Hannibal's Dynasty

by Dexter Hoyos

  It is economical to suppose that the boy came with his brother-in-law and

  namesake after the older Hasdrubal put down the rebellion in Numidia.

  Young Hasdrubal had been born around 244, if a late writer is correct in

  making him three years younger than Hannibal; so he would have been ten or

  eleven when his namesake came to Africa to deal with the Numidians. Hamil-

  car had had his eldest son by him from the age of nine, and judged the years

  of older childhood, merging into early youth, as the right ones to start train-

  ing each boy in warfare and leadership. At any rate Polybius describes his

  youngest son Mago as ‘trained from boyhood in military matters’. Mago,

  born around 241 or 240, will have come to Spain just before or not long after

  his father’s death.

  By 218 the younger Hasdrubal was experienced enough, and respected

  enough, for his elder brother to deputise him to govern Punic Spain while

  Hannibal was away. Mago, in his early twenties at most, marched with Hanni-

  bal and was given crucial tasks like commanding the ambush corps at the

  battle of the Trebia. Hamilcar obviously meant all three to qualify for high

  position in Punic Spain and at home. This was a normal enough ambition in

  any aristocratic leader, and all the more then to be expected in Hamilcar.

  After all he was now—so long as victories continued and Spain’s riches kept

  flowing—supreme in the state and the focus of political enthusiasms both at

  Carthage and in his expanding province. (The story that he claimed he was

  rearing lion-cubs to ruin the Romans belongs, on the other hand, to the

  revenge-war legend.)15

  Grooming for high position meant training in war primarily, as Polybius

  writes of Mago. Skill on horseback and with weapons, and in commanding

  formations large and small, had to be gained, and by the end of 229 both

  Hannibal and Hasdrubal were campaigning with their father. But literacy and

  a knowledge of the world, present and past, were equally necessary. Nor

  could this education be limited to purely Punic matters or be put in purely

  Punic terms, important though these—like the Barcids’ Punic religion—

  remained. A good grasp of the Greek language had been desirable or

  essential to a Carthaginian aristocrat for a long time, given their city’s links

  in peace and war with the Greek world, Sicily above all. With that world

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  revolutionized by Alexander the Great and his successors and imitators both

  eastern and western, the need for Carthaginians to understand Hellenistic

  civilization had become at least as great as its attractions already were.

  Hannibal was taught Greek by a Spartan named Sosylus. He seems to have

  become fluent in the language, so Sosylus probably arrived in Hamilcar’s

  time. Sparta was no longer the officious military state of older times but

  Spartan expatriates were well regarded abroad—for instance Xanthippus, the

  professional soldier who had saved the Carthaginians from Regulus. Sosylus

  may have known something of war too, to judge from the one surviving frag-

  ment of his history of the Second Punic War. He became a devoted friend of

  his pupil, went with him on his epic quest against Rome, remained with Han-

  nibal ‘as long as fortune allowed’ (Nepos writes) and then wrote his history,

  which irritated Polybius but was still read 200 years later.

  At some date Hannibal’s circle was joined by another notable Greek.

  Silenus, of Cale Acte in Sicily, also followed him ‘while fortune allowed’.

  Later he too wrote an influential account of the war against Rome, though

  neither it nor Sosylus’ survives. The two men’s association with the Barcid

  family illustrates the family’s Greek connexions and interests. Hannibal in

  later years would deal with Greeks, in Italy and Asia Minor, easily and on the

  same cultural level; his military talents and methods matched Alexander’s.

  Even so the connexions need not be overestimated. Greece was still produc-

  ing mercenary officers, not just soldiers, but though Punic armies continued

  to hire the soldiers no Greek (not even a Spartan) ever held a high command

  again.16

  VII

  Hamilcar next struck into the hinterland of Acra Leuce. It was late 229 or

  very early in 228, since Polybius writes that he spent nearly nine years in Spain

  and perished ten years before the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218;

  and Diodorus shows that his death took place in winter. Polybius and Livy

  also attest that his successor Hasdrubal held power for eight years before

  being assassinated late in 221. Hamilcar met his end probably not long into

  the winter of 229–228, as we shall see.

  His sons Hannibal and Hasdrubal accompanied him while his son-in-law

  held a separate command elsewhere. As Diodorus tells it, he laid the town of

  Helice under siege but then sent the bulk of his army and the elephants to

  winter-quarters at Acra Leuce. With the remaining Punic forces thus weak-

  ened, a new danger arose. The ‘king of the Orissi’ arrived with an army,

  feigning a wish for friendship and alliance with the Carthaginians but in fact

  aiming to help the besieged. At the right moment he attacked Hamilcar’s

  troops and put them to flight.

  Barca saved his sons and his friends by sending them off on one road

  while he took a different one to draw off the pursuit. As the enemy, led by

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  their king, were about to overtake him he plunged on horseback into a broad

  flooding river to perish. But Hannibal and his brother escaped to Acra Leuce,

  where their brother-in-law Hasdrubal soon joined them with other troops.

