The Sword of Rome

by Jeremiah McCall

  Marcellus responded that he would come to the city’s defence. A direct march to Nola from Casilinum, however, was barred by the now hostile Capua, which had a strong cavalry force that could pose considerable difficulties for a Roman army on the march. Instead of the more direct route, Marcellus circumvented Capua by marching east/north-east along the River Volturnus to Caiatia. Then he crossed the river, and passed south-east, keeping Mount Tifata as a buffer between his army and Capua. The army continued this way into the hill country north of Suessula and, finally, arrived at Nola.35 When the Roman army approached, however, Hannibal withdrew west to the vicinity of Neapolis to try his hand again at negotiating with the Neapolitans.

  A quick study of a map of Campania suggests that Hannibal was essentially maneuvering in a very small territory around Marcellus – the two armies were likely never more than twenty miles apart at any moment and closer than that most of the time. His goal was to gain an advantage in the remaining key settlements of Campania: Neapolis, Nola, and Nuceria. He may well have concluded that a pitched battle over Nola was an unnecessary expense at the moment when other important targets existed. Neapolis continued to hold firm against Hannibal, however, and his army soon moved on to Nuceria. Bounded on the south by hills, Nuceria was the southernmost major settlement of Campania. Hannibal did not succeed in winning the loyalty of Nuceria and ultimately destroyed the settlement through what must have been a quick siege.36

  Marcellus, on the other hand, remained at Nola. Perhaps he reasoned that attempting to follow Hannibal around would simply allow the latter to control the pace and timing of another battle. He may also have been busy strengthening the resolve of the Nolan senate and rooting out those inclined to surrender the city to Hannibal. With the disaster at Cannae, the shifting allegiances of so many key southern cities, and Campania wavering with the defection of Capua, Marcellus must have judged that securing Nola was critical to maintaining Roman influence in Campania, particularly since Neapolis, another critical location, persisted in rebuffing Hannibal. It seems incredible to think he would not have received word about Nuceria, but whether he was unwilling or unable to come to the town’s aid is a mystery.

  Livy and Plutarch suggest that at this point a distinguished young Campanian cavalryman, Lucius Bantius, was one of the focal points for disaffected Nolans wishing to join Hannibal. This Bantius had earned a reputation among the allied cavalry as an outstanding rider and combatant. The disaster at Cannae, however, moved Bantius to question the Roman cause. He had apparently fought with great distinction at Cannae, slaying a number of opponents. The weight of the enemy’s numbers eventually overwhelmed him, and he was left for dead on the battlefield.37 Found among the slain by the victorious Carthaginians, the young cavalry trooper was brought to Hannibal, who had his injuries nursed then sent him home to Nola with gifts.38 Upon arriving at Nola, Bantius was among the leaders who advocated joining Hannibal. Though historians must be cautious when such an anecdote crops up in the ancient sources, this particular episode is not farfetched. A pillar of Hannibal’s Italian strategy was to dissolve the bonds of the Roman alliance system by gaining the support of the Italian peoples. If Hannibal came across a young man like Bantius who was not only a member of the Italian municipal elite – all allied cavalry were – but from an important city in Campania, he would assuredly have recognized the potential to form an advantageous relationship with the man.

  While at Nola, Marcellus learned of Bantius’ political leanings through personal observation or report and opted to address the situation directly. He summoned Bantius to a meeting and discussed his concerns. Livy and Plutarch both offer direct quotations of the words Marcellus offered Bantius; at best these might reflect the gist of the conversation. Marcellus praised Bantius for his service at Cannae and rewarded him with a large sum of silver coins and a warhorse.39 Livy adds that Marcellus encouraged Bantius to serve with him personally in the future. The results of these and any other encouragements were that Bantius came to support wholeheartedly the Roman cause. It is hazardous at best to try to unearth the character of Marcellus from an event of this sort, but it certainly is plausible that one who had carved out a reputation for audacity and valour in cavalry battles would have found Bantius to be a kindred spirit of sorts.

