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

by Robert L. O'Connell

  Most of Hasdrubal’s force remained intact, but its spirit was broken. Spanish desertions the next day convinced him that it was hopeless to stay put and try to defend the camp, so he slipped away that night with the remainder of his army. To make it to Gades and safety, he would have had to cross the Baetis, but Scipio with the aid of local guides beat him to the fords. Blocked, Hasdrubal turned in flight toward the Atlantic coast but was quickly brought to bay by Scipio’s cavalry and skirmishers. Once the legionaries arrived, Livy says it was less a battle than “a butchering as of cattle.”79 Hasdrubal escaped with barely six thousand of his men to a nearby hill, which by its very steepness allowed them to defend themselves.

  Still, surrounded and without means of supply, their situation was hopeless, the Romans maintaining a blockade apparently aimed at demoralizing rather than annihilating the survivors. Soon enough, Hasdrubal Gisgo fled to Gades, but not before arranging for ships to evacuate him back to Africa. Masinissa also escaped, but only after talking over his options in secret with Silanus, whom Scipio had left in charge while he returned to Tarraco. Mago was the last of the principals to come down off the mountain. He would join Hasdrubal Gisgo briefly in Gades before the latter withdrew; the last of the Barcids in Spain, Mago was also the last to give up the fight there. Abandoned by their leaders, the rest of the army simply evaporated, which allowed Silanus to join Scipio and announce that the war here was over.80 This was premature, but major Carthaginian resistance in Spain was at an end.

  Scipio was already concerned with a canvas broader than Iberia—broader, it soon became evident, than that of his colleagues in Italy. For he understood that once Barcid power was broken in Spain, the key to getting rid of Hannibal was the vulnerability of Carthaginian home turf. As war opened in 218, the senate had had every intention of invading Africa, but then Hannibal had brought the fight to them instead, and twelve years later they were still distracted. Not Scipio. The summer of 206 found him already working both sides of the African pressure point—not simply the Numidian prince Masinissa, but also his archenemy, Syphax.

  Two rival Numidian kingdoms, both of them unstable, occupied central North Africa at this point. Massaesylia, the larger of the two, lay to the west; the other, Massylia, was much smaller and was sandwiched between its near-namesake and Carthaginian territory to the east.81 Both were dominated and manipulated by Punic power but were also restive and rebellious. Earlier the Carthaginians had used Masinissa’s father, Gala, the Massylian king, to drive Syphax, ruler of the Massaesylians, from power.82 Now, however, Gala was dead and his throne was in dispute, while Syphax was back firmly in charge and was anxious to expand his power. Seeking to take advantage of the situation, Scipio first sent his alter ego, Laelius, to convince Syphax to ally himself with Rome, but when the king proved evasive, Scipio sailed over from New Carthage himself.

  As Scipio’s two quinqueremes approached the harbor of Siga, Syphax’s western capital, Scipio found to his horror that none other than Hasdrubal Gisgo, on his way back to Carthage with seven smaller but more nimble triremes, had just made landfall and was now in a position to even the score after the shutout at Ilipa. Making the best of a bad situation, Scipio raced into port before Hasdrubal had time to weigh anchor, and once in port, neither man was willing to offend the king by coming to blows in his very harbor.83

  So in an unlikely turn of events, and at Syphax’s insistence, Scipio would dine with his most recent mortal enemy, sharing the same couch, and trading pleasantries. Hasdrubal left deeply impressed, not only finding Scipio even more charming than he was lethal on the battlefield, but also concluding that Syphax, if left to his own devices, would soon be under the spell of the general and in the Roman camp. Scipio thought so too, and sailed away assuming he had a new ally. But Hasdrubal had a daughter; history would know her as Sophonisba (the Punic name was Cafonbaal), just one of a string of North African spellbinders from Elissa to Cleopatra, and she would soon have Syphax wrapped around her little finger.

