Hannibal (19 page)

If he brought outstandingly good news, Mago had also some requests to make. Hannibal badly needed reinforcements in terms of trained infantrymen, more Numidian horse, and money. The opposition party in Carthage, led by one Hanno, a descendant of the Hanno who had been eclipsed by Hamilcar Barca, and a representative of one of the richest families in Carthage, was prompt with objections against sending Hannibal assistance. If he had won such great victories, why did he need more money and men? If he was making these demands when most of Italy was in his grasp, what would he have asked for if he had been defeated? Now, surely, after so conclusive a victory was the time to make peace, for it seemed doubtful whether the position would ever be bettered for obtaining good terms.
 

Though often discredited by subsequent historians, the peace party did have a point to make—and one which later events would justify. It is not surprising, however, that it was overruled and the decision was taken to send Hannibal substantial reinforcements. The bulk of these, some 20,000 infantrymen, were to come from Spain while, from immediate Carthaginian territory, it was agreed to send him 4,000 Numidian horse and 40 elephants. In the event, the major reinforcements never reached Italy. The position in Spain had seriously weakened during the two years that Hannibal had become master of the Italian arena. After the defeat of Hanno in 218, Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother Cnaeus had gone on to drive Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal back south of the Ebro, and the Romans had also gained control of the sea along the Spanish coast. Throughout 216, while Hannibal had dominated Italy and concluded the humiliation of Rome at Cannae, the Romans had been consolidating their hold on northern Spain, as well as fomenting tribal unrest in the south. Hasdrubal, even though reinforced from Carthage, was hard put to it to maintain Carthaginian suzerainty as far south as the Guadalquivir, with the result that he could spare no troops to send to assist Hannibal in Italy.

On the face of it, however, as the year 216 drew to a close it seemed to the ruling Carthaginians that the prospects of ultimate victory were good. There was a revolt in Sardinia against the Romans and this could be fostered; northern Spain could yet be regained; Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, the ally of Rome, was dying, and in due course events there might offer the chance of regaining the whole island—or as much of it as suited them. Hannibal’s successes put heart into a Senate that was always inclined to judge things largely by the prospect of immediate financial return. Three expeditionary forces were fitted out, one for Sardinia, and two for Hannibal in Italy. Only the smallest of these ever reached him—the Numidians and the elephants—for Spain, main source of Carthage’s wealth, was destined to receive the lion’s share. It is significant that the reinforcements Hannibal was to receive as a result of the Carthaginians’ decision had to land at Locri, a small port in the far south-west of Italy, because no major port was in his hands.

Intent on capitalising on his victory, Hannibal was in touch with Philip V of Macedon, a perspicacious and energetic ruler who had a long-standing grievance against Rome for her interference in Adriatic affairs, and who saw in the Carthaginian successes in Italy a chance to improve his own position in Greece. For him, as for so many others in Greece and the East, Rome was the enemy, the principal threat to independence of action, and he well understood the old saying ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’. In the summer of 215 he and Hannibal were to sign a treaty (preserved by Polybius) in which both parties, while in no way committing themselves, agreed on an alliance against Rome.

The Roman senate had no cause to feel anything but grave alarm in the latter months of what must be called ‘The Year of Cannae’. The misery and gloom which shrouded the city took the people back from the straightforward atmosphere of the Republic into something darker, something that cried out from the very roots of an old peasant stock whose pragmatism had never quite overlaid the religion and the superstitions of the Etruscans whom they had conquered so many years before. The sacred Sibylline Books were consulted and an embassy was sent to Delphi to ask the advice of one of the oldest oracles in the Mediterranean world. Just as some two thousand years later, in the midst of more sophisticated wars, people have felt that their errors and sins have brought this calamity upon themselves, so the temples were crowded then, and every effort was made to uncover the reason for the wrath of the gods—and to appease it. Two Vestal Virgins, who might at other times have gone undiscovered in their sins of the flesh, were found to be unworthy of their celibate title: one committed suicide and the other was buried alive. The Romans, mindful though some of the educated were of the rationalism of Greece, even turned back to the darkest and oldest of gods (such as those whom the Carthaginians still worshipped) and reverted to expiation in human sacrifice: two Greeks and two Gauls were buried alive to satisfy this ancient thirst for blood.

