The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  By invading Sicily, Rome gained a new enemy, Carthage. Carthage had long had designs on all of Sicily, but since her failed armadas against the Sicilian Greeks in 480 (and again in 410 bc) she had not pressed them. Meanwhile she had continued to develop economically and politically in north Africa. She had a long-standing presence in southern Spain, an area which was very rich in metals; she had developed an increasingly strong presence in her north African hinter­land where the richer Carthaginians farmed estates with slaves; as before she continued to control north-western Sicily and metal-rich Sardinia too. For troops, she relied heavily on the mercenaries whom she hired in north Africa with her surplus riches: she pursued a real 'privatization' of warfare. But mercenaries were always a possible source of trouble and might well prefer their individual generals to the Carthaginian state. The Carthaginians' constitution had evolved a series of councils and magistracies which served as checks and balances against a coup by any one individual, even if backed by hired troops. Aristotle, even, had admired the system. By the 260s many of Carthage's leading citizens were educated men. One of them wrote an excellent long work on agriculture (Romans later translated it from

  Punic into Latin). Another described (surely correctly) the amazing journey of Hanno the Carthaginian and his fleet (perhaps c. 400 bc) out into the Atlantic, down the west coast of Africa and on past Senegal. Here was an adventure beyond any Roman's horizon, includ­ing a meeting with a tribe of hairy 'women' near the African shore whom Hanno's men named 'gorillas' (the origin of our name for the animal).6

  Lying near to Greek Sicily, Carthage had always had a big Greek community too. Her rich households were famous for their fine car­pets, their gold and their luxury, but they were also open to Greek design. They displayed ornamental Greek sculptures for owners who sometimes had a Greek education: it is not surprising that in the next generation the young Hannibal had a Greek tutor and was attended on his march by a Greek historian. Carthaginian 'cruelty' and 'treach­ery' were legendary among her enemies, at times unfairly. However, Greeks did also observe, correctly, that Carthaginians preserved the old Levantine practice of child-sacrifice to the gods, especially in times of crisis. The archaeology of Carthaginian burial grounds supports their observation, although it is probably only a Greek elaboration that music was played while the small children were being killed so as to drown the cries of their mothers.7

  The First Punic War developed from Rome's illegal entry into Sicily and lasted from 264 to 241. It was the longest continuous war in classical history. In Carthage, Rome's wolf-children met a worthy match, and both sides were innovative. After watching Pyrrhus in Sicily the Carthaginians had added a new weapon to their army: the forest elephant, which was still native along parts of north Africa (including, as Aristotle knew, Morocco). As the First Punic War centred on Sicily, the Romans, too, were obliged to take a bold step: they built their first major fleet. It relied on the help of Greek and south Italian allies (and a captured Carthaginian warship, it was said, as a model), and when built it owed much to coastal Italians' com­mand and experience. In 256, therefore, Roman generals were already confident enough to risk the four days' journey over open sea and invade Carthage's north African territory. But the venture failed, partly because the Carthaginians had a Spartan expert as their military adviser. Rome's general was the famous Marcus Regulus whom Carthage captured, but it is only a legend, propagated by his descend­ants, that his captors sent him back to negotiate at Rome where he advised against any concessions and then went back to Carthage for a heroic inevitable death. Actually, Regulus was killed locally and his widow tortured two Carthaginian prisoners in revenge.8

  The long war had important economic consequences. In Sicily and Carthage, Roman armies took slaves by the ten thousand, more than they ever took in Italy. They even enslaved the entire population of luxurious Greek Acragas (Agrigento). Many of these captives were then sold, but as Acragas was soon repopulated, fellow Greeks had probably ransomed the city's former citizens in order to save them. However, many of Acragas' other slaves were surely taken back to Italy, as were many of the captives from Carthage, to be the booty of rich Romans. Most of these slaves had already worked on the land and so they would farm for Romans too. They increased Rome's ability to send so many free soldiers (otherwise essential farm­workers) so regularly overseas. Already slave-users, the richer Romans were certainly now a slave-society.