  Back in Spain, Scipio apparently wanted to use the rest of 206 to tie up loose ends so he could return to Rome and stand for the consulship.84 But he got more than he bargained for. The Iberian Peninsula remained a fractious place, and ejecting Punic power and making the peninsula Roman proved to be two very different things.

  Initially, Scipio and his lieutenants—Marcius in particular—divided up to conduct a series of punitive expeditions against tribes and localities that had withheld their allegiance. Although these expeditions were generally successful, the resistance proved unexpectedly bitter. (The fighters in a place called Astapa, for instance, slaughtered their own women and children before waging a suicidal sortie.85 This should have been a hint; the Romans in fact were poised atop a volcano.)

  The first eruption ensued shortly, when Scipio fell ill and rumors began to circulate that he was near death. Not surprisingly, Indibilis was among the first responders, rallying numerous Iberian and Celtiberian warriors and staging a broad-based rebellion.

  Worse still, the news of Scipio’s illness rebounded back on his army. Eight thousand troops garrisoning a town called Sucro, complaining that they hadn’t been paid and had been left to stand idle, mutinied, demanding either to be led into battle or sent home and discharged. This mutiny was both dangerous and symptomatic. The exciting and profitable days of campaigning against booty-laden Carthaginians were plainly near an end in Spain; the future was anti-insurgency with its combination of boredom and terror. Thus far, deployment in Spain had proved to be a one-way ticket, with some of Scipio’s troops having been on station for upward of a decade.86 So the promise of a long and inconclusive counterinsurgency campaign had implications far beyond the Sucro mutineers. These implications may be reflected in Livy’s (28.24.13) apparently phony naming of the chief conspirators, Caius Albius (White) and Caius Atrius (Black), the former being from Cales, one of the Latin towns that had refused to supply men in 209, in part because of interminable overseas service.87

  At any rate, Scipio, now recovered, reacted rapidly and decisively. He surrounded the mutinous elements with a larger body of his forces, gave them a long and embittered speech, and then, while the loyal troops pounded their swords against their shields, had thirty-five of the ringleaders brought before them naked and in chains to be beaten and then beheaded. Last, he had each of the remaining mutineers take an individual oath of allegiance before he paid them all and promised that their transgressions would be forgotten.

  This constituted a dramatic turn of leadership, to which both Livy and Polybius devote considerable space,88 but it was also pretty plainly a stopgap measure. Nevertheless, Scipio’s actions united the army sufficiently to enable him to conduct a swift and successful campaign against Indibilis, who characteristically escaped, eventually to be killed in still another rebellion after Scipio was gone. Rome was destined to be mired in more than a generation of continuous internecine warfare here, and the final conquest of northwest Spain did not come before the time of Augustus Caesar. But for Scipio, that was somebody else’s problem; he was destined to be remembered as Africanus, not Hispaniensis. He had come to Spain to get rid of Barcid power, not to make the place Roman; now he was interested in getting rid of Hannibal.

  Still, before leaving, there remained the matter of Mago Barca holed up at Gades, and also Masinissa, who was with him. Quiet negotiations with the African prince had continued intermittently, and like Syphax, he desired a personal meeting with the Roman general before entering into a compact. Scipio agreed to a secret rendezvous, thinking it important enough to journey all the way from Tarraco to a remote location in the Baetis valley. Masinissa, telling Mago that the horses were wasting away in the confined quarters of Gades, which was on a small island, asked and received permission to cross over and stage some raids inland. Instead, Masinissa headed for the Romans.

  If you believe Livy (28.35), who is our only source for the meeting, it was virtually love at first sight. Not a word was said about Masinissa’s role in
the death of Scipio’s father and uncle, nor about Scipio’s budding relationship with the Numidian prince’s mortal enemy, Syphax. Instead, Masinissa testified that his long-held desire to serve Rome, though perhaps thwarted in Spain, would come to fruition in Africa. Should Scipio be sent to Africa and Masinissa inherit his father’s vacant throne, then Masinissa was “confident the hours of Carthage will be numbered.” Scipio, who knew a good cavalry commander when he saw one, was delighted. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship between Masinissa and this Scipio, and Scipio’s grandson, even; for the Numidian was destined to live for a very long time. It was also the beginning of the end for Carthage; for the city never had an enemy more persistent than Masinissa. Meanwhile, as the two departed from their initial tryst, Masinissa received permission to raid the territory of some of Rome’s local allies—lest Mago suspect something was amiss.

