Hannibal (22 page)

It was for these reasons that the consul Claudius Marcellus had been sent to Sicily. In the confusion that followed the death of Hiero, a number of towns went over to the Carthaginian cause, notably Leontini a little north of Syracuse, commanding the richest and most fertile area in the island. Marcellus was a tough and distinguished soldier whom Hannibal had learned to respect as the man who had several times blocked him in Campania whenever he moved from Mons Tifata. Completely fearless, Marcellus in his first consulship in 222 had personally engaged a Gallic chieftain and killed him with his own hand. He had then dedicated his spoils, the
spolia opima,
in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius—the third and last time in Roman history in which such an outstanding offering was ever made. Ruthless to the defeated and in the imposition of military law, Marcellus was loved by his own troops for his concern about their welfare. After retaking Leontini, where he had some two thousand of the opposing troops beheaded as rebels against Rome, he moved south to invest Syracuse by land and sea. The Romans were masters at siege warfare and Marcellus had every reason for confidence. The Syracusan defences were overextended, particularly to the north of the island-fortress of Ortygia, where a large triangular area, only lightly inhabited, was enclosed by massive walls that would have required many more men for its defence than the Syracusans possessed.

Hannibal was fully aware of the importance of this struggle that was taking place to the south of him and had been in correspondence with Carthage about the necessity of landing an army in Sicily to lend a hand in the insurrection. With Sicily in Carthaginian hands the Roman dominance of the Strait of Messina could be challenged—thus reversing the process of the First Punic War and providing the secure base from which he could overcome those adamant cities on the Bay of Neapolis. So long as Sicily was basically pro-Roman his own position in southern Italy was always threatened. Some later historians have referred to the misuse of Carthaginian ships and manpower in the Sicilian campaign, arguing that they would have been better employed as reinforcements for Hannibal. It is very doubtful if that is how he himself saw the matter. Hannibal was not only a master tactician but also a considerable strategist: Sicily was the key to his ultimate success in Italy, since it now looked as if the help that he had been expecting from his brother Hasdrubal would not be forthcoming. With Tarentum secure and with the Romans unwilling to challenge him anywhere on the battlefield, it seemed that he could maintain his position in Italy for years if need be (which he was in fact to do). What he needed now was a success in the south: Sicily, with its rich land as a granary and its excellent ports for the use of the Carthaginian fleet. With this firm base behind him he would be able to move north in due course, after securing Neapolis and Cumae and eliminating the Roman naval threat in his rear, and come to grips with the heart of the adversary—Rome and the Latin confederation, which it was now clear would never be broken on a single battlefield.

These were the reasons why the Carthaginian fleet when it came did not make its way to the great harbour of Tarentum, but brought up instead on the long beaches of southern Sicily where, over many miles of barely inhabited territory, the overstretched Roman fleet could keep no permanent watch and ward. The harbour of Heraclea Minoa at the mouth of a small river was chosen as the disembarkation point, and here the admiral Himilco brought ashore 25,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 12 elephants-a large enough force, it might have seemed, to secure all the south of the island before moving on to the relief of Syracuse. All seemed to go well at first and the principal city in the south, Agrigentum (Girgenti), fell to the invaders. But generals of the calibre of Hamilcar and his sons were always rare among the Carthaginians, and this army was in due course to come up against Marcellus.

The siege of Syracuse, undertaken with such confidence, proved to be protracted: largely because of one man. Among the inhabitants of the city was the great Greek mathematician and scientist Archimedes. Educated in the Alexandrian mathematical school, at a time when Euclid was teaching there, Archimedes (a friend, if not a relative, of Hiero) had enriched the city with his gifts of intellect, as well as constructing for the ruler numerous unusual engines of war. (Like Leonardo da Vinci, centuries later, he paid for the leisure and freedom to speculate, with practical work that could ensure the security of his patron.)

Marcellus had decided to attack the city from the seaward side of Achradina, the suburb of the old city on the northern side. Ortygia itself appeared to be almost unassailable.

