The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  Two heroes were thrown up by this First Punic War: on the Roman side, Regulus; on the Carthaginian, Hamilcar. Perhaps we should add a third and fourth—the Senate and the Roman people. The Senate won Hiero of Syracuse to Rome’s side, and thereby assured supplies for Roman troops in Sicily; it organized the nation with wisdom and resolution, and led it to victory through almost overwhelming disasters. The citizens provided money, materials, labor, and men to build Rome’s first fleet—330 vessels, nearly all quinqueremes 150 feet long, each manned by 300 rowers and 120 soldiers, and most of them equipped with novel grappling irons and movable gangways for seizing and boarding enemy ships; by these means naval warfare, unfamiliar to the Romans, could be turned into hand-to-hand combat, in which the legionaries could use all their disciplined skill. “This fact,” says Polybius, “shows us better than anything else how spirited and daring the Romans are when they are determined to do a thing. . . . They had never given a thought to a navy; yet when they had once conceived the project they took it in hand so boldly that before gaining any experience in such matters they at once engaged the Carthaginians, who for generations had held undisputed command of the sea.”14 Off Ecnomus, on the southern coast of Sicily, the hostile fleets, carrying 300,000 men, fought the greatest sea battle of antiquity (256). The Romans under Regulus won decisively and sailed on unhindered to Africa. Landing there without careful reconnaissance, they soon met a superior Carthaginian force, which almost annihilated them, and took their reckless consul prisoner. Shortly afterward the Roman fleet was dashed by a storm against a rocky coast, 284 vessels were wrecked, and some 80,000 men were drowned; it was the worst naval calamity in the memory of men. The Romans showed their quality by building 200 new quinqueremes in three months, and training 80,000 men to man them.

  After keeping Regulus a prisoner for five years, his captors allowed him to accompany a Carthaginian embassy sent to Rome to seek peace, but on his promise to return to captivity if the Senate refused the proffered terms. When Regulus heard these he advised the Senate to reject them and, despite the entreaties of his family and his friends, went back with the embassy to Carthage. There he was tortured to death by being prevented from sleeping.15 His sons at Rome took two Carthaginian captives of high rank, bound them in a chest studded with spikes, and kept them awake till they died.16 Neither tale seems credible, until we recall the barbarities of our time.

  III. HAMILCAR

  Of Hamilcars, Hasdrubals, and Hannibals Carthage had an abundance, for these names were given in almost every generation in their oldest families. They were pious names, formed from those of the gods: Hamilcar was “He whom Melkart protects”; Hasdrubal was “He whose help is Baal”; Hannibal was the very “Grace of Baal.” Our present Hamilcar was surnamed Barca—“lightning”; it was his nature to strike swiftly, suddenly, anywhere. He was still a youth when (247) Carthage gave him supreme command of its forces. Taking a small fleet, he harassed the coast of Italy with surprise landings, destroying Roman outposts and taking many prisoners. Then, in the face of a Roman army holding Panormus (Palermo), he disembarked his troops and captured a height overlooking the town. His contingent was too small to risk a major engagement; but every time he led it forth it returned with spoils. He begged the Carthaginian Senate for reinforcements and supplies; it refused, hugged its hoards, and bade him feed and clothe his soldiers on the country that surrounded him.

  Meanwhile the Roman fleet had won another victory, but had suffered a serious defeat at Drepana (249). Worn out almost equally, the two nations rested for nine years. But while in those years Carthage did nothing, relying upon the genius of Hamilcar, a number of Roman citizens voluntarily presented to the state a fleet of 200 men-of-war, carrying 60,000 troops. This new armada, sailing secretly, caught the Carthaginian fleet unprepared at the Aegadian Isles off the west coast of Sicily, and so overwhelmed it that Carthage sued for peace (241). Carthaginian Sicily was surrendered to Rome, an annual indemnity of 440 talents was pledged to Rome for ten years, and all Carthaginian restrictions on Roman trade were withdrawn. The war had lasted nearly twenty-four years and had brought Rome so near to bankruptcy that its currency was debased eighty-three per cent. But it had proved the irresistible tenacity of the Roman character and the superiority of an army composed of free men over mercenaries seeking the greatest booty for the least blood.

