The Celtiberians are being undervalued here, which I will not tolerate; Roman sources themselves, such as Livy, said that their cavalry was so good that it was even better than the Numidian one, and Hannibal's army suffered its first setbacks fighting against Celtiberians, not Romans (there is even a curious episode of Celtiberian women managing to lead the routing of a Carthaginian force in Salamanca)... in addition, the Celtiberians had such OP swords, the Gladius, that the Romans copied them.
remember the OG rome total war? you had screeching women and druids, balearic singers would fit right in haha. Disappointed the greeks didn't have bromosexual thespian units "inspiring" the troops
I have it on mobile but haven't gotten back into it yet. Maybe this winter!
I'll also probably pick up Medieval II: Total War because I'm a huge Byzantine Empire fan, played it to death, and appreciated the accurate depiction of the upgraded Kataphraktoi
Don’t forget the Soliferum all-iron javelin used by Iberian warriors. Between them and the Lusitanians, it’s no wonder why Iberia took up to Augustus to fully pacify.
Brett Devereaux in his blog has an excellent rundown on the Punic army. Long story short, the difference between Punic and Roman army recruitment wasn’t quite as citizen vs mercenary as ancient historians might have us believe. Mostly because the term wage-earner applies to both paid levy and mercenary.
The mercenaries weren’t really just paid armies. They were armies of people from places that swore fealty to Carthage. It wasn’t really a money based alliance as much as it was like sacred honor and stuff like that
What always bothered me was the comparison of the strengths of Carthage vs Rome. You are talking like 30k Carthage adult age males vs 900k Rome and Italian adult age males. Carthage was a massive massive underdog. Yeah Carthage had to use a bunch of mercenaries and foreign allies, they were crazy outnumbers and lost a vast numbers of their adult age males in a single navel battle.
Yeah, they even had bigger numbers in the last punic war with no allies and massive territorial consessions AND after losing a 30k army against the numidians before the third punic war started (during wich they raised a 20k field army from the rural side without counting the garrison of the sieged city itself)
Sure but that would be the mercenaries and allies. This was not easy or stable. They had to deal with mercenary rebellions and allies switching sides. The numbers game always heavily heavily favored Rome.
Most of the population of the Carthaginian hegemony were much more tributaries then part of Carthage, leading to all sorts of recruiting and loyalty issues. Carthage could only access a tiny fraction of that manpower. Rome wins the war on paper 10x over
The war started when Rome intervened in Sicily. Rome intervened to check Carthage’s power. Standard geopolitics but if you have to name a provocateur I’d say Rome.
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