Hannibal (34 page)

Putting in next day at the island of Cercina, not far from the coast, Hannibal was dismayed to find some other ships there on their way to Carthage, and he was of course recognised by the crews of the vessels. Having invited the captains and crews, flattered by the invitation, to dine with him, he suggested that they bring ashore the sails and spars of their ships so that they could put up awnings as protection against the sun. The entertainment carried on throughout the day and into the night, when Hannibal quietly embarked and got under way. When his guests awoke next morning their host was gone, and, even if they had had any thought of pursuit and had known his destination, it would have taken them some time to re-rig their ships and follow him. Some weeks later Hannibal landed at that ancient home of the Phoenicians, Tyre, the birthplace of Dido and the mother city of Carthage.

The remaining thirteen years of Hannibal’s life are sad to contemplate, although not so desiccated as the last years of Napoleon, for Hannibal remained at liberty until the day when he took his own life. It was the year 195 B.C. when the great hero of the eastern Mediterranean world set foot in the cradle of his race, to be acclaimed by all those in the Levant and Asia Minor who saw their freedom threatened by the advancing shadow of Rome. Soon after the defeat of Philip of Macedon, Rome claimed to be the protector of Greece—a judicious move which pleased the Greeks and at the same time ensured their ultimate servitude. It was only in Antiochus that Hannibal could see any hope for the revival of a war against Italy. Antiochus, however, had no wish to be involved in a distant war in the central Mediterranean, he was only concerned to secure and increase his eastern empire. He had ambitions to be recognised in Greece, but a small force which he sent there was soundly trounced at that pass of classic memory, Thermopylae, and he was hard put to it to secure Asia Minor for himself.

Hannibal’s reputation did not make him popular among the military men and advisers who surrounded the Syrian king, and he was never given the fleet and the troops which he had asked for in order to invade Italy. Antiochus, indeed, had many men under arms, but they were not of the calibre of the Romans in any respect. In 189 B.C. at the battle of Magnesia he lost conclusively and was compelled to withdraw from most of Asia Minor, leaving it to the Romans and their allies. Previously in a review of the king’s army, although it was nearly twice the size of that which his enemy brought onto the battlefield, Hannibal had dryly replied when asked his opinion of this great host: ‘Yes, it will be enough for the Romans, however greedy they may be.’

A few anecdotes survive about Hannibal in these years when he moved, an exile from his own country and a declared ‘enemy of the Roman people’, through the courts and petty kingdoms of the East. His was the laconic style, the
imperatoria brevitas
, revealed earlier in such remarks as ‘Rome has her Hannibal in Fabius’ and ‘Marcellus was a good soldier but a rash general’. Invited on one occasion by Antiochus to listen to a lecture by an old academic who specialised in military studies he made no comment until his opinion was specifically asked for, when he quietly remarked: ‘In my time I have had to listen to some old fools, but this one beats them all.’

There was a second meeting between Hannibal and Scipio some time before Antiochus opened the war in the East. A mission was sent to Ephesus from Rome to try to discover the Syrian ruler’s attitude and intentions. Scipio, who was leading it, sent to ask Hannibal if he was willing to meet him, to which the latter readily agreed. The accounts of this describe the two men talking of old times, and Scipio asking Hannibal who he thought was the greatest general in history. ‘Alexander the Great,’ Hannibal replied, adding that with only a small force he defeated armies many times greater in number than his own, and that he overran the remotest regions of the earth. Asked whom he would put next, Hannibal thought for a moment and said ‘Pyrrhus’ (the King of Epirus who had invaded Italy in 280 B.C.), citing his brilliant judgement in his choice of ground and his careful disposition of his troops. The Roman (and Scipio was clearly seeking for a compliment) pressed on: ‘And the third?’ ‘Myself without doubt.’ Scipio laughed, ‘And what would you have said had you beaten me?’ ‘Then,’ replied the Carthaginian, ‘I would have placed myself first of all commanders.’

