Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

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  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Author’s Note

  1. THE VOW

  2. YOUNG HANNIBAL

  3. SPAIN

  4. SAGUNTUM

  5. OVER THE PYRENEES

  6. CROSSING THE RHÔNE

  7. GATEWAY TO THE ALPS

  8. THE SECOND AMBUSH

  9. SUMMIT OF THE ALPS

  10. TICINUS

  11. TREBIA

  12. THE APENNINES AND THE ARNO MARSHES

  13. TRASIMENE

  14. FABIUS MAXIMUS AND ESCAPE

  15. CANNAE

  16. THE CAMPAIGN FOR SOUTH ITALY

  17. THE MARCH ON ROME

  18. WAR IN SPAIN

  19. SCIPIO CAPTURES CARTAGENA

  20. METAURUS

  21. ROMAN TRIUMPH, ITALY TO SPAIN

  22. ZAMA

  23. EXILE

  24. HANNIBAL’S LEGACY

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  To great soldiers of the world who have waged just war, who know the agonizing questions of battle.

  “War may too often issue from the bowels of hell but even heaven has its war trumpets.”

  PATRICK N. HUNT

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  PREFACE

  Hannibal has loomed large in my imagination since my youth. Over the decades, as I have read about his exploits and the history of his time, I attempted to follow in his footsteps across three continents. As I discovered, ambiguities abound. Ancient sources provide often contradictory or problematic interpretations of his motivations and actions. Should we expect anything else, given the passage of time?

  My archaeology fieldwork has concentrated for decades on Hannibal. Every year for the last twenty years I have stood at the summits of Alpine passes, ascending and descending rocky footpaths and road surfaces in every calendar season. Whether in biting wind and flurries of snow—not uncommon above 8,000 feet even in August—or on gusty, sunnier days, I have marveled at the challenges Hannibal faced on his intrepid marches and campaigns, especially when I climbed for hours to reach a spectacular vista as the almost vertical crags descended into forested slopes and plains far below. With more questions than answers over time, I have traveled to Carthage, where at the Secret Harbor I once picked up an old murex shell—the source of the famous Punic (Carthaginian) purple dye—before carefully placing it back on the sand. Many times I have traipsed through the remains of Punic Cartagena, the walled terraces of Saguntum, and western coastal Spain as well as across the eastern Pyrenees, through what was ancient Gaul and now is France, and then up the Rhône and Isere Valleys. I have walked back and forth across all the Italian battlefields important in Hannibal’s military campaigns and various Hannibal sites elsewhere in Italy. On multiple occasions in Turkey, standing along the sun-glimmered Sea of Marmara around Gebze has made me reflect on Hannibal’s last days. Many times with teams of Stanford students and more than a few times with engineers and geologists, I have carefully investigated at least thirty Alpine summits to try to determine where Hannibal crossed the Alps. I could never be an armchair historian: I have to see and try to understand what I write about.

  The ancient historian Polybius has so often been my guide—literally in my hands—that my copy of his History is nearly worn out. I believe, as did he, that it is best to visit as many locations as possible if one wants to better understand historical events. Attempting to match text and topography has been my touchstone wherever possible. Other ancient historical accounts I have consulted include Livy’s ample and colorful texts—even though his geography is often suspect—augmented by Appian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Frontinus, Cornelius Nepos, Ammianus Marcellinus, Valerius Maximus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Vegetius (listed here not necessarily in chronological order, but in order of importance to my research), and many other fragmentary sources, as much in the original languages of Greek and Latin as possible. From these sources I infer that Hannibal was one of history’s greatest military minds because of his changing tactical responses to extraordinary challenges. That Hannibal has been a riveting topic for millennia, and continues to be so even as he remains a conundrum, explains why so many writers continue to ponder him from different angles. How I wish I could have met Hannibal and asked him the questions that to this day still defy authoritative answers.

  Stanford, 2017

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  All dates are BCE unless indicated otherwise.