  ‘Helice’, the town Hamilcar was besieging, can hardly have been Ilici, the

  modern Elche: as mentioned earlier, this lay only 12 miles (20 kilometres) or

  so south-west of Acra Leuce and astride the road to the rest of Punic Spain.

  It would have been strange, and hard, for Hamilcar to found his city if a

  strong hostile centre stood so near. Nor was there much need for winter-

  quarters in those parts, a district where Europe’s biggest palm-forest has

  flourished for a millennium, or much difference between the climates of the

  two towns. Again, if Ilici had submitted at first to Punic domination but now

  revolted, it was acting in dangerous isolation. The only help came from the

  Orissi, in Roman times called Oretani, whose territory lay on the plateau of

  La Mancha and in the eastern Sierra Morena over 100 miles (160 kilometres)

  distant in a straight line—and in reality a much longer and more difficult

  route, across the mountains.17

  Hamilcar’s target was probably a different ‘Helice’ inland. The trouble is

  that there is no place known by that name. Ilucia, a stronghold of the Oretani

  themselves according to Livy (in a later context), does not suit. Diodorus

  implies, if anything, that ‘Helice’ was not Oretanian—and if it was, the Ore-

  tanian king would hardly turn up to help one of his own towns only when a

  siege was well under way. Nor would he have then been able to put Hamilcar

  so completely off his guard.

  Less
likely still is it that ‘Helice’ stood somewhere near the river Iber (the

  Ebro) far to the north—although the Byzantine versifier Tzetzes so names

  the river that claimed Barca. Tzetzes is just guessing wrongly. The Ebro valley

  lay beyond the Carthaginians’ attested areas of action until the end of the

  220s, not to mention lying even further from Oretanian territory than Ilici

  did. In turn it would be incomprehensible that Hamilcar should choose to

  send the bulk of his forces (elephants included) all the way back to Acra

  Leuce and maroon himself with the rest hundreds of miles away in hostile

  country. For the same reason we must rule out Alce, a Celtiberian stronghold

  about halfway between the upper reaches of the rivers Anas and Tagus, north

  of the Oretani.18

  As it happens, there is a second Elche in the south-east: the small town of

  Elche de la Sierra, in dramatically wild terrain in the heart of the mountains,

  about 65 miles (115 kilometres) west of the first and only 3 miles north of

  the river Segura, the ancient Tader. There are drawbacks: its ancient name is

  unknown (even assuming the town existed then) and the region gives no

  good access westwards. But only 20 miles (32 kilometres) to the east, today’s

  Hellín is probably ancient Ilunum, on the route southwards from Saltigi

  (Chinchilla near Albacete) to the coast—later to be a Roman road. This

  inland route linked up at Saltigi with an east–west one, another Roman road-

  to-be, giving access to the plain of La Mancha and the upper reaches of the

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  river Anas. Tobarra, on the same road a few miles north, was very likely the

  Turbola listed by the geographer Ptolemy among the Bastetani of south-

  eastern Spain; and the town of Cieza, on the road 30 miles (50 kilometres)

  south across rough but low-lying country, may have been ancient Segisa,

  another Bastetanian centre.

  Ptolemy also lists two places called Arcilacis, giving one to the Turduli and

  the other to the Bastetani. He is probably repeating one and the same place.

  It cannot be located with any exactness, but the name is noteworthy. Greek

  and Roman writers rendered Spanish place-names in varying ways (especially

  the obscurer ones): as an example, the towns of Aurinx and Orongis that

  Livy mentions in different passages were probably identical—and may in fact

  have really been Aurgi, modern Jaén. ‘Helice’ could well be a different form

  of Arcilacis; or else Diodorus’ source mistakenly supposed that Arcilacis and

  Ilici were the same.19

  Livy, as noted earlier, names the place where Hamilcar died as Castrum

  Altum. Some distance away was a Mons Victoriae or ‘Victory Mountain’,

  though that need not have been named from his defeat. The names point to

  mountainous terrain for Hamilcar’s end. Livy’s own context is military opera-

  tions in the south-east in the Second Punic War. These operations afterwards

  involved the towns of Castulo in the eastern Sierra Morena, Iliturgi on the

  Baetis not far from Castulo, and Bigerra, identified either as a place not far

  east of Castulo and Iliturgi or as one in the mountains west of Ilunum and

  north-west of Elche de la Sierra. The campaign itself is debatable but it

  seems, all the same, that Livy’s source used actual topographical names. They

  indicate that the upper Baetis valley was strategically accessible from the

  region where Barca met his death.20

  ‘Helice’ then may well have stood somewhere in the rugged country south

  or south-west of Saltigi, whether or not Elche de la Sierra marks the site. It

  would have been a strongpoint—not necessarily the only one—from which

  the local tribe dominated the route between the coast and the inland plains,

  or at least their refuge when things went badly.

