Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  9. Jean-Pascal Jospin. “Des Allobroges Alpins: Souverainetés, Résistances et Autonomies,” Rester Libres! Les expressions de la liberte des Allobroges a nos jours (Grenoble, Fr.: Musee Dauphinois, 2006), 13–21.

  10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 50.3.

  11. Geoffroy de Galbert, Hannibal en Gaule (Grenoble, Fr.: Editions Belledone, 2007); Patrick Hunt, “Hannibal in the Alps: Alpine Archaeology, 1994–2006,” chap. 8 in Alpine Archaeology (New York: Ariel Books, 2007), 97–108. Carefully researched by French historian de Galbert and others, this newly found probable Celtic oppidum is the focus of a planned joint French-American collaboration, including a team from Stanford directed by this author.

  12. Barry Cunliffe, The Ancient Celts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 76.

  13. Stephen Allen. Celtic Warrior 300 BC–AD 100 (Oxford: Osprey, 2001), 44.

  14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 52.1.

  EIGHT: THE SECOND AMBUSH

  1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 34.2.

  2. Ibid., 48.1–3.

  3. Ibid., 34.6.

  4. Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37. Walbank says that too much ink has been wasted on this problem and that the past half century of research has not solved it.

  5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 52.3–6.

  6. This is plausible where the French national road D215 runs today between Modane, Fort Saint-Gobain, Villarodin-Bourget, and Aussois, at which point an army could easily descend eastward back to the Arc River at a much shallower topography somewhat following the French national D83 road, but exiting the low plateau near the Ruisseau d’Ambin-Arc River confluence around Les Glières just west of Bramans.

  7. The local Musée Archéologique at Sollières has accumulated some of this material (much from the Grotte des Balmes, spanning a minimum of six thousand years of antiquity); French archaeologist René Chemin of the Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Maurienne has documented a high degree of Celtic activity in the region of the Val Cenis between Bramans and Lansvillard. This society has sponsored many archaeological projects in the region and has presented exhibitions and lectures. The author attended one such lecture in Lanslebourg in August 2013 by René Chemin on Celtic activity in the local region; another 2013 exposition was Jean Barthélémy’s “L’expédition d’Hannibal dans les Alpes: Etat des hypothèses”; another exposition in 2013 was by Jean-Pascal Jospin of the Musée Dauphinois, Grenoble.

  8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 32.

  9. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 53.6. The Greek word for “white rock” is leukopetron. While this landscape of white rock might be expected in many places in the Alps, it is most likely a more dramatic topographic feature of vast rock framed by dark forest. This suggests that the second ambush took place still below the tree line—normally between six thousand and seven thousand feet in the Alps—and snow would be redundant if a place is so named “white [or bare] rock.”

  10. Our Stanford team has verified the antiquity of this gorge as an exposed anticline of layered dolomite and gypsum for at least 2,500 years based on chemical solubility rates of the stone. Richard A. Jolly, “Hannibal’s Pass: Results of an Empirical Test,” Alpine Journal 67, nos. 304/305 (1962): 246, 248, suggests that the leukopetron “white rock” location is the nearby L’Echeillon Gorge, one and a half miles west of the Bramans Gorge, although both share geological circumstances.

  11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 35.

  12. Shean, “Hannibal’s Mules,” 175.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 9, 24.4–8.

  14. Giovanni Brizzi, “Carthage and Hannibal in Roman and Greek Memory,” chap. 27 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 483–98.

