Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (44 page)

On leaving Carthaginian territory Hannibal became a ‘castaway of fortune’ and entered the murky world of Hellenistic politics (Plutarch,
Flam
. 20.2). The journey took him from the sandy island of Kerkina on a Tyrian ship heading east across the Mediterranean. The Barcid family traced their roots back to the original colonists from Tyre and Hannibal arrived at the city, a ‘son of Tyre’ now in exile.
²⁴
Tyre was part of the Seleucid kingdom at the time and Hannibal’s natural choice of refuge was with the king, Antiochus III. Antiochus’ power was increasing in the face of the Roman defeat of the Macedonians. The second Romano-Macedonian war (200–197
BCE
) had ended in the defeat of Hannibal’s old ally Philip at Cynoscephalae. Antiochus had just come to peace terms with the Ptolemaic king in Egypt and he seemed the strongest option to oppose the growing might of Rome.
²⁵
The Romans viewed Antiochus and the Seleucids as the biggest obstacle to their extension of influence and control.

Hannibal was now in his early fifties. His fame had spread across the wider Mediterranean and as Rome’s power grew Hannibal seems to have been a focal point for anti-Roman agitation. When he put himself in the service of the Seleucid king he was welcomed and his reputation as Rome’s great enemy was celebrated. Conflict with the Romans was imminent and Antiochus may have hoped that Hannibal held the secret of how to defeat Roman power. What actual role Hannibal held at the court of Antiochus is nowhere clearly defined. He is vaguely said to have provided the king with guidance and direction and in essence became a Hellenistic warlord at a foreign court. It was not a position Hannibal was used to, and court life under Antiochus was full of jealousies, intrigue, threats of usurpation and betrayals. This must have been difficult for him to navigate as a military commander whose life had been spent on the field of battle. Cicero describes a renowned Hannibal at Ephesus
where ‘his name was held in great honour among all men’ invited to hear a philosopher named Phormio pontificate ‘upon the duties of a general and the whole military art’. Hannibal spoke rather frankly of what he thought of the philosopher ‘in not very good Greek but with very good sense’. He commented wryly that ‘he had seen many doting old men, but had never seen anyone deeper in his dotage than Phormio’. The impression of the world-weary commander with little time for the niceties of court life shines through Cicero’s anecdote (
De oratore
2.75–76).

The Romans were unnerved by Hannibal’s links with Antiochus. We hear reports of how envoys from Rome and their allies the Attalid kings tried to undermine Hannibal’s position with Antiochus. Scipio Africanus even visited the court and tried to drive a wedge between Hannibal and the king. There are suggestions that Antiochus was jealous of Hannibal’s status and celebrity and disliked the fact that everyone had placed all their hopes in him (Cassius Dio frag. 19).
²⁶
Hannibal responded to the accusations with the story of the sacred vow he had taken as a nine-year-old boy and the promise he made to his father – never to be an ally of Rome. The earliest version of the oath was (probably) written down by Polybius and was repeated so often that it has become an essential part of Hannibal’s story. He might have felt slightly insulted at having to convince Antiochus of his loyalty and of his eternal enmity to the Romans (Polyb. 3.11; Livy 35.19). Such was the atmosphere of mistrust at the court that Rome’s greatest enemy felt he had to prove to the king that his hostility towards the Romans was genuine.
²⁷

A few years after leaving Carthage (
c.
193
BCE
) Hannibal is rumoured to have returned to Africa, landing with five ships in the region of Cyrene. He may have been testing the ground to see if he could reach out to the Carthaginians. He must have met with representatives from Carthage there, perhaps drumming up support for Antiochus’ upcoming battle against the Romans. Our report of this visit is fraught with difficulties and full of errors so it becomes problematic to accept the detail of the story as factual (Cornelius Nepos,
Hann.
8.1–2).
²⁸
However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Hannibal still had many supporters at Carthage who would be willing to continue to fight against Rome. Livy reports that Hannibal ‘had every confidence that the Carthaginians also could be induced to rebel by his persuasion’ (Livy 34.60.5). In Ephesus Hannibal had met a man from Tyre named Ariston. He trained him as an agent and sent him to Carthage loaded with gifts and ‘a code of secret signs’ to be used to make contact with the Barcid supporters (Livy 34.61.2–3). There is much of interest in Livy’s tale of the agent Ariston who, with his secret handshakes, acted as a Barcid agitator at
Carthage. He held covert meetings with Hannibal’s supporters but was quickly found out by his enemies as well. Ariston was called up in front of the Carthaginian Senate to explain his actions. Nothing further seems to have come of the attempts to increase support for another war at Carthage and Ariston escaped on a ship back to Tyre (Livy 34.61.14). We can see Hannibal here in his role of agitator against Roman power even though at Carthage, whilst he still had allies, his popular support seems to have waned.
²⁹

