Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (28 page)

The cure prescribed by the Sibylline Books shocked even Livy, as it included what he called ‘outlandish sacrifices’. The sacrifice demanded by the sacred books involved ‘a Gallic man and woman and a Greek man and woman being buried alive in the Forum Boarium (the cattle market), in a spot enclosed with stones which had already been the scene of this very un-Roman practice of human sacrifice’, Livy tells us (22.57.6). This particular custom of human sacrifice, of Gauls and Greeks, is recorded on two other occasions in the
Republic (in 228
BCE
and 114/113
BCE
) and was eventually banned by a senatorial decree in 97
BCE
(Pliny,
NH
30.12).
⁵⁹
The meaning behind the sacrifice remains an enigma. One argument assumes that in this ritual the Gauls and the Greeks were chosen to represent the future enemy and to ward off the possibility of losses in battle.
⁶⁰
Livy suggests rather obliquely that the sacrifice signified a ‘renewal of the war effort’ and secured future victory by appeasement of the gods.
⁶¹

The Roman Senate appointed Marcus Junius as dictator and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus as his Master of the Horse. They held a ‘troop levy’ and conscripted boys from the age of seventeen, and some who must have been even younger, for Livy tells us they were still wearing the toga
praetexta
(worn by boys under sixteen). The manpower shortage even led to the buying and arming, ‘at state expense, of eight thousand sturdy young men from the slave population’ (Livy 22.57.11). The practice of conscripting slaves into the army had, on occasion, been employed before this but it was rare in the third century.
⁶²
The Romans formed four new legions and one thousand cavalry with these new conscripts (roughly eighteen thousand men).
⁶³

Carthalo, Hannibal’s envoy, was turned away by the Romans and returned to Apulia to describe the reaction in the city. A lictor (who symbolized the power of the consul) had met Carthalo on the road and informed him, in the name of the dictator, that he must leave Roman territory by nightfall (Livy 22.58.9). The Roman citizen prisoners proceeded on after Carthalo turned back. The ten men addressed the Senate and, after lengthy and heated debate, it was decided emphatically ‘that the prisoners were not to be ransomed’. Nor would any private citizens be allowed to pay for the release of their sons, husbands and brothers (Livy 22.59–61.10; Polyb. 6.58.8). The ‘no peace, no ransom’ reaction from Rome was an integral part of the Roman narrative of their own exceptional nature.
⁶⁴
The prisoners therefore returned to Hannibal empty handed.

In the months after Cannae, after consolidating his victory and accepting the allegiance of some of the Apulian cities, Hannibal sent his brother Mago to Carthage with news of his great triumph. The nature of our sources means that we rarely view the events of Hannibal’s life from anything other than a Roman perspective. A brief mention in Livy or Polybius of the reaction to events at Carthage is all that has come down to us of the Carthaginian perspective on the war. The voyage to Carthage was dangerous, with the Roman navy patrolling the coasts and as yet no friendly ports open to the Carthaginians between Italy and North Africa.
⁶⁵
A ship from Carthage must have picked Mago up in one of the cities on the southern tip of Italy where he had gone to enlist
‘the Bruttian and [other] communities that were abandoning their allegiance to Rome’ (Livy 23.11.7).
⁶⁶

For the first time in many years a member of the Barcid family returned to Carthage and was granted an audience in front of the Senate. And what news he brought. Mago related the marvellous exploits of his older brother. He told them that ‘Hannibal had met six commanders on the battlefield, four of them consuls and the two others a dictator and Master of Horse and with them six consular armies’. Mago inventoried the numbers killed (in all the battles so far) as ‘upwards of 200,000’ and the more than ‘50,000’ prisoners taken. The people of southern Italy who had come over to Hannibal after Cannae were listed too: ‘the Bruttii, the Apulians, and a number of the Samnites and Lucanians had defected to the Carthaginians, and Capua had surrendered to Hannibal – Capua, the capital not just of Campania but now, after the drubbing the Romans had received … of Italy too’. Surely, Mago concluded, ‘for these victories, so great and numerous the immortal gods should truly be thanked’ (Livy 23.11.7–12).

Then Mago, with great dramatic flourish, ‘ordered gold rings to be poured out at the entrance to the senate house’. These rings, taken from the fingers of dead Roman knights (
equites
), created a ‘mound … so great that, according to some sources, they amounted to more than three measures (
modios –
Latin term used to measure dry goods)’, although Livy goes on to note that he thought this an exaggeration (23.12.1–2). Mago’s display was indeed dramatic and the majority of the Senate of Carthage was ‘overjoyed’ with the news. The purpose of Mago’s visit was to press home Hannibal’s need for more support from Carthage. ‘The campaign was being fought a long way from home … and grain and cash were being used up in large quantities,’ he insisted. The realities of Hannibal’s struggle were here laid bare for the leading men of Carthage and they were told that to win he needed more resources. If the Carthaginians wanted to help Hannibal, Mago urged, the Senate needed to ‘send reinforcements, and … grain, and money, for their pay, to the soldiers who had served the Carthaginian people so well’ (Livy 23.12.3–4).

The only resistance, according to Livy, came from Hanno, veteran of the Mercenary War and long-time enemy of the Barcid family in the Senate. His was the sole voice of dissent and caution, we are told; refusing to be drawn into the elation of victory, he asked sceptically if ‘the Romans had [yet] sent Hannibal ambassadors to sue for peace?’ (23.13.1). Despite Hanno’s reservations, Carthaginian ‘hearts filled with joy’ and thus by ‘a huge majority … a senatorial decree was passed that authorized sending 4,000 Numidians [cavalry] and forty elephants, and … talents of silver’ (exact amount
not clear). Mago and an unnamed Carthaginian general (called a
dictator
in Livy) were dispatched to Iberia to raise 20,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry ‘as reinforcements for the armies’ (Livy 23.13.7–8).
⁶⁷
Could the young Mago Barca ever have imagined when he left his brother on this mission, first to Carthage and then to Iberia, that he would never see him again?
⁶⁸

CHAPTER 8

AFTER CANNAE

The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so.
(Ennius,
Ann.
frag. 31.493)

I
N THE LATE SUMMER
of 216
BCE
Hannibal had little time to enjoy the fruits of his victory after the destruction of the Roman armies at Cannae. He was in his element on the battlefield in the role of master strategist directing the different pieces of his army. In Polybius’ mind Hannibal’s genius rested in his personal command over a heterogeneous force of ‘men who had nothing naturally in common’ but whom he kept at a high functioning level.
¹
He is compared to a good ship’s captain steering his vessel, keeping everyone in harmony (Polyb. 11.19.3). Hannibal, in fact, used the diversity of his army to exploit the consistency of the Roman legions, employing elements of surprise and unorthodox tactics to keep his enemy off balance.
²

The brilliance of the victory at Cannae faded quickly for Hannibal as he faced the daunting task of trying to defeat the Romans off the battlefield as well. More than ever his depleted forces needed allies, bases and support from the cities and states of southern Italy. The past year had seen Hannibal directing his army across Apulia, Samnium and into Campania but until Cannae he had not acquired any significant supporters in the region. If he was to win the war, it was crucial that he consolidate his victories and build a power base in the south of Italy. His strategy for ultimate victory was to detach allied territories from Rome. If he was successful, the Romans would eventually be unable to retain their authority throughout the peninsula. The political
battleground after Cannae lay between Hannibal’s pledge to free the southern Italians from Roman hegemony and Rome’s notion of an ‘Italia’ to unify their allies.
³
A sense of Rome’s tactics in the face of Hannibal’s victories echoes in the anti-Hannibalic propaganda of the time. In a speech at Venusia after Cannae the surviving Roman consul Varro accentuated ‘this … Carthaginian enemy, not even native to Africa, [who] brings from the farthest limits of the earth – soldiers who have no knowledge of human law and civilization …’. These words were designed to emphasize the foreign (and thus barbaric) nature of the Carthaginian Hannibal and his multi-ethnic army. Varro went on to ask the southern Italians whether they wanted ‘to have laws imposed from Africa and Carthage, to permit Italy to be a Numidian and Moorish province?’ (Livy 23.5.11–12). The speech may be a purely Livian invention but it no doubt reflects the Romans’ appeal to their allies and their counterpropaganda against Hannibal. Hannibal might claim that he brought freedom but the Romans would argue that he was bringing a foreign kind of non-Italic freedom.
⁴

Just after Cannae the Romans appeared, by any contemporary standard, to have lost the war. By the time Mago stood in front of the Senate at Carthage he could list the peoples and cities that had come over to the Carthaginian side in the months after the battle (Livy 22.61.11–13, 23.11.11).
⁵
The situation, however, was much more nuanced than Livy’s portrayal suggests, and far from every city in the regions listed (Bruttium, Apulia, Campania) switched allegiance to Hannibal. Livy overstates the Roman losses and the reality is that Rome still held substantial territory, influence and power in the south of Italy. What rings true in Livy is that up until Cannae, ‘the loyalty of the allies had remained unshaken, but now it began to waver, and the sole reason for that was surely the loss of faith in the empire’ (22.61.10). There had been a significant shift of loyalty away from Rome to Hannibal but there were still many bases from which the Romans could carry on the fight.

Ultimately cities switched sides or remained loyal to Rome depending on local conditions.
⁶
Southern Italy was made up of city-states that had been, until Cannae, under the umbrella of Roman control with each place linked directly to Rome through alliances and treaty obligations. These links had been pieced together slowly over the course of the Roman conquests in the fourth and early third centuries. This long process, including wars against the Etruscans, three Romano-Samnite wars and the invasion of Pyrrhus, had created a patchwork system of allies. The ruling elite of each city negotiated alliances based on power and patronage. To succeed with his plan, Hannibal would have to convince these elite families that he could provide an advantage
over the Romans. The competitive nature of the urban elites within each town meant that when one elite family supported the Romans there was another disgruntled family waiting to seize its opportunity. Hannibal’s approach had to address these specific circumstances. This was a complicated and difficult undertaking and although Hannibal did gain new allies, many cities remained loyal to Rome.

Some similarity existed in each case that a city joined with Hannibal. If Hannibal approached a city he first made contact within the ruling elite. There is always mention of factionalism among the ruling families when a city went over to the Carthaginians.
⁷
Livy gives the example of Statius Trebius, a local elite from Compsa (23.1.1–3). Compsa was a strategically placed Samnite city on the frontier between Samnium, Lucania and Apulia, at the headwaters of the river Aufidus (
Map 1
). The Trebius family were the political opponents of a rival clan allied to the Romans. Hannibal’s approach would entail making contact with Trebius and negotiating with his group so that they in turn could influence the city’s population into switching allegiance.
⁸
The intervention of one elite family in the town on behalf of Hannibal proved enough at Compsa.

Hannibal’s policy of leniency towards the Italian allies captured in his previous victories had been designed to influence opinion in the cities. Even before Cannae, a group of Capuan
equites
(knights) who had fought for the Romans at Trasimeno convinced Hannibal that Capua would be willing to revolt (Livy 22.13.2–3). At Nola in Campania we hear of Lucius Bantius, who had been found ‘half-dead in a heap of corpses’ on the field at Cannae. Hannibal had admired his bravery and treated him kindly in the aftermath. As a result Bantius was inclined to ‘put Nola under the authority and control of the Carthaginians’; however, the Roman consul Marcellus convinced him otherwise with praise of his military ability and gifts, including a ‘superb horse and 500 denarii’ (silver coins) (Livy 23.15.7–15). The battle for the hearts and minds of the Italian allies of the south was thus won or lost one city at a time.

Hannibal had first moved to secure support in the Apulian and Samnite territories and in Bruttium in the south. When Arpi, the most important town in Apulia, came over to Carthage other towns in the region followed soon after (Polyb. 3.118.3; Livy 22.61.10–12).
⁹
Hannibal then moved on to Campania and advanced first towards the port of Neapolis (Naples). Access to a port on Italy’s west coast would provide Hannibal with relatively straightforward access to Carthage and Iberia for supply and reinforcements.
¹⁰
The paradox for Hannibal was that the more allies he gained, the further stretched
his army became and the more pressing his need for reinforcements from Carthage. Neapolis, however, held firm and Hannibal chose not to try to take the city by siege (Livy 23.1.5–10). Over the course of 216–214
BCE
Hannibal would attempt, repeatedly, to take Neapolis but it stayed loyal to Rome. In addition, having learned the hard way from his experience at Saguntum, he knew that a long siege would only tie up a substantial part of his army and expose his other allies to Roman attacks.
¹¹