Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (29 page)

After sounding out Neapolis, Hannibal turned towards nearby Capua. Although not a port, Capua was the largest city in Campania, ‘long basking in prosperity and the favour of fortune’ (Livy 23.2.1) and had been an ally of the Romans from the fourth century. In origin Capua was Etruscan but since the fifth century it had been a Samnite city; the people spoke Oscan and had been heavily influenced by coastal Greek colonial foundations.
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Capua reflected the multi-layered cultural mix of the cities of Campania in the third century. With an independent Senate and citizen council, the population of Capua possessed a form of limited Roman citizenship (
civitas sine suffragio
). This did not give Capuans the right to vote or stand for office in Rome but gave the people some legal protection under Roman law. The requirements of their limited citizenship also included direct taxation, obligatory military service and tribute.
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In origin this status may have held some advantages but by the latter part of the third century it was largely seen as a burden, a form of ‘taxation without representation’.
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Capua was a strategic centre for the control of southern Italy. When Hannibal crossed into Campania after Cannae a delegation of Capuans made contact. This same group had just been to see the Roman consul Varro at Venusia hoping to use the situation to negotiate. They had rejected Varro’s reasoning and now turned to Hannibal to make an alliance (Livy 23.7.1). In Livy’s view the Capuans were imperialist in their outlook and intended to ‘make a treaty now with Hannibal on their terms and once he had finished off the war and retired in triumph to Africa, the Campanians would be left with sway over Italy’ (23.6.1). A man named Pacuvius Calavius, leader of the pro-Carthaginian party in the city, led the approach on behalf of Capua (Livy 23.8.2).

Although the Capuans did not make contact with Hannibal until he had entered Campania, they had been leaning towards the Carthaginian cause since the victory at Trasimeno. Defection to Hannibal gave the Capuan government a powerful negotiating position and the terms agreed stated that ‘no Carthaginian general or magistrate had authority over a Capuan citizen, nor was a Capuan citizen obliged to perform any military or other service against his will’ (23.7.1).
Capua, as Livy reports, viewed its allegiance with Hannibal as a means of increasing its hegemony in Campania. In practical terms, Hannibal received very little from the arrangement while the Capuans were given authority without any obligations to Carthage. The enforced military service which the Romans had imposed was obviously a bone of contention among the Capuans and they were seeking to govern their affairs independently.
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Despite the unfavourable terms for Carthage, it is hard to overstate the symbolic importance of the defection of Capua and what it meant to Hannibal at that moment. It was a great political blow to the Romans, who had already suffered the celebrated battlefield defeats. The betrayal felt at Rome permeates Livy’s account as he heaps abuse on the population of Capua and calls them ‘arrogant and untrustworthy’ (23.5.1). It was even more deeply felt since many of the leading citizens were connected by links of patronage and marriage to Roman senatorial families. That the Romans were so astonished by Capua’s defection seems surprising, given that over the previous century the city had sided against the Romans on more than one occasion. Capua had never been the most restful of allies to Rome.
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The close link between Rome and Capua was exemplified by the three hundred Capuan
equites
serving with Roman forces in Sicily. These soldiers became a focus for negotiations between Hannibal and the city. The settlement meant that Hannibal handed over three hundred of his prisoners to Capua, allowing them to make an exchange with the Romans for their sons.
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The Capuan soldiers serving in Sicily eventually chose not to return to their city and the Romans offered them citizenship in exchange for their loyalty. The result was to split families in Capua into pro-and anti-Hannibal factions, ultimately undermining the Carthaginian success in the city. Tensions between the two sides were high and we learn that any Roman citizens left in Capua were rounded up and locked in the baths, where they asphyxiated in the heat (Livy 23.7.2–3).
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In late September 216
BCE
, with the negotiations completed, Hannibal sent a message to the praetor of the town saying that ‘he would be in Capua the following day’.
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The advent of the legendary Carthaginian general meant that the ‘whole population’ turned out to see him ‘with enthusiasm’. Arriving in the city in triumph to cheering crowds must have been extremely satisfying for Hannibal, who had been fighting in Italy for two years with no opportunity to celebrate his own triumphs. As crowds lined the streets ‘eager to catch a glimpse of the general now famous for so many victories’, did Hannibal believe he was finally seeing the fruits of his hard work? The ‘entire
community was agog at the prospect of welcoming and setting eyes on the Carthaginian!’
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These events reflect the heroic status that Hannibal carried with him after his great victories. Livy tells us that Hannibal spent the day touring the city and on the following one made an address in the Senate of Capua. ‘He [Hannibal] thanked the Campanians for preferring friendship with him to an alliance with Rome and amongst the extravagant promises was a commitment that Capua would shortly be the capital of all Italy …’ (Livy 23.7–10.10).

Hannibal slept that same night at the home of two of the elite Capuan citizens who had been instrumental in turning the city. He was entertained in the evening with an extravagant banquet that began before sunset, at which his hosts and Pacuvius Calavius along with a famous Capuan soldier were invited to dine with the general and his entourage. Not everyone in Capua was excited to see Hannibal, and Livy claims that the son of Pacuvius Calavius, who attended the dinner with his father, had boldly planned to assassinate Hannibal whilst he feasted. The father was able to talk the son out of the murder in the end but the story reflects the real and constant danger Hannibal would have lived with in Italy. With loyalties split, the Romans must have encouraged any and every opportunity to rid themselves of their charismatic enemy (Livy 23.8.1–10.10).
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In the autumn of 216
BCE
Hannibal’s army was spread thinly across southern Italy. A garrison was left in Capua to secure the city and protect it from Roman reprisals. Two other armies were operating in Apulia and in Bruttium. More than ever Hannibal must have hoped for reinforcements from Carthage. He no doubt expected his brother Mago to return to Italy with new troops by the following spring at the latest. Hannibal needed to capture a port city to disembark these expected reinforcements and with the campaigning season still open he pushed on. After Capua he played ‘cat and mouse’ with the Romans. His first target was again Neapolis, where he ‘alternated promises and threats’, perhaps mistakenly assuming that after Capua’s change of allegiance Neapolis might be more pliable, but to no avail (Livy 23.14.5). Then Hannibal changed course towards Nola, one of the southernmost cities on the Campanian plain, whose territory bordered Neapolis to the east, on the opposite side of Mount Vesuvius from the sea. Although not a port, Nola was an Oscan-speaking city with links and a long history of allegiance to Neapolis and also to Cumae, another key centre further north (see
Map 1
).
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As Hannibal approached Nola, the governing body of the city sent word to the Roman praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus who was nearby at Casilinum (Livy 23.14.10). Marcellus was a veteran of the Gallic wars of
the 220s and an experienced commander. His army approached Nola carefully, taking a route through the mountains perhaps in order to avoid meeting Hannibal. When the Romans arrived, Hannibal and his forces left Nolan territory, advancing to blockade Nuceria, taking and sacking the city (Livy 23.15.2–6).

Hannibal then returned to his camp outside Nola. The city’s loyalty hung in the balance. Marcellus’ army held the town and the two sides skirmished in the space between the city walls and the Carthaginian camp (Livy 16.16.2–5). The very presence of Hannibal unsettled the city and although the population was still tenuously loyal to Rome, Marcellus decided he had to ‘risk a battle’ before the town switched sides. Hannibal drew his forces up in formation outside the city wall and presented his army for an encounter. Marcellus left Hannibal waiting outside the city walls. Just as Hannibal stood down and sent some of his forces back to his camp, assuming there would be no contact, Marcellus unleashed his troops from within the walls. In the resulting melee, the Carthaginians suffered significant losses (how many we cannot know, as even Livy doubts his own numbers: perhaps some 2,800 Punic soldiers compared to 500 Roman, 23.16.15). The Roman sources stress the importance of the victory as the first good news since the war began. Marcellus was the first Roman general to engage with Hannibal after Cannae and gained a remarkable reputation from his successes.

