Rome

  The whole world was watching. Especially the recently conquered tribes of Cisalpine Gaul were watching. Here was the key to unlocking the strategic door into Italy. A Carthaginian victory might set the region alight and provide the local allies needed to provide reinforcements, supplies, and bases for the winter. The consul Publius Cornelius Scipio, returning from his abortive landing in the Rhône delta, led out a strong force of cavalry and light infantry to reconnoitre and probe the Carthaginian position. Hannibal met them at the River Ticinus and immediately attacked with his much stronger cavalry, driving the Romans off with serious loss; the consul was wounded and had to be rescued by his own son. Scipio pulled his army back to Placentia on the middle Po, leaving Hannibal free to forage and recruit. But when the other Roman consul arrived with his army from the south – the intended conquerors of Africa – the Romans advanced again and pitched their camp close to Hannibal’s. It was late December and winter had set in – the coming Battle of the Trebia was to be fought in sub-zero temperatures and falling snow – but both sides were eager to fight.

  The consuls commanded 40,000 men, mostly heavy infantry, plus good numbers of light infantry, though rather inadequate cavalry. The men were a mixture of Romans, Latins and allies. The Romans (probably also the Latins, and possibly some at least of the allies: we do not know) were organized into legions of 4,200 men, each composed of 1,200 velites (light javelin-throwers), 1,200 hastati (younger men serving as armoured heavy infantry with javelin, sword and body-shield), 1,200 principes (older men equipped in the same way), and 600 triarii (older still and armed with a long thrusting-spear instead of a javelin). Traditionally, these formed four distinct battle lines, the velites providing a screen of skirmishers in front, the hastati in the second line and, if they were needed, the principes in the third forming the main shock forces, the triarii a final reserve around which the army could rally in the event of disaster. This was still, however, an amateur army: despite regular drilling and weapons practice, the rank and file remained a militia of peasant farmers, the officers and generals upper-class politicians. It was an army easily goaded into battle on unfavourable terms.

  Early one morning Hannibal sent his light cavalry up to the Roman camp to taunt their enemies. Sempronius Longus, the consul commanding that day, immediately led his men out – before breakfast in freezing winter weather – deployed them for battle, and led them forward to the attack. They faced a Carthaginian army of a size comparable to their own and with a large professional core. Hannibal himself had spent his youth and young manhood at war. He presided over a war council made up of veteran generals. The army he had brought from Spain was composed of long-service mercenaries. The Romans had deployed and advanced in the usual way. The Carthaginian deployment, by contrast, embodied a cunning tactical scheme. The superior Carthaginian horse was on the wings, made up of Numidian light javelin-throwers, and Carthaginian, Spanish and Gaulish heavy shock cavalry: about 10,000 in all. The infantry centre was held by newly recruited Gauls: tough fighters, but lacking discipline and the least reliable part of Hannibal’s army. Between the Gauls in the centre and the cavalry on the flanks, the infantry elite was stationed: Libyan spearmen and Spanish swordsmen. There were perhaps 20,000 heavy infantry in all, ranged in separate battle lines, each one many ranks deep. In front of each of the infantry flanks was a block of elephants (all 37 of which had survived the crossing of the Alps). Out in front was a skirmishing screen of 8,000 light infantry, including slingers from the Balearic Islands and javelin-throwers from Spain. Finally, hidden in a stream-bed on the edge of the battlefield were 2,000 picked men under a trusted marshal.

  The battle went almost according to plan. The main weight of the Roman infantry attack fell on the Gauls in the centre, who gradually gave ground, drawing their enemies forwards after them. The much weaker Roman cavalry were swept away on the wings, and as the Carthaginian horse reformed and charged the exposed flanks of the legions, there were simultaneous attacks by the elephants and the Libyan and Spanish heavy foot. To complete the disaster, the concealed force emerged and plunged into the Roman rear. The Carthaginian victory would have been total had not the Gauls collapsed completely in the centre and fled, allowing 10,000 legionaries to break clean through to the far side of the battlefield and escape. Even so, the Romans lost 15,000 men; and would no doubt have lost many more but for cold, sleet and snow hindering the Carthaginian pursuit. The consuls and the rump of their army survived – retreating to Cremona and Placentia – but Hannibal ended the year master of the north. The war – Rome’s interminable war for empire – had come home with a vengeance.

