Battle of White Tunis
battle in Sicilian Wars
The Battle of White Tunis was fought between Carthage and the tyrant Agathocles of Syracuse in 310 BC. It was the first large battle of the Agathocles' military expedition to Libya. Even though heavily outnumbered by the Carthaginian army, the soldiers of Agathocles were far more experienced in warfare than the Carthaginian citizen soldiers. Another important factor was the terrain, which prevented the Carthaginians from using their numbers to outflank Agathocles. The Carthaginian suffered a serious defeat, which caused some of the Carthaginian allies to change their allegiance to Agathocles.
Prelude
Earlier during his war against Carthage, Agathocles had lost the Battle of the Himera River in 311 BC and lost control of Sicily except for Syracuse itself, which was besieged by the Carthaginians in the same year. Instead of facing the army which besieged Syracuse, he decided to start an unexpected and risky attack on his enemy's home soil, Libya. It would divert the Carthaginians from Syracuse and incite the Libyan allies of Carthage to revolt, as well as allowing him to plunder the wealthy territory of Carthage. He calculated that his experienced army, even though little remained of it, would have an edge over the Carthaginian forces there, which were not as experienced as the Carthaginian forces in Sicily.
With sixty triremes Agathocles managed to escape a Carthaginian blockade of Syracuse in August 310 BC. His fleet narrowly escaped a naval battle with a pursuing Carthaginian fleet as they landed at Latomiae, which is near the modern Cape Bon. Agathocles then burned his ships to remove any option of retreat for his soldiers.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of White Tunis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.