Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (41 page)

Carthage’s only substantial ally in Africa was now defeated and after the battle of the Great Plains, Masinissa and Laelius were sent to pursue Syphax and to reclaim the land of the Massylians as Masinissa’s kingdom. Ovid’s
Fasti
tell us that it was on 23 June that Masinissa captured Syphax, who had been thrown by his horse in a cavalry engagement between the two kings (6.769). The Masaesylian king was to be handed over to the Romans but first Masinissa took him straight to the impregnable stronghold of Cirta. There Syphax was paraded in chains before the walls of the city and, as Masinissa had wagered,
when the population saw their king bound and defeated they opened the gates to the conqueror (Livy 30.12.1–10).
³⁸

Masinissa took the city, Syphax’s realm, and also took his wife, the Carthaginian Sophonisba. The daughter of Hasdrubal Gisgo had been instrumental in keeping Syphax loyal to Carthage in the year of Scipio’s invasion. Now she flung herself on the mercy of Masinissa, begging him to take her life rather than see her paraded in chains in Rome.
³⁹
Sophonisba was ‘a woman of great beauty and in her prime’ and Livy tells us that she moved the Numidian king’s heart with her nobility and bravery (30.12.17). Masinissa then decided that, rather than hand her over to the Romans, he would marry Sophonisba himself. As she was the wife of the king he had just conquered, this would have been customary in the Numidian tradition. Needless to say it was not a custom that impressed Scipio. Masinissa had, by marrying Sophonisba, saved her from Roman captivity and removed her from Scipio’s power.
⁴⁰

Once Masinissa was again in the company of Scipio, the Roman general insisted that he hand over his wife as a captive of war. Sophonisba, born of Carthaginian nobility and wife of a defeated king, would be a valuable commodity. In the legend as told, rather than deliver her to Scipio, Masinissa had a cup of poison secretly passed to his queen by a servant. She chose death over slavery and took the cup with the words ‘I accept this wedding gift … it is not unwelcome, if my husband has found it impossible to give his wife a greater one’. With dramatic flourish she drank the poison and died. The story of Sophonisba as narrated by the Roman sources has echoed down the centuries. She was, by her beauty and persuasive power, able to ‘make everyone subservient to her wishes’ (Appian,
Lib
. 27). The romance and nobility of the Carthaginian queen in a story otherwise filled with battle-hardened men have been celebrated in poetry, plays, paintings and opera from Petrarch and Boccaccio through to Voltaire. Sophonisba’s courage in the eyes of the Romans meant that Scipio was denied his trophy and Syphax was sent alone to Rome in chains to be presented as the great prize to the Senate (Livy 30.13.1–15.8).
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In the Senate at Carthage the leaders of the city could think of few options after the defeat at the Great Plains and now the capture of Syphax.
⁴²
A period of fraught activity and negotiations took place as the final outcome seemed inescapable. Scipio intended to lay siege to Carthage, and to avoid this fate a delegation from the Carthaginian Senate formed of thirty ‘leading elders’ went to Scipio at his camp at Tunes to negotiate (Livy 30.16.2–5).
⁴³
These leading men of Carthage came before the Roman general. Their approach was customary, which means they ‘not only saluted the gods and did obeisance to the Earth, as is the custom with other men, but they debased themselves by
falling prostrate on the ground and kissing the feet of the members of the council’ (Polyb. 15.1.6–7).
⁴⁴
With these gestures of flattery and obsequiousness, which the Romans found foreign, the Carthaginian elders asked for a pardon and also shifted the whole responsibility for the war on to Hannibal and his supporters (Livy 30.16.4).
⁴⁵
The Barcids and their followers were distinctly out of favour at Carthage at this moment and Hannibal, still in Italy, could only watch impotently from afar as the negotiations continued.

Scipio was swayed by the Carthaginian council to offer peace terms. These were harsh and insisted that ‘the Carthaginians were to hand back all prisoners of war, deserters and runaway slaves. They were to remove their armies from Italy and Gaul … to stay out of Iberia … to leave all the islands that lay between Italy and Africa, surrender all but twenty warships and hand over five hundred thousand measures of wheat and three hundred thousand of barley’, and pay a significant financial indemnity (Livy 30.16.10–13).
⁴⁶
The Carthaginian Senate was given three days to consider the terms. Crucially for our understanding of Hannibal, Livy insists that these negotiations were a subterfuge and that Carthage was only ‘playing for time’ to ‘allow for Hannibal to cross from Italy’. The Senate at Carthage did not feel it should reject any terms at this point, no matter how harsh; effectively, it was stalling.

