Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  If Hannibal loved or was infatuated with anyone in the passions of adolescence, history has not preserved any names. His loves and concubines throughout his long life must have been fairly private, because other than a brief mention of a Spanish wife named Imilce, we never learn their names, not even when he lived with a courtesan in Salapia. Nor do we know whether he had any children, which is not as unusual as it might seem. On the other hand, Hannibal lived a military life without ever being tied down to one place long enough to develop relationships outside of his family (and mistresses) and his eventual close circle of military advisors. That is not to suggest that young Hannibal was lonely while surrounded by his military comrades and his father’s officers. Seldom in history has any young man been so devoted to one thing alone: the art of war, and that was due greatly to his father, probably the best general of his generation.

  After founding Akra Leuke, Hamilcar turned his full attention to bringing the people between the rest of Andalucia and even western Valencia under his control in several military campaigns between 235 and 231 BCE. Near the Gulf of Cartagena, the Batuli tribes around Cape de Palos were assimilated as a conquered people fairly quickly by Hamilcar, who was accompanied by his son-in-law Hasdrubal the Fair (husband of Hannibal’s older sister) around 236 BCE. Hasdrubal the Fair had also founded Cartagena in one of the best natural harbors in the Mediterranean, adjacent to land rich in silver ore a few miles to the east. Shipping from this deep harbor, well protected against raids, could hardly have been easier. Here Hasdrubal built a fort, as well as several temples and a thriving colony with stone structures whose foundations still remain—no doubt with Hamilcar’s military assistance or the supervision of his military engineers.

  A new minting of silver coins was apparently stamped with Hamilcar’s visage, much of it sent to Carthage from the fine, deep port and the rest stockpiled for the general’s future campaigns. Hamilcar must have also taught Hannibal the value of silver for military negotiation with locals for food and supplies or paying an army’s mercenaries. When the Romans sent a deputation to inquire around 231 BCE about the purpose of the Punic silver mining activity, Hamilcar’s answer must have referred to repaying the war indemnity from 241 BCE.5 Apparently the Romans accepted this answer and left him alone.

  The Mastetani tribe near Murcia, just north of Cartagena, was also soon within Hamilcar’s military vision, apparently a mostly successful campaign, and in 229 BCE Hamilcar was attempting to conquer the area of Helike, near modern Toledo to the north. This was where the Celtiberian Vettoni tribe was located, northern allies of the warlike Turdulli and Turdetani. Unfortunately for Hamilcar, this interior location deep in Spain—where negotiations were set to take place—was quite far removed from his long supply lines on the coast. The Celtiberian Oretani tribe marched south from the Manchegan plains to help defend the Vettoni until Hamilcar was greatly outnumbered, the main body of his army having been left a few miles to the east while he went to negotiate. However, the Vettoni feared and respected Hamilcar’s leadership too much to attack the entire Carthaginian army. Hannibal would have been alongside his father in almost every campaign, and was certainly near his father at this one.

  HAMILCAR’S DEATH

  One source, Diodorus Siculus, writing a couple of hundred years later, says that while Hamilcar was negotiating with the treacherous Vettoni, accompanied by only a few officers, he was ambushed. This went completely against the protocols of ancient warfare, because there was a truce during negotiations. But the Celtiberians were more chaotic barbarians than a unified army.

  Hamilcar feared for Hannibal, who led a small scouting detachment also removed from the larger army. Hannibal would have been around nineteen, and his younger brother Hasdrubal was with him in this small force. According to the ancient sources, Hamilcar diverted attention from the small force with his sons during the ambush and sacrificed himself to save them. Diodorus has Hamilcar drowning in the Júcar River, probably wounded, but a terse account by Polybius has him surrounded and fighting the Vettoni down to his last man and then being killed himself. Finally, Cornelius Nepos, a Roman biographer who lived in the first century BCE, writes that Hamilcar engaged at first with the Vettoni but then drowned in the Tagus River.6 Taken all together, an ambush by the Vettoni seems likely, and Hamilcar, severely wounded, managed a partial escape only to drown. Furthermore, considering how good a soldier he was and a master tactician, sacrificing himself for his sons was in keeping with Hamilcar’s character.

