The Sword of Rome

by Jeremiah McCall

  The way in which Hannibal dealt with Herdonea after the victory illustrates the logistical and operational difficulties he faced at that stage in the war. After years of campaigning in Italy, he simply lacked the forces and the loyalty of sufficient Italian city states to enjoy a secure position. Rather, his army continued to play the role of a formidable band of marauders, certainly safer in southern Italy than elsewhere, but hardly secure. It may have been a sound strategy, therefore, though it certainly seems desperate, that Hannibal deported the population of Herdonea to Thurii and Metapontum and then razed the town.7 Its loyalties were suspect; its position was strategically important; and Hannibal’s forces were too few to garrison it.

  Soon after the Roman defeat at Herdonea, Marcellus drafted a letter to the senate intended to bolster its courage: he would engage Hannibal and exact revenge for Herdonea. His army left its position in Samnium and marched south over the rugged hills to the town of Numistro in Lucania, perhaps sixty or seventy miles away. There Marcellus found Hannibal’s army encamped on a hill and ordered his soldiers to pitch camp on a nearby plain within sight of the Carthaginian. Once the camp was established, Marcellus taunted Hannibal to battle, forming his lines facing the enemy with the left flank anchored by the town. The first legion and right allied wing occupied the front lines while the third legion and left wing made up the reserve. Hannibal accepted the challenge and arranged his forces with the right wing extended up the hillside and the Spanish infantry in the front.8

  The two armies engaged in what must have been an exhausting struggle. Livy says that the Roman left and Carthaginian right first clashed at the third hour, roughly 9.00 am by modern reckoning, and fought until dusk, with Hannibal adding war elephants to the fray at some point in the fight. Make no mistake; individual soldiers were certainly not fighting for their lives for nine or ten hours straight without relief. By any reckoning, there must have been numerous pauses in the fighting as the men clashed then fell back, even if only a pace or two to recover and test the mettle of the enemy through shouts and threats – if they had sufficient breath to do so.9 As it happened, the forces were well matched that day, and there would be no quick victory. Indeed, as dusk approached, Marcellus relieved the front lines by sending in the third legion and left wing; Hannibal also cycled in fresh troops. The battle reignited with a fury, but nightfall quickly put an end to any thought of continuing the battle. The next day, Marcellus arranged his forces for battle again, but Hannibal kept his army inside its camp on the hill. The Romans, though no doubt with scouts carefully watching the hill, took advantage of the de facto truce to despoil the enemy corpses from the previous day and burn their own dead. Hannibal, though, must have judged that he had nothing to gain by continuing the battle when the armies were so evenly matched; he struck camp that night and withdrew east to Apulia under cover of darkness.10

  For Hannibal, close battles such as these drained manpower that he could ill afford to lose. Marcellus was fighting under no such limitations; even after the catastrophic defeats early in the war, the Romans could still sustain losses far more readily, especially when those losses contributed to the ultimate defeat of the invader. It is no surprise then that the consul opted to pursue the Carthaginian army. He left the Roman wounded at Numistro under the protection of a detachment then marched after Hannibal. The Romans, or at least their commander, must have been more motivated to re-engage the Carthaginians than the latter were to escape, for the Roman army caught up with Hannibal outside the colony of Venusia, approximately twenty miles distant from Numistro. The two armies camped again and tested one another with their infantry and cavalry vanguards. Presumably, Hannibal would have committed his armies to a full engagement if the skirmishes had revealed any weaknesses in the Roman position. They did not. After a few days, the Carthaginians again struck camp at night and moved to Apulia. Marcellus’ forces doggedly followed Hannibal’s army over the next few days, scouting well during the day for traps along the route that Hannibal had marched the night before.11

