Hannibal

HANNIBAL

Ernle Bradford

Copyright © Ernle Bradford 1981

Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material:

Doubleday & Co. Inc. for an extract from
The Odyssey
translated by Robert Fitzgerald;

Evans Brothers Ltd. for an extract from
Enemy of Rome
by L. Cottrell; Robert Hale Ltd. for an extract from
Carthage
by B. H. Warmington; The Loeb Classical library (William Heinemann Ltd.: Harvard University Press) for extracts from the Foster translation of Livy and the Patton translation of Polybius;

Oxford University Press for an extract from
Hannibal’s March in History
by Dennis Procter;

Penguin Books Ltd. for an extract from Juvenal:
The Sixteen Satires
translated by Peter Green (Penguin Classics, revised edition, 1974). Copyright © Peter Green, 1974;

A. D. Peters & Co. Ltd. on behalf of Thomas Dorey and Donald Dudley for an extract from
Rome Against Carthage
published by Seeker & Warburg Ltd.;

Thames & Hudson Ltd. for extracts from
Hannibal
and
Alps and Elephants
by G. de Beer;

University Tutorial Press Ltd. for an extract from
History of Rome
by Allcroft and Masom.

The author also wishes to acknowledge with grateful thanks the help of the staff of the London Library.
 

CHRONOLOGY

BC

247—Hamilcar Barca takes command in Sicily during 1st Punic War. Hannibal born in Carthage.

244—Hamilcar occupies Mount Eryx in western Sicily.

242—Roman victory at sea over Carthaginians off Aegadian islands.

241—End of 1st Punic War.

240—Revolt of Carthaginian mercenaries.

237—Revolt suppressed by Hamilcar.

237-6—Hamilcar and son Hannibal leave North Africa for Spain.

235-30—Extension of Carthaginian empire in Spain.

230—Hamilcar killed. Son-in-law Hasdrubal succeeds command.

226—Agreement between Hasdrubal and Rome, limiting Carthaginian expansion in Spain to south of Ebro river.

221—Hasdrubal assassinated. Hannibal succeeds command.

219—Hannibal takes Saguntum.

218—2nd Punic War begins. Hannibal crosses the Alps and defeats the Romans at Trebia river.

217—Hannibal destroys army of Consul Flaminius at Lake Trasimene.

216—Hannibal annihilates consular armies at Cannae. Many southern allies of Rome secede. Capua becomes Hannibal’s headquarters.

215—Roman Treasury bankrupt. Hiero of Syracuse dies. Succeeded by Hieronymus. Syracuse goes to war against Rome.

214—Hieronymus assassinated. Hostilities start in Sicily.

213—Marcellus sacks Leontini and besieges Syracuse. Tarentum secedes to Hannibal.

212—Marcellus takes Syracuse. Archimedes killed. Romans defeated by Hannibal in Apulia.

211—Hannibal’s march on Rome. Capua capitulates to Romans.

210—Romans again defeated in Apulia. Hostilities in Sicily end with Rome victorious.

209—Fabius retakes Tarentum. 12 Latin colonies refuse further military service.

208—Scipio defeats Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal in Spain. Hasdrubal crosses Pyranees into Transalpine Gaul.

207—Hasdrubal crosses Alps into Cisalpine Gaul. Scipio defeats last Carthaginian army in Spain. Hasdrubal defeated and killed at Metaurus river.

206—Mago, Hannibal’s youngest brother, evacuates Spain and sails to Balearics. War in Spain ends.

205—Mago lands in Liguria and captures Genoa and Savona

204—Scipio invades North Africa.

203—Mago dies of wounds. Hannibal recalled to Carthage.

202—Hannibal defeated at Battle of Zama. End of 2nd Punic War.

200—Hannibal becomes Chief Magistrate of Carthage. He reorganizes the city’s finances and holds supreme power for five years.

195—Hannibal forced to flee Carthage and offers services to Seleucid empire in the East.

183—Hannibal commits suicide in Bithynia.

In whichever way I might like to relate my life to the rest of the world, my path takes me always across a great battlefield; unless I enter upon it, no permanent happiness can be mine.

Carl von Clausewitz

A man who exercises absolute authority is constrained to assume a pose of invariable reserve.

Alfred de Vigny

PREFACE

DEATH IN EXILE

Hannibal was sixty-four when he committed suicide in Bithynia. An ageing, defeated war-leader, he had at long last reached the end of even his reserves and will to live. The year was 183 B.C. and the soldiers of his enemy Rome were taking up positions round his house with the intention of killing him or, preferably, taking him back to Italy to be the central figure in a Roman triumph. When that was over, he would be killed in any case.

An outcast from his own
city of Carthage, to whose cause he had dedicated his whole life, Hannibal had come to this distant kingdom, bordered on the north by the Black Sea and on the west by the Sea of Marmora, as a guest of its ruler, King Prusias. It would be difficult to imagine a more obscure and tranquil setting than this country villa in Bithynia for the departure from this world of a man whose life had been a hurricane that had shaken the Mediterranean world from North Africa to Spain, France, Italy and Greece. Now, at the limits of the known world—the geographical heart of darkness—this Carthaginian nobleman, who has been described as ‘the greatest soldier the world has ever seen’, was about to take poison.

