Battle of Panormus

The Battle of Panormus was fought in 250 BC during the First Punic War. A Roman army led by Lucius Caecilius Metellus defeated a Carthaginian force led by Hasdrubal. Roman force of two legions defeated a much larger Carthaginians army of 30,000 men and between 60 and 142 war elephants. This was the last significant land battle of the war, which ended nine years later in a Roman victory.

About Battle of Panormus in brief

The Battle of Panormus was fought in 250 BC during the First Punic War. A Roman army led by Lucius Caecilius Metellus defeated a Carthaginian force led by Hasdrubal. The Roman force of two legions defeated a much larger Carthaginians army of 30,000 men and between 60 and 142 war elephants. This was the last significant land battle of the war, which ended nine years later in a Roman victory. The main source for almost every aspect of the battle is the historian Polybius, a Greek sent to Rome in 167 BC as a hostage. The accuracy ofPolybius’s account has been much debated over the past 150 years, but the modern consensus is to accept it largely at face value. Modern historians usually take into account the later histories of Diodorus Siculus and Dio Cassius, although the classicist Adrian Goldsworthy states \”Polybious’ account is usually to be preferred when it differs with any of our other accounts\”. Other sources include inscriptions, coins and archaeological evidence. Most male Roman citizens were eligible for military service, and would serve as infantry, with a better-off minority providing a cavalry component. Traditionally, when at war the Romans would raise two legions, each of 4,200 infantry and 300 cavalry. A small number of the infantry served as javelin-armed skirmishers, with body armour, a large shield, and short thrusting swords. It was the long-standing Roman procedure to elect two men, known as consuls, to each lead an army each year.

In most circumstances Carthage recruited foreigners to make up its army from North Africa which provided several types of close-order infantry fighters including javelins, helmets and light skirmishers who threw spears and light cavalry. In Gaul, most people avoided close combat from a distance and avoided a close combat with Gaulia and Iberia, which threw spears from a close distance from a long distance. In North Africa, most Gauls avoided a direct threat to the city of Carthage if there was there was a threat to their army if the city was not directly threatened by the Roman army. The Romans withdrew from the war in 256–255 BC, but suffered a heavy defeat by a. Carthage’s capital, Carthage, was destroyed along with their capital in 146 BC, and so the account of the Firstpunic War is based on several, now-lost, Greek and Latin sources. Only a part of the first book of the forty comprising Histories deals with the First punic War, and it is considered broadly objective and largely neutral as between Carthaginia and Roman points of view. The Roman heavy infantry then charged the CarthaginIAN left flank, which broke, along with the rest of the Carthageians. The elephants were captured and later slaughtered in the Circus Maximus, and the Romans won the battle, but not before Carthage had taken control of Sicily.

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