Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (38 page)

It was now early midsummer and Hannibal waited in vain at Canusium for word from his brother.
³⁰
Hasdrubal marched first east and then south along the Via Aemilia crossing the Po valley to the Adriatic coast (Livy 27.46.4). Reports placed the Carthaginian camp near the town of Sena (modern Senigallia) on the sea.
³¹
The consul Marcus Livius Salinator tracked Hasdrubal and camped nearby. The two sides prepared for battle. Meanwhile, Claudius Nero left his camp in Apulia in the utmost secrecy. Employing a subterfuge that Hannibal had used in the past he left some of his forces in place and stole away with the balance in the night. In a forced march he and seven thousand troops (including one thousand cavalry) surprised even his consular colleague with his swift appearance at his camp near Hasdrubal (Livy 27.43.8).
³²
The younger Barcid general, waiting for his brother, may have been puzzled at the lack of contact. As the two sides drew up their lines Hasdrubal noticed some unfamiliar shields in the Roman forces opposite him. After extensive reconnaissance his scouts reported they had heard two trumpet calls at the Roman camp, indicating that both consuls were present. Hasdrubal came to the realization that he now faced both the consuls and their armies. It dawned on him that Claudius Nero had somehow linked up with his colleague, and that his brother Hannibal was nowhere in sight (Livy 27.47.1–5; Polyb. 11.1.2).
³³

Hasdrubal was in a quandary, ‘tormented by how one of the consuls had slipped away from Hannibal’ (Livy 27.47.5). He may have assumed that Hannibal had been defeated in a battle and that he had arrived too late. Outnumbered, he now faced the armies of two experienced generals in un-familiar territory. Hasdrubal made a quick decision to leave his camp by night and head for the Via Flaminia, where he planned to cross the Apennines into Umbria. The route took Hasdrubal north from Sena in order to cross the Metaurus; he was probably heading for the most accessible route for moving his army, including elephants, across the Apennines. Hasdrubal’s army may have numbered about 30,000 to 35,000 men, made up of Carthaginians, Numidians, Spanish and Celtic troops, cavalry, recruited foot soldiers and elephants.
³⁴
As they tried to retreat by night, they were abandoned by their guides and wandered along the twisting banks of the river Metaurus.
³⁵
These
nocturnal wanderings gave the Romans enough time to catch up. At the banks of the Metaurus, as Hasdrubal was searching for a place to ford the river, he was forced into battle.
³⁶

At the Metaurus Hasdrubal faced the Roman consuls whose numbers could have been in the region of forty thousand. The Romans imposed a battle as soon as they caught up with the Carthaginian army, not wanting to give Hasdrubal a chance to compose himself. Hannibal’s brother had no choice but to fight even though he had been marching through the night and his soldiers were unprepared for battle. As Polybius puts it, ‘none of these things was favourable to Hasdrubal, but as circumstances did not admit delay … he was obliged to draw up his Iberians and Gauls’ (11.1.2). Hasdrubal placed his ten elephants in front of his line. He waited just behind them with his army arrayed narrowly after him. His troops fell on the enemy, ‘determined either to conquer or die in this battle’ (Polyb. 11.1.3). The two sides fought with equal ferocity but eventually the younger Marcellus (son of the slain consul) was able to circle around the Roman camp and attack the flanks of the Carthaginians. At the Metaurus the outflanking manoeuvre, so often used successfully by Hannibal, was turned against his brother by the younger generation of Roman commanders. The elephants, trapped in between the two armies, flailed around and as such they were ‘of equal service to both sides’. Six of the elephants were killed with their drivers and the other two captured. The young Marcellus cut down the Iberian troops on the flanks and the fierce battle favoured the Romans. Casualties were high, although the numbers are difficult to ascertain with any certainty. Many of Hasdrubal’s soldiers were killed on the field and many captured (Livy 27.49.5–9; Polyb. 11.3.2–3). The Romans too suffered high casualties but it was a devastating loss for the Carthaginians. So much so that Livy would claim that they ‘had been repaid for Cannae’ (27.49.5).
³⁷

Polybius calls Hasdrubal a ‘brave man’, especially ‘at this his last hour when he fell in the thick of the fight’, and the Augustan poet Ovid adds that he died ‘by his own sword’ (Polyb. 11.2.1; Ovid,
Fasti
6.770).
³⁸
Only his elder brother rivalled him in excellence as a general but Hasdrubal never attained the legendary status of Hannibal. The poet Horace, who wrote a poem that glorified the family of Claudius Nero, celebrated this defeat of Hasdrubal as one of the great moments of Roman history (
Ode
4.4). It was revenge for earlier defeats and another turning point for Hannibal in Italy. In Rome news of the victory was met with joyful celebrations in the streets and the temples filled with offerings. The Senate ‘decreed three days of public thanksgiving’ as the Romans began to believe that the gods were back on their side and again ‘dared to carry on business as in peacetime’ (Livy 27.51.8).