  By contrast, Carthage lost the war after a big Roman naval victory in 242/1 and was fined a huge sum. She was obliged to evacuate Sicily (after five hundred years on parts of it) and was left to fight a bitter war back in Africa against the foreign African mercenaries on whom her army depended. Crushing peace-terms usually encourage revenge, all the more so when the Romans then coolly seized the valuable Carthaginian dependency of Sardinia in the 230s while Carthage's mercenary war was ending. In response, members of one prominent Carthaginian family, the Barcids, set off for Spain with troops and war-elephants to recover some of Carthage's lost prestige and no doubt to see how far success might go. On leaving, the father is said to have made his nine-year-old son take an oath at an altar 'never to be a friend to the Romans'.9 So much for Carthaginian 'perfidy': the son, Hannibal, never betrayed what his father made him swear.

  For nearly twenty years (from 237 to 219) this Carthaginian force engaged in conquests in southern Spain. Two new towns were founded there, a New Carthage (now Cartagena) and a Fair Cliff (perhaps modern Alicante). In 226, however, a Roman delegation arrived and bluntly told the Carthaginian commander 'not to cross the river Ebro' which lay on the route north-eastwards from Spain to the Pyrenees and ultimately, therefore, in the direction of Italy. But just as in Sicily in 264, the Romans now followed up their agreement by accepting an appeal from the far 'Carthaginian' side of the Ebro. Here, a turbulent faction in the non-Greek city of Saguntum called on their 'good faith' against pro-Carthaginian enemies. The Romans accepted the appeal and caused no end of spin and whitewash by later Roman historians who were concerned to put an unjust Rome in the right. From Hanni­bal's perspective, Rome's behaviour was an unlicensed interference in territory which was his. It was made in order to support a group who had harassed good friends of Carthage inside a city which was not rightfully Rome's at all. So he set about besieging Saguntum.

  Rome was not exactly free for a big new battle. She had been having serious problems with turbulent Gallic tribesmen in north Italy and in 219 was far from secure on that front. She was also concerned with an intervention she was making across the Adriatic into Greece. However, these distractions did not make her hesitate in the West. A few cautionary voices were sounded in the Senate, but, in response to Hannibal's siege of Saguntum, Roman ambassadors were sent to Carthage. They could not speak Punic but one of them was competent in the other language of Carthage's senators, Greek. 'We bring you peace or war,' said Fabius (who was from a Greek-speaking family), and he formed a fold in his toga with one hand; 'choose which you prefer.’ From the Carthaginians' perspective, what business was it of the Romans if one of their generals in Spain attacked a city on behalf of pro-Carthaginian friends while he was not bound by any contrary treaty? So the Carthaginians told the envoy to choose instead. Fabius smoothed out the fold in his toga and shook out war.

  29

  Hannibal and Rome

  One of Hannibal's friends, known as the 'Gladiator', re­marked that as far as he could see there was only one way by which they could manage to reach Italy. Hannibal asked him to explain, and the 'Gladiator' replied that they must teach the army to eat human flesh and become used to it. Hannibal could not refute the boldness or the practicality of this idea, but he could not persuade himself or his friends to accept it.

  Polybius, 9.24

  The resulting Second Punic War with Carthage, from 218 to 202, strained Rome to the very limit, wracked Italy and ended by trans­forming Rome's resources, range and ambitions. To us, the hero is Hannibal, twenty-nine years old at the outset, who astonished the Roma
ns by crossing the Alps and offering 'freedom' yet again, but this time to Italians throughout the peninsula. No wonder his name was evoked later by Napoleon during a similar transalpine campaign to 'liberate' Italy. Yet Hannibal was also remembered for destroying 400 towns and costing 300,000 Italian lives. His supreme victory at Cannae killed 48,000 enemy troops and is still studied in Western military academies. The rate of killing during the battle has been estimated at 500 lives a minute.1 But even so, he did not win the war. The greater heroes turned out to be Roman: the noble Fabius Maximus, who turned defeat gradually into victory by a campaign of painful delay and devastation, and the brilliant young Scipio who ended by invading Africa and winning a last great battle near Zama in 202.