  One

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  THE VOW

  The Roman historian Valerius Maximus tells a story about the young Hannibal. As a boy in Carthage, Hannibal and his younger brothers would wrestle one another. Their father, Hamilcar Barca, would boast proudly to his guests, “My boys are lion cubs reared for Rome’s destruction.” Whether this actually happened, we don’t know, but we can imagine the young Hannibal wanting to please his father and taking pride in Hamilcar’s boast.1

  Hannibal was born around 247 BCE during a long war between Carthage and Rome that often took Hamilcar, a famous general, away for extended periods of time. Hannibal’s parents gave him a name rich in religious meaning; “Baal be gracious to me” or “Baal be merciful to me.” Baal was a great Carthaginian god of fertility who manifested himself in thunderous storms; in naming him so, Hannibal’s family tied the boy’s future to his personal god and thus to his destiny. With sacrifices to the gods made at his birth, Hannibal had a long military tradition to follow.

  Carthage in North Africa had been deliberately chosen for its location by the Phoenicians, who had founded the city in what is now Tunis. They thought it was perfectly situated for trade. A natural bay and man-made harbors offered shelter to Carthaginian ships that traded with fertile Sicily, only a short voyage away.2 Trade also extended to Spain and over much of the Mediterranean Sea. Although Carthage’s docks were secreted behind a high wall, protected from the prying eyes of the outside world, young Hannibal would have frequently seen his city’s renowned double harbor. He would have walked with family members, maybe elder sisters or servants, passing through exotic markets of redolent spices alongside the famous port. The Phoenicians who established Carthage around 814 BCE were most likely refugees from Tyre who fled from Assyrian invaders swarming like locusts from their Mesopotamian lands in the east. As Carthage’s mother city, Tyre was famous for its mercantilism and its far-flung trade, as the prophet Ezekiel scorns in his tirade against Tyre in Ezekiel 23:7–8: “whose footsteps led her abroad to found her own colonies, whose traders were princes, whose merchants the great ones of the world.” Like mother, like daughter.

  As a boy, Hannibal would have heard many times that for a half millennium, Carthage had ruled the western Mediterranean sea unchallenged. In addition to its mercantilism, Tyre bequeathed to Carthage the Phoenician alphabet and the Phoenician language, which in the Carthaginian dialect was known as Punic. (Both languages are extinct.)

  After centuries in the Mediterranean, Carthage had no rivals until Rome began to flex its newfound power.3 Now there was a growing shadow from Italy. With an agrarian mindset, the upstart Romans were much more acquisitive than the Carthaginians, constantly seeking to brin
g new territories under their sway. Carthage had colonies in Spain and elsewhere, but these were largely mercantilist enterprises. Carthage was uninterested in making the Celtiberians of Spain and other colonies into Carthaginians, whereas Rome wanted its colonies to think of themselves as Romans, and indeed it made Roman citizenship a possibility. So long as goods and treasure flowed back to Carthage as expected, the city-state was content to let the colonies organize themselves politically however they wished. In contrast, in the Roman world, even slaves could become wealthy, and in time they might even become free. The available evidence does not indicate that slaves in Carthage ever had such opportunities.

  Hannibal’s family was aristocratic, descended from military leaders and merchant princes.4 Hannibal lived in one of his family’s villas, likely atop one of the hills where Carthage caught afternoon breezes from the sea. But Carthage’s harbor was the city’s pride and joy. It possessed the best naval berths the world could offer. The outer rectangular harbor’s water glinted around a merchant fleet and quays that could berth up to 220 sailing ships. The inner circular harbor often bristled with warships and many-oared triremes and quinquiremes, their bronze shields reflecting sunlight. Perhaps the young Hannibal wished to sail in a warship to one of the great naval battles he heard about often.

