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Updated: June 28, 2025
They acquired the Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, still bears the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their power.
In front of all, the plain was dotted with naked men advancing at regular intervals and bearing small bucklers of lynx-hide the famous Balearic slingers that always opened the day of battle for Carthage. The heart of Sergius swelled within him, beating hard and fast under the tension of the moment.
Beyond lay the Alban Mountains, and, beyond these, no one knew where, the strange dangers that awaited them: fierce Spaniards with slender blades as red as the crimson borders of their white coats; wild Numidian riders that always fell upon the rear of Rome's battle; serried phalanges of Africans, veterans of fifty wars; naked Gauls with swords that lopped off a limb at every stroke; Balearic slingers whose bullets spattered one's brains over the ground; Cretans whose arrows could dent an aes at a hundred yards; and above all, over all, the great mind, the unswerving, unrelenting purpose that had blended all these elements into one terrible engine of destruction to move and smite and burn and ravage at the touch of a man's will.
It was a punitive expedition undertaken against some restless tribes, but it was rendered arduous by the unhealthiness of the climate and the difficulty of procuring adequate supplies for the suffering Roman troops. The annexation of the Balearic islands with their thirty thousand inhabitants may have been regarded as a geographical necessity, and certainly resulted in a military advantage.
We may remember that in ancient warfare the Cretan bowmen were as famous as the Balearic slingers or the archers of England. On the whole, however, the genius of the Minoans, like our own, was more commercial than military, though, no doubt, they were not devoid of the fighting spirit when occasion arose.
Palmyrin Rosette was suddenly separated from his servant Joseph, and when, after a long period of unconsciousness, he came to himself, he found that he was the solitary occupant of the only fragment that survived of the Balearic Archipelago.
The transfer of the other crowns and dignitaries to Philip, was accomplished a month afterwards, in a quiet manner. Spain, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, America, and other portions of the globe, were made over without more display than an ordinary 'donatio inter vivos'. The Empire occasioned some difficulty.
This view is further supported by the fact that at this time the expeditions of the Romans against the corsairs e. g. the Balearic, Ligurian, and Dalmatian expeditions appear to have been regularly directed to the occupation of the points of the coast whence piracy issued; and this was natural, for, as the Romans had no standing fleet, the only means of effectually checking piracy was the occupation of the coasts.
There is some foundering of land at the south-western tip of Europe; the "Straits of Gibraltar" begin to connect the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, and the Balearic Islands, Corsica, and Sardinia remain as the mountain summits of a submerged land. Then the upheaval is resumed, in nearly every part of the earth.
The Fātimī Khalifs conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In 1002 the Saracens pillaged Pisa, and the Pisans retaliated by burning an African fleet.
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