Strategically, this Spanish Carthage was perfectly placed not only for fishing and trade, but also as a transit point for the precious silver brought from the interior. Although it is unlikely that Hasdrubal had any pretensions to become a Hellenistic-style monarch by adopting the trappings of kingship, the Barcids nonetheless added to their prestige and their aura of personal power, essential in their dealings with the leadership of the Spanish tribes and their own mercenaries, many of whom were drawn from lands where charismatic autocracy was the rule. It is also clear that the Barcids increasingly saw the Spanish territories as their own personal fiefdom, and any outside intervention, even from Carthage itself, was unwelcome.31 This situation was only exacerbated by the economic discrepancy between Barcid Spain and Carthage. The former enjoyed an economic boom, with many settlements being enlarged in this period, and a triple-shekel coin was added to the currency, indicating that after 228 BC, when the final indemnity payment was made to Rome, there was plentiful silver in circulation. In contrast, the silver content in the bullion coinage being minted in Carthage appears to have continued to diminish, and overvalued bronze coinage was still the main currency.32
Indeed, when the Roman Senate, probably after receiving reports from their concerned allies in Massilia, decided to find out more about what the Barcids were doing in Spain (first in 231 and again in 226), they did not travel to Carthage, but went directly to Hamilcar and then later to Hasdrubal in Spain.33 On the first occasion Hamilcar had stated that his sole intention was to pay off Carthage’s war indemnity.34 On the second visit, according to Polybius, the hard-pressed Romans played for time through flattery and conciliation, and an agreement was reached with Hasdrubal that the Carthaginians would not ‘cross the river Hiberus [now generally thought to be the river Júcar] bearing arms’.35
In 221 BC the question of succession arose again, when a vengeful servant whose previous master had been murdered on the general’s orders assassinated Hasdrubal in his palace in New Carthage.36 The succession was, however, never in doubt. The Spanish army quickly acclaimed Hannibal, the 26-year-old son of Hamilcar, as their new leader, and the Carthaginian Popular Assembly then ratified the appointment.
HANNIBAL
In many ways Hannibal represented the growing chasm between Barcid Spain and Carthage. He was a product of ‘the camp’. He had left North Africa at the age of 9, and his formative years had been spent among the troops on campaign in Spain. The later Roman historian Livy described the young general’s martial qualities as follows:
Power to command and readiness to obey are rare associates; but in Hannibal they were perfectly united . . . Reckless in courting danger, he showed superb tactical ability once it was upon him. Indefatigable both physically and mentally, he could endure with equal ease excessive heat or cold; he ate and drank not to flatter his appetites but only so much as would sustain his bodily strength; waking and sleeping he made no distinction between night and day; what time his duties left him he gave to sleep, nor did he seek it on a soft bed or in silence, for he was often to be seen, wrapped in an army cloak, asleep on the ground amid common soldiers on sentry or picket duties. His clothing in no way distinguished him from other young men of his age; but his accoutrements and horses were eye-catching. Mounted or unmounted he was unequalled as a fighting man, always the first to attack, always the last to leave the field.37
With the appointment of Hannibal, the perception that the Spanish command was a Barcid family possession was confirmed. In his account Livy emphasized the sense of resentment towards the Barcids that had built up among some of the Carthaginian political elite, in a diatribe supposedly delivered by Hamilcar’s old enemy Hanno in the Carthaginian Council of Elders. Although the words are undoubtedly Livy’s, the sentiments that they impart are probably genuine:
Are we afraid that it will be too long before Hamilcar’s son surveys the extravagant power and the pageant of royalty which his father assumed, and that there will be undue delay in our becoming slaves of the despot to whose son-in-law our armies have been bequeathed as though they were his patrimony?38
It is clear from the Barcid coinage of this period that Hannibal was keen to promote his familial links with Hamilcar. A series of silver coinage issues appeared showing a portrait of Heracles–Melqart depicted with a number of elements associated with the Greek Heracles, including a club resting on his shoulder and a laurel wreath.39 The figure is a clean-shaven young man, and on the reverse is an African elephant. At roughly the same time a double-shekel silver coin was released which showed a similar figure with laurel wreath and club. Although this Melqart displays very similar characteristics, he sports a beard and is clearly older. On the reverse there is again an African elephant, but here with a driver on its back. These coins are a progression from earlier coins depicting Melqart, in that they attempt to associate the Barcids and the god.40 The war elephant was a symbol that came to be increasingly linked with the Barcids during this period.