  HANNIBAL’S FAMILY

  Hannibal’s family was the Barcid clan, landowners of vast farms a few days’ journey to the south around the Sahel region of North Africa, where wheat was then plentiful, well watered by the forested eastern Atlas Mountains.5 More important, his immediate ancestors were generals and legendary fighters. Because the Barcids were natural leaders in the old pattern of Phoenician aristocracy,6 during his early life Hannibal would see his father only between engagements in Sicily, where he fought the hated Romans. From snippets of household conversations, the boy might have grown to understand that the Romans were now challenging Carthage over which power would control the great island. His father often moved so fast between lightning-strike battles along Sicily’s northern coast that messengers from Carthage would arrive on each other’s heels. The year of Hannibal’s birth, 247, was also about the time that Hamilcar Barca received his military commission to lead much of Carthage’s forces.

  Not much is known about Hannibal’s mother. We do not even know her name, but she would have likely descended from a similar aristocratic family of Carthage and would have wedded with a dowry of silver, land, and slaves, as was common for aristocratic families at the time. In between engagements, when his father would return with Carthaginian fleets for a few months, Hannibal’s mother bore two other boys, Hasdrubal and Mago. His mother and father already had three daughters before Hannibal, although their names, too, have been lost to history. Hannibal’s parents guaranteed that their daughters would marry well, usually into other leading military families. The eldest married a man named Bomilcar, who would become admiral over a Carthaginian fleet. The second daughter would marry Hasdrubal the Fair, who later helped Hamilcar conquer and govern Iberia, as much of Spain was known then. The third daughter later wed outside the Carthaginian aristocracy, marrying a local chief of nearby Numidia for a political alliance. Thus, the Barcids were a well-connected family in Carthage.

  Hannibal’s education would have been similar to that expected for a young aristocratic boy. Not much can be said other than that he had a Greek tutor in literature named Sosylos who must have taught him some of Homer’s epics and probably how to read. Sosylos may have taught him from Aristotle’s Logic, because Hannibal knew much about Aristotle’s famous pupil Alexander the Great and his military exploits. The boy may well have known about Odysseus because Hannibal shared the cunning character of this Greek hero, full of stratagems. We do not know when Hannibal’s education started, but Sosylos even accompanied Hannibal later on his military campaigns in Italy.

  END OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR

  But everything changed in 241 BCE when Hannibal was six years old. Military disaster struck the Carthaginians as events near the end of the First Punic War reversed earlier successes. Although the enemy Romans had lost fleet after fleet, more than seven hundred ships, and up to a hundred thousand men in a series of naval disasters starting in 264 BCE, when war had broken out, they refused to give up. Carthage had a very different leadership after 244 BCE. Its Council of Elders—the Gerousia—increasingly opposed the long Punic War that had dragged on for twenty years. (Punic was the Roman word for Carthage, a possible abbreviation of the Greek word Phoinikes, which may have originally meant the people of “red dye.”7 This important cloth dye derived from shellfish was a commodity in which the Phoenicians had a trading monopoly for centuries.) The Romans had refused to surrender during two decades of bad outcomes and had only the final naval victory in their favor. But Carthage was already intimidated by Roman mobilization of endless resources.

  The Gerousia was Carthage’s governing body. According to Aristotle’s Politics, Carthage had a form of constitution and elected magistrates. The Gerousia was not as powerful as the contemporary Roman Senate, but like the Roman Senate, it was oligarchic in nature. In Carthage, the upper class consisted of wealthy merchants and landowners, and so the Gerousia sought to protect commercial interests. As a consequence, the Gerousia tended to be conservative and cautious about military action. Military families such as the Barcas were often at odds with the Gerousia if there was not an imminent threat. We should remember, too, that much of Carthage’s military was made up of mercenaries, who might not have even been Carthaginian by birth.

