Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  Scipio also planned well for possible outcomes and especially designed a way to neutralize the war elephants.37 He also divided his Roman army into the similar three lines he had used at the Battle of Ilipa in Spain in 206 and the Battle of the Great Plains west of Utica in 203. His hastati or lightest infantry made up the front line, his heavier principes were the second line, immediately behind the hastati, and his triarii were the heaviest infantry, his third line, deployed close behind the principes to prevent the war elephants from getting between the lines. Massinissa’s Numidian cavalry flanked the infantry on the right, and Laelius commanded his Italian cavalry on the left. Scipio, by this time, expected Laelius to almost fight as an extension of himself. The two generals, Hannibal and Scipio, appeared to be mostly imitating each other’s placements at this point, and there was nothing immediately deceptive or daring about their battle tactics as recorded.38

  Scipio introduced a unique strategy aimed at the elephants. From his experience with Carthaginian battles in Spain, he knew that the beasts were often unmanageable.39 But Scipio took Hannibal’s elephants into account with more deliberation than he had Hasdrubal’s elephants at Ilipa.40 He now divided his Romans into distinct groups of small mobile maniples, units of sixty to one hundred soldiers, that would separate to each side when the war elephants charged straight ahead, drawing them through the empty corridors.41 This would have been frightening for the soldiers unless they were highly trained to block with their shields together almost in unison. Scipio may have practiced these tactics if he could have done it without prying eyes. The elephants could be disposed of behind the army lines if they charged straight through the lanes made for them. Scipio placed his very mobile light velites skirmishers either between the maniples to hide the slight maniple breaks in his ranks or in small groups barely in front and between the maniples. When the elephants came, these light velites would run back through the gaps as fast as possible.

  This canny maneuver depended greatly on the trained maniples and their commanders knowing when and how to move to the side and how far. The tactic may suggest that the Roman maniples left more space between the ranks of soldiers than usual, and that the three lines were so close behind one another to keep elephants from moving left or right through the line gaps. The assembly of the army on the field had to be extremely well executed, but the broad Zama plain made this new maneuver possible, as Scipio planned, unlike the much narrower field at Cannae, where the compression of Roman forces had been fatal.42 No doubt Scipio was aware that no matter how much he prepared in advance, he was dealing with a brilliant adversary who could improvise on the spot in the heat of battle.

  The war trumpets sounded, and the first phase of battle began. Romans beat on their shields and gave their war cry while the shouts of the assembled Carthaginian army must have been a cacophony of languages. Livy says the Romans were louder, but this is dubious, since they were fewer, although contrasting vocables uttered in so many languages would have just added to the confused din. Livy, however, implies the opposite, that war cries made a slight difference in the spirits of the soldiers: Hannibal’s forces made a discordant noise, no doubt loud but possibly canceling any desired effect because there was no discernible meaning; whereas the Roman war cry was in unison and thus all the more terrifying.43

  Hannibal’s elephants and skirmishers charged forward, kicking up clouds of dust, and aimed straight ahead to make breaches in the Roman line. But many elephants, always hard to control when their vision was relatively suspect, veered away to the right; many of those who did charge were channeled forward as the Roman maniples opened up as planned. Some elephants did inflict damage on the Roman front lines. If the Roman army faced eastern sun, the low morning light reflected off metal traces may have even disconcerted some young elephants, who were also unused to the din of horns and trumpets, as Polybius notes.44 Some mostly untrained elephants who veered right never encountered Romans and instead ran amok into Carthaginian lines, wreaking great damage and confusion there as they stampeded their own forces. Most of Hannibal’s war elephants were ineffective, spoiling his desired aim of sowing great confusion among the Roman ranks. So the first phase of battle did not go Hannibal’s way.