Hellenistic kings and leaders had long blurred the division between personal and divine portraiture. There often appears to be an almost deliberate ambiguity between the human and the divine in the portraits on the coins of Alexander and his successors, which bolstered the issuers’ claims to divine protection and favour. In the Barcid context there also appears to be the added focus on articulating the legitimacy of Hannibal taking command as Hamilcar Barca’s son. That legitimacy over the Spanish realm was further bolstered when, as his predecessor Hasdrubal had done, Hannibal married an Iberian woman, from Castulo, ‘a powerful and famous city’, which was in close alliance with the Barcids.41
Hannibal spent the first two years of his generalship mopping up opposition and expanding Barcid territory towards the north-west of Spain. He would soon prove his genius as a military commander. Not only did he storm a number of important Celtiberian strongholds, but he also showed great cunning in his destruction of a dangerous enemy force. In the spring of 220 BC, finding themselves threatened by a formidable foe, Hannibal and his army feigned retreat by crossing the river Tagus and set up camp on its left bank. The trap was now baited by leaving enough space between his trenches and the banks of the river to encourage the enemy to attack. When the enemy started to cross the river, they found themselves under attack from the Barcid cavalry. Those who managed to struggle across found forty of Hannibal’s war elephants waiting to trample them underfoot. Hannibal then crossed the river with the rest of his army to deliver the coup de grâce. This victory was so emphatic that others now knew not to test the military worth of the young general.42
SAGUNTUM
Hannibal now held much of the territory north of the river Hiberus, with the important exception of the city of Saguntum, which a few years previously had reacted to the creeping northward advance of the Barcids by entering into an alliance with Rome. The Saguntines proved a useful source of information about Barcid activity in Spain, and the relationship was evidently close enough for Roman envoys to be invited to adjudicate when pro-Roman and pro-Barcid factions clashed within the city. Unsurprisingly, the Romans found in favour of the pro-Roman party, and a number of Barcid supporters were executed. The message was clear–any attack on Saguntum would be viewed in Rome as a serious provocation.43
Undeterred, over the next few months in 220 Hannibal slowly tightened his control over the territory around the city. Alarmed, the Saguntines sent increasingly persistent requests for assistance from their ally Rome. Eventually, after much prevarication, the Roman Senate dispatched envoys to parley with the Barcid general. Once again the Carthaginian Council of Elders was sidelined as the Roman embassy made its way directly to Spain.
The meeting that was held in the great palace at New Carthage was very different from the one six years previously, when the hard-pressed Romans had played for time by, in the words of Polybius, ‘flattering and conciliating’. The young general was solemnly warned not to attempt anything that would harm Rome’s ally Saguntum, as its citizens lay within Roman t
rust (fides). It was perhaps the hypocrisy of the ambassador’s pious reference to Roman fides which riled Hannibal into retaliation. The young general retorted that Rome itself had not delayed in interfering in the affairs of Saguntum, including the driving out and execution of pro-Carthaginian members of its elite. He then bitterly turned the whole question of faithfulness back on to the Romans: ‘The Carthaginians, he said, would not overlook this violation of good faith, for it was from old the principle of Carthage never to neglect the cause of the victims of injustice.’44 Hannibal did not even deign to mention the second Roman demand, that he respect Hasdrubal’s agreement not to cross the Hiberus, and he dismissed the envoys–who then sailed to Carthage to make their protests there.45
Hannibal’s rather high-handed treatment of the Roman ambassadors surely gives an indication of his growing confidence in the Barcid position in Spain. After all, the resources at his disposal were greater than any Carthaginian general had previously enjoyed. Hannibal now controlled almost half of the Iberian peninsula, an area of roughly 230,000 square kilometres. He had inherited an excellent fighting force of 60,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 200 elephants, honed by over sixteen years of campaigning against a determined and ferocious enemy. A series of alliances had been signed with the leaders of powerful Celtiberian tribes that added to his military strength. Huge mining production meant that there was enough money to meet war costs. A later Roman writer estimated that one mine at Baebelo, whose shafts ran for more than a Roman mile and half (2.2 kilometres) into the mountain, produced an enormous 135 kilograms of silver a day for Hannibal. Indeed the weight and purity of the silver coinage that was being produced for the troops was a reflection of robust economic health.46
It was perhaps with these great resources in mind that Hannibal now decided to defy Rome and attack Saguntum. The Saguntines resisted doggedly, and progress was very slow. They made particularly good use of the falarica, a type of oversized javelin, whose metre-long iron spike was bound with material covered in flammable pitch and sulphur and then set ablaze and hurled down on to the Punic attackers. Hannibal himself was wounded in the thigh by a javelin when he strayed too close to the city walls. Not long after, a new Roman embassy landed a short distance away from the Carthaginian camp, but Hannibal refused even to grant them an audience, explaining that he could not guarantee their safety and that he was in any case too busy commanding the siege.47
THE ROAD TO WAR
Knowing that the Roman embassy would now again journey on to Carthage, Hannibal sent messengers with a letter addressed to the heads of the Barcid party there, warning them and requesting that they prevent his opponents in the Council of Elders from making any concessions to Rome.48 Hannibal’s action here suggests that, despite the strength of the pro-Barcid faction in Carthage, he feared that some members of the Council of Elders might have been swayed by what the Roman envoys had to say.49 When one looks at the debased coinage still being minted in the North African metropolis in this period (against the magnificent silver issues being produced in Spain), it could be argued that the beneficial effects of the Barcid economic miracle had not yet reached Carthage.50