‘After the appeasement of this outbreak, however,’ writes B. H. Warmington in
Carthage,
‘that fierce determination which had marked the Romans in the worst days of the First Punic War returned. As for the direction of the war, the voters from now on regularly chose candidates who had the support of the senate, since two of the consuls who had been chosen against its wishes were at least partly responsible for the defeats at Trasimene and Cannae. Tremendous efforts were demanded of themselves and the allies; the war tax was doubled in 215, by 212 there were twenty-five legions in the field, and all the while a fleet of 200 ships with 50,000 rowers was kept in being.’ Rome, which had refused to ransom its soldiers captured at Cannae, now showed its iron mood: prisoners were released from jail on condition that they joined the legions and were prepared to fight for their country, and several thousand young and healthy slaves were bought from their owners and given their freedom on condition of their enlistment.

Temples and private houses were stripped of arms and armour that had been kept as battle trophies from earlier wars, and all craftsmen and artisans capable of working in metal were conscripted into the manufacture of armaments. The city had not forgotten its duty by the gods and it did not forget its duty by the material requirements of a war to the death. Another dictator, Marcus Junius Pera, was appointed, with Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus as his Master of the Horse. At the Trebia, at Trasimene and at Cannae the Romans paid bitterly for a policy of aggressive action. They now showed that they were wise enough to have profited by the lesson. Quintus Fabius Maximus, ‘the delayer’, had shown them the right course of action and henceforth they were to take it.

Hannibal now set about establishing, as far as he could, that kingdom in the south which the victory of Cannae seemed to have placed in his grasp. Capua was, of course, his primary consideration, for this rich, though politically divided, city seemed to offer a capital from which he could conduct his war on Rome. The city had not come over to him without considerable dissension among its leaders, but perhaps the decisive fact which led to them doing so was a Roman demand that the Capuans help them with money, grain and troops. The Capuans seem to have been a self-indulgent people and they shirked the burden of attaching themselves to a hard cause—especially when the army of Hannibal stood at their gates. On the other hand, they soon made it clear to the Carthaginian that their friendship did not imply any very active collaboration. He might not call upon any elements

of their armed forces, although Capuans were allowed to volunteer for service with him, and in the whole area of Campania only local officials might have any jurisdiction. Similarly Carthaginian laws and customs were only to apply to the army of Hannibal but had no authority over the Campanians. Nevertheless Hannibal, who had hoped for the great port of Neapolis as his headquarters, but had been deterred by its closed gates and strong walls, had found a suitable and basically well-disposed capital city for his conquest.

It was apparent that the whole concept of the war on which he had acted was false. It was not enough to conquer dramatically upon the field, and then to dictate a peace that would confine Rome to her old boundaries and restore the Mediterranean world to the
status quo
that prevailed before the First Punic War. By refusing to yield even after their resounding defeats, the Romans had introduced a new element into warfare and were not abiding by ‘the rules’ which had long obtained among ancient civilisations. Hannibal has often been compared to Napoleon, but one of Napoleon’s innovations was to unleash upon the eighteenth century kingdoms of Europe a new concept—total or ‘people’s’ war. It was the Romans who now did this to Hannibal, by refusing to accept that defeat upon the battlefield implied defeat in the war. He had time during the winter of 216 to realise that he was faced with something quite novel: a war of attrition against a politically well-balanced republic. The Alexander of the Afro-Semitic world was faced with a problem that had never confronted the Greek Alexander in his campaigns against the kingdoms of the East.

North-east of Capua, dominating that fertile plain, rises the 1,800 foot head of Mons Tifata (Monte Virgo) which was to serve as one of Hannibal’s main bases for the years to come. It had the great advantage that its summit was a plateau suitable for grazing horses and other animals, and that it commanded not only the plain to the west but also the valley of the Vulturnus, leading eastwards through the passes into Samnium and Apulia. It might be well enough for the troops and even Hannibal himself to winter in Capua, but it is doubtful (and he had good cause, if Livy is to be believed) that he ever trusted the citizens of Capua to any great extent. To suggest, as later Roman writers did, that the army, and even Hannibal himself, was ‘corrupted’ by soft living in the first winter in Capua is to imply that the Roman generals and armies who encountered him during the years to come were of very indifferent quality.