  The youngest Barcid brother was busy with schemes of his own. Discouraged by Scipio’s quelling of the mutiny and his defeat of Indibilis’s rebellion, Mago had just about given up hope of success in Spain and was planning a return to Africa, when he received money and orders from Carthage to take his fleet to Italy instead, recruit an army of Gauls and Ligurians and then try to join Hannibal.89 Being a Barcid, however, he had an alternative agenda, a surprise raid on New Carthage, a mirror image of Scipio’s own, aimed at regaining the family military-industrial complex and turning the Iberian tables on the Romans. Before Mago left, however, he shook down Gades, wringing all the money he could from the inhabitants, which proved a mistake. The foray on New Carthage went badly—the New Carthaginians had been forewarned and were no longer Barcid friendly—and upon returning to Gades, Mago discovered that the gates were barred against him. More than insulted, he invited the city fathers to confer, and promptly crucified them.90 He then sailed for Ibiza to begin staging his own invasion of Italy, his departure marking the termination of Barcid and Punic power in Spain. Scipio could go home.

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  The conquering hero returned to Rome in late 206 with a fleet of ten ships crammed with, among other spoils of war, 14,342 pounds of silver and a great quantity of other coins destined for Rome’s flagging treasury.91 He met the senate on the campus Martius and, within the sacred confines of the temple of the war goddess Bellona, gave them a rundown of his achievements in Spain. He reminded them that he had faced down four enemy commanders (two Hasdrubals, Hanno, and Mago) and four Carthaginian armies, and that upon his leaving not a single Punic soldier remained in Spain. He added that although a triumph had never before been awarded to a victorious commander who had not held the appropriate magistracy, perhaps, considering his service to the state, he might be the first exception. They turned him down cold.

  Still, he got its equivalent from the crowds that gathered in the streets of Rome to catch a glimpse of the man of the hour, Publius Cornelius Scipio. Livy (28.35.6–7) describes him during this period as being in the “bloom of youth,” with long flowing hair and virtually oozing virility. If it had been possible for there to be a rock star in ancient Rome, then he would have been it … and just as incongruous to some of the dour members of the senatorial establishment.

  But not to the people. His house just behind the forum was virtually under siege. He was similarly surrounded at the Temple of Jupiter as he sacrificed a hundred oxen—a hecatomb he had promised his patron deity while still in Spain. At the Comitia Centuriata, presided over by outgoing consul and family friend L. Veturius Philo, he was elected consul virtually by acclamation, with most of the other magistracies going to political allies, including his consular colleague P. Licinius Crassus, perhaps the richest man in Rome, and pontifex maximus since 212. More good news for Scipio: the senate had decided that the consular provinces for 205 would be Bruttium at the toe of the peninsula, where Hannibal was, and Sicily; but since Crassus as chief priest could not leave Italian soil, this meant that Scipio would get the island, which was the natural staging ground for an invasion of Africa. It was it seemed a fait accompli, wired by the Cornelii and those others who believed in truly taking the offensive and giving it to Rome’s rising star.

  The plan would not go down smoothly. The opposition in the senate would object with a churlishness that reminds us that politics in Rome were always personal and that ambition in the service of the state was still, and very nakedly so, ambition—a corrosive force that would one day tear apart the republic. This sulfuric climate is captured by Livy in two speeches purportedly given by the principals, which, unlike pre-battle harangues, may well reflect what was actually said.

