A History of the Roman World

by Scullard, H. H.

  After Cannae, as we have seen, news reached Rome of the revolt of Lucania, Bruttium, and Capua. Then came a report that Postumius had been surprised in Cisalpine Gaul; his force of two legions was cut to pieces, while the commander’s skull was preserved for use in the temple rites of the priests of the Boii. To supervise Rome’s defence a dictator was appointed, M. Junius Pera (consul 230 and censor 225) with Ti. Sempronius Gracchus as Master of the Horse. The people no longer challenged the political control of the Senate; the unfortunate careers of their own champions taught them to trust the Senate’s judgment. Raising fresh forces Pera took up a position on the Via Latina near Teanum, covering the road to Rome. The Romans thus withdrew behind the line of the Volturnus so that Hannibal won over most of Campania except the coast towns and Nola, where he was frustrated by Marcellus. During the winter of 216–215 Hannibal besieged and finally captured Casilinum on the Volturnus. Later Roman annalists might delight in recounting that this winter, passed in luxurious quarters in Campania, undermined the discipline of Hannibal’s army, but the Roman generals of the day knew better.18

  The year 215 proved embarrassing to Carthage, as she sought to encircle Rome with enemies. Hannibal had to remain without help. The Scipios’ victory at the Ebro necessitated diverting to Spain the reinforcements designed for Hannibal (p. 191). The rebellion of Syphax in Africa involved the recall of Hasdrubal from Spain. The ill-fated attempt of Hasdrubal the Bald in Sardinia was a useless dissipation of energy. In the summer Bomilcar landed a small force at Locri, but this was all the help Hannibal received. Only the arrival of reinforcements from Spain could change the complexion of the war; and this the Scipios prevented. In Italy the Romans again ventured across the Volturnus. Marcellus occupied a strong position (at modern Cancello) between Capua and Nola; Gracchus protected the coast near Cumae, while Fabius covered the way to Rome near Cales. Hannibal, who was thus surrounded on three sides, moved his camp from Capua to the hills above; at Mt Tifata he could command all the important roads and valleys, while a plateau suitable for his cavalry nestled among the peaks. From this stronghold, where centuries later Garibaldi also rested, Hannibal struck twice, but he struck in vain. His attempt on Cumae was thwarted by Gracchus; a second thrust at Nola was parried by Marcellus. But while he achieved little in Campania, his lieutenants were completing the conquest of Bruttium; Rhegium alone held out. Yet Rome showed her confidence in her generals by electing Fabius and Marcellus consuls for 214; the number of legions was raised from fourteen to twenty.

  In 214 Hannibal, who had wintered in Apulia, returned to Mt Tifata and summoned Hanno from southern Italy. On his march via Compsa, Hanno found his path blocked by Gracchus who defeated him near the river Calor some three miles east of Beneventum and thus forced him to retire again to Bruttium. So Hannibal, who had in vain attacked Puteoli and Nola, abandoned his offensive in Campania. He failed to surprise Heraclea and then Tarentum, where the Roman fleet stationed at Brundisium was too quick for him. Meanwhile Marcellus had stormed Casilinum and the Romans had recovered Compsa and Aecae in Apulia, which meant that they could advance their base from Luceria to Herdonea. Hannibal was being pushed further and further south.

  In 213 the Romans decided to concentrate on Apulia rather than to attempt the more difficult task of taking Capua. With four legions operating from a circle of fortresses they won over Arpi, but later a severe blow hit them. Not only had Syracuse transferred her allegiance and thus necessitated the removal of the energetic Marcellus from Italy, but now Tarentum followed her example; and in the wake of Tarentum came Metapontum and many other Greek cities in southern Italy. The Tarentines had been embittered by Rome’s execution of some of their hostages who had tried to escape. Their town lay on a narrow peninsula, north of which stretched the best harbour in Italy (the Mare Piccolo); the site bears considerable resemblance to New Carthage (p. 203). By night two gates in the city’s eastern wall were opened and when day broke two detachments of Hannibal’s army had united in the Forum. The Roman garrison, however, retained the citadel, a strong hill which commanded the harbour entrance; this greatly diminished the value of Hannibal’s success. He had to build a defensive wall between the town and citadel, and to drag the ships out of the harbour overland. So ended a dark year for Rome.