After Hannibal retreated he moved on to lay siege to Casilinum, which he would take the following spring. Marcellus laid down the law in Nola, determined to make an example of the Nolans and to frighten them into submission. Key members of the population, who had been agitating for Carthaginian allegiance, were declared traitors. Marcellus had seventy men beheaded and their estates made ‘common property of the Roman people’ (Livy 23.17.2–4). Thus the people of Campania found themselves caught between two powers and were forced to walk a fine line.
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Nola would continue to be a target for Hannibal and over the next three years he would try again and again to take the city.
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After the encounter with Marcellus, Hannibal settled in around Capua for the winter of 216
BCE
. Capua was renowned for its perfumes and scented oils imported from the East. Its reputation, in the stern Roman mind, was one of exuberant decadence. The land here was rich and fertile and the ports on the coast nearby allowed the Capuans to import luxuries of all sorts. Livy implies that the whole Carthaginian army was quartered inside Capua that winter and the warmth and hedonism of the town corrupted Hannibal’s stern and battle-hardened soldiers.
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In the Roman imagination the corrupting luxury of Capua took ‘men whom the most intense misery had failed to break’ and
ruined them with ‘excessive comfort and unlimited pleasure …’. ‘Sleep, drink, dinner-parties, whores, baths and inactivity that, from habit, became sweeter every day – all this sapped their physical and moral strength’ (Livy 23.18.10–13). The legend as told claims that once the Carthaginian soldiers slept in soft beds and in the arms of softer women they were no longer capable of the valour and the morality of good soldiers. In the Roman mind these men, including the invincible Hannibal himself, lost their edge among the soft scents and warm baths of the city. The reality of that winter must have been significantly less luxurious for the majority of troops. Winter quarters for most of the army was more likely to have been their camp on Monte Tifata, the mountain that sits behind Capua. Certainly the higher-ranked soldiers stayed in the city and still more of the army would have been billeted in other cities now allied to Carthage (Livy 23.18.10–16).
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During the winter of 216/215
BCE
Hannibal must have been pondering his next move. His biggest obstacle was that he did not have the manpower to sustain drawn-out political wrangling with each city he approached. Moreover, the specific terms under which he assembled his new allies seemed to have been based on the Carthaginian model. This meant that new allies were not necessarily obliged to provide troops to Hannibal to join the military struggle against Rome. Some of the new allies certainly did supply troops, however, especially in defence of their own territories (see Livy 24.15.7 on the Bruttians and Lucanians among Hanno’s army). In this way Hannibal set himself apart from the Romans, whose alliances were almost always associated with some kind of mandatory military service. Importantly, by doing so, Hannibal undermined his own chances of success.

For Hannibal and his army, the transfer of allegiance away from Rome reduced the pool of recruits available to the Romans. From 216
BCE
onwards Hannibal had towns to operate from and could rely on steady supplies. Along with the new allies, he also acquired the responsibility of protecting these cities from Roman retribution. It was essential that there were tangible rewards for the elites who had delivered their cities to Hannibal. We shall see that when these were not forthcoming the alliances began to crumble.

Whilst inter-elite rivalry won allies for Hannibal, inter-urban rivalries in the south worked against him. Hannibal’s overall strategy had been successful in Iberia, in the north of Italy and in much of Apulia, but the sophisticated urban centres in the wealthy region of Campania were not so easily swayed. Capua was an important ally for Hannibal but its defection actually favoured the Romans because of the inter-urban rivalries in Campania. The prospect of Capua achieving pre-eminent status in the region with dominance over
neighbouring cities was enough to convince other Campanian towns to remain loyal to Rome. Indeed, by granting Capua its desired pre-eminence Hannibal worked against his own freedom agenda.
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In the same way, the Romans played on the strong rivalries between the cities of Campania (i.e. Capua, Neapolis, Nola, Cumae) and used the mutual hostility to retain their remaining allies.
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The piecemeal nature of Hannibal’s alliances made a coherent defensive strategy difficult to implement. For the first time since leaving the Iberian peninsula Hannibal had to defend territory, which meant he had to divide his army into units commanded by lieutenants.
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The resources available to protect the new allies were limited and the longer the war dragged on, the more stretched these resources became. In the ensuing years the Romans ground down Hannibal’s gains and won back the pieces of Italy that had been lost, one by one. Yet the fact that, despite their massive manpower advantage, the Roman armies never massed again to meet Hannibal in a fixed battle in Italy reveals just how close Hannibal came to victory. They adopted the strategy that Fabius Maximus had advocated before Cannae and made use of their numerical superiority. They divided their forces and harried the Carthaginians from all directions, skirmishing to train their newly recruited troops but not engaging unless they had full advantage. Nevertheless, it took them almost a decade to regain control of southern Italy – which illustrates the astonishing tactical and military skill that Hannibal displayed. To carry on military operations, often successfully, without reinforcements against so many Roman legions was a staggering achievement.