The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (34 page)

At any rate, Scipio, now recovered, reacted rapidly and decisively. He surrounded the mutinous elements with a larger body of his forces, gave them a long and embittered speech, and then, while the loyal troops pounded their swords against their shields, had thirty-five of the ringleaders brought before them naked and in chains to be beaten and then beheaded. Last, he had each of the remaining mutineers take an individual oath of allegiance before he paid them all and promised that their transgressions would be forgotten.

This constituted a dramatic turn of leadership, to which both Livy and Polybius devote considerable space,
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but it was also pretty plainly a stopgap measure. Nevertheless, Scipio’s actions united the army sufficiently to enable him to conduct a swift and successful campaign against Indibilis, who characteristically escaped, eventually to be killed in still another rebellion after Scipio was gone. Rome was destined to be mired in more than a generation of continuous internecine warfare here, and the final conquest of northwest Spain did not come before the time of Augustus Caesar. But for Scipio, that was somebody else’s problem; he was destined to be remembered as Africanus, not Hispaniensis. He had come to Spain to get rid of Barcid power, not to make the place Roman; now he was interested in getting rid of Hannibal.

Still, before leaving, there remained the matter of Mago Barca holed up at Gades, and also Masinissa, who was with him. Quiet negotiations with the African prince had continued intermittently, and like Syphax, he desired a personal meeting with the Roman general before entering into a compact. Scipio agreed to a secret rendezvous, thinking it important enough to journey all the way from Tarraco to a remote location in the Baetis valley. Masinissa, telling Mago that the horses were wasting away in the confined quarters of Gades, which was on a small island, asked and received permission to cross over and stage some raids inland. Instead, Masinissa headed for the Romans.

If you believe Livy (28.35), who is our only source for the meeting, it was virtually love at first sight. Not a word was said about Masinissa’s role in the death of Scipio’s father and uncle, nor about Scipio’s budding relationship with the Numidian prince’s mortal enemy, Syphax. Instead, Masinissa testified that his long-held desire to serve Rome, though perhaps thwarted in Spain, would come to fruition in Africa. Should Scipio be sent to Africa and Masinissa inherit his father’s vacant throne, then Masinissa was “confident the hours of Carthage will be numbered.” Scipio, who knew a good cavalry commander when he saw one, was delighted. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship between Masinissa and this Scipio, and Scipio’s grandson, even; for the Numidian was destined to live for a very long time. It was also the beginning of the end for Carthage; for the city never had an enemy more persistent than Masinissa. Meanwhile, as the two departed from their initial tryst, Masinissa received permission to raid the territory of some of Rome’s local allies—lest Mago suspect something was amiss.

The youngest Barcid brother was busy with schemes of his own. Discouraged by Scipio’s quelling of the mutiny and his defeat of Indibilis’s rebellion, Mago had just about given up hope of success in Spain and was planning a return to Africa, when he received money and orders from Carthage to take his fleet to Italy instead, recruit an army of Gauls and Ligurians and then try to join Hannibal.
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Being a Barcid, however, he had an alternative agenda, a surprise raid on New Carthage, a mirror image of Scipio’s own, aimed at regaining the family military-industrial complex and turning the Iberian tables on the Romans. Before Mago left, however, he shook down Gades, wringing all the money he could from the inhabitants, which proved a mistake. The foray on New Carthage went badly—the New Carthaginians had been forewarned and were no longer Barcid friendly—and upon returning to Gades, Mago discovered that the gates were barred against him. More than insulted, he invited the city fathers to confer, and promptly crucified them.
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He then sailed for Ibiza to begin staging his own invasion of Italy, his departure marking the termination of Barcid and Punic power in Spain. Scipio could go home.

[5]

The conquering hero returned to Rome in late 206 with a fleet of ten ships crammed with, among other spoils of war, 14,342 pounds of silver and a great quantity of other coins destined for Rome’s flagging treasury.
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He met the senate on the
campus Martius
and, within the sacred confines of the temple of the war goddess Bellona, gave them a rundown of his achievements in Spain. He reminded them that he had faced down four enemy commanders (two Hasdrubals, Hanno, and Mago) and four Carthaginian armies, and that upon his leaving not a single Punic soldier remained in Spain. He added that although a triumph had never before been awarded to a victorious commander who had not held the appropriate magistracy, perhaps, considering his service to the state, he might be the first exception. They turned him down cold.