  Had Hannibal's father talked to his son of crossing the Alps one day and avenging the previous war (and the loss of Sardinia) on a startled Rome? Perhaps, and perhaps Romans were right to be ner­vous, especially as north Italy below the Alps was so troubled with the Gallic tribesmen. But even then, Rome was miles away and the territories which she controlled totalled some 15,000 square miles. After the many conquests and treaties which she had made in Italy since the 340s, her adult male citizens now numbered more than 2.70,000, increased by particular Italian communities. From other communities she could draw on Italians as allies too. These Italians' treaties with Rome did not require them to pay tribute, but did oblige them to send and pay soldiers for Rome's wars. Rome's allied Italian manpower was more than 600,000, on top of her own ever-increasing citizenry. The heady days of the 390s, when a few Gauls could migrate south and seize Rome's Capitol, belonged to another era: Rome's potential soldiery was enormous, far bigger than the 30,000-50,000 citizens of classical Athens' days of dominance.

  During the previous twenty years, the preceding Carthaginian con­quests in Spain had been a slow business. Nonetheless, it was from Spain that Rome's greatest opponent emerged: the young Hannibal crossed the river Ebro in June 218 bc with 40,000 troops and thirty-seven elephants, only a fraction of the Carthaginian commanders' herd. He then crossed the Pyrenees and by mid-August he had also crossed the broad river Rhone north of Avignon by ferrying the ele­phants across on camouflaged rafts (although some of them panicked and swam). His troops were vastly fewer than Rome's potential man­power, and as he headed northwards up the Rhone's far bank, the watching Roman general, Scipio, cannot have given him much chance of reaching Italy at all. The Alps towered in his way, but Hannibal turned east and took them on, probably crossing Mont Cenis (argu­ably by the Savine Coche pass, around 7,500 feet high) in late October.

  Up in the Alps, he was later said to have used hot vinegar to split open rocks which blocked his path (where, though, would he have found enough firewood to heat up enough vinegar?). The elephants must have helped to clear the way and certainly scared off the hostile local tribesmen. When he came down into the plains above Turin he had only 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry; none of the elephants had yet died. Although his army was already halved, he still won a first skirmish against Roman troops by the river Po. He followed it up in late December with a crushing victory over a Roman consul and army at the river Trebbia (near Piacenza). A key to his success here was the doubling of his army with recruits from the anti-Roman Gauls in north Italy. They had at first hesitated to join him, but they were encouraged by his initial success and his terror tactics towards those who had refused.

  With this army of hired Africans, Spaniards and Gauls, Hannibal was wary of a plot against his life, and in camp he is said to have worn different wigs in order to disguise himself.2 Disguise would have been difficult because he lost an eye while travelling through marshlands around the river Arno. By then he had also lost almost all his elephants: only seven survived the cold winter and Hannibal, the most famous 'elephant-general', never used them again in battle. However, the few (perhaps only one) who soldiered on were still a symbol: Italian towns on his route struck coins showing an elephant, even an Indian elephant (attended by a negro): perhaps Hannibal had acquired it from trade with the Ptolemies. If so, it is antiquity's great traveller, from Egypt to Italy. It may be the one called the 'Syrian', remembered as the bravest in battle. It had only one unbroken tusk: did one-eyed Hannibal ride it? In June 2.17, at Lake Trasimene in Etruria, his one eye was still clear-sighted: he took advantage of misty weather and outwitted another Roman consul and a bigger army.

  Hannibal's crack troops were his cavalry, of which he had many thousands. His Numidians, from north Africa, were brilliant horse­men, able to direct their horses without any bridles by their clever use of a neck-rein. They had a flexibility which mounted Romans and Italians could not match. It is, then, for horses that Hannibal's march should be famous: when he pushed on to reach the eastern coast of Italy he reconditioned his horses there with the contents of the local cellars: he bathed them in old Italian wine, a vintage tonic for their coats.' Personally, Hannibal was not a drinker and his only luxury was the food he had to consume. He had also left his Iberian wife back in Cadiz. Not until three years later, when he was in south Apulia at Salapia, is he known to have succumbed to an Italian woman, and she was a prostitute.4

