Hannibal (4 page)

Throughout these years Rome was not unaware that far beyond Sardinia, across the long sweep of sea to the Balearics, and westward yet again, there in the Iberian peninsula—a land larger than Italy and almost totally unknown to them—her enemies were increasingly active. Merchants and sailors from the thriving Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) were well acquainted of most things that happened in the western Mediterranean. They knew that the Carthaginians were consolidating their hold on the land and they were concerned at, among other things, being denied the tin from southern Spain. The other main source was Cornwall, whence it was transported by sea to Brittany and then overland by a circuitous route which, in its closing stages, passed only a little north of the Pyrenees. Clearly, if a hostile power were allowed to dominate Spain north of the Ebro and extended up to the Pyrenees themselves, this all-important route might also be threatened.

For Massilia the economic threat was paramount, while for Rome the military threat could also be discerned on the horizon. In 226 B.C., anxious to effect some agreement before Carthaginian expansion might render it too late, the Romans sent a mission to Hasdrubal the Handsome to try to define the spheres of influence of the two powers. Hasdrubal, at that moment in the development of the new empire, did not want to become involved in any major disagreement with Rome. Aware that as his power grew steadily behind him he would—if he so chose—be able to break any treaty when it suited him, he agreed to the Roman suggestions. A treaty was signed between the two powers to the effect that the river Ebro should form the northern limit of the Carthaginian sphere of influence and the southern limit of the Roman. A specific clause, whose importance is shown by the fact that Polybius quotes it twice, stated that the Carthaginians would not cross the Ebro ‘for the purpose of waging war’. Hasdrubal was clearly playing for time: the natural defence line of the Iberian peninsula was the Pyrenees, and to acknowledge Roman authority over so large an area of the country to the north was contrary to geographical and strategic sense. Hasdrubal was lacking in neither. There was, however, one small—but, as it proved, vital—point that was overlooked. Well south of the line of the Ebro, on the Mediterranean coast, there was a Greek colony called Zacynthus (Saguntum) which maintained close trading links with Massilia. The Massiliotes, for their part, who, as allies of Rome, must have had a hand in framing the treaty, certainly knew of its geographical relationship to the demarcation line. Possibly Hasdrubal discounted it as something that could be dealt with, amicably or not, at a later date. At the time that the treaty was signed Saguntum was no more than a Greek colony with close ties with Massilia, but not under the protection of the Romans. Yet Saguntum was in fact in alliance with Massilia (in turn, an ally of Rome), and this must have been well enough known to the Carthaginians.

During all these years in Spain—first under his father, and then under his brother-in-law—Hannibal had been familiar with the world of the soldier. He had lived in their camps ever since leaving Carthage and, though his education was no doubt well attended to by his Greek tutor, the daily canvas against which he grew up was a military one, set in the world of Spain. Spain, whose African face even in those days was marked enough in the southern regions, gradually changed the further north that the Carthaginians extended their sway by arms and by alliances. What memories Hannibal retained of Carthage, the palaces of the rich, the great temples of the ancient gods, or the towering tenements of the poor, is but conjecture, yet Spain must necessarily have become his homeland—and Spain was many countries. Ranging from the arid south to the eagle-haunted frozen mountains of the north, it differed also in its peoples. The Iberians and the Tartessians from the area of Tartessos (Tarshish) west of Gades were the first to be encountered by the Carthaginians. They were partly familiar, because of the centuries in which the Phoenicians had traded with them, and the closeness of their North African background meant that culturally and materially they had absorbed a great deal from the Semitic East. Further north, however, the colonisers encountered a racial mixture of Iberians with Gallic invaders (Celts), sometimes referred to as Celtiberians, while the northern third of the country was dominated by Gauls who had arrived later in successive waves across the Pyrenees. Over the centuries throughout the length and breadth of the country the original native inhabitants had retreated before these invaders and sought refuge in the mountains. It was with the Spanish inhabitants of Iberian and Celtic stock that the Carthaginians were to form the bulk of their army, the formation and training of which Hasdrubal had largely entrusted to his brother-in-law Hannibal in recent years.

