Hannibal (13 page)

Hannibal’s personal relations with the Gauls who joined his army, now and later in his campaigns, were all-important for his success in Italy. What he promised them, as he did his own men who had followed him from Spain, was complete freedom and the right, by conquest, to the lands that they made theirs. Since the lives of Gallic warriors at that time revolved around warfare, usually against their fellow Gauls, and they had hardly attained the settled ways of the Italians, who were agriculturalists first and foremost, the appeal of battle and plunder was irresistible. They asked for nothing more, believing that to die in battle was the proper thing for a man—and that their spirits would, in any case, survive. Their outlook on life was in a sense Homeric, and in almost all respects they resembled the Norsemen of later centuries. Feasting and drinking wine, boasting of their exploits, listening to tales of heroism from their bards, they were brave and simple children. Gold torques and heavy wrist- and arm-bands of gold showed their wealth; their unarmoured bodies displayed their contempt for the enemy (until trained into Carthaginian and Roman usage of corselets); and they went trousered through the world—unlike the men of the Mediterranean, who saw in the long leggings of the North the mark of the savage. The historian Diodorus writes of them that they would happily engage in single combat with one another over trivial incidents at their drinking parties and that they were fond of songs about the great deeds of their ancestors. ‘They enlarge the bronze helmets that they wear with horns, to give an appearance of great size. They carry shields as long as their bodies, embossed with the bronze head of some beast. They speak in riddles, hinting darkly at their meaning, while always extolling themselves. Terrible in aspect, they appear threatening; yet they have sharp wits and are often clever in learning.’

These were the men who were to form the bulk of Hannibal’s army for many years, and these were the men whom he bad above all to impress—not only with his superior intelligence and cunning, not only with a bravery that would equal theirs on the battlefield, but with some quality that seemed to set him apart from other human beings. As a cultured man and as a Carthaginian noble, sprung from generations of rich and noble men, he was accustomed to the ways in which the simple may be impressed and overawed. (Among his personal staff was a Carthaginian priest and soothsayer, and Hannibal must have been conversant with the skills with which the priesthood worked upon the superstitions of the ignorant.) Polybius, almost certainly quoting some earlier and contemporary authority, tells us that it was ‘during this winter that he also adopted a truly Punic artifice. Fearing the fickleness of the Celts and possible attempts on his life, owing to his establishment of friendly relations with them being so very recent, he had a number of wigs made, dyed to suit the appearance of persons differing widely in age, and kept constantly changing them, at the same time also dressing in a style that suited the wig, so that not only those who had seen him but for a moment, but even his familiars found difficulty in recognising him.’

Hannibal had, indeed, good reason to fear an attempt upon his life, for during his few months in Italy he had already been responsible for the death of many Gauls—among the Taurini, prior to the battle of Trebia, and recently at Victumulae—and he knew how the code of the blood-feud operated among them. He remembered the fate of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, assassinated in Spain for some unspecified grudge. His recent wound may well have served to remind him that it was upon him, and him alone, that the success of the war against Rome depended. Not only Hasdrubal but also his father Hamilcar, killed in battle, had died before they could work out the great oath that they had taken upon the altar—to wreak vengeance upon Rome for her perfidious treatment of Carthage. Many thousands had already fallen in pursuance of that oath, and it was clear to Hannibal that by his hand upon the sacrificial offering not only had he committed himself, but also, without him, the Carthaginian cause was doomed.

The news from Spain was bad. Under the attack of the Roman legions, commanded by the brother of the consul Scipio, the Carthaginian forces in northern Spain had been defeated. Most of the region between the Pyrenees and the Ebro was now in Roman hands with the result that, contrary to his hopes and expectations, he could no longer be reinforced overland by the way that he had come. Furthermore, the Romans, putting to good use their command of the sea, had thwarted a Carthaginian attempt to land reinforcements near Pisa. Hannibal’s communications were efficiently strangled and, although his first onslaught on Italy had proved successful, the long-term Roman strategy of reducing the Carthaginian source of power—Spain—and of denying him assistance by sea was already bearing fruit. ‘Rome’, wrote William O’Connor Morris, ‘was a great nation, Carthage an ill-governed state’, and the truth of those words would become increasingly apparent as the years went by. Hannibal had no other sure source of reserves but the Gauls of Italy: he was dependent upon them, and the whole success of the expedition was dependent upon him staying alive. His hopes at this time must also have been geared to the possibility of seducing away from Rome the Latin allies, who in many respects formed the bulk of her armies. If he could shatter the confederation that held these states together he could deprive Rome of a principal source of manpower and isolate her. For this reason, both now and in the future, he was careful to make a distinction among the prisoners that he took: Romans were reduced to slave status, but the allies were treated kindly and, whenever possible, sent back to their homes with the message that the Carthaginian had no enmity against them. His war was against Rome.

