Open Collections

Maze, Jane

University of British Columbia

Polybius commands authority on the Punic Wars. His Histories dominates discussion of the Sardinia Crisis of 237 BC, an enigmatic turning point in history overshadowed by the three hot Punic Wars. Yet, the historian’s data concerning this instance of Roman coercive diplomacy is slight and disingenuous. His first book narrates the Mercenary War to which the Sardinia Crisis is attached as epilogue along a Carthaginian timeline which sneakily avoids discussion of related Roman geopolitical history of the 230s BC and the senatorial squabbling over the real end of the war. He cleverly blurs inconvenient facts even as his third book upholds this intense brinkmanship and its resolution via Addendum to the Treaty of Lutatius as the foremost of his tripartite causes of the Second Punic War; this, his own novel contribution to Punic Wars historiography. Sardonic Addendum: The Unfought Punic War of 237 BC traces Roman war aims of the first – but not last – Punic War and shows how these were achieved in two-parts with the moderate Treaty of Lutatius’ and provocative Addendum. This thesis is important to modern Punic Wars historiography because it questions Polybius’ reliability as a Punic Wars historian and looks beyond his narration by consulting a broad range of sources, including extant and non-extant literary sources, numismatics and naval archaeology. This thesis determines that Polybius does not tell the whole story by discounting Roman war aims of the First Punic War, and acts of piracy and Roman consular actions on the nearby northern Tyrrhenian and Ligurian shores. Ultimately, this thesis weighs the ensemble for a viable telling of how Rome took Sardinia from Carthage in an unfought, uncounted Punic War.

Text

2022-06-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/81861

Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/