Antiochus never fully accepted Hannibal into his inner circle of advisors and the Carthaginian would play a peripheral role in the ensuing fight with Rome. Of the many councils of war held in the run-up to battle Hannibal was only invited to a few, and when he spoke the king and his advisors did not appreciate his counsel (Justin 31.5.1–9). At the battle of Magnesia in
c.
190
BCE
the Romans and their allies the Attalid kings defeated Antiochus. The ensuing peace treaty, signed at Apamea in 188
BCE
, strictly limited the Seleucids’ power and essentially stripped them of all their territorial possessions in Asia Minor. The specific terms agreed that ‘they were to give up all possessions west of the Taurus mountains … and in addition Antiochus was to give up Hannibal the Carthaginian …’ among others (Polyb. 21.17.3–7; Livy 37.45.3). Hannibal had not played a pivotal role in the battle and had commanded a small part of the fleet that was defeated by the Rhodian navy.
³⁰
Now aged fifty-seven, Hannibal once again found himself on the losing side of a fight against Rome. Antiochus could no longer offer him a place of refuge and he was forced to depart from Seleucid territory.

After the Peace of Apamea the Roman-allied Attalid kings of Pergamon acquired temporary dominance among the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east. Hannibal’s options narrowed further as Attalid influence expanded in the region. His trail becomes elusive in the five years after the battle of Magnesia. The stories of his travels are embellished by legends of tricks and stratagems performed on hapless locals and the great wealth which he carried with him. There is a rumour that he visited Gortyn in Crete before he took refuge in Armenia and then settled in Bithynia, an independent kingdom in Asia Minor whose king, Prusias, was at war with the Attalid king Eumenes II.
³¹
Hannibal continued to fight the anti-Roman cause for Prusias. One of his most impressive manoeuvres came while commanding the Bithynian fleet. Ships under Hannibal’s command are reported to have catapulted ceramic pots filled with poisonous snakes on to the decks of the enemy vessels.
³²
The soldiers on the Attalid ships at first laughed at the strategy, but as the vessels began to fill with the snakes laughter turned to panic and they conceded victory (Justin 32.4.6–8).

In the end, however, Prusias lost his war with Eumenes and a requirement of the subsequent peace treaty was again that Hannibal be handed over to the Romans. He remained their most wanted enemy. There are many versions of what followed. Most imply that Hannibal saw the end of his options and chose to commit suicide rather than fall into Roman hands, but none is certain. He was by then ‘a frail old man’ living in a house by the sea in the town of Libyssa (between Istanbul and Izmit in modern Turkey). We are told that Hannibal was living a quiet life in retirement. His Roman enemies were not content to let matters rest even though Hannibal now posed no real threat. By this time Hannibal’s reputation alone was enough to rally opposition to Rome and the Romans would take no chances.
³³

The exact details of his death may rest with the contents of a ring he always wore. He reportedly carried poison with him so that he would never fall victim to a Roman plot to seize him. The Romans would have liked nothing more than to parade their great enemy through Rome in chains. In Livy’s version Hannibal takes a cup of poison. Just before he drank he is reported to have said, ‘Let us now put an end to the great anxiety of the Romans, who have thought it too long and hard a task to wait for the death of a hated old man’ (Livy 39.51.9). Hannibal died aged sixty-five in the year 183/182
BCE
, the year that saw the death of his nemesis, Scipio Africanus.
³⁴

Hannibal, the general and strategist whose brilliant military mind engineered some of the most devastating defeats ever inflicted on the armies of Rome, was perhaps surprised to meet his end quietly in old age. His implacable opposition to the growing power of Rome had made him the focus for resistance to its imperial ambitions for over forty years. He died as he had spent most of his life, as an outsider in a land far from Carthage. Yet he is inextricably linked to the fate of Carthage and is remembered as the most famous Carthaginian of them all. This is the ultimate paradox of Hannibal. The great adventures of his career and the stunning military victories put him in the league of elite Hellenistic commanders in an age of conquest. He was and has been universally considered one of the greatest military strategists of all time. Yet essential to his story is that just thirty-six years after his death, the city of Carthage was completely destroyed and burned to the ground by the Romans in a vengeful war. Hannibal had come very close to defeating Roman power but ultimately failed. His attempts to save Carthage from Rome’s dominance may well have contributed to her ultimate destruction. Yet even in his failure the Romans both admired and feared Hannibal. As a result of this and ‘his world renowned exploits’, in death he has retained a kind of heroic notoriety far exceeding that of all his enemies (Diodorus Sic. 29.19).