  About the same time, the superior cavalry forces under Massinissa and Laelius overwhelmed the Carthaginians and their allied cavalry units, driving them back, especially on the Carthaginian right cavalry flank, where Laelius and his Roman horsemen attacked after elephants had broken up that side of the infantry. Livy says that the rogue elephants caused Cartha-ginian cavalry to flee away from battle rather than charge the Roman cavalry.45 Hannibal had hoped that if his inferior cavalry retreated on his flanks and the Romans chased them, then the Roman cavalry would be drawn off the battlefield and could not outflank Hannibal’s infantry. This worked as long as the Carthaginian cavalry could engage the enemy cavalry, but soon the cavalry engagement ended.

  The initial infantry phase of battle also disappointed Hannibal. Even though the Romans were outnumbered, the surge of Hannibal’s front line of allied mercenaries did not penetrate the disciplined Roman line. Instead it gave way to Scipio’s deeply massed front of trained hastati, principes, and triarii. Hannibal’s first line of mercenaries then retreated into his untested second line of Carthaginian and Libyan levied recruits, causing disarray as they backed into their own army. Now the mercenaries, who had never fought under Hannibal, were more than matched by the advancing Romans, who had formed into a cohesive army since Sicily and had yet to be defeated under Scipio’s bold leadership. The mercenaries tried to turn away from the Romans but had nowhere to escape, blocked by their allied second line of Carthaginian recruits and levies. Instead, in pandemonium, to preserve their lives, the feckless mercenaries began to attack their own Carthaginian allies of the second line to get away from the Romans.

  Because the number of Roman infantry was now mostly equal to the combined first and second lines under Hannibal, the Roman advantage began to show, as it was also the better trained fighting force. The esprit de corps of the untrained and confused Carthaginians in the second line turned to panic as they were pressed between their first and third lines, the mercenaries forcing them toward the third line of Italian veterans, who refused to move back. Because Hannibal had kept his old veterans in the rear as needed reserve, the empty space he had left between his first two lines and his third line quickly disappeared as the Romans continued to move forward fighting as a tight-knit block now that the elephants were no longer a threat.

  Now many of the desperate Carthaginians and mercenaries fell victim to their own army, mostly unknown to one another and having no loyalty to the oversight of their general, fighting internally in great disarray as well as falling to the more disciplined Romans. To arrest the retreat, Hannibal’s Italian veterans of the third line put their wall of spears facing forward, not allowing the Carthaginian and mercenary lines to back up any farther. The veterans finally forced their allies instead to run to the right and left, at first filling up the flanks left by the evacuated cavalry and then many fleeing the battlefield altogether. But somehow Hannibal masterfully pulled his disorganized army back together, mostly stopping the hemorrhage of flight.

  In this second battle phase, Hannibal’s army coalesced into one line as Scipio advanced his army, keeping his hastati in the center and spreading out his other two lines of principes and triarii to right and left on his own flanks to also make one line so that Hannibal could not outflank him. The difference was that Scipio’s infantry strength was now on his two sides, whereas Hannibal’s Italian veterans created the strong center of his line. Both armies were now fighting in full engagement, and Hannibal’s wily veterans in the middle—his original third line—could have turned the day in his favor, since they were mostly fresh and were facing the weaker Roman center of light infantry. The courage of Hannibal’s Italian veterans may have temporarily rallied their remaining mercenary infantry and Carthaginian companions, even though these were hard press
ed by the Roman heavy infantry fighting on the flanks. Both master strategists, Scipio and Hannibal had balanced their strengths against the enemy’s weakness. The battle seemed to become a stalemate for a while.

  But in the third phase, the tide turned after the superior Roman and Numidian cavalry had routed the smaller Carthaginian and allied cavalry. The Romans and Numidians on horseback now returned to the battle from the rear, and as they were far more mobile on horseback and had suffered few casualties, they began to systematically slaughter Hannibal’s army from behind. Once again this became a battle where superior cavalry seemed to have the ultimate role in victory. It was an enveloping outcome eerily similar to Cannae but where the victim was the teacher and the victor his student.

  At Zama, the death toll for Hannibal’s army mounted to twenty thousand, with another twenty thousand captured, as Polybius maintains,46 whereas Scipio’s losses were possibly only about two thousand men.47 Whether the western sun was glaring in the Carthaginians’ eyes and whether the accessibility to fresh water in the spring—here controlled by Scipio, who had arrived first at Zama—were factors in battle, we will likely never know, but these were in any case certainly minimal to Carthage’s defeat. Zama was Hannibal’s Waterloo, and like Napoléon, it was his last battle against his arch foe.