His implacable enemies, the Romans, had tracked him down to his remote retirement. They could never rest as long as he was alive. Hannibal had waged war against Rome for over sixteen years and had reduced their city and their state to the very edge of physical, economic and moral bankruptcy. He had bled their armies white, and in the course of one afternoon—at Cannae in Italy—had killed upon the field more men than in any single battle in recorded history. In the end he had been defeated, but he had always escaped his pursuers. His armies had long since been disbanded, but he had still survived in those countries of the eastern Mediterranean that had not yet yielded to Rome. He had warned all their rulers that unless they continued to fight against Rome they, would all, one by one, lose their freedom.

Now, at the close or his life, he lived at the village of Libyssa on a quiet inlet from the sea leading towards the Bithynian capital, Nicomedia. Although Hannibal was the guest of Prusias, he had been careful to live outside the city, for he had no wish to call attention to himself. He knew that he had been declared throughout the known world an enemy of the Romans, and that no man, no king, no country was allowed to give him shelter. Prusias in far Bithynia had dared to do so, thinking that his country was so remote from Rome, or even from its ever-growing shadow, that Hannibal could remain unobserved. The king needed the advice of this famous soldier-statesman on the reorganisation of his kingdom.

Then Bithynia found itself engaged in a war with Pergamum, that prosperous city in Asia Minor which had become a client of the Roman state. The forces of Prusias were badly defeated, and he turned to Hannibal for advice. The latter would have been wise, however difficult it might have been, to avoid acting as counsellor to a king who was engaged against a client of the all-conquering Romans. But he had dedicated himself since the age of nine at an altar in distant Carthage ‘never to be a friend of the Roman people’. Hannibal managed to change the course of the war and secure a victory for Bithynia at sea. It involved a stratagem so ingenious that the men of Pergamum when they encountered it were completely demoralised, broke off the action, and fled. It had occurred to Hannibal that in the semi-open vessels of that time, where the oarsmen were naked and even the marines were only lightly clad, nothing could be more fearsome than the explosion on board of ‘bombs’ of poisonous snakes. The countryside of Bithynia was scoured for them and they were then packed in slithery heaps inside pottery jars. When the two fleets engaged, and the jars bursting on the decks of the opposing ships released their venomous contents, there was widespread panic—and the Bithynians secured their victory.

Rome, like all imperial powers, depended upon the smaller states that fell within its orbit feeling secure, and Rome was not used to her allies and clients being defeated. Shortly after this incident the envoys of King Prusias were summoned to Rome to explain why they were at war with Pergamum in the first place. The king had kept Hannibal’s presence in his country secret, but one of the envoys was not so discreet. The Roman Senate at once declared that this enemy of their people must be surrendered. Flamininus, a Roman general distinguished in affairs of the East, heard of Hannibal’s whereabouts and determined that the Carthaginian should never escape again as he had so often in the past. ‘Hannibal must be tracked down and captured or killed’, in the words of Plutarch, ‘like a bird that has grown too old to fly, and lost its tail feathers.’

Hannibal had long known what his fate would be if the Romans ever laid hands upon him. In a just cause, as he saw it, he had made war upon them for their infamous treatment of Carthage at the conclusion of an earlier war. He had taken an army right through Spain and into what is now France, crossed the river Rhône, traversed the Alps at a time of the year when no one believed it possible, and invaded Italy. For fifteen years he had used Italy as his battlefield and his home, destroying Roman armies with almost contemptuous ease. Hearing now from his servants that his house was surrounded by soldiers, he is said to have remarked: ‘It is now time to end the anxiety of the Romans. Clearly they are no longer able to wait for the death of an old man who has caused them so much concern.’

His irony mocked his enemies to the last. When the Romans burst into the house they found their great adversary lying dead; even in his very end he had eluded them.
 

I

A DISPUTED WORLD

The dark giant lay sprawled on the sands of Tunis. Far to the north the new champion of the arena lifted his arms in triumph. The galleys passed upon the sea, the soldiers laid down their arms, cities were rebuilt and peace was everywhere welcomed. The supine giant was unconscious, but not dead. Slowly he began to raise himself upon his elbows.

Hannibal was born six years before the end of the first great war between Rome and Carthage. He was the son of Hamilcar Barca, Barca being one of the most distinguished families in Carthage. Their name meant ‘Thunderbolt’, and they could trace their descent back to Queen Elissa (Dido), the legendary founder of the great North African city. Hannibal’s birth in 247 B.C. coincided with the appointment of his father to the supreme command of the city’s forces by land and by sea. There is a legend that his birthplace was the small island of Malta, a Carthaginian colony, but it is almost certain that it was Carthage itself. Hamilcar’s palace lay in that city of tall white buildings climbing the hill of Byrsa. It overlooked the deep Gulf of Tunis and the African Mediterranean flickering to the north.

Hannibal was only to know Carthage in the early years of his life, after which, throughout the formative years of young manhood and into middle age, he would be in Spain and Italy. He would see the city again only when, to all intents and purposes, his cause was lost and Carthage was ultimately doomed. Yet it was this city that inspired him to lead her armies against Rome, that fired him to lead them across the Alps and to carry into Italy a war that lasted for sixteen years and was described by the Roman historian Livy as ‘the most memorable of all wars ever waged’.