  Carthage was now to be all but destroyed by its own greed. It had withheld for some time the pay of its mercenaries, even of those who had served Hamilcar well. They poured into the city and demanded their money; and when the government temporized and tried to disperse them, they broke into mad revolt. Carthage’s subject peoples, taxed beyond endurance during the war, joined the uprising, and the women of Libya sold their jewels to finance revolution. Twenty thousand mercenaries and rebels, led by Matho, a Libyan freeman, and Spendius, a Campanian slave, laid siege to Carthage at a time when hardly a soldier was there to defend it. The rich merchants trembled for their lives and appealed to Hamilcar to save them. Torn between affection for his mercenaries and his city, Hamilcar organized an army of 10,000 Carthaginians, trained them, led them forth, and raised the siege. The defeated mercenaries, retreating into the mountains, cut off the hands and feet of Gesco, a Carthaginian general, and 700 other prisoners, broke their legs, and then threw the still living victims into an indiscriminate grave.17 Hamilcar maneuvered 40,000 of the rebels into a defile and blocked all exits so well that they began to starve. They ate their remaining captives, then their slaves; at last they sent Spendius to beg for peace. Hamilcar crucified Spendius and had hundreds of prisoners trampled to death under elephants’ feet. The mercenaries tried to fight their way out, but were cut to pieces. Matho was captured and was made to run through the streets of Carthage while the citizens beat him with thongs and tortured him till he died.18 This “War of the Mercenaries” lasted forty months (241-237), and “was by far,” said Polybius, “the most bloody and impious war in history.”19 When the conflict was over, Carthage found that Rome had occupied Sardinia. Carthage protested, and Rome declared war. The desperate Carthaginians bought peace only by paying Rome an additional 1200 talents, and surrendering Sardinia and Corsica.

  We may judge the fury of Hamilcar at this treatment of his country. He proposed to his government that it should provide him with troops and funds to re-establish the power of Carthage in Spain, as a steppingstone to an attack upon Italy. The landowning aristocracy opposed the plan, fearing further war; the mercantile middle class, resenting the loss of their foreign markets and ports, supported it. As a compromise Hamilcar was given a modest contingent, with which he crossed to Spain (238). He recaptured the cities whose allegiance to Carthage had lapsed during the war, built up his army with native recruits, financed and equipped it with the products of Spain’s mines, and died while leading a charge against a Spanish tribe (229).

  He left behind him in the camp his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his sons Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago—his “lion’s-brood.” The son-in-law was chosen commander, and for eight years governed wisely, winning the cooperation of the Spaniards and building near the silver mines a great city, known to Rome as Nova Carthago, or New Carthage—the Cartagena of today. When he was assassinated (221), the army elected as its leader Hamilcar’s eldest son, Hannibal, then twenty-six years of age. Before leaving Carthage, his father had brought him, a boy of nine, to the altar of Baal-Haman and had bidden him swear that someday he would revenge his country against Rome. Hannibal swore, and did not forget.

  IV. HANNIBAL

  Why had Rome permitted the reconquest of Spain? Because she was harassed with class strife, was expanding in the Adriatic, and was at war with the Gauls. In 232 a tribune, Caius Flaminius, foreshadowed the Gracchi by carrying through the Assembly, against the violent opposition of the Senate, a measure distributing among the poorer citizens some lands recently won from the Gauls. In 230 Rome took her first step toward the conquest of Greece by clearing the Adriatic of pirates and seizing a part of
the Illyrian coast as a further protection for Italian trade. Safe now on south and east, she resolved to drive the Gauls over the Alps and make Italy a completely united state. To secure herself on the west she signed a treaty with Hasdrubal by which the Carthaginians in Spain agreed to stay south of the Ebro River; and at the same time she made an alliance with the semi-Greek towns of Saguntum and Ampurias in Spain. In the following year (225) a Gallic army of 50,000 foot and 20,000 horse swept down the peninsula. The inhabitants of the capital were so frightened that the Senate returned to the primitive custom of human sacrifice and buried two Gauls alive in the Forum as an appeasement of the gods.20 The legions met the invaders near Telamon, killed 40,000, took 10,000 prisoners, and marched on to subjugate all Cisalpine Gaul. In three years the task was completed; protective colonies were established at Placentia and Cremona, and from the Alps to Sicily Italy was one.

  It was an untimely victory. Had the Gauls been left unmolested for a few years more they might have stopped Hannibal; but now all Gaul was aflame against Rome. Hannibal saw the opportunity he had longed for—to cross Gaul with little opposition and to invade Italy with Gallic tribes as his allies.