So far Carthage had every reason to be happy about her trust in Hamilcar, and in the ‘expansionist party’ which had seen a new empire in Spain as the only solution to the city’s difficulties. Exports from Spain more than made good the losses from Sicily and Sardinia and there was no sign of these exports declining—rather the reverse—under the leadership of Hasdrubal the Handsome. It was a blow, therefore, when the news was received in 221 B.C. that Hasdrubal had been murdered (traditionally by a local Gaul with some unspecified grievance). But there can never have been any great doubt as to his successor. Although Hamilcar Barca had acknowledged the formal jurisdiction of Carthage, he seems to have enjoyed these new lands almost as an independent kingdom of his own and had carefully laid the grounds of the succession. It was almost inevitable that, upon the death of Hasdrubal, Hannibal should succeed him.

IV

HANNIBAL IN COMMAND

Hannibal was twenty-six when he was unanimously chosen by the army as its new commander. The veteran soldiers seeing him daily over the years had long ago remarked his likeness to his father. ‘They imagined’, writes Livy, ‘that Hamilcar was restored to them as he had been in his youth. They noticed the same lively expression and piercing eye, the same features and cast of countenance. It had not taken him long to show that his resemblance to his father was the least consideration in gaining him support. Never was there a genius more fitted for those two very different things—obedience and command. It was very difficult to decide whether he was dearer to the general or to the army. Whenever there was anything to be done requiring courage and resolution there was no one whom Hasdrubal liked better to entrust with it; nor did any other leader inspire his men with more confidence and daring.’ These words, coming from the pen of the historian engaged in writing the definitive eulogistic history of Rome, carry more weight than if they had been written by the Greek secretaries whose accounts (alas, long lost) were compiled from day to day over the brilliant years of Hannibal’s life.

He had been some sixteen years in Spain, and it is not difficult to see how they had trained him for his subsequent role. But it is also clear, from the evidence of his life and achievements, that upon him seemed to shine that special grace or talent which, in all ages and under all varieties of religious belief, has appeared to contemporary observers to have been God-given rather than acquired by circumstances, parentage or self-discipline. ‘To reckless courage in incurring dangers he united the greatest judgement when in the midst of them,’ wrote Livy. This is the difference between leadership and plain bravery. From the record of his life we know that he must have been well built, strong and agile, and with qualities of endurance that, even when pitted against the hardy Romans, seem to have been exceptional. Exceptional, too, was that strange power, possessed by other famous leaders but by few to so great an extent, of commanding the devotion of his armies. These were composed not of patriotic citizens fighting in defence of their country, nor of a whole people liberated from centuries of oppression and believing in their revolution as in a religion (the armies of Republican France wielded by Napoleon), but a mercenary mixture of Libyans, Numidians, and other North Africans, Iberians, Celtiberians, Gauls from Spain and from France and, finally, Gauls from Italy. They were, it is true, Carthaginian-officered, but this officer class was only a handful in the multitude of men whom Hannibal led over the years. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that this
corps d’élite
was of exceptional quality and it is un-fortunate that so little is recorded of its individual members. A few names are known: Hannibal’s brothers Hasdrubal and Mago, who joined his forces in Spain at some unspecified dates, Gisgo, another general, Maharbal an outstanding cavalry leader, and Synbalus, a distinguished physician from Alexandria. Aristotle describes how the Carthaginian officers were ‘allowed to wear one bracelet for every campaign they had served’.

Livy’s portrait of this great enemy of Rome continues: ‘No toil could exhaust his body or overcome his spirit. He could endure heat and cold alike, and his consumption of food and drink was determined by natural want and not by pleasure. His times of sleeping and waking were not determined by night or day. Once his work was done he gave what time remained to rest, but he did not court this with a soft bed or by quiet. Many have often seen him lying on the ground wrapped only in a military coat amid the sentries and outposts of his soldiers. [This has such an authentic ring about it that one would like to know from what source contemporary with Hannibal—perhaps the missing diaries?—this vivid picture was drawn.] In his dress he was in no way superior to his equals, but he was conspicuous in his arms and his horse. He was always by far the first in the ranks of both cavalry and infantry and—foremost to enter the battle—he was the last to leave it once battle had begun.’