Early in the spring, well aware that the Gauls were restive and that they were eager to leave their own territory and live off the land of their enemy, Hannibal gave the order for the army to move south into Etruria. Knowing that the eastern route by Ariminum on the Adriatic coast would be guarded by two consular legions, and having no doubt found out that the other main force awaited him on the western flank of the Apennines at Arretium, he decided to take a route which the Romans would not have anticipated. The way that he chose was more direct, but its disadvantages would become apparent only too soon. It seems likely that, having marched as far as Bologna he then turned west, crossing the Apennines by the Passo Collina to come out near Pistoia. He emerged into the valley of the lower Arno, an area at that time undrained and marshy in the extreme. The order of the army on the march, as given by Polybius, is interesting since it shows what reliance he placed upon the various national units. In the van went the Africans and the Spaniards and all the more disciplined troops, the baggage train being interspersed among them; behind, forming the main body, came his thousands of Gauls; and in the rear came the cavalry, both heavy and light, ready for action if any attempts were made to harass the army and forming also a formidable warning to any Gauls who might think of deserting if the going got difficult.

The crossing of the marshes of the lower Arno was almost as hard upon the troops, in its quite different way, as had been the latter stages of the Alps. ‘All the army’, says Polybius, ‘suffered much, chiefly from lack of sleep, as they had to march through water for three continuous days and nights. The Celts were much more worn out and lost more men than the rest. Most of the pack-animals fell and perished in the mud, the only service they rendered being that when they fell the men piled their packs on their bodies and lay upon them, being thus out of the water and enabled to snatch a little sleep during the night. Many of the horses also lost their hooves through the continuous march in the mud.’ Only one elephant now survived out of the thirty-seven with which he had crossed the Alps: this was ridden by Hannibal himself in the passage through the marshes. This was possibly the one Indian elephant in the troop since the elder Cato referred to the survivor as Surus (‘the Syrian’) and Indian elephants used in ancient warfare came via Syria.

Livy paints an even harsher picture of the plight of the invading army than Polybius, but both confirm that it was here that Hannibal suffered a severe misfortune. ‘Hannibal himself, whose eyes were suffering in the first place from the trying spring weather, alternating between hot and cold, rode upon the sole surviving elephant, that he might be higher above the water. But lack of sleep, damp nights, and the air of the marshes affected his head, and since he had neither place nor time for employing remedies, he lost the sight of one of his eyes.’ Juvenal later refers to him as ‘the one-eyed commander, perched on his monstrous beast.’

Whatever he and his men had suffered in these days through the marshes of the Arno valley was redeemed by the immense tactical advantage that he had stolen over the enemy. Far to the east of them Servilius and his troops watched the roads and passes on the Adriatic side of Italy, while to the south Flaminius waited at Arretium to bar the road to Rome. Hannibal had no intention of meeting the enemy on a field of the latter’s choosing and not of his own. He intended to by-pass Flaminius and carry straight on towards the central plains of Italy. His troops had asked for rapine and plunder and to live off the land of their enemy and he was leading them directly into the rich plains of Tuscany—the desired treasure-land of many armies in the centuries to come. Rich in grain and cattle, the smiling land of ancient Etruria yielded up its villages, its animals and its crops to this furious horde that, locust-like, moved easily through it in the warm days of spring. Hannibal was well aware that Flaminius, left high and dry at Arretium, would be tortured at the reports reaching him of these depredations. Flaminius had set himself on the road to Rome like the champion of the city—and had been ignored. He must also have been aware of the political danger to Rome arising from Hannibal’s apparently uncontested march of success. The Etruscans, former masters of the land, had always resented the dominance of the city which they had fought so long and so hard, and they might consider this Phoenician descendant as nearer to them in blood and culture than the Romans.