  Barca’s strategic plan can be reasonably inferred. He meant to subdue the

  hinterland of Acra Leuce, moving through the high country to the eastern

  reaches of the river Anas. Since his first campaign had brought the lands

  around the lower Anas into his power, the final goal of this new drive may

  have been to round off control of the entire river north of the Sierra

  Morena.

  Access from beyond that range to the ore-rich areas around Castulo was

  (until quite modern times) chiefly by the pass of Despeñaperros, 30 miles (50

  kilometres) or so north of Castulo. Mastery of the Anas riverlands would

  safeguard Punic possession of the silver-bearing mountains on their north-

  ern side. Equally it would mean a convenient start-line for further

  annexations, if and when they were wanted. Hamilcar surely saw no need to

  stop his empire-building at the Anas—or even at the Tagus. Central and

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  north-eastern Spain was the homeland of the warlike Celtiberians, valuable as

  allies and dangerous if hostile. To their west on the plains around the river

  Durius (now the Duero), the Vettones and Vaccaei grew plentiful harvests of

  grain.

  With all of these the Carthaginians would have had long-standing contact

  through trade and mercenary-recruiting. Before 229, too, Barca may well

  have sought closer links with communities north of the Sierra Morena.

  Almost certainly the town of Castulo, in the heart of the silver-lands of that

  range and an Oretanian city according to later writers, was within the Punic

  area of dominance by then—otherwise his activities over on the east side of

  Spain, with so glaring a gap in his control of the Baetis heartland, are inexpli-

  cable. Larger or stronger towns within a Spanish tribal region did act fairly

  independently (Numantia in Celtiberia is an obvious later case) but, if Punic

  hegemony had now spread to their southern kinsmen, the Oretani-Orissi

  beyond the Sierra Morena too may well have struck up a friendship or

  alliance with Hamilcar. This would help explain why he was taken in by their

  king when that person arrived offering military support against the enemy at

  ‘Helice’.

  But not every Spanish leader or people welcomed being under Punic domi-

  nation, however mild. The people of ‘Helice’ did not; nor did the

  Oretani-Orissi, who faced the prospect of firmer control or even ultimate

  conversion from allies into tribute-paying subjects.

  Significantly, the siege of ‘Helice’ was still on when winter caught up with

  the Carthaginians. If campaigning had begun in spring 229 as usual, Hamilcar

  must have reached the town only after working through other areas—

  starving out or storming places like Segisa, Ilunum and Turbola one after the

  other. Plainly ‘Helice’ was both well sited and held by a fairly small though

  hardy force. This would account for Hamilcar deciding to send most of his

  army back to the coast even though the town was holding out. He did not

  expect to overwhelm it by weight of numbers but would let a winter-

  blockade do the work. Sending off the bulk of the army, including the

  elephant corps, eased his own problems of supply and was done probably at

  the start of winter, late in 229, for to leave it until well into the season would

  have been undesirable (especially for the animal
s). Diodorus moreover

  implies a certain amount of time between the ensuing disaster and Has-

  drubal’s vengeance on the Orissi, which was the new general’s first military

  move in 228.

  Despite his reduced strength Barca can hardly have thought there was

  much danger, for he kept both sons with him. The arrival of the Orissi with

  their king did not alarm him: had he been expecting their support and thus

  felt able to send away so many of his own force? At all events he accepted

  their supposed help, to his own destruction.

  Later writers tell an elaborate tale of oxen being yoked to blazing wagons

  and sent charging against his panic-stricken troops, and Hamilcar being killed

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  in the battle that followed. It is not easy to accept this alongside Diodorus’

  differing and matter-of-fact report. Nor is Nepos’ naming his attackers as

  Vettones (who dwelt far to the north between the Tagus and Durius) any

  more believable. But we can accept that in December 229 or January 228, in a

  swollen stream—probably the Segura—in the uplands of today’s province of

  Albacete, the founder of Barcid supremacy found his end. He was 50 or 51.21

  VIII

  Hamilcar’s achievement was great. He had not only saved the Carthaginian

  republic but rebuilt it as a first-class power. The new mines and tribute-

  revenues from Spain brought new prosperity; some of it may have trickled

  across to allies like Utica and their Libyan subjects too, if it is true that the

  conquests enriched ‘all Africa’, while Punic Spain opened up fresh opportu-

  nities for citizens prepared to venture there. Over his home country Hamilcar

  skilfully set up and maintained a political dominance not seen since the time

  of the earlier Hanno the Great—or even the Magonids—and left it secure

  enough to be passed on first to his son-in-law and next to his son.

  Ancient observers found him both attractive and enigmatic. Naravas was

  impressed enough by his fame to become his ally and kinsman; Polybius,

  rather exaggeratedly, sees him as the best general on either side in the war

  with Rome, admires his leadership in the African revolt and in Spain, and—

  again admiringly rather than in hostility—judges him the ultimate inspirer of

  the Second Punic War. In Diodorus he is both the saviour of his country and