No one knows how the commander of the small Greek mercenary corps was found at Carthage.
Perhaps the Carthaginians themselves asked for help from Sparta, perhaps he had already joined one of the biggest and best armies of his time.
What we do know, however, is that when the hard times came, the Carthaginians made him commander-in-chief of the great Carthaginian army to oppose the other superpower of the time, Rome itself.
The unknown Xanthippus of the Lacedaemonians reformed the Carthaginian army in record time instituted Spartan discipline and left the city walls to face the powerful enemy, the best army of its day, which had landed in the north.
And so he went down in history as one of the most famous generals of the ancient world, for under his command the Carthaginians neutralized the Roman threat.
Xanthippus suddenly comes to the fore. He had nothing remarkable to show until he was appointed leader of the Carthaginians in the First Carthaginian War. He was a mercenary from Sparta, probably a brave warrior and a very capable commander.
He introduced drastic reforms to the army's combat readiness. When the nobles of the city saw their results, they elected him marshal of their forces.
Until the appearance of Xanthippus in history, the First Carthaginian War did not go well at all for the Phoenician people of North Africa. Carthaginians and Romans had been allies in driving the Greek element out of lower Italy for decades, but at some point, it became clear that two sovereign powers could not both fit in that corner of the western Mediterranean.
They had great power and had expansionist policies on their agenda, so conflict was only a matter of time. At the time when the Romans, with the help of their ally from Africa, snatched Greater Greece from the Greeks, strategically located Sicily and Syracuse, in particular, were on the verge of separating them.
The Romans and Carthaginians had had their eyes on lower Italy for years, and Sicily had indeed become the preferred place for the two superpowers to clash. By 261 BC, 4 years of sporadic conflict, most of Sicily was in Roman hands, but the Carthaginians still had a strong foothold on the island. Rome realized that the key was in the fleet: the Africans had a strong fleet, the strongest in the Mediterranean, while the Romans had nothing of note.
They built ships, developed military technology, trained crews, and began to achieve victories at sea against their opponents, which slowly turned into triumphs in naval battles. The Romans eventually prevailed on land and sea and set about conquering Carthage itself, something unthinkable a few years earlier.
In 256 BC, Roman troops landed on the shores of North Africa. Exhausted from the fierce war, the landing was just another means of pressure by the Romans to force the enemy into a humiliating surrender.
Their terms, however, were exhaustive and would not be accepted by the Carthaginians. The Romans marked victory after victory in the unknown African land, occupying enemy cities and by 255 BC even had the city of Tunis in their hands, just 15 kilometers from Carthage.
Now it was the Carthaginians who asked for peace, but the arrogant Roman commander Marcus Atilius Regulus demanded excessive compensation. His vindictive conditions included even disbanding the famous Carthaginian fleet.
While Regulus continued to plunder Carthaginian territories with his 15,000 hoplites and 500-man cavalry, the Carthaginians went on the counterattack. And it is at this point that the story of Xanthippus begins.
The three historians who tell us of his achievements, the Greek Polybius and the Romans Appian and Dion Cassius, do not tell us how the Lacedaemonian mercenary came to Carthage. Only the epic poet of the 1st century AD, Cilius the Italian, writes something about his origin and says that he came from the city of Amyklai in the Peloponnese.
One version says that he also arrived among the thousands of mercenaries hastily recruited by Carthage because of the Roman danger. This is what Appian claims, that the Spartan's arrival came after Carthage called on Sparta to send help.
Modern historians, however, think it is more likely that Xanthippus was already in the Carthaginian army and had distinguished himself in battle. And so the Carthaginians asked for his help.
Be that as it may, Xanthippus was commander of the Greek mercenary army of Carthage when a very difficult situation arose.
At that time, Polybius reports, he publicly commented on the incompetence of the local generals and the poor condition of the army. The rulers of Carthage called him to apologize for his attitude, and he responded with concrete proposals for the fighting spirit of the army. And he convinced them. And so he became a general.
From the day after he took office, he imposed Spartan discipline and constant training on that motley army of mercenaries from every place of the Mediterranean which the Carthaginians assembled in their city. Under his command, his troops acquired long spears, something he knew from the Greek armies and in the use of which he had his men train natives and mercenaries.
The result was that in a short time the Carthaginian army seemed completely reformed and ready to cross the city walls to face the Roman legions in the second large-scale ground operation of the First Carthaginian War. The same legions that a year earlier (in 256 BC) had defeated three Carthaginian generals, Amilcas, Asdrouvas, and Vastoros, in the battle that pinned the Carthaginians to their walls.
With 12,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 100 elephants under his command, Xanthippus came out of the gates of Carthage with his battle-hardened army to face Regulus. The conflict would become known as the Battle of Tunis, it took place in 255 BC and was a triumph of Xanthippus' tactics.
After cutting off the Roman supply lines, he forced his opponent to face him in the open field just as the Spartan was about to exploit his superior cavalry and elephants. First, he threw the African elephants into the battle, which trampled the Roman hoplites and sowed panic.
The Roman legionnaires were proved to be more capable than the Carthaginian infantry, who held their ground in the center of the formation, and victory was finally won by Xanthippus' cavalry, which defeated the Romans and surrounded the well-trained hoplites. In the Spartan's victory, Regulus’s hasty move, which he did because he did not believe his opponent to be a capable leader, also played an important role.
Thus, in his letters to the Senate, he wrote that there was no problem and would hand over Carthage to the new commander sent by the Romans to North Africa. The account of the battle gave him no justification: the Romans (and their 2,000-3,000 African allies) lost nearly 15,000 men and Xanthippus only 800. Regulus fell to the Carthaginians, as did 500 Roman hoplites. The Romans who escaped the slaughter boarded ships and sailed for Sicily.
Xanthippus' military triumph freed Carthage from the Roman threat and redirected the war back to Sicily and the sea. The First Carthaginian War would last a few more years, until 241 BC, and in those 23 years, the Romans would only be able to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily.
In that year, the Roman fleet won a famous victory at sea and eventually forced Carthage to surrender. But then the Romans gradually violated the peace terms and annexed the Carthaginians' land, and in 218 BC the Second Carthaginian War broke out.
As for the triumphant Xanthippus, it is still not clear what happened. As mysteriously as he appeared in history, so mysteriously he disappears too. It is not impossible that he held the office of a marshal, but fell victim to the intrigues which the natives forged against him. Appian claims that he may have been assassinated by the benevolent Carthaginians, as his high-ranking duties were overlooked by many.
Diodorus of Sicily confirms this story, telling us that after the battle of Tunis, Xanthippus began to besiege the cities of North Africa which Regulus had conquered, and even reached Sicily. A fact that further fueled jealousy. The Greek historian claims that for his return from the island to Carthage he was given a sabotaged ship and drowned in the Adriatic Sea.
Modern historians, however, do not consider these stories plausible, knowing the attitude of the Romans and Greeks toward the Carthaginians. Polybius, on the other hand, tells us that he was "wise" and left troubled Carthage immediately after his victory, offering his military services to the king of Egypt, Ptolemy III the Benefactor.
And it is not impossible that he became a ruler in the territories he annexed to Ptolemy in 245 BC.