The Roman consul Claudius Nero had detached Hasdrubal Barca’s head and kept it as a token and proof of his victory. It is not clear whether Hannibal even realized that Claudius Nero had left the vicinity (although it is hard to believe that this was so). When the consul returned to his camp near Canusium he ordered that the head of Hasdrubal be catapulted before the advance guards of the Carthaginian positions. In this way it was taken to Hannibal in his camp.
³⁹
Claudius Nero released two of his African prisoners so that they could go to Hannibal and provide a first-hand account of what had happened. It was a dramatic gesture perhaps designed to force Hannibal to surrender. When he learned of his brother’s death and the destruction of the army that had been coming to his aid Hannibal was shaken to the core. Livy claims prophetically that ‘he now clearly saw the destiny of Carthage’ (27.51.12).

A series of paintings by the eighteenth-century Venetian artist Tiepolo captures the image of the aftermath of the Metaurus. An ornately plumed Hannibal lurches back in horror at the site of the rotting head of the younger brother he had not seen since he left Iberia eleven years earlier (see Plate 7). This was the final blow to Hannibal’s aspirations in Italy and was the last season of major campaigning between the two sides there.
⁴⁰
After the Metaurus Hannibal struck camp and retired to Bruttium. He now carried out mainly defensive operations, fending off Roman armies rather than attacking any new positions. Livy notes that throughout the next year (206
BCE
) ‘there was no encounter with Hannibal. After the recent misfortune that had fallen both on his country and on him personally he did not initiate any hostilities and while he remained inactive the Romans did not provoke him’ (Livy 28.12.1).

The battle for Italy was well and truly over with the death of Hasdrubal but the Carthaginians kept fighting and Hannibal himself had yet to be defeated. In Iberia the war dragged on and ‘it was not only in Italy that the god of war smiled upon the Romans’ (Silius Italicus 16.23). The Carthaginian command continued under Mago Barca. The youngest of the three brothers carried on fighting in Iberia along with Hasdrubal Gisgo, whom Livy notes was ‘the greatest and most famous Carthaginian leader after the Barcids’ (28.12.13). The Carthaginian generals lost more territory but an intense struggle between the Celtiberians, Romans, Numidians and Carthaginians continued. For Scipio it was a period of consolidation and victory. Politics as much as military prowess won the day as Scipio’s assiduous courting of the Celtiberian chieftains and the Numidians over this period broke up the alliances that had been so essential to Carthaginian (especially Barcid) successes.

The decisive battle for the Iberian peninsula took place near Ilipa in the early spring of 206
BCE
(Silpia in Livy 28.12–15; Polyb. 11.20–24), (see
Map 2
).
⁴¹
This town is situated just north of modern Seville on the banks of the strategic Baetis river. We have seen that control over the region, which was rich in resources, was sought by both Carthage and Rome. Hasdrubal Gisgo and Mago had held troop levies across the Baetis river valley and well into Lusitania (modern Portugal) and raised a large army.
⁴²
The numbers of troops they managed to pull together may have been as many as 70,000 (Polyb. 11.20.2), although a lower number of 50,000 is also mentioned (Livy 28.12.13). The cavalry contingent was thought to be in the region of 4,000 strong.

