Sigh, etc

I'm not exactly homeless. I'm still sleeping at my place in Parkville, despite being in close proximity to Punchy McTwat, who hasn't shown his face around. I can't sleep at Mom's or Jamie's, because they have cats, and I'm a more fragile bitch than I previously thought.

So almost all of my stuff is at my parent's, with some other ephemera at Jamie's. At my home remains the computer, some clothes and the big furniture. Every time I go over to their side of town, i load the car with as much kit as I can, then store it there until such time as I have a more permanent address. It's not the worst situation one can be in, but y'know...

So let's see. Last time we were about half way through learning about the Punic Wars. when we left, a regional Sicilian battle had engaged Rome and Carthage, the Mediterranean superpowers, and now it was just down to these two. Rome had some early success by avoiding a naval war and using their superior army to control Sicily. They went too far when they attacked Carthaginian lands in North Africa, and the Carthaginians rallied to crush them, and then took the major Sicilian port of Agrigentum from Rome. They burnt it to the ground.

So things went back and forth for a long time. Carthage won an advantage when taken to sea, Rome when the battle went to land. eventually, Hamilcar Barca, the Carthaginian general, sued for peace after the Romans won a decisive naval victory at the Battle of the Aegates Islands in 241. The Carthaginians quit Sicily.

What was learned from this battle was the ineffectiveness of publicly funded fleets. Both navies were unable to maintain seaward blockades of major port cities- supply lines just went around them and travelled overland. It also taught the Romans the importance of constructing fleets, a lesson which sucked for everyone else.

An important innovation that the Romans developed was the corvus, which is a simple ship to ship bridge that would allow legionnaires to board enemy ships. Up until then, they were just ramming each other out there.

In the end, what decided the battle wasn't really technology. It was Rome's aggressiveness juxtaposed against Carthage's relative pacivity. After the war, Hanno the Great, a land owning aristocrat, gained power and demobilized the navy. They believed, naively perhaps, that having sued for peace, they could resume rebuilding their commercial influence. Roman aristocrats, on the other hand, privately invested in the war effort. The Romans were never as opposed to tyrants and armies as their Greek and Levantine counterparts turned out to be. This was an early victory for a fascist state over one that favoured free markets. Not that that's a bad thing- a fascist state isn't inherantly evil, nor is a free market state inherantly good. That may have been the case in the 20th century, when fascism got tied up with misguided notions of ethnic identity, but even in Republican times, Rome never bothered much with ideas of racial superiority.

In my opinion, fascism and free markets are neutral ideas, both of which don't work particularly well. Fascism tends to spiral into overt militarism (this was true in Rome as it was in 20th century Germany) and a fearful populace. Free markets usually open huge gaps between the rich and poor, and set the ground for revolution. Eh. Back to tribalism.

Anywho. In the aftermath, Rome induced terms that would have made the treaty of Versailles look mild. Carthage had almost no public funds. Hanno the Great-ish tried to withhold wages from the army, leading to the Mercenary War. The Punic government fought off the mercenaries, but in the course of things, lost control of Corsica and Sardinia to Rome.

A second Punic War followed the mercenary war, which I'll get in to some other time.