The Punic Wars: Rome, Carthage, and the Struggle for the Mediterranean 0312342144, 0306813629, 9780806130040, 0500400121, 9780312342142

Table of contents :
Hannibal and Scipio Africanus: The Lives and Careers of the Second Punic War’s Legendary Generals
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
The Mediterranean Rivalry
Hannibal’s Early Years
Scipio’s Early Years
The Start of the Second Punic War
Rome on the Brink
Victories in Spain
Taking the Fight to Africa
Zama
Scipio’s Final War
Hannibal’s Legacy
Scipio’s Legacy
Online Resources
Further Reading
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

Citation preview

Hannibal and Scipio Africanus: The Lives and Careers of the Second Punic War’s Legendary Generals By Charles River Editors

Miguel Hermoso Cuesta’s picture of a bust of Scipio Africanus

About Charles River Editors

Charles River Editors provides superior editing and original writing services across the digital publishing industry, with the expertise to create digital content for publishers across a vast range of subject matter. In addition to providing original digital content for third party publishers, we also republish civilization’s greatest literary works, bringing them to new generations of readers via ebooks. Sign up here to receive updates about free books as we publish them, and visit Our Kindle Author Page to browse today’s free promotions and our most recently published Kindle titles.

Introduction

An ancient bust of Hannibal Carthage was one of the great ancient civilizations, and at its peak, the wealthy Carthaginian empire dominated the Mediterranean against the likes of Greece and Rome, with commercial enterprises and influence stretching from Spain to Turkey. In fact, at several points in history it had a very real chance of replacing the fledgling Roman empire or the failing Greek poleis (city-states) altogether as master of the Mediterranean. Although Carthage by far preferred to exert economic pressure and influence before resorting to direct military power (and even went so far as to rely primarily on mercenary armies paid with its vast wealth for much of its history, it nonetheless produced a number of outstanding generals, from the likes of Hanno Magnus to, of course, the great bogeyman of Roman nightmares himself: Hannibal. However, the Carthaginians’ foreign policy had one fatal flaw; they had a knack over the centuries of picking the worst enemies they could possibly enter into conflict with. The first serious clash of civilizations which Carthage was involved with was Greece, which rapidly became hostile when

the Carthaginians began pushing to spread their influence towards the colonies known as Magna Graecia (“Great Greece”), which had been established in southern Italy and Sicily by several Greek poleis. These territories would become a casus belli of the First Punic War. Certain foreign policy decisions led to continuing enmity between Carthage and the burgeoning power of Rome, and what followed was a series of wars which turned from a battle for Mediterranean hegemony into an all-out struggle for survival. In the history of war, only a select few men always make the list of greatest generals. Napoleon. Caesar. Alexander. They are always joined by Hannibal, who has the distinction of being the only man who nearly brought Rome to its knees before its decline almost 700 years later. Rome never suffered a more horrifying defeat in its history than at Cannae, and indeed, Hannibal nearly rewrote the course of Western history during the Second Punic War. Even today there remains great debate on just how he accomplished his masterful invasion of Italy across the Alps. Since his army included war elephants, historians still argue over exactly where and how he crossed over 2,000 years after he managed that incredible feat. Although the Romans gained the upper hand in the wake of the First Punic War, Hannibal brought the Romans to their knees for over a decade during the Second Punic War. While military historians are still amazed that he was able to maintain his army in Italy near Rome for nearly 15 years, scholars are still puzzled over some of his decisions, including why he never attempted to march on Rome in the first place. While Hannibal had been in Italy, it had been relatively easy for the Carthaginian oligarchy, particularly the Hundred and Four, a federation of powerful traders, and Hannibal’s chief political rival, Hanno the Great, to marginalize him. For years his political party, the Barcids, had struggled to obtain even a token amount of funds and troops for his enterprise, but Hannibal’s arrival on the scene changed all that. Even his rivals could not deny the simple fact that, all else aside, the man could fight a battle like no other general alive. With Rome threatening invasion, Hannibal was suddenly the necessary hero of the hour. Bolstering his Italian mercenaries with levies from Africa and Carthage, the Carthaginian ruling elite desperately invested

the money that Hannibal had begged for throughout the last decade in order to assemble a scratch force capable of at least presenting an appearance of force against Scipio Africanus’ army. Hannibal can hardly have been thrilled to see the amount of trouble the Carthaginians went to in order to assemble an army that, had he had his way years before, might well have been completely unnecessary. Certainly it appears that he prepared to take the field with less than his customary ardor. At 45, he was still far from old, but ever since he had first left Carthage he had spent virtually all of his adult life fighting, and the strain was beginning to tell. By all accounts he was in poor health, and prone to sickness. Indeed, rather than seek to bring Scipio Africanus to battle, in 202 B.C. Hannibal met the Roman general and attempted to talk peace. The army the Carthaginians had succeeded in gathering, not to mention the presence of Hannibal himself, convinced Scipio that he might be well-advised to seek a diplomatic solution, and the two began negotiations, which were helped by the fact that both generals recognized a kindred spirit in the other. Through negotiations, Carthage was forced to give up much, especially considering Hannibal’s roster of victories, but Rome’s star was on the rise once again, and Hannibal knew he could not hope to win a protracted war. Hannibal agreed to Scipio’s terms: Carthage would lose possession of Iberia and the Mediterranean islands, renouncing all claims to overseas territories but maintaining its heartland and African possessions, with the exception of the Numidian kingdom of Masinissa, who had declared for Rome. Reparations would be made, Scipio demanded, to Rome itself and to the countless families which Carthage’s wars had decimated, and the Carthaginian army and fleet must both be reduced in numbers, in order for them to never again threaten Rome’s supremacy. Hannibal, who recognized these terms, though harsh, as probably the best deal Carthage was likely to achieve, acceded to them, but the proposed peace between he and Scipio never happened. While the negotiations were going on, a Roman fleet which had gotten itself stranded upon the coast of Tunisia was seized by the Carthaginian navy and ransacked of all its supplies and equipment. When Scipio heard of this, he furiously demanded reparations, but, unaccountably, the Carthaginian oligarchy high-handedly turned him down. Perhaps they felt secure enough with Hannibal at the head of an army on Carthaginian soil

to defy Rome, or perhaps the terms of the treaty stung their pride. Whatever their reasons, they could not have committed a bigger diplomatic error if they had gone out of their way to do so. Scipio departed the negotiations in a rage. There would be no terms. On October 19, 202 BCE, on the plain of Zama in modern Tunisia, battle was joined. For the first time in one of the battles of the Second Punic War, Hannibal had the infantry advantage and Rome had the cavalry advantage. The result would decide the fate of the Second Punic War and the course of history. Hannibal will always be listed among history’s greatest generals, and his military campaign in Italy during the Second Punic War will always be studied, but part of the aura and mystique surrounding the Carthaginian legend is that there is still a lot of mystery. Since Carthage was destroyed by Rome a generation after Hannibal, most of what is known about Hannibal came from the very people he tormented in the late 2nd century BCE, and thus much of his background is unknown. Moreover, even as military historians are still amazed that he was able to maintain his army in Italy near Rome for nearly 15 years, they are still puzzled over some of his decisions, including why he never attempted to march on Rome in the first place. While he remains far less known than Hannibal, Publius Cornelius Scipio, the man who has become known to history as Scipio Africanus, is widely regarded as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. In the space of less than 10 years, the genius of Scipio took Rome from being on the brink of utter destruction to becoming the dominant power in the Mediterranean. He displayed not just acute understanding of the tactical needs of the battlefield but also a strategic overview that consistently allowed him to confound his enemies. Scipio has been described as “the embodiment of grand strategy, as his campaigns are the supreme example in history of its meaning.” However, like many other successful military leaders, Scipio proved much less able to deal with the envy and political machinations of the Roman Senate, and he ended his life not in glory but in bitter, self-imposed retirement, much the same way Hannibal did. Both men left legacies of military genius, catastrophic defeats, perseverance in the face of setbacks,

astounding victories. Their stories also heavily involve ingratitude, envy, and enmity from within. Hannibal and Scipio Africanus: The Lives and Careers of the Second Punic War’s Legendary Generals chronicles the two rivals, their campaigns, and their lasting legacies. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Hannibal and Scipio Africanus like never before.

Hannibal and Scipio Africanus: The Lives and Careers of the Second Punic War’s Legendary Generals About Charles River Editors Introduction The Mediterranean Rivalry Hannibal’s Early Years Scipio’s Early Years The Start of the Second Punic War Rome on the Brink Victories in Spain Taking the Fight to Africa Zama Scipio’s Final War Hannibal’s Legacy Scipio’s Legacy Online Resources Further Reading Free Books by Charles River Editors Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

The Mediterranean Rivalry Carthage was almost certainly founded during the colonization boom of the Phoenician Empire. This was a movement which took advantage of the relative collapse in the fortunes of Greece, Crete and the Hittite Empire to establish a string of up to 3,000 colonies between Asia Minor and Spain, and Carthage was conveniently positioned smack in the middle of the extremely lucrative Iberia–Asia Minor raw metals route. Although it was a convenient position, Carthage itself was apparently not intended to be anything special in terms of colonizing efforts, particularly because the Phoenician colonial method differed radically from the Greek variant. While the Hellenes would create a settlement that was self-sustaining and almost always self-governing, while still retaining ties of alliance and friendship with the so-called “Mother City” on mainland Greece, the Phoenicians, both for administrative control reasons and due to population constraints, did not as a rule create self-sufficient colonies. Instead, the Phoenicians exerted more control over the settlements, particularly when it came to trade regulations. Thus, the settlement which gradually spread upon the hill of Byrsa was very low in the food chain. From 850–650 BCE, Carthage gradually became more and more wealthy thanks to her privileged position straddling the major land and sea trade routes of the Mediterranean. These two centuries saw the emergence of what would later become known as “Punic” (Carthaginian) culture, a distinctly West African Phoenician identity which differed noticeably from its predecessor. The growth of this culture indicated a rise in influence on Carthage’s part, and that rise manifested itself in 650 BCE when Carthage founded its own independent colony, a settlement on Ibiza, without assistance from Tyre. As the fortunes of Tyre and the Phoenician Empire waned, first with the loss of Sicily to the ever-expanding Greeks and then with Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon’s great siege of Tyre in 585 BCE, Carthage’s fortunes continued to rise. More settlements were founded, more cities of the North African seaboard were brought under direct Carthaginian control rather than paying their dues to Tyre, and a large colony was

established in Syrtis, between Tunisia and Lybia. Additionally, Carthage’s rise was bolstered by the influx of a large number of immigrants of both wealth and high political status from Tyre itself, as many of the elite fled the conflicts which enveloped the Phoenician capital. For centuries, Carthage’s expansion had progressed relatively smoothly, with no one challenging their dominion over the Mediterranean. Even the Etruscans, whose heyday coincided with Carthage’s rise to prominence, had not vied with the Punic Empire for supremacy. In fact, the Etruscans had become valued trading partners and then allies, despite several incidents involving pirates. However, near the end of the 6th century, a new power was emerging on the Mediterranean with hitherto unseen forcefulness, swallowing up the Etruscan cities and pursuing a policy of ruthless military expansion which threatened to upset the balance of power for good. The Carthaginian elite felt nervous enough watching the rapid growth of Rome that in 509 BCE, a treaty, the first of several, was signed between Carthage and Rome. Although at the time Carthage was far more significant both politically and militarily, an ally on the Italian mainland who would be both belligerent and at odds with the Greeks was certainly useful. The treaty itself was similar to others that the Carthaginians had signed with various states throughout the Mediterranean, and it served to limit the sphere of influence and commercial enterprise each power was meant to abide by. In 348, Carthage signed another treaty with Rome, which was now quickly becoming the dominant power in Italy. Rome gained trade access (but not settlement rights) to Sicily, while Carthage maintained a monopoly on trade in Iberia and Sardinia. Rome also gained valuable Latin possessions from the treaty, further cementing its position as a dominant Italian power. This initially cordial relationship, however, would prove to be far from lasting. Inevitably, Carthage and Rome would be locked in a mortal struggle that would define one city and ruin the other. Sicily was largely at peace, barring the occasional skirmish, for several decades after the peace with Agathocles, but Carthage had plenty of internal and external threats to worry about, not least the burgeoning power of Rome, despite their peace treaty (another treaty was allegedly signed in 306 BC, but

its authenticity is questionable). Sicily was not a problem again until around 280, when Carthage launched a renewed attack on the Sicilian city-states, seizing Akragas and besieging Syracuse. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was busy waging war against the Roman Republic in Southern Italy when he received a request for aid from several Sicilian poleis, Syracuse among them, against Carthage.

Ancient bust of Pyrrhus Pyrrhus sailed for Sicily with a vast army, forcing Mago, the Carthaginian general, to lift the siege of Syracuse. Pyrrhus then captured Eryx and demanded that Carthage quit the island of Sicily entirely. When these terms were refused, he once again defeated the Carthaginian army in the field in 276. However, Pyrrhus, able general though he was, had made himself increasingly unpopular among the Sicilian poleis both for his blatant power grabbing and for his cavalier treatment of allies, so much so that he was forced to depart from Sicily. Pyrrhus’s fleet suffered a heavy defeat at sea at

the hands of the Carthaginian navy, and he would go on to a crippling campaign in southern Italy which eventually resulted in Rome absorbing virtually the entire lower half of the Italian peninsula into its own domains, bringing its borders onto Carthage’s Sicilian doorstep. Something had to give. After a period of increased tension, the inevitable war finally erupted in 264. With the domination of many of the city states, and with only Syracuse the true threat, the Carthaginians decided that they had invested far too much money, time and effort in their war against the Greek city states to simply abandon the field. Carthage, with its eyes firmly resting upon a future ripe with financial possibilities as well as the ability to allow Carthaginian colonization, settled in for the long haul. Shortly after the decision was made to continue the effort, though, the ruler of Syracuse died, and as far as the Carthaginians knew the resistance had ended. This was not the case. A group of Italian mercenaries who had been hired by the city of Syracuse started to make their way back to Italy when they stopped in the city of Messana, which offered them rest and hospitality before continuing their journey. The mercenaries took advantage of the situation and “treacherously seized Messana…they expelled or slew the male inhabitants, divided their wives and children” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 3) and took control of the city. These mercenaries decided to call themselves “the children of Mamers, or Mars” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 3) and sought to establish themselves as a power. Carthage disagreed with that plan. When Carthage learned of the treachery of the mercenaries they started to march upon the city of Messana. It was the Carthaginians’ intent to punish and capture those mercenaries that they could. The mercenaries, upon discovering that they were now in the path of Carthage’s fury, found their courage wanting. The mercenaries decided to “petition Rome to intercede” upon their behalf. The mercenaries reminded the Roman Senate in their plea that the mercenaries were Italians and that it was the responsibility and duty of Rome to come to their aid. To leave the mercenaries to the fate which Carthage was going to dictate would show that Rome had no power over Sicily, and that, more importantly, Rome was ignoring its responsibilities to watch out for its Latin brethren.