Hannibal dragged the lure in front of his opponent, and Flaminius rose to the bait. Although a number of his officers strongly advised him not to attack until he had been joined by his fellow consul and his forces, Flaminius broke up his camp and set off in pursuit of Hannibal, ‘utterly regardless of time or place, but bent only on falling in with the enemy….’ Like Sempronius before him, he wished to be seen as sole champion and defender of Rome and, even if this side of his nature had not played its part, he—as the consul nearest the invader—could hardly allow this public humiliation of Roman arms to continue any longer. Hannibal must soon have heard the news that the Roman army was on the march, and permitted himself the luxury of a smile. Calmly and confidently he trailed his forces past the ancient city of Cortona to his left and moved towards Lake Trasimene on his right.

Like many other sites of ancient battles the area around Lake Trasimene has changed considerably over the centuries. A small flat plain to the north of the lake, surrounding the river Macerone, is largely the result of alluvial deposit (as well as a deliberate lowering of the level of the lake in the fifteenth century) and did not exist in Hannibal’s time. The way by which Hannibal approached the lake was by the defile of Borghetto, ‘Malpasso’ as it is appropriately called, with the great misty surface of Trasimene and its two islets, Isola Minore and Isola Maggiore, lying mirrored in the waters on his right hand. To the left of him as the army came into what was then a small basin, the valley of the river, the hills bulked up all round in the shape of a U. Barren or scrub- and cistus-tangled today, the hills most certainly held thicker coverage at that time. Once through the narrow entrance by Malpasso, a bottleneck with the water on one side and slopes the other, Hannibal could see ahead the long conspicuous ridge where the valley of Tuoro lies. Here, readily and immediately visible to the Romans as they entered through Malpasso, he would station a prominent part of the army.

At Trebia he had had to use some ingenuity to make the land work for him, but at Trasimene nature had prepared a trap designed for slaughter. Like the last chamber into which the great tunny fish are driven, the
camera della morte
, the lake shore provided the bottom and the hills to west, north and east the enclosing sides. East, then, on the long ridge Hannibal sited his best troops, the Africans and Spaniards. Drawn up formally with standards and banners, they would at once proclaim to the consul, as he came through the defile, that Hannibal had arranged his army for a setpiece battle, taking advantage of the fact that the legions would have to advance up a slope to attack. The Romans would not shirk that—and Flaminius with his eagerness to get at the enemy would not let the unfavourable approach deter him. On the western slopes, which ran down towards the lake and which would be on the left flank of the Romans once they had entered the basin of the Macerone, Hannibal stationed the Gauls and the Carthaginian heavy cavalry; and on the east, in an extended line, on flat ground below the hills he stationed his light troops, the slingers and pikemen. All was set. All that remained was for the long body of the Roman army to insinuate itself through Malpasso and then Hannibal, after waiting until they were all in place, would close the door. The Gauls and cavalry would drop down the slopes on their left and seal off the road behind them.

That night, Flaminius and the head of the Roman column reached the lake and encamped to the west, outside Malpasso. They had been following close on Hannibal’s heels and they knew that he must be quartered not far away—somewhere ahead, perhaps on the far side of this neck of the great lake. They waited for the dawn.

It was a very misty morning—not so rare in spring—the damp air rising off and hiding the lake, and lying thick over the river valley. Eager to get to grips with the Carthaginian before he could move on further towards Rome, Flaminius gave the order for the advance. Hannibal waited until the first of the consul’s troops were in contact with his own men, stationed below the main body of his army, then the trumpets blared out, brazen and ominous through the mist. From the western slopes near Malpasso, north as far as the village of Sanguineto, the Gauls and the heavy cavalry came thundering down, taking the legions on their left flank and closing the passage behind them. To quote Livy: ‘…their onset was all the more sudden and unforeseen inasmuch as the mist from the lake lay less thickly on the heights than on the plain, and the attacking columns had been clearly visible to one another from the various hills and had therefore delivered their charge at nearly the same instant.’