you fight for are going to be these cities. And so having a naval fleet is going to be important to that. Also, when you think of Sicily in general, Sicily is going to be very important for supporting your fleets if you have your own vessels. And so you're going to need both land and sea components to be working together. The sea vessels are going to have to supply, of course, the supplies to the troops on the ground. They're going to have to help with besiegements of cities. But also the troops on land are actually going to have to help these ships. When you look at the way that ships worked in the past, they actually had a pretty large capacity of men compared to the size of the ship. As I said with the Quinqueriums and the Triremes, you had like a couple hundred men per ship, 300, 200 men per each ship. This meant that the effective capacity of each ship to serve out its time on the sea was limited. They could only stay out at sea for a couple of days in the hot Mediterranean sun. They didn't have enough room for supplies to go on for much further. That meant that in order for a fleet to effectively work in an area, every couple days she had to come back, pull up her ships onto sand, rest the men, and allow them to gather more supplies. And so in order for the fleet to work effectively, they also had to have reliable bases back on shore. And so that's kind of the dynamic that you have with Sicily. You have to have a balance of a navy and an army. Rome, of course, has the army and no navy. Carthage has a very strong navy and is just now starting to ramp up the army. And so if Rome wants to be victorious, she can't just rely on her army. Now let's go ahead and talk a bit about the ships. The most predominant ships at the time would have been the Triremes. So the Triremes were, the name is derived from having three rowers per oar. Think of the Greeks, think of the ships they had. The Greeks were mostly known for using Triremes. These were fast, slender ships. They are going to have essentially, as I said, three rowers per oar. And if you think of the Battle of Salamis, that's exactly the vessel the Greeks were using to defeat the Persians. And each of the rowers sat on a different level. These were agile ships, as I said, with a crew of 200. They could reach speeds of eight knots and turn 100 degrees in two and a half ship lengths. So these were very maneuverable ships, but they had to require skilled crews in order to pull off these tactics, to row in sync, to really get it going. What some of the other vessels you saw, however, was the Conquerium. Conquerium refers to having five men who rowed each oar. You might also see historians refer to the Triremes as threes. The Conqueriums have five. And we actually don't really know the component of how the Conqueriums work. We can only sort of guesstimate at them or use some washed up models of Conqueriums. So when you look at the Trireme, as I said, three men per oar, each man is on a different level. If you have a Conquerium and you try and arrange it with five people per oar for five levels, that makes a huge ship. In order to make a ship that tall, you have to make it wide so it doesn't flip. And so you can't have a man on each oar. It's going to be too wide of a ship. It's going to be very weird construction. So we think that it was some combination of the two. And we think that it was the five rowers most likely dispersed on three levels. Conqueriums, of course, because they have five men per oar, are going to have more men in total. They carried around 300 men. However, they were slower because of the additional troops on board, the additional sons. And they're less maneuverable. One of the upsides, however, to this is for every five men on the ship rowing an oar, you only had to have one or two who are very experienced. This means as a percentage of the men in your fleet, you don't actually have to have that many trained rowers. And that's going to be a huge boon to Rome, who doesn't have much of a naval tradition. So that's going to be sort of what Rome is going to be relying on in the conflict. Also, another benefit of the Conquerium is the greater mass actually makes it so that the center of gravity, it's going to be lower. And so it's going to be more resilient in the rough seas. It's going to have sort of more staying power in rough seas. It's not going to rock around as much. It's not going to flip over as much. And also when you ram just the equation of momentum MV, the greater mass, the greater momentum you have, you can make more of an impact when you ram a ship. So that's going to be one of their benefits. There were even larger ships than Conqueriums. If you look at the Ptolemies, Ptolemy II even had 30s and 40s. These were monsters of their time. However, there's no written record of them actually ever engaging in conflict. The largest ships to ever serve in an active conflict were probably 10s. And Rome never even floated anything larger than a 6 during the war with Carthage. And then let's look at the tactics as well. As you've seen, as I mentioned earlier, the main tactics would have been ramming. This is something the Tririums are good at. Fast nimble, they could get in, get out. When you want to ram a ship, you have to take into account certain angles. If you angle from the wrong way, you might actually clip your own oars. You might even get embedded in the enemy ship. So it takes a skilled sailor to ram. Another tactic is going to be boarding. Essentially turning what would be a naval battle into a land battle when you fix all the ships together and you allow boarding parties to fight. And so Carthage, as I said, has a naval tradition. She's going to focus more on the Tririums. And she's going to have some Conqueriums and stuff mixed into her fleet. But she's going to rely mostly on ramming because she's very skilled, has skilled sailors, and they know how to pull this off. Now, going back to the Romans, as I said, they basically have no fleet. And so they need one in order to engage in this conflict, to be on equivalent ground with Carthage and to have any hope of winning the war. And so what I find amazing is the determination that Rome just throws behind, not only ousting Carthage from Sicily all of a sudden, but actually creating an entire fleet. And so the stages of this occurring. So after the Battle of Aggregentum, Rome decides that she's going to have to have a navy. Rome starts building up her fleet. And the way they do this is the Romans actually caught and they secured a ship, a Conquerium that ran aground early around the start of the conflict. If you remember around Regium where Claudius was trying to cross the straits, trying to cross into Sicily, he engaged overnight, crossed the sea. Actually, one of the Carthaginian ships ran aground. And so the Romans were able to capture this and they start examining it. And from this one ship, they're able to replicate the design. And soon enough, Rome puts her artisans and her craftsmen and her woodworkers all to work recreating the ship. Now, I want to talk briefly about the ship designs themselves. The Carthaginians were very good at constructing ships. And what's incredible to me, every time I look at history, it's incredible. But what's incredible to me is actually for one of the ships that they've found, archaeologists have found inside the ship, there's actually numbers on the beams. There's different instructions written on the beams. And what this implies is that actually there was mass production going on for ships. They had numbers beams that went to certain numbers in the hull, holes here and there. And so this is an example of mass production, even before that started happening in later stages of the Industrial Revolution. This was going on in early history at this time. And so when the Romans start building their ships, they sort of have this formulaic way to go about building their ship. They model their ship after the Carthaginian ship that ran aground. They start training their sailors on land. They line them up on their banks on land. They have rowers practice on land. And then basically at the end of their construction, they have a fleet of 100 quinquirums and 20 triremes. That's 120 ships going 0 to 120 is an incredible feat, especially if you think that on each quinquirum, there's 300 men. 300 times 100 quinquirums, 20 triremes. Triremes had basically a crew of 200. That's a huge, staggering amount of men, amount of resources putting into a fleet for a group, a state that basically had no experience with sailing whatsoever. And so it just goes to show the importance of having a fleet and the sheer dedication of Rome to achieving her objectives. So that's where I'm going to end this episode right here, is the initial Carthaginian setbacks and the mind-blowing decision of Rome to create this massive fleet. And we're going to tune in next time to see just how effective this fleet can be and how it might turn the tide of the war and to see what happens when Carthage actually decides to engage with her main army and her own armada. So I'll see you guys next time. Thanks so much.