by Dexter Hoyos
tors, and no doubt the senators with most influence and status—probably
needed Barcid support less and less. More and more, by contrast, the Barcids
would need to bargain to gain support from the Hundred and Four. Has-
drubal son of Gisco looks like the strongest of their allies, and it may be
more accurate to see Punic affairs, by 208 if not earlier, as being run not by
Hannibal’s family and supporters alone, but by a coalition of Hannibal’s
group and Hasdrubal’s.3
II
For in 209 the fortunes of war turned against the family and Carthage. After
four years on the Punic side, Tarentum in Italy was recaptured by the Romans
under Fabius the Delayer thanks to a lovesick Bruttian captain changing
sides—a stratagem quite in Hannibal’s own class, and compounded by the
Romans’ success in luring him away beforehand into Bruttium. In Spain the
three discordant Punic generals had betaken themselves to widely separate
locales in the centre and west of the peninsula; they thus allowed an improba-
ble new Roman leader—26 years old, with no previous experience of high
office or independent command, notable only for being the son and name-
sake of the dead proconsul P. Scipio—to lead a bold thrust down the coast
from the Ebro and capture no less a prize than New Carthage the day after he
arrived outside its walls.
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Hasdrubal and his colleagues had managed yet another misjudgement.
They must have heard of young Scipio’s appointment to Spain or else his
arrival at Tarraco—not to mention the 11,000 fresh troops he brought with
him—but they failed to send even a detachment to keep an eye on the Ebro
line and left barely 1,000 troops as garrison at New Carthage. To unjustified
strategic complacency, in other words, they added a disastrous misestimate of
the new general. Maybe they had viewed the appointment of another Scipio
to Spain in quasi-Barcid terms—as a political move to ensure the loyalty of
Spain-beyond-Ebro that his father and uncle had won, but with his youth and
inexperience posing no serious military problems for them. That young
Scipio should match the Barcid model militarily too, by proving himself a
better general than his father and as much a master of the unconventional as
Hannibal, must have come as a shock—including to Hannibal over in Italy.4
Not only was Scipio’s booty from New Carthage colossal but, at a stroke,
he effectively cleared the Carthaginians from eastern Spain, threw them onto
the defensive and won over a growing number of Spanish peoples and
princes. Even the Ilergetans Indibilis and Mandonius, veteran enthusiasts for
Carthage though they had been, now decided on a policy reversal. This series
of misfortunes paralysed the Carthaginian leaders’ judgement. They not only
waited in the south for Scipio’s next onslaught, though he had withdrawn to
Tarraco for the winter, but also—because of their continuing antagonisms,
according to Polybius—failed to unite their armies or even bring them into
supporting distance of one another.
As a result, in 208 Hasdrubal confronted the enemy by himself and with
inferior numbers. Once he had taken up a hilltop position at Baecula near
Castulo, he showed no tactical flexibility (except for extricating part of his
army after defeat): Scipio pinned him down frontally and then shattered both
his flanks. But the Roman did not pursue the defeated troops as they retired
northwards because he would risk attack from the other Punic armies too.
This is a damning implication for what the three Carthaginians might have
achieved had they co-operated closely against him from the start.5
Even before Baecula, if the sources are correct, the Carthaginians had
revived the scheme of Hasdrubal marching from Spain to Italy to reinforce
his brother. This had first been mooted in 216–215, only to be quashed by
the Scipio brothers’ victory of Hibera. The reason for reviving it now was
drastically different—no longer to strengthen a victorious Hannibal as he
moved to force their foes to peace, but to bring him help in a last effort to
retilt the military balance and stave off final Roman victory. Scipio let Has-
drubal go, confident that the 12 legions in Cisalpine Gaul and Italy would
cope with the new invader and intent on prising the rest of Barcid Spain
from the Carthaginians’ grasp. His confidence was sound.6
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T H E D E F E AT O F H A S D RU BA L
III
By now Hannibal could manage only negative wins. In the same year 208 he
mauled, but failed to destroy, a Roman corps marching against Locri. Then
an ambush on a hill in Lucania killed Marcellus, again consul, and mortally
wounded his colleague Crispinus, but the coup gained little: Crispinus alerted
allied communities against deceptive use of Marcellus’ signet ring and Hanni-
bal’s try at capturing Salapia backfired badly. The locals let in his advance
body only to shut the gates and slaughter the men. The incident may even
have cheated him of a victory over the consuls’ combined armies, for they
reportedly had been keen on a battle—one that, judging by past form, he
might well have won. If so, Hannibal had defeated himself. Crispinus now
took care to avoid fighting.