  NINE: SUMMIT OF THE ALPS

  1. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 45.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 53.6. The phrase “highest pass of the Alps” has caused near endless contention. One of the weakest arguments some use since Gavin de Beer is that Polybius must have intended the Col de la Traversette, but this is specious if the Romans and, furthermore, Polybius had no knowledge of its existence. The ancients, especially Romans, were limited in their montane geography, and the Col de la Traversette might not even be that ancient geologically, based on the current rate of its deterioration: its tiny window of no more than 100 feet wide is strewn with fresh rockfall, and inscriptions there since its first known foray in late medieval times are half eroded away. Even in the late medieval period, a tunnel had to be made under it for “safer” passage. Its tiny summit makes it impossible for an army to encamp there, as Polybius says, and its lack of any vegetation at its height (9,600 feet.) makes it extremely unlikely that animals—especially elephants with capacious appetites—could manage to find anything to eat for the several days necessary, as Polybius also states. Much more reasonable is the grassy Lac du Savine summit valley of the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche Pass. These are only a few of many possible arguments against Col de la Traversette, not even including philology, as argued by Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37–45, esp. 43–45. When our Stanford team of twenty, including engineering students, as always, crossed the Col de la Traversette on foot in 2006, none found it a credible match for Polybian criteria.

  3. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.9–54.1.

  4. In 2000 our Stanford team found this to be fact in a field season at the 2,450-meter-high (8,300 feet) Gran San Bernardo, in conjunction with the Soprintendenza of the Valle da Aosta, codirected by Dr. Cinzia Joris and Davide Casagrande. Along the old Roman road Via Alpis Poenina, a partial burial had covered the torso of a man with scattered stone but left the arms and legs covered only with soil. Wolves had dug up the arms and legs and carried away bones; only one upper arm (the squarish humerus bone) we found within a few meters’ radius had deep canine fang puncture holes. Also see P. Framarin, “La ripresa defli scavi e l’aggiornamento della topographia del sito di Plan de Jupiter. I sondaggi 2000 e 2007,” in Alpis Poenina, Grand Saint-Bernard: Une Voie À Travers l’Europe, ed. L. Appolonia, F. Wiblé, and P. Framarin (Aosta, It.: Interreg IIIA, Italia-Svizzera, 2008), 33–39; for context, also see fig. 2 in Stefano Galloro, 40.

  5. M. Arnold. “The Radiative Effects of Clouds and Their Impact on Climate,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 72 (June 1991): 795–813; Patrick Hunt, “Alpine Climate and Its Effects on Archaeology,” chap. 2 in Alpine Archaeology (New York: Ariel Books, 2007), 19–28; also Hunt, “Alpine Archaeology: Some Effects of Climate and Altitude,” Archaeolog, a website of Stanford University, last modified December 5, 2005, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/cgi-bin/archaeolog/?p=17.

  6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.2.

  7. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 35.

  8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.2–3.

  9. Ibid., 54.7. Kuhle and Kuhle argue capably from the Greek that this is not a scree slope of tiered avalanche deposit from above but a sheer drop-off of broken-away rock. See “Hannibal Gone Astray?,” 591–601, and “Lost in Translation,” 759–71.

  10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 37.

  11. Lancel, Hannibal, 78–79; Patrick Hunt, “Hannibal’s Engineers and Livy (XXI.36–7) on Burned Rock—Truth or Legend?,” Archaeolog, a website of Stanford University, last modified June 6, 2007, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/cgi-bin/archaeolog/?p=127; Erin Wayman, “On Hannibal’s Trail: The Clues Are in the Geology,” Earth (2010).

  12. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 54.8.

  13. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 37.2; Lancel, Hannibal, 78–79.

  14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 56.1; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 46.

  15. Ibid., 60.5.

  16. Ibid., 60.6.

  17. Louis Rawlings, “The War in Italy, 218–203,” chap. 17 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 299–319, esp. 305.

  TEN: TICINUS

  1. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 47–48, aptly suggests that this fifteen-day alpine passage should be
reevaluated, that it is perhaps only a partial numbering of the total time it took through the entire mountain region. He also writes that Polybius might have intended that this was the time needed for summiting the difficult pass from its approach to its descent.

  2. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 43.

  3. Andreas Kluth, Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011), 92–93.

  4. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 56.4.

  5. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 48.

  6. Enrica Culasso Gastaldi and Giovanella Cresci Marrone, “I Taurini ai piedi delle Alpi,” in Storia di Torino dalla Preistoria al commune medievale, vol. 1, ed. Giulio Einaudi Editore (Torino, It.: Accademia della Scienze di Torino, 1997), 95–134, esp. Gastaldi, “Annibale e i Taurini,” 116–21. Also see F. Landucci Gattinoni, “Annibale sulle Alpi,” Aevum 43 (1984): 38ff.

