Abstract:
This thesis investigates the military equipment and tactics utilized by Carthaginian, Celtic, Celtiberian, Iberian, Italic, Libyphoenican, Numidian, Greek, and Sicilian troops that fought in the Carthaginian, Roman, and Syracusan armies in the century leading up to the First Punic war. It also specifically examines the methods by which Carthage, Rome, and Syracuse extended their respective hegemonies and the socio-political power dynamics at work within them, which appear, like the aforementioned military equipment to have been remarkably similar. It intends to illustrate that this similar extension of hegemony and socio-political power dynamics worked together with their frequent employment of similar troops, who fought with similar weapons, to create a distinct western Mediterranean military koine. Therefore, this thesis refutes the traditional Roman-centric literary narratives that promoted a sense of Roman military exceptionalism during the fourth and early third centuries BC. Indeed, the corpus of archaeological evidence examined in this work demonstrates that Roman armies, which in the years following 338 consisted of up to fifty percent allies (many of whom had served in Carthaginian and Syracusan armies since the fifth century) were fighting with remarkably similar weapons and tactics as their wider western Mediterranean contemporaries. Finally, this thesis also intends to illustrate the central role that Celtic and central and southern Italians appear to have played in the development and transmission of this remarkably similar military equipment across the western Mediterranean.