The general did succeed, by a classic speed-march, in sweeping away a
Roman force besieging Locri where his friend Mago the Samnite was com-
mandant, another negative win. In effect he was down merely to defending
his status quo in south Italy. Plutarch reports that after the loss of Tarentum
he had told his lieutenants there was no longer any possibility of conquering
Italy: in other words of winning the war. The report may be true, even if the
general spoke in a moment of atypical gloom. As noted earlier, Hannibal was
in danger of becoming irrelevant to his own war.7
Hasdrubal’s approach therefore offered the last hope for regaining strate-
gic dominance and, with it, final victory. Moreover victory had to be won,
and be seen to be won, in Italy. Not only was it virtually impossible to force
the Romans to peace through winning in Spain (the events of 211 had shown
that); but success in Spain under Hasdrubal son of Gisco, counterbalanced
by defeat—or just stalemate—in Italy, would see the Barcids’ already fragile
primacy at Carthage collapse. The political and dynastic achievements of
Hamilcar, his son-in-law and Hannibal himself were at stake.
By contrast, if Hannibal could combine his veteran army with his brother’s
new forces he could revive the possibilities of 216 and 215, with better
prospects. Forty or fifty thousand trained and experienced troops—plus
whatever Gallic contingents Hasdrubal might recruit on the way—would
enable him to force battle on the legions that dogged his path yet refused to
fight, or open the way to Rome and the blockade that he ought to have
mounted after Cannae. It might encourage Philip V to re-enter active warfare
against the Romans. The blow to Roman morale and resources, after so many
years of struggle, could be terminal.
The Rom
ans recognized this well enough. Six legions guarded northern
Italy, seven were spread across the south from Capua to Bruttium and two
waited in reserve at Rome. For the new consuls of 207 they turned not to
well-used veterans like Fabius Maximus, Q. Fulvius Flaccus or M. Valerius
Laevinus, but to a surprising combination recommended by the Senate. Along
with the competent if unspectacular C. Claudius Nero, who had commanded
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in Spain before young Scipio’s arrival and more recently had served under
Marcellus in southern Italy, they elected the oddest choice of the whole war—
M. Livius Salinator, consul in 219 but afterwards convicted of embezzling
booty, and since then a total outsider to affairs. The combination was all the
odder because the two men thoroughly disliked each other. What prompted
Livius’ fellow-citizens into appointing the two of them to cope with the crisis
can only be guessed, but the wily old Fabius Maximus, who through the
Senate prevailed on them to accept reconciliation, plainly saw potential.8
Hasdrubal had left Spain during 208 with a rebuilt army, wintered comfort-
ably in southern Gaul and marched for the Alps in spring 207. He crossed
these, reportedly by the same route as his brother but without any losses,
arrived in Cisalpine Gaul earlier than his foes expected, and added large num-
bers of Gallic and Ligurian warriors to his forces. This was a textbook
example of efficient achievement, very unlike Hannibal’s messy experience
11 years before.
Hasdrubal was a skilful general as long as he was not facing opponents.
Once on hostile ground he began to make mistakes, his first being an un-
necessary siege of the Roman stronghold Placentia on the river Po. His aim
was to impress the region’s Gauls, but this backfired since he failed to take it.
Worse, it lost him the momentum he had won by his early arrival in Italy.
The new consuls had time to join their armies: Livius in the north, Nero
watching Hannibal near Tarentum. Hasdrubal gave up the futile siege and
moved south-eastwards to the Adriatic coast. Everything now hung in the
balance. The fortune and future of Carthage depended on his joining up with
Hannibal.9
IV
Hannibal knew he was coming. Locri, Metapontum and other ports still gave
contact with Carthage, while new prisoners and deserters could tell of the
Romans’ plans and anxieties. If he were to stay in Apulia or Lucania, Has-
drubal would have to march most of the length of the Italian peninsula,
250–300 miles (400–500 kilometres), to join him—all the while fending off
Livius and the other Roman forces that would swarm to block his path. It
would make eminent good sense instead for Hannibal, whose knowledge of
the terrain was now unrivalled, to move northwards to link up with the new-
comers in or near Cisalpine Gaul. How fast he could move even in these
times he had shown in 211 with the march on Rome, followed by the extraor-
dinary lunge down to Rhegium, and again in 208 in his lightning thrust to
raise the siege of Locri. As senior general it was his responsibility, too, to fix
the arrangements with his brother, if only in broad terms initially while leav-
ing greater precision to when the armies came closer.10
Hannibal did little of either. Livy’s account has some oddities and maybe
a textual error, but plainly shows him prowling restlessly around Apulia,
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shadowed by Nero and his watchful subordinates and unable to break away.