  Also see the collections of the Museo Archeologico Piemonte (Museo di Antichità di Torino); also see Walter Finsinger and Willy Tinner, “Holocene Vegetation and Land-Use Changes in Response to Climatic Changes in the Forelands of the Southwestern Alps, Italy,” Journal of Quaternary Science 21, no. 3 (March 2003): 243–58, esp. 254, discussing anthropogenic change in the history of the region; also see Martha D. Pollak, “From Castrum to Capital: Autograph Plans and Planning Studies of Turin, 1615–1673. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47, no. 3 (September 1988): 263–80.

  7. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 38.6.

  8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 60.9.

  9. John Prevas, Hannibal Crosses the Alps: The Invasion of Italy and the Punic Wars (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 178.

  10. A. E. Astin, “The Second Punic War,” Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient History, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 76.

  11. Gastaldi, “Annibale e i Taurini,” 118–20.

  12. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 90, 107.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 64.1–11.

  14. Ibid., 62.1–14; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 44.9.

  15. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 45.

  16. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 61.1–6.

  17. Bradford, Hannibal, 69–70.

  18. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 46.

  19. Lancel, Hannibal, 84.

  20. Ibid.

  21. “Placentia-Piacenza, Italy,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, ed. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, and Marian Holland McAlister (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

  22. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 47.1.

  23. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.8.

  24. John T. Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2006), 895: “Severed heads were proof of a warrior’s valor, confirming the number of enemies he had slain in a battle.” But judging by the frequency of decapitation in Celtic literary accounts, it was more than fascination with verifying an enemy death and clearly tied to Celtic ritual. Also see Cunliffe, Ancient Celts, 127–28: “A recurring theme is the cult of the severed head [as displayed in the columnar sculptures] of Roquepertuse with niches for severed heads.”

  25. Thomas George Eyre Powell, The Celts, repr. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 130; Gerhard Herm, The Celts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 54: “The most hideous Celtic custom, in Greek historians’ eyes, was head-hunting.” Herm also notes, “Diodorus once saw Celtic warriors with whole wreaths of victims’ heads hanging on their bridles,” quoted in Herm, 55.

  26. Also note Miranda Green, “A Carved Stone Head from Steep Holm,” Britannia 24 (1993): 241–42. According to Galbert (pers. comm., 2009), there is also a circa 1909 cache of at least nineteen decapitated skeletal heads, presumably victims of Celtic raids, found at the Grotte de Fontabert in the Grenoble area of Savoie. Also see Galbert, Hannibal et César dans les Alpes (Grenoble, Fr.: Editions de Belledonne, 2008), 158–59; H. Müller, “Tombes gauloises de la Tène II, découvertes au pied des Balmes de Voreppe,” Bibliothèque municipal de Grenoble, Fonds Dauphinois, 1909; Stephen Fliegel, “A Little-Known Celtic Stone Head,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 3 (March 1990): 89, 91: “It is known from the classical literary sources as well as the representational and archaeological evidence that the Celts practiced ritualistic headhunting, that is to say, the act of severing the head from the body after death” and “The Celts placed considerable importance on their collections of heads, particularly from distinguished enemies. Diodorus [Library of History, vol. 29] explains that their owners displayed them to strangers with great pride.”

  27. Astin, “Second Punic War,” 76.

  ELEVEN: TREBIA

  1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.9; Michael P. Fronda, “Hannibal: Tactics, Strategy, and Geostrategy,” chap. 14 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 243.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 68.11.

  3. A maniple (speira in Polybian Greek) is a term for a fighting military unit of sixty to a hundred men and is often confused with the Latin word cohors (cohort). See M. J. V. Bell. “Tactical Reform in the Roman Republican Army,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14, no. 4 (October 1965): 404–22.

  4. William O’Connor Morris, Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman, Patriot, and the Crisis of the Struggle Between Carthage and Rome, 1937), 127.

  5. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 53; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 55; O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 112.

