The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic

by Robert L. O'Connell

  The First Punic War began inconclusively. The Carthaginian fleet proved unable to keep the Romans off the island, but the Romans had trouble making progress once they got there, since the rough topography did not favor massed land battles. (There would be only four in the entire conflict, two of them in Africa.) Also, most of the population lived behind walls, which made it hard for the Romans to get at and control the civilians. After the arduous though successful siege of Agrigentum, the Romans realized that the only way to win was to exclude the Carthaginians from the entire island, and that meant building a fleet.40

  It was an audacious proposition. Romans did not take to the sea naturally, and apparently no one in Italy had experience with quinqueremes. Polybius (1.20.10) tells us that to fill the gap they used a Carthaginian warship that had run aground early in the war, and duplicated it one hundred times in sixty days—ancient reverse engineering. Meanwhile, oarsmen were trained on stages, sitting in the order they would assume at sea. Even if, as is likely, these rowers were joined by socii navales, naval allies, from Italian coastal towns with seafaring traditions, the Roman armada—its men and its timber—were bound to be green in comparison to Carthage’s. They proved it on their first mission when the crews of a seventeen-ship squadron panicked and were captured, earning for their commander, an ancestor of Scipio Africanus, the nickname Asina (“she-ass”). This initial loss was deceptive, however. Almost immediately the Carthaginians ran into the main Roman fleet and lost a number of ships, and this was only their first unpleasant surprise.

  The Romans had a secret weapon. Realizing their quinqueremes were outclassed, someone had suggested turning them into delivery systems for marines by mounting pivoting boarding bridges, which Polybius calls “crows,” on their bows. As a Carthaginian vessel approached to ram, the crow from the Roman ship would slam down, embedding itself with an iron beak, whereupon a file of gladius-wielding Romans would storm aboard to wreak havoc on the helpless oarsmen. In the war’s first massive fleet action off Myle on the north coast of Sicily, the Carthaginians were puzzled by the strange devices but sailed confidently ahead, and were thus impaled, losing around forty-five ships and ten thousand men, many of whom were killed.41 If the crow was sort of the reductio ad absurdum of naval warfare, allowing the Romans to turn seaborne encounters into infantry battles, the Carthaginians were plainly slow to react, suffering a string of defeats off Sulci and Tyndaris, and then a huge one at Cape Economus. The latter, which involved almost three hundred thousand participants—more than had fought in a naval battle before or since—has been compared to Cannae in the way the Punic center collapsed inward; but certainly with different results. According to Polybius (1.28.10–14), the Carthaginians had over thirty ships sunk, and sixty-four captured by the Romans and their crows.

  Rome now went for the knockout.42 Refitting their fleet, they headed to Africa in the late summer of 256, disembarked near Cape Bon, and ravaged the rich agricultural district, just as Agathocles had done. At this point messengers from Italy ordered most of the fleet back with the spoils, leaving the consul Regulus with forty ships and two legions. He almost immediately met and defeated the Carthaginians at a place called Adys, plundering their camp and leaving them despondent and faced with the threat of a native revolt. But Regulus overplayed his hand. He offered peace terms so harsh that his opponents decided they had little to lose by continuing.

  With their backs quite literally to their city’s wall, the Carthaginians were open to suggestions. A Greek mercenary named Xanthippus, who was familiar with Spartan training methods, took command and drilled a scratch force of civilians into an effective phalanx. In the spring of 255 he led them onto a chosen field, accompanied by a strong cavalry element and approximately a hundred elephants. Rather than wait for reinforcements, Regulus, whose horse were heavily outnumbered, engaged and soon found himself engulfed and then captured, with only about two thousand Romans managing to escape to their original camp near Cape Bon. This disaster would cast a long shadow over Scipio Africanus’s plan to take the Second Punic War to Africa a half-century later.

  The Carthaginians, who had suffered negligible losses, were undoubtedly elated, but only temporarily. The Romans had readied a fleet to blockade Carthage at sea while Regulus invested it by land. Events having overtaken that plan, the fleet was now sent to rescue the remnants of the Roman invasion force. The Carthaginians intercepted the armada off Cape Bon,43 only to lose 114 ships, many of them driven ashore and captured by the Roman grappling tactics—their fifth naval defeat of the war.