EPILOGUE

HANNIBAL’S AFTERLIFE

M
EMORIES OF WAR LINGER
long after they are fought and memories of epic wars especially so.
¹
There would not have been a family across the whole of the western Mediterranean at the beginning of the second century
BCE
that did not have a story, a memory or a familial death connected to the Hannibalic War. The war became the paradigm for subsequent great wars in Roman memory. Hannibal became the most renowned enemy of the Romans and outstanding general of his generation. We do not know how the Carthaginians remembered Hannibal or how Hannibal’s position in the memory of the Punic people lived on in North Africa. We do know that members of the Carthaginian Senate who went to Rome to negotiate peace blamed the entire war on Hannibal and absolved themselves from any responsibility. The idea that Hannibal was driven by a hatred of the Romans passed on to him by his father and was the sole cause of the war seemed to be an explanation to which both sides were willing to subscribe.
²
Among his supporters at Carthage Hannibal may have been remembered as a hero who had challenged the Roman oppressor and as the greatest ever Carthaginian general. Few Carthaginian commanders had been able to inflict losses on the Romans in the previous decades of war; Hannibal and his brothers were among a very select group. With Carthaginian memories lost to us it is the memories of the conquerors that have been preserved for posterity. Hannibal’s fame and skill were celebrated by his enemies, along with the paradox of his Carthaginian deceptions. These are the seeds from which Hannibal’s heroic status grew and flourished across the ages.

Hannibal’s legend was initially shaped in Iberia, where the destruction of Saguntum brought him face to face with the power of Rome. When he first appears in Livy he is a brave captain serving as an apprentice to his brother-in-law Hasdrubal. ‘The older soldiers thought that a young Hamilcar had been brought back to them; they saw that same dynamism in his expression, the same forcefulness in his eyes, the same facial expression and features …’ In Livy’s picture Hannibal’s appearance recalled his father and stirred the loyalty of his soldiers. Livy continues, ‘there was no one whom Hasdrubal preferred to put in command when a gallant or enterprising feat was called for, while there was no other officer under whom the rank and file had more confidence and enterprise’ (Livy 21.4.2–5). Hannibal’s life had become legendary by the time Livy wrote and it is difficult to separate the reality of the man from the construction of his myth.

Aspects of Livy’s description read like the quintessential Hellenistic leader. Hannibal’s persona, as sketched by Livy, is not dissimilar to Plutarch’s account of the general Pyrrhus: ‘they compared his appearance and the speed and vigour of his movements to those of Alexander the Great, and felt that they saw in him an image and reflection of that hero’s fire and impetuosity in the field’ (
Pyrr.
8). Hannibal, like Pyrrhus, was a youthful and heroic commander who could inspire his troops by his very presence. He reminded his men of the great generals who had come before. Hannibal was described like Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus was compared to Alexander the Great.

Polybius lived closest to Hannibal’s time and consulted some who had known him, including the one-time ally of the Carthaginians, Masinissa (9.25.4). From his researches he concludes that Hannibal was one of history’s great men and calls him an ‘extraordinary product of nature’, capable of carrying out ‘any project within the reach of human endeavour’ (9.22.6; 11.19.1–7). Going even further he enthuses that ‘no one can withhold admiration for Hannibal’s generalship, courage, and power in the field’ (11.19.1). Polybius portrayed Hannibal at the beginning of the war not only as a military genius but also as having all-round superior qualities as a man. The terms he used to discuss Hannibal were similar to those he employed when writing of the Greek scientist Archimedes during the Roman siege of Syracuse (8.5–7).
³
The loyalty to Hannibal among his troops was a product of his genius, his force of personality, and his practical approach to sharing out the spoils of the victories with all his soldiers. The inclusiveness Hannibal displayed towards his army was celebrated – all his soldiers had a place and were valued. He famously claimed, according to Ennius, that ‘he who should strike the enemy, shall be a Carthaginian in my eyes, whoever he shall be. Wherever he hails
from …’.
⁴
To join Hannibal’s cause was enough and he maintained a strong sense of solidarity among his soldiers throughout his leadership. An incredible talent to manage people, to organize, negotiate and create loyalty augmented Hannibal’s ability as a military strategist. He kept his army in service, in the field, highly functioning for the better part of sixteen years. He fed, clothed and supplied his men and, most importantly, kept them under his control and loyal in the most extreme circumstances.