For its part, Carthage was not concerned with any plea that the mercenaries made. Carthage believed that the treachery of the mercenaries, so foreign to the rigorous decorum and high moral standards of the Roman culture, would prohibit the Roman Senate from voting to send any sort of assistance to the mercenaries. However, Rome’s reasons for fighting the First Punic War were as clear cut as Carthage’s. Rome sought to not only protect its own holdings in Sicily (as well as their allies), they were also concerned about either the Greeks or the Carthaginians increasing their strength on the island. Such a buildup of strength would directly affect the safety of Rome itself. In addition to protecting itself Rome also had economic reasons. Obtaining more influence on Sicily would increase trade and the ability to export materials to new markets. City states defeated would not only be allied to Rome but some of the conquered states’ lands would be doled out to worthy Roman citizens. Thus, when the Italians who had seized Messana sent a delegation to the Roman Senate seeking assistance, the Roman Senate could not “refuse to protect Italians who appealed to them avowedly as the head of the Italian confederation for aid against the Greeks and Carthaginians” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 5). The Roman Senate, honor bound, could not “look calmly on while the city of Messana fell into the hands of the Carthaginians.” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 5). Understanding these needs, the Roman consuls found that they were able “to raise a patriotic cry of Italians against foreigners.” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 6). With this public backing, the Roman government could successfully prepare the state for war against Carthage. In addition to the requirements of Roman honor, there was the basic necessity to maintain the protective barrier around the city of Rome. The Roman Senate understood that the city of Messana could be used by the Carthaginians “as a standing menace to their [Roman] power and a vantage ground in the great conflict.” (Smith, The Punic Wars, 5). The Roman government was quite sure this would be the case was in the near future. In the First Punic War, as in previous conflicts, Carthage had relied upon the hiring of mercenary troops. These troops, coming from all around the Mediterranean and specializing in a wide array of weapons and tactics, were

commanded by their own native officers. The various mercenary units, however, were under the command of a professional Carthaginian soldier. On Sicily, the Carthaginians had landed their mercenary units, but never together or with a clearly designed or coordinated plan of attack. The Battle of Agrigentum also caused a shift in policy among the Carthaginian military elite. Rather than face the legions on land, they would attempt to resolve the conflict at sea, where their massive and highly proficient professional navy had the advantage. That said, with few positions of strength remaining to them on the island, the Carthaginian forces under the command of the Carthaginian Hamilcar Barca opted to attack Italy. By using the Carthaginian navy and its skill upon the seas, Hamilcar launched a series of raids along the Italian coast in an effort to bring the war home to the Romans and to force Rome to withdraw its forces from Sicily. Rome did not withdraw, however, nor did it relinquish any territory which it had gained. Instead, it held firmly onto the conquests they had made on land. That said, by 260 BCE it was clear that the war’s focus would switch to the sea. Indeed, as it would turn out, the “decisive actions in the First Punic War were on the seas.” (US Army Command and General Staff College, Force Projection in the Punic Wars, 3). For Rome, the First Punic War was the beginning of its martial navy; while Rome had sailors who were fairly adept at plying the trade routes through the Mediterranean, they didn’t enjoy any sort of maritime prowess in regards to warfare upon the sea. Upon the outbreak of war with Carthage, however, this all changed. The Carthaginians were the undeniable superpower on the Mediterranean and had been for centuries; they could, quite literally, sail circles around the Roman navy at the beginning of the war. The Romans, however, were quick learners, something the Carthaginians discovered to their detriment, and the First Punic War saw the “largest naval engagements until the 20th century.” (US Army Command and General Staff College, Force Projection in the Punic Wars, 9). At the beginning of the war, the Carthaginian navy, manned by native Carthaginians and not mercenaries, were fully capable of defeating the few ships which the Romans were able to launch. The Carthaginian navy was

also able to force the Roman troopships off of their marks, making them land farther from their intended destinations or forcing them to attempt night crossings, which were always dangerous even for the most skilled sailors. Rome, however, soon learned how to build ships equal to the Carthaginians’ through the capture of the Carthaginian ship. The Roman navy was dealt a crushing defeat at the Battle of Lipara, but Rome did not take this defeat lying down. Instead, the Senate authorized a massive financial package for the navy, boosting wartime production to hitherto untold (and virtually unsustainable) levels so that more than 100 Roman triremes were constructed within less than two months, a monumental undertaking. Once Rome had the ships, however, the Romans still needed to find experienced captains and crews to use those ships effectively, so a stopgap solution was developed: the corvus. Rather than ram the enemy ships and try to sink them, the Roman galleys would close alongside the Carthaginians and then drop the corvus, a hook-ended bridge, onto the enemy deck, linking the ships together. Once that was in place, Roman legionaries would swarm across the bridge, effectively turning a naval battle into a land one and returning the combat to terms which were favorable to them. The Carthaginians suffered grievously at the hands of this brilliantly simple device (though it was eventually phased out of service as the Roman navy became as adept as its Punic counterpart) and would gradually lose supremacy on the Mediterranean over the duration of the war. By 257 BCE, Carthaginians had ceased their raids upon Italy, as Hamilcar Barca had been forced to break off the engagements due to a lack of funds and logistical support from Carthage. A year later, the Romans decided to test their burgeoning naval skills once more in what would be known as the Battle of Cape Ecnomus, perhaps the largest naval battle in all of antiquity. Both fleets were of such immense size that each one had two separate commanders; for the Roman fleet, these commanders were the consuls Marcus Atalius Regulus and Lucius Manlius, while the Carthaginian commanders were Hanno and Hamilcar. Both Hanno and Hamilcar were battle tested commanders, while the consuls were elected officials. The forces were evenly matched in spite of the Roman navy’s relative youth and inexperience, and the battle was a long and fierce fight. Eventually, the Romans defeated the Carthaginians and drove them away

from the Italian coast, taking hold of the ships abandoned by the Carthaginians and adding them to their fleet. With their victory at Ecnomus, Rome had successfully driven the war away from Italy and opened the path to North Africa, which would let them bring the war to the Carthaginians. With the sea lanes to North Africa open, the Romans prepared an invasion force to assault the Carthaginian home territory, and in 255 they landed their legions in North Africa seeking to crush the Carthaginians. Naturally, the Carthaginians did not wait while Rome moved towards Carthage; the city’s government sought out a commander for their mercenary army and chose a Spartan trained general, a Greek mercenary by the name of Xanthippos. The Carthaginians, changing their policy of keeping only a Carthaginian in the position of supreme command, hired Xanthippos and brought him to Carthage. Once in the city, Xanthippos went amongst the mercenaries, some of whom he had fought with and others whom he had fought against. These mercenaries knew the merits and victories of Xanthippos and gave him a measure of respect that no Carthaginian could hope to command, and this respect translated to rapid responses to his orders. This helped bring about the crucial Carthaginian victory in the battle of Tunis in 255. At that battle, nearly half of the Roman army and the consul Regulus were captured by Xanthippos’ troops. The surviving legionaries, about 5,000 men, dug into a position which they could easily defend, and shortly after the battle, the remaining Roman troops were rescued by a portion of the Roman fleet. The Roman defeat at the hands of Xanthippos marked the end of Roman efforts in North Africa. By 254, the Carthaginian army returned to Sicily in an effort to take back their lost holdings and to seize the entire island. At the same time, Carthage made the decision to release Xanthippos, so in 251, Hasdrubal was the commander of the Carthaginian forces on Sicily. In the northwest of Sicily, the Roman and Carthaginian forces met in the battle of Panormus, and Hasdrubal’s troops were defeated and pushed back, eliciting an attempt at peace negotiations from the Carthaginians. This gesture was made through the release of the consul Regulus who had been captured at the battle of Tunis.

In 247, the Carthaginians succeeded in landing the general Hamilcar Barca upon Sicily. Though ill-supplied and with few replacements, Barca successfully kept the Romans from taking the islands. By 242, however, he was no longer able to hold the Romans back, and the Roman legions took the Carthaginian held cities of Lilybaeum and Drepanum. In 241, Carthage launched a fleet under the command of another admiral named Hanno in an effort to resupply Barca and once more secure Carthaginian positions on Sicily, but a Roman fleet under the command of consul Lutatius Catulus sailed out to intercept the Carthaginians. Over the previous twenty three years of war Rome had learned to master the sea. With this knowledge – and with their ships prepared for war – they met the supply laden Carthaginian ships, and the defeat suffered by the Carthaginians was so devastating that it convinced them to sue for peace. With general Hamilcar Barca given the power to treat for peace, he met with consul Catulus. Catulus offered generous terms which Barca readily accepted. Both sides agreed to not continue any hostilities towards the enemy’s allies. Carthage, however, would be forced to abandon all of their holdings on Sicily. In addition to this, no Punic ships of war could enter Italian waters, the Carthaginians would be forced to pay a heavy restitution, and they had to release 8,000 Roman prisoners. All of these blows badly crippled the Carthaginian economy. The end of the First Punic War brought a decisive shift of power in the Mediterranean. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Carthage was the reigning power, dominating the shipping lanes, ports, and trade. They controlled allies and territories with mercenary troops and gained allies and territories in the same fashion. Rome, while a strong power, was not considered the equal to Carthage, but after 23 years of war, the Romans were victorious. The terms of peace dealt serious blows to the Carthaginian economy, and the humiliation helped ensure there would be a Second Punic War several decades later.

Hannibal’s Early Years Most of what the histories have to say about Hannibal have come from his greatest enemies, for shortly after his death Carthage was utterly annihilated by the Roman legions, and they left no annals behind to explain the Carthaginians may have thought of their greatest soldier. That said, it is known that Hannibal was disliked by many of the most prominent Carthaginian factions, who were always reluctant to support him even in the hour of his greatest success, but their dislike was nothing compared to the utter hatred that the Romans felt for him. They could not belittle his achievements, so they attacked the only thing that was open to question: his character. Roman historians named him arrogant, ruthless, vicious, hedonistic, and cruel, and though some of his actions do bear out these labels, others seem to contradict them entirely. Thus, a fine controversy has raged over the years, with some historians arguing that Hannibal’s character was beyond reproach, like his generalship, while others argue that he was everything his Roman detractors suggested, and more. The truth, as always, is likely to lie somewhere in the middle. Like many classical figures on whom much has been written, but almost always second-hand, Hannibal remains something of a mystery. He never left any personal documents behind, or if he did, they did not survive antiquity.

Hannibal was born in Carthage in 247 BCE, the first-born son of Hamilcar “The Thunderbolt” Barca, a prominent Carthaginian nobleman and a successful general who had distinguished himself leading Carthage’s forces during the First Punic War against Rome (“Punic” being the adjective the Romans reserved for all things Carthaginian). Though Hamilcar used the cognomen Barca (meaning “thunderbolt”), it’s unclear whether that was passed down to his sons, but historians still generally refer to Hannibal as Hannibal Barca. Regardless, with such a fine martial tradition in his family, it naturally followed that Hannibal too would join the Carthaginian army, rather than engage in the other great pastime of the city’s nobility: trade. With the state of the Mediterranean basin being what it was in 247 BCE, it followed that there would be plenty of employment for soldiers. Indeed, Hannibal was born into a world of strife. Carthage, the northern African superpower, had grown rich on trade and the intelligent use of force, but their position of supremacy was being challenged by the rising star of Rome, which by this time was also aggressive, expansionistic, and heavily slanted towards conquest and the military rather than peaceable trade. Given that, it was inevitable that Rome would come into conflict with Carthage, and had already done so during the first Punic War, a brutal and bitter conflict which had lasted for over two decades and resulted in a Roman victory and the loss of large swaths of Carthaginian land across the Mediterranean. While the

two great powers were at war, other factions, such as Syracuse and the Seleucids, had also attempted to carve out a larger piece of the Mediterranean pie. When Hannibal was 11 and proceeding with the typical education of a Carthaginian military nobleman’s child (by all accounts he excelled at horsemanship, wrestling, and other martial pursuits), his father Hamilcar, who was desperate to find Carthage a new source of revenue to replace the lost territories of Sardinia and Corsica, managed to persuade the Carthaginian ruling elite of the desirability of the military conquest of the Iberian peninsula, the riches of which, he argued, could fund Carthage for the next war. The Carthaginian rulers consented, so in 236 BCE Hamilcar went about preparing the invasion of Spain, which at the time was a loose collection of tribes with no ambitions beyond their local territory. Furthermore, annexation of land on the Iberian Peninsula was unlikely to anger Rome unduly, even though the Republic’s forces were also pursuing their own interests in the north of the peninsula. In fact, containment of Roman expansion may also have been part of Hamilcar’s strategy. Hannibal, though barely 11 at the time, begged his father for leave to accompany the expedition. At first, it appears as though Hamilcar was reluctant to let someone so young join him on his campaign, but due to repeated pleas by Hannibal, he seems to have relented. Whatever his reasons, the young Hannibal was certainly with the Carthaginian army when it marched along the coast of North Africa to the strait of Gibraltar, where, under Hamilcar’s supervision, the troops were ferried across the narrow strait and onto Spanish soil. The journey took Hamilcar’s army some months, but at the time the Carthaginian navy was in such a parlous state that there were simply not enough ships available to transport the army by sea from Carthage itself, leading Hamilcar to take the longer coastal route. Once there, however, Hamilcar’s army was vastly successful in prosecuting war on the peninsula itself. The Iberian tribes, inferior in equipment and training, could not hope to resist the Carthaginian troops, and despite stiff fighting they were defeated piecemeal and annexed, a process which took several years. During this time, Hannibal grew to adolescence, tutored in warfare by Greek instructors who instructed him by detailing the conquests of Alexander the Great, Alcibiades, and Pyrrhus of Epirus, all of