Archimedes had supplied the ramparts with an artillery so powerful that it overwhelmed the Romans before they could get within the range which their missiles could reach; and when they came close they found that all the lower part of the wall was loopholed, and their men struck down with fatal aim by an enemy whom they could not see, and who shot his arrows in perfect security. If they still persevered and attempted to fix their ladders [to the seaward side of the walls], on a sudden they saw long poles thrust out from the top of the wall like the arms of a giant, and enormous stones or huge masses of lead were dropped from these upon them by which their ladders were crushed to pieces and their ships almost sunk. At other times, machines like cranes were thrust out over the wall, and the end of the lever, with an iron grapnel affixed to it, was lowered upon the Roman ships. [Livy’s description inspired numerous artists in later centuries.]

As soon as the grapnel had taken hold, the other end of the lever was lowered down by heavy weights and the ship raised out of the water until it was made almost to stand upon its stern; then the grapnel was suddenly let go, and the ship dropped into the sea with a violence which either upset it or filled it with water…. The Roman soldiers, bold as they were, were so daunted by these strange and irresistible devices, that if they saw so much as a rope or a stick hanging or projecting from a wall, they would turn about and run away crying that ‘Archimedes is going to set one of his engines against us.’

It was one of the first examples in the history of warfare of a superior enemy, in terms of numbers and of purpose, being thwarted and overcome by superior technology. ‘So the genius of one man, Archimedes, defeated the efforts of innumerable hands.’

The Roman quality of dogged perseverance, which was to win them their empire, finally triumphed over Greek scientific ingenuity and those walled defences, which had made the Syracusans confident that theirs was the unconquerable city’. Repulsed in his sea-attack, Marcellus turned his attention to the landward side and—on a night when it was known that the Syracusans would be celebrating a great feast of Artemis—overran the weak fortifications in the north and swooped down on the city. (It never paid to relax when matched against the Romans, as countries from Persia to Britain were to learn in the centuries to come.) The struggle that followed was long and complicated. A Carthaginian fleet that had been in the harbour withdrew in an irresolute manner when it seemed that it might be trapped there by the Roman ships to seaward. Part of the Carthaginian army that had landed in the south was unable to reinforce the city and was compelled to take up quarters in the marshy delta of the Anapus river that fed into the Grand Harbour. As had happened before in the long history of Syracuse, the fever-ridden delta of the Anapus took its toll of the army encamped there and thousands of soldiers and two Carthaginian generals died. Hannibal’s emissary, Epicides, who had been conducting the defence of the city, realised that all was lost and fled south to Agrigentum.

Late in 212 B.C. the marble and golden city fell to Marcellus and his Romans—men who had absorbed the courage of Sparta, without having the wit of the Athenians, but who possessed an organised discipline that most Greeks lacked. Allcroft and Masom in
A History of Rome
summarised the conclusion of the siege of Syracuse thus—the conclusion, it might be said, of centuries of Greek colonisation of Sicily, that great island which had seemed to the first Greek navigators the perfect ‘new-found-land’ and rich beyond all their expectations:

In the autumn a Spanish officer opened the gates of Ortygia and Achradina, and the Romans were masters of Syracuse after a siege of more than two years. The usual atrocities marked its downfall; the city was pillaged, and most of its treasures of art carried off to Rome. Archimedes was cut down by a Roman soldier. The war in Sicily lasted two years longer owing to the energy of Mutines, a Libyan officer, who waged a guerilla war with the Romans, until the repeated slights of a jealous colleague led him in revenge to betray Agrigentum, 210 B.C. After this the island became once more a peaceful province, whose destiny it was to provide corn for its masters and submit patiently to the extortions of the governors, tax-collectors, and money-lenders of victorious Rome.

(The pattern of the island, one might say, was shaped for all its future history, and the nature of the Sicilian temperament irrevocably fixed into a mould of resentment and a determination to evade any conqueror’s law by whatever means possible.)