  In August 216 Hannibal won his supreme victory at Cannae in south-east Italy by pitting what were now some 50,000 troops against a much bigger Roman army which was probably about 87,000 strong. Once again, his mobile cavalry and ingenious battle-order proved unbeatable. After a day of slaughter, a Carthaginian, Maharbal, is said to have urged Hannibal to hurry straight to Rome, 250 miles away, where he could be 'dining on the Capitol after four days'.'' It would have been an amazing multi-ethnic dinner-party above the Forum, but Hannibal hung back. Instead, he won successes in the south, above all when he detached the powerful state of Capua from Rome's alliance. His troops then wintered in the town which had so long been famous for its luxury, including a council-chamber called 'the White House', a big scent-market and a tempting line in women and soft bedding. Moralists later said that this winter in Capua cor­rupted him, but oft-cited 'luxury' was not really the root of his problems.

  Fundamentally, they were political. On entering Italy Hannibal had proclaimed freedom. His quarrel, he said, was not with Italy but with Rome. Italian prisoners were courteously dismissed. Just as he had hoped to profit from Rome's Gallic enemies north of the Po (in what is now, but was not then, 'north Italy'), so he hoped to detach Rome's many differing allies and dependencies throughout Italy. His brother Mago was sent down into the south to activate Pyrrhus' former stamp­ing ground and liberate the Greek cities too. Attempts were to be made on all the Roman gains of the fourth and third centuries bc, including Naples and Tarentum. An alliance was even struck with King Philip V of Macedon over in northern Greece. Hannibal was certainly not acting as a lone adventurer without the approval of the Carthaginian government in Africa: in 215 they did manage to send him some more elephants across to southern Italy. His treaty with Philip makes his official support clear. Nor was he aiming to flatten Rome. She was to be left with a role, but without a confederacy, as if history could be turned back two hundred years. Hence, in part, Hannibal's refusal to hurry from Cannae straight to Rome's Capitol hill.

  If Hannibal had succeeded, history until Hadrian's lifetime would have been completely different. Hannibal knew about Pyrrhus; he could read and speak Greek and Greek historians accompanied him. Nonetheless, did he simply repeat Pyrrhus' mistakes? Pyrrhus had been called a brilliant dice-thrower who could not exploit the results; Hannibal, too, was said to know how to win, but not how to use a victory. Actually, Hannibal had more in his favour. Unlike Pyrrhus, he had the full support of an established home government with the capacity to reinforce him, both from Africa and Spain. His victories were not 'Pyrrhic': they were crushingly one-sided triumphs. Neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal made decisive use of their elephants, but Hanni­bal was a cavalry-king, the great Alexander's equal. Whereas Pyrrhus was a Homeric Achilles in combat, Hannibal was a consummate trickster, more of an Odysseus. He was a master of ambushes, of cunning
battle-plans and false letters. He even tied blazing sticks to the horns of two thousand oxen and herded them away from his army by night so as to mislead his enemy about the 'lights' and line of his troops on the move. Like Pyrrhus, he came within a few miles of Rome (in 211, on a diversionary march northwards) but ultimately, like that of Pyrrhus, his was yet another 'liberation betrayed'. Even in the south, there were Greek city-states which never fully took his side.

  For this hesitation, there were good reasons. Whatever Hannibal's personal culture, his troops were mostly random barbarians with little charm for the wary, civilized Greeks or for Rome's most favoured Latins. What would 'freedom' really mean when offered by a wild Gaul or a Carthaginian oligarch? The more Hannibal had to wait around, the more he devastated the countryside, while his own reprisals in captured cities could be dreadfully harsh. Above all, southern Spain had been blocked off from Italy by shrewd, long-term Roman generalship. Right from the start, in 217, the two elder Scipios, Rome's generals in Spain, had realized that they must keep troops on the coast there to block more troops from reaching Hannibal. If Hannibal had galloped to Rome after Cannae, there would have been the obstacles of the city's walls, many Roman survivors and some robust street fighting. But could he not have succeeded, like the Gauls in the 390s and without the treacherous geese?