This nicely turned compliment no doubt delighted Scipio, which is probably the reason that we have it reported by both Livy and Plutarch, Of these two great soldier-statesmen Arnold comments that Scipio resembled ‘the Achilles of Homer, the highest conception of the individual hero, relying on himself and sufficient to himself. But the same poet who conceived the character of Achilles has also drawn that of Hector; of the truly noble, because unselfish, hero, who subdues his genius to make it minister to the good of others, who lives for his relations, his friends and his country. And as Scipio lived in and for himself, like Achilles, so the virtue of Hector is worthily represented in the life of his great rival, Hannibal, who, from his childhood to his latest hour, in war and in peace, through glory and through obloquy, amid victories and amid disappointments, ever remembered to what purpose his father had devoted him, and withdrew no thought or desire or deed from their pledged service to his country.’

Both these distinguished men, so similar in many respects, so dissimilar in others, ended their lives in exile. Scipio, whom Cato had always hated—for his love of Greek culture almost as much as anything—was charged by the latter and his friends in the senate with defaulting on public funds. Scipio in reply brought his account books into the senate, tore them up, and told his accusers to grovel for proof in the fragments. He then pointed out that thousands of talents of silver had come into the public treasury through his agency, and that his victories had given Rome not only Spain, but also Africa, and now Asia (for he had also served at Magnesia). He left Rome in great bitterness and never returned.

Hannibal, after the defeat of Antiochus and the conclusion of a peace treaty between the King and Rome, no doubt rightly presumed that it would contain a clause relating to the deliverance of the Carthaginian into the hands of the victors. Swiftly and secretly he left by ship for Crete, then a wild and untamed island, the home of pirates and of men who accorded recognition to no monarch or state. Even here he was not to be left in peace. Rome, as she expanded into the east, and as her shipping routes grew more and more extensive, became increasingly concerned about the safety of her merchant marine. It was natural that in due course the Romans should become interested in this great island lying between the Aegean and Egypt, potentially prosperous and useful, but at that moment infested with pirates.

Hannibal had settled at Gortyna, an ancient city, second only to Knossus in importance in ancient times, and situated on a small river about three miles distant from the south coast. An amusing but possibly apocryphal story, tells how when Hannibal made his home here he made a point of openly depositing his treasure in the local temple of Artemis—much as one would in a modern bank. Rightly suspicious of Cretan honesty (as St Paul was to be some centuries later) the ‘treasure’ that he sent for safety to the temple was no more than a deception; large clay vases being weighted down with lead with a scattering of gold coins visible on the top. The bulk of his remaining fortune was concealed in some hollow bronze statues that stood in the garden of his house. In due course, a Roman squadron visited Crete bent on stamping out piracy and investigating the potential of the island’s resources and harbours. Hannibal in his inland retreat was undisturbed, but he knew that it could only be a matter of time before the Romans heard of the wealthy Carthaginian living in retirement at Gortyna, and learned his name. As he had done at Carthage, and as he had done at the court of Antiochus, Hannibal left secretly and swiftly. With him went the statues from his garden. When the Cretan priests of Artemis or Roman soldiers broke open the jars stored in the temple one can imagine his ironic laughter on the wind.

So Hannibal came to remote Bithynia, to the kingdom of Prusias. Even his death did not bring an end to his influence. His memory was to trouble Rome throughout all the centuries of the empire’s existence. Once he had stormed at the very gates of their city, once he had been close to overthrowing the state which now commanded nearly all the known world…. Historians and poets never forgot him; even the most acerbic such as Juvenal remembered that horrendous cry: ‘Hannibal at the gates!’
 

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CONCLUSION

The war which Hannibal initiated against Rome may be regarded as the last effort of the old eastern and Semitic peoples to prevent the domination of the Mediterranean world by a European state. That it failed was due to the immense resilience of the Romans, both in their political constitution and in their soldiery. Whatever Hannibal might achieve upon the battlefield, the strength that he could not break was the Republic and its association of allies. Had he been fighting against any other nation in the ancient world there is no doubt that his overwhelming victories would have brought them to their knees and to an early capitulation. Livy is right when he says that there was no other people that could have survived a disaster such as Cannae and continued to prosecute a war.