Still, he got its equivalent from the crowds that gathered in the streets of Rome to catch a glimpse of the man of the hour, Publius Cornelius Scipio. Livy (28.35.6–7) describes him during this period as being in the “bloom of youth,” with long flowing hair and virtually oozing virility. If it had been possible for there to be a rock star in ancient Rome, then he would have been it … and just as incongruous to some of the dour members of the senatorial establishment.

But not to the people. His house just behind the forum was virtually under siege. He was similarly surrounded at the Temple of Jupiter as he sacrificed a hundred oxen—a hecatomb he had promised his patron deity while still in Spain. At the Comitia Centuriata, presided over by outgoing consul and family friend L. Veturius Philo, he was elected consul virtually by acclamation, with most of the other magistracies going to political allies, including his consular colleague P. Licinius Crassus, perhaps the richest man in Rome, and
pontifex maximus
since 212. More good news for Scipio: the senate had decided that the consular provinces for 205 would be Bruttium at the toe of the peninsula, where Hannibal was, and Sicily; but since Crassus as chief priest could not leave Italian soil, this meant that Scipio would get the island, which was the natural staging ground for an invasion of Africa. It was it seemed a fait accompli, wired by the Cornelii and those others who believed in truly taking the offensive and giving it to Rome’s rising star.

The plan would not go down smoothly. The opposition in the senate would object with a churlishness that reminds us that politics in Rome were always personal and that ambition in the service of the state was still, and very nakedly so, ambition—a corrosive force that would one day tear apart the republic. This sulfuric climate is captured by Livy in two speeches purportedly given by the principals, which, unlike pre-battle harangues, may well reflect what was actually said.

The first speech was given, appropriately enough, by the great Delayer, Fabius Maximus. He opened by arguing that the African strategy was not settled and that Scipio insulted the senate by maintaining it was. Dissembling that he was too old to be jealous, he asked the young general’s pardon “if I do not rate even your glory above the welfare of Rome.” “Hannibal is formidable still,” Fabius said, and it was Scipio’s duty to confront him in Italy, since the state could not afford two separate armies, one for Africa and one on home soil. Fabius remembered Regulus’s ill-fated African expedition during the First Punic War, and also raised the specter of Mago’s sailing to Italy and attempting to join his brother. “My opinion is that Publius Cornelius was elected consul for the republic and for us, not for himself and his personal ends, and that the armies were enlisted for the defense of the city and Italy, not that consuls in the arrogant manner of tyrants may transport them to whatever lands they choose.” This concluding statement encapsulated all that the old guard found dangerous about this charismatic newcomer.
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For, as French historian Serge Lancel notes, in a dim way Fabius sensed the rise of a new class of rulers inclined to appeal to the people, and also to the army, since it is likely the senate had heard of the “imperatorial”—if not “imperial salutation”—the general had been given by his troops in Spain.
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Fabius’s suspicions would not be assuaged by Scipio, who chose to argue his case on its merits alone. Rather than Regulus, he urged the senators to remember that Agathocles of Syracuse, besieged at home by Carthaginians, had successfully diverted the hostilities by invading Africa. But why bother with old stories, he added, when there was no better illustration of taking the offensive than Hannibal himself? Yet the Barcid had far less hope of Rome’s allies joining his cause than Rome did of splitting off Carthage’s oppressed dependencies. The enemy had no citizen soldiers, Scipio reminded the senate, but relied on mercenaries “as fickle as the wind.” As far as the central issue, Scipio assured the senate he was not ducking it: “Yes, Fabius, I shall have the antagonist you give me, Hannibal himself…. I shall draw him after me. I shall force him to fight on his native ground, and the prize of victory will be Carthage, not a handful of dilapidated Bruttian forts…. It is Africa’s turn to be devastated by fire and sword.”
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Stirring words, vengeful words, but Livy tells us the senatorial reaction was only lukewarm, since rumor had it that if Scipio failed to get his colleagues’ approval for the invasion, he intended to bring the plan before the people. Technically legal, this was absolutely without precedent—the Roman political equivalent of dirty pool—exactly the sort of tactic that would eventually tear the republic apart.
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Another old guardsman, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, four times consul and one of the principal conquerors of Capua, took up the interrogation, asking Scipio point-blank if he was ready to accept the senate’s decision in the matter, only to receive the ambiguous reply that “he would do what was in the interest of the state.”