  The first speech was given, appropriately enough, by the great Delayer, Fabius Maximus. He opened by arguing that the African strategy was not settled and that Scipio insulted the senate by maintaining it was. Dissembling that he was too old to be jealous, he asked the young general’s pardon “if I do not rate even your glory above the welfare of Rome.” “Hannibal is formidable still,” Fabius said, and it was Scipio’s duty to confront him in Italy, since the state could not afford two separate armies, one for Africa and one on home soil. Fabius remembered Regulus’s ill-fated African expedition during the First Punic War, and also raised the specter of Mago’s sailing to Italy and attempting to join his brother. “My opinion is that Publius Cornelius was elected consul for the republic and for us, not for himself and his personal ends, and that the armies were enlisted for the defense of the city and Italy, not that consuls in the arrogant manner of tyrants may transport them to whatever lands they choose.” This concluding statement encapsulated all that the old guard found dangerous about this charismatic newcomer.92 For, as French historian Serge Lancel notes, in a dim way Fabius sensed the rise of a new class of rulers inclined to appeal to the people, and also to the army, since it is likely the senate had heard of the “imperatorial”—if not “imperial salutation”—the general had been given by his troops in Spain.93

  Fabius’s suspicions would not be assuaged by Scipio, who chose to argue his case on its merits alone. Rather than Regulus, he urged the senators to remember that Agathocles of Syracuse, besieged at home by Carthaginians, had successfully diverted the hostilities by invading Africa. But why bother with old stories, he added, when there was no better illustration of taking the offensive than Hannibal himself? Yet the Barcid had far less hope of Rome’s allies joining his cause than Rome did of splitting off Carthage’s oppressed dependencies. The enemy had no citizen soldiers, Scipio reminded the senate, but relied on mercenaries “as fickle as the wind.” As far as the central issue, Scipio assured the senate he was not ducking it: “Yes, Fabius, I shall have the antagonist you give me, Hannibal himself…. I shall draw him after me. I shall force him to fight on his native ground, and the prize of victory will be Carthage, not a handful of dilapidated Bruttian forts…. It is Africa’s turn to be devastated by fire and sword.”94

  Stirring words, vengeful words, but Livy tells us the senatorial reaction was only lukewarm, since rumor had it that if Scipio failed to get his colleagues’ approval for the invasion, he intended to bring the plan before the people. Technically legal, this was absolutely without precedent—the Roman political equivalent of dirty pool—exactly the sort of tactic that would eventually tear the republic apart.95 Another old guardsman, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, four times consul and one of the principal conquerors of Capua, took up the interrogation, asking Scipio point-blank if he was ready to accept the senate’s decision in the matter, only to receive the ambiguous reply that “he would do what was in the interest of the state.”

  This was plainly unacceptable. But after a day of cooling off and maneuvering, a compromise was reached. Scipio agreed to accept the senate’s decision, but probably with the assurance that he had the votes to give him Sicily as his province and permission to cross to Africa if he thought it was “to the advantage of the state.”96

  Yet there was a very significant proviso. As far as the senate was concerned, an invasion was one thing, an army to conduct it was another. Apparently acti
ng on Fabius’s claim that Rome could not afford separate forces for home and Africa, Scipio was denied permission to levy troops in Italy. He could only call for volunteers and aid in the form of ships and supplies from the allies. Some historians think this tradition is either false or exaggerated, but both Livy and Appian affirm it.97 Since his Spanish army had mutinied, it is logical to assume that Scipio viewed those troops as a spent entity, and troops who had returned to Italy after long service were not likely to be subject to further conscription. He did manage to gather seven thousand volunteers, though this was clearly not enough. Still, he must have known that there were potentially useful legionaries still in Sicily, soldiers who, despite all manner of neglect and abuse, had remained loyal. For he had served with them at Cannae.

  IX

  RESURRECTING THE GHOSTS

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  Scipio was in no hurry. In all probability he did not even arrive in Sicily until the late spring of 205, and would not push off to Africa for another year.