The First Punic War opened the long series of three contests between Rome and Carthage for control of the western Mediterranean. As is known, the Romans managed to prevail in all of them, but to do so they had to overcome critical moments. If in the second conflict the protagonist of them was Hannibal Barca, in the previous one there was a Spartan general at the service of the Punics who caused the legions a resounding setback in the battle of Bagradas. He was called Xanthippus and his popularity reached such an extreme that, according to a dubious legend, the Carthaginian rulers themselves ordered his assassination.
Xanthippus was not Punic but Greek. Spartan, to be exact, which is indicative of his almost inevitable military vocation. In the third century BC, Sparta was already experiencing a strong decline that continued that turning point that was the resounding defeat of Leuctra before the Theban Epaminondas and his Boeotian allies in 371 BC, as a result of which he lost Messenia and the League was dissolved. of the Peloponnese. Thebes assumed the Hellenic hegemony but only temporarily because it was then that the thriving Macedonia broke in, whose king Antigonus III would conquer Sparta in 222 BC.
So long ago many Spartan military had chosen to offer their services as mercenaries. And Carthage needed them to confront a Rome that had not only managed to control almost the entire Italian peninsula but also to subdue King Pirro - ironically with Carthaginian help - and thus take over the Greek cities in the east of Magna Graecia, that is to say , Sicily. The Punics owned three quarters of the rest, which they now saw in danger along with other possessions such as Corsica, Sardinia and the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
The spark that ignited the conflict was the request for help made to Rome by the Mamertine mercenaries, hired by the tyrant of Syracuse but left without a master to serve when he was assassinated. They had previously made it to Carthage, which rejected it so as not to cause a casus belli , but the Romans, after long debates, accepted when considering that they were neighbors (they came from Campania), that the foreseeable war would be far away and that a victory that would allow them to obtain colonies would favor the economy.
So two legions landed in Messina to reinforce the Mamertines, who had expelled the Carthaginian garrison from the city. It was the year 264 BC. and shortly after Syracuse also fell, while several more cities under the Punic orbit went over to the Roman side, which in this way guaranteed supplies without depending on their fleet, inferior to that of the enemy. Carthage reacted by hiring mercenaries, since its army did not usually incorporate its own people except in extreme cases. Those troops arrived in Sicily just in time to rescue Agrigento, which was besieged, forcing the enemy to dig in.
However, the two armies ended up facing each other in pitched battle, with a Roman victory. The Carthaginians were able to withdraw but the city was sacked, which opened control of the entire southern part of the island to Rome. Advancing from there and in parallel from the north (secured thanks to the naval victory of Milas), they took over more cities. They suffered a setback in 259 BC. but they recovered and continued until they reached Lilibea, the last great Carthaginian island stronghold. The siege, however, was unsuccessful because the city received supplies by sea.
Meanwhile, Rome built a large fleet with which to move an army to North Africa in 256 BC. The Carthaginian navy tried to prevent it but, despite its numerical and, presumably, naval superiority, it was defeated at Cape Ecnomo (Sicily), in what some consider to be the greatest maritime battle of antiquity, with nearly three and a half hundred soldiers. ships for each side. And although the Romans lost twenty-four ships, the others suffered more than twice as many losses, thus beginning a campaign on African soil intended to spread panic by threatening to take Carthage itself, just as Agathocles had done in the 310. In fact, the abandoned fields were looted, depriving their target of supplies.
In 255 BC, the Carthaginian Senate ordered Hamilcar Barca to return from Sicily to join his forces with those of Hasdrubal Hanno and Bostar and stop the advance of the consul Marco Atilio Régulo, who was only forty kilometers from Carthage. Although they had superior cavalry and war elephants to do so, their infantry strength was much smaller than the Romans and their tactic of occupying a hill in Addis (in present-day Oudna, Tunisia) was unsuccessful. The Romans surrounded it at night and attacked from two points at dawn, achieving a resounding victory in which the Carthaginian generals were captured.
Its consequences anticipated a disaster, since the Numidians also took the opportunity to rise up against their oppressors and thousands of peasants ran to safety behind the walls of Carthage, aggravating the supply problem. Only the insufficiency of troops prevented Regulus from planting himself there and organizing a siege, since he only had his consular army -two legions-, apart from the fact that he would soon exhaust his consulate. That is why he tried to force the adversary to negotiate a peace that favored him; but the Punic Senate considered the conditions unacceptable, which included handing over the fleet, ceding Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, paying compensation and submitting to Rome.