  At the end of his Zama disaster, Hannibal escaped with a small detachment of cavalry that had either stayed with him or returned before the final outcome, making his way east not to Carthage, where he would have faced only enemies among his countrymen, but the farther distance to his old family estates in Hadrumetum, now Sousse, Tunisia, 120 miles to the east.48 Scipio then plundered the Carthaginian camp and soon returned to Utica with his prisoners and great booty as a Roman victor before sending his fleet toward Carthage to present Rome’s demands.

  When Hannibal finally returned to Carthage weeks later to give his report—his first visit in thirty-six years—he told the tribunal of Carthage he had lost both the battle and the war. He told the elders their only recourse was to seek peace with Rome and pay whatever indemnity was imposed. Scipio’s ships were thus met with a vessel out of Carthage laden with olive branches and herald’s devices—which protected the occupants as messengers, not soldiers—suing for peace. Its humbled ambassadors were to see firsthand what Scipio’s victory now meant. As in the First Punic War a half century earlier, one decisive battle determined Carthage’s fate. But unlike the prior campaigns, this defeat took place in their homeland rather than on the sea. It must have been perceived as far more disastrous. Hamilcar had contested the first war and the indemnity of 241, but his son made no such protest after Zama.

  At Zama, Scipio had figured out how to render war elephants useless or more dangerous to their own ranks, somehow observing from military intelligence or Numidian complicity that these difficult animals could be Carthage’s first attack force. The inequity in cavalry was also a major factor and had probably been uppermost in Scipio’s mind for some time, whether that meant bribing the Numidians or creating compelling circumstances such as Massinissa’s passion for Sophonisba and desire for revenge against Syphax.

  Conversely, Hannibal, having just returned from Italy, did not have such opportunity to assemble sufficient Numidian cavalry or train his new army as a unit between the late autumn of 203 and the autumn of 202 leading up to Zama. The better training of Scipio’s army was also very much a factor, since he planned and trained his men for almost two years and had fought with at least some of them since Spain. The slight advantage in number of Hannibal’s army was not a factor when so many of his forces had not fought together like Scipio’s army had.

  Polybius says Hannibal had done all he could at Zama as a good and experienced general. He had tried by interview with Scipio before battle to secure a diplomatic resolution, knowing the odds were against him. Even though he had a long history of victory, he understood the many possibilities and unexpected contingencies of war. Thus, he had accepted battle when he had no other choice, and planned as best he could for it both before and during battle. Hannibal likely understood that the outcome would be universal dominion for Rome.49 Zama made Carthage despair in similar terms as Rome had despaired after Cannae, but Zama was the beginning of the end for Carthage, whereas Cannae proved to have been only a setback for Rome.50 Few would disagree with a bluntly honest Hannibal that his loss determined the course of history. As one historian has said, Zama was “one of the most crucial [battles] in the history of Europe.”51

  THE AFTERMATH OF ZAMA

  At Tunis, where Scipio met the ten humbled ambassadors from Carthage in the late fall of 202, Scipio’s authority imposed a far heavier penalty than in 241. Carthage could continue as a sovereign state for now without a military occupation by Rome, but it would exist with severely limited scope. It had already lost all claim to Spain, Sicily, and the islands, but now it also had to accept that its fleet was reduced to ten triremes, its elephants must all be handed over to Rome, it was expressly forbidden to wage war outside Africa, and it must seek Rome’s permission to exercise any war in Africa.