Then envoys from both sides went to Rome for the treaty to be ratified. The elders from the Senate at Carthage were granted an audience and appeared before the Roman Senate at the Temple of Bellona, where negotiations continued. At this critical moment in the story of Hannibal, of Rome, of Carthage and the run-up to the final battle of the war, our two main sources provide two versions of events and there is no way to reconcile the difference in the statements: one of them is wrong.
⁴⁷
The issue lies in whether or not the terms dictated by Scipio were accepted and ratified by the Romans and Carthaginians. Livy, as we have seen, believed the Carthaginians’ plea for peace was a stalling tactic and that the Romans knew they were only waiting for Hannibal and Mago to return with their armies to reopen hostilities. Livy calls the whole process a façade that was created to delay while Hannibal prepared for battle. Polybius, on the other hand, insists that the treaty was formally accepted by the Roman Senate and that there is no indication that the peace was not being seriously considered (Livy 30.23.8; Polyb. 15.1.3–4).

Following these negotiations Hannibal received envoys from the Senate at Carthage that commanded him to leave Italy and return home (Livy 30.9.19–20). In the north of Italy Mago was severely wounded in a battle with a Roman army ‘in the land of the Insubrian Gauls’ (north of Genoa) where he may have gone to recruit soldiers for his return to Africa. Mago was carried from the
field of a fierce battle that saw many Roman losses. Livy claims that once their commander had fallen the Carthaginians ‘ceded victory’. Mago was carried south towards the sea where a delegation from Carthage waited for him near Genoa. The youngest brother of Hannibal received his orders to return home to Carthage and was helped onboard a waiting ship. Mago’s wounds were so severe that he died en route, before they had even passed Sardinia (Livy 30.19.1–6).
⁴⁸

Just how we interpret these events at the end of the war rests on whether we believe Livy’s claims that the Carthaginians were stalling. Livy maintains that Carthage had not given up at all and that, by recalling Hannibal and Mago, was attempting to shore up numbers at home. In this case the peace negotiations were a subterfuge. The opposing view, from Polybius, implies that Carthage recalled Hannibal and Mago as part of the agreement with the Romans on a proposed peace. In accordance with the peace terms the Carthaginians had to remove their armies and commanders from Italy and Liguria. Rome, in the mind of Cassius Dio, would never have accepted peace with Carthage while Mago and Hannibal were still on Italian soil and thus the ratification of the treaty was delayed until they had departed (Cassius Dio 17.74).
⁴⁹