The year 216 was the high tide of Hannibal’s success in the Italian peninsula, yet it was not until the autumn of 203 that he was finally to leave these shores. Throughout those years, despite one or two reverses, he was to maintain his hold over all this land with an army composed of dwindling numbers of North Africans and Spaniards and mainly of Gauls and natives of Bruttium and other southern provinces, where the influence of Rome had never been deeply felt. Notwithstanding the two thousand years and more that have intervened since the kingdom of the south was held by Hannibal it is possible to feel that his shadow still lies across all this land. ‘Africa comincia a Napoli’ (‘Africa begins at Naples’), say modern Romans when they wish to disparage all this territory to the south. It is probable that the phrase originated during those later centuries when the Moors/Saracens/Africans and Ottoman pirates devastated the whole of this area. It is tempting, however, to think that the memory of Hannibal, which bit so deeply into the Roman consciousness during the classical period, has never been effaced.
 

XVIII

THE LONG STRUGGLE

At the beginning of the year 215 Hannibal was holding Mons Tifata, from which point he commanded all the Campanian plain. The Romans, who despite all their losses had eight legions in the field, were principally concerned with watching the routes north. Thus, Quintus Fabius Maximus, no longer dictator but now appointed one of the consuls for the year, was stationed with his army no more than ten miles to the north of Capua at Cales. The second consul, Tiberius Gracchus, was near the western coast at Sinuessa guarding the Appian road to Rome at a narrow point where the hills constrained it to the coast. At Nola, south-east from Capua and guarding the cities and ports that lay around the Bay of Naples, was the proconsul Marcellus with two legions. In Apulia, protecting Brundisium and Tarentum—since it was rightly feared that Hannibal might attempt to seize one or other of these valuable seaports—was stationed a fourth army under Marcus Valerius. All important routes were guarded and other smaller armies kept watch in Sicily and Sardinia, both areas where it was expected that the Carthaginians might make a landing. Rome was fully extended, and Hannibal, confident after his success of the previous year and his negotiations with King Philip of Macedon as well as with Syracuse in Sicily, could afford to wait developments. In the words of Arnold in
The Second Punic War
: ‘Seeing the result of his work thus fast ripening, Hannibal sat quietly on the summit of Tifata, to break forth like the lightning flash when the storm should be fully gathered.’

During this year Neapolis was attacked on three occasions, but once again the weakness of Hannibal’s position—his lack of siege equipment—was plain for all to see. The Romans were not slow to take note that any well-walled and well-defended city was secure against the Carthaginians. No doubt a corresponding feeling of relief was felt throughout Rome itself, even though so large a part of Italy was still denied to them. The inland towns of Casilinum and Nuceria fell to him, but by investment and not siege, and even the small Greek town of Petelia (Strongoli) in the southwest of the Gulf of Taranto managed to hold out for eight months before surrendering. With it soon went Cosentia and the useful port of Croton, once the dominant Greek city on the Gulf, whose defeat and extirpation of its rich rival Sybaris in 510 B.C. has passed into history.
 

By the end of 215 the Carthaginian army in Bruttium (modern Calabria) had overrun this whole south-western area of Italy, only Rhegium (Reggio) on the Strait of Messina holding out in its loyalty to Rome. As with the other important ports like Neapolis and Cumae, against both of which Hannibal had been unsuccessful, Rhegium owed its resistance not only to the strength of its landward walls but also to the fact that it could be supplied by sea, and the Roman fleet had complete mastery of that all-important narrow channel which divides Italy from Sicily. In the last years of the war, when the strength of the Carthaginian army was declining and the tactics of ‘the delayer’ were everywhere being applied against him, the region of Bruttium was to prove Hannibal’s final redoubt in the Italian peninsula. In these comparatively early stages it provided a recruiting centre for the Carthaginians, now that they were so far separated from their Gallic allies in the north. Hanno, who was in command in the south, is said to have raised an army of some 20,000 out of Bruttium, mainly from the hardy mountain natives who disliked Rome and who had no feelings against the Carthaginians, as did the Greeks of the coastal towns.