  Carthage had not done well; nearly a decade of fighting had brought little but futility. The city was no longer under threat, but the fleet was shattered and it would be five years before we would hear of renewed operations at sea.44 Carthaginian warships and seamanship were plainly superior, but in the massed engagements close to shore that had been typical of this conflict, there was little opportunity to apply these advantages. Instead the Carthaginians found themselves boarded and their vessels captured, and in such circumstances it can be presumed that the Roman marines were not gentle. This along with drowning must have led to many thousands of casualties. All aboard were probably not citizens, but the toll on the city’s male population must have been heavy. It was fortunate for Carthage that, unlike during much of the war with Hannibal, prisoners of this conflict were frequently ransomed; therefore, many men were probably able to return to their homes. Still, the city’s demographics must have been significantly affected. Carthage remained enormously wealthy, and could afford to reinforce and rebuild its mercenary land forces in Sicily at least five times during the war.45 Yet the naval fleet was a precious asset, and if it were decimated, Carthage could not win this type of conflict.

  Meanwhile the Romans were also being swamped by fate, discovering that while at sea, seamanship did matter. After picking up the remnants of Regulus’s Afrika Korps, they ran into a sudden storm off Camarina on the south coast of Sicily. Probably already riding low in the bow from the weight of their crows, the war galleys didn’t stand a chance against the heavy seas and rocky shores. Of 364 ships, Polybius (1.37.2) says, only 80 survived, and he calls it the greatest naval catastrophe in history. His words still stand; there is simply no modern equivalent. More than one hundred thousand Romans and Italians likely drowned—twice the number of dead at Cannae. That number may have amounted to 15 percent of all the military manpower in Italy.46

  But if the Romans were discouraged, they didn’t show it. Instead, they voted the two consuls in charge triumphs for the victory at Cape Bon, and set about rebuilding the fleet. By the spring of 254, they may have had as many as three hundred ships and were looking for trouble.47

  They found it. After establishing superiority in Sicilian waters, they were back in Africa raiding the coast. While the Carthaginians failed to challenge them, the tides did, beaching the fleet until they managed to break free by jettisoning everything heavy, including presumably their spoils. Disconcerted, the Romans left in a hurry, and the commander Sempronius Blaesus compounded his problems by attempting an open sea return to Italy, during which he ran into another storm off Cape Palinurus in Lucania that cost him more than 150 ships. He too was voted a triumph, but for the next few years Romans cut back their operations and regrouped.

  The year 249 found them blockading Lilybaeum, one of the last Carthaginian bases in Sicily, but none too successfully, since elements of the renascent Punic fleet stationed nearby at Drepana had repeatedly relieved it. The new consul, Publius Claudius Pulcher, rashly intent on eliminating this nuisance, sailed north at midnight aiming to surprise the Carthaginian commander Adherbal. The Punic fleet barely cleared the harbor, but once in open waters was at last able to effectively apply its superior crews and equipment against the Romans, who appear to have given up their crows and who ended up losing 93 out of 123 of their ships. And that was just the beginning. The other consul, L. Iunius Pullus, was leading a convoy of eight hundred transports and 120 warships to resupply the
troops at Lilybaeum, when he was intercepted by a smaller Carthaginian squadron under Carthalo. Without ever actually engaging, the Carthaginian admiral forced the Roman fleet’s two detachments close to the rugged shore, and then, anticipating a storm, he ducked behind Cape Pachynon, leaving the Romans facing the full fury of the squall. Before the storm was over the Roman navy had virtually ceased to exist.

  Carthage had found an ally in Mother Nature, and she proved by far the more effective killer, probably accounting for in excess of two hundred thousand Roman and allied drowned in the three great storms off Camarina, Cape Palinurus, and now Cape Pachynon. Too exhausted to reconstitute the fleet, the Romans were still not about to quit. Instead they appointed a dictator, resumed ground force operations in Sicily, and bided their time. Their adversaries, on the other hand, seemed to have reached a strategic fork in the road.