whom he would come to greatly admire and hold in high esteem. Of course, Hannibal also witnessed his father Hamilcar’s successes as a commander firsthand. It is likely that Hamilcar himself, when campaign matters permitted, would have taken time to instruct his son himself, for they appear to have been close. Indeed, Hamilcar was determined that Hannibal himself, when the time came, should take up his mantle and proceed with the crusade that had occupied most of his military life: the destruction of Rome. Hamilcar had never recovered from the humiliation of being defeated by the Republic’s forces, and he longed for the day when he might lead Carthage’s troops against Rome once again. To this end, he spent much time instilling in his son an implacable hatred of Carthage’s sworn enemy. Such was Hamilcar’s zeal for his cause, and his desire to bind his son to it, that he had Hannibal accompany him to a shrine in the town of Peniscola (near modern Valencia) and bid him swear upon the altar that he would be Rome’s enemy forever. Hannibal duly did so, adding, “As soon as I have come of age, I swear that I will bring Rome low by fire and the sword”. Hamilcar’s campaigns continued successfully, and he even began to consolidate his gains by founding a string of cities, including, popular legend has it, the port city of Barcino (from Barca, his family name), on the site of modern-day Barcelona. However, Hamilcar’s success came to an abrupt end in 228 BCE, when, while leading his army across a river against an army of Iberian tribesmen, he fell from his horse and drowned. Hannibal was 19 at the time and already a proven battlefield commander, having taken command of a detachment of Carthaginian troops at some point during Hamilcar’s campaigns. He had already displayed a glimmer of the military genius that would characterize his later career in his handling of his soldiers. Hannibal grieved deeply for his father’s death, but his sorrow was somewhat lessened by the appointment of his older brother-in-law, Hasdrubal, to overall command of the army. Having another family member commanding in Iberia, rather than an unknown quantity, meant more opportunity for advancement, and Hannibal was pleased to accept a position on Hasdrubal’s staff, where he had ample opportunity to prove his mettle.

Meanwhile, Hasdrubal, who was less bellicose than Hamilcar, set about consolidating his father-in-law’s gains, pursuing a policy of appeasement and settlement in the territories that Hamilcar had already annexed. After all, the main purpose of the Iberian invasion had been to generate revenue, and there could be no tax collecting while there was a war raging. Accordingly, Hasdrubal, much to Hannibal’s chagrin, signed a peace treaty with Rome and established a de facto frontier along the northern valley of the Ebro, with both factions promising they would refrain from straying across the river. Quite what Hannibal made of Hasdrubal’s decision to sign a peace treaty with his and his father’s sworn enemy is unclear, but he cannot have been pleased by the fact. Nevertheless, like a good soldier, he obeyed, and he was given cause to rejoice in 226 BCE when an alliance was formed between the Carthaginians and the Gaulish tribes of the Po valley in Northern Italy, tribesmen hostile to Rome who had already once memorably sacked the great city itself. Rome was likely to respond, and they did so by annexing the area known as Cisalpine Gaul, dashing Hannibal’s hopes of a joint invasion of Italian soil. It was around this time that Hannibal, then in his early 20s, married an Iberian princess named Imilce, the daughter of a powerful tribal leader. As part of his successful – and highly remunerative – policy of consolidation, Hasdrubal had insisted that many of his young unmarried officers marry local highborn ladies, and Hannibal’s marriage seems to have been part of that policy rather than any particular passion he might have felt for Imilce. Hannibal continued in Hasdrubal’s employ for several years, firmly establishing himself as one of the most resourceful Carthaginian commanders in Iberia. In 221 BCE, Hasdrubal was killed by a Celt assassin, but who paid the killer’s purse is still a mystery. Certainly there were plenty of people who wanted him dead, including the Iberians he had pacified , the Romans who viewed him as a significant obstacle, and anyone else feeling threatened by the possibility of a Gaulish-Carthaginian invasion of Italy. Moreover, the Carthaginian court itself was notorious for intrigue and political plotting, so there is a distinct possibility that it was someone in Carthage who wanted Hasdrubal dead for their own ends. Regardless of who was behind it, Hasdrubal’s death was a golden opportunity for Hannibal. He had already proven himself to be a resourceful

commander, and in addition to his undoubted merits he had the good fortune to be the child of the mighty Hamilcar Barca. Thus, when the time came for the army of Iberia to choose its new commander, Hannibal was chosen to nearly universal popular acclaim, and his appointment was promptly validated by Carthage. At the age of 26, Hannibal was now commander of the Carthaginian forces in Iberia, and they had one objective: war with Rome.

Scipio’s Early Years Of all the aristocratic families in Rome during the 3rd century BCE, none were more distinguished or more deeply embedded in Roman society than the Cornelia family. Their origins are now lost to history, but by 250 BCE, this was one of the most powerful patrician families in Rome, accounting for more politicians and military leaders than any other. There were several distinct branches of the Cornelia family, each tracing its descent from a different originator. At that period in the development of the Republic, the two most influential branches of this family were the Lentuli and the Scipiones. Like other patrician Roman families, the Cornelia family used the tria nomina (three names) convention for naming members of the family. Each name comprised three parts; praenomen (personal name), nomen (family name), and cognomen (family branch). However, confusingly, each family branch tended to use a limited number of personal names, so there are many individuals of the same name spread across the generations. The Scipiones, for example, tended to use only the names Publius, Gnaeus, and Lucius for male members of the family. When a new arrival to the family was born in 235 BCE, there was nothing about his name that made him stand out. There had been many men of the family named Publius Cornelius Scipio, but this child would go on to become one of the greatest military leaders Rome had ever produced and would personally contribute to the Roman Republic becoming one of the most powerful confederations in the ancient world. When Publius Cornelius Scipio was born, Rome had only recently taken control of the whole Italian peninsula and was beginning to expand beyond into lands in present-day Spain, France, and Sicily. The First Punic War had ended just a few years before Scipio was born, but Rome still considered Carthage the main obstacle to its own expansion. Much of what is known about Scipio came from the writings of early Roman historians such as Titus Livius (59 BCE – 12 CE) and Greek writers such as Polybius (208-125 BCE). These men both produced detailed narrative histories of the Republic through the study of contemporary

records, including letters and political and military records. These histories have survived and tell a great deal about the Republic itself and minutia of the life of its citizens. Polybius’s writing in particular is valuable in terms of Scipio because it was written soon after the events it described, the writer personally visited many of the battlefields on which Scipio fought, and he had access to important eyewitnesses such as Gaius Laelius, Scipio’s friend and subordinate. At the same time, perhaps surprisingly given his later prominence, almost nothing is known about the childhood and adolescence of Publius Cornelius Scipio. In Roman households, the father (paterfamilias) had complete control over the lives of his wife and children. The household in which Publius grew up was controlled by his father, also Publius Cornelius Scipio, a senior politician who would later serve as Consul. His grandfather and great-grandfather had also served as Consuls, and there is little doubt that the family had high hopes for young Publius. Like most male children of wealthy patrician families, he would have received an extensive basic education, though not at school. Families that could afford to would employ tutors, brought in to the family home to teach reading and writing in Latin before moving on to topics that would generally include poetry, literature, history, geography and other important languages of the period such as Greek. All male children of patrician families were expected to have a good basic knowledge of history, particularly the history of Rome, as well as of the arts. Naturally, these children were expected to study diligently. Most were given just one day off in every eight days, during market days. The purpose of this education was not just to impart knowledge that would be useful in later life, but to ensure that the student became vir bonus (“good man”), one who fully understood his obligations under the mos maiorum, the social and moral code that governed Roman society. Under the Republic, all property owners of an appropriate age were expected to undertake military service, and this particularly applied to the sons of patrician families. Those who held political office in the Republic were required to take command of armies in times of war, and to prepare them for this, male children were given military training that included the

use of weapons and horsemanship, as well as a study of military history including the tactics used by previous Roman commanders. Young Publius would certainly have received education and training in res militaris (“military matters”). Military service was also seen as an essential prerequisite for the Republic’s highest leader. The highest political appointments were available only to those who had served in no less than 10 tours of military service. Boys in patrician families were expected to marry, not necessarily in order to find a life partner but as a duty to ensure the continuance of the family. These marriages were generally arranged by the father, so the young people involved had little say in the matter. Roman males were eligible to marry at the age of 14 and females at the age of 12. At some point during his teenage years, Publius was married to Aemilia Tertia, daughter of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, a leading member of another patrician family who would also later serve as Consul. The couple had two children: Publius, a sickly child whose constant illness meant that it was unlikely he would ever be able to serve in a public role, and Lucius.

The Start of the Second Punic War It seems likely that Publius was being groomed for a political career, but the emergence of another young man as a Carthaginian leader would change all that and force Publius to focus instead on a military career. The result of the First Punic War was a complete dearth of cash in Carthage, which was a serious problem because Carthage relied chiefly on mercenary armies. Thousands of mercenaries throughout the Carthaginian Empire were suddenly not getting their wages, and the result was inevitable: war. An all-out insurrection of mercenary contingents throughout the Punic Empire, including Iberia, Sardinia and Corsica, and a renewed attack from the subjugated Lybian tribes, followed. Suddenly, Carthage was fighting for her very life, and grudgingly accepting military and financial aid from her two old enemies, Syracuse and Rome. The war dragged on for two years, but by 238 Carthage was once again secure, with order restored to her dominions. Still, the cost had been heavy; taking advantage of Carthage’s desperate situation, Rome had conveniently seized both Sardinia and Corsica, which had been plunged into lawlessness by the mercenary uprising, and there was nothing Carthage could do about it. The mines of Iberia, with their vast amounts of as yet untapped wealth, were still secure, but control of them was dubious. Crisis, as so often occurs, had brought political change in its wake, and the Barcid family, led by Hamilcar Barca, had risen to prominence during the Mercenary Wars. Hamilcar was a skilled general who rapidly rose to command all of the Carthaginian armies by ousting the competition of his rival, Hanno the Great. Hamilcar was populist and had the support of the common people, whereas Hanno was a scion of the old Carthaginian aristocracy, but their power was on the wane. Thus, it was Hamilcar and his son-in-law, Hasdrubal the Fair, who subdued the Iberian cities, but the loyalty of these new dominions was far from certain. Rather than owing allegiance to Carthage, the Iberian cities looked to Hamilcar exclusively for guidance, making Spain a virtual Barcid fief. Hamilcar was killed in battle in 228, so Hasdrubal took over as his successor and began to look for a way to strike back at Rome in retaliation

for the First Punic War and the blatant land grab in the chaos that followed. It appears likely that around 225, Hasdrubal began plotting with the Gauls of the Po Valley in the north of Italy (the only as yet unconquered area in the Italian Peninsula) to launch an attack on Rome with Carthaginian backing, but the Senate got wind of the plan and ordered a pre-emptive strike of their own, leading to a five-year war which eventually led to the annexation of the Po Valley. Hasdrubal himself was assassinated in 221, possibly with Roman collusion. Rather than solve the Romans’ problem, Hasdrubal’s death brought about the rise of the most famous Carthaginian of all. Hasdrubal was succeeded by his brother-in-law and Hamilcar’s son, Hannibal. In the history of war, only a select few men always make the list of greatest generals, and one of them is Hannibal, who has the distinction of being the only man who nearly brought Rome to its knees before its decline almost 700 years after his time.

A Carthaginian coin believed to depict Hannibal as Hercules

For two years, Hannibal bided his time, consolidating his position in the Iberian peninsula and massing his forces, abiding by one of the greatest military truths and one which doubtless his tutors and his father, with their tales of Alexander and Alcibiades, had contributed to instill in him: numbers do not matter so much as concentration of force, i.e. what troops are available to fight in one single critical location, at any given time. Meanwhile, even as Hannibal was preparing to strike out against their very heart, the Romans seem to have grown unusually complacent; after all, Hannibal was new to overall command, and with both Hamilcar and Hasdrubal dead, they must have felt themselves secure. When in 218 Hannibal resurrected his brother-in-law’s plan for a joint Gaulish and Carthaginian invasion of the Italian peninsula, the Romans were caught napping, something which they would live to regret in the following years. Hannibal needed a casus belli, and in 219 BCE the Romans obliged him with one by forming an alliance with the powerful Iberian city of Saguntum, well south of the line drawn along the Ebro, and unilaterally declaring it a Roman protectorate. Hannibal took this for outright rebellion, and acted accordingly, investing the city and besieging it for eight months until it fell. He then protested to Carthage that Rome had broken the terms of their agreement with them, declaring that there could be only one feasible course of action: war. The Carthaginian rulers, having been burned once before, were wary of becoming embroiled in a new conflict with Rome, but such was Hannibal’s popularity with the troops in the Iberian peninsula that, with the memory of the Mercenary Wars still fresh in their minds, they acceded to his demands rather than risk a full-blown mutiny. Scipio was just 17 when the Second Punic War began, but he would quickly find himself directly involved since his father had been elected Consul at the beginning of 218 BCE alongside the second Consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus. These two men would be directly responsible for directing the military forces of the Republic against Hannibal and his army. In the spring of 218 BCE, at the head of approximately 50,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry, and 50 war elephants, Hannibal began marching northeast. His plan was breathtakingly ambitious: he would march through the Pyrenees, across southern Gaul, over the Alps and into Italy proper, thereby avoiding the heavily fortified border in the northwest of Italy. It was a route

