Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (40 page)

Once aware of the imminent invasion, the Carthaginians worked to lure King Syphax back to their side in alliance. Syphax liked to view himself as a moderator between the two sides and had maintained relatively good relations with both Scipio and the Carthaginian leader Hasdrubal Gisgo. He was eventually persuaded to return to the Carthaginian fold through an alliance sealed by marriage to Sophonisba, the beautiful daughter of Hasdrubal Gisgo.
²¹
This marriage would ensure that the people of Carthage and the king ‘would have the same friends and enemies’. Syphax, coaxed by his new young wife, was encouraged to send envoys informing Scipio of the official pact he now had with the Carthaginian people. Syphax told Scipio that he would be ‘obliged to fight for the land of Africa’ against any Roman invasion (Livy 29.23.1–5). Livy endows Sophonisba with a great deal of influence over her husband’s decisions at this crucial time. It is difficult to know how much of this plays into the construction of a femme fatale and how much may actually be reflective of her personality. She is one of the few women whose name we know from this long tale of war and conquest that would have had such devastating consequences for so many women in Rome and Carthage.
²²

Meanwhile at Carthage they must have watched with some trepidation as Masinissa struggled to regain the kingdom of his father Gaia that had been usurped by a distant relative.
²³
Once he had sealed his alliance with Scipio in Iberia he crossed to the kingdom of the Mauri (modern Morocco) and raised a small army (Livy 29.30.1). This force grew as Masinissa won over supporters and defeated the usurpers. In Livy’s words, he began to ‘nurture a kingdom that had only just begun to coalesce’ (29.31.6). With Syphax now allied with Carthage and Masinissa now allied to Rome, the two kings were poised to fight the war in Africa by proxy for their more powerful allies. Urged on by Hasdrubal Gisgo, Syphax turned to attack the new king next door.
²⁴
Containment of Masinissa would be of great strategic value to the Carthaginians, for without allies Scipio’s upcoming invasion would be a much more challenging task. An initial encounter saw Masinissa defeated and he
fled with ‘a few horsemen’ to a mountain called Bellus (perhaps near modern Tabarka) situated close to wealthy and fertile Carthaginian farmland.
²⁵
There the Massyli of Masinissa plundered widely, looting and killing.

The Carthaginians pushed Syphax to finish off the young king. In a ‘fierce battle’ that, Livy claims rather vaguely, took place ‘on some hills’ between Cirta (Syphax’s capital, modern Constantine) and Hippo (Hippo Regius, modern Annaba) the two kings drew up their armies. Syphax was eventually victorious but Masinissa again escaped with ‘sixty cavalrymen’ despite being pursued across the countryside by Syphax’s son Vermina. Eluding capture in dramatic style, which included plunging, wounded and on horseback, into the Bagradas river, Masinissa reached the region of the Lesser Syrtis (about 320 kilometres south-east of the battle site), now a king in exile (Livy 29.30–33).

In the preparations for the invasion of Africa Hannibal was not forgotten by either side. The Romans directed four legions against him in Bruttium while Scipio made his plans in Sicily.
²⁶
At some point after Laelius had returned to Sicily from his raiding party in Africa, Scipio decided that ‘the recovery of the city of Locri’ would be in his interests (Livy 29.6.1). Locri, held by the Carthaginians since 215
BCE
, had been a mainstay of Hannibal’s support. As the Romans closed in around Hannibal many in the city were having to take stock of their situation. For the population in and around Locri life must have been unbearable as the stalemate in Bruttium turned to lawlessness and raiding. Numidians, Bruttii and the Romans all ‘took pleasure in looting and made raids on enemy farms’ (29.6.1–9). Tradesmen from Locri who had been captured in a raid by soldiers allied to Rome plotted to betray one of the citadels in the city to their captors. These men were sent off to meet Scipio at Syracuse and presented the plan to him.

Roman forces from Rhegium were diverted along with the Locrian exiles to try to seize the town by stealth. The plan was partially successful and one of the two citadels in the city fell to the Roman forces by night. Carthaginian troops in Locri were commanded by Hamilcar, who immediately sent messengers to Hannibal warning him that they were under attack. Hannibal was nearby and as soon as he received the news made his way to the aid of the garrison. The Carthaginians now held one citadel in Locri and the Romans the other, with the population caught in the middle. As Hannibal approached Locri by land, Scipio, hearing that his forces were at risk, sailed over from Messana in Sicily with ten ships (Livy 29.7.1). Hannibal ordered his troops to attack the Roman forces in the town while he planned a surprise assault on the city. Scipio, at the same time as Hannibal’s attack was under way, sailed into the harbour at Locri. The following day, when Hannibal was preparing to
scale the walls, Scipio marched his forces out of the main gate of the town and ‘took the Carthaginians by surprise’. Hannibal lost some two hundred men in the resulting skirmish.

Livy reports that when Hannibal realized that Scipio was present he ordered a retreat and sent word to his men remaining in the citadel that they should ‘look out for themselves’ (29.7. 8–10). Locri, one of the first cities to go over to Hannibal and the place that had remained most loyal throughout his time in Italy, had fallen. To what extent the events around Locri related to Hannibal’s orders from Carthage to attempt to divert Scipio cannot be determined. He may have lured the Roman commander there as a distraction, and Livy criticizes Scipio for diverting his attention from Africa: ‘this major scheme was put on hold by a lesser one’ (29.6.1). Even though Hannibal lost Locri he did manage to get most of his men out alive. In that regard he could view the engagement as a success, as the town was of little use by this stage in the war, whilst the men held much more value.
²⁷

Thus the first round of the battle between the two most famous generals of their generation went to Scipio. The aftermath of Scipio’s capture of Locri was marred by atrocities committed by his commander in charge, Pleminius. Livy claims Pleminius made life miserable for the Locrians and ‘so outdid’ the Carthaginians and ‘inflicted unspeakable abuse’ on the people in the city. Pleminius, according to Appian, even ‘robbed the temple of Persephone’ (
Hann
. 55) and the crimes and atrocities committed in this phase of the war remained a blight on Scipio’s reputation. They also helped to ensure that upheaval in Bruttium rumbled on for many years after the war with Hannibal was over.
²⁸

After Locri fell to the Romans in 205
BCE
and up until Hannibal left Italy in 203
BCE
, the territory available to him shrank steadily to almost nothing.
²⁹
Cosentia (Cosenza) and six other towns in Bruttium were ‘detached’ from Hannibal by the proconsul Crassus (in 204
BCE
) and then Thurii was abandoned (Appian,
Hann
. 57). Polybius describes these last years in Italy for Hannibal as ‘shut in there [on the Lacinian promontory] and almost besieged’ (15.1.11–12). Hannibal was now powerless to do anything to divert Scipio’s invasion.

At the start of the campaigning season of 204
BCE
Scipio gathered his ships and men at Lilybaeum and launched his offensive. The Roman consul landed with his invasion force on African soil at the ‘headland of the Beautiful One’ known today as Cap Farina north of Utica (Livy 29.27–29; Polyb. 21.21) (
Map 3
). As soon as Scipio landed he was eagerly joined by Masinissa, who had made his way north, accompanied only by a few horsemen.
³⁰
Masinissa,
now a king without a kingdom, was even more eager to support the Roman invasion than he had been before.

In Carthaginian territory the arrival of Scipio had brought ‘frantic dread’ to the population of the cities and the farmlands nearby. There were crowds of men and columns of women and children clogging the roads, peasants driving their animals. The people of Carthage had not, Livy points out, seen a Roman army for over fifty years, hence ‘the heightened excitement and panic’. The city gates were shut, men were posted on the walls and sentries and outposts readied for what they believed was an imminent attack. Carthage prepared for a war the population did not believe they could win. They did not have ‘a strong enough commander or a strong enough army’ to field against the Romans. They were, as Livy notes, only too keenly aware of Hasdrubal Gisgo’s poor record against this very same Scipio in Iberia and now he had landed on their shores (Livy 29.28.1–8).

A young Carthaginian nobleman named Hanno was sent out to harass the Romans and reconnoitre their position. The Roman cavalry engaged in a skirmish and managed to kill large numbers of the Carthaginian cavalry squadron, including the commander (Livy 29.29.1). Carthage then sum-moned Hasdrubal Gisgo and Syphax ‘to come to the support of Carthage and the whole of Africa’. There followed another disastrous cavalry encounter with yet another young Hanno which saw Carthage lose 2,000 horsemen including 200 Carthaginian nobles (Livy 29.34.1–6). These initial encounters did not bode well.
³¹

In late summer Scipio moved to besiege the Carthaginian allied city of Utica while Hasdrubal Gisgo pulled together an army and Syphax gathered his forces. In the autumn of 204
BCE
the Carthaginian army included 30,000 foot soldiers and 3,000 horsemen. When combined with Syphax’s cavalry numbering about 10,000 and another 50,000 foot soldiers they substantially outnumbered the Romans (Livy 29.35.9–12; Polyb. 14.1.14).
³²
The threat of such a large army moving against him forced Scipio to give up the siege of Utica and move off.
³³
He wintered precariously on the sea, where he constructed a camp that allowed him to enclose his navy and army inside ‘a single circumvallation’ on a promontory in the delta of the Bagradas river (Livy 29.35.13–15). The defences built for the winter camp reveal just how insecure Scipio must have felt.

The unsolvable issue of actual troop numbers reflects the ambiguities in our sources and their narrative intent to exaggerate Scipio’s achievements. Estimates for the number of troops Scipio took with him from Sicily range from a high of 35,000 to a low of 17,000 and arguments to support both
numbers exist. A reasonable quantity of troops for the invading force probably lies somewhere in the middle of the two numbers, around 28,000 men in total, close to 10,500 Roman troops and about 17,500 allied forces.
³⁴
The combined Carthaginian forces must have been more than Scipio’s but it is unlikely that they were as vastly superior as Livy claimed. If the numbers had tilted so far in the Carthaginians’ favour it is unlikely that Scipio would have been able to quietly retreat to his camp for the winter without an attempt being made to dislodge him.
³⁵
It could be that Scipio’s reputation and his military celebrity, like those of Hannibal before him, made the Carthaginians wary of launching an outright attack.

March 203
BCE
saw new consuls in Rome who had to contend with Hannibal in Bruttium, his brother Mago Barca in Liguria and an uprising in Etruria. There does not seem to have been a coherent strategy from Carthage at this point. Carthage may have wished Hannibal to maintain a presence in Italy but he was not able to have any impact on the Roman campaign in Africa. Keeping Hannibal from returning to Carthage must have been part of the Roman strategy, isolating him farther and farther until he was surrounded, with little room to manoeuvre, clinging on to the edge of Italy. The spring also brought a renewal of Scipio’s command from Rome.
³⁶
The winter in Africa had seen Scipio trying to lure Syphax back into an alliance with Rome but Syphax was more interested in a negotiated peace between the two sides. A proposal for peace suggested by Syphax, surely with Carthage’s approval, would see Hannibal recalled from Italy and Scipio leave Africa. Scipio may have considered this option but it is more likely he was bluffing, biding his time and lulling the opposition into complacency. He was also unwilling, it seems, to face the combined forces of Syphax and Hasdrubal Gisgo, and could not entice Syphax over to Rome. The old king’s young Carthaginian wife, Sophonisba, kept him loyal to the cause and Livy includes plenty of innuendo about the licentiousness of the barbarian and Syphax’s innability to control his libido. These Roman cultural stereotypes of the Numidian serve to obscure the political implications behind Syphax’s actions (e.g. Livy 30.3.4–5).

Scipio hesitated, while pretending to engage with Syphax’s peace plan. He then conceived an opportunity to deliver a crushing blow to the Carthaginian forces whilst not risking many of his own troops. It would be a classic example of the use of ruses and stratagems that Hannibal would have been proud of. ‘The Carthaginian winter quarters,’ Livy tells us, ‘had been built from materials indiscriminately brought together from the countryside, so the structures were almost entirely of wood.’ The Numidian camp nearby consisted mostly
of reed and thatch huts. Scipio diverted the attention of soldiers in camp by moving out of his winter quarters towards Utica and then sent Laelius and Masinissa along with ‘some of his troops’ and ordered them to attack the camps by hurling firebrands into them. The Carthaginians and Numidians were taken totally by surprise and both the camps burned to the ground. Although Syphax and Hasdrubal escaped, many of their soldiers were caught by the flames or struck down by the Roman soldiers as they tried to flee the camps. Livy’s estimate of 40,000 men ‘slaughtered or consumed by flames’ again seems extremely high but there is no doubt that the Carthaginians suffered a disastrous loss of life, elephants, weapons and supplies (30.3–6).
³⁷

Scipio then pressed on with the siege of Utica while Hasdrubal and Syphax scrambled to levy more troops and regroup their armies. Not long afterwards, just days, according to Livy (but in any event probably late in the spring), the Carthaginians were able to field another army against the Romans. Smaller numbers this time, about 30,000 hastily recruited, poorly trained peasants from the fields or anyone the Carthaginians could find to press into service. The armies met at a place called the Great Plains, which is thought to be in the valley of the Bagradas river, a five-day march from Utica. Scipio’s army, with Masinissa’s cavalry playing a key role, drew up against the hastily gathered forces of Hasdrubal Gisgo and Syphax plus four thousand Celtiberians recruited from Iberia. The Romans and allies easily won the day. Hasdrubal and Syphax again retreated, defeated this time in battle rather than by fire. After these two successive disasters the city of Carthage was in an uproar and expected a direct attack within days. Inside the walls the people gathered supplies and prepared for a protracted siege. Debate raged about what to do. Some among the population must have talked of Hannibal and his forces in Italy. The reality was that their most famous and successful commander was not in any position to alleviate the suffering of the city, as he was essentially trapped. Scipio moved to take Tunes (Tunis), just south of Carthage, from where he could cut the city off from its heartland (Livy 30.9.7–12).