Hannibal (28 page)

Hasdrubal, expecting that his letter would by now have reached Hannibal and that the latter would be hastening to meet him, lay confronting the army of Livius and Porcius. The Romans had shown no sign as yet of wishing to give battle, and Hasdrubal no doubt thought that the longer he could stay in a holding position the more time was afforded for Hannibal to come up behind the enemy and take them in the rear. He had crossed the Metaurus and then moved south towards the small river Sena (Cesano) which lay between his position and that of the Romans, only about half a mile distant. The area was part of the Umbrian plain and, although more wooded then than now, was good campaigning country. The Metaurus, in those days when the Apennines were dense with trees, was probably a larger river than it is today, and the banks and cliffs which overhang its northern side were undoubtedly more of an obstacle. Claudius Nero is said to have come within reach of his fellow consul after only seven days on the march, an average of thirty miles a day—something which, even with all the aid along the way, seems hardly possible. Certainly he moved amazingly fast, as fast as Hannibal on any of his forced marches, and he was up in the intended battle area long before any news of his approach could have preceded him. Waiting out of sight until nightfall, Nero now joined his fellow consul Livius, he and his troops moving in to share the tents of the soldiers already assembled there. When dawn came there would be no evidence from freshly erected tents that the Roman army had been augmented.

On the next day a council of war was held, the praetor, Porcius Licinus, being present together with the two consuls. Livy records that ‘the opinions of many were inclined towards postponing the time for battle, until Nero should refresh his troops, worn by the march and lack of sleep, and at the same time should take a few days to acquaint himself with the enemy.’ Nero, however, was adamant: he was determined to attack at once, pointing out that ‘his plan, which rapid movement had made safe,’ must not be nullified by any delay. He was acutely aware that Hannibal might discover his absence from his own army, and attack at once. If Hannibal yet again achieved one of his astounding victories, he would certainly follow Nero’s route north and the Roman army would find itself caught between the two Carthaginian brothers. Livius somewhat reluctantly agreed and the Roman forces began to deploy themselves for battle.

While the Carthaginian troops also began to move into their determined places-both opposing armies being no more than half a mile apart—Hasdrubal decided to take a final look at the Roman dispositions. Livy writes that ‘riding out in front of the standards with a few horsemen, he observed among the enemy old shields which he had not seen before and very lean horses; and he thought the numbers also larger than usual. Suspecting what had happened, he promptly sounded the recall and sent men to the river from which the Romans were drawing water, that some Romans might be captured there and scanned to see whether any chanced to be more sunburned as though from a recent march.’ At the same time he sent horsemen off to ride round the Roman camps and check whether the earthworks had been enlarged or whether any new tents had been erected. Deceived by Nero’s subtlety in having no changes made and having his own men billeted with those who were already there, they reported back to Hasdrubal that all was as before. They had, however, noticed one unusual thing—when the orders were being given by trumpet, one had sounded as usual in the praetor’s camp but, instead of only one sounding from the camp of the consul Livius, there had been two distinct trumpet blasts. Hasdrubal, familiar for years with the routines of his Roman enemy, deduced at once that this meant that two consuls were present. If two consuls, then possibly two consular armies or at least a vastly enlarged force awaited him.

The presence of the second consul also suggested the terrible thought that his brother and his army might have been defeated. The Romans would never leave Hannibal unwatched by one or other consul if he were still alive. Hasdrubal succumbed to the fear that all was lost in the south. That night he gave the order for his troops to withdraw and take up a new position on the banks of the Metaurus.