  Whereas the Treaty of Lutatius in 241 exacted 2,200 talents of silver, the new indemnity for defeat was 10,000 talents of silver to be paid out in installments for fifty years. Carthage must also submit 100 hostages chosen by Rome between the ages of fourteen and thirty,52 and therefore in their prime, who could be rotated or replaced. Carthage must also release any Roman prisoners, amounting to 4,000 Roman slaves released from Carthaginian captivity—some of them patricians such as Terentius Culleo, who walked behind Scipio in his now triumphal return. Some have calculated the value of the indemnity, in the most current estimate, this 572,000 pounds of silver would be worth over $183 million.53 This would not bankrupt Carthage as a state, but it did penalize the people with added taxes rather than coming from the official treasury, which Hannibal later on protested to the Council of Elders.54 Interestingly many modern war reparations assigning responsibility for war are derived partly from at least the spirit if not the letter of this Carthaginian precedent.55

  Many of the Carthaginians wept as their ships were burned in the gulf in plain sight of the city, with the whole populace watching the primary means of their trading wealth go up in flames, possibly in the presence of Scipio and his army. If Hannibal were also there witnessing the conflagration, he surely suffered as a defeated general at home rather than as a victorious commander who had made Rome tremble for years. For the first time in his adult life, Hannibal had no army.56

  Scipio’s victory at Zama worried some in the Senate that he might covet the tyranny of an old-style rex (king).57 Livy even mentions the words regius (“royal” or “regal”) and regnum (“rule” or “realm”) as allegation by Scipio’s critics.58 But Scipio was content to bring Carthage and its territory to defeat.

  The Senate ratified Scipio’s terms by early 201. Confirmed in his proconsulship over Africa, Scipio remained there until 201, arriving at Lilybaeum in Sicily and then marching through Italy in triumph until he arrived in his chariot in Rome as the conqueror of Africa. He would thereafter be known as Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Africa.59

  Hannibal was not forced to march alongside Scipio as his defeated enemy. Perhaps Scipio understood that the very sight of Hannibal in Rome might have been unnerving to Romans and would even detract from Scipio’s own persona of victory. Plus, he might have concluded that taking such a dangerous person as Hannibal to Rome might not be wise, since Scipio gauged Hannibal to be as crafty as himself. Possibly also out of respect for his adversary’s reputation, Scipio allowed Hannibal to remain in his homeland. He may have considered Hannibal the only person strong enough to keep Carthage on the stable path of honoring its financial payments as they came due.

  Immediately after Zama in 202, when negotiations were brokered over the treaty with Rome, while voting, Carthage’s Council of Elders had a sole elder opposing the treaty—likely named Gisco—and an angry Hannibal is reported to have seized this dissenter and thrown hi
m from the speaker’s platform. When Hannibal’s indignant fellow Carthaginians objected to his physical aggression, his verbal response was both an apology for being away so many years and for behaving more as a military leader before the council than as a legislator. But he also offered a compelling argument that Rome could have acted much more severely against Carthage. Livy recorded this event, so word got back to Scipio and to Rome.60

  When the first indemnity installment of silver came due for Carthage to send to Rome, Livy says in a singular anecdote61 that many Carthaginians wept in shame but that Hannibal laughed a bitter laugh, possibly revealing contempt for the mercantile powers of Carthage that had never fully supported him and must now pay up in consequence. The prolonged conflict had been called “Hannibal’s War,” since Carthage had disavowed him more than once.62 Hannibal also knew that the charge of this being his war was in many ways an accurate assessment.

  Livy put a retort in Hannibal’s mouth that seemed prescient: he was not laughing except at misfortune. He who had long been the beneficiary of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck, as Polybius reminded, now mistrusted her.63 Hannibal now warned that Carthage would find out all too soon that this war indemnity was the least of its troubles to come.

  Twenty-three

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  EXILE

  Zama shattered Hannibal’s long-held dreams of putting Rome back in its place on mainland Italy and restoring Carthage to power in the Mediterranean. He never fought directly against Rome again; he never won another major battle and never commanded another army. In fact, his greatest battles over the remaining third of his life were reduced to the survival of Carthage and to merely stay alive himself. Now in his midforties, he no longer had the energy, strength, and stamina of youth or the yearning hope and positivism of a young man as he had been at the summit of the Alps looking into Italy and forward to many years ahead. His future looked bleak even in Carthage.