Battle of Panormus
The Battle of Panormus was fought in Sicily in 250 BC during the First Punic War between a Roman army led by Lucius Caecilius Metellus and a Carthaginian force led by Hasdrubal, son of Hanno. The Roman force of two legions defending the city of Panormus defeated the much larger Carthaginian army of 30,000 men and between 60 and 142 war elephants. The war had commenced in 264 BC with Carthage in control of much of Sicily, where most of the fighting took place. In 256–255 BC the Romans attempted to strike at the city of Carthage  in North Africa, but suffered a heavy defeat by a Carthaginian army strong in cavalry and elephants. When the focus of the war returned to Sicily, the Romans captured the large and important city of Panormus in 254 BC. Thereafter they avoided battle for fear of the war elephants which the Carthaginians had shipped to Sicily. In late summer 250 BC Hasdrubal led out his army to devastate the crops of the cities of Rome's allies. The Romans withdrew to Panormus and Hasdrubal pressed on to the city walls. Once he arrived in Panormus, Metellus turned to fight, countering  the elephants with a hail of javelins from earthworks dug near the walls. Under this missile fire the elephants panicked and fled through the Carthaginian infantry. The Roman heavy infantry then charged the Carthaginian left flank, which broke, along with the rest of the Carthaginians. The elephants were captured and later slaughtered in the Circus Maximus. This was the last significant land battle of the war, which ended nine years later in a Roman victory. Primary sources. The main source for almost every aspect of the First Punic War is the historian Polybius ( 200 – c. 118 BC), a Greek sent  to Rome in 167 BC as a hostage. His works include a lost manual on military tactics, but he is best known for his "Histories", written after 146 BC, or about a century after the end of the war. Polybius's work is considered broadly objective and neutral between the Carthaginian and Roman points of view. Carthaginian written records were destroyed with their capital, Carthage, in 146 BC and Polybius's account of the First Punic War is based on several lost Greek and Latin sources. Polybius was an analytical historian and when possible interviewed participants in the events he  wrote about. Only part of the first book of the 40 comprising "Histories" deals with the First Punic War. The accuracy of Polybius's account has been much debated over the past 150 years, but the modern consensus is to accept it largely at face value, and the details of the battle in modern sources are almost entirely based on interpretations of Polybius's account. The modern historian Andrew Curry considers Polybius "fairly reliable"; while Dexter Hoyos describes him as "a remarkably well-informed, industrious, and insightful historian". Other, later, ancient histories of the war exist, but in fragmentary or  summary form. Modern historians usually take into account the later histories of Diodorus Siculus and Dio Cassius, although the classicist Adrian Goldsworthy states "Polybius' account is usually to be preferred when it differs with any of our other accounts". Other sources include inscriptions, coins and archaeological evidence. Armies. 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. The  others were equipped as heavy infantry, with body armour, a large shield, and short thrusting swords. They were divided into three ranks, of which the front rank also carried two javelins, while the second and third ranks had a thrusting spear instead. Both legionary sub-units and individual legionaries fought in relatively open order. It was the long-standing Roman procedure to elect two consuls each year to each lead an army. An army was usually formed by combining a Roman legion with a similarly sized and equipped legion provided by their Latin allies. Carthaginian citizens only served in their  army if there was a direct threat to the city of Carthage. In most circumstances Carthage recruited foreigners to make up its army. Many were from North Africa which provided several types of fighters including: close-order infantry equipped with large shields, helmets, short swords and long thrusting spears; javelin-armed light infantry skirmishers; close-order shock cavalry carrying spears; and light cavalry skirmishers who threw javelins from a distance and avoided close combat. Both Iberia and Gaul provided small numbers of experienced infantry; unarmoured troops who would charge ferociously, but had a reputation for breaking off if a combat  was protracted. The close-order African infantry would fight in a tightly packed formation known as a phalanx. Slingers were frequently recruited from the Balearic Islands. Roman and Greek sources refer to these foreign fighters derogatively as "mercenaries", but the modern historian Adrian Goldsworthy describes to this as "a gross oversimplification". They served under a variety of arrangements; for example, some were the regular