  Back home, beginning around 248, the Carthaginians appear to have dealt directly with native unrest, waging war against the Numidians and Libyans until the Carthaginians controlled a band 160 miles deep—an Africa-first policy that came to be associated with the general and politician Hanno “the Great.”48 Just what this said about Carthage’s willingness to continue the war with Rome is hard to specify, but the effort is bound to have drawn resources away from it. Meanwhile, Hanno would remain in the eyes of the ancient sources the focal point of those who believed that Carthage’s best future was in its agricultural heartland. As such, Hanno became the great antagonist of Hannibal’s family and the skeptic of their subsequent overseas adventures.

  Both were taking shape toward the end of 248, with Hannibal’s own birth and his father’s arrival in Sicily.49 Sometime earlier Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar, had picked up the nickname Barca (“Thunderbolt”); it certainly suited him and the rest of his clan. Unpredictable and lethal, that is the way they would be remembered by history, as Barcids, carrying a last name in a society without them.50 Hamilcar’s aggressiveness made him a most un-Carthaginian general. He was sent to relieve the more cautious Carthalo, and his first operation was a raid on Italy, ravaging the coast around Locri. This was the first installment in what would become a family saga of bringing war to the enemy’s doorstep.51 Back in Sicily, he established himself at Hercte, a high promontory above the sea, and began waging a guerilla campaign, striking like summer lightning the northwest coast of Sicily, and Italy as far up as Cumae. After three years he suddenly shifted thirty-five miles farther west to Eryx, where he held out for two more years between two Roman forces, resisting their every attempt to get rid of him. Polybius considered him the best commander on either side, but Hamilcar was plainly just holding on, starved for resources, hoping the Romans would give up first.

  That was not about to happen. In late 243 the Romans decided to break the stalemate by building another fleet. But since the state lacked the cash, the endeavor had to be financed by leading private citizens—one, two, or three to a ship—asking to be reimbursed only if things went according to plan. This was an impetuous but characteristic act of faith and determination, especially considering the fate of previous Roman armadas.52 All two hundred of the new quinqueremes were modeled on a particularly fast captured Carthaginian galley, and the Roman crews were exercised relentlessly in Sicily during the year 242 by the consul in charge, C. Lutatius Catulus. They had plenty of time to train, since the Carthaginians were slow to send out a fleet against them, a laggard nine-month response that points to trouble in raising the oarsmen necessary to crew their fleet of 250 warships.

  At last the Carthaginians sailed in early March 241, intent on joining up with Hamilcar, who had been cut off from resupply by the Roman fleet. Instead Catulus intercepted them in heavy seas off the aptly named Aegates (Goat) Islands. Their ships weighed down with provisions and rowed by inexperienced crews, the Carthaginians were swamped, quite literally. Polybius (1.61.6–8) puts their losses at 120 ships, with 50 sunk, but refers to only ten thousand actual prisoners. (Diodorus 24.11.1–2 puts the figure still lower, at six thousand.) Given the weather conditions, this implies that at least fifteen thousand drowned, and possibly a great many more. It is also conceivable that their fleet was simply undermanned. In either case, it is apparent that the Carthaginians had reached the end of the line in terms of human resources.

  Almost immediately the authorities at home gave the now hopelessly marooned Hamilcar full authority to negotiate a peace with the Romans. It was a mistake. Anxious to distance himself from any admission of defeat, Hamilcar worked through his subordinate Gesgo, who then bargained with Catulus to avoid having Hamilcar’s army disarmed, which was another mistake.53 Catulus, anxious to end the war on his watch, not only agreed to these terms, but imposed rather light conditions in other respects. Basically, Carthage had to evacuate Sicily; give up all Roman prisoners, while ransoming their own; and pay an indemnity of around 112,000 pounds of silver during the next twenty years. (This indemnity was later raised to 163,000 pounds over ten years, with 51,000 payable immediately.) The deal having been struck, Hamilcar marched his forces to Lilybaeum, abandoned his command, and promptly sailed for home, leaving the hapless Gesgo with the unenviable task of demobilizing twenty thousand mercenaries long without pay. This was the biggest mistake of all. For Carthage the war may have been over, but the fighting was far from finished.

