Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (37 page)

Hasdrubal was able to get away with about two-thirds of his soldiers, as well as his treasury and elephants.
¹¹
His goal was to cross the Pyrenees, pass over
into Gaul and eventually on to Italy to meet up with Hannibal.
¹²
This was no spontaneous dash for the mountains: the Carthaginians must have planned the march beforehand. Polybius and Livy say nothing of a Carthaginian strategy but it only makes sense if it was a prearranged departure. This is emphasized by the fact that a new army was sent from Carthage to replace Hasdrubal under the general Hanno. Hasdrubal Barca did not risk his entire army in the battle but seems to have held back and retreated as soon as the tide was about to turn. His route took him across the river Baetis and north from there perhaps to the Atlantic coast and around the Pyrenees. Scipio let Hasdrubal and his army go, wary of a trap and the possibility of the other Carthaginian armies catching up with him from behind (Polyb. 10. 39.8–9). This cautious approach left Scipio open to criticism at Rome from Fabius Maximus (‘the delayer’, of all people). It was not a policy Scipio would repeat in later battles (Livy 28.42.14–15).

By the time Hasdrubal departed from the Iberian peninsula the situation in Italy from Hannibal’s perspective was bleak. His ability to manoeuvre had been greatly reduced and only the region of Bruttium and the cities of southern Magna Graecia remained under Carthaginian control. The area in which he could operate had been severely eroded yet he still managed to elude Roman power and inflict the occasional defeat on the many different armies he faced. The advent of Hasdrubal supplied Hannibal with a glimmer of possibility. He must have hoped that the joined-up Carthaginian armies could inflict another setback on the Romans big enough to shift the momentum in Italy. This must have been the brothers’ aspiration.
¹³

Not everything in Italy had gone according to Roman interests and there was underlying turmoil and support for Hannibal’s cause that may have sustained his ambitions. In 209
BCE
, the stalwarts of the Roman coalition, the Latin allies, were extremely unhappy after years of pressure on their resources. Evidence for the strain on the relationship comes from reports that twelve out of the thirty Latin allies told the Roman consuls that they would no longer supply the men necessary to fill their quotas for recruitment. The Latin cities complained about their soldiers’ length of service and the cost: ‘a compatriot conscripted by the Romans was more lost to them than one captured by the Carthaginian’ they claimed (Livy 27.9.1–6). There had also been trouble among the Etruscans and in Etruria the propraetor Varro (the surviving consul of Cannae) was sent to deal with uprisings and disturbances near Arretium (modern Arezzo).
¹⁴
Despite these internal problems the general feeling at Rome in the summer of 208
BCE
was confidence that a final strike at Hannibal might end the war quickly.
¹⁵
The glory, reputation and honours won by Fabius
Maximus at Tarentum and Marcellus at Syracuse spurred on other commanders who were hoping to build up their own reputations.

Marcellus had once more been elected consul, for 208
BCE
, and his colleague was Titus Quinctius Crispinus. Crispinus took his army and made for Bruttium, where he attacked the town of Locri. When Hannibal approached Locri with his army, Crispinus was forced to raise his siege (Livy 27.25.10–12). Marcellus had his legions at Venusia in Apulia and Crispinus moved north to confer. Hannibal now spent his time marching back and forth from the scene of one military crisis to another. The two Roman consuls planned to join forces to deliver a crushing defeat. Despite his forces being substantially outnumbered, often on the defensive and their movements restricted to an ever-shrinking territory, Hannibal was still dangerous. A multitude of Roman armies seemed to block every route and were constantly harassing his remaining allies. The consuls set up their camps close to each other in an area between Venusia and Bantia, on the border between Apulia and Lucania. Hannibal remained the consummate risk-taker and was still confident of his abilities to match any army in the field. He moved up from the south into the same area as the consuls, looking to engage them. The Roman commanders were also eager, lining up their soldiers ‘almost daily’ in their enthusiasm to do battle with Hannibal (27.25.13–14).