  With Nuceria destroyed, Hannibal decided the time was right to make an attempt on Nola.40 He returned to the vicinity of the town and camped near the Roman army, itself camped outside the city walls. According to Livy, though each army’s foragers and light infantry scouts engaged in sporadic skirmishes, neither commander would commit to a pitched battle. Hannibal, for his part, had apparently been negotiating covertly at night with disaffected Nolans for the surrender of the city.41 For the moment, waiting in the hope of gaining the city through treachery was the more sound strategy, particularly now that the alliance with Capua – not to mention most of southern Italy – must have helped alleviate Hannibal’s daily supply problems somewhat. Hannibal had turned waiting patiently for his enemies to make mistakes into an art form, and it would have made little sense to commit to battle precipitously.

  Marcellus, for his part, probably had little strategic reason to initiate a battle with Hannibal. The latter had destroyed three Roman armies; indeed, the survivors from the most recent catastrophe at Cannae formed a significant portion of Marcellus’ army at Nola. Not that Hannibal’s reputation would have been sufficient to stop Marcellus; he clearly liked to play against the odds. But he had never, so far as we know, seen the Carthaginian’s army in battle, nor had he actually witnessed Hannibal’s tactics. It was one thing to be courageous and quite another to be foolhardy. In the context of any larger strategy, forcing a battle in the current circumstances was likely not a sound strategy. At that particular moment, the city of Rome was recovering from Cannae; the consul Varro had returned to the city to give his report; and the senate was deliberating how to rally to the grave challenge Hannibal posed. Many of the most important Greek cities of south Italy had transferred their allegiances to Hannibal. Now the powerful city of Capua had forged an alliance with the Carthaginian. With this arrangement, the allegiance of the entire region of Campania, which it is worth noting again was just south of Latium, was hanging by a thread. Neapolis had remained loyal to the Roman cause, but a Roman failure at Nola could cause the Neapolitans to have a change of heart.42 Securing Nola, maintaining the Roman position in Campania, and providing the senate with time to recover and plan were paramount among the strategic goals Marcellus entertained, or certainly should have been. None of these goals was served by committing to a pitched battle hastily. And so, the two armies and their commanders apparently waited for days. When Marcellus received word of the nocturnal meetings between Carthaginians and Nolan conspirators, however, he withdrew his army into the walls of Nola and planned to test Hannibal in battle.43 Marcellus must have judged the benefits of waiting were now outweighed by the disadvantage of giving the Nolan conspirators time to solidify their plans against the Roman army.

  Livy and Plutarch report Marcellus’ battle plan as follows. The walls of Nola had three gates facing the Carthaginian camp and Marcellus intended to use these gates to launch an attack. The obvious danger, however, was that the Nolan conspirators would close the city gates to the Roman army once it engaged Hannibal, leaving the army trapped between two hostile forces. To guard against any betrayal within the city, the baggage train and camp servants were left within the city walls along with the wounded and a reserve force of soldiers. This group would ensure that the city walls remained in Roman hands while the army engaged in battle. To guard further against any attempt to close the gates behind the Roman army, Marcellus issued an order that none of the Nolans were to come near the walls or gates of the city.44

  Then Marcellus stationed his best legionaries at the center gate along with the Roman citizen cavalry, while the allied cavalry, light infantry, and newest recruits in the army were stationed at the gates on either side.45 Either these preparations too
k some time or Marcellus paused after making arrangements for a few days because Hannibal was caught off-guard by several days of Roman inactivity. Livy and Plutarch suggest he assumed that the Romans had surrendered the field to him completely and gave the orders to bring up siege equipment.46 At this point when a portion of the Carthaginian army was occupied elsewhere making siege preparations, Marcellus gave the orders to attack. Complete with blasts of the trumpets and shouts intended to startle the enemy, Marcellus ordered the heavy infantry, supported by the cavalry, to close quickly with the Carthaginian forces.47