  6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 51.6ff.

  7. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 111, with good reason, as the time of year would be long beyond the safe sailing season in the Mediterranean, which generally closes in late September. This is another one of those Livian versions of the story that reduce his credibility compared with Polybius’.

  8. J. A. Cramer, A Dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal over the Alps (London: J. W. Parker and G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1820), xix.

  9. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 173.

  10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 17.

  11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 53.6–15.

  12. Millennia later, Napoléon I tried to follow this same Hannibalic strategy in the Padana and along the Trebia as well. See John Peddie, Hannibal’s War (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 32.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 70.12.

  14. Ibid., 70.11.

  15. Rivergaro is approximately where many of the most credible historians place the combined Roman camp of Scipio and Sempronius on the east Trebia side (about 5.5 miles from the battlefield near Canneto). The likeliest Trebia battlefield lies just north of Canneto on the west side of the river, with Hannibal’s camp slightly farther northwest (about 1.75 miles) of the Canneto battlefield near Campremoldo di Sopra on the west Trebia side. See map, Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 174.

  16. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 177.

  17. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 72.13.

  18. Hannibal seems to have often used his Celt allies this way, putting them at the center, where they would absorb the greatest damage. It is possible that he was exploiting them as cannon fodder, although he no doubt promised them great reward for their feckless bravery at taking the very brunt of the battle.

  19. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 74.11.

  20. Bradford, Hannibal, 79.

  21. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 180.

  22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 77.5–6.

  23. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 75.1–2.

  24. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 58.

  25. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 15 and 63. Note bk. 23, Hannibal at Cannae, 37, where Livy says that Sempronius helped in a successful battle against Hannibal’s brother and forced him out of Lucania. Sempronius’ son, of the same name, was made consul in 194 and, redeeming the family name somewhat, oversaw Roman colonists in parts of Gaul. (See, by way of comparison, Livy, History of Rome, bk. 34, Close of the Macedonian War, 42.)

  TWELVE: THE
APPENNINES AND THE ARNO MARSHES

  1. Lancel, Hannibal, 91; Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 270.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 78.1–4; Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 1.

  3. Lancel, Hannibal, 90; Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 181–82.

  4. While Polybius is our best source, his historical lens is at times imperfect, being after the fact.

  5. Giovanni Brizzi, Scipione e Annibale: La Guerre per Salvare Roma. (Rome: Bari: Editore Giuseppe Laterza e Figli, 2007), 48: “il quale partiva per raggiungere il fratello Cneo in Spagna.”

  6. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 57. It includes the fortified town Victumulae, belonging to Roman ally the Celts. Livy says that Hannibal even had another battle with Sempronius, but this is not taken as fact.

  7. Lancel, Hannibal, 91.

  8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 58.

  9. Colin Hardie, “The Origin and Plan of Modern Florence,” Journal of Roman Studies 55, nos. 1/2 (1965): 122–40.

  10. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 62.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 60.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 78.6.

  14. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 11. Lazenby also suggests that Hannibal took the internal route through Etruria hoping that the Etruscans might defect to him.

  15. This pass, or the Porretta Pass, according to Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 61; Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 184; and O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 117.

  16. Technically, both the Porretta and the Collina Passes mostly follow the Italian Trans-Apennine national road SS-64 and the Reno River (Fiume Reno) much of their route until the Commune Granaglione. Then the Reno River follows the SP-632 road mostly the rest of the way to the source of the Reno River. The Porretta Pass is on the north half of the Apennine route (Emilia Romagna), and the Collina on the south portion (Tuscany). Near Collina, the SS-64 is roughly 13 miles west of the main Italian primary north-south autostrada A1, which goes from modern Bologna to modern Prato. Although the modern autostrada A1 partly follows the Reno River Valley, leaving Bologna it diverges from the Reno River while still in Emilia Romagna. The Reno River’s source is around 2,390 feet high (745 meters), about 3 miles west of the Collina Pass. So if Hannibal followed the Porretta-Collina Pass route, he would have traveled along the Reno River watershed until cresting the Apennines at a slightly higher place.