Carthage Must Be Destroyed (41 page)

Dionysius then proceeds to describe how Heracles pacified the barbarous Ligurians, who had tried to block the Alpine passes so that he could not proceed into Italy.
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In Italy, Heracles clashed with Cacus, who in Dionysius’ story was ‘an exceedingly barbarous chieftain reigning over a savage people, who had set himself to oppose Heracles . . . and on that account was a pest to his neighbours. He, when he heard that Hercules lay encamped in the plain hard by, equipped his followers like brigands and, making a sudden raid while the army lay sleeping, he surrounded and drove off as much of their booty as he found unguarded.’ Afterwards Cacus was besieged by Heracles’ army and his forts were stormed and demolished before he himself was killed and his land given to a group of Greeks and indigenous inhabitants of the area under their respective kings Evander and Faunus.
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Dionysius identifies one of the main reasons for Heracles’ success in Italy as

Some obvious correspondences with Hannibal’s Italian expedition immediately present themselves. First, there is the heavy emphasis on Heracles’ role in defending and indeed saving states that were being attacked and taken over by tyrannical neighbours, a situation analogous to the subjugation of Magna Graecia and the rest of Italy by Rome. Second, there is the reference to uniting Greeks and barbarians under the banner of the hero, which once more reflects a central tenet of Hannibal’s campaign in regard to Greeks and Carthaginians. Third, there is the focus on Heracles crossing vast rivers and cutting a route through seemingly impenetrable mountains, which are both themes that appear in the narrative of Hannibal’s journey to Italy. Finally, the confrontation with Cacus, the robber chief, becomes a far more conventional ground war in the euhemeristic account, with battles and sieges, and is followed by Heracles’ release of prisoners of war and their resettlement on recently conquered land. Heracles’ generous treatment of his captives mirrors similar methods later used by Hannibal to attempt to detach the Italian allies from Rome (cast here as the evil Cacus).

The numerous correspondences between Dionysius’ euhemeristic story and the Hannibalic campaign are thus too obvious to be ignored, and would surely have resonated with contemporaries. While the precise origin of Dionysius’ story is unfortunately unknown, an account told by Diodorus points tantalizingly towards a Sicilian origin, most probably from the period of the Second Punic War, when (as we have seen) contemporary Sicilian writers and Carthaginian coin-makers made similar associations. Hannibal’s message was, however, not aimed exclusively at Greeks, for other important communities on the Italian peninsula had strong links with the hero. The cult of Hercules, the Italian interpretation of Heracles, was particularly strong in the central Apennines and Samnium, and the Samnites had a notoriously difficult relationship with Rome and might become useful allies.
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If Hannibal took the fight against Rome to Italy, then these groups would be critical for providing bases, supplies and other logistical support, as well as much needed reinforcements.

Away from the grand narratives of trans-Mediterranean diplomacy, Hannibal’s association with Heracles–Melqart served a more pressing day-to-day purpose in creating cohesion among the disparate ranks of his soldiery. The figure of Heracles–Melqart was already powerfully emblematic for the Barcid army, and Hannibal endeavoured to maintain that association between the god and his troops through the issue of large quantities of coinage bearing the god’s head.
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The fiercely contested conflict ahead, however, would naturally involve large-scale casualties and the necessary recruitment of large numbers of reinforcements–men who would need swiftly to be integrated into Hannibal’s force. The multivalent symbol of Heracles–Melqart provided a potent shared symbol not only for the culturally diverse troops who already comprised the Carthaginian army, but also for potential new recruits.

The Heraclean image attributed to Hannibal by his propagandists may well have created cohesion among the Carthaginian army not only by its diverse appeal, but also by the sense of divine favour that it conveyed. An ancient-Greek military strategist, Onasander, writing 300 years after Hannibal, made the following observation: ‘Soldiers are far more courageous when they believe that they are facing dangers with the good will of the gods; for they themselves are watchful, each man, and they look out keenly for omens of sight or sound and an auspicious sacrifice for the whole army encourages even those who have private doubts.’
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As Gregory Daly has recently pointed out, ‘Hellenistic armies apparently developed their
espirit de corps
based on the mystique of their leaders who could be seen as having almost “supernatural powers” as they were granted triumphs by the gods.’
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The claim to divine endorsement was a key element of Hannibal’s campaign against the Romans, and certainly played to the expectations of Hannibal’s Celtic allies, whose chieftains were often accompanied by bards who eulogized their deeds in song.
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In the writings of the later Roman historian Cassius Dio, the equation between successful leadership and divine sanction is made explicit. Dio attributes Hannibal’s ability to predict future events to the fact that ‘he understood divination by the inspection of entrails.’
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At those critical moments when confidence in their mission had begun to ebb away from his troops, Hannibal seems to have ensured that some evidence of divine favour was presented by which the stocks of Carthaginian self-belief were replenished and the troops were reminded that they were literally following in the footsteps of Heracles and his army. Indeed, when a late-Roman military writer, Vegetius, mistakenly claimed that Sosylus served as a military tactician under Hannibal, he was only partly wrong. The role that Sosylus and other writers within the general’s circle played in propagating Carthaginian propaganda was central to the early success of the campaign.
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On the eve of the army’s departure, Hannibal journeyed to Gades, that first great Phoenician bridgehead in the West and the supposed site of Geryon’s home island of Erythia. There he made solemn vows at the altar of Melqart.
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It appears that this episode was Silenus’ work, and it is surely no coincidence that what has survived from his account is a description of the Heracleium, a sacred spring located in the sanctuary of Melqart. Thus, once more, the extent to which Heracles–Melqart, along with Hannibal, was the central character in Silenus’ narrative is highlighted.
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For Hannibal himself this visit was far more than a public display of pious devotion, for the rites that he performed in the sacred precinct marked the first steps of a carefully choreographed journey.