  The pursuit must have continued until the end of the campaigning season, since Marcellus drafted a letter to the senate late in that year or early in the next reporting that he continued to pressure the Carthaginian to fight. Presumably, Marcellus indicated in that letter that it would be better for him not to leave his troops to hold the consular elections at Rome. In any event, the senate decided to summon Laevinus, still in Sicily, so that Marcellus could keep his post.12 It would appear that Hannibal continued to avoid engaging Marcellus that year, however, for no battle was reported, and the next thing we know from Livy, it was spring of 209 and Marcellus had been granted proconsular imperium to continue his operations in Apulia. He was assigned the legions he had commanded as consul, but the several thousand survivors of Centumalus’ army at Herdonia were sent in disgrace to bolster the Cannae legions in Sicily.13

  The war strain experienced by the Romans had only worsened with the passage of another year. Where Roman citizens had complained the year before, now dissatisfaction had sparked among the allies. Beyond the simple fact that Rome’s allies had provided no fewer, and likely many more, troops to the war effort than the Romans themselves, the precipitating event seems to have been the news that the survivors of Herdonea, many of them allied troops, were being exiled to Sicily. Moved to protest, twelve of the thirty Latin colonies’ delegates at Rome declared to the consuls that they simply could not provide any additional troops or funds for the war effort. This was a serious stand – the twelve were violating their formal treaty obligations with the Romans and setting a precedent that could decimate Rome’s ability to prosecute the war. The news hit the senate hard. Without any clear solution to the problem, the senate instructed the consuls to act as they saw fit in the Republic’s interests. Accordingly, the consuls checked the mood of the remaining eighteen colonies. The delegates from each of these assured the Romans that they were ready to meet their annual troop requirements and, according to the version Livy preserves, that they would patriotically supply even more if called upon. The senate officially thanked and praised the eighteen colonies, and even two centuries later Livy dutifully preserved the names of the towns. The twelve treaty violators were shunned, neither reprimanded or dismissed.14

  The meeting of the senate and the decisions made at the beginning of this consular year are particularly interesting because they are recorded in some detail by Livy and give a better-than-usual picture of some of the types of issues the senate faced in the middle years of the war. First of all, there were still more signs of war strain. The spontaneous donation of precious metals by the aristocracy in the previous year had not fully relieved the Republic’s financial straits. Consequently, the senate decreed that the gold supplies the Republic collected from a five per cent tax on freed slaves be drawn upon to continue funding the war effort. Since the gold, apparently 4,000 pounds of it, was distributed to each of the consuls and proconsuls, and 100 was allocated for the citadel of Tarentum, under Roman control, it would seem these funds were used primarily to pay and supply soldiers.

  The senate’s efforts to keep the Republic upright and fighting for the year could not be complete, however, without addressing the various signs of the gods’ displeasure. Livy reports an interesting mix of prodigies this year, too good to pass up, if for no other reason than that they illustrate some of the possible signs the Romans believed the gods could present. (Note that the pulvinaria referred to were the couches and cushions set aside in the temples for the gods to sit upon.)

  On the Alban Mount a statue of Jupiter and a tree near the temple had been struck by lightning; and at Ostia a basin, and at Capua the city wall and the temple of Fortune, and at Sinuessa the wall and a gate. Also some persons testified that the current of the outlet of the Alban Lake was blood red and that at Rome inside the cella of the Temple of Fors Fortuna a small image on a garland fell of itself from the head of the statue into the hand. And at Privernum it was established that an ox spoke, and that in the c
rowded market place a vulture flew down upon a shop, and that at Sinuessa a child was born of an uncertain sex, as between male and female ... also that it rained milk there, and that a child was born with the head of an elephant. These prodigies were atoned for with full grown [sacrificial] victims, and prayers were ordered at all the pulvinaria and entreaties for one day.15

  Reading the list of omens presented by Livy, which were hardly unique to this year, is an excellent corrective for any who think of the Romans as modern rationalists simply dressed in ancient garb. It never hurts to be reminded that, for the Romans, maintaining the proper, balanced relationship with the gods was considered a critical duty of the government, even more so in times of war.