Marcellus had given orders that Archimedes was on no account to be harmed (or so he said later), but legend has it that the great mathematician was so engrossed in working out some problem in a sand tray that when soldiers burst into his chamber and he disregarded their shouts to declare his identity he was run through with a spear. He was not Syracuse’s only major loss, for innumerable art treasures of the city were now despatched to Rome. It has been said that this first major introduction of Greek art was to some extent responsible for the growth of the subsequent Roman admiration and emulation of Hellenic culture. In much the same way, many centuries later, the loot from Constantinople was to adorn Venice and fertilise the imagination of that city’s artists and craftsmen.

The consequences of the fall of Syracuse were strategically very damaging to Hannibal. With the Romans in possession of the Great Harbour, and with their hold upon the Messina Strait strengthening their control of the sea approaches to Sicily and Italy, Hannibal and his army were even further cut off from their mother city of Carthage. Unless reinforcements could reach him from Spain by way of the Alps he was more or less marooned in Italy. Only his military genius, and the fear that his previous successes had instilled into the Romans, could preserve him from defeat.

XXI

THE MARCH ON ROME

In the spring of the following year Hannibal was largely concerned over the fate of Capua, where four Roman armies had been deployed with the intention of reducing the city by blockade rather than by assault. The usual appeals for help had already reached him from the Capuans. Since he himself was still in the region of Tarentum, he had sent Hanno from Bruttium to Beneventum to try to relieve the city. Hanno, having brilliantly evaded the army of Gracchus in Lucania, as well as that of Nero on his flank, had managed to slip through and set up a fortified camp which he turned into a grain store. The Capuans were asked to send every waggon and beast of burden available to take away the grain that he had collected for them. Fatally subject to inertia and ineptitude, the Capuans only managed to produce four hundred waggons, at which Hanno exclaimed: ‘Not even hunger, which excites dumb animals to exertion, can stimulate the Capuans to any diligence.’

The Capuans were sent back with orders to produce further transport but by the time they returned with two thousand waggons, the Romans had got wind of the project and were ready and waiting. While Hanno was away with a foraging party, they attacked the camp and, despite a spirited resistance by the remaining Carthaginians, the position was stormed and the grain, the waggons, and other stores were captured. Hanno and his party managed to get away and retired in disgust to Bruttium. Capua, through no fault of its Carthaginian allies, was still left without supplies.

On hearing the news Hannibal despatched two thousand Numidians to go to the relief of Capua—something which was achieved by these astonishing desert horsemen by evading all the cordons around the city and managing to enter Capua by night. Heartened by this evidence of support, the Capuans rode out when the confident Romans were gathering in the corn outside the city. At the head of them rode the Numidians. Fifteen hundred Romans were killed in this sortie and the rest, demoralised by the unexpected arrival of Hannibal’s great cavalry arm, took refuge behind their fortifications. At the same time they suffered a further shock. Gracchus, who was on the point of leaving his province to come and reinforce the blockade of Capua, was drawn into an ambush and killed. Hannibal, with his traditional attention to the courtesies of war, had his body given honourable burial.
 

He had sent his Numidians ahead only to act as an advance force, and it was not long before the consul, Fulvius Flaccus, was apprised of very unwelcome news. Mons Tifata was swarming with men, and its flat top was once again occupied. Hannibal, moving from southern Italy with extra-ordinary speed (faster than the Roman cavalry who had been summoned from Lucania, comparatively close at hand), had appeared upon the scene once more. He entered Capua in triumph, the two consular armies withdrawing before him—evidence of the awe still felt by the Romans at his presence, as well as of some unspoken agreement among them to adhere to the policies of Fabius Cunctator, even though the latter no longer commanded high office. Hannibal could not, however, quarter his army on the town because of the lack of supplies and when the Roman armies withdrew, he followed the one under Appius Claudius which was heading for Lucania as if to threaten southern Italy. As soon as the Carthaginian army had moved away Flaccus returned to invest Capua; not long afterwards Claudius gave Hannibal the slip and also returned to the city. By the end of the year six Roman legions were at Capua to begin the Roman practice of circumvallation: surrounding the besieged place with earthworks and trenches that prevented the inhabitants from leaving, as well as relief forces from entering.