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

by Robert L. O'Connell

  It was a defining act and a defining moment. Rome in effect had kicked Carthage when it was down. Few modern historians disagree with Polybius’s (3.10.4) judgment that this episode did not simply further embitter Carthaginians but was a principle cause of the second war with Rome. The circumstances argue that Hamilcar and the Barcid clan were particularly outraged and held the grudge as long as they could hold a sword.

  Conjuring what must have been the tumultuous political atmosphere of Carthage in 237 B.C. is a problematic endeavor, based essentially on scraps. Yet certain elements do emerge from the mists of time looking more like realities than apparitions. There was bound to have been widespread dissatisfaction concerning the events of the recent past, with the fingers of blame pointing in more than one direction. Also, we can make out two distinct factions, one led by Hanno the Great and the other by Hamilcar Barca.

  Our own vision of the former has been clouded by Gustave Flaubert’s portrait in the flamboyant historical novel Salammbô. Hanno is portrayed as ulcerous, obese—eating flamingo tongues and drinking viper broth, a repulsive creature whose cowardice is exceeded only by his cruelty. The real Hanno was no caricature. Granted, Livy plainly uses him as a foil to Barcid ambitions, but Hanno does seem to have had a good sense of power realities. His vision of “Africa first” and commercialized agriculture was a plausible future for the state. Still, he plainly represented the oligarchy that had presumably mismanaged the lost war with Rome, and he was personally associated with the policy of heavy taxation that had caused the Libyans to join the mercenaries in rebellion.59 At this point, both his reputation and his style of government must have been open to challenge.

  Yet skepticism of Hanno did not necessarily translate into approval for Barca. After all, it was Hamilcar’s original abandonment of his forces that had led directly to their disastrous mutiny. Nor were his earlier desire to continue resistance in Sicily and his general intransigence toward Rome necessarily popular with an exhausted and depleted Carthage. Indeed, Appian tells a story of Hamilcar threatened with being brought to trial over his conduct in Sicily.60 Still, of the two, Barca seems to have been the more resourceful and resilient.

  It stands to reason that opposition to the oligarchy’s recent record would have been located in the assembly of the people, and here one Hasdrubal the Handsome seems to have held sway—“the lord of the Carthaginian streets,” Diodorus (25.8) calls him. It was this politician with whom Hamilcar forged a tight alliance, making him his son-in-law and possibly his lover.61 Some have seen the stirrings of democracy in this pairing, but this seems like a stretch. More likely, it was motivated by a general dissatisfaction with contemporary events and, in the case of these two, mutual self-interest. Hasdrubal was young and apparently ambitious. Hamilcar had a plan and needed a command. The people elected the generals.

  It was a marriage made … if not in heaven, at least in Carthage, and then the happy couple would honeymoon in the south of Spain, the fabled land of silver mines, and make everybody rich—or at least rich enough to pay off the Romans. Compared to this scenario, Hanno and agribusiness must have sounded pretty stodgy, and the scenario’s appeal is testified to by Hamilcar’s apparently having left for Spain almost immediately, bringing his son-in-law with him.62

  Before departing, however, Barca did several things that had immense significance for the future. No doubt careful to follow the rituals of a very religious place, Hamilcar performed a customary sacrifice, probably to Ba‘al Shamim, after which he requested a moment of privacy with his nine-year-old son. Hamilcar asked him if he would like to come to Spain. The boy begged to be included, at which point the father took him to the altar, placed his hand on the sacrificed carcass, and made him swear an oath of eternal enmity toward the Romans.63 The son, of course, was Hannibal, and he told the story to Antiochus, the Seleucid emperor, four decades later as evidence of his loyalty and commitment to fighting the Romans. It’s a melodramatic tale, but none of the ancient sources, and few modern historians, doubt its veracity. If there was one thing that bound the Barcids, it was a hatred of Rome.