  Most illuminating of all in the report of the initial senate meeting for the year was the fact that Roman aristocrats continued at their usual business of political competition. The continued presence of an invader in Italy, the strain to Roman funds, the small-scale rebellion of twelve Latin colonies, and the abundance of bad omens from the gods for the year did nothing to stop the wrangling for prestige and position. The consul Flaccus conducted the elections for censors; Marcus Cornelius Cethegus and Publius Sempronius Tuditanus were elected. One of their first orders of business was to choose the princeps senatus (‘first man of the senate’), a great honour for an aristocrat. They did not have to agree on the candidate; perhaps it was because two censors would usually not agree on whom to bestow the honour that it was normally decided by lot which censor had the right to choose the princeps. The lot, which for Romans represented the will of the gods, fell to Tuditanus. Cethegus apparently did not agree with his colleague’s inclinations and demanded Tuditanus follow custom and choose the senator among them all who had first been elected censor: Titus Manlius Torquatus. Tuditanus shot back that the lot showed the gods wanted him to make the choice and, therefore, he was free to make whatever choice he wished. He chose Fabius Maximus, whom he believed to be the premier citizen of the state, regardless of custom. The censors argued vehemently about whom to award the honour, but Cethegus finally yielded and Fabius, Tuditanus’ choice, was honoured with the title princeps senatus.16 This is yet another example of how the rules and customs of the Republic could be quite malleable when applied to the competition for offices and honours.

  The censors next attended to the business of revising and updating the roll of senators, passing over several eligible men who had not been steadfast in their commitment to Roman victory. Finally, the senate moved to punish those whose contributions to the war were deemed less than satisfactory. First came the punishments for the Cannae legions, still the scapegoats of choice for the Republic. Those cavalry troopers among the Cannae legions who had been serving with a state-supplied horse were now stripped of those horses and required to serve their full ten years of required military service with their own horses, regardless of the years they had already served – a little arithmetic shows that these soldiers had served at least seven years, including their fight at Cannae. Then the senate directed its attention to those of the cavalry class who had been at least seventeen at the beginning of the war – and thus liable to provide military service – but had not served. These citizens were stripped of their political status and made into aerarii, those who had no right to vote or hold office, and had no military obligations.17

  After concluding these various official matters, the consuls headed south, Fulvius to Capua and Fabius to Tarentum in hope of relieving the Roman garrison holed up in the citadel and taking the port city. It appears, going by Livy’s account, that the capture of Tarentum ranked highest on the list of Roman objectives. Accordingly, Fabius, who commanded operations in the region of Tarentum, asked Marcellus to keep Hannibal occupied. No doubt Marcellus, who had spent the better part of the previous year pursuing the Carthaginian forces, readily agreed, perhaps even feeling what Livy attributed to him: ‘[Marcellus] had come to believe that no Roman was so good a match for Hannibal as himself.’18 When spring came, Marcellus led his forces from their winter quarters – presumably in Apulia – and made contact with Hannibal’s army at Canusium. Hannibal was at work turning the town to his cause. The arrival of the Roman army changed his plans, however, and he led his troops away from the plains around Canusium toward more wooded ground. The Romans followed, and initially it must have looked to them as if another season would be spent marching round the Apulian countryside with little to show for it. Still, Marcellus hoped to draw his enemy into battle or perhaps catch him in some mistake. Camping close to the Carthaginians after every march, he drew his forces into battle lines. Hannibal, however, though willing to send out cavalry and infantry skirmishers, would not commit to a full battle.19

  The situation changed one evening when the Roman army finally caught its enemy on the march. It must have been a chaotic affair as soldiers clashed in the failing light, but the Romans successfully prevented the Carthaginians from building a regular camp. When the encroaching darkness separated the armies, both hastily constructed whatever encampments they could in the open plain. The proximity of the enemy likely made it far too risky for Hannibal to disengage fully. Perhaps, too, the morale of his soldiers was not high enough to risk refusing battle yet again. Whatever the case, when Marcellus ordered his soldiers into their positions the next morning, Hannibal followed suit. There was to be a battle that day.20