  Many at Rome felt that their superior numbers were not being used to the best advantage; more boldness and vigour, greater clearness of purpose were required. Capua had been given a breathing-space which Marcellus’ energy had denied to Syracuse. The people were tiring of Fabius (consul 215 and 214) and his son (consul 213). New men were elected consuls for 212: Q. Fulvius Flaccus (consul 237 and 224) and Appius Claudius Pulcher (praetor and propraetor in Sicily since 215); and all the commands in Italy, save only Gracchus’, were changed. But most of the foreign commands remained unaltered. The number of legions was raised to its highest total of twenty-five; Rome braced herself for the effort and planned to start the siege of Capua. Though the consuls made their base at Bovianum instead of Beneventum or Casilinum in order to mask their intention, the Campanians suspected what was in store and asked Hannibal for supplies. Hanno was ordered to conduct convoys from Lucania. He advanced via Salernum towards Beneventum, which Flaccus entered secretly by night. Issuing forth, Flaccus surprised and captured Hanno’s camp and supplies at Apollosa, three miles south-west of Beneventum, and thus thwarted the attempt to provision Capua. This success was counter-balanced by the surprise and death of Gracchus, probably in Lucania; this was the first Roman reverse in the field since Cannae, and Rome could ill afford to lose so brave and energetic a soldier. Hannibal himself marched into Campania, but could do little as provisions were already short. Three Roman armies closed round Capua and surrounded it with a double line of circumvallation.

  In 211 the twenty-five legions were maintained and Flaccus, Appius Claudius and Claudius Nero continued in the command at Capua. Hannibal made one last effort to relieve the city. He suddenly descended on it with a picked force, but the Roman entrenchments faced outwards as well as inwards, so that he could accomplish nothing when the Romans declined battle. He then made his final desperate throw: by marching on Rome itself he hoped to draw off the armies from Capua. Advancing through Samnium perhaps as far north as Amiternum he suddenly swept round to the southwest; crossing the Anio he camped four miles east of the city and rode up to the Colline Gate.19 It was a terrifying moment; no enemy had approached the gates of Rome since the Gauls nearly two hundred years before. Beside the new recruits there were two of last year’s legions in Rome. The walls were manned and a camp was formed about a mile outside, opposite Hannibal’s. After a few days, when he hoped that part of the Roman army might be on its way from Capua he recrossed the Anio and marched by Tibur to Casinum after a slight skirmish with the consul Sulpicius Galba. By this route he would get between Capua and a Roman army advancing up the Via Latina. But at length, realizing that his bold stroke had miscarried and that the Roman armies were still beleaguering Capua, he did not return to Campania but swung off to Apulia, and left Capua to its fate. This was not long delayed; in despair the Capuans surrendered. Apart from some of the nobility, the people were granted their lives; the city was not sacked, but its land was confiscated; it was deprived of all municipal autonomy and was administered by a praefectus elected annually at Rome. The Senate’s judgement of its defection was stern but just; politically Capua was destroyed, but materially it was allowed to live. It did not suffer the bitter fate of Syracuse.

  The fall of Capua marked a turning point. The same year Syracuse also had fallen and an alliance had been negotiated with Aetolia. But news came from Spain of the disaster of the Scipios. Claudius Nero, who had served at Capua, was despatched with reinforcements to hold the line of the Ebro. Rome was exhausted. Hannibal might be confined to southern Italy, troops might come home laden with booty from Campania and Sicily, but the land of Latium and Samnium was still devastated and groaning for rest. So the legions were reduced to twenty-one and the year 210 pa
ssed comparatively uneventfully. Salapia was captured, though the consul Cn. Fulvius was trapped and killed near Herdonea in Apulia. His colleague Marcellus, the victor of Syracuse, did not attempt to storm Tarentum but contented himself by operating carefully near Venusia. But Rome’s inactivity had a grave result in the autumn; twelve of the Latin colonies through war-weariness refused to send their contingents.

  The year 209 opened with the gloomy prospect of further cautious advances gained at great sacrifice amid serious dissatisfaction among many of the allies; it finished, however, more successfully than could be anticipated. While Fulvius and Marcellus held Hannibal at bay, the cautious Fabius was to advance to Tarentum. Marcellus manoeuvred successfully against Hannibal near Canusium, Fulvius won back some hill towns; Fabius, aided by a fleet and by an attack on Caulonia to distract Hannibal’s attention, moved against Tarentum which fell by treachery before Hannibal arrived. The city was sacked. Thus the long war dragged on in Italy. At stupendous sacrifice and with dogged perseverance Rome, after parrying Hannibal’s offensive, had at length won Syracuse, Capua and Tarentum, and had confined Hannibal to southern Italy. But all might be in vain if the Italian Confederacy in the north began to break up. Not a moment too soon came news of young Scipio’s brilliant success at New Carthage. The whole complexion of the war was changed; fresh courage and hope flowed in the veins of Rome and her allies. The conqueror of Hannibal had arisen.