no general had ever taken before, let alone a general with so many animals (including elephants). His father Hamilcar had been defeated trying to invade southern Italy and attempting to outfight the Roman navy at sea; Hannibal would not make the same mistake. Pushing aside with contemptuous ease the stiff resistance of the Pyrenean tribes, who contested every step of the way from their strongholds of the mountain passes, Hannibal pushed forwards with remarkable speed, leaving behind a detachment of some 10,000 Iberian soldiers to keep his lines of communication open and pacify the tumultuous region. He then marched on into southern Gaul, negotiating with the local chieftains and outfighting those who had a mind to contest his advance. His speed of maneuver, and his ability to move his army across rough terrain, proved unmatched in the ancient world since the time of Alexander the Great. By that point, his army, which now numbered some 40,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry, and around 40 war elephants, danced up the valley of the Rhone to evade a Roman force sent to bar his passage southwards through the strategically vital gap in the mountains where the Alps meet the Mediterranean. With that route closed to him, Hannibal, undaunted, struck south and east across the Alps themselves. Exactly what route he took is still the subject of hotly contested debate today, and even Roman scholars writing shortly after his prodigious feat seem to have no clear idea of where precisely he made his passage, but one thing is certain: it was one of the most remarkable maneuvers in military history. There were no roads greater than a goat-track across the Alps, none of them continuous, and the high passes were smothered by snow, often year-round, with drifts dozens of feet deep. Moreover, those passes included other hazards, such as potential rockfalls, and the barren terrain offered limited supplies. To top it all off, these passes were crawling with bellicose tribesmen who lived by banditry and hid in impregnable fortresses perched atop sheer crags. To Hannibal’s army, most of them Iberians from the sunbaked plains of southern Spain or Carthaginians from the hot deserts of Northern Africa, the Alps must have looked like an icy Hell. Hannibal’s passage of the Alps remains the most famous event of his life and legend, and even though the location of his crossing matters little compared to the fact that he ultimately did get across, it has nonetheless been the most compelling mystery of his life for over 2,000 years. Even ancient

historians were intrigued and tried to figure out the answer. Polybius mentioned that Hannibal’s men came into conflict with a Celtic tribe, the Allobroges, which was situated near the northern part of the range along the banks of the river Isère. The famous Roman historian Livy, writing over 150 years after Polybius, claimed Hannibal took a southerly route. It is believed that both historians used the same source, a soldier in Hannibal’s army, Sosylus of Lacedaemon, who wrote a history of the Second Punic War. Geographers and historians have pointed to the 6 most likely mountain passes that could have actually been used and then tried to narrow it down by finding one that seems to match the descriptions of both Livy and Polybius. A handful of historians used those accounts to theorize that Hannibal crossed the Alps at the Col du Montgenèvre pass, which would have been in the southern part of the range near northwest Italy. That also happened to be one of the better-known road passes in the ancient world, and it was used often for diplomacy. Wherever the crossing, and despite the innumerable difficulties, Hannibal got across. He reached the rolling foothills of Northern Italy several months later, at the head of 20,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and a mere handful of war elephants (the great beasts having fared none too well, as was to be expected, in the mountain passes). If figures relating to his troop numbers before and after his celebrated crossing are to be believed, only half of the men Hannibal marched into the Alps marched back out again, and Hannibal must have known that no supply convoys could ever hope to cross where his army had passed. Nor, with the Roman navy’s supremacy in the Mediterranean, could he have much hope of resupply or retreat by sea. Like Caesar would do nearly 170 years later crossing the Rubicon, Hannibal had cast the die. He and his men were left with no choice but victory or death. By the fall of 218 BCE, the Carthaginians had reached the Isère River at the foot of the Alps. Realizing that this presented a threat to Italy from the north if Hannibal were able to cross the Alps, Consul Publius Scipio hurried back to Rome to prepare an army to meet a possible invasion from the north while Gnaeus Scipio took the army into Hispania, where he fought several successful battles against Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal Barca.

Hannibal quickly advanced on the main city of the hostile Taurin tribe (present-day Turin). He captured the city and had its surviving inhabitants killed as a lesson to other cities which might choose to stand against him. Taken completely by surprise by Hannibal’s sudden appearance in northern Italy, Consul Publius Scipio quickly gathered his legions from their winter quarters and moved north to meet Hannibal. This time he took with him his son, and though Scipio was jus 17, this was not unusual despite the young man’s inexperience. Roman fathers often took their sons into battle for the Republic as a way of completing their military training. In late November, the two armies met on a flat plain close to the confluence of the Po and Ticino Rivers. The army that Hannibal brought to the battle mainly comprised cavalry, around 6,000 strong. The Consul commanded around 3,000 Roman cavalry supported by 7,000 velites (lightly armored infantry provided with javelins). Despite having a numerical superiority, the outcome was a disaster for Rome. The fast-moving Carthaginian cavalry were used cleverly by Hannibal as they focused on the velites and were so effective that the javelin-throwers were unable to let loose a single volley. When they broke and fled before the charging cavalry, the velites hampered the deployment of the Roman cavalry. The outcome was a rout. Rome lost almost 3,000 men during the battle, while Hannibal lost only a handful of his cavalry. The Roman survivors fled south back towards Rome, but before the battle was completely over, the young Publius Cornelius Scipio would make his mark. His father was wounded during the battle, and near the closing stages of the fighting, Scipio and his father were cut off from the main Roman force and surrounded by Carthaginian cavalry. With only a few bodyguards to protect him, the Consul’s death or capture looked certain, which would have been a terrible blow to the city. Young Scipio had been placed in charge of a small troop of Roman cavalry being kept in reserve on a low hill overlooking the battlefield and watching as the battle developed. Polybius described what happened next: “When he caught sight of his father in the battle, surrounded by the enemy and escorted only by two or three horsemen and dangerously wounded, he at first endeavoured to urge those with him to go to the rescue, but when they hung back for a time owing to the large numbers of the enemy round them, he is

said with reckless daring to have charged the encircling force alone. Upon the rest being now forced to attack, the enemy were terror-struck and broke up, and Publius Scipio, thus unexpectedly rescued, was the first to salute his son as his deliverer.[1]” The Battle of Ticinus was a stunning shock for Rome. This was the first time that a Roman army had met Hannibal in battle, and his tactical brilliance had proved too much for them. The Roman army was respected throughout Italy and beyond, and such a comprehensive defeat was totally unexpected. However, the bravery of Publius Scipio provided some welcome good news. The capture or killing of a serving Consul had been avoided and the young man was hailed as a hero. It seems that his father intended to award him the corona civica (“civic crown”), the highest Roman award for military valor, but the boy refused, saying only that “the action was one that rewarded itself.” The combination of courage, boldness, and modesty proved irresistible, and young Scipio quickly became wildly popular amongst both the Roman aristocracy and the people. Within two years, he would be promoted to the role of tribunus militum (“military tribune”), an important role that directly served the legatus, the overall commander. Many young Romans served as military tribunes, and this was often seen as a route to the Senate and to political advancement. However, for a young man to achieve this role so quickly was unusual and unexpected, and it was presumably a direct result of the fame brought by his bravery in rescuing his father at the Battle of Ticinus.

Rome on the Brink Personal accolades aside, Rome was now in a precarious position. Emboldened by this Roman defeat, the Gauls of the Po valley rose in revolt, sending a large force (around 20,000 men) to join Hannibal’s army. Hannibal then marched his force south of Scipio’s main base at Placentia, on the Trebia river, cutting him off from the support of Consul Sempronius Longus, who was marching up from southern Italy to come to his aid and bring Hannibal to battle. However, when the provisions promised to his army by the Cisalpine Gauls failed to materialize, Hannibal was forced to abandon his tactically superior position to capture the supply depots at Clastidium, allowing Longus and Scipio to join their forces near the Trebia.

Although the Roman Senate was now hurriedly raising legions in Rome, and two powerful Roman armies had joined together, Hannibal apparently remained unfazed. He promptly marched on the Roman camp on the Trebia, making a show of force and inviting Scipio and Longus to attack him. The two Roman generals obliged, throwing their celebrated infantry across the Trebia in order to attack Hannibal’s forces, arrayed on the bluffs above the river. Exhausted by their river crossing, the Roman troops became entangled in a bloody melee with Hannibal’s infantry, fighting each other to a standstill until Hannibal unveiled his master stroke. Concealed from the

Roman infantry by the terrain until the last moment, his light infantry and cavalry stormed into the Roman flanks, enveloped the entire force and, trapping the legions with their backs to the river, annihilated them. It was a crushing victory for Hannibal, and a disaster for Rome. It would be the first of many.

By this point, the campaigning season, which traditionally stopped during the winter months, was virtually over. Hannibal decided to winter his troops in Cisalpine Gaul, but he quickly wore out his welcome there. Possibly because the Gauls were displeased at how Hannibal had used their levies to grind down the Roman forces, the supplies they provided were stilted and ungenerous. In early spring, Hannibal decided to find himself a more secure base and made ready to carry the war into Italy proper. However, despite the winter lull, the Romans had not been idle. Two consular armies, under consuls Servilius and Flaminius, had marched at the beginning of the new year to block Hannibal’s routes to the south and east, fortifying their positions there and effectively immuring him within northern Italy. A normal general would have thought himself trapped. Hannibal, however, had a plan.

To the south lay the Apennines Mountains and the huge swampy delta of the Arno river, in modern Tuscany, an area reckoned impassable by any army. Hannibal must have reckoned that after what he had faced in the Alps, he and his men were ready for any challenge. After a brief pause for consideration, he ordered his army to march for the Arno. The Apennines were less of a challenge than the Alps had been, and Hannibal’s forces made decent enough time as they crossed through them, but Hannibal himself suffered a debilitating injury, losing an eye to a virulent infection (believed to be conjunctivitis) that kept him bedridden for a spell. His army then descended into the basin of the Arno, but the going was far harder than even Hannibal could have anticipated. The entire region was a festering swamp, with not a single scrap of dry, solid land for his men and horses to sleep on. Hannibal quickly realized he had marched his men into a death-trap. With no choice but to push on, he and his men marched uninterruptedly for four days and three nights, in water and mud that often came up to their waists, with no rest except what they could snatch on their feet. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Hannibal’s men perished on the march. Some were drowned, others were swallowed by quicksand, others contracted malaria or dysentery from drinking the swampy water, and still more simply died of exhaustion. By the end of the march, Hannibal had lost the last of his war elephants, as well as virtually all of his supplies and wheeled transport, but he was now in Etruria, Roman heartland, with both Flaminius and Servilius to the north of him. As Polybius noted in his account, Hannibal had reached an important crossroad in his campaign. As Polybius wrote, “[Hannibal] calculated that, if he passed the camp and made a descent into the district beyond, Flaminius (partly for fear of popular reproach and partly of personal irritation) would be unable to endure watching passively the devastation of the country but would spontaneously follow him…and give him opportunities for attack.” Hannibal needed to bring Flaminius to battle, to avoid the danger of having a large enemy force to his rear, but he found Flaminius too passive to give him the battle he sought. In order to persuade the Consul – who had a healthy fear of his abilities – to take to the field against him, Hannibal set about ravaging the surrounding Etrurian countryside, sacking towns, burning markets and generally

wreaking havoc in the hope that Flaminius would become so incensed that he would be forced to defend the Italian heartland, or that a direct order should arrive from Rome ordering him to do so. Hannibal, though his military strategy was sound, was not as strong in his political choices as he was in battle: by devastating Etruria, he lost support among the local people, whom he might otherwise have been able to lure away from their alliance to Rome. Moreover, despite Hannibal’s best efforts, Flaminius stubbornly stayed put in his defensive position. Frustrated by the Roman general’s supineness, Hannibal marched around Flaminius’s flank and cut him off from Rome, the kind of turning movement in warfare that was rarely used in the ancient world but became standard fare (and often the ultimate strategic goal) over the next 2,000 years. Even with such a massive threat to his lines of supply and communication, Flaminius still refused to march, so Hannibal turned and marched southwards. This time, with the Senate demanding what exactly he was playing at, Flaminius had no choice but to chase him. Flaminius marched his 30,000 men after Hannibal, but the Carthaginian forces outstripped him. Desperate to bring the enemy to battle, Flaminius pushed recklessly onwards without scouting his line of advance, a mistake which was to cost him dear. On the northern edge of Lake Trasimene, Flaminius marched his army through a narrow defile and onto a small plain that was ringed by wooded mountains, through which his trackers reported Hannibal had marched some time previously. It was only when the last of the Roman forces had marched through the defile that Hannibal swung the jaws of his trap shut: his cavalry rushed forward from concealed positions to close the only gap through which Flaminius’s force could retreat, and then his entire army poured howling out of the woods and fell onto the Romans before they had the chance to take up battle positions. In the ensuing desperate melee, virtually the entire Roman army was wiped out: 15,000 or more, including Flaminius himself, were killed, cut down in the melee or drowned in the lake trying to swim to safety. Around 5,000 more Roman soldiers were captured, and the remainder scattered into the hills. In one masterful stroke, Hannibal had disposed of the last field army in Northern Italy, successfully executing antiquity’s greatest ambush. Rome herself was now at his mercy.

Hannibal was now in an ideal position to strike at Rome, but he chose not to do so. If he ever had any siege artillery in his baggage train (no mention is made of it in the original sources) then he lost it in the Alps or in the swamps of the Arno, because he had none available to invest Rome, nor, apparently, the engineering expertise either among his Carthaginian troops or his Gaulish levies to manufacture any. Without siege engines, he could still have chosen to ring the city with earthworks and lay siege to it, but instead he decided to march into Southern Italy, where he hoped to incite revolt among Rome’s subject states. In desperation, the Senate did something that had only rarely been done in the past in appointing a Dictator to rule Rome. Unlike a Consul, a Dictator was appointed to rule alone and with absolute power for a period agreed by the Senate. The man chosen was one of Rome’s most senior and experienced politicians, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, and he quickly began assembling an army capable of smashing the Carthaginians who were rampaging south through the Italian peninsula.