  Hannibal was now bereft of his father before he was twenty. But enough of his father’s will and experience had been imparted that Hannibal would have been prepared to lead, however premature the timing seemed. While Hannibal must have deeply mourned the loss of his father privately, he was by now every inch a warrior, and soldiers are supposed to be emotionally and psychologically steeled for sudden death in battle. Knowing that good decisions must be made despite personal loss, there is little time for sentiment, as soldiers are taught to put the deaths of their comrades behind them and move on. Hannibal already had years of dedicated military training at his father’s side, in which he had been prepared for leadership. He must have been ready to take his father’s mantle as well as carry out the life-changing promise he had made back in Carthage: the vow to hate Rome.

  Three

  * * *

  SPAIN

  Hamilcar’s unexpected death was a great blow to Carthaginian affairs abroad and to Hannibal personally, although we can only guess his reaction because there was no word about it from Carthage or Hannibal himself.

  How the news of Hamilcar’s death was received in Africa depended on whether the majority in the Gerousia, the Council of Elders, had sided with the charismatic and popular general or with his dovish enemies such as Hanno, who wanted to stay close to home and not venture out so boldly to provoke Rome.

  Hasdrubal the Fair, now sole commander of the colonies, administered Carthaginian Spain effectively for a half decade from 228 to 221 BCE, consolidating positions held already while his adjutant Hannibal served him militarily across southern Iberia, expanding new territories under Carthaginian control. As war chief and virtual ruler, Hasdrubal was more inclined to administer Spain through diplomatic pragmatism than had Hamilcar, who’d carved out territory by military force and ruthless tactics that made him feared among the Celtiberian tribes. In this regard, Hasdrubal was more similar to the traditional rulers of Punic Carthage, who were less inclined to military power and more to commercial consolidation.1 Polybius refutes the charge of the contemporary Roman historian Quintus Pictor Fabius that Hasdrubal was ambitious and power hungry and that his policy in Spain was an underlying cause for the Second Punic War. Polybius maintains that it was Hamilcar who had “contributed much to the origin” of the Second Punic War but instead relates Hannibal’s admiration for Hasdrubal’s leadership.2 Under Hasdrubal, most of the southern half of Spain gradually fell under Carthaginian hegemony or at least operated with varying degrees of autonomy under its shadow. From Gades in the hot South along the Atlantic side of Gibraltar, to New Carthage (modern Cartagena) in the east along the Mediterranean coast, to the forested Sierra Morena northward, and soon even into central Spain along the Tagus Valley, Carthage was unchallenged by any cohesive foe, least of all Rome, which could only look on with envy at this time. Able troops spread throughout garrisons in Spain now complemented Carthaginian mercantile and engineering acumen.

  The overall policy that Hamilcar had established would continue. Although Hannibal no longer had his father for counsel or further military training, the young commander had enough natural leadership ability that he was given increasingly more responsibility over the soldiers, moving ever farther north and west into the Spanish frontiers. Probably due to Hasdrubal’s skill at parleying with the Celtiberians, Hannibal now acquired a Spanish wife: the princess Imilce from the Punic ally of Castulo on the upper Gaudalquivir River, although we have no surviving accounts about her other than she might have later
borne Hannibal a child, possibly a son.3

  In the meantime, the silver mining operations and other Iberian trading ventures were enormously successful, and through spies and a network of informants and trading partners—colonies such as Massilia at the mouth of the Rhône River in Gaul (roughly modern-day France)—Rome could not help but notice that the Carthaginians were not suffering as much as they would have preferred under the chafing war indemnity imposed on them from the Treaty of Lutatius. By now, Rome was certainly also wishing it had some of the silver wealth of Spain for itself. Rome was waiting to reduce Carthaginian power and wealth in Spain.

  ROME MAKES A CLAIM TO SPAIN

  Finally, the Romans, having subjugated some of the Celts who were living just south of the Po River Valley of Lombardia, Northern Italy, decided that Carthage’s hold over Spain was becoming too profitable and too close to Roman interests for comfort. In 226 a small envoy of Roman diplomats visited Hasdrubal, probably at Cartagena, and demanded that he draw the Punic boundary at the Ebro River. If the diplomatic mission was indeed at Cartagena, the Roman envoy would not have failed to notice the wealth of local silver flowing through the port city.