  The element of surprise was with the Romans. In such battles it was not necessary that the enemy be caught completely unawares to gain an advantage; introducing any uncertainty and fear into the minds of the enemy combatants could turn the tide. Mental uncertainty translated into less effective fighting, sometimes even chaos, and the collapse of enemy units. The loud initial noises, the continued shouts of the baggage train, and the rush of the Roman army at an unexpected moment successfully disrupted the Carthaginian center. Once the center was clearly thrown into some confusion, Marcellus’ lieutenants manning the side gates issued forth with cavalry and light infantry to attack the flanks of the Carthaginian force.48 Marcellus had executed a well-planned surprise attack designed to disrupt, demoralize, and drive off the enemy. Still, the battle was far more a moral victory than a decisive blow of any sort. Even Livy, who had no experience of military affairs and was not above trusting inflated casualty reports, was reluctant to believe that so many as 2,800 Carthaginians died and only 500 Romans. Plutarch, on the other hand, gave the larger and more even number of 5,000 Carthaginian dead.49

  Regardless of the actual casualties inflicted, the attack was quite successful. It drove off the Carthaginian army, secured Nola, and demonstrated that there was a Roman field army in Campania that would fight, and could win. Indeed, this victory became a core part of Marcellus’ historical reputation. The distinction was so commonplace that 170 years later Cicero compared his spirits raised by a letter from a friend to the Roman people first picking themselves up after Cannae because of Marcellus’ victory at Nola.50 Livy, for his part, waxed poetically a generation later when he said, ‘I rather think that the greatest thing in that war was accomplished that day. For not to be defeated by Hannibal was a more difficult thing than it was later to defeat him,’ a sentiment uttered later by Valerius Maximus and Plutarch.51 An exaggeration, to be sure, but it must have been a significant bolster to Roman morale that Marcellus was the first Roman commander to have any success against Hannibal in battle. The Carthaginian was not invincible.

  Repulsed at Nola, without hope of easily acquiring the city, and with the constant pressure to supply and motivate his army, Hannibal must have felt he could not afford to spend more time in his current camp. Consequently, his army moved to nearby Acerrae.52 This town lay between Capua and Nola and was less than ten miles from Neapolis, that port city still arguably a primary objective for the Campanian campaign. The men of Acerrae, and though Livy does not say, presumably the women and children, abandoned the town as Hannibal made preparations to besiege it. Emptied of any resistance, the Carthaginians plundered the city and set it afire.53

  Meanwhile, now that the danger from the Carthaginian army was momentarily averted, Marcellus turned his attention to the conspirators in Nola. He set up headquarters in the town forum and launched an inquiry into the identities of the Nolans who had met with the Carthaginians. More than seventy, Livy records, were convicted of treason.54 In a time of war outside the city of Rome, however, conviction hardly implies anything like a formal trial. Though Marcellus may have wanted to conduct a fair investigation so as to secure the loyalty of Nola further, as the supreme Roman military commander there, he technically needed only to satisfy himself that these seventy-plus Nolans were guilty. Once satisfied, the guilty were beheaded and their property forfeited to the Romans – such was the power of consular imperium in action.

  With that grim business concluded and Nola secured for the future, Marcellus withdrew his forces to a camp north of Suessula. Perhaps this was in response to news of Hannibal at Acerrae, though the precise chronology is not clear. Even if not, the camp was well located. Midway and within a good half day’s march of both Capua and Nola, the camp allowed Marcellus to pressure the former and provide support for the latter. From there, he could also guard the leg of the Appian Way that extended from Campania into nearby Beneventum, an important Roman colony in Samnium. Occupying this position allowed Marcellus to restrict Hannibal’s movements both by containing him in Campania and putting pressure on his newly acquired and important Capuan allies; Roman cavalry could patrol the countryside and attack foragers while the full army could mobilize if needed for a larger threat. Marcellus’ choice of camp was advantageous enough that it was maintained for years later, and dubbed the castra Claudiana (or ‘Claudian Camp’) after its founder.55

  It appears that encamping above Suessula did put pressure on Hannibal. After the sack of Acerrae, Hannibal was concerned that the Capuans might return to the Roman fold with a Roman army encamped so near, and so marched his forces north to Casilinum, only a few miles distant from Capua, to make sure that Capua kept to its newly struck alliance.56 Casilinum was held by a small Roman garrison and guarded, as noted earlier, two major roads to Rome. The fact that Hannibal did not march on Rome after Cannae suggests that attacking the city, which most historians agree would have been futile, was not part of his strategy. Nevertheless, taking Casilinum would certainly keep his options open and kept the danger of an attack on Rome – however remote – present in the mind of Marcellus and other commanders. Obfuscation was a critical strategic tool in an ancient commander’s kit, and the threat of an attack could serve to pin an enemy commander and force down just as effectively as an actual attack.