  The leaders in Carthage wrongly assumed that the last Sicilian battle at Drapanum (now Trapani) in 249 BCE had been such a complete victory for Carthage that the Romans would soon relinquish their claim to western Sicily, traditionally Punic territory. Led by Hanno, a great landowner rather than a military man, the now-dovish Gerousia began recalling and dismantling the fleets. In demobilizing their great navies, the Carthaginians turned many back into merchant vessels and sent them out again on far-flung trade. Hanno believed the future of Carthage lay in Africa and not overseas. Hamilcar Barca still led forces of thousands in Sicily and even raided South Italy in quick attacks, but Carthage’s Senate wanted peace so much that it blindly underestimated Roman tenacity of will.

  The blow that Hamilcar Barca anticipated was slow to develop but quick to strike. The Roman Senate heard from its well-placed spies that Carthage was sending ships home. In Italy, southern Campanian senators and rich landowners had always had the most to lose from a close Carthaginian presence in Sicily. These wealthy Romans formed an unusual plan. Because Rome was either unable or unwilling to finance a new fleet, they dug deep into their own pockets and absorbed all the costs. Even borrowing against their land, they took advantage of the downsizing of Carthaginian naval power and paid for outfitting as many new ships as they could. Smart businessmen, these rich Romans asked for reimbursement only in the event of victory. Back in Carthage, Hamilcar was dismissed as a hawk. The general’s messengers who conveyed his warnings about the piles of fresh cut timber on the wharves and quickly growing hulls in Italian harbors went unheard.

  After many Roman losses at sea, one naval battle decided the outcome of this struggle between Carthage and Rome. The Romans had recently dredged a storm-wrecked Carthaginian ship’s hull out of the Sicilian water to be examined by their carpenters and shipwrights. To their surprise, the Italian ship builders discovered an amazing fact: every piece of wood on the Carthaginian ship was numbered. The Romans were not long in figuring out that the Carthaginian boats were easily assembled from timbers according to a template. This made shipbuilding easier, since all the wood dimensions were predetermined and merely slotted into place and caulked. It was hardly necessary to have a master shipwright in charge of building each boat. Many ships could be assembled simultaneously. The practical Romans quickly duplicated the technique, accelerating the usual time needed to build a navy.

  On March 10, 241 BCE, in the Battle of the Aegates Islands west of Sicily, Ro
me’s new fleet completely outmanned the small and hastily prepared Carthaginian fleet. Once the mightiest power on the seas, Carthage’s navy was destroyed. Demoralized by its first naval defeat—an unthinkable event—the Council of Elders negotiated a quick surrender that infuriated Hamilcar. The terms of surrender left nothing to Carthage and everything to Rome. This was partly because the Hanno-led Carthaginian Senate was not interested in maintaining maritime power—unlike Rome, which understood its destiny in the need to expand. Hanno’s Senate faction thought only of its status quo control of African territory. The Treaty of Lutatius in 241, so named after the victorious Roman consular admiral Gaius Lutatius Catulus, was a permanent blow to Carthaginian maritime might and apparently also a personal affront to Hamilcar Barca. It was a disaster, demonstrating Roman intents that Hamilcar could never forgive. In one treaty, Carthage’s traditional monopoly of the seas was lost forever. Hamilcar Barca even refused to come to the negotiating table with Rome.

  The Greek historian Polybius, who wrote about the rivalry between Rome and Carthage, carefully recorded the terms of surrender. First, Carthage would have to remove every Carthaginian citizen from Sicily and give up all claims to this huge, fertile island. Second, all Punic ships and men were to withdraw from the many islands around and between Sicily and Italy. These had been convenient places where Carthaginian ships had harbored for centuries. Third, Carthage would also have to cut off all ties with Siracusa, a powerful city-state in Sicily that the Romans wanted badly to control because of its superb harbor. Hamilcar saw correctly that this treaty would end Carthage’s historic claims to sail and trade in the western Mediterranean. Finally, Carthage would have to pay an indemnity of 3,200 talents of silver, a total of almost 10 million shekels, a third of it due immediately because Rome demanded war reparations. In the short term, accepting these circumstances was dire enough, but over the long haul, this could be a death sentence to Carthage, however slow the squeeze would be. Hamilcar knew it and was enraged. He believed Carthage could rise again.