This was plainly unacceptable. But after a day of cooling off and maneuvering, a compromise was reached. Scipio agreed to accept the senate’s decision, but probably with the assurance that he had the votes to give him Sicily as his province and permission to cross to Africa if he thought it was “to the advantage of the state.”
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Yet there was a very significant proviso. As far as the senate was concerned, an invasion was one thing, an army to conduct it was another. Apparently acting on Fabius’s claim that Rome could not afford separate forces for home and Africa, Scipio was denied permission to levy troops in Italy. He could only call for volunteers and aid in the form of ships and supplies from the allies. Some historians think this tradition is either false or exaggerated, but both Livy and Appian affirm it.
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Since his Spanish army had mutinied, it is logical to assume that Scipio viewed those troops as a spent entity, and troops who had returned to Italy after long service were not likely to be subject to further conscription. He did manage to gather seven thousand volunteers, though this was clearly not enough. Still, he must have known that there were potentially useful legionaries still in Sicily, soldiers who, despite all manner of neglect and abuse, had remained loyal. For he had served with them at Cannae.

IX

RESURRECTING THE GHOSTS

[1]

S
cipio was in no hurry. In all probability he did not even arrive in Sicily until the late spring of 205, and would not push off to Africa for another year.

There certainly would have been pressure to make his move sooner. Up north, Mago Barca had already crossed over to Liguria with an army and would soon stir up sufficient trouble that the authorities in Carthage would send him reinforcements and Rome would bolster their blocking force in Etruria with more troops and the reliable M. Livius Salinator. However, this probably didn’t satisfy nervous souls along the Tiber.
1
Meanwhile, in North Africa, Masinissa, in the midst of fighting and losing a civil war with Syphax over his father’s kingdom, grumbled about the delay in the Roman invasion. Yet Scipio’s only concession was to send his trusted wingman, Laelius, off on a raid of the African coast, which provided nothing more tangible than a spate of panic in Carthage, some booty, and contact with Masinissa, who met him with a few horsemen and many complaints.

Scipio’s consulship lasted only a year, as did technically his African imperium. Still, Scipio seems to have understood that his support was sufficient to extend his imperium indefinitely (though not without controversy, as we shall see). The New Carthage raid in Spain had removed all doubt that he could move quickly if the situation demanded it. However, he did not move swiftly against Africa. It seems he had his own internal clock, in this case paced by the need to lay his plans carefully, to ensure logistical support for what promised to be a vast operation, and above all to build a winning army out of what amounted to scraps.

Livy (29.1.1–11) opens his description of Scipio’s sojourn in Sicily with an anecdote that may or may not be apocryphal but certainly exemplifies Scipio’s ingenuity in putting together a fighting force.
2
Upon arriving with his volunteers, who apparently were just in the process of being divided into centuries, he withheld three hundred of the most strapping young men, who were neither armed nor assigned to units, and were probably pretty puzzled. He then conscripted an equivalent number of Sicilian horsemen, all of them from the local nobility and none too willing to serve on what was likely to be a long and dangerous expedition. When a nobleman, appropriately coaxed, expressed his reservations, Scipio posed an alternative: house, feed, train, mount, and arm one of the unassigned youths; a proposition all of the remaining Sicilians jumped at, thereby creating an enthusiastic nucleus for his cavalry out of a recalcitrant pack, what amounted to something out of nothing. True or untrue, Scipio was about to attempt something comparable on a much larger scale.

Upon inspecting the troops stationed in Sicily he had inherited, Livy tells us, Scipio selected the men with the longest service records, particularly those who had served under Marcellus and who were skilled in siege and assault operations.
3
Plainly, Livy was referring to the
legiones Cannenses
—now called the 5th and 6th legions, made up of the survivors of Cannae and the two battles of Herdonea. Scipio did not have any reservations about their record, for he understood, