The Fall of Carthage (43 page)
The next morning Nero persuaded his colleague and the praetor to risk a battle immediately, preferring the benefit of surprise over allowing his footsore soldiers to rest. Hasdrubal had already formed his army in battle order outside his camp as the Romans marched out to deploy. However, he is said to have noticed amongst the Roman line men with old shields he had not seen before, and cavalry with lean horses, as well as having a general impression of an increase in Roman numbers. Worried, Hasdrubal refused battle and the Romans, as was usual, did not force an engagement with an enemy who refused to advance far from his camp. Patrols were sent out to observe the separate camps pitched by Licinus and Salinator. Livy tells us that they reported two trumpet fanfares in the consul's camp and only one in the praetor's camp, which Hasdrubal correctly understood as meaning that a second consul must also be present. The size of Hasdrubal's army is unclear, but it seems probable that the addition of the equivalent of a strong legion to the Roman armies facing him convinced him that a battle was unwise. In the night he retreated towards the River Metaurus. Livy claims that his guides, presumably local men, deserted and that the Punic column went astray in the darkness, but night marches have always been difficult and it is possible that the mistake was accidental. Later in the night Hasdrubal reached the river bank and ordered his units to follow it, hoping to strike the proper road by the light of dawn and so discover a crossing place.
The Romans began the pursuit as soon as they realized that the enemy had retreated. Nero led with the combined cavalry of the three armies, followed by Licinus with the
velites
and Salinator, under whose auspices the battle was fought, with the main army. They caught up with Hasdrubal when the latter had decided that his men needed rest and so had begun to construct a camp on a hill overlooking the river. As the various elements of the Roman armies arrived and began to form a battle line, the Carthaginian ordered his men to stop work on the camp and deploy. Both sides must have been tired after their march, but the Roman commanders were eager for battle and did not intend to delay. The precise location of the battle of Metaurus is unknown and the suggestions have varied widely. The terrain seems to have been fairly uneven and the open space limited, and this, combined with the haste with which each side formed up, made the battle less regular than Hannibal's early campaigns and more like the fighting in southern Italy. Nero commanded the Roman right wing, apparently with his own infantry and cavalry; Licinus held the centre and Salinator the left. It is unclear whether all the cavalry were divided between the extreme left and right wings as was the usual practice, although Livy seems to imply that the bulk of the Roman cavalry were with Salinator on the left which may mean that Nero had the allied horse. Hasdrubal stationed his ten elephants (fifteen according to Appian
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) ahead of his centre, and placed his best troops, the Spanish, on the right and the Gauls on the left. According to Livy his centre behind the elephants was composed of Ligurians, but Polybius does not mention their presence at all in his account, although he may simply have lumped them in with the Spanish. Neither Livy nor Polybius make any specific mention of Carthaginian cavalry. The Gauls were on high ground in a very formidable position, certainly impossible to take by a frontal attack and perhaps difficult even to reach. The Punic centre and left were deployed unusually deep, probably a reflection of the confined space and the haste with which they had formed up. The Romans are unlikely to have had many more than 40,000 men and Hasdrubal significantly fewer, but these numbers must remain conjectural.
velites
and Salinator, under whose auspices the battle was fought, with the main army. They caught up with Hasdrubal when the latter had decided that his men needed rest and so had begun to construct a camp on a hill overlooking the river. As the various elements of the Roman armies arrived and began to form a battle line, the Carthaginian ordered his men to stop work on the camp and deploy. Both sides must have been tired after their march, but the Roman commanders were eager for battle and did not intend to delay. The precise location of the battle of Metaurus is unknown and the suggestions have varied widely. The terrain seems to have been fairly uneven and the open space limited, and this, combined with the haste with which each side formed up, made the battle less regular than Hannibal's early campaigns and more like the fighting in southern Italy. Nero commanded the Roman right wing, apparently with his own infantry and cavalry; Licinus held the centre and Salinator the left. It is unclear whether all the cavalry were divided between the extreme left and right wings as was the usual practice, although Livy seems to imply that the bulk of the Roman cavalry were with Salinator on the left which may mean that Nero had the allied horse. Hasdrubal stationed his ten elephants (fifteen according to Appian
32
) ahead of his centre, and placed his best troops, the Spanish, on the right and the Gauls on the left. According to Livy his centre behind the elephants was composed of Ligurians, but Polybius does not mention their presence at all in his account, although he may simply have lumped them in with the Spanish. Neither Livy nor Polybius make any specific mention of Carthaginian cavalry. The Gauls were on high ground in a very formidable position, certainly impossible to take by a frontal attack and perhaps difficult even to reach. The Punic centre and left were deployed unusually deep, probably a reflection of the confined space and the haste with which they had formed up. The Romans are unlikely to have had many more than 40,000 men and Hasdrubal significantly fewer, but these numbers must remain conjectural.