It was then that Xanthippus was hired. Not much is known about him before these events, except for the data provided by Silius Italicus (a Roman poet of the 1st century AD), who in his work The Punic War he gives that he was born in Amiclas, a Laconian city. However, there are doubts about it and it is possible that the rhapsode put that because he metrically adjusted to his verses. Italicus is also the one who reviews the names of three sons of Xanthippus, called Xanthippus, Eumaquio and Critias, who would later form part of Hannibal's army as mercenaries and would fall before Scipio in the battle of Ticino, in the year 218 BC.
What does seem likely is that he was the head of a contingent of mercenaries in the service of Carthage. According to Polybius, who is the main source, he caught the attention of the Carthaginian rulers when he harshly criticized the generals, accusing them of being the main obstacle to victory because of their clumsiness. Thanks to that he was summoned before the suffetes (equivalent to Roman senators) to explain himself; he must have been convincing because he left the meeting as head of the Carthaginian army.
There was no lack of misgivings about his ability to do the job, but he soon proved himself up to the task. It was that same winter in the Llanos de Bagradas, after training his men in the tactic of fighting in a phalanx, in the Greek way, given that the flat terrain of that area favored that type of formation. To do this, he placed the Carthaginian citizen militias in the center, with his experienced mercenaries on the right flank and the elephants in the vanguard, far enough from his first line of infantry to avoid surprises with them (it was common for them to give half a hit when wounded). turn around and trample their own). The cavalry, in their usual role, protected the wings.
Against that, Regulus placed his maniples closely packed with him, in a tighter and deeper formation than usual, giving him the ample depth he considered necessary to counter the enemy charge. His great problem was the scarcity of cavalry, since a good part of the animals had been lost at sea; it is estimated that the rival surpassed him in this aspect in a proportion of one to eight. And, indeed, the Punic horsemen prevailed with ease, enveloping the legions while the elephants entered like a battering ram in his formation, disorganizing it and causing the legionnaires to be unable to manoeuvre, hindering each other.
Ironically, Xanthippus was let down by his mercenaries, who suffered a pickle at the hands of the legionnaires - nearly a thousand casualties - forcing them to retreat. It was a moment of respite for Regulus, but he immediately found himself completely surrounded; His men crushed each other as the Punic horsemen slaughtered them with arrows and the phalanx struck the final blow. The consular army was practically exterminated and barely two thousand men out of the initial fifteen thousand could escape to safety, running to take refuge in Addis.
Their misfortunes would not end because the Roman fleet that managed to rescue them sank in a storm on its way back with them, so that in the end only eighty survived. Regulus, for his part, fell prisoner and would later be released to send an offer of truce to Rome on the condition that he later return. Being as they were in other times, the consul kept his word and again in the enemy city he had to face torture and death. It is said that when the news reached Italy, the Roman Senate handed over his family to the two Carthaginian generals imprisoned in Addis so that they could take revenge on them. It is possible that everything is a legend, since Polibius does not mention it.
Bagradas was Carthage's only major land victory in that war. Paradoxically, that brilliant triumph made Xanthippus earn even more hatred from the Carthaginian military commanders. That did not go unnoticed, so he asked to collect the emoluments from him to return to Greece. But the Sufetes asked him to deviate on the way to relieve the siege of Lilibea, which he was still resisting. He complied with the order and, indeed, his arrival raised the morale of the defenders, thanks to which he organized a counterattack that broke through the encirclement. There he terminated his services to Carthage and re-embarked for his homeland.
It is at that moment where the legend referred to at the beginning is situated, according to which, it would also have aroused suspicion among the rulers of Lilibea, who ordered his death. In this way, Xanthippus would have been killed either directly, at the hands of a bribed crew, or indirectly, by providing him with a trireme that was not in good condition and ended up sinking. Now, there is a little data that indicates that Xanthippus not only continued to live but also entered the service of Pharaoh Ptolemy III Euergetes, who back in 245 BC, shortly after ascending the throne, appointed him governor of a newly established province. conquered the Seleucids.
In this sense, Polibius tells that he traveled to Greece without going through Sicily, which leads to the deduction that either there was no assassination attempt or he survived it. In general, historians consider the conspiracy theory implausible; if so, we do not know what became of him afterwards. Only that his effort was wasted because Rome managed to win the First Punic War, although it took a total of twenty-three years and the conditions imposed in the end were less burdensome for Carthage than those offered by Regulus, since he only lost Sicily and smaller islands and, yes, , she had to pay a thousand talents in compensation plus another two thousand two hundred over a decade… which left her with no money to pay the mercenaries and thus suffered a war against them. But by then a new military genius had emerged, Hamilcar.