  The First Punic War had been an epic struggle. As was the case with World War I, at the outbreak of hostilities neither side had had any idea what they were getting into. Both wars were also contests characterized by immense tactical futility and huge losses. The Roman death toll is remembered as proverbially huge by historians, but less attention is paid to the price Carthage paid, in large part because its fleets avoided the kinds of storms that probably killed almost everyone involved.54 Still, Polybius (1.63.6) estimates that Carthage lost five hundred quinqueremes during the conflict. Even if most of these ships were captured and their crews were not entirely made up of its citizens, Roman marines were swordsmen trained to kill, and many of the survivors may have been sold into slavery rather than ransomed. Altogether, it adds up to a lot of potentially missing Carthaginians.

  And this was not a society well suited to warfare. During the long course of the conflict it had been the Romans who had taken all the initiatives to actually win—building a fleet and invading Africa. The Carthaginians, it seems, had fought mostly to persevere. With rare exception, they had failed to effectively apply their fleet, and from this point, Punic naval power would remain permanently depleted.55 Wealth had bought endurance in the form of successive mercenary forces, but in the end this beast would turn upon its master in the most disastrous way, not simply biting the hand that fed it but going for the throat.

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  Forsaken by Hamilcar, who had apparently filled their heads with empty promises, the twenty-thousand-man force he left in Sicily can be presumed to have been in a foul mood, one only temporarily mollified by Gesgo, who at least had the sense to send them back to Africa in small groups on a staggered schedule to be paid off.56 Had this been done promptly, each element might have been repatriated safely. Instead, apparently hoping to strike a better deal, the Carthaginians refused to put up any cash until all the mercenaries had arrived, a blunder of the first order. Having congregated and once again been put off, this time by Hanno “the Great,” all twenty thousand marched on Carthage. Upon realizing just how frightening they were to their former employers, the mercenaries raised the ante repeatedly.

  Worse followed, much worse. When the Libyan contingent became enraged and seized the unfortunate Gesgo, who had been trying to pay them, the whole force went into open revolt. This in turn led the Libyan peasantry, whose taxes had grown ever more burdensome during the war with Rome, to join the mercenaries. Many of the Numidian princes, who had been struggling against Punic domination over the previous decade, followed, and very soon Carthage faced an army many times the size of the one that had been led by Regulus. Once again the city revealed its terrible vulnerability on home
soil.

  This conflict would last more than three years until at least the end of 238 B.C., and in the words of Polybius (1.88.7), this struggle “far excelled all wars we know of in cruelty and defiance of principle.” Beset by a sea of mercenaries, Carthage had trouble hiring more but eventually managed to put together a combination of Punic citizens and loyal local hirelings with no affinity to the veterans from Sicily, though the force was heavily outnumbered and lacking in experience compared to their adversaries. The imbalance was compounded by a leadership struggle at the top. Hanno, who proved to be a good organizer but was less competent in the field, found himself sharing command with Hamilcar Barca, a far better soldier. The two, already likely to have been political antagonists, did not play well together, and eventually Hanno would be forced to resign, but not before operations had been compromised.57

  Fortunately for Carthage, the enemy was a body without much of a brain, and Hamilcar, applying his martial skills in ways not evident even in Sicily, consistently flummoxed the larger rebel forces, who responded with senseless acts of cruelty like dismembering Gesgo and his fellow hostages. At times Barca used diplomacy, winning over the Numidian Navaras and his forces, then rewarding him with marriage to his daughter. But for the most part he showed himself every bit the rebels’ equal in atrocity, ordering captive mercenaries stomped to death by his elephants, and crucifying their leaders once their forces collapsed.

  Observing from across the Mediterranean, the Romans, who disliked deserters even more than they disliked Carthaginians, were initially scrupulously fair, banning their merchants from trading with the mercenaries, and even returning the remaining Punic POWs free of charge. Then, around 240 B.C., temptation appeared on the Carthage-held island of Sardinia, where a group of Carthage’s foreign hirelings seized the chaotic moment, murdered their officers, and Mamertine-like petitioned Rome for help. The Romans had wanted the island since building a fleet but had played coy until the locals ousted the mercenary mutineers, who fled to Italy and again propositioned the senate.58 This time the Romans cast their scruples aside and voted to send an expedition to Sardinia, and when the Carthaginians protested, declared war on them. In no condition to fight, acquiescence cost Carthage not only Sardinia but an additional sixty-one thousand pounds of silver.