Hannibal prepared to leave Italy, where he had now spent fifteen years in arms. This amounted to almost one third of his life and longer than he had ever lived at Carthage. He was increasingly isolated in Bruttium and as reports of Scipio’s victories in Africa spread, more of Hannibal’s remaining allies ‘revolted … and expelled their garrisons’ (Appian,
Hann
. 57). Under these circumstances it is difficult to believe Livy’s claim of his reluctance to depart: ‘Hannibal listened to the words of the envoys [while] he was gnashing his teeth and groaning, and barely able to hold back his tears’ (30.20.1). In truth, Hannibal had been trapped in a tiny patch of Bruttium for the last few years as Carthage lost battle after battle to Scipio.
⁵⁰
Encircled as he was by Roman armies, it seems more probable that Hannibal was willing when ordered to return to Africa but certainly had regrets. A fleet was sent by Carthage. Hannibal had supplemented this by building his own transport and was ready when the Carthaginian envoys appeared to summon him home.
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Given his precarious situation, Hannibal’s return seems more likely to have been part of a negotiated deal, an evacuation, rather than a bold move by the Carthaginians to challenge Rome.
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‘Such was the end of Hannibal’s invasion of Italy’ – and his tears may have been real enough to the people who had remained loyal all those years (Appian,
Hann
. 61). The Roman reprisals were not going to be kind to the Bruttii and Hannibal re-garrisoned the few towns that were still faithful with soldiers whom Livy calls ‘unserviceable’. He also slaughtered his pack animals and
horses (in the thousands), which would have been difficult to transport.
⁵³
Livy claims that he brought with him ‘the real strength of his army’ but how many soldiers is difficult to estimate. He may, by supplementing the ships sent by Carthage, have surprised all sides by transporting a good proportion of his soldiers with him, estimated at between 12,000 and 20,000 men.
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These men were those who had been loyal to their commander throughout his victories and losses, as well as those who had joined the cause in Italy. There are reports that some of the Italian soldiers were unwilling to go across to Africa and that Hannibal killed those who resisted in the temple of Juno Lacinia, where they had taken refuge. This would have been a significant act of sacrilege for a man who had bestowed spoils on the temple and who had also endowed it with an inscription of his life, and seems to have been an invention of later sources (Livy 30.20.6).
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Hannibal and his army did not sail directly back to Carthage when he departed from Bruttium. His destination was the Sahel region on the east coast of Carthaginian territory somewhere near Hadrumentum (modern Sousse) (Livy 30.25.11). Perhaps Hannibal wisely avoided the city because Scipio’s fleet could cover the whole gulf from its port near Utica and it was safer to land his army to the south. More likely is that Hannibal landed his army in the region where his family had property. His chance of sustaining his troops with local support was much better than what would have awaited him at Carthage. Once he landed, the forces set up camp.

It is easy to read hostility towards Carthage in Hannibal’s actions.
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Hannibal may have avoided Carthage because he was functioning as a free agent, an independent commander with an army that he had recruited personally. He had become more a warlord than a general of the state. Certainly there is no indication that he was consulted about the Carthaginian peace plan or played any part in the ongoing negotiations. He had received no funding from Carthage for the upkeep of his army and his soldiers were loyal to their commander. There was also the possibility that Hannibal would be prosecuted by the state for his running of the war in Italy. All this must have played a part in his decisions. It seems certain that discussions between his camp and supporters at Carthage with the Carthaginian government would have been part of the wider diplomatic effort.
⁵⁷
From Hannibal’s perspective Carthage had been so unsupportive of his efforts in Italy that now he was recalled he might have been unwilling to follow their commands. There may be some truth in Livy’s view that Hannibal ‘had not been defeated by the Roman people, who have been so often slaughtered or routed, but by the Carthaginian Senate with its carping jealousy’ (30.20.1–7).
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Hannibal spent the winter of 203/202
BCE
in his family territory building up his forces and waiting to see who took the next step. Peace negotiations continued, with both sides in a kind of stasis. Some of Mago’s army had made it back to Africa and may well have joined up with Hannibal’s forces.
⁵⁹
The winter passed, with the city of Carthage under a blockade – the Romans holding Tunes to the south and the fleet at Scipio’s camp near Utica to the north. Early in the spring of 202 events at Carthage shifted the focus from peace again to war.
⁶⁰
It was a period of great uncertainty and a truce of sorts was being upheld. What unfolded reflects the reality of war and peace in the ancient world, where the population of cities and generals in the field waited, sometimes for months, for the sailing season before receiving a response to negotiations.

Livy details how a fleet of transport ships carrying supplies from Sicily to the Roman army, ‘two hundred freighters and thirty warships’, was blown off course and ‘scattered far and wide’ (30.24.5–12). Many of the freighters were blown to the island of Aegimurus, at the mouth of the gulf north of Carthage, and others directly across the gulf from Carthage to Aquae Calidae (Korbous, see
Map 1
).
⁶¹
From inside Carthage, the population saw the Roman supply fleet being blown off course and ‘people converged on the forum from all over the city’. The Senate at Carthage was convened. There was a great deal of excitement over the wrecked fleet and it was decided to fetch the Roman transport vessels and tow them back to the city. It was far from a unanimous decision but the Carthaginians had been living under a fairly comprehensive blockade for months now. They had also been supplying Scipio’s troops with grain and barley as needed, thus hunger was rife in the city. So the sight of the Roman transports full of fresh supplies running aground across the bay may have proved too great a temptation and fifty warships were sent out to collect the remnants of the fleet.
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