  X

  SCIPIO AND ROME’S OFFENSIVE

  1. SCIPIO’S CONQUEST OF SPAIN

  After the disaster of the two Scipios in 211 the Romans lost all Spain south of the Ebro, including presumably Saguntum, while the survivors clung precariously to the Ebro line. Had the Scipios been killed a year earlier, the situation would indeed have been calamitous; but the fall of Syracuse and Capua facilitated the sending of reinforcements. The appointment of Claudius Nero, who had long served in Italy under Fabius’ cautious strategy, suggests that the government envisaged a purely defensive strategy in Spain. Indeed, with his few troops Nero could hardly have acted otherwise. Landing late in 211 he tried during the next year to secure the land north of the Ebro; his hold on the interior was slender, though he possibly caused Hasdrubal Barca some trouble.

  But a defensive attitude in Spain might not prevent the ultimate breakthrough of overwhelming forces. A return to the offensive strategy of the Scipios was indicated, if the man to direct it could be found; and who was more fitting to avenge the Scipios than the son of Publius, the future conqueror of Hannibal? Aged twenty-five, courageous, resourceful, self-confident and wise, the young P. Scipio had an extraordinary power of inspiring confidence in others. His character was a blend of the man of action and the religious mystic; his unusual enthusiasm was moderated by Greek culture and Roman common sense. He had fought in Italy, but as he had only held the aedileship (in 213) he was not qualified for a high command. The details of his election are obscure, but he was enthusiastically nominated by the people to a proconsular command in Spain, and the Senate wisely acquiesced. Constitutional precedent was neglected; Scipio was the first privatus to be invested with proconsular Imperium. His colleague, M. Junius Silanus, possessed only propraetorian imperium. Late in 210 he sailed with reinforcements to Spain where his total force, including the Spanish allies, was over 30,000 men.

  Scipio spent the winter organizing his army and planning one of the most daring exploits of Roman history. So far from remaining on the defensive, he would strike at the enemy’s heart by swooping on their base, New Carthage (Cartagena). Its capture would be of immense value. It contained the bulk of the Carthaginians’ money and war material and their hostages from the whole of Spain; its harbour was one of the best in the western Mediterranean; and it would give Scipio a base from which to conquer the south. Inheriting the strategic ideals of his father, he realized that a base was essential and that his father had failed because Saguntum was not far enough south. His plan was possible because the three Carthaginian generals were still on bad terms and had wintered apart, Hasdrubal Barca in central Spain, the other Hasdrubal near the mouth of the Tagus, and Mago near Gibraltar; each was ten days’ march from New Carthage. Thus one morning early in 209 the small garrison of the city awoke to find the town beleaguered by land and sea. For Scipio, leaving Silanus to guard his communications, had marched south with his main army at great speed and arrived at the same time as the fleet under his friend Laelius.

  The town lay on a peninsula, which ran east and west, within a deep bay which faced south. On the east the peninsula was joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. On the west it was separated from the mainland by a narrow channel which ran north into a large lagoon which spread over the land immediately north of the town. The town was thus surrounded by water on three sides: by the lagoon in the north, by the canal in the west, and by the bay and open sea on the south. On his arrival Scipio encamped on a hill across the eastern isthmus. Next day after beating back a sortie he vigorously assaulted the town from the land side, while the fleet attacked from the south. The first assault failed, but later in the day he renewed the attack and simultaneously sent a party through the lagoon to storm the northern walls while the enemy’s attention was engaged on the other fronts. This lagoon was shallow and in part fordable, but was probably not affected by any tidal action of the sea. When the wading party was about to start, a squall from the north suddenly sprang up and lowered the level of the lagoon by driving the water into the bay. Of this possibility Scipio who had made careful topographical enquiries during the winter may have been aware. To the men, however, it seemed like the direct intervention of heaven, not out of keeping with the mystical self-confidence of their inspired leader. The men raced through the now shallow waters and scaled the deserted battlements, for all attention was focused on Scipio’s frontal attack. Sweeping along the northern wall the escalading party fell on the enemy in the rear. At the same moment the whole defence was crumbling and the naval detachment was scaling the southern walls. So fell the city.1

  Thus Scipio had won the key position in Spain. Besides an immense quantity of booty, money and munitions, he gained control of the local silver mines and thus cut deep into the enemy’s revenue. By his wise treatment of the Spanish hostages and prisoners, he obtained more than mere territorial advance. His romantic personality and his generous outlook, like that of Sertorius later, fired the Spaniards’ imagination, so that many native princes came over to him. He spent the rest of the year building up a new model army, drilling it in tactical reforms of far-reaching effect and training it in the use of new weapons. He adopted the Spanish sword and perhaps adapted the javelin (pilum) which led the Romans to the mastery of the civilized world. Meanwhile the three Carthaginian armies abandoned without a blow the eastern shore of Spain and held on to the south and interior.