  The recent struggle with the mercenaries also seemed to have encouraged Hamilcar to value fidelity. The army he brought to Spain was no Carthaginian rent-a-force; instead, the timing argues that he never disbanded the elements he’d used to destroy the rebels. More to the point, it appears he marched the army across North Africa, crossing to Iberia at the Pillars of Hercules.64 Possibly Carthage simply lacked the ships to transport the force, but this is unlikely. It was a trek nearly as extended, though probably not as difficult, as Hannibal’s eventual march over the Alps, the kind of long haul that hardens and bonds an army, a training exercise by which—like Hamilcar’s earlier proclivity to directly attack Italy—the father provided a precedent for the son. The march also serves to illustrate what one historian calls the Barcids’ “landlubberly preference for action on terra firma,” strangely at odds with their country’s maritime tradition.65 In a very un-Carthaginian way, the Barcids were all about land power, and this army, tempered on the long march to Spain in 237 B.C., was to remain their personal implement of aggrandizement, a professional rather than a mercenary force, continuously under arms until Scipio Africanus finally shattered it nearly forty years later.

  [6]

  Southeastern Spain had been influenced by Phoenicians since the first millennium B.C., when they had established emporiums on the shores of Andalusia, but subsequent Greek pressure, particularly from the city of Massilia (today’s Marseilles), had narrowed the Phoenicians’ sway. Gades (modern Cádiz) at least remained Punic-friendly, and it was here that Hamilcar landed within easy reach of the gold and silver mines of the Sierra Morena. It appears that among the first things he did was arrange for a steady supply of these precious metals to be sent back to Carthage, a move that must have bolstered his political standing at home.66

  The next eight years were occupied with almost continuous campaigning as Hamilcar worked his way east, occupying the coast of southern Spain, and then penetrated up the valley of the Baetis River (modern Guadalquivir River) to seal this band of territory on the inland side. The Massiliotes watched this expansion with increasing distress, and Hamilcar finally drew the attention of their allies the Romans, who sent a delegation in 231, only to be blandly told that he was simply fighting to pay off Roman war indemnities. A clever answer, delivered far from their sphere of control, but the Romans were unlikely to have departed convinced of his goodwill.

  Two years later he was dead, ambushed by a Celtiberian tribe, the Oretani. According to one tradition, he sacrificed himself so that Hannibal and his brother might escape. There is an anecdote recounted by Valerius Maximus (9.3.2) of Hamilcar, years earlier, watching his three boys—Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago—engaged in rough play, and noting proudly, “These are the lion cubs I am rearing for the destruction of Rome!” Perhaps, but not yet. Hannibal, the oldest, was not yet twenty, too young to take over the family business; instead Hasdrubal the Handsome was elected by the army to run things in Spain, and then his position was ratified at home.

  Exactly what was the nature of this enterprise in Spain—was it Barcid or Carthaginian? It’s impossible to say definitively; the evidence is just too fragmentary. Those who argue that it was planned and directed as a matter of Carthaginian state policy can dismiss as inconclusive any indications of Barcid independence, especially in the face of a larger strategic vision of outflanking Rome and developing a replacement for lost holdings in Sicily and Sardinia.

  Yet in detail this story looks unconvincing; what clues remain are covered with Barcid fingerprints. Polybius (3.8.1–4) cites Fabius Pictor as saying that Hasdrubal the Handsome, after Hamilcar’s death, journeyed briefly to Carthage and tried to take over the government, and when this failed, he returned to Iberia and ruled “without paying any attention to the Carthaginian Senate.” The trip may be in doubt, but the management style rings true.

  Diodorus (25.12) tells us that the Spanish tribes
proclaimed Hasdrubal strategos autokrator, the same title conferred on Alexander by the League of Corinth. This may not simply have been because Diodorus was a Greek and was used to such terminology. There was a very Hellenistic cast to the Barcid operation in Spain; after all, this was the Mediterranean basin’s most successful model of how to move into a hinterland and rule. The Barcids were essentially soldiers and conquerors of a more traditional sort. As such, they represented an order of power different from what had been prevalent in Carthage, and more akin to the Greek despotism of the east. Then there is the matter of the money. We have two double shekel pieces attributed to Barcid Iberian mints of the era, depicting what are possibly Hamilcar and Hasdrubal. Both are represented as Hellenistic monarchs crowned with the royal diadem and laurel leaves.67

  Hasdrubal certainly behaved like a contemporary basileus, marrying a local princess (as Alexander had in Asia and as Hannibal would do in the future), and scrupulously playing divide and rule among the local tribal chiefs. He also set up a metropolis, New Carthage (modern Cartagena), a huge palace-cum-fortress complex on a peninsula three hundred miles east of Gades, a site that commanded one of the best harbors in the world and was in the vicinity of rich silver mines. It would become Barca central—an arsenal, a treasure chest, and the nerve center of an operation that by all appearances bought the Barcids independence and assuaged the more timid souls at home through a steady stream of precious metals. All the while charting a course dictated by family priorities.

