Hannibal (21 page)

Standing on low, flat land, Tarentum was unusual in the nature of its harbour. The main basin was large and protected to seaward by two islets, but there was also a small landlocked basin—the Little Sea—running deep inland with a narrow entrance. Hard by the mouth of this basin was a small eminence, no more than about 70 feet above the surrounding town, but sufficiently strong for it to have been turned into Tarentum’s citadel. The Little Sea protected one side of the city, the Mediterranean another, and the third landward side was heavily walled and fortified. It was not the kind of place that Hannibal would have dreamed of attempting under normal circumstances. The Tarentines, however, unlike their fellow Greeks of Neapolis and Cumae, were suspected by the Romans, probably in view of their earlier conduct, of being untrustworthy allies. For this reason they had been forced to send hostages to Rome as surety of their good behaviour. Some of these were unwise enough to make an attempt to escape back to their city and, when recaptured by the Romans, were put to death with great cruelty—something which made the anti-Roman party in Tarentum even more hostile. They came to the conclusion that they would fare better under the Carthaginian, whose generosity to other towns and cities such as Capua was well enough known by now.

With the opening of the campaigning season in 213 B.C. Tarentum began to seem even more desirable to Hannibal, for he had the misfortune of losing the important communications centre of Arpi to the consul Fabius and—a rare blow to morale—some of the Spanish garrison had even deserted to the Romans. Informed that there was a pro-Carthaginian party inside Tarentum, Hannibal moved south but remained far away from the city. In this position he was potentially threatening not only Tarentum but also Brundisium, the two most important ports in southern Italy and the only ones, with the exception of Rhegium on the Messina Straits, still remaining in Roman hands. Hearing of his arrival in the area thirteen young Tarentine nobles, led by a certain Philemenus, left the walled city, whose gates of course were closed by night, and made their way to Hannibal’s camp on the pretext of going on a hunting expedition. Captured by the sentries on the outskirts of the Carthaginian camp, Philemenus explained their political sympathies, and the beginning of a plot for the betrayal of Tarentum was hatched. To make their absence seem plausible upon their return, Hannibal allowed the young men to take back with them some cattle which they could say they had found straying and had rounded up. The same pretext was used on a number of other occasions. Philemenus being well known as a keen hunter, his return with cattle or game—some of which he was always careful to give to the Roman sentries—was accepted as quite normal.

Hannibal, who had pretended to be ill as an excuse for his unusual inactivity and accordingly had kept to his tent, waited until all the preparations for the seizure of Tarentum had been made. He had promised Philemenus and his fellow conspirators that the Carthaginians would neither garrison the city nor demand any tribute from its inhabitants. His army would be forbidden to plunder, with the agreed exception of those houses which would be pointed out to Hannibal as belonging to Roman or pro-Roman citizens.

Once Philemenus’ nightly routine of going out to hunt had become so established that the Roman sentries thought nothing of it, and willingly opened the gates when they heard him whistle upon his return, the moment was ripe for Hannibal to act. Taking ten thousand infantry and some cavalry with him, and sending eighty Numidian horsemen to scout in advance, he left the main body of his army and moved up to a point about fifteen miles distant from Tarentum. The Numidians were ordered to kill any people that they encountered, so that no one should learn of the advance of Hannibal’s troops. At the same time they were to raid the countryside haphazardly, thus confirming the Romans in their belief that they were no more than a foraging party and did not herald the advance of an army. Livy recounts the events of that night:

Hannibal’s guide was Philemenus with his usual load of game. The rest of the traitors were waiting as previously arranged…. As he approached the gate a fire signal was given by Hannibal as had been agreed and from Nico [another leading conspirator inside the city] the same signal blazed; then on both sides the flames were extinguished. Hannibal was leading his men silently to the-gate. Nico and his men attacked the sleeping sentries in their beds, slew them and opened the gates [the main Teminitis entrance]. Hannibal with his infantry column entered…. Meanwhile on another side of the city Philemenus was approaching the postern gate by which he was accustomed to come and go. His well-known voice and the now familiar signal aroused the sentry as Philemenus was saying that they had a boar so large they could scarcely carry it. While two young men were carrying in the boar, he himself followed with a huntsman who was unencumbered. As the sentry was marvelling at the size of the animal he was looking towards the men who were carrying it, and Philemenus ran him through with a hunting spear. Then about thirty armed men rushed in and, cutting down the rest of the sentries, broke open the adjacent gate. The Carthaginian column burst in and made their way silently to the forum, where Hannibal joined them. He then despatched two thousand Gauls, divided into three units, through the city, each group being accompanied by two Tarentines to act as guides. Hannibal ordered them to occupy the principal streets and, when the uproar began, to kill the Romans everywhere but to spare the citizens of Tarentum. The guides were told to warn any of their own people whom they met to be quiet and fear nothing.

Already there was a great uproar (as is usual in a captured city), but what it was all about no one quite knew for certain. The Tarentines thought that the Romans must be plundering the city, while the Romans thought it was some kind of uprising treacherously started by the townspeople. Their commander, roused early in the uproar, escaped to the harbour where he was picked up by a skiff and rowed round to the citadel. Further confusion was caused by the sound of a trumpet from the theatre. This was a Roman trumpet stolen by the traitors for this very purpose and, being unskilfully sounded by a Greek, no one could tell what signal was being given and to whom.

When the day broke the Punic and Gallic weapons were recognised which ended the uncertainty of the Romans, and at the same time the Greeks, seeing slain Romans everywhere, realised that the city had been captured by Hannibal. The Romans who had not been slaughtered had fled to the citadel and, while order was gradually being restored, Hannibal ordered all the citizens, except those who had followed the Romans in their retreat to the citadel, to assemble without arms. Then he spoke to them with friendly words, reminding them of how he had released their fellow citizens who had been captured at Trasimene or Cannae. He inveighed against the haughty rule of the Romans and then bade each citizen to go to his home and write upon the door the word ‘
Tarentine
’. After the assembly had been sent away and all the doors had been marked, Hannibal released his troops to plunder the houses of the Romans, and the booty was considerable.

Hannibal’s commando tactics, aided by his fifth column within the walls, secured for him a great port and a prosperous city, though his success was somewhat nullified by the fact that the Roman garrison and their sympathisers still held the citadel, and were not to be dislodged from it. An attack on it failed, and Hannibal was forced to try to seal it off by an earthwork. This proved ineffectual, for the position of the citadel on its promontory commanding the entrance to the inner harbour meant that the garrison and its other inmates could be reinforced and fed from the open sea, where the Roman fleet had naval superiority. Furthermore, all the Tarentine ships were now bottled up in the inner harbour, the Little Sea, and it looked at first as if they were permanently trapped. Hannibal solved this by having the ships dragged onto the land and then moved through the streets of Tarentum on wheels, before being launched again into the outer harbour.

The betrayal and the capture of the city, and even the ingenious method of freeing the ships, all bore the stamp of Hannibal. The fact that Tarentum fell by treachery was one of the arguments later used by the Romans to accuse Hannibal of ‘Punic faith’ or double-dealing. It only remains to be said that, throughout the whole of the history of warfare, the betrayal of a city from within by a party favourable to the besiegers has always been a common practice. The early history of Greece abounds in accounts of just such stratagems. There is nothing in any way peculiarly ‘Punic’ about it.

Leaving the citizens themselves to cope with the problem of the garrison in the citadel, Hannibal moved out his troops (as he had promised the Tarentines he would do) and shortly afterwards took them back to winter quarters. Metapontum, on the Gulf of Taranto and slightly to the west, soon came over to him while Thurii, another Greek port on the far side of the Gulf, fell to an army under Hanno and Mago, the townspeople opening the gates to the Carthaginians. Despite the loss of Arpi, the year finally had proved favourable to Hannibal, and the only large ports in southern Italy, below the Bay of Neapolis, that still remained in Roman hands were Brundisium on the Adriatic coast and Rhegium on the Messina Straits.