  The Punic leader was now twenty-eight years old, at his prime in body and mind. In addition to a Carthaginian gentleman’s schooling in the languages, literatures, and history of Phoenicia and Greece,21 he had received a soldier’s training through nineteen years in camp. He had disciplined his body to hardship, his appetite to moderation, his tongue to silence, his thought to objectivity. He could run or ride with the swiftest, hunt or fight with the bravest; he was “the first to enter the battle,” says the hostile Livy, “and the last to abandon the field.”22 The veterans loved him because in his commanding presence and piercing eyes they saw their old leader Hamilcar return to them in fresh youth; the recruits liked him because he wore no distinctive dress, never rested till he had provided for his army’s needs, and shared with them all sufferings and gains. The Romans accused him of avarice, cruelty, and treachery, for he honored no scruples in seizing supplies for his troops, punished disloyalty severely, and laid many snares for his foes. Yet we find him often merciful, always chivalrous. “Nothing occurs in the accounts of him,” says the judicious Mommsen, “which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law of the times.”23 The Romans could not readily forgive him for winning battles with his brains rather than with the lives of his men. The tricks he played upon them, the skill of his espionage, the subtlety of his strategy, the surprises of his tactics were beyond their appreciation until Carthage was destroyed.

  In 219 B.C. Roman agents organized in Saguntum a coup d’état that set up a government patriotically hostile to Carthage. When the Saguntines molested tribes friendly to him, Hannibal ordered them to desist; when they refused he besieged the city. Rome protested to Carthage and threatened war; Carthage replied that since Saguntum was a hundred miles south of the Ebro, Rome had no right to interfere, and had, by signing an alliance with it, violated her treaty with Hasdrubal. Hannibal persisted in the siege, and Rome took up arms again, never dreaming that this Second Punic War was to be the most terrible in her history.

  Hannibal spent eight months in subduing the Saguntines; he did not dare advance toward Italy while leaving to the Romans so excellent a port for landing in his rear. In 218 he crossed the Ebro, challenging fate as Caesar would at the Rubicon. He had an army of 50,000 infantry and 9000 cavalry, none of them mercenaries, most of them Spaniards and Libyans. Three thousand Spaniards deserted when they learned that he planned to cross the Alps, and Hannibal released 7000 others who protested against his enterprise as impossible,24 It was hard enough to force a passage through the Pyrenees; more unexpected was the fierce resistance of some Gallic tribes allied with Marseilles; a summer of fighting was required to reach the Rhone, and a major battle to cross it. He had hardly left its banks when a Roman army arrived at the mouth of the river.

  Hannibal led his troops north toward Vienne and then struck eastward into the Alps. Celtic hordes had crossed those ranges before him, and he too might have done it without extraordinary hardship had it not been for the hostility of the Alpine tribes, and the difficulty of getting his elephants through narrow or precipitous passages. Early in September, after a climb of nine days, he reached the summit and found it covered with snow; there he let his men and animals rest for two days and then began the downward march through passes steeper than the ascent, over roads sometimes buried by landslides and often paved with ice. Many soldiers and beasts lost their footing and tumbled to their deaths. Hannibal spurred on his despairing forces by pointing out to them, in the distant south, the green fields and sparkling streams of Italy; that paradise, he promised them, would soon be theirs. After seventeen days in the Alps they reached the plain and rested. So many men and horses had been lost in the crossing that the army was now reduced to 26,000—less than half the force that had left New Carthage four months before. Had the Cisalpine Gauls resisted him as the Transalpine Gauls had done, Hannibal’s progress might have ended there. But the Boii and other tribes welcomed him as a savior and joined him as allies, while the recently established Roman settlers fled southward across the Po.

  Faced with this second threat in seven years to the very life of Rome, the Senate mobilized all its resources and called upon the states of Italy to unite in the defense of their land. With their help Rome raised armies totaling 300,000 foot, 14,000 horse, and 456,000 reserves. One army, under the first of many famous Scipios, met Hannibal along the Ticino—a small river flowing into the Po at Pavia. Hannibal’s Numidian cavalry put the Romans to flight, and Scipio, dangerously wounded, was saved by the brave interposition of the son who was destined to meet Hannibal again at Zama sixteen years later. At Lake Trasimene Hannibal encountered another Roman army, 30,000 strong, led by the tribune Caius Flaminius, and accompanied by slave dealers bringing fetters and chains for the prospective prisoners whom they hoped to sell. With part of his forces Hannibal decoyed this army into a plain surrounded by hills and woods that concealed most of his troops; at his signal the hidden columns debouched upon the Romans from every side and killed nearly all of them, including Flaminius himself (217).

