The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (28 page)

Deserters are not much dwelled upon by patriotic historians such as Livy. But the question looms: Could more than a few of these deserters actually have been members of the
legiones Cannenses
, exiled to Sicily, shunted to the side without a combat role, angry and disgusted at their treatment? It certainly seems possible, and could account for the continuing senatorial bitterness toward these ghosts of Cannae.
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But it does not seem likely; more probably the deserters were garrison troops gone native. For while he was in Sicily Marcellus seemed favorably disposed toward troops he had already commanded in Italy. Later, when the
Cannenses
petitioned Marcellus to be removed from the sidelines and included in the operations against Syracuse, he immediately wrote the senate requesting permission to use them. The wording of the reply, which Livy quotes, is interesting:

The senate saw no reason why the interests of the republic should be entrusted to the hands of soldiers who had deserted their comrades, in battle, at Cannae. If Marcus Marcellus, the proconsul, thought otherwise, that he should act as he deemed consistent with the good of the state and his own conscience, with this proviso, however, that none of these men should be exempt from service, or be decorated for valor, or be brought back to Italy, so long as the enemy should be in the land of Italy.
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The indications are that Marcellus had every need for the
Cannenses
, for the siege of Syracuse proved a gigantic enterprise. It appears that Marcellus and Appius waited until the spring of 213 to begin operations. In the meantime they gathered resources and modified their equipment for what was to be one of the few attempts in any of the three Punic wars to take a strongly fortified place by direct assault.
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And it failed utterly.

Syracuse was vast compared to most ancient cities, and the Roman generals were perfectly aware of the strength of its encircling walls, girding it both inland and along the coast and the harbor district, the products of a succession of paranoid tyrants with penchants for public works. What the Roman generals hadn’t counted on was the ancient equivalent of a rocket scientist organizing the city’s defense … none other than Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived and, unfortunately for the Romans, a weapons designer of rare creativity. So, when the attackers began their assault—Appius on the landward side and Marcellus along the harbor district or Achradina—they found a physics instructor, or at least his mechanisms, lying in wait for them.

Marcellus had modified some of his quinqueremes into siege craft, lashing them together and mounting on their bows scaling ladders that could be raised by pulleys and then lowered against the walls—a kind of thematic variation on the First Punic War’s “crow” boarding bridges, which the Romans now called
sambucae
, for their resemblance to harps. In this case the harps played only sour notes, as chronicled in a fragment by Polybius, himself an expert on siege craft and an obvious fan of Archimedes.
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As Marcellus’s
sambucae
approached supported by sixty quinqueremes filled with assault troops, the Romans found themselves barraged by a hail of projectiles launched from a succession of catapults carefully calibrated to cover all ranges. Forced to attack at night, it only got worse as they drew closer and were raked incessantly by “small scorpions”
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(probably crossbows) shot from narrow loopholes cut in the fortifications. When the attackers finally got the
sambucae
into place and their extensions deployed, great beams pivoted out from the walls and dropped stones and lead weights to shatter the ladders. These beams also released clawlike devices to catch the prows of the ships themselves, which were then ratcheted upward until they were nearly vertical. Then the ships were suddenly released, which caused them to capsize and sink. All told, it was a debacle that left Marcellus joking ruefully at his helplessness in the face of Archimedes, and left his troops prone to panic if they saw so much as a plank or a rope projecting from a wall.
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Appius did no better with his landward component, being subject to much the same treatment. They were not about to give up, but from now on they would rely on blockade and eventually subterfuge.