  The Roman strategic position was still strong, however. Africa and Spain were vulnerable to attack with the main Carthaginian army in the Po Valley, and there was every chance that Hannibal could be held there and denied entry into Italy, the real heartland of Roman power. Eleven legions were raised in 217 BC – an unprecedented number – and both consuls, with six of these legions, were sent north to block Hannibal’s anticipated invasion. (Roman sources count only Roman citizen legions. Typically at this time, a Roman army included equal or larger numbers of Latin and allied troops organized in their own contingents. The unit numbers quoted here should therefore be doubled.) For his part, Hannibal was eager for a new victory in Italy. Trebia had secured the allegiance of Cisalpine Gaul. A battle won in Etruria or Umbria might begin to break up the Italian core of Rome’s empire (so central was this aim that his standard practice was to release without ransom non-Roman POWs). The consul Gaius Flaminius – incompetent, witless, arrogant – was set on beating Hannibal before his colleague could arrive to share the glory. Hannibal lured him on, feigning a strategic retreat, until the Roman army was strung out for miles in a marching column between Lake Trasimene and high ground to the north. Suddenly, from the heights above them, sounding through an early morning mist, the legionaries heard the war-cries of tens of thousands of their enemies deployed for ambush in the defile. Within minutes the Roman column was engulfed, its way blocked front and rear, and under attack along its entire length. The Romans never had a chance to deploy, and within half an hour it was over, 15,000 dead (including the consul), 10,000 taken prisoner, a mere 6,000 escaping in the confusion.

  The morale of the Roman ruling class collapsed. Quintus Fabius Maximus was elected dictator. Cautious and conservative, his solution to the crisis was to avoid pitched battle and wear down Hannibal’s forces in a long war of attrition: he was dubbed Cunctator – ‘the Delayer’. New legions were raised, but their role now was to shadow the enemy, to box him in, to harass his foragers, not to confront him in open battle. The armies marched the length of Italy laying it waste, the Romans employing scorched earth to deny Hannibal supplies, the Carthaginians plundering Rome’s allies in an effort to feed their army and provoke the enemy to battle. The policy was unsustainable. If Rome could not protect her allies, if her generals were too scared to fight an invader, her Italian Empire seemed bound to collapse. The Fabian policy was overturned the following year, and the two new consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, were ordered to seek battle in the summer of 216 BC. The armies met on a level open plain at Cannae in Apulia.

  Varro was in command on the day of the battle. His plan was to withhold his wings, which were weak in cavalry, while launching an immediate attack in the centre with his legions. Hannibal’s plan was a precisely calculated mechanism for translating the energy of this attack into the means of the Roman army’s destruction. Cannae was a tactical masterpiece. It requires no genius, of course, to realize that destroying an enemy’s flanks so that his centre can be surrounded and annihilated is a guarantee of victory. What makes Cannae special is that Hannibal found a way to do this in the concrete circumstances facing him. The Roman legionary attack was massive but unsophisticated: it was like a steam-roller that rumbled forwards with tremendous power but was impossible to stop or turn. Each man in the mass knew little of the battle around him, but he could scent victory o
ver an enemy ahead who was faltering and falling back, and, scenting it, his instinct was to drive forwards. The Carthaginian mistake at Trebia was not repeated: the Gauls deployed in the centre were supported this time by the Spanish, creating a line that would give but not break through the long hours of battle. As the struggle of infantry developed in the centre, the Carthaginian horse again mastered the Romans on the wings, and columns of Libyan spearmen pushed forwards on the flanks of the legions. The trap was set. The mass of Roman infantry was then assailed on every side – Gauls and Spanish in front, Libyans on the flanks, cavalry against the rear. The ring of enemies gradually compressed the legionaries into a tight mass without room to manoeuvre, deploy or wield weapons. Hardly any broke out; they simply died on the ground where they stood. In all, of the 80,000 or so Roman troops who engaged that day, 65,000 perished.