troops of allied cities or kingdoms seconded to Carthage as part of formal treaties. The Carthaginians also employed war elephants; North Africa had indigenous African forest elephants at the time. Background. Start of the war. The  Roman Republic had been aggressively expanding in the southern Italian mainland for a century before the First Punic War. It had conquered peninsular Italy south of the River Arno by 272 BC. By this time Carthage, with its capital in what is now Tunisia, had come to dominate southern Spain, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and the western half of Sicily in a military and commercial empire. In the 3rd century BC Carthage and Rome were the preeminent powers in the western Mediterranean. In 264 BC the two cities went to war  over the city of Messana (modern Messina) in the north-eastern tip of Sicily. Much of the war was fought on, or in the waters near, Sicily. Away from the coasts its hilly and rugged terrain made manoeuvring large forces difficult and favoured defensive over offensive operations. Land operations were largely confined to raids, sieges and interdiction. Garrison duty and land blockades were the most common operations for both armies; only two full-scale pitched battles were fought on Sicily during the 23-year-long war; Panormus was one of these. After several Roman successes the war on Sicily reached  a stalemate, as the Carthaginians focused on defending well-fortified towns and cities; these were mostly on the coast and could be supplied and reinforced without the Romans being able to use their superior army to interfere. Invasion of Africa. From 260 BC the focus of the war shifted to the sea. The Romans won naval victories at Mylae (260 BC) and Sulci (258 BC), and their frustration at the continuing stalemate in Sicily led them to develop a plan to invade the Carthaginian heartland in North Africa and threaten the city of Carthage (close to modern Tunis). After defeating  the Carthaginians at the Battle of Cape Ecnomus, possibly the largest naval battle in history by the number of combatants involved, the Roman army landed in Africa on the Cape Bon Peninsula and began ravaging the Carthaginian countryside. Most of the Roman ships returned to Sicily, leaving 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry to continue the war in Africa. A Carthaginian army which was strong in cavalry and elephants and approximately the same size as the Romans' was defeated after the Carthaginians positioned it on a rocky hill and the Roman infantry stormed it. The Carthaginian's losses are unknown, although  their elephants and cavalry escaped with few casualties. The Carthaginians gave charge of the training of their army to the Spartan mercenary commander Xanthippus. In early 255 BC Xanthippus led an army of 12,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 100 elephants against 15,500 Romans, offered battle to them on an open plain, and decisively defeated them at the Battle of Tunis. The elephants played a prominent part in this victory. Approximately 2,000 Romans retreated to Aspis; 500 were captured; 13,000 were killed. The Romans evacuated the survivors by sea, but the Roman fleet was devastated by a storm while returning to  Italy, with 384 ships sunk from their total of 464 and 100,000 men lost—the majority non-Roman Latin allies. Prelude. Having lost most of their fleet in the storm of 255 BC, the Romans rapidly rebuilt it, adding 220 new ships, and launched a determined offensive in Sicily; their entire fleet, under both consuls, attacked Panormus early in 254 BC. Panormus was a large-for-the-time city on the north coast of Sicily, the site of the modern Sicilian capital Palermo. It had a population of approximately 70,000 and was one of the largest Sicilian cities still loyal  to Carthage and the most important economically. The city's prosperity was based on trade and fishing, which resulted in an unusual lack of agriculture and the area immediately around the city was thickly forested, even close to the gates. The city was surrounded and blockaded, and siege engines set up. These made a breach in the walls which the Romans stormed, capturing the outer town and giving no quarter. The inner town promptly surrendered. The 14,000 inhabitants who could afford it ransomed themselves and the remaining 13,000 were sold into slavery. Much of western inland Sicily then went over  to the Romans: Ietas, Solous, Petra, and Tyndaris all came to terms. In 252 BC the Romans captured Thermae and Lipara, which had been isolated by the fall of Panormus. In late 253 BC or early 252 BC Carthaginian reinforcements were sent to Sicily under Hasdrubal, who had taken part in the two battles against the Romans in Africa. The Romans avoided battle in 252 and 251 BC; according to Polybius because they feared the war elephants which the Carthaginians had shipped to Sicily. The historian Nigel Bagnall suggests that survivors of the battle against Xanthippus passed on "horrific stories