From the moment that Hasdrubal determined on this retreat in the face of the enemy all, indeed, was lost for him. His native guides deserted, his troops lost heart, and the Gallic levies—undisciplined, untrained, and always prone to drunkenness—became completely disordered. Confused in the darkness, ignorant of the countryside, the Carthaginian army straggled back in the direction of the river. If Hasdrubal had intended to take up a strong position on the northern bank he was to be foiled by the condition of his own troops, and by the fact that the Romans followed hard on his heels. Hasdrubal was a brave and experienced general, and it is unlikely that he had no future plans beyond trying to bring the Romans to battle on the line of the Metaurus. Dorey and Dudley suggest that ‘he could have marched north-east and then back into the Po valley, but this is not very likely. Probably he intended to turn left towards Rome, by-pass the Roman armies at the Sena, reach friendly communities in Etruria or Umbria and then find out what had happened to Hannibal.’ Claudius Nero had not realised, when he had so cannily concealed the presence of his troops from the watching Carthaginians, that his own presence would be disclosed to them by the sound of a trumpet, and he certainly could not have guessed that the report of this would cause Hasdrubal to withdraw. The fear of Hannibal uniting his army with his brother had spurred Nero on his march to the north, and the fear that Hannibal was lost had caused Hasdrubal to withdraw precipitately.

With the dawn of the following day Hasdrubal drew up his troops as well as he was able on the south bank of the Metaurus—concentrating his best troops, the Carthaginians and the Spanish veterans, against Livius. His drunken and demoralised Gauls were sited on a small hillock, where he hoped that they would enjoy some protective advantage against the Romans under Nero on his right. Other Spanish troops and Ligurians were in his centre, where he had also placed his ten elephants, hoping that the weight of their attack would break down the troops under Porcius, who commanded there. In the event, the elephants proved a liability. The Romans had learned by now that, when wounded by spears (the formidable
pilum
), the elephants would turn tail and run amok among the ranks behind them.

The battle was fierce and prolonged on Hasdrubal’s right, where he and Livius were engaged, the Carthaginians, Spaniards and Ligurians fighting courageously and well. But on the left the Gauls, in their protected position, scarcely moved, and Nero found it hard to attack them. In the centre the elephants caused as much confusion among their own troops as among the Romans, and the issue remained undecided. Eventually Nero, judging that the real contest was on the other wing and that it was there that the battle would be won or lost, once again used his initiative and acted completely against all conventional military practice. Abandoning his attempts to draw out the Gauls, he moved his troops right round behind the Roman battle-line and fell upon the Carthaginian right wing. This new weight of fresh legionaries pouring in against them caused Hasdrubal’s seasoned troops to fall back. The battle suddenly became a rout. Panic-stricken men struggled to cross the Metaurus, while the whole of Hasdrubal’s right wing collapsed in ruins. Realising that all was lost, Hannibal’s brother spurred his horse into the Roman lines and died, sword in hand—‘a heroic gesture’, says Polybius, but Hasdrubal was worth far more to the Carthaginian cause alive. It is probable that the despair he felt was induced not only by his defeat, but also by the fear which had earlier driven him to withdraw his army—the fear that his brother lay dead somewhere in the south of Italy.

Livy gives the fanciful figure of 56,000 men killed on the Carthaginian side (anxious, perhaps, to provide the Romans with a suitable vengeance for Cannae), while Polybius gives 10,000. The latter is more likely to be accurate, for it is doubtful if Hasdrubal had more than 60,000 men in the first place, many of whom had already deserted, while the Gauls, who had hardly been engaged, withdrew safely in a body. The Roman dead are given as 8,000. Such was the battle of the Metaurus, a battle that sealed the fate of the Carthaginian attempt to defeat the Romans in their homeland. On that day the balance of power in the Mediterranean shifted for ever.

Nero, who by his action in the battle and by his first swift move to reinforce his fellow consul had shown that he was an outstanding general both tactically and strategically, wasted no time now all was over. He was well aware that the main threat to Rome was past—the danger of two armies under two sons of Hamilcar uniting on Italian soil. But he knew that the seemingly permanent threat still lay with Hannibal in the south. He hastened bade from the victory at the Metaurus and took command again of his legions in Apulia. Hannibal’s troops remained facing his own (Nero’s absence had not been remarked), and no word had reached the opposing armies of the great battle in the north.

The first news of the disaster was when some Roman cavalry spurred up to the Carthaginian’s outposts at night and threw a dark object towards the sentries. When it was brought to Hannibal in his tent he looked at it and said, ‘I see there the fate of Carthage.’ It was the head of his brother Hasdrubal.