A statue of Fabius Maximus

Rather than meet Hannibal in open battle, Fabius pursued a policy of harassment, attacking supply trains and outposts to undermine Hannibal’s power while he gathered a new army. Eight legions were assembled, each of 5,000 men, the largest single army that Rome had ever sent into the field at that time. Frustrated by Fabius’ tactics, Hannibal took out his spite by ravaging the country estates and cities of the Apulian region before making his way into Campania, one of the most important agrarian regions in Italy because of its vast fertile plains that produced harvests crucial to feeding the great masses of Rome. Even the threat to the Campanian exports failed to draw Maximus into open battle, but Hannibal was so overzealous in his harrowing of Campania that, he soon realized, come the winter his army would have nothing to live off. Accordingly, he decided to march back to Apulia, but found his path blocked by a number of different Roman contingents that Maximus had placed at crucial passes to bar his way back. Hannibal responded with customary brilliance, by feinting his entire army at a thickly wooded hill, suggesting he was going to march through the forest and ignore the pass, and when the Roman army repositioned to attempt to bar his way, promptly marched his men about and through the pass they had so obligingly left unguarded, a tactical master stroke which so damaged Fabius’ already tarnished reputation as a commander that he was forced to step down as Dictator. As British historian Adrian Goldsworthy noted, the maneuver was "a classic of ancient generalship, finding its way into nearly every historical narrative of the war and being used by later military manuals". Hannibal spent the winter comfortably ensconced in Apulia, raiding the region to procure supplies for his army and making overtures to the Macedonians, the city-states of Syracuse, and many other erstwhile allies of Rome. He needed their help in the hopes they would provide him with men and supplies which were desperately needed since Carthage stubbornly refused to support him. Despite his successes, Hannibal was not particularly politically beloved at home, with many believing he was being too rash in provoking Rome. Frustrated, Hannibal resumed the campaigning season in the spring of 216 B.C. by capturing the city of Cannae, a crucial supply hub, and placing himself along the line that convoys from the ports and

warehouses of the south needed to travel to reach Rome. This was something the Romans could not and did not take lying down. Now, the Roman forces disregarded the delaying tactics that Fabius had favored, fully determined to destroy Hannibal once and for all as quickly as possible. Polybius described the unprecedented nature of this Roman army: “The Senate determined to bring eight legions into the field, which had never been done at Rome before, each legion consisting of five thousand men besides allies. ...Most of their wars are decided by one consul and two legions, with their quota of allies; and they rarely employ all four at one time and on one service. But on this occasion, so great was the alarm and terror of what would happen, they resolved to bring not only four but eight legions into the field.” The armies of Rome and Hannibal finally met in August 216 BCE near Cannae, and the outcome was the bloodiest battle in history at the time. Despite the massive horde headed his way, Hannibal was ready for them. He encamped his army near the Aufidus, a river not far from Cannae, and waited. His intelligence told him that Consul Varro, the more influential of the two Roman generals, was a firebrand, talented in attack but with a tendency to overreach himself, and Hannibal resolved to use this flaw to his advantage. Hannibal arrayed his army in the open, sure that Varro would be unable to resist the temptation to offer battle, and then deliberately placed his weakest infantry in the center of his battle-line. Varro led the Roman legions straight at the center of Hannibal’s formation, proceeding in characteristic bull-headed fashion and spearheading the assault himself. Hannibal’s troops in the center yielded before the legions, as Hannibal had anticipated, sucking the bulk of the Roman force deep into the center of Hannibal’s formation. Meanwhile, the wings of Hannibal’s infantry automatically swung against the flanks of the Roman force while Hannibal’s cavalry, led by his celebrated general Maharbal, crushed the Roman cavalry and light infantry deployed to protect the formation’s flanks and rear and, in so doing, succeeded in encircling it completely. The Roman force now found itself unable to run or maneuver, completely surrounded by Hannibal’s forces. It was one of the earliest examples of the pincer movement in the history of warfare.

Around 75% of the Roman army was cut down in the ensuing melee, which would be in the vicinity of between 50,000-80,000 soldiers depending on which initial estimates are considered to be accurate. Among the casualties was the luckless Consul Paullus, two-thirds of the city’s Military Tribunes, a host of officials and noblemen from the most prominent Roman families, and almost a full third of the Senate. Hannibal’s army killed so many prominent Romans that his men collected more than 200 gold signets from dead Romans, and he had the rings sent to Carthage to demonstrate his complete victory. Livy described the scene vividly: "So many thousands of Romans were dying ... Some, whom their wounds, pinched by the morning cold, had roused, as they were rising up, covered with blood, from the midst of the heaps of slain, were overpowered by the enemy. Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared, made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves." If

the casualty numbers are accurate, Hannibal’s army slaughtered an average of 600 Roman soldiers every minute until nightfall ended the battle, and less than 15,000 Roman troops escaped, which required cutting their way through the center of Hannibal’s army and fleeing to the nearby town of Canusium. Cannae is still considered one of the greatest tactical victories in the history of warfare. As military historian Theodore Dodge described, “Few battles of ancient times are more marked by ability...than the battle of Cannae. The position was such as to place every advantage on Hannibal's side. The manner in which the far from perfect Hispanic and Gallic foot was advanced in a wedge in échelon... was first held there and then withdrawn step by step, until it had reached the converse position... is a simple masterpiece of battle tactics. The advance at the proper moment of the African infantry, and its wheel right and left upon the flanks of the disordered and crowded Roman legionaries, is far beyond praise. The whole battle, from the Carthaginian standpoint, is a consummate piece of art, having no superior, few equal, examples in the history of war.” Furthermore, the fact Cannae was a complete victory with the wholesale annihilation of the enemy army made it the textbook example for military commanders to try to duplicate, usually, of course, without success. Cannae was the kind of annihilation that every commander from Caesar to Frederick the Great to Napoleon to Robert E. Lee sought, and that few save Caesar and Napoleon bagged whole armies is a testament as to the near impossibility of achieving a victory like Cannae. Of course, the Battle of Cannae was an unqualified disaster for Rome, unprecedented in the annals of the city, and one with consequences which echoed around the Mediterranean. The Syracusans and Macedonians, now believing that Rome’s star was on the wane, abandoned their alliances with the Republic and sided instead with Hannibal. With yet another Roman army decimated, Rome was again at Hannibal’s mercy, as Livy noted: “Never before, while the City itself was still safe, had there been such excitement and panic within its walls. I shall not attempt to describe it, nor will I weaken the reality by going into details... it was not wound upon wound but multiplied disaster that was now announced. For according to the reports two consular armies and two consuls were lost; there was no longer any Roman

camp, any general, any single soldier in existence; Apulia, Samnium, almost the whole of Italy lay at Hannibal's feet. Certainly there is no other nation that would not have succumbed beneath such a weight of calamity.” In just 20 months, Hannibal had destroyed three Roman armies, totaling about 16 legions and upwards of 150,000-200,000 men, and it is estimated that Rome had lost 20% of its adult men. Once again, however, Hannibal inexplicably wavered and opted not to attack Rome itself. Though he still lacked siege equipment, there would almost certainly have been someone among his allies with expertise in siege warfare, but Hannibal refused to march north, choosing instead to stay in southern Italy. Much of the blame for Hannibal’s supineness, in this case, remains with the Carthaginian oligarchy, who once again refused to provide him with money, reinforcements, or the siege equipment he so vitally needed. According to legend, after Cannae, the Numidian cavalry commander Maharbal suggested that Hannibal march on Rome. When Hannibal resisted, Maharbal was alleged to have said, "Truly the Gods have not bestowed all things upon the same person. Thou knowest indeed, Hannibal, how to conquer, but thou knowest not how to make use of your victory." Of the whole Roman army, only 4,000 cavalry escaped from the battle with their weapons and made their way back to Rome, including Scipio. It’s not known what his role was during the battle, but it seems that the survivors elected young Scipio their leader, so he led the way back to Rome. When they arrived back in Rome, the city was understandably in a state of panic. People were openly saying that Rome was finished, and some younger patricians who had gathered around Lucius Cæcilius Metellus were considering moving to another city and serving under a foreign king. Many members of the Senate believed that the only sensible course of action was to try to make peace with Hannibal, whatever the terms. This was Rome’s darkest hour. Almost alone, young Publius Scipio believed that the situation could be salvaged. Although he was just 20, he addressed the Senate, as was his right as a member of one of the five great families. Referring to their desire to make peace with Hannibal, he said, “That it is not a proper subject for deliberation; that courage and action, and not deliberation, were necessary in

such a calamity. That those who desired the safety of the state would attend him in arms forthwith.[2]” Next, he confronted Lucius Cæcilius Metellus and the group of patricians who were considering defecting to another city. He burst in on a meeting of the group, sword in hand, and told them, “I swear that I will neither desert the cause of Rome, nor allow any other citizen of Rome to desert it. I insist that you, Lucius Cæcilius, and the rest of you present, take this oath; and let the man who demurs be assured that this sword is drawn against him.[3]” The patricians seemed more terrified of Publius Scipio than they were of Hannibal, and they did as he instructed. Somehow, Scipio was able to calm the Senate and the people of Rome and persuade them that they could not only fight on against Hannibal, but that they could also defeat Carthage. He had no authority to do these things, and it seems that he succeeded by force of will alone. At a time when Rome desperately needed strong leadership, Publius Scipio stepped forward and provided it. In 213 BCE, he stood for the position of aedilis curulis, a role responsible for maintaining public order in Rome. Technically he was too young to stand, but such was his popularity that he was elected unanimously. That said, Rome still had to deal with plenty of misfortunes. The Consul elect for 215 BCE, Lucius Postumius Albinus, was killed alongside his whole army of 25,000 during an ambush by tribes allied with Hannibal in Gaul. The bad news continued when Scipio’s father and uncle were killed in battle with Carthaginian forces in Spain. By 211 BCE, Hannibal controlled most of the Italian peninsula and the bulk of Spain, and he had concluded alliances with the main tribes in Gaul to the north, though he had not yet attempted a direct attack on the city of Rome itself. When elections were held in Rome for the position of pro-consul, a regional leader for territory outside the Italian peninsula controlled by Rome, there were few positions available due to the loss of territory to Hannibal. Despite this, for one region, Hispania, the situation seemed so hopeless that there were no candidates. Noting this, the 24-year-old Scipio decided to stand, though technically he was too young and lacked the qualifying experience for such a role. However, his performance after the defeat at

Cannae had made him so popular and so revered for his courage and determination that he was unanimously elected. For the first time, Publius Scipio would serve as a military commander, though the forces at his command were relatively small and greatly dispirited after a string of defeats at the hands of Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal Barca. As a soldier, the two battles in which Scipio had participated were serious defeats for Rome. As a commander, he would never fight a losing battle.

Victories in Spain Scipio arrived in Hispania with reinforcements of 10,000 men to supplement the legions already stationed there, and he immediately began to show his acumen as a leader. Despite his youth, his strategic grasp of the situation was clear: Hispania was the key to defeating Hannibal in Italy. All his supplies and reinforcements came from that area, so if the Carthaginians could be defeated in Hispania, it would become much easier to defeat Hannibal in Italy. Basing himself in Tarraco, where he arrived in late 211 BCE, Scipio spent the winter touring the encampments of his forces and visiting Roman allies in the area. He also spent time analyzing the forces opposing him. The main leader of Carthaginian forces was Hasdrubal Barca but another of Hannibal’s brothers, Mago, and a general from another noble Carthaginian family, Hasdrubal Gisco, each commanded their own armies. All three were jealous of the others and each sought glory for themselves. Scipio became aware that these three factions tended to operate independently, rarely coming to the support of the others, and he quickly realized that it would be possible to fight all three separately. By late 210 BCE, he had planned his campaign, but he revealed the details to no one, fearful that the news would spread. His plan was not, as most people expected, to attack the largest army of Hasdrubal Barca but instead to focus on the main Carthaginian city in Hispania, New Carthage. His analysis had determined that none of the three Carthaginian armies were within 10 days march of New Carthage, so he figured that if he moved quickly and without warning, he might be able to seize the city with little bloodshed. New Carthage was the main source of communication and supply between the Carthaginians in Hispania, their homeland and Hannibal’s forces in Italy. It was also the main supply depot for Carthaginian forces in Hispania, meaning its capture would be a major blow to Carthage. Scipio moved fast, crossing the Iber River in early 209 BCE and marching his army of 25,000 men southwest along the Mediterranean coast to New Carthage. His arrival there was completely unexpected, and he discovered that the city was guarded by less than 1,000 men. Before the attack he told

his men, “You will in actuality attack the walls of a single city, but in that single city you will have made yourselves masters of all Spain.[4]” This was the first time that Scipio had commanded an army in battle, and he kept himself close to the fighting so that he could watch and direct his troops. The attack was a success, and the city was captured intact and with minimal Roman casualties. Scipio plundered the Carthaginian stores and treasures and freed a number of hostages taken from Spanish tribes to force their cooperation with the Carthaginians, but he did not allow his men the loot the city after the fighting was over. Instead be behaved with surprising kindness and restraint towards the occupants of the captured city, at least by the standards of his era. Hostages were returned to the tribes from which they had been captured, prisoners were treated well, and 10,000 prisoners who were citizens of New Carthage were released immediately and had their property and money returned. After the initial fighting there was a minimum of looting and destruction by Roman troops, and this stopped completely when Scipio gave the order. This was a shrewd move on Scipio’s part. The capture of a city in that time generally meant widespread looting and the massacre of its citizens. By keeping these things to a minimum, the Romans were treated by some people more as liberators than conquerors, and many Hispanic tribes that had previously been friendly to Carthage began to consider siding with Rome. He also pleased his troops by ensuring that the loot captured during the battle was fairly distributed, but they were less pleased when he demanded that they continue training after the battle the very next day. The legions were required to drill and undertake a three-and-a-half-mile-march in full armor. Scipio recognized that the capture of New Carthage was a major blow to his enemies, but his army was still outnumbered by the three Carthaginian armies and there would be hard fighting ahead. Leaving a strong garrison to guard the captured city, he marched his army back to Tarraco. He continued his policy of seeking to persuade the allies of Carthage to transfer their allegiance to Rome, and in this he was very successful during the winter of 209-208 BCE. The capture of New Carthage was recognized as a vital development, because if the Carthaginians attacked the city, Scipio could fall upon their rear from Tarraco. If they attacked him in Tarraco, the