The battle began when Hasdrubal launched his main assault against Salinator and the Roman left, who advanced to meet him. Livy claims that the elephants disordered the
hastati
and created a temporary advantage, but then panicked and spread confusion on both sides. The fighting was fierce and no clear advantage was achieved by either side as both Salinator and Hasdrubal were closely involved in the fighting, directing and encouraging their men by personal example. On the right, the Romans could make no headway against the position held by the Gauls and were unable to find a way of outflanking it. Nero then made a remarkably bold and imaginative decision on his own initiative. Taking many of the men from his wing, he led them in a march behind the Roman battle line and around the enemy's extreme right flank. They then attacked the Spanish in the flank, turning the tide decisively in the Romans' favour. The Punic right and centre collapsed into rout under this unexpected onslaught. Hasdrubal, realizing that the day was lost, died fighting heroically or, according to another tradition, committed suicide. The Romans rolled up the entire army, driving the Gauls from their hilltop and storming the Punic camp. More Gauls are said to have been discovered there, most lying in a drunken stupor in their tents. It is possible that Hasdrubal's recently recruited Gallic allies had as poor march discipline as the tribesmen Hannibal had had to drive along in 217. For troops unused to campaigning, the long and confusing night march would have proved very fatiguing.
Polybius tells us that 10,000 of Hasdrubal's men fell in the battle for the loss of 2,000 Romans, far more plausible figures than the huge totals given by Livy. Six elephants were killed and the other four rounded up in the aftermath. It was a great Roman victory and the entire campaign demonstrated the higher efficiency and greater flexibility of Roman armies compared to the beginning of the war. The Romans had responded quickly to news of the enemy's intentions, arranging to intercept Hasdrubal with two armies, which were then reinforced by a strong detachment from a third. Nero's march was a triumph not just for discipline and determination, but for the logistical organization which allowed him to arrange in a matter of days for supplies to be prepared in advance along his route. His decision to march from one wing to outflank the enemy on the opposite end of the battlefield displayed a degree of tactical flexibility unimaginable in the legions of 218. The same level of skill was also to be shown by Scipio Africanus' armies in Spain and Africa.
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The relief at Rome was overwhelming when news of this victory was received, and three days' public thanksgiving was declared by the Senate. Even more so, according to Livy, when it was learned that Nero had rejoined his own army in Apulia before Hannibal had been able to take advantage of his absence. The last great crisis of the war in Italy had been averted. Livius Salinator was awarded a triumph for his victory, and Nero, who had been his subordinate, the lesser honour of an ovation. However, Livy claims that when Nero rode on horseback behind Salinator's chariot the cheers were louder for him, the crowd believing that he had been the real architect of the victory. By archaic tradition Roman soldiers who marched in a triumph sang ribald verses at their commander's expense. Nero received the slightly dubious honour of being the target of more of these jibes than his senior colleague.
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Evacuation
In 205 Hannibal's remaining brother, Mago, landed near Genoa with 2,000 cavalry and 12,000 infantry, some recruited during the past winter from the Balearic Islands. Subsequently he was sent a draft of seven elephants, 800 horse and 6,000 foot along with funds to recruit from amongst the enthusiastic and warlike Ligurian tribesmen. Mago's campaign never really gathered momentum and he does not appear to have made a concerted effort to join his elder brother. Perhaps the objective was simply to keep the war going on another front. In 203 he was brought to battle in the territory of the Insubres by the praetor Publius Quinctilius Varus and the proconsul Marcus Cornelius Cethegus with an army of four legions. According to Livy's problematic account, the Romans once again deployed the legions in more than one line. Mago was hit by a javelin in the thigh and his withdrawal from the field is supposed to have triggered the collapse of his army. Soon afterwards he was ordered to return with his army to Carthage to defend it against the Roman invaders, but died of his wound en route. His expedition had not caused the same level of panic as Hasdrubal's invasion in 207. By this stage of the war, the Romans were beginning to reduce their war effort, demobilizing some of their legions and encouraging citizens to return to their farms.