Hannibal’s thinking was that of a general of the old school (although there were few except Alexander the Great who were in his category) and his mistake was to believe that victory upon the battlefield secured the victory over a state. He was politically naive. At the same time it must be conceded that no conquering general before in history had encountered a people as dour and rugged as the Romans, who also possessed in their republican institutions, and the flexible strength of their relationship with their allies, so sound a framework for nationhood.

It has often been suggested that if the great Carthaginian had conquered Rome the history of the western world would have been irretrievably changed: there would have been no Graeco-Roman culture permeating the Mediterranean basin and Europe, but instead some Semitic inheritance from Carthage and the East. This is doubtful. Carthage was hardly a nation-state, at least in terms of manpower, and was always reliant upon mercenaries and men of other races to fight her wars. The Carthaginians were not an imperial-minded people but a comparatively small handful of merchants, craftsmen, and seafarers, prosperous and powerful from their trade, but not seeking great tracts of territory to colonise. Their only venture into this area was in Spain where the foundations of empire were laid by Hannibal’s father, very largely, it would seem, for an ultimate war of vengeance upon Rome. The idea of attacking Rome overland would never have suggested itself had Carthage retained control of the sea, but Roman seapower prevented this, and in the end this same seapower would strangle Hannibal’s lines of communication. He inherited the power-base of Spain and his father’s thinking, but it is unlikely that he ever considered his great venture across the Alps as anything other than a massive raid upon the enemy. If Rome had cracked and sought peace from Hannibal, one can be almost certain that the terms imposed upon her would have been sufficient only to ensure a situation in the Mediterranean resembling that which had existed before the First Punic War. Carthage did not have sufficient manpower to colonise in the manner of Rome or other countries in later centuries. Hannibal desired the abasement of a foe that, he felt, had betrayed the terms of the first peace treaty with Carthage and had begun to expand in a manner detrimental to the trading interests of his country.

The Carthaginians were the great entrepreneurs and middlemen of the ancient world: they had little culture of their own to transmit. Although the invention of the alphabet may be ascribed to their ancestors the Phoenicians, there is no evidence that they had any facility for literature, and the only, Carthaginian prose work of which we have certain knowledge was a treatise on agriculture. In their architecture, and even in pottery and other artefacts, the predominant influence was that of Greece. Their state, although fairly stable politically—and sometimes admired by Greek writers for this quality—had little to offer the people of other races. They had nothing as durable or as resilient as the Roman republic. If Carthage had triumphed over Rome, and even if Carthaginian influence had permeated Italy, it is unlikely to have been anything distinctive. The influence of the Greeks would still—just as it did with the Romans—have triumphed. The culture of the western world would have suffered a setback if Hannibal had won his war, but it would probably have been only a temporary one. In religious and moral terms the Carthaginians, with their primitive Canaanite beliefs and practices, would soon have been eclipsed by the more sympathetic pantheon of Greece, and inevitably by her philosophers. It is noteworthy that Hannibal himself had a Greek tutor when young, that he took two Greek secretaries with him on his great expedition, that he paid equal reverence to the gods of that country as to those of his own, and that the lost history which he wrote for the people of Rhodes would have been in Greek.

Hannibal’s genius in warfare has often and justifiably been acclaimed, for he had all the attributes of a great captain. When it comes to strategy, the movement of great armies and their tactical deployment upon the battlefield, he is almost impossible to fault. Hannibal had been bred for war and the world of the soldier was as natural to him as the sea to a shark or the air to an eagle. In the early years of his campaigns in Italy he enjoyed the benefit of the divided Roman military command and was quick to exploit differences of temperament between the two consuls opposing him. But against the tactics of ‘the delayer’, the canny Fabius Maximus, Hannibal was compelled to resort to a war of attrition, something for which neither he nor his composite armies were suited.