army stationed in New Carthage could be called in for support. Faced with dwindling supplies, a lack of reinforcements, and the steady decline of support amongst the Hispanic tribes, the Carthaginians were left with little option but to attack Scipio. Even at this point, however, the Carthaginians were still operating as three separate armies and didn’t bother gathering them into a single force. Thus, in early 208 BCE, Hasdrubal Barca began to advance into the district of Castulo with an army of around 30,000 men, comprised of both Carthaginian troops and warriors from allied Hispanic tribes. Scipio advanced to meet him with a force of a similar size and, near the town of Baecula on the upper reaches of the Baetis River (present-day Guadalquivir), the two forces met. This would be the first time that Scipio had commanded his army in open battle. Hearing of the approach of the Roman army, Hasdrubal drew up his force in a defensive position on a small but steep plateau backed by the river. The front of the plateau, the side facing the Roman army, had a distinct step, and on this lower step he placed a large force of light infantry while keeping his cavalry and the main bulk of his army on the top. Scipio first sent his velites against the troops on the lower step, and the better disciplined and trained Roman troops quickly drove the Carthaginian infantry back to the top of the plateau in disorder. The velites pursued, pressing forward to the top of the plateau. Scipio led half of his cavalry and heavy infantry on an attack on one flank of the plateau while the other half simultaneously attacked the opposite side. Assailed on three sides, the Carthaginian force disintegrated. Around 8,000 Carthaginians were killed and around 12,000 Carthaginians and Hispanic warriors surrendered. Roman losses were minimal. This was a very significant victory, and news of it led to wild celebration in Rome. The victory was only slightly tempered by news that Hasdrubal had survived the battle and fled into Gaul, from where he intended to march into Italy and join Hannibal. After the battle Scipio returned to Tarraco and continued to gain the support of the Hispanic tribes. In this he was very successful, aided by the fact that he had released all Hispanic prisoners taken at Baecula. Still, the war in Hispania was far from over. Hasdrubal Gisco still commanded a powerful army in the port city of Gades (present-day Cadiz), and the relatively small force under the command of Mago Barca had been

reinforced in early 207 BCE by the arrival of fresh troops under the command of Carthaginian General Hanno. In the summer of that year, Hasdrubal Gisco left Gades and advanced east into present-day Andalucía, establishing his army in a number of fortified cities. Mago Barca, supported by Hanno, took over the defense of Gades. It was clear that Scipio would have to defeat both Carthaginian armies, but before he could even consider how to achieve that, he had first to contend with a mutiny within his own forces. Following his victory at the Battle of Baecula, Scipio moved first to deal with two rebellious tribes in the area. Scipio sent one of his senior officers, Gaius Lucius Marcius Septimus, to complete the subjugation of Castulo, while he turned his attention to the larger Illiturgis tribe. This was not the first time that Scipio had delegated important actions to a subordinate, and this was something he was particularly adept at. Although this seems commonplace now, it was much less so in that period. Senior Roman commanders were also politicians, which meant they were very careful to ensure that their reputations were reinforced by all that happened on the battlefield. This led to a reluctance to delegate, in case a subordinate stole the commander’s glory, and where important tasks were delegated, the commander would often downplay the importance of these in dispatches to Rome. It is a sign of Scipio’s growing maturity (he was still just 28) that he was not only happy to delegate, but also gave his subordinates full credit when they performed well. In the attack on the city of the Illiturgis, Scipio showed that he was also becoming much more tactically aware than most contemporary Roman commanders. On approaching the city, he split his army into two, taking command of one half himself and placing the other half under the control of another subordinate and friend, Gaius Laelius. For such an attack to succeed by dividing the concentration of force by the defenders requires careful coordination of timing and absolute trust on the part of the overall commander in the subordinate who has control of the other half of the army. The attack was successful, the city was taken, and in an unusual display of harshness, Scipio had it utterly destroyed as an example to other tribes in the region.

Scipio then returned to New Carthage, where he received welcome news. A deserter from Hanno’s army in Gades had arrived in the city and was offering to provide details of the city’s defenses. This would provide an attack on the city a good chance of success, and Scipio was keen to grasp the opportunity to seize the city, which represented the last Carthaginian port in Spain. Scipio immediately began planning for an assault on Gades, and the plan he developed was bold and extremely ambitious. He would send one part of his army by sea to assault the city from the seaward side while the other marched the 400 miles to Gades and simultaneously attack from the landward side. This was tactically astute, but it would also be complex. Undeterred, Scipio did not hesitate to put the plan into operation. It seems likely that he intended to lead one half of the army himself, but around this time he was struck down by a serious illness and was forced to delegate, giving command of one half of the army to Gaius Laelius and the other to Gaius Lucius Marcius Septimus. While his subordinates marched towards Gades, the news of Scipio’s illness spread, and soon this turned to rumors of his death. It seems that this rumor may have contributed to a mutiny of Roman troops in the town of Sucro, midway between Tarraco and New Carthage and an important waystation on the supply route between these cities. The men there were aggrieved that they had missed out on the loot from the capture of New Carthage and other cities, and, as was not uncommon in the Roman army, they had not been paid for several months. Believing Scipio to be dead, they threw their officers out of the camp and took control for themselves. This was a serious situation as mutinies can spread fast, and it was imperative that Scipio quell it as quickly as possible. The normal reaction in the Roman army to any inclination to mutiny was instant and brutal punishment, but once again Scipio displayed a particular talent for motivating and controlling his troops. Recovered from his illness, he traveled to Sucro and had the mutineers drawn up in the town square, guarded by men from his own army. The mutineers were very surprised to see their commander alive and well, but even more surprised when he spoke to them. Instead of a short rebuke followed by mass executions and

floggings, Scipio stood and looked at the men in silence for a long period before he finally began to speak: “Can I call you countrymen, who have revolted from your country? Or soldiers, who have rejected the command and authority of your general, and violated your solemn oath? Can I call you enemies? I recognize the persons, faces, and dress, and mien of fellowcountrymen; but I perceive the actions, expressions, and intentions of enemies.[5]” Then, he addressed the issue of their grievance about the lack of pay: “Mercenary troops may, indeed, sometimes be pardoned for revolting against their employers, but no pardon can be extended to those who are fighting for themselves and their wives and children. For that is just as if a man who said he had been wronged by his own father over money matters were to take up arms to kill him who was the author of his life.” The speech to the mutineers was a perfectly pitched appeal to honor and duty. It ended with Scipio offering an amnesty to the mutineers with the exception of a few ringleaders. This was gladly accepted. The men swore to follow Scipio to the end, and the instigators of the mutiny were dragged into the square and promptly executed. In this speech to the mutineers, Scipio showed a real talent for oratory and for understanding not just how to make his men fight for him, but how to make them want to fight for him. When this was followed by a final battle in Spain that fully demonstrated Scipio’s tactical genius, he would become the respected and revered of all Roman military commanders. The attack on Gades failed, and it was later discovered that the Carthaginians knew about the Roman plan. Without the advantage of surprise, the attack stood little chance of success, and the Roman army returned to New Carthage. In the spring of 206 BCE, Mago Barca moved his army out of Gades and began to advance into Andalucía, while Hasdrubal Gisco advanced from the north. The two forces met at the town of Ilipa, a few kilometers north of present-day Seville. The combined Carthaginian army amounted to around 70,000 men, substantially outnumbering Scipio’s forces. Scipio marched his army north to confront the Carthaginian force. As soon as Mago became aware that the Romans were in the area, he launched a

surprise attack with the bulk of his cavalry. Carthaginian scouts had seen that the Roman infantry were unprotected by cavalry, and Mago hoped that this attack might severely weaken Scipio’s army. However, Scipio had foreseen this move and concealed the bulk of his cavalry behind a low hill. When the Carthaginian cavalry attacked, they were taken by surprise by a Roman counterattack that smashed into their flank. The Carthaginian cavalry then withdrew in confusion and with heavy casualties. For the next two days, the rival armies maneuvered in sight of the other without entering battle, each trying to assess the strength of the other. On each occasion, Scipio arrayed his army in the same way, with the most powerful troops, the Roman legions, in the center and the light infantry, mainly auxiliaries from friendly tribes, on the flanks. He knew that Mago and Hasdrubal would assume that this would be the formation he would use in the actual battle. Early the following morning, Scipio sent his cavalry to raid the Carthaginian camp, knowing that would bring his enemies out to face him. The Carthaginian force duly emerged and set out their battle lines. The strongest troops were in the center of the Carthaginian lines, where they expected to meet the Roman legions. However, the maneuvers of the previous days had been a deception. Scipio had always intended to array his army with the legions on the wings and the Iberian auxiliaries in the center. His plan was to execute a maneuver now referred to somewhat fittingly as a “reverse Cannae,” an advance where the wings of his army would move more quickly than the center, thereby enveloping the enemy wings before crushing the center. The plan worked flawlessly. The Carthaginian wings collapsed and the legions began to close in on the center. It seems likely that a complete massacre was averted only when a torrential downpour temporarily prevented the maneuver and the remnants of the Carthaginian force were able to withdraw to their camp. Overnight, many of their Iberian allies deserted, and, in the morning, the Carthaginian army withdrew to the north. Scipio pursued, caught, and attacked the army the following day. The dispirited Carthaginian army was virtually destroyed, and Mago and Hasdrubal Gisco fled with the only troops they had left, around 6,000 men, to a nearby mountaintop. Without food or water, their situation was hopeless.

In short order, the remainder of the army surrendered, though not before Mago and Hasdrubal Gisco escaped. The Battle of Ilipa marked the effective end of organized Carthaginian resistance to the Roman occupation of Spain. Mago and Hasdrubal Gisco lost around 50,000 men in four days of fighting and maneuvering and were deserted by most of their allied tribes. Gades fell soon after, and when Scipio returned to Rome in early 205 BCE, he was hailed as the greatest of all Roman generals.

Taking the Fight to Africa On his return to Rome, Scipio was greeted by two very different responses to his victories in Spain. There was adulation from a large segment of the population, which regarded Scipio as a leader of genius and the only man capable of defeating the Carthaginians. However, there was also a large degree of envy, mainly from members of the Senate who saw Scipio’s dramatic victories and his popularity with the ordinary people as a threat to their own prestige. Scipio was not yet 30 and had been successful where so many others had failed, but to some people, Scipio was nothing more than an upstart who had been lucky to achieve overrated victories against armies comprising mainly uneducated savages. This, of course, ignored the catastrophic military defeats the Carthaginians had inflicted on Rome before the emergence of Scipio as a leader, but the jealousy his success engendered would affect the remainder of his life and career. The greatest accolade that could be given to any Roman military leader was a triumph, a parade through the streets of Rome at the head of his army followed by a retinue including important prisoners and loot. In general, this honor was accorded to a general on the successful conclusion of a war. If any general deserved such recognition, it was Scipio following his victories in Spain, but the Senate refused to grant him a triumph on a technicality: he had not previously served as a Consul, usually a prerequisite for high military leadership. Scipio reacted by standing for the role of Consul and was immediately and unanimously elected. This seems to have increased even further the resentment of some older Senators to his meteoric rise to fame, especially a faction gathered round Fabius Maximus, the man who had briefly served as Dictator when Hannibal’s army threatened the city. Fabius had never engaged Hannibal in battle, preferring a strategy of attacking his supply lines and bases. The tactics, which are now appreciated as being wise, were not appreciated until well after Hannibal left Italy, and they led to Fabius being given the derogatory nickname Cunctator (“Delayer”). Upon his election as Consul, Scipio quickly made it clear that his intention was to lead a Roman invasion of North Africa, the Carthaginian homeland, even though Hannibal was still in Italy.

In the wake of the catastrophe at Cannae, the Roman ruling elite had reevaluated Fabius Maximus’ strategy and began to use his tactics to harass, delay, and whittle down Hannibal’s forces in the field, studiously avoiding open battle whenever they could. For years they harried Hannibal’s armies, and while there were blunders that allowed Hannibal to lash out (three Roman armies were destroyed in the period between 215 and 212 BCE), the victories were minor and ultimately meaningless. After almost half a decade of continuous warfare, Apulia was a scorched desert incapable of sustaining an army in the field, and Hannibal was getting no supplies either from his allies or from Carthage. Moreover, his allies were proving to be hopelessly ineffective in the field, meaning he either had to lead the force himself or risk losing one of his field armies. Whenever Hannibal did take command, the results were often devastating for Rome, but decisive victory eluded him. Rome could raise far more troops than Hannibal, unsupported, could ever hope to obtain, and a war of attrition was destined to favor them in the end. The tide was finally turning against Hannibal. In 211, Hannibal received a massive blow as, while his army was in the field, the Romans besieged and captured his base at Capua. Still reeling from this news, his woes were compounded when he discovered that his Syracusan allies had also been crushed, with Sicily fallen to the Romans, and Philip, the king of Macedon, also defeated and driven out of the Roman dominions. Hannibal himself continued to prove himself a great general, inflicting several notable defeats upon all the armies sent against him, but they were, in the long term, meaningless. He fought on, but he continued to lose territories throughout 210 and 209 BCE, and between 208 and 207 BCE he was pushed further south until finally being forced to retire to Apulia, where he anxiously awaited reinforcements under the command of his brother Hasdrubal. These reinforcements might have turned the tide, for once he had the troops at his command Hannibal planned to march upon Rome once and for all, but Hasdrubal never reached Hannibal. He got himself entangled in a battle with the Romans on the Metaurus, and his army was defeated and he was killed. Hannibal, knowing his situation in Apulia was untenable, was forced to retreat into Bruttium, the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula, where he was also forced to endure the horror of having his brother’s severed head tossed over the walls into his camp.