  However much dissembling took place on both sides, a minor treaty was signed between the Spanish Carthaginians and the Romans that Carthage acknowledged this Ebro River boundary—and that Carthage would not cross the Ebro “for the purpose of waging war.” The Ebro River merely divides the eastern seaboard of Spain’s long coastline into two-thirds to the south and one-third to the north—not a natural boundary like the jagged Pyrenees Mountains. For Hasdrubal and Hannibal, this uneven treaty also played the Roman hand, showing its designs on the rest of Spain above the Ebro. Hasdrubal acquiesced nonetheless, although we don’t know whether he did it to buy his people time or to assuage Rome of Carthaginian ambitions about the rest of Spain.

  But Hannibal and surely Hasdrubal would have remembered the disasters of the Treaty of Lutatius and how Rome had taken advantage of the Carthaginian desire for peace and continuity of its maritime trade after years of war—forcing Carthage to relinquish claims to any kind of toehold in Sicily even for shipping. They also would have remembered how Rome soon assimilated Sardinia not by battle victory or diplomacy and treaty, since Sardinia was not even part of the Lutatius treaty—instead, Rome had taken Sardinia by outright duplicity, clandestinely arming a revolt in its favor and landing an army on the island for peacekeeping, claiming it had been invited. It was an old ploy that has usually worked throughout history. Hasdrubal and Hannibal would surely have suspected that the Romans could not be trusted over the Ebro boundary. The treaty must have satisfied Rome, which left Spain alone for a few more years.

  CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  Once again circumstances changed for Hannibal. After ruling Spain for a little more than five years, Hasdrubal the Fair was killed in battle by insurgent Celtiberians in the far north in 221 BCE. The shock would have been far greater had not Hannibal been prepared to step into his natural role as general over the assembled forces. Now he was quickly elected commanding general. The trained Carthaginian military presence in Spain consisted not only of Carthaginians, Numidians, and other Libyans but also assimilated Iberians, Celts, Balearic Islanders, and others from Ibiza or islands such as Mallorca and Menorca, as well as friendly tribes spread throughout the Spanish peninsula. Livy marks the transition as one of destiny. Even Hannibal’s physical likeness to his father was a factor:

  [The armies] imagined that Hamilcar himself had been restored to him as he had appeared in youth. They observed in his face the same intense expression and penetrating gaze, the same confidence and strong-willed countenance. But Hannibal had not needed time to prove his resemblance to his father was not just physically superficial and this mirror image was the least important in gaining the support of the army. Never before was there a more suited genius for commanding respect and obedience from his men . . . Nor did any other leader fill his men with courage and boldness . . . In addition he was indefatigable in body and spirit and took no comforts or pleasures beyond those of his men, in fact could often be found at night sleeping wrapped in a blanket like one of his merest scouts. The things that set him apart were not his clothes, which were identical to those of his men, but his horses and weapons and above all his position to be first into battle and last out.4

  In this text, it is hard to miss the egalitarian role Hannibal encouraged regarding the lives of his soldiers, whose loyalty he carefully gathered and possibly manipulated, as Livy suggests. He inspired confidence not just in his unswerving military prowess but also in his personal virtues. He was not motivated or spoiled by luxuries like so many of his historical counterparts in Rome or elsewhere.

  It is not unlikely that Hannibal’s physical toughness was influenced by the stories of Alexander the Great he knew through his tutors.5 En route to his victories in Persia, Alexander was often said to be more austere and unmovable like a Spartan—and his teacher Leonidas had trained him in his adolescence—when it came to personal comfort. Hannibal’s decades with his father, Hamilcar, had also strengthened his self-discipline. Sharing his soldiers’ daily hardships would cement the bond between Hannibal and his men even further.