The target of the engagement was a hill between the main Roman and Carthaginian camps, where Hannibal had stationed some Numidian cavalry in ambush. The Roman consuls, with a small number of cavalry (two squadrons) and skirmishers (about thirty
velites
), moved to survey the hill on horseback. As they climbed the hill the Numidians shifted to block their return to camp. Fierce fighting broke out until Crispinus, struck by two javelins, turned his horse and fled, whilst Marcellus was run through the side with a broad spear (Plut.
Marc.
29.8).
¹⁶
Roman confidence had been extremely high but the fact that the two experienced consuls failed to learn from all the previous encounters with Hannibal and blindly stumbled into a trap is both surprising and revealing. Polybius scathingly comments that Marcellus brought ‘this misfortune on himself by behaving not so much like a general as like a simpleton’ (10.32.7).

In the Roman camp they watched in horror as the skirmish ended before they could send out cover. To Hannibal it must have seemed almost too easy. The venerable Roman general Marcus Marcellus, many times consul and defender of Nola, taker of Syracuse and illustrious opponent of Hannibal, met his death on that hill in 208
BCE
. He had an immense reputation among both the Romans and the Carthaginians, and was immortalized by Virgil:

They were struck with awe as father Anchises paused,

Then carried on: ‘Look there, Marcellus marching toward us,

Decked in splendid plunder he tore from a chief he killed,

victorious, towering over all’.

(
Aeneid
6.852–856
¹⁷
)

At well over sixty at the time of his death, Marcellus came to his end rather ignobly, plunging into a trap having failed to take proper precautions, and putting his army at risk (Livy 27.26–28; Polybius 10.32.1–12). He was brave, however, and had always been willing to fight Hannibal head on when others dared not. Hannibal is said to have confessed that he ‘feared Fabius as a schoolmaster and Marcellus as an adversary’ (Plutarch,
Marc.
9.4). He held his old rival in great esteem. Plutarch reports that when Hannibal ‘was told of Marcellus’ death, [he] immediately rushed to the hill’. On that spot Hannibal looked down upon the face of his long-time foe, ‘his fierce and troublesome enemy, and gave the order to have the body properly clad and adorned and honourably burned’ (Plutarch,
Marc.
30.1).
¹⁸

Before he cremated the consul, Hannibal had taken his consular ring, no doubt thinking it might come in useful. His first move after Marcellus’ death was to try to take advantage of this victory and recapture the nearby city of Salapia. His approach was a ruse: he tried to use the ring of the dead consul to convince the guards of the city to open the gates. The townsfolk wanted nothing to do with Hannibal and some of his men were trapped and killed when the trick was discovered. If nothing else, the story illustrates just how far Hannibal’s status in Italy had fallen by the summer of 208
BCE
. Once he had been shown unable to protect his allies he was isolated and unwelcome in the cities across the south.
¹⁹
Thus even though this was the first time in Roman history that both consuls had been killed in battle (or as a result of battle) there was little respite for Hannibal and his army. The Romans did not miss a step and Crispinus, although he died a few days later, lived long enough to appoint T. Manlius Torquatus dictator for the rest of that year (Livy 27.33.7).

After his failure at Salapia Hannibal immediately left for the south to relieve another siege of Locri, which had begun when Roman troops arrived from Sicily. He had just killed one consul and fatally wounded the other but the Romans still returned in full strength. Tracking Hannibal’s whereabouts every season reveals he was almost constantly on the move, against one or another of the Roman armies that appeared as soon as yet another was defeated. The analogy of the many-headed Roman Hydra had never been
more apt as they came back at him with more men no matter what success he had (Livy 27.28.1–17).

Through the winter of 208/207
BCE
Hannibal was in Bruttium while his brother’s passage through Gaul was creating quite a stir. Reports arrived at Rome claiming that Hasdrubal carried with him large quantities of gold to raise a new army. Word must have reached Hannibal that his brother had left Iberia and was spending the winter, after crossing the Pyrenees, in Gaul. In the early spring of 207
BCE
Hasdrubal crossed the Alps with his army ‘more quickly and easily’ than his brother had just over a decade earlier (Livy 27.39.7; Polyb. 11.1.1).
²⁰
It is possible that Hasdrubal crossed the mountains via the most southern of the Alpine passes, the main route that follows the Durance valley.
²¹
He moved quickly through to the Po valley and gathered recruits along the way, laying siege to the Roman colony of Piacenza en route. Both Hannibal and the Romans were caught out by the speed at which Hasdrubal crossed the mountains and had not ‘anticipated that his journey would be anything like as easy and swift as it turned out to be’ (Livy 27.39.13–14). Hannibal therefore left his winter quarters later than was ideal to rendezvous with his brother.