  These priorities led east, for now only toward the river Ebro, with Hasdrubal advancing along the coast from New Carthage. The Romans, worried that he might try to link up with rebellious Ligurians and Gauls and always with a good sense of who was in charge, chose to deal directly with the Barcid rather than with the Carthaginian senate, sending out their ambassadors in 226.68 They struck a deal. Hasdrubal would not cross the Ebro, and he may have been assured that the Romans would not interfere to the south.69 At any rate it was a line in the sand, and apparently Hasdrubal spent the next five years consolidating behind it. Then he was dead, handsome Hasdrubal assassinated by an angry Celt; ironic, since he’d always been more the diplomat than the soldier. This would not be said of his successor.

  By acclamation the army chose Hannibal, now twenty-six, as their leader. Livy (21.4.2) tells us “the old soldiers thought that Hamilcar had been restored to them … the same lively expression and piercing eye, the same cast of countenance and features.” And, it might be added, the same agenda.

  IV

  HANNIBAL’S WAY

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  Hannibal is at the center of our story … at the center of anybody’s story of the Second Punic War. Yet historians complain that we are left with but the shadow cast by his deeds, that his character eludes us.1 Besides the paternal compact against Rome, there are no revealing childish anecdotes—little Hannibal tricking his playmates, beguiling a stallion, or concocting something equivalently brave and enterprising—the kind of homey palaver the ancients typically used to delineate their subjects. Still, it is the province of a certain kind of genius to remain forever ineffable. In the modern idiom, think Ronald Reagan, FDR, Thomas Jefferson; being indescribable may have been the touchstone of Hannibal’s endless tactical wizardry.

  The personal details that do remain mostly form an image of a generic martial workaholic. Livy (21.4.1–8), eying him through the lens of his own country’s military conventions, depicts him as a good man with a sword, fearless in combat, oblivious to physical discomfort, sleeping on the ground amidst his men, sharing their hardships, eating for sustenance, not pleasure. In other words, Hannibal was an ideal Roman commander, with an obligatory dose of villainy, being Rome’s bête noire. Livy describes “inhuman cruelty, more than Punic perfidy, no truth, no reverence for things sacred, no fear of the gods … etc.” In fact, for a Carthaginian, Hannibal does not seem very religious. None of the Barcids do, though this may be partly a function of the evidence, or rather the lack of it. As far as cruelty, he did crucify one or more guides who misled him at critical junctures, and there was at least one instance when he may have ordered prisoners slaughtered,2 but there is more than a little irony in any Roman claim of enemy cruelty. This was to be a brutal war, and there is little evidence that Hannibal was any less humane than his opponents. Rather, there is evidence that he treated his dead foes—or at least their commanders—with some chivalry, giving them decent burials, an approach starkly contrasted by C. Claudius Nero delivering to Hannibal the head of his brother Hasdrubal to announce the result of the Metaurus campaign.

  Clearly Hannibal was no monster. Even Livy concedes that, and certainly Polybius does, indicting Hannibal with only avarice—a quality not necessarily a glaring vice for a man far from home with an army to feed. Sex was no apparent preoccupation. He married once, a Spanish chieftain’s daughter named Imilce, and Pliny the Elder credits him with a later liaison with a prostitute in the southern Italian town of Salapia, an item of some civic pride even three centuries later.3 There is no record of other lovers, either female or male. He appears to have had friends, albeit almost all of them soldiers. He was also approachable and willing to be criticized, most famously by the cavalryman Maharbal after Cannae: “You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but you don’t know how to use one.”4 But he could give as good as he got, and his gallows humor shines through many of the anecdotes told about him. Thus, before Cannae, when an officer named Gisgo fretted over how amazingly numerous the Roman army appeared, Hannibal replied that there was something even more amazing: “In all this multitude there is no one who is called Gisgo.” On the occasion of Tarentum’s surprise fall, though nonplussed he remarked to the effect that the Romans must have gotten their own Hannibal.5