For all intents and purposes, Hannibal’s campaign in Italy was over. He succeeded in holding on in Bruttium for a further four years, but he was never able to push north, and his army was fast dwindling to nothing, with his veterans being killed off and his mercenaries melting away. In 206 BCE, it was reported to him that Scipio’s Roman armies had occupied the entirety of Iberia, driving the Carthaginian forces from the peninsula. Finally, in 203 BCE, Hannibal was peremptorily recalled to Carthage, 15 years and scores of victories after he had first entered Italy in arms. The reason for his recall was simple: Rome was on the march, with a massive army under the command of Scipio preparing to attack and destroy Carthage. Initially, many in the Senate were critical of Scipio’s bold strategy to invade Africa. Fabius asked, “Why do you not apply yourself to carry the war in a straightforward manner to the place where Hannibal is, rather than pursue that roundabout course, according to which you expect that when you have crossed into Africa Hannibal will follow you thither?[6]” Reacting to accusations that he was moved to oppose Scipio’s proposed plan due to envy, he added dismissively, “What rivalry can there exist between myself and a man who is not equal in years even to my son?” He finished with a scathing attack on Scipio’s motives: “You are going to leave Italy when Hannibal is there, not because you consider such a course beneficial to the State, but because you think it will redound to your honour and glory.” Despite his earlier failure to defeat Hannibal, Fabius was a respected senior member of the Senate as well as a skilled orator, and his arguments against Scipio carried weight. The Senate refused to sanction his plan to mount an invasion of Carthaginian North Africa and only grudgingly allowed that the Consul with responsibility of the island of Sicily might choose to advance to Africa if he so wished, but that he would do so without any form of material or financial support from the Senate. Of course, the Consul with responsibility for Sicily was Scipio himself. The Cornelii family rallied to support Scipio and raised sufficient money to gather, supply and equip an army of 7,000 men and 70 warships. It was clear that this was much too small to take on the main Carthaginian force, but it did at least provide the nucleus of an army, and Scipio traveled to Sicily with these men.

The island of Sicily had been under Roman control for several years, but it had become a place where disgruntled and disgraced soldiers were sent as a punishment. Many survivors from Roman military defeats such as Ticinus and Cannae had been sent to languish in the garrison on Sicily. However, Scipio was astute enough to understand that these battles had not been lost because of a want of courage or ability on the part of these troops but failures on the part of their commanders. Moreover, he understood that these men were desperate to assuage the shame associated with involvement in these defeats. Instead of regarding the soldiers on Sicily as hopeless rejects, Scipio saw them as experienced men strongly motivated to perform well in battle. The garrison on Sicily would become the heart of the army with which he would attack Africa. One major problem for Scipio was a complete lack of cavalry, something that the Carthaginians always had. The Senate refused to provide him with cavalry, and the expense to raise and outfit cavalry was beyond the means even of his wealthy supporters. His solution was novel: he demanded that several hundred sons of noble Sicilian families gather to be pressed into service with the Roman military as cavalry. On the given day the youths gathered, but it was clear that they were not in the least enthusiastic about joining Scipio’s army. One asked how he might be excused from performing this service. Scipio replied that anyone who did not wish to join his army was free to leave, provided that each paid for the provision of a horse, equipment, and fodder. All gladly agreed, and Scipio found himself with several hundred horses on which he mounted Roman troops, all at no expense to the Senate. In 204 BCE, Scipio and his army sailed from Sicily and landed near the Carthaginian city of Utica (in the present-day Bizerte Governorate in Tunisia). For the first time, Rome would take the fight to the Carthaginian homeland, and Scipio would earn the name by which he has become known to history. Scipio’s first priority after landing in Africa was to capture a city with a port that he could use to bring in supplies for his men and reinforcements. There is some debate about the size of the army he brought to Africa, though the most commonly agreed figure is around 16,000 infantry and 500 cavalry.

While this was not an inconsiderable force, it was much smaller than the Carthaginian armies he could expect to face. He first used his men to lay siege to the coastal city of Utica, but this proved much more difficult to capture than he had anticipated. For more than a month, the Romans mounted attacks on the city, but each time they were repulsed, and ultimately, before Utica could be taken, Scipio was forced to break off to deal with a more pressing danger. The Carthaginians had recently concluded an alliance with the powerful Numidian King Syphax. The relationship between the Numidians and Rome had been extremely complex since the beginning of the current war. Syphax was the king of the western Numidians, and his most important rivals in the region were the eastern Numidians under King Gala. In 213 BCE, Syphax had concluded an alliance with Rome and in return received help in training and equipping his army. However, when King Gala died in early 206 BCE, a squabble over succession between his sons weakened the eastern Numidian army, and King Syphax was able to seize large parts of their territory. The new king of the eastern Numidians, Masinissa, then quickly concluded an alliance with Rome. Having lost this ally, Carthage sent Hasdrubal Gisco, who had escaped from Spain following the defeat at the Battle of Ilipa, as an emissary to King Syphax to try to persuade him to switch sides. Partly by promising the Numidian king marriage to his daughter Sophonisba (who had previously been promised to King Masinissa), Hasdrubal was able to persuade King Syphax to become an ally of Carthage. This was a major threat to Scipio, who now faced not just the army of Carthage but also the powerful western Numidian army. While the siege of Utica was still in progress, Scipio learned that a combined Carthaginian-Numidian army of up to 80,000 men was advancing along the coast towards him. Knowing that his army was too small to meet this force in open battle (despite having been bolstered by a force of Numidians under the command of King Masinissa), Scipio devised a plan. The combined army of Syphax and Hasdrubal had established a winter camp from which they intended to attack the Romans in the spring, but Scipio knew that Syphax was not particularly enthusiastic about a war with Rome and would be prepared to discuss peace terms. Envoys were sent by Scipio to the camp to meet with Syphax and Hasdrubal. However, the real purpose

of this was to allow a number of Roman officers, dressed as servants, to roam freely through the camp of King Syphax. They mapped its layout and discovered that it comprised mainly wooden buildings. After that, Scipio took his army out under cover of darkness and approached the camps of Hasdrubal and Syphax. He split his army, leaving his trusted subordinate Gaius Laelius, who had accompanied him from Spain, to attack the camp of Syphax while Scipio himself led the attack on Hasdrubal’s camp. The Romans set fire to outlying buildings and the fire quickly spread through the flammable wooden buildings. Many soldiers died in their sleeping quarters and many more were trampled to death as they fled from the flames. The survivors, disorganized and largely unarmed, fled into the desert, only to be pursued and massacred by the Romans. No one is quite certain of casualties, but it has been suggested that as many as 50,000 may have died that night, with several thousand more captured, including a number of Carthaginian nobles. This was a crushing blow to the Carthaginian-Numidian alliance, though both Syphax and Hasdrubal escaped. Freed from this immediate threat, Scipio returned to the siege of the city of Utica in order to turn it into a Roman supply center, while news of the massacre of the combined army caused alarm and despondency in Carthage. Some nobles proposed making peace with Rome on whatever terms were offered, and some demanded the recall of Hannibal and his army from Italy, but eventually it was decided to raise a new army and to send that to confront Scipio. Thus, in the summer of 203 BCE, Syphax and Hasdrubal found themselves leading a new army that included a large number of Celtiberians and Spanish mercenaries brought in to supplement the Carthaginians. They marched the new army towards Utica and the Roman force. Scipio moved out quickly to meet this new threat and the two opposing armies finally met in battle on an open plain near the Bagradas River, and once again, Scipio’s tactical brilliance would prove decisive. The army he faced was drawn up with the strongest troops, the Celtiberians, in the center surrounded by Numidians on their left and Carthaginians on their right. Facing this Scipio placed his legions in the center with Roman cavalry on his

right, facing the Numidians and the forces of his ally King Masinissa on his left, facing the Carthaginians. First, Scipio sent his Roman cavalry and the forces of King Masinissa against the wings of the opposing army, which quickly broke and retreated in disorder. Then he moved his legions forward to attack the main body of Celtiberian infantry while they were simultaneously attacked on both flanks by the Numidians and the Roman cavalry. Attacked on three sides, the Celtiberians stood no chance and were hacked to pieces by the bold attack. Those who weren’t killed or surrendered fled in disorder, with Hasdrubal taking the bad news back to Carthage and Syphax retreating to his capital of Cirta. Syphax was pursued by King Masinissa, supported by a small Roman army under the command of Gaius Laelius. Syphax was finally defeated in a battle near Cirta, during which he was also badly wounded. King Masinissa was given control of the western Numidian provinces, and the wounded Syphax died in Roman captivity later in 203 BCE.

Zama If the Carthaginians had been worried before, news of this further defeat and the loss of their Numidian ally caused something close to despair. At first, the Carthaginians considered peace talks, and Scipio proposed very reasonable terms. The talks were continuing and ambassadors were returning to Carthage with Scipio’s terms when suddenly the Senate of Carthage broke off talks and did precisely what Scipio had predicted to the Roman Senate: they recalled Hannibal and his army from Italy to defend Carthage. Finally, the two most successful military leaders of the period would meet in battle. Thus, even while negotiations were continuing between ambassadors from Carthage and the Roman Senate, Hannibal set sail from Italy with his forces. In Rome there was jubilation that the threat represented by Hannibal had finally left the Italian peninsula, but also some apprehension. After all, Scipio’s invading force would now have to deal with Carthage’s greatest general, and Scipio’s situation when he heard of the arrival of Hannibal was not particularly strong. Ships bringing him supplies and reinforcements from Sicily had been caught in a storm, leading to many being sunk or captured by the Carthaginians. His ally King Masinissa was still busy reconquering the territory held by Syphax, and he had with him 10 cohorts of the Roman army. All of this had left Scipio short of men and supplies, and his initial goal of laying siege to Carthage before Hannibal arrived was impossible with the forces at his disposal. Instead, he marched his army to an area inland from Carthage, intending to cut the city off from its overland supply routes from Africa. Hannibal landed with 24,000 men in Leptis, in present-day Libya. He then marched on to Hadrumetum, present-day Sousse in Tunisia. On the way, he was joined by two thousand cavalry provided by another Numidian chief, Tychaeus, and by around 12,000 Gauls and Spanish mercenaries who had formerly been part of Mago’s army in Liguria. Hannibal’s destination was Carthage itself. With this powerful army within the city, he could not only defend it easily, he could leave at a time of his choosing and engage the Roman army in battle. Scipio knew that if there was to be any chance of defeating Hannibal, he had engage Hannibal before the Carthaginian army reached Carthage.

In moving his army inland from Carthage, Scipio hoped that this would persuade Hannibal to march west to meet him rather than north to Carthage. He also knew that placing himself inland from Carthage put him closer to his ally King Masinissa, who he hoped would be able to join him before he engaged Hannibal. This worked perfectly, as the Senate in Carthage sent urgent messages to Hannibal asking him to engage Scipio in order to allow overland supplies to get through to Carthage. Hannibal marched his army west, and he would meet the Romans on open, flat plains at Zama in presentday Tunisia. The two armies were fairly evenly matched. Hannibal’s army comprised around 36,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, supported by 80 fearsome war elephants. Scipio had been reinforced by the arrival of King Masinissa with 6,000 men, so he had just under 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Hannibal lined up the main body of his army in three lines behind his war elephants, and on each flank he placed cavalry (Numidian on one side and Carthaginian on the other). Scipio adopted a similar formation, with his infantry drawn up in three lines in the center with Numidian cavalry under Masinissa on the right and Roman cavalry under Gaius Laelius on the left. Scipio’s main concern was the war elephants, which were virtually unstoppable and were easily capable of smashing through his lines. However, though the elephants were powerful, they were difficult to maneuver; once they were moving in a straight line, they were difficult to turn. To counter the threat of the elephants, Scipio devised a brilliant plan. He believed that if the charging elephants saw gaps in the lines ahead of them, they would tend to follow these rather than attempt to push through the massed formations. He therefore included wide, empty lanes between his formations, which he concealed from the enemy by initially filling with skirmishers. As the battle began, Hannibal unleashed the war elephants, intending to disrupt the Roman formations before his infantry engaged, but upon a signal from Scipio, the skirmishers withdrew into the main formations and the war elephants plunged through the gaps in the Roman lines without causing major disruption. They were harried and pursued behind the lines by archers and javelin-throwers, while the Roman cavalry blew trumpets to confuse and

frighten the elephants, several of which turned the way they had come and charged into the Carthaginian left flank, creating chaos there. The elephants would not play much of a role in the battle. Masinissa took advantage of this to charge home against the cavalry on that flank and drive it from the field, but he found himself embroiled in a chase orchestrated on the fly by Hannibal as the Carthaginian cavalry lured him away from the main battle.

The Battle of Zama by Henri-Paul Motte (1890) As a result, the Battle of Zama became a brutal contest of strength between Carthaginian and Roman infantry, both supported by cavalry attacking the flanks and rear. The Roman and Carthaginian infantry hammered each other in the center of the lines, with both sides momentarily gaining the advantage, only to be driven back in turn. The battle raged for hours, with neither side able to gain the upper hand, but eventually Masinissa, who had chased the Carthaginian cavalry clean off the field with his superior numbers, returned and charged the Carthaginian forces from behind, enveloping them. Scipio rallied his faltering and exhausted troops to one last great effort, and they fell upon the Carthaginian troops, which were trapped and unable to maneuver. Like Hannibal’s masterpiece at Cannae, but this time with the roles inverted, the encircled force had nowhere to run. Thousands were cut down where they stood, with only around 10% of Hannibal’s original force,

including Hannibal himself, succeeding in breaking free and escaping. Around 20,000 Carthaginians died that day and about 20,000 more surrendered to Scipio. The remainder, including Hannibal, fled back to Carthage. With this decisive Roman victory, the Second Punic War was effectively over. Left with little option, Carthage sued for peace. This was granted, but on terms so harsh that Carthage would never again be a threat to Rome. Now that Carthage had surrendered virtually all military ambition, Hannibal himself devoted himself to politics. He secured his election to chief magistrate through the support of the Barcid party and introduced highly successful political and financial reforms, much to the chagrin of his rivals. Hannibal was so successful as a politician that Carthage, despite still being hampered by a heavy war indemnity, prospered to the point that the Romans demanded he step down as magistrate. Rather than do so, Hannibal voluntarily went into exile, worried he might expose Carthage to new Roman reprisals.