Polybius’ comment that, ‘Of all that befell both the Romans and the Carthaginians, the cause was one man, and one mind—Hannibal’s’, was clearly justified. Almost the whole of the Mediterranean world, with the exception of Greece where Philip of Macedon still hesitated, was now engulfed in flames. The main event in Sicily had been the accession to the kingdom of Syracuse of the young Hieronymus, who had at once declared for the Carthaginians—only to be almost immediately murdered by the pro-Roman party. This in its turn had provoked the Syracusans who favoured Carthage to kill or expel the rich merchants and others who favoured Rome. It is significant that here, and elsewhere in Italy itself, it was the popular party in its hatred of those who had grown wealthy through their Roman connections who favoured Hannibal. The poor and the dispossessed saw in him a leader who would free them from the heavy hand of Rome, but who would not thereafter concern himself overmuch, if at all, as to how they governed their cities. It is, perhaps, curious to see the autocratic warlord welcomed by the plebeians but we can see it happen time and again throughout history.

In Spain the war had been going well for Roman arms, to such an extent that one of the principal allies of Carthage, the Numidian king Syphax, now changed allegiance and declared for Rome. Since the Carthaginians depended so greatly on the skill and superiority of the Numidian horse this was a bitter blow, but one which was to be offset by further changes of political allegiances. The war had now spread to North Africa and another Numidian king, Gaia from eastern Algeria, was encouraged to take arms against his fellows and prevent the Romans from securing a foothold on the continent. Gaia’s son, the young prince Masinissa, was to play a large part in the later story of Hannibal’s campaigns. In combination with Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, who had been compelled to take his troops to Africa to put down this threat in his rear, he crushed the rebellious Syphax, thus permitting Hasdrubal to return to Spain to meet the Roman threat in that quarter.

The war now exploded in Sicily. There can be no doubt that Hannibal, although he was constantly engaged in Italy against the ever-increasing tide of Roman arms, never failed to realise how important to his cause could be a Carthaginian triumph in that rich and powerful island to the south. Sicily had been for centuries the bone of contention between Greek and Carthaginian, and it had been the loss of Sicily to the Romans—through no fault of his father Hamilcar—which had led to the humiliating peace that had concluded the First Punic War. Two emissaries of Hannibal, Hippocrates and Epicides, had now been entrusted with the government of the great city and port of Syracuse after the expulsion of the pro-Roman party. It was essential for his overall strategy that the Carthaginians not only should retain their hold over Syracuse but also should gain control over the major part of the island. With the ports and harbours that had once been theirs—particularly in the west—they had a chance of breaking the Roman stranglehold upon the sea between Sicily and Carthage itself. The real difficulty lay in that, once the Romans had gained the upper hand over the Carthaginians in that sphere which had formerly been synonymous with the name of Carthage, they were never to relinquish it. Because his city, the Queen of the Sea, was never able to reinforce him properly, nor challenge the Romans successfully, all the years that Hannibal was to spend in Italy were in the end to prove unavailing. The influence of seapower upon history has never been more clearly demonstrated than in this great war between Carthage and Rome.
 

XX

SICILY

Syracuse had once been the most prosperous and important city in the central Mediterranean. In the fifth century B.C. at the time of the Graeco-Persian wars—wars which determined the fate of the West—Syracuse had been able to field more heavily armoured infantrymen and more ships than all of Greece. Now, although still of consequence, it had become something of a backwater, but a backwater that was enriched by the money and the artistic treasures of the greatest era of its parent Greeks.

Romans who visited the city were dazzled by the beauty of its architecture, by the visible evidence of wealth, by its vast theatre and its superb situation. The alliance of its former ruler Hiero had given the Romans not only a promise of stability in an always bedevilled island but also an acquaintanceship with the rich treasures of colonial Greece. The Great Harbour, about five miles in circumference, had witnessed the destruction of Athenian powers in 413 B.C. The small harbour lying between the island of Ortygia and the capital was capable of housing a fleet. Its importance to the Romans as a naval base in the war against Carthage was obvious enough, while its loss, if it should be occupied by a Carthaginian fleet, would have been a dangerous blow to Rome and of the greatest value to Hannibal. If the Carthaginians could secure and hold Syracuse they had a lifeline to their capital and a major supply base for Hannibal’s army.