  Cannae finally shattered the solidity of Rome’s Italian Empire. Livy provides an impressive list of the communities that now came over to Hannibal – all the Gauls, most of the Samnites, the Lucanians, the Bruttians, and most of the Greek cities of the South. The greatest prize, though, was Capua, perhaps the greatest city in Italy after Rome, whose allegiance Hannibal won by supporting local democrats against the pro-Roman oligarchy: they provided Hannibal with a first-rate base and an army of 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse. Henceforward, Greeks, Samnites, Lucanians and Bruttians would provide a growing proportion of Hannibal’s army. But for all that, the gains were limited and problematic. The whole of the north, most of the centre and some of the south stayed loyal to Rome. Hannibal now had allies and territory to protect: if he failed in this, he would lose what support he had gained; but in guarding his new fiefdom, he sacrificed the strategic mobility that had won him such startling battlefield success in the first two years of the war. Some of his new friendships, moreover, ensured the continuing enmity of others: Hannibal’s war rekindled ancient fears of the barbarian ‘other’ – of the Gaul, the Oscan, the highland brigand, the cattle rustler – and reactivated old rivalries between neighbouring cities and tribes, while his support for democrats triggered upper-class fears of revolt from below and threats to property.

  These tensions compounded the central strategic problem now confronting his campaign. Even Cannae – the greatest defeat the Romans had ever suffered – had not destroyed Rome’s Italian confederation. The war, it seemed, could not be won by mere spectacle. Roman territory would have to be broken away bit by bit in a long struggle of sieges and attrition. But how could Hannibal win such a war? His offensive represented a powerful coalition of forces: the revanchist imperialism of the Barca faction and the hawkish wing of the Carthaginian ruling class; the anti-Roman nationalism of the subject peoples of Cisalpine Gaul and southern Italy; the hostility of democratic crowds towards pro-Roman oligarchs in the cities of Magna Graecia; and the attraction of pay and booty for the professional mercenaries who made up the rank and file of Hannibal’s army. But against this was the extraordinary resilience of the Roman state. Polybius estimated its reserves of citizen and allied manpower at 700,000 foot and 70,000 horse; and in the years after Cannae, having doubled the rate of war tax, the Romans regularly mobilized 20 legions (170,000 men), more than ever before. It was sufficient not only to maintain an iron ring of containment and pressure around Hannibal and his south Italian allies – the Fabian strategy renewed – but to allow the Romans to go on to the offensive in Spain and win a crushing victory over the Carthaginian army there in 215 BC. Even then, Rome was not at full stretch. When the Greek revolt spread to Syracuse, Tarentum and other southern cities, Roman mobilization reached 25 legions (210,000 men), so that Capua and Syracuse were recaptured in 211 BC. As Polybius observed, the Romans had the strength to divide their forces, whereas Hannibal could be in only one place at a time.

  The war reached stalemate in southern Italy. The wider anti-Roman movement gradually decayed, but Hannibal’s skill and continuing successes enabled him to maintain a large mercenary army and keep Roman commanders at a distance. The war’s centre of gravity shifted to Spain. Roman victory there might compel the Carthaginians to abandon Italy for the defence of their Empire. Carthaginian victory might free them up to send a second army to reinforce Hannibal in Italy. The struggle for Spain ebbed and flowed. The Roman victory of 215 BC was followed by a crushing double-defeat in 211 BC. The ex-consuls Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio were separately defeated and killed in the same month. It seemed a shattered blow both to the Roman cause in Spain and to the Scipiones family, who, with the Aemilii, had led the opposition in the Senate to the Fabii’s defensive strategy. They had argued for an offensive war linked with empire-building. Denied the main command (against Hannibal) since 216 BC, they had been fobbed off with Spain; and, after a promising start, this had now ended in disaster.