The Heraclean association forced home by Silenus can also be seen in another famous anecdote concerning a supposed dream of the Carthaginian general. Below is the version supplied by Cicero, which is thought to be the most accurate rendition of Silenus’ original:

Although other versions of this episode were adapted by their Roman authors to place Hannibal in a sinister and ultimately flawed light, the original story appears to have hailed from the sympathetic pen of Silenus.
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The pro-Hannibalic tint of the initial version is indeed confirmed by the hostile reaction of the Roman writer Valerius Maximus, who described it as a ‘definite prediction, hateful to any person of Roman blood’.
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Indeed, the fact that it was so widely reported and discussed would suggest that it had a considerable impact. The main emphasis of the dream is that Hannibal has divine sanction to pursue a war with Rome, a sanction confirmed by the approval of Jupiter/Zeus and his provision of a divine guide (who must surely be Hercules/Heracles).
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The beast that Hannibal sees wreaking the ‘devastation of Italy’ has been variously interpreted, but most plausibly as the Hydra, the many-headed serpent which Heracles was commanded to kill as his second labour. The problem in fulfilling that task, so it proved, was that the beast’s heads would spontaneously reappear once severed–a problem eventually overcome by cauterizing the wounds to prevent regrowth.

In Silenus’ tale, therefore, as Hannibal is represented by Heracles, so Rome is represented by the Hydra, the self-perpetuating monster which the western hero is called to overcome. Indeed, one of Pyrrhus’ advisers had once likened Rome to the Hydra precisely for the city’s extraordinary capacity for self-renewal. The original story therefore signified not only the divine sanction and Heraclean quality of Hannibal, but also Rome’s monstrous nature and destruction of its allies’ territory.
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The message of Silenus’ vignettes may therefore have been that the great god/hero of the old Mediterranean world had risen once more and called the faithful to muster, for now the time had come to civilize the barbarous and drive the Roman monster into the sea. Other scholars have argued that Coelius had deliberately doctored Silenus’ tale, omitting an important detail about a terrible storm that appears in the versions given by Livy and Cassius Dio. They contend that Coelius’ intention was to change the location of the dream from its original place–as Hannibal’s army crossed the Alps–to earlier, just after the final fissure with Rome. This would mean that, in its proper context, the point of the dream was to encourage the Carthaginian army in their efforts to keep moving forward and to master the difficult conditions and terrain that faced them.
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Both Polybius and Livy acknowledge a Hannibalic propaganda campaign which attempted to surround the Carthaginian general with divine associations. In fact their complaints serve as confirmation of just how successful Hannibal’s literary entourage had been in pushing the idea of the expedition as divinely sanctioned. As the stories of how Hannibal had tamed this wild land and its even wilder peoples multiplied, so his claim to be heir to Heracles became ever more sure. Thus Polybius condemned certain anonymous writers because

Livy, in turn, has a Roman commander exhort his troops before battle against the Carthaginian general to find out ‘whether this Hannibal is, as he gives out, the rival of Hercules in his journeys, or whether he has been abandoned by his father to pay tax and tribute and to be the slave of the Roman people’.
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Indeed, the heavy emphasis that Livy places on the impiety of Hannibal throughout his account of the war is probably connected with the disquiet that the Carthaginian’s association with Heracles–Melqart engendered in Rome.
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What made Hannibal such a potent threat was not merely his military might, but the challenge that he presented to the previously successful Roman model of territorial conquest and incorporation. The relentless divine associations attributed to the Carthaginian general by his literary entourage represented something far more potent than mere selfindulgence.

Hannibal was intent on setting out a clear alternative not only to Roman political hegemony, but also to the Roman mythology by which that hegemony was justified. The Romans’ own promotion of the cult of Hercules had provided a much-needed mythical and historical affirmation for the huge territorial gains in Italy and in the old Carthaginian colonial possessions in the central Mediterranean. Hannibal’s appropriation of Heracles placed a large question mark over such claims. Hannibal appears to have been determined to wrest from Rome not only the military but also the propagandistic initiative. The Romans found themselves recast by Hannibal’s literary entourage in a new and unfamiliar role: as the agents of a tyranny from which the great hero was destined to liberate Italy. Rome, it appeared, was the new Cacus. In attempting to unite the Punic, Greek and Italian communities under the banner of Heracles–Melqart, Hannibal was attempting to drive Rome out of the god/hero’s ancient realm. Timaeus had underlined the ‘historic’ ties that supposedly bound the Romans and the western Greeks against the Carthaginians, but now his heirs embarked on a bold project to dismantle that proposition. From the outset, Hannibal’s assault on Rome aimed not only to reduce the city’s present formidable power base in the central Mediterranean, but also to undermine increasingly confident Roman claims to a distinguished past that foretold Rome’s emergence as a regional superpower.