Carthaginian Surprise Naval Sortie

Sieges are not only walls and ladders. They are also tides and moles. In 149 BCE, with Roman camps spreading from Utica toward the harbors, Carthaginian shipwrights—defying the letter and spirit of the 201 peace—assembled a fighting flotilla. The city sent it out in a sudden rush, oars heaving in unison, bronze prows low and hungry [17]. The sortie jarred Roman assumptions. In the narrow approaches between the commercial harbor and the sea, hulls tangled, oars snapped, and shouts carried across the water. The color in the chop was the dark green of churned harbor water, flecked with foam and the flash of scarlet and purple standards. For a city that had been told to keep only ten triremes, it was an act of defiance and ingenuity [17]. Tactically, the attack disrupted Roman siege preparations, buying time for Carthage to strengthen interior defenses and ship additional stores from allied points along the coast. Strategically, it showed that Carthage’s spirit had not been penned within legal clauses. From the cothon to the outer harbor, citizens and slaves alike had built a small fleet under siege conditions—and then used it. Rome adjusted. Engineers and admirals conferred in Utica and on the beachheads, mapping how to choke off the outlets with stone and timber. The sortie had punctured complacency; it had not shattered the blockade.