  Hannibal now controlled all northern Italy, but he knew that he was still outnumbered ten to one by a resolute foe. His only hope lay in persuading at least some of the Italian states to revolt against Rome. He released all prisoners whom he had taken from Rome’s allies, saying that he had come not to fight Italy but to set it free. He marched through flooded Etruria, where for four days no dry land could be found on which to pitch a camp; crossed the Apennines to the Adriatic, and there allowed his soldiers a long interval to refresh their energies and heal their wounds. He himself suffered from severe ophthalmia, took no time to treat it, and lost the use of one eye. Then he marched down the eastern coast, inviting the Italian tribes to join him. None did; on the contrary, every city closed its gates against him and prepared to fight. As he moved south, his Gallic allies, interested only in their northern homes, began to desert him. Plots against his life were so numerous that he had to assume ever new disguises. He begged his government to send him supplies and men by some Adriatic port; it refused. He asked his younger brother Hasdrubal, whom he had left in Spain, to organize an army and cross Gaul and the Alps to join him; but the Romans had invaded Spain, and Hasdrubal did not dare to leave it. Ten years were to pass before his coming.

  Rome now adopted against her greatest adversary his own baffling policy of caution and attrition. Quintus Fabius Maximus, made dictator in 217, created an adjective by delaying as long as he could a direct engagement with Hannibal; in time, he believed, the invaders would be reduced by hunger, discord, and disease. After a year this “masterly inaction” irritated the Roman populace; the Assembly overruled the Senate, as well as all precedents and logic, by electing Minucius Rufus codictator with Fabius. Against Fabius’ advice Minucius advanced against the enemy, fell into a trap, was s
everely beaten, and thereafter understood why Hannibal said that he feared Fabius, who would not fight, more than Marcellus, who would.25 A year later Fabius was deposed, and the Roman armies were entrusted to Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Caius Terentius Varro. Paulus the aristocrat counseled caution; Varro of the plebs was all for action; and as usual, caution lost the argument. Varro sought and found the Carthaginians at Cannae, in Apulia, some ten miles from the Adriatic coast. The Romans had 80,000 infantry, 6000 cavalry; Hannibal had 19,000 veterans, 16,000 unreliable Gauls, 10,000 horse; and he had lured Varro to fight in a broad plain ideal for cavalry. He had placed the Gauls at his center, expecting that they would give way. They did; and when the Romans followed them into the pocket, the subtle Carthaginian, himself in the thick of the fray, ordered his veterans to close in upon the Roman flanks and bade his cavalry smash through the opposed horsemen to attack the legions from behind. The Roman army was surrounded, lost all chance of maneuvering, and was almost annihilated; 44,000 of them fell, including Paulus and eighty senators who had enlisted as soldiers; 10,000 escaped to Canusium, among them Varro and the Scipio who was to win the surname of Africanus Maior (216). Hannibal lost 6000 men, two thirds of them Gauls. It was a supreme example of generalship, never bettered in history. It ended the days of Roman reliance upon infantry, and set the lines of military tactics for two thousand years.

  V. SCIPIO

  The disaster shattered Rome’s hegemony in southern Italy. Samnites, Bruttians, Lucanians, Metapontum, Thurii, Crotona, Locri, and Capua joined Cisalpine Gaul in attaching themselves to Hannibal; only Umbria, Latium, and Etruria remained firm. Hiero of Syracuse was loyal to the death, but his successors declared for Carthage. Philip V of Macedon, fearful of Roman expansion through Illyria into the east, allied himself with Hannibal and declared war upon Rome. Carthage herself became interested and sent Hannibal meager reinforcements and supplies. Some of the young Roman nobles among the survivors at Canusium thought the situation hopeless and meditated flight to Greece, but Scipio shamed them into courage. Rome was for a month hysterical with terror; only a small garrison remained to protect it against Hannibal. Matrons of high family ran weeping to the temples and cleansed with their hair the statues of the gods; some whose husbands and sons had fallen in battle cohabited with foreigners and slaves lest their strain should die. To regain the favor of obviously offended deities the Senate again sanctioned human sacrifice and buried alive two Gauls and two Greeks.26