  Some among Rome’s conservative senatorial majority hoped that the Spanish defeat would silence the hawks. They were quickly disabused. Publius Cornelius Scipio, son and heir of the ex-consul – who as a young man had rescued his wounded father on the battlefield, and who, though still only 26 years old, was already a veteran officer of eight years active service – stood for election to the Spanish command. The decision rested with the Assembly of the Centuries – made up of Roman soldiers – and Scipio was elected. Weary of the war – of the losses, of annual conscription and high taxes, and of land laid waste and trade decayed – the rank and file had rejected old age and caution for a young fighter. In doing so, they sent a shock wave through the political system. Such elevation was unprecedented for one so young; Scipio had never held a senior magistracy, never wielded the power of imperium; and the jealous old men on the backbenches of the Senate resented and feared this breach of tradition. But they could not prevent it: under the stress of war, the old order – of amateur generals and part-time armies – was crumbling. A new kind of politics – imperial rather than urban – was being forged in the storm and stress of the war against Hannibal. Scipio was to become the first of Rome’s great professional generals, and also the first of the populists, the conservative revolutionaries, who broke with their class, appealed to the people, and built a career as generals and empire-builders in defiance of the Senate. Scipio was the first of the men like Caesar who would eventually topple the Republic.

  The young Roman general took war seriously – he studied it with the conscious aim of becoming its master. The army he commanded also took war seriously. The levy was imposed on communities, not individuals, and this allowed most places to be filled by volunteers. Many men returned to war each year or remained on campaign from one year to the next. For them, soldiering was becoming a career. This was especially so in Spain, an overseas posting in which men may have been obliged to serve for the duration. The Spanish army had been shattered in 211 BC, but around the surviving core of officers and men who had served his father and uncle, Scipio built it anew. He may have introduced new weapons – was it now that legionaries were first equipped with the gladius and the pilum of the Celtiberians? He certainly drilled his soldiers until they could carry out the complex battlefield manoeuvres that the division of the army into maniples (sub-divisions of 120) made theoretically possible. Proper intelligence and reconnaissance services were developed. Light infantry tactics became more elaborate. Not less, Scipio’s charisma and confidence transformed the morale of the army, while his diplomatic finesse won over a coterie of Celtiberian chieftains. Suddenly, in 209 BC, with his new machine ready for testing, he struck. A combination of brilliant intelligence, rapid movement and total surprise allowed the Romans to storm into New Carthage, the enemy’s Spanish capital, before any of the three widely dispersed Carthaginian armies could move to support it. By a coup de main Scipio had secured the most important fortress, naval base, munitions plant, and treasure-house in Spain.

  The Carthaginian generals had to fight if their empire was not to unravel. Scipio met Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, at the battle of Baecula in 208 BC. The enemy occupied a str
ong defensive position on a plateau at the top of cliffs. Scipio pinned Hasdrubal’s centre with a large and well-supported force of velites, while the bulk of his men were formed into two mobile columns to advance on to the enemy’s flanks and attack them from either side. The Carthaginian line quickly collapsed. Two years later, confronting another Hasdrubal at Ilipa, this time on an open battleground, Scipio repeated the tactics: a weak and withdrawn centre to pin the enemy; elaborate manoeuvres on the flanks; devastating attacks that broke the enemy line at both ends and rolled it up. Ilipa destroyed the last Carthaginian army in Spain, and any remaining strongholds were swiftly overrun. Scipio returned to Rome the victor of New Carthage, Baecula and Ilipa, and conqueror of the Carthaginian Empire in Spain. His ambition now was for the supreme command, but he envisaged this not as a command in Italy, but as a new command to lead an invasion of Africa, with Carthage itself as target, a threat almost guaranteed to secure Hannibal’s recall to fight in defence of the home-land. The Fabian strategy of an Italian defensive was to be transformed into a Scipionic strategy of African empire-building.