  Casilinum was garrisoned by a force of perhaps 1,000 soldiers, mostly from the Latin towns of Praeneste and Perusia.57 Hannibal dispatched a small detachment ahead of his army to negotiate for the surrender of the city and the installment of a Carthaginian garrison. The detachment was driven off by the Casilinum garrison, however, and Hannibal soon arrived with his main force, intending to storm the city.58 The garrison successfully blunted the Carthaginian attack, however, and Hannibal shifted to siege tactics, attempting to mine the city walls. What an impressive force those Latin soldiers must have been; no more than 1,000 strong, they held off the great Hannibal and his army. They headed off the Carthaginian mines with their own countermines and stalled the enemy attempts to undermine the walls.

  Thwarted for the time being and with winter approaching, Hannibal left a small force in a reinforced camp and took the bulk of his army to Capua to spend the winter months.59 Marcellus’ army, on the other hand, wintered at the castra Claudiana above Suessula. Finally, sometime in the autumn or winter of 216, the army that had been hastily assembled at Rome after Cannae – two city legions, composed partly of freed slaves and pardoned murderers – encamped near Casilinum.60 This force of some 25,000 was under the command of the dictator Marcus Junius Pera and his second-in-command – the position Romans titled ‘master of cavalry’ – Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Gracchus was one of the curule aediles for 21661 before Pera selected him to be master of horse. Livy notes that these soldiers were levied in the aftermath of Cannae but makes no reference to their destination or activities until the spring of 215, at which point he notes that Gracchus waited in camp with the army, commanded to undertake no action, while the dictator was fulfilling important religious obligations at Rome.62 Perhaps this simply reflects that it took some time after Cannae to levy troops, form legions, and march to Casilinum, since presumably they could have helped relieve Casilinum if they had arrived earlier. Most likely, this hastily levied force consisting largely of soldiers drawn, from a Roman perspective, from the dregs of society, was intended to remain fixed near Casilinum to guard the roads to Rome while the senate undertook the required administrative recovery after Can
nae. It may have been considered far too chancy at this critical stage in the war to commit untrusted troops to battle unnecessarily.

  Winter arrived, major military operations ceased with the exception of the blockade at Casilinum, and at Rome a number of loose ends had to be tied. Among the most important of these was the replenishment of the senate. It had been five years since the senate roll had been updated and many had died in the past few years, some from old age, but certainly many more in the battles against Hannibal.63 A second dictator – pretty much unheard of to Romans – was appointed solely for the purpose of revising the lists of senators.64 Ordinarily, vacancies in the senate, historians think, were filled by those who had held public office, but in 216 there were far too many vacancies to be filled in this way. Accordingly, the dictator, M. Fabius Buteo, went beyond this standard approach to include Romans who had not held office but who, in Livy’s words, ‘had spoils of the enemy affixed to their houses or had received the civic wreath’65 the latter a reward for saving a citizen in battle.

  According to Livy, it was after the senate rolls had been revised that the senate instructed Marcellus, the dictator Pera, and his master of horse Gracchus to leave their forces under subordinates and report to the senate at Rome. The three complied, and following their reports, Pera initiated the elections for magistrates for the following year (215).66 Lucius Postumius Albinus, the praetor who had spent the year in Gaul, was elected consul in absentia and his colleague was Pera’s master of horse, Gracchus. The praetors elected for the year were Marcus Valerius Laevinus, Appius Claudius Pulcher, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, this last one for the second time.67

  These names in and of themselves should not register with most readers, but the omission of Marcellus’ name from among them is surprising until one recalls that the Roman electorate did not limit itself to electing only those with the best military records. In the elections for 216, however, Marcellus had been one of a number of well-qualified candidates that were passed over. His omission from the elections for 215 underscores, however, that even in times of great military need, elections followed the normal lines, whereby there was far more to winning office than a successful record as a commander. Here was the only commander who had won any sort of victory against Hannibal, a man who had kept Campania secure and discharged his duties for the year admirably, to say the least. These were all achievements of the last few months before the elections, yet he was not elected to office.