  Scipio now had a base sufficiently far south to justify an offensive in Baetica, where he marched early in 208. Hasdrubal Barca, who was quartered near Castulo, advanced to a strong position south-east of Baecula (Bailen) which he hoped would counterbalance the numerical superiority of the Romans. Scipio occupied the hills opposite, but fearing the arrival of a second Carthaginian army he decided to fight on the ground chosen by Hasdrubal. This was a gradual hill, broken half-way up by a flattish terrace; the front and rear were protected by rivers, the sides by streams or watercourses. The Roman light-armed troops at first engaged the enemy’s covering force on the terrace, while Hasdrubal began to lead his main forces out of the camp down towards it. Scipio sent all his light troops to support the first attack and to engage the enemy’s attention. Meanwhile he divided his main army. Detachments swept up the two valleys onto the terrace and fell on the Carthaginians’ flank before they had formed up. Seeing the day was lost Hasdrubal executed a masterly withdrawal and retired with half or two-thirds of his army. Crossing central Spain and the upper Ebro, he ultimately slipped through the western passes of the Pyrenees on his way to Italy.

  Though thwarted strategically, Scip
io had won a glorious tactical victory, which was a real turning point in the development of the Roman army. The Romans were learning the lesson of Cannae and being trained to greater flexibility and individual initiative. Tactically the weak point at Baecula was that Scipio’s light troops were not holding the enemy’s main body during the outflanking movement. But that was soon to be remedied. Scipio has often been condemned by ancient and modern critics for allowing Hasdrubal to leave Spain. In the circumstances the charge is unjustified for three reasons. To follow Hasdrubal was too dangerous, if not impossible; and he could not hold all the passes of the Pyrenees. Secondly, Scipio’s object in Spain was to subdue it, not to expose it to the other two Carthaginian armies while he went on a wild goose chase after Hasdrubal; indeed, it is doubtful whether as a mere privatus cum imperio he had the right to leave Spain without orders. Thirdly, the seriousness of Hasdrubal’s arrival in northern Italy in 207 has been over-emphasized; Rome could and did cope with the danger. Scipio solved a difficult situation with marked success.2

  After Hasdrubal Barca’s departure for Italy, reinforcements were sent to Spain under Hanno, who joined Mago to recruit further in Celtiberia. They were checked by Silanus who captured Hanno, though Mago escaped and joined Hasdrubal Gisgo near Gades (207). With the threat to his flank now removed, Scipio could advance southwards, but Hasdrubal refused battle. His only hope was delay; so he turned to a Fabian strategy of exhaustion and distributed his army in various towns. Scipio did not waste time with a war of sieges, although as a demonstration his brother Lucius carried by assault a rich and valuable town, Orongis. In 206 the situation was changed. When Hasdrubal Gisgo heard that Hasdrubal Barca had been defeated and killed at Metaurus while seeking to join Hannibal, delay was useless; the fate of Spain must be staked on a pitched battle. Early in the year Scipio met the combined Carthaginian forces near Ilipa (Alcala del Rio, near Seville). For several days both armies faced each other in battle array with their best troops in the centre, their allies on the wings. Early one day Scipio drew up his troops in a different order with the Romans on the wings and a centre of Spaniards. A cavalry attack forced Hasdrubal to lead out his men in their usual formation, before he realized the altered Roman order. It was then too late to change. After a deliberate delay to weary the enemy, who had not breakfasted, Scipio stopped skirmishing and delivered the final blow. His centre advanced slowly, declining battle. Meanwhile his wings, by a complicated manoeuvre, were extended, advanced in column and then wheeled again into line, so that they outflanked the enemy, whose resistance soon crumpled. By a brilliantly rapid pursuit Scipio cut off the enemy’s retreat; though Hasdrubal and Mago escaped, their forces were cut to pieces or else surrendered. No less brilliant were Scipio’s tactics. He had rectified one of the weaknesses of Baecula; he now held the enemy’s main forces while the wings carried out their outflanking movement.3