The Roman sources describe Scipio as greatly outnumbered, his total force being 45,000. The Carthaginians had massed in this strategic location with the hope of tackling the Roman army once and for all. The news of Hasdrubal’s death on the Metaurus must have reached them and perhaps they were willing to risk Iberia in a win or lose scenario. Scipio’s role as the foil to Hannibal is nowhere clearer than in the narrative around the subsequent battle of Ilipa. Scipio carefully prepared his troops for the battle. His plan was to surprise the Carthaginians in their camp by catching them off guard. He made sure his own soldiers had breakfasted and were organized to attack and fight (Polyb. 22.11.4–8). This is the reverse of events of the battle of Trebia in 218
BCE
, when Hannibal had drawn the Romans unprepared into a battle at which Scipio was present. By startling the Carthaginians with an early morning attack on their camp he was able to unsettle them. As Hasdrubal Gisgo hastily drew his army into a battle line Scipio outsmarted the much larger Carthaginian force with a series of very complicated manoeuvres.
⁴³
These involved turning whole sections of his army at angles through various steps in order to outflank the Carthaginian army.
⁴⁴
The battle was won by Scipio’s tactical brilliance and ended in the destruction of the newly raised army of Hasdrubal Gisgo.
⁴⁵
Hannibal’s brother Mago was also supposedly present at the battle of Ilipa but we do not have a clear picture of his movements.

The survivors of the Carthaginian army retreated in disordered flight after Ilipa, harassed by the Roman cavalry. Livy claims that Hasdrubal Gisgo eventually ‘abandoned his army and fled to Gades by night’ (28.16.8).
⁴⁶
He sent boats back for Mago who had continued to hold out with his army and with this help the Carthaginian forces dispersed to safety. Shortly thereafter Hasdrubal returned to Africa, crossing over from Iberia and stopping at Siga, the western capital of the Numidian king Syphax, trying to drum up continued support for the Carthaginian cause.
⁴⁷

In Iberia Scipio founded a new Roman city, a colony for his veterans on the Baetis river, called Italica.
⁴⁸
The years of fighting, however, did not come to a close with Ilipa and the rest of the Iberian peninsula was ‘mopped up’ by the Romans but not without fierce local resistance (Polyb. 11.24.10–11; Livy 28.19.1–23.5).
⁴⁹
Livy puts it succinctly when he notes that ‘the time for reprisals seemed to have arrived’ (28.19.7–8) and the Roman troops meted out revenge on those who had opposed or betrayed them over the previous years of war. The so-called ‘treacherous towns’ of Castulo and Ilurgia were attacked (Appian,
Ib.
32).
⁵⁰
At Illurgia, ‘nobody considered taking captives alive … it was a massacre, of armed and unarmed alike, and of women as well as men, the invaders’ ruthless fury descending even to the massacre of infants’ (Livy 28.20.6–7). At Castulo, so closely linked to Hannibal through his wife, the city surrendered the Carthaginian auxiliaries in the town and thus managed to diminish the impact of the Roman retribution. The people of Astapa (near modern Osuna), long allies of the Carthaginians, no doubt having heard of the fate of Illurgia, chose mass suicide over capture by the Roman commander.
⁵¹
Further into the clean-up operations Scipio fell seriously ill and this became the catalyst for a mutiny, revealing just how important the personality of the individual commander was to the army in Iberia and how unstable the situation remained (Polyb. 11.25–33). Eventually ‘all the Carthaginians were driven from the land of gold and departed from Spanish territory’ (Silius Italicus 16.24–25).
⁵²

The legacy of Barcid rule in the Iberian peninsula lived on after the departure of the Carthaginian armies. Through the previous decades settlements had been established that were populated with Barcid veterans and there had been immigration from Carthaginian cities in Africa (Appian,
Ib
. 56).
⁵³
This perhaps contributed to the continuing dissent, rebellion and upheaval in the Iberian peninsula up until the first century
CE
. The threat no longer came from Carthage itself and the Romans made sure they controlled the strategic centres for communication and mineral wealth. Gades was the last stronghold of the Carthaginians on the peninsula. It was the place where Hamilcar Barca had landed some thirty-three years previously: the Carthaginian adventure in Iberia had come full circle. Mago Barca had remained holed up at Gades with the remnants of the Carthaginian army while Hasdrubal Gisgo returned to Africa. Orders from Carthage directed Mago to abandon Iberia and return to Italy with his forces. As he sailed from Gades en route to Italy, Mago made a desperate attempt to attack New Carthage, perhaps holding some hope of reclaiming the old capital. When his attack on the city was repulsed, Mago and his fleet were forced back westwards and attempted to take refuge again
in Gades. At this point, the long-time ally and the last pro-Carthaginian city in the Iberian peninsula refused him entry (Livy 28.37.10). Mago, with nowhere to turn, retreated to the island of Minorca before eventually sailing on to Genua (Genoa) in Liguria and capturing the city in
c.
205
BCE
.