Scipio’s Final War There was celebration in Rome when Scipio returned there in 200 BCE, and while he was greeted by the bulk of the population as a hero, not everyone was happy. Scipio was finally granted the triumph he had been previously denied and was given a new name. In the event of a particularly notable military success, some Roman leaders were awarded a special agnomen, a victory name, as a commemoration. In recognition of his success in Africa, Scipio was given the agnomen Africanus, and over 2,000 years later he is still known best as Scipio Africanus. He was said to have been offered many other honors, but it seems that he refused them all. He was generous to the troops that had served under him in Spain and Africa. After the defeat of Carthage, each soldier was allotted two acres of good land for each year served. This was generous and allowed many of his veterans to live a comfortable retirement. In 199 BCE, he was elected Censor, a role that required, amongst other things, the maintenance of public morality. Many people supported the notion that Scipio should be given some more important role in the government of Rome. It was suggested, for example, that he be appointed Dictator for life, but he seemed disinterested and rejected all such suggestions. However, while Scipio’s success against Carthage won him honors and awards, it also made him a number of implacable enemies in the Roman Senate. Some were motivated by simple jealousy. Scipio was not yet 40 at the end of the war, and many envied his rapid rise to fame and glory. Others had more personal reasons for their antipathy. Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder was a respected statesman and a skilled orator who was bitterly opposed to what he regarded as the degeneration of Roman culture and society through the adoption of Greek philosophies, luxury, and the accumulation of wealth. He pointed to Scipio as an example of this, citing his love of Greek literature and his lavish sharing of spoils with his troops as being “Un-Roman.” Cato had served as quæstor in Africa and claimed to hate the degenerate “Greek habits” Scipio displayed, such as “walking about the gymnasium in a cloak and slippers.[7]” Cato detested these to such an extent that he could not bring himself to share the same quarters with his commander.

A bust of Cato the Elder Cato also believed that the peace terms dictated by Scipio to Carthage, though punitive, were not sufficient. He claimed that after the Battle of Zama, when Carthage was helpless, Scipio should have destroyed the city utterly. He also objected vehemently to the fact that Scipio had given permission for Hannibal to return to Carthage, where he took up a role in the city’s government. Cato famously took to ending every speech in the Senate with the words “Delenda est Carthago” (“Carthage must be destroyed”), even when the speech had nothing to do with Carthage. Cato’s hatred of Scipio seemed to transcend rationality, but a group of Senators coalesced around him and came to believe not that Scipio had saved Rome through his defeat of Carthage, but that he had betrayed it by not destroying the city and capturing or killing Hannibal. Disgusted by this, Scipio withdrew from politics almost completely, but he did take part in one more military campaign, serving as legate under the command of his brother, the serving Consul, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, in a

war against the Seleucid King Antiochus in 190 BCE. Rome was victorious, but on his return to Rome the Scipio brothers were accused of appropriating money given by Antiochus that should have been turned over to the Senate. The case was not proven, but in 185 BCE, Cato attempted to persuade the Senate to bring a case against Scipio Africanus for taking bribes from Antiochus. This was a serious charge, and while Scipio’s allies were able to prevent it coming to trial, Scipio was completely disillusioned with politics and retired to his large estate at Liternum in the Campania region of southcentral Italy. He refused even to visit the city of Rome, and he became increasingly bitter over what he saw as the ingratitude of the Senate for all that he had achieved. Details of his life after his retirement to Liternum are sketchy. Scipio apparently died there within two years of leaving Rome, probably in 183 BCE at the age of 52. There is some doubt over the precise cause of death. Some accounts suggest that this was the final result of an illness contracted during the war with Antiochus in 190 BCE, while others maintain that he took his own life, still despondent over his treatment by the Senate. He was buried in an elaborate tomb in Liternum that was said to include the inscription “Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis" (“Ungrateful Fatherland, you shall not even have my bones”). Today, there remains no trace of Scipio’s tomb, but about 200 years later, Augustus was said to have taken a trip to Liternum specifically to visit Scipio there. In an odd and somewhat fitting coincidence, Hannibal, Scipio’s legendary rival, also died the same year, and like Scipio, Hannibal’s later life was not happy. He found himself exiled from Carthage, first to Crete and then to Bithynia under the protection of King Prusias. However, the king was keen to gain favor with Rome by having Hannibal killed. When he learned of this, Hannibal killed himself by taking poison.

Hannibal’s Legacy Despite the smattering of defeats he accumulated later on in his career, Hannibal was one of the most brilliant generals in ancient history, with a record unmatched by anyone except arguably Alexander the Great and Caesar. However, as Maharbal allegedly remarked, Hannibal seemed to know how to win a battle, but not how to completely capitalize off of it. Half a dozen times during the course of his Italian campaign, he could have marched on Rome and perhaps ended the war with a Carthaginian victory, but for various reasons he chose not to do so. Much of the blame for these decisions lies with the indecisiveness of the Carthaginian oligarchy, but Hannibal must bear his own portion of responsibility. Nevertheless, despite these perceived failings, Hannibal was truly a figure who loomed larger than life. His decades of relentless fighting against Rome transformed him into a monster in their eyes, with virtually no Roman family who could claim that they had not lost a family member to Hannibal’s forces. It is telling that no matter how badly Hannibal defeated the Romans, they despised him so greatly that the Senate refused to negotiate with him, even from a position of great weakness. Hannibal was Rome’s bogeyman, and long after his time, whenever Rome faced a disaster, Roman Senators would describe the disaster as "Hannibal ante portas" (“Hannibal before the Gates”). It is perhaps the greatest testament to his generalship and his character that the Romans themselves erected a statue of him in their Forum, making clear that they considered their victory in the Second Punic War to be their greatest accomplishment to date. The greatest boast a Roman soldier could make, even in defeat, was that he “fought against Hannibal.” Of course, Hannibal’s legacy extended far beyond personality and psychology. There is a universal consensus that Hannibal was one of the greatest generals in history, and arguably the greatest. During the American Civil War, the Lincoln administration was greatly concerned about General William Tecumseh Sherman cutting his supply lines and marching through enemy territory without any lines of communication for three months in late 1864. It was possible to assuage those concerns by pointing to the fact that Hannibal’s armies stayed in Italy without Carthage’s help for the better part

of two decades. In the 1911 Encyclopoedia Britannica, Maximilian Otto Bismarck Caspari noted, “As to the transcendent military genius of Hannibal there cannot be two opinions. The man who for fifteen years could hold his ground in a hostile country against several powerful armies and a succession of able generals must have been a commander and a tactician of supreme capacity. In the use of strategies and ambuscades he certainly surpassed all other generals of antiquity. Wonderful as his achievements were, we must marvel the more when we take into account the grudging support he received from Carthage. As his veterans melted away, he had to organize fresh levies on the spot. We never hear of a mutiny in his army, composed though it was of North Africans, Iberians and Gauls. Again, all we know of him comes for the most part from hostile sources. The Romans feared and hated him so much that they could not do him justice. Livy speaks of his great qualities, but he adds that his vices were equally great, among which he singles out his more than Punic perfidy and an inhuman cruelty. For the first there would seem to be no further justification than that he was consummately skillful in the use of ambuscades. For the latter there is, we believe, no more ground than that at certain crises he acted in the general spirit of ancient warfare. Sometimes he contrasts most favorably with his enemy. No such brutality stains his name as that perpetrated by Claudius Nero on the vanquished Hasdrubal. Polybius merely says that he was accused of cruelty by the Romans and of avarice by the Carthaginians. He had indeed bitter enemies, and his life was one continuous struggle against destiny. For steadfastness of purpose, for organizing capacity and a mastery of military science he has perhaps never had an equal.” Whether Hannibal is the greatest general ever or merely one of the greatest makes for a good armchair debate, but regardless of his ranking, his influence on military tactics is undeniable. In particular, Hannibal demonstrated that warfare was about more than superior tactics in battle, because his success owed as much to his strategic outmaneuvering of his enemies. As historian Theodore Dodge put it, “Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so

ably against such odds. Constantly overmatched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation. Excepting in the case of Alexander, and some few isolated instances, all wars up to the Second Punic War, had been decided largely, if not entirely, by battle-tactics. Strategic ability had been comprehended only on a minor scale. Armies had marched towards each other, had fought in parallel order, and the conqueror had imposed terms on his opponent. Any variation from this rule consisted in ambuscades or other stratagems. That war could be waged by avoiding in lieu of seeking battle; that the results of a victory could be earned by attacks upon the enemy’s communications, by flank-maneuvers, by seizing positions from which safely to threaten him in case he moved, and by other devices of strategy, was not understood...” Hannibal has always had his share of admirers in the centuries that followed, from Schlieffen to George Patton, but once again the greatest tribute to his ultimate military legacy was paid by Rome. Understanding Hannibal better than anyone, Rome completely adjusted the way it conducted war after the Battle of Cannae. At Cannae, the Roman infantry used the phalanx formation popularized by the Greeks, but that massed formation proved incapable of maneuvering once enveloped in Hannibal’s pincer assault. Moreover, the Romans had their high command alternate between two consuls at the head of the army, which made for a poor and confusing line of chain of command. After Cannae, Rome reorganized their units so that they could mass together like a traditional phalanx but retain independent maneuverability by splitting into columns. Rome also did away with the binary leadership command structure and began relying on more professional forces instead of citizen armies. The effects these changes had on Rome’s destiny cannot be understated. Rome turned itself into the greatest military machine on the planet over the next several centuries, and having one consul at the head of legions instead of two created army loyalties to the consul in command instead of Rome itself. This inevitably laid the groundwork for the civil wars that led to Caesar’s destruction of the Roman Republic and the implementation of the Roman Empire. Thus, ironically, it was another of antiquity’s greatest generals, Caesar, who fulfilled Hannibal’s goal of destroying the Roman

Republic, as a result of Roman changes made in response to the carnage Hannibal inflicted upon them. Hannibal would certainly have relished that as his ultimate legacy.

Scipio’s Legacy Scipio Africanus has long been considered one of the greatest military leaders the world has ever known, and it is easy to see why. As a commander, he never fought a losing battle, and each victory displayed tactical brilliance. He consistently demonstrated a clear understanding of the chaos of battle that defines a great general. His creation of concealed lanes through his formations that negated the power of Hannibal’s war elephants at Zama and the use of a reverse formation at the Battle of Ilipa are just two notable examples, but in almost every battle in which he commanded a Roman army, Scipio was always clear about what needed to be done and the most effective way in which it could be achieved. Beyond his grasp of the situation on the battlefield itself, Scipio demonstrated a clear grasp of a wider strategy. When faced with the choice of attacking any one of three Carthaginian armies in Spain, for example, he instead used his forces to capture the city of New Carthage, simultaneously denying his enemy much needed supplies and reinforcements and seriously undermining Carthaginian prestige in Iberia. In Africa, when it was assumed that he would either move to attack Hannibal’s army or advance on Carthage itself, he instead moved to cut off the city’s overland supply routes, knowing that this would both place him closer to reinforcements from the army of King Masinissa and force Hannibal to come to him. Scipio was one of the few leaders who excelled both tactically and strategically. However, while Scipio was nearly unparalleled in his ability to wage war, he proved much less capable of dealing with politics. He seemed genuinely baffled by Cato’s continuing enmity and disgusted by the efforts of an element of the Senate to portray his victories as a betrayal of Rome. It is difficult to know whether there was any truth in the accusations of corruption laid against Scipio and his brother during the later war against Antiochus, but his reaction was certainly odd; instead of refuting the allegation, he haughtily reminded the Senate that it was the anniversary of his victory over Hannibal at Zama, and the charges were forgotten in a wild burst of acclamation.

For all his tactical and strategic genius and his ability to understand the psychology of the men fighting for him and his enemies, Scipio Africanus never seems to have been comfortable dealing with a Senate that included large factions motivated against him by envy and antipathy. In this sense it is difficult not to compare and contrast Scipio with the only Roman general more famous than him: Gaius Julius Caesar, who would demonstrate not just absolute mastery of warfare but the ability to manipulate the Senate to his will. This was something that Scipio never managed to do, and instead of fighting the politicians in Rome as Caesar would do, he chose to retreat into obscurity and bitterness. It was a sad and unfair end to the career of a man who almost singlehandedly pulled Rome back from the brink of defeat and set it on the path to dominating the ancient world.

Online Resources

Other books about Rome by Charles River Editors Other books about ancient history by Charles River Editors Other books about Scipio on Amazon

Further Reading Bagnall, Nigel (1990). The Punic Wars. ISBN 0-312-34214-4.

T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1951, 1986). Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Hannibal, Da Capo Press; Reissue edition, 2004. ISBN 0-306-81362-9 Goldsworthy, Adrian (2006). The Fall of Carthage. ISBN 978-030436642-2. Lazenby, John Francis (1978). Hannibal's War. ISBN 978-0-8061-3004-0. Lancel, Serge (1995). Hannibal (in French). Mahaney, W.C, 2008. "Hannibal's Odyssey, Environmental Background to the Alpine Invasion of Italia," Gorgias Press, Piscataway, N.J, 221 pp. Polybius, Histories, Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (translator); London, New York. Macmillan (1889); Reprint Bloomington (1962). Palmer, Robert E. A. (1997). Rome and Carthage at Peace. Stuttgart. H. H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician, Thames and Hudson, London, 1970. ISBN 0-500-40012-1 H. H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War Thirlwall Prize Essay (University Press, Cambridge, 1930)

Free Books by Charles River Editors We have brand new titles available for free most days of the week. To see which of our titles are currently free, click on this link.

Discounted Books by Charles River Editors We have titles at a discount price of just 99 cents everyday. To see which of our titles are currently 99 cents, click on this link.

[1]

The Histories Of Polybius, Book 10, published in Vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. [2] The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. [3]

The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. [5] The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. [4]

[6]

All quotations on this page are from The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927. [7] The Histories Of Polybius, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 – 1927.