  There is little doubt that this was a sane, even psychologically healthy, individual. A comparison to the murderous paranoia of Alexander, or to the incestuous dynastic scheming of the Hellenistic monarchs of the day, makes this still more apparent. Rather than manifesting jealousy at his brother-in-law Hasdrubal’s succession, Hannibal gave every appearance of having won his complete trust as a subordinate.6 Nor was there the slightest hint of sibling rivalry among the Barcid boys; without exception, to the day of their deaths both Hasdrubal and Mago pursued the interests of their brother—a family monolith, indivisible, in effect “all the fine young Hannibals.”

  Culturally, however, Hannibal was something of a changeling; for he was deeply Hellenized, and this is a real point of comparison with Alexander. Like the Macedonian, Hannibal had been tutored by Greeks, he spoke the language fluently, and he had a deep knowledge of their contemporary military practices and battle history. And also, like the conqueror of the Persians, Hannibal embarked on his great expedition armed with Greek historians to capture what transpired. This is suggestive. Alexander the Great was not simply the age’s most brilliant captain; he exemplified heroic achievement in the Mediterranean basin. The ancients—or their rulers, at least—lived in order to be remembered, and of all pursuits, military glory was the most indelible. If there was a romantic side to Hannibal, it is to be found here. His epic journey across the Alps, his vengeful pursuit of Rome, his brilliant set-piece victories, his seemingly endless anabasis on the Italic peninsula, all find their symbolic analogue in the Macedonian’s payback for the Persian invasion of Greece and in Alexander’s subsequent adventures in Asia. It makes sense that this was the emotional wellspring from which Hannibal gained sustenance and endurance, especially as the years passed and the goal grew ever fainter.

  But if ultimately the source of Hannibal’s strategic imagination must remain a matter of speculation, his operational and tactical skills are beyond dispute. At this level Hannibal was among the best military commanders who ever lived. For sixteen campaigning seasons in Italy he demonstrated an ingenuity and consistency that has never been surpassed, losing not one significant battle, and on five separate occasions effectively obliterating major Roman field forces.7 His capacity for trickery was
endless. Whether escaping from an apparently hopeless trap, or springing one on a hapless foe, he always seemed to concoct the unexpected and employ it to his own best advantage. In the case of the Romans, he proved particularly adroit in maneuvers prior to battle, turning their instinctive aggressiveness against them and fighting only when and where he, not they, chose.8

  Without doubt he possessed the best army that ever fought under a Carthaginian standard, but his troops won in large part because Hannibal was their leader. Not only was he a master at using each combat component to maximum advantage, but it is evident that his inspirational example was central to elevating the performance of all. During the entire time they were together in Italy, immersed in what frequently must have amounted to a litany of privation, there was not a single incident of truly mutinous behavior—an amazing record for any Carthaginian army, and one that Scipio Africanus and the notoriously well-disciplined Romans could not match.

  He had their complete trust, but he’d earned it. It has been argued that Hannibal lacked the patience for sieges, but there was seldom an occasion in Italy when he could have sat down to wage such an attack without jeopardizing the safety of his troops. They were always his most precious asset, essentially irreplaceable, so he never allowed himself to be pinned down, never wasted them in fights without purpose, never relied on sheer force of numbers when there was an alternative. At one point Livy has him say: “Many things which are difficult in themselves, are easily effected by contrivance.”9 This was the tactical Hannibal in a nutshell. In the Middle Ages the phrase might have graced his escutcheon. One of his best modern commentators, J. F. Lazenby, compares Hannibal to “a boxer, faced by a heavier opponent he feinted, weaved and dodged, and kept out of range—but his punch was devastating when he saw his chance.”10 If anybody could make an army “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” it was Hannibal.