Enter the Carthaginians. Specifically, a large force sent over from Africa under Himilco (twenty-five thousand foot soldiers, three thousand horse, and twelve elephants) landed on the south coast of the island and quickly took Agrigentum, an important base in the First Punic War that had been lost to the Romans after a long siege. Marcellus, too late to prevent the fall of Agrigentum, did intercept a column of approximately ten thousand Syracusans led by Hippocrates that had broken the Roman blockade and was on its way to join the Carthaginians. Although most of the infantry was killed or captured, Hippocrates and around five hundred cavalry managed to reach Himilco, who then advanced to a river just south of Syracuse. Worried, Marcellus had already fallen back on Roman lines when a force of fifty-five Punic quinqueremes commanded by Bomilcar sailed into the Syracuse harbor, making it look like the Roman blockade would soon be broken.
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But as usual the Carthaginians dithered. Himilco and Hippocrates, rather than pressing the issue at Syracuse, wandered off—first failing to intercept a reinforcing Roman legion that was marching from the northwest coast, where it had landed, and later concentrated on sowing rebellion inland. Bomilcar, worried about his fighting strength, retreated to Africa.
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Marcellus, uncertain in the spring of 212 whether to pursue Himilco, finally resolved to tighten the noose around Syracuse. Since Marcellus’s troops had already been augmented by one legion, it seems likely that he began employing the
Cannenses
at this point, for he would need troops, because he had a plan to get into the city. The plan was based on two vital bits of intelligence: the Romans had learned that one part of the wall was lower than previously thought, and the Syracusans, who were in the midst of celebrating a three-day festival to the goddess Artemis, had been given lavish quantities of wine by Epicydes to compensate for a general lack of food. Drinking on an empty stomach being what it was and is, Marcellus and most of his army managed to break in on the last night of the blowout and seize nearly the entire city—with the exception of the Achradina and a nearby citadel—before the stupefied population realized what had happened.
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Himilco and Hippocrates raced back, intent on relieving the situation, but fate intervened in the form of a virulently infectious disease that swept through their encampment, killing both of them and most of their soldiers. The infection spared Marcellus’s and Appius’s forces, whose tightly organized camps and sanitary procedures may have saved them.
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Yet when it came to Sicily, the Carthaginians were proverbially persistent. Back in Africa, Bomilcar, who had been running the blockade and bringing in at least some food to what remained of Punic Syracuse, convinced the leadership to send him back with a massive relief force—130 warships and 700 transports stuffed with supplies. Fleet in hand, Bomilcar crossed quickly from Carthage but then hesitated to round Cape Pachynus just south of Syracuse, apparently held up by unfavorable winds. Afraid that Bomilcar would return home, Epicydes sailed out and convinced him to risk a naval engagement. Marcellus—outnumbered and with no naval combat experience to speak of, but forever belligerent—ventured forth, willing to fight the Carthaginians.

For a few days the fleets lay at anchor on either side of the cape. Finally, Bomilcar came out and appeared ready to pass beyond the promontory—one modern historian calls it “perhaps, the supreme moment of the war.”
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But Livy reports (25.27.12) that when the Carthaginian admiral saw “the Roman ships bearing down on him, terrified by something unforeseen, he made sail for open water, and, after sending messengers to Heraclea to command the transports to return to Africa … headed for Tarentum.”

Epicydes quickly fled to Agrigentum, as Syracuse was now beyond hope of relief. Resistance continued for a while, in large part motivated by the Roman deserters, who knew what would happen to them if captured, but the betrayal of a key citadel and the surrender of the Achradina marked the end of what remains one of the most famous sieges in world history. Marcellus was inclined to be merciful but, being a Roman, let his men pillage the city. He also had given orders that Archimedes be spared, but a legionary cut the old man down, the story being that he had refused to be drawn away from his calculations.
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Property rights were given the same regard as academic freedom by the rampaging Romans, who picked the place clean—so clean that the haul brought home by Marcellus for his ovation was said to have kick-started the city’s passion for Greek art!
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The plight of the
Cannenses
continued. Later, when he was back in Italy serving his third consulship, Marcellus would upbraid the senate for not allowing him, in return for his many services to the state, to redeem Cannae’s survivors. Yet the senate remained unmoved and had already sent the remnants of the army defeated at the First Battle of Herdonea to join the
Cannenses
in exile, both groups to suffer the additional indignity of not being allowed to set up their winter camp within ten miles of any town.
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Nonetheless, it appears that it was largely these troops, this band of military pariahs, who were expected to put down the remaining Carthaginian resistance in Sicily, which sputtered anew after the fall of Syracuse. The resistance was now focused on Agrigentum under Himilco’s replacement, Hanno; the ever-resilient Epicydes; and a newcomer, sent over by Hannibal from Italy, named Muttines, a Libyan cavalry commander of considerable skill and energy. Leading a force of Numidians, Muttines raised sufficient havoc to force Marcellus, who had yet to return to Rome, inland to confront the threat. Near the Himera River, Muttines waged several successful skirmishes against Marcellus’s outposts, but then was drawn away to deal with a mutiny. In his absence, Epicydes and Hanno—the latter apparently particularly envious of his colleague’s success and disdainful of Muttines’s lack of pure Carthaginian blood—decided to give battle and were crushed, losing thousands of troops and eight elephants. Marcellus might have followed up his victory and put an end to the conflict, but since he was a Roman, the lure of high office apparently caused him to leave Sicily in late 211 to stand for consul.
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The
Cannenses
were left to hold down the fort—in their eyes more probably left holding the bag—and without their general, the situation deteriorated. For back in Africa, still clinging to the vision of a Carthaginian Sicily, the leadership anted up one more time, sending eight thousand infantry and three thousand Numidian horsemen.
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Muttines used them ruthlessly to ravage the countryside, a matter of no little importance, since rural Sicily was a massive producer of grain, and since Rome, with Hannibal loose in Italy, needed all the food it could get. Roman troop morale was low, and without adequate defense, towns began to defect to the Carthaginian side. The situation was in limbo, sufficiently serious that the senate was ready to send Marcellus back to Sicily. But Sicilians in Rome, mortified by Marcellus’s prior lust for loot, protested so vociferously that he was persuaded to exchange commands with Marcus Valerius Laevinus, whose steady hand we saw holding Philip V in check.
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Laevinus proved equally effective in Sicily, perhaps more so since luck was on his side. After settling some disorder in Syracuse, he went straight for Agrigentum, where he found the enemy in disarray and, in the case of Muttines, positively mutinous. Hanno, still jealous and contemptuous of Muttines’s origins, had replaced him and given his own son command of the Numidians. Outraged, the Libyan was ready to deal, so when Laevinus and his army marched up to the city wall, the gate swung open and legionaries poured in. Hanno and the everlasting Epicydes slipped out another portal and made it to Africa, but their forces were liquidated, the city fathers were beheaded, and the population was sold into slavery. The rest of Sicily quickly got the message.

The war here was over. Rome was firmly in charge. Carthage had proved exceedingly persistent in its attempts to regain a foothold on the island, especially when compared to the lack of support for Hannibal in Italy, but the Carthaginians’ time here was at an end. So was any pretense of Sicilian Greek independence. The Greeks had squandered their independence here, as they would elsewhere. Sicily would become a breadbasket for Rome, Laevinus being careful to reestablish agriculture before departing the island in triumph. Muttines too prospered. Granted Roman citizenship and taking the name of his patron, Laevinus, he would command troops twenty years later in the war against Antiochus. There was even an inscription at Delphi to him and his four sons—Publius, Caius, Marcus, Quintus … Romans through and through.
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The
legiones Cannenses
, on the other hand, got nothing. They remained on the island for another six years, as invisible as ghosts, figuratively sitting on their shields, waiting for a break.

[5]

Spain was critical and always had been. For it was not only Hannibal’s launching pad, but his familial base of support since his father had turned it into Barca land. Carthaginian and even Phoenician presence had long preceded them, however, having been drawn to Spain’s precious metals. These factors would now leave the authorities in Africa more inclined to send reinforcements here than directly to Hannibal in Italy. Money and habit—these seemed to matter most to the elders back home; so the Barcids and the authorities in Carthage were to be united in their determination to hold on to Spain.