So far the Roman historian has painted a noble picture of the great adversary who had nearly prevented the emergence of that Roman empire which Livy celebrated. (It is, of course, necessary for the military historian to stress the qualities of his country’s enemy, otherwise the victories of his own side would seem insipid.) Livy now turns to the other side of Hannibal’s character, it being a natural assumption that no man can be of a piece but that, if he has good or admirable qualities, these must be somehow counterbalanced by the bad. Thus: ‘These very great qualities of the man were equalled by monstrous vice: inhuman cruelty, a worse than Punic perfidy, having no regard for truth and none for sanctity; no fear of the gods, no reverence of an oath, and no religious scruples.’ As will become clear, these major charges cannot be substantiated and there is no evidence—even in Livy’s own account—of any of them. It is as if the historian, having acknowledged Hannibal’s known virtues, suddenly became afraid of his own temerity and had to neutralise them with a recital of evil traits that would account for Rome’s justifiable hatred of him and, in the eyes of the gods, her righteous triumph over such a monster.

It is even more curious that none of those later commentators on Hannibal (including Livy) ever found anything scandalous to say about his private life. Julius Caesar, Octavian Augustus, Tiberius, and almost all other Roman rulers of distinction are commonly accused of drunkenness, adultery, fornication, sodomy, or sadism, and the unfortunate Tiberius of almost every aberration that can be found in the textbooks of sexual pathology. The writers of antiquity, in fact, who managed to find some more or less scandalous anecdotes about nearly all the great men in their history, found themselves baffled when it came to Hannibal. The second-century historian Justin says almost reluctantly that his behaviour towards his female captives was such that ‘one would not think he was born in Africa’—an interesting example of early racial bias. The unreliable Appian, writing in the second century A.D., over three centuries after the events and basing his account on some unknown source, states that while wintering in Lucania in south-east Italy Hannibal indulged in luxurious living and ‘the delights of love’. It would have been scarcely surprising if he had; certainly not unnatural in a soldier who by then had been years away from his home in Spain. He had married in Castulo the daughter of the local chieftain, called Imilce and possibly of Greek blood. There is no certain record of any children, although tradition has it that she bore him a son. It is unlikely that Hannibal ever saw her again after he left on his expedition to Italy. Certainly it would have been politic for him to have married into the ruling caste of that city, for Castulo commanded the Silver Mountains of the Olcades people and their friendship was therefore important to the Carthaginians. The poet Silius Italicus, in his epic,
Punica,
pictures Imilce pleading with her husband to be allowed to go with him across the Alps and being refused. Elsewhere he says that the love of Hannibal and Imilce was one of memories.

Just as no letters from Hannibal, whether to his wife or to anyone else, have been preserved (letters which might have told us more about the man than anything in the histories) so no bust or statue exists that can safely be identified with him. Of the coin portraits which may well depict him one of the most interesting was struck at Cartagena about 220 B.C., shortly after he had taken command. Since coins in the ancient world assumed for a mostly illiterate people an importance that it is difficult for the modern world to understand—being both pictures and pronouncements—it is very probable that Hannibal’s succession to the leadership would have been marked by the striking of a number of silver coins. The Cartagena coin shows a handsome young man (the beardless head of Melqart, the Phoenician Hercules), with a profile unlike a Greek or Roman in that the straight nose ends in nostrils with a Semitic flare. The full mouth is slightly down-turned and firmly delineated. The hair is curly and the eye large, prominent and thoughtful. It is interesting to note that this coin portrait is almost identical to a bronze bust of a young man found at Volubilis, Morocco, which on good authority has been claimed as being of Hannibal. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth and jawline are so similar to the coin as to make the attribution credible. This is not merely the head of a handsome young man, in the classic tradition, but of a thoughtful and powerful personality—quite different from the Antinous-like youths of which antiquity has yielded so many.