Collections: Raising Carthaginian Armies, Part V: How a Carthaginian Army Fights

This is the fifth and last part of our series (I, II, III, IV, V) looking at how Carthaginian armies were raised and constituted. Over the last four parts, we’ve looked at the larger components of Carthaginian armies: the relatively small role of Carthaginian citizens, the more prominent role of North African conscripts, of Numidian and Iberian vassals, and of mercenaries and allies from Italy and Gaul. As we’ve noted, the place of many of these troops within Carthage’s armies changed over time, particularly in the third century as Carthage exercised a more direct presence in Spain, Gaul and Italy, thereby transforming mercenaries into vassals and allies. To close off this week, I want to briefly discuss some of the ‘odds and ends’ of Carthaginian military forces that we haven’t gotten to yet, most notably the role of light infantry slingers from the Balearic islands and of war elephants. But I want to spend most of the time here discussing how these composite armies fight. Now that,…