  That particular day, Marcellus stationed the allied right wing in the front line along with the extraordinarii, those soldiers hand-handpicked for exceptional fitness and ability. The line persevered through two hours of fighting, but eventually showed signs of wavering. Marcellus commanded his reserve legion to the front to relieve the troops. The reserves were moving into position as the front line yielded. Then, something went terribly wrong. Livy’s version suggests that the troops handled the maneuver poorly; the quickly yielding front lines were relieved too slowly by the plodding reserves.21 Plutarch, however, suggests that Marcellus made a poor decision and that the very decision to send in reserves at that point and in that way caused the disruption, not any failure on the soldiers’ parts.22 While assessment of blame would prove important in the following months, the immediate practical effects remained the same. Confusion bred fear, fear sparked panic, and the Roman battle line collapsed. Even were our sources for the battle eyewitnesses and multiplied in number, it would be impossible to know the exact sparks that led to the rout. The physical and psychological stress of the battlefield could build one person’s fear into a wave of chaos. An individual’s uneasiness raised the apprehension of others, which in turn increased that individual’s stress in a feedback loop that could disintegrate armies.23 On that particular day, in that particular catastrophe, several thousand Romans died in the rout, six military standards were lost, and the army retreated to its camp.24 Though they differ in the attribution of responsibility, both Livy and Plutarch agreed that Marcellus chastised his troops’ cowardice that evening. Whether that was the course he chose, Marcellus must have been frustrated that things had gone so terribly wrong.

  Here an interesting problem appears in the sources. Livy and Plutarch suggest that Marcellus gave orders to his soldiers to prepare for battle again on the next day. In this second battle, the defeated troops of the allied wing and the Roman cohorts that had been routed returned to the front line to redeem themselves. The eighteenth legion occupied the right wing, seemingly held back in reserve according to Livy’s description. According to Livy, Marcellus indicated that he would personally lead the troops that had lost their standards the day before. This is followed by a reference to Marcellus at the center of the battle line, encouraging his soldiers and witnessing their performance.25 Though he essentially agrees on the details of the battle, however, Plutarch makes no reference to Marcellus in the front ranks. His only relevant comment is that the general saw a point of confusion in the Carthaginian line and ordered his cavalry to charge at the weak spot.26 The Roman front line, according to the sources, engaged Hannibal’s Spanish infan
try, tough veteran soldiers. The centers of the two battle lines fought in close combat for some time without reaching any decision. Hoping to tilt the scales, Hannibal ordered war elephants to be brought to the front. The elephants and their drivers assaulted a spot in the line and caused considerable panic among the Romans at the center. A junior officer, Gaius Decimus Flavus assessed the situation and acted swiftly to restore his soldiers’ morale. He grabbed the standard from a unit of hastati not yet panicked by the elephants and ordered the soldiers to follow him. At his command the hastati cast their pila at the elephants. The creatures, shocked and maddened by their injuries and likely wishing they were grazing peacefully on an African plain, not engaging in the follies of humans, turned and stampeded. They rampaged through their own battle lines, disrupting the Spanish formations as they fled through their own ranks to escape the noise and pain of the battle. The Carthaginian line collapsed in the panic and confusion, egged on by the Roman cavalry that Marcellus dispatched to the center when he observed the failing enemy line.27 The Carthaginian forces fled to their camp pursued by the Romans, elated by their success. Between the continued damage wreaked by the elephants, and the vengeance sought by the Romans, the Carthaginian forces were slaughtered. Perhaps 8,000 died that day on the Carthaginian side. The Romans suffered high casualties as well, considering they were the victors; perhaps close to 3,000 soldiers died and many others were wounded.28 Indeed, the number of wounded was substantial enough that it prevented Marcellus from pursuing Hannibal when he led his army away that night. The best the Roman commander could manage was to send scouts to track Hannibal’s movements; they gave word that the commander had led his forces south to Bruttium, the ‘toe’ of the Italian peninsula.29 Marcellus, however, returned his army to its winter quarters at Venusia, though it was still only the middle of the summer.30