There were also signs that the alternative policy of developing Carthage’s African territory–the strategy that had been pushed by Hanno and his supporters–was beginning to pay dividends. Indeed, archaeological survey of Carthage’s African hinterland has revealed an increase in its occupation and agricultural production levels, with considerable amounts of produce being exported from the city to western Sicily.51 Tyrrhenian trade was also booming, with large quantities of Campanian black-glaze pottery, which was mostly used as common tableware, being found in Carthage during this period.52 Certainly some of the more perceptive members of the Roman Senate appear to have been aware of the tensions between the Barcids and some in the Carthaginian Council of Elders, and to have actively sought to exploit those differences.53 Hannibal was thus perhaps mindful of the importance of bringing Barcid Spain completely back into the Carthaginian fold, to remove any danger of being disowned as a renegade. Most importantly of all, however, he would have wished for the diplomatic agreements that his father and brother-in-law had entered into to be accepted and given the official authority of the Carthaginian state.54
In Carthage, the Roman ambassadors at last found somebody who took their complaints and threats seriously. The great Barcid opponent Hanno stood up in front of the Council of Elders and launched a blistering attack on Hannibal. In the speech that is attributed to him by Livy, the focus of his assault is not Hannibal’s hatred of Rome, but rather his all-consuming ambition:
‘I urged you’, he [Hanno] said, ‘and warned you not to send Hamilcar’s son to the army. That man’s spirit, that man’s offspring cannot rest. As long as any single representative of the blood and name of Barca survives, our treaty with Rome will never remain unimperilled. You have sent to the army, as though supplying fuel to fire, a young man who is consumed with a passion for sovereign power, and who recognizes that the only way to it lies in passing his life surrounded by armed legions and perpetually stirring up fresh wars. It is you, therefore, who have fed this fire which is now scorching you . . . It is against Carthage that Hannibal is now bringing up his penthouses and towers, it is Carthage whose walls he is shaking with his battering rams. The ruins of Saguntum–would that I might prove a false prophet–will fall on our heads, and the war which has begun with Saguntum will have to be carried on with Rome.’55
Hanno finished with an exhortation that the siege of Saguntum should be lifted immediately, and Hannibal be handed over to the Romans. But on this occasion his words had little impact, and even his own supporters sat in silence.56 However, we should be wary of taking this as a ringing endorsement of Barcid unilateralism. Even those councillors who were no friends of the Barcids were still political realists, and if the Carthaginian Council of Elders attempted to relieve Hannibal of his command, that decision would have to be ratified by the Popular Assembly, still very much a Barcid political stronghold.
It also remained to be seen how a man who commanded such a huge standing army and controlled the resources of an area greater than Carthage’s African territories could be dismissed and detained. Such a move might momentarily appease Rome, but the Spanish territories in which so much of Carthage’s hopes were invested would surely be lost for ever. The native tribes swore their allegiance to the Barcids, not to Carthage. They would certainly not meekly accept a replacement overlord from the ranks of the Carthaginian Council. Confronted by their own impotence, the anti-Barcid faction pragmatically elected to keep their counsel.57 Hannibal’s relationship with some members of the Carthaginian elite clearly remained a marriage of convenience. As the Roman historian Cassius Dio would so astutely point out, ‘He was not sent forth in the beginning by the magistrates at home, nor later did he obtain any great assistance from them. For although they were to enjoy no slight glory and benefit from his efforts, they wished rather not to appear to be leaving him in the lurch than to cooperate effectively in any enterprise.’58
In regards to Saguntum, however, it appeared that Hannibal’s calculation had paid off. Despite the later efforts of Rome’s historians to conceal the procrastination, the Roman Senate debated what should be done about Saguntum until it was too late.59 As the siege entered its eighth month, there was still no sign of a Roman relief force. The starving people of Saguntum eventually gave up hope and committed mass suicide by incinerating their town. Hannibal split the spoils of war three ways. The captives were handed over to the soldiers to be sold as slaves or ransomed, and the proceeds from the sale of all the looted property were sent back to Carthage. As for the gold and silver, Hannibal set that aside for what lay ahead.60
In Rome, the Senate was split between those who wanted to declare immediate war on Carthage and those who wished to send another embassy. Although Rome would be able to muster a formidable army –and, more importantly, control the seas–the senators knew that by taking on Hannibal
they were now subjecting the city to considerable risk against a large and well-trained force led by an energetic and talented leader. After a debate, it was decided to send a mixed delegation of hawkish and dovish senators to Carthage. Their mission was simple: the Carthaginian councillors were to be asked whether Hannibal had acted on his own initiative or whether the attack on Saguntum had been officially sanctioned. If their answer was the former, then a request would be made that Hannibal be handed over for retribution. The latter would be treated as a declaration of war. When the Roman ambassadors were led into the Carthaginian Council, they met a united body.
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