XXVI

THE EBBING TIDE

With the death of his brother Hannibal had lost his last hope of defeating Rome. The severed head had signalled the end of that brave endeavour to bring the greatest military power in the Mediterranean to its knees by striking at the heart of the Roman homeland. For the first time in twelve years Hannibal had lost the initiative in the war. He withdrew into Bruttium, that wild and mountainous area from which he had drawn the bulk of his recruits in recent years, and where he still retained the two small seaports of Croton and Locri. The temptation to return to Carthage must have been almost irresistible, for Hannibal could see that the loss of Hasdrubal and his army meant that the war in Italy was drawing to a close. He knew, too, that Spain was likely to pass out of Carthaginian control and that the next stroke after that on the Roman part would be an invasion of the Carthaginian homeland. At the same time, he evidently concluded that his presence in Italy, weakened and relatively ineffectual though his army had become, tied down many legions and prevented the Romans from concentrating their forces and their fleet in an attack on Carthage itself. He must remain where he was, posing a permanent threat to Rome.

The news of the battle of the Metaurus river was received with a joy such as the city had not known in all those long years. It was, as the poet Horace remarks, the first day since Hannibal had swooped down out of the Alps that victory smiled on the Roman people. Both consuls were accorded a triumph, in which Claudius Nero was deservedly received with greater acclaim than his fellow, for it was clear that his initiative and brilliant dash—in defiance of all rules and regulations—had given them a victory of immense consequence. The threat to Rome was eliminated and it had already been seen that Hannibal on his own, unmatched as a general though he was, did not have the men or the equipment to endanger the city. Four legions were disbanded, and no further action was taken that year, save to keep watch and ward on the Carthaginian in his Bruttian lair. Philip of Macedon, sensing that the curtain was coming down on the great Hannibalic enterprise, made his peace with the Aetolians, thus bringing to an end his short and uneasy alliance with the Carthaginian.

The year 206 saw no major operations in Italy, the two consuls, Quintus Metellus and Lucius Philo, contenting themselves with keeping Hannibal bottled up in Bruttium. The main centre of the war was now in Spain, where Scipio continued to display his customary brilliance, decisively defeating Hannibal’s younger brother Mago and Hasdrubal Gisgo at Baecula. In the previous year other armies under Hanno and Mago had been worsted and it was clear that the whole of Spain, of that Carthaginian empire founded by Hamilcar, was slipping from their grasp. This was evident enough to the Iberians and the Celtiberians themselves, who were nearly all rapidly allying themselves with the Roman cause. For those who resisted, such as the powerful chieftain Indibilis, the Roman reaction was swift and bloody. Fortress towns like Astapa and Iliturgi were destroyed, tribes which had conspired against Scipio’s father and uncle were decimated, and Castulo, the stronghold where Hannibal many years before is said to have found himself a wife, yielded to Roman siege engines and Roman swords.

Scipio’s actions in Spain anticipated the later history of the Roman empire (which he so largely helped to found) in ‘sparing the defeated but beating the rebellious to the ground.’ His discipline was not only extended to the wild tribes of Spain, for when a mutiny broke out in one of his legions it was put down with equal harshness, the leaders being promptly put to death. It was soon clear that, with the departure of Hasdrubal for Italy to join his brother, the unifying Carthaginian hand in Spain had been withdrawn. Carthaginian control over the country was lost even more quickly than it had first been imposed. Only Gades remained as a last outpost of Carthaginian power and, before the end of 206, even this ancient trading centre of the Punic peoples was preparing to welcome the Romans. Although it would be many years before all the tribes of the wild and mountainous Iberian Peninsula would be pacified (that euphemism for the sword) all Spain in effect was in Roman hands. After some thirty years the dominion that had been established by the Barca family was at an end.

Although Hannibal was to remain in Italy for a further three years and was never defeated on Italian soil, he now found himself deprived of the very base from which he had set out on his long march. Moreover he and his country had now lost Spain’s silver and mineral wealth, and even the manpower which had so largely fuelled his giant enterprise. He was to find that the strategy which he had used against the Romans when he had decided to invade their country was to be turned against the Carthaginians. All along Scipio had seen that to debar the enemy from his source of power was the best way of defeating him, and had achieved this first objective with his success in Spain. He now prepared for his second objective—Africa.