The city of Rome was thrown into a panic at the news that another Barcid brother had crossed the Alps and that his army was now in Italy. The potential for terror was great, ‘now there were two Punic wars in the country, two mighty armies and practically two Hannibals’ (Livy 27.44.5) but the situation a decade on was remarkably different. The reality of the threat posed by the Carthaginians had been severely diminished by 207
BCE
and it is a testament to Hannibal’s reputation that such dread was aroused by Hasdrubal’s arrival (27.39.1). Livy claims that the citizens of Rome went into a frenzy of religious placation of the gods as prodigies and omens were recorded that heightened the alarm. With wolves mauling guards at Capua and a stream of blood flowing through a gateway in Minturnae, nine days of religious ceremonies and public prayer and sacrifice were employed to calm the ‘public conscience’ (27.37.1–4). Particularly vivid details of the birth of a child at Frusino who was the size of a four-year old and had no visible gender caused Etruscan soothsayers to be brought in. They ordered that the child be taken from Roman territory, placed alive in a box and thrown into the sea. The great defeats of the previous decade had left a superstitious Roman public haunted and the gods had to be ritually placated.

The consuls elect for 207
BCE
, Gaius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius (Salinator), divided Italy in two. Nero moved south against Hannibal and Salinator faced north and the newly arrived army of Hasdrubal. These were
two experienced Roman commanders determined to keep the two brothers and their armies apart. The Romans faced the new Carthaginian threat with the huge numbers at their disposal in Italy. There were a total of twenty-three legions in action that year and fifteen of those were in Italy. This amounted to four times as many soldiers as Hannibal had faced in Italy when he arrived in 218
BCE
.
²²
In addition to the consular armies, there were armies in Etruria and in the region of modern Rimini (Ariminum, called the
Ager Gallicus
) ready to block any route that Hasdrubal might take over the Apennines (Livy 27.36.10–13, 40.1).
²³

Hannibal approached Grumentum to meet the consul Claudius Nero as he moved south. He had to be more cautious than ever as the Romans were now more confident in their approach and a more experienced set of military commanders was (usually) less likely to be surprised or outmanoeuvred.
²⁴
Hannibal had to contend with the army of the new consul, two legions in Bruttium under Q. Fulvius Flaccus and two more near Tarentum and one in Capua.
²⁵
In this period Hannibal’s resources were at an all-time low and the greater number of Roman troops meant he could not rest in one place. He could not afford to be caught between two armies. Intense skirmishes took place at Grumentum and Venusia. Livy reports that Hannibal’s army was deeply demoralized by the large number of casualties suffered by the Carthaginians troops (27.42.10–13).
²⁶

Hannibal turned south to Metapontum and then advanced his troops north to Canusium (Canosa). There he awaited word from his brother. The consul Claudius Nero set up his camp nearby, tracking Hannibal’s movements. Hannibal’s wayward route through Apulia and Lucania is puzzling, and reconstructing his movements and motivations difficult.
²⁷
He may well have been so harried by Roman armies that he took evasive action or he may have needed to collect more troops because of the losses he had suffered in the skirmishes at Grumentum and Venusia (Livy 27.42.1–17).
²⁸

Meanwhile when Hasdrubal was in the Po valley laying siege to the town of Placentia he sent ‘four Gallic horsemen and two Numidians’ with a letter to his brother. The messengers crossed most of the length of Italy through enemy territory and reached Metapontum but found that Hannibal had already moved on. The messengers set out to follow him but were caught and handed over to the Roman praetor Quintus Claudius somewhere near Tarentum (Livy 27.43.1–4). The praetor pressured and questioned the messengers who, under the threat of torture, revealed their mission. Quintus Claudius sent the letter containing the details of the Carthaginian brothers’ plan with the messengers directly to the consul’s headquarters. The Romans
now knew that Hannibal was meant to move north and meet Hasdrubal in Umbria.
²⁹
Hasdrubal did not know that their plan had been uncovered and it is not clear that Hannibal was aware of the specifics at all. The Barcid brothers were seemingly in disarray. This illustrates the degree to which Hannibal’s once superior intelligence network seems to have fallen apart and was no longer functioning.