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In 203 the same order came to Hannibal himself, instructing him to evacuate Italy and return to the defence of his homeland. He embarked his army at Croton and sailed back to Africa, allegedly after massacring all the Italian soldiers who refused to come with him, although this is most probably a piece of Roman propaganda. He spent sixteen campaigning seasons in Italy and, if he had in the end found himself forced into an ever decreasing corner of the Peninsula, he had not been defeated in a single important battle. For many years his soldiers had been vastly outnumbered by their enemies, but even the more experienced, better drilled and more flexible Roman armies, which had defeated his brothers with such dismissive ease, lacked the confidence to face up to and beat Hannibal and his veterans. Hannibal had failed to win the war in Italy, but neither had he truly lost it. In the meantime the Romans had proved successful on every other front, establishing peace with Macedonia and winning outright victories in Spain and Sicily, so that they were in position to mount an invasion of Africa. It is to these campaigns that we must now turn.
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CHAPTER
10
10
Spain, Macedonia and Sicily
N
EARLY ALL THE FIGHTING
in the First Punic War had occurred in and around Sicily, apart from Regulus' invasion of Africa and sporadic raiding of the Italian and African coastlines. The Second War between Rome and Carthage spread over a much wider area. Hannibal with the best of the Punic armies invaded Italy from his base in Spain, and there too the greatest number of Roman soldiers took the field, but the Carthaginians were later also to attempt the re-conquest of Sardinia and Sicily. From the very beginning, the Romans threatened the Punic province in Spain, and they were to end the war by mounting a second invasion of North Africa. Some of this widening of the conflict had been anticipated by both sides. In 218 the Roman Senate had expected the year's consuls to fight in Africa and Spain, and Hannibal had made provisions for the defence of both areas. In other cases the war spread unexpectedly. Philip V of Macedon, long nervous of growing Roman influence in Illyria, chose to ally himself with Hannibal, impressed by the latter's victories in 218-216. The king's intervention was purely opportunistic and more bitterly resented by the Romans as a result. For a decade a Roman fleet and army operated in Greece and Illyria to prevent a feared Macedonian expedition to Italy. The naval skirmishing around Sicily only escalated into a major war when political turmoil in Syracuse finally led to an alliance with Carthage.
There was some interconnection between the different theatres during the war. Spain was the base from which Hannibal had launched his invasion of Italy and one reason for the Romans' persistence in maintaining the long struggle there was fear of a repeat of this expedition. In fact, Hasdrubal Barca made an unsuccessful attempt to move on Italy in 215 and actually succeeded in 208-207. Had the Carthaginians re-established themselves in Sicily, its ports would have allowed them to support Hannibal's army in Italy far more closely. In reality Hannibal and the Punic and allied commanders in Sicily gave each other littie direct aid. A more direct impact on the Italian campaign resulted when both Hannibal and Mago were recalled to counter Scipio's successes in Africa. The slow pace of communications made it difficult to co-ordinate the operations in different theatres. Hannibal and Hasdrubal singularly failed to unite and support each other when the latter finally arrived in Italy in 207. The main role of central authority was in the allocation of men and resources to the different regions, along perhaps with dictating the priorities of the commanders there. The Roman Senate annually reviewed the state's war effort, how many troops should be in service, where they were to operate, how they were to be supplied, and who was to command them. Even when Hannibal was marauding through Italy, shattering one army after another, the Senate was still able to take thought for operations elsewhere. The Carthaginian war effort lacked such clear direction, imposed at a fundamental level on the Roman state by its tradition of annual magistracies. In 218 Hannibal appears to have disposed the military effort in both Africa and Spain, but once in Italy, he had only limited contact with either area. The authorities in Carthage were less intimately linked with military organization than their Roman counterparts. They did provide resources for and urge actions upon commanders in Spain and Sicily, but their directives were occasional and many decisions were reactions to Roman moves rather than the product of concerted objectives of their own.
Spain 218-211
BC
BC
The Spanish Peninsula was occupied by three major peoples. In the west, in an area roughly equivalent to modern-day Portugal, were the Lusitanians. In southern and central Spain were the people who gave the region its name, the Iberians, whilst the land to the north was the territory of the Celtiberians, a mixture of migrating Gallic tribes and the indigenous population which had merged to create a distinct culture. All three peoples were tribal, but these tribes were far less coherent than their Gallic counterparts and the focus of loyalty for most tribesmen was the town or city. Invariably fortified and usually set on a hilltop, most of these communities were small, little more than villages. A few on the southern coast, like Saguntum, had grown much larger, possessed a literate culture and were by this period hard to distinguish in prosperity from the Greek and Punic colonies in the region. Various kings and chieftains appear in the narrative of the operations in Spain, but their power does not appear to have been fixed, depending instead on personal charisma and particularly on a reputation as warriors and leaders of warriors. Strong leaders, who had proved themselves in war, might control many settlements in both their own and other tribes' territories, the area loyal to them changing in size as their prestige, and that of rival leaders, fluctuated.
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