This from the general who had pounced out of the mist on Flaminius and
broken free of a trap laid by no less a foe than Fabius. He could not even get
messengers or officers through to his brother to concert plans—or he did not
try. It was left to Hasdrubal the newcomer to send off half a dozen riders,
Numidians and Gauls at that, southwards in search of the Punic army of
Italy. They carried a despatch asking Hannibal to link up with his brother’s
army in Umbria. Surprisingly enough they did penetrate all the way to
Metapontum, where Hannibal had last been reported. But they found him
gone—and as they doubled back searching for him they fell into the enemy’s
hands. Had Hasdrubal sent Roman or Italian deserters, this setback might
have been avoided.11
Hannibal’s behaviour almost gives the impression that he had decided to
leave it entirely up to his brother to try to make contact and to propose how
to join their armies. Since he sent no messengers to Hasdrubal—or even if
he did—he had to expect that Hasdrubal would seek to send some to him;
but he left no guides or escorts in any of the allied centres (like Metapontum)
where such messengers might come looking for him. He moved around
southern Italy, apparently seeking to break away from the Romans but in
effect going about in circles.
Livy first has him marching from near Larinum in Apulia towards the Sal-
lentine peninsula, the heel of Italy, before the consul Nero’s arrival in the
region. ‘Larinum’ may be a textual mistake for Tarentum, but such a manoeu-
vre looks pointless anyway; if it was a decoy force which later Roman
historians misunderstood, the decoy-attempt failed after a collision with a
Roman propraetor. Next—wherever he himself had really been—the general
swung away south to Bruttium, gathered reinforcements and moved north
into Lucania; he fought scrappily with Nero at Grumentum, went on to
Venusia and another scrappy encounter, then southwards to Metapontum for
more troops (recruited in Bruttium by Hanno). After that he moved once
again to Venusia and came finally to rest near Canusium in northern Apulia.
Some of these marches and battles may well be Roman exaggerations, as
Hannibal’s alleged losses surely are, or else doublets (for instance the double
set of Bruttian reinforcements). If all his movements are reliably reported,
he must have covered at least as much ground as in a march from Bruttium to
Umbria. In any case the outcome is clear. He advanced no further north than
to Canusium, and there he came to a stop.12
One view is that, all along, Canusium was where he intended Hasdrubal to
join him, contrary to his brother’s call for them to meet in Umbria nearly 200
miles (300 kilometres) farther north, but this is hardly plausible. He may have
had a high estimate of Hasdrubal’s abilities, but it would have been asking too
much: even supposing the latter could fight his way down the length of Italy
he would have arrived with an army shrunken and devastated. Nor can Han-
nibal have notified his brother of any such intention, seeing that Hasdrubal
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was expecting him to come north—yet not to notify him would have been
unbelievable folly. Much more likely, the halt at Canusium was meant to give
messengers from his brother a chance to find him so that, at last, they could
concert their moves.
The idea that Hasdrubal’s despatch about Umbria was a deliberate red her-
ring, meant to mislead the Romans, is hardly pla
usible either. It would mean
that Hasdrubal sent off no genuine message at all or, if he did get one
through, that it had no effect (for it is quite unlikely that a genuine message
would tell Hannibal simply to stay quiet in Apulia while his brother fought his
way down). Claudius Nero took the despatch with deadly seriousness. He
warned the Senate at Rome to station the urban legions at Narnia and himself
took an action that changed history.
Hasdrubal’s proposal for a junction in Umbria was asking a lot of his
brother, but no more than the task Hasdrubal himself had undertaken. Both
were facing powerful enemy forces with limited numbers. Umbria was nearer
Cisalpine Gaul than Apulia, but Hasdrubal had crossed over from Spain and
now had to make his contested way from the Cisalpine plains through un-
familiar hills, dales and mountains. Hannibal knew the country and had
proved to the world his skills in moving swiftly and in eluding foes. If they
could join up, Umbria offered a notable strategic advantage: the fertile Tiber
valley and the major new road from Ariminum to Rome, the Via Flaminia.
This is a clue to Hasdrubal’s thinking, which may well have been his
brother’s too if they had been in touch, via Carthage, before the younger
Barcid left Spain or while he was en route: the joint armies should make Rome
their objective. A vigorous redirection of the war-effort, breaking free from
the frustrating cul-de-sac of Apulia and Bruttium, would be a bold move
quite in Hannibal’s style. It would not mean abandoning the pro-Punic Ital-
ians of the south to Roman mercies. The towns were garrisoned, his
indefatigable nephew Hanno could be left with a mobile army once more
and, if Hannibal and Hasdrubal did join forces and menace Rome, the bulk
of enemy forces in the south would more or less inevitably be drawn north-
ward too.13
Beyond that we can only guess at the brothers’ hopes. To move against
Rome would have to mean first defeating the swarms of Roman forces that
would gather against them. Hannibal, eager for another and more conclusive
Trasimene or Cannae, would be ready for that. A big victory or series of vic-
tories in the north might bring over some of the Etruscan cities, wavering
and unhappy in their loyalty to the Romans and already a worry to the consul