  When it came to “obedience”—Livy’s grudging choice of words for the soldiers’ response—Hannibal would come to expect his men to follow him unfailingly even when it appeared counterintuitive and dangerous. But Hannibal’s strategies would prove to be trustworthy to his armies. This was one of the greatest strengths of a Hannibal-led army, such that history has rarely if ever seen its equal before or after. It wasn’t a disregard for danger, as Alexander often displayed, thinking himself to be a demigod or a heroic avatar, but an ability to understand and exploit others’ weaknesses. Livy is forced to describe Hannibal as a military “genius” because how else could Hannibal wreak such destruction on Rome’s armies unless he had genius? Livy’s only other explanation is that Hannibal was treacherous—a characteristic that the Roman historian wants his readers to infer.

  HANNIBAL’S LEADERSHIP IN SPAIN

  In 221–220 BCE Hannibal immediately set out to establish his authority and test his military power by starting to rein in the tribes on the fringes of Spain in the West, including the Turdetani and Turdulli, and the Cynetes, and tribes to the north such as the Lobetani, Veitones, Vaccaei, and Olcadi. Learning much from Hasdrubal’s policies, Hannibal also knew that Spanish silver would have to be spread around the peninsula. Hamilcar had also been careful to pay his mercenaries according to expected standards augmented by loot from conquests, and Hannibal had learned firsthand from observing his father in the 240–238 BCE Mercenary Wars back home in Carthage6 how important it was to take care of mercenaries. Fortunately, there was ample silver to be spread around Spain.

  Basing himself in Cartagena, as had Hasdrubal, Hannibal carefully acquired the best possible army of trained soldiers—on the one hand, buying the loyalty of some veteran mercenaries; and on the other, offering other mercenaries the opportunity to share loot from his Spanish conquest as he subjugated the peninsula in lightning attacks and sieges. Although he still visited Akra Leuke, where his father had colonized and set up a military command just outside Andalucia, Hannibal seemed to always return to Cartagena and its silver as the primary Punic base of operations and also the primary link back to Carthage. He always made certain that the leaders in Carthage had favorable reports of his success to accompany the silver shipments, although the silver bullion spoke the loudest and underscored his reports with convincing evidence.

  THE FOUNDING OF CARTAGENA

  The fort that Hasdrubal the Fair began on the Cerro del Molinete hill closest to the harbor was made of worked stone in Punic style: carved blocks with detailed borders and many building foundations whose traces still line the hill with remnant walls. From the heights of this hill, one can still see across the blue harbor or across to the summits of the other hills that also housed urban forts or temples to Carthage’s gods. Carth
aginian silver coins were also minted here from the nearby mines, and the local archaeological museum has a silver Punic coin of Tanit, the goddess consort of Baal, so there also may have been a Tanit shrine, or tophet, in or near Cartagena as well as in other Iberian colonies, especially since other early sanctuaries have been found in Sardinia and Sicily.7 The natural harbor has been so valuable historically over millennia that it was the primary Mediterranean port for the Spanish Empire of the fifteenth through twentieth centuries and more recently that of Spain’s submarine fleet.

  CARTAGENA’S TOPOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

  As one arrives by boat into the Cartagena harbor, the jagged coastline here gives way to many smaller bays under looming plateaus, and panoramic remains of seventeenth-to-nineteenth-century cannon emplacements can be glimpsed that solidified Cartagena’s reputation as among the most impregnable ports of the historic world. That this port was also only a few miles from the richest silver mines in Spain demonstrates how canny and practical the Carthaginians were in carefully choosing locations of their maritime colonies for maximum trading convenience. The Archaeological Museum of Cartagena displays Punic amphorae—vessels for shipping oil or wine—and household pottery of all shapes and sizes. Quite a bit of it was imported from Carthage or Greek colonies, and the rest local copies; all evidence of a substantial Punic population of several thousand people, although there also would have been a constant flow of people back and forth from the mother city of Carthage. Archaeological exploration of more of Cartagena’s perimeter and survey of even some of the higher local peaks may yet uncover additional sanctuaries to Baal and Tanit and additional support communities outside the known walls. The now-dry lagoon to the immediate southwest of Cartagena could have accommodated an entire merchant fleet or warships. Unfortunately, when the Romans conquered Spain a few years later under the Scipio family, the Carthaginian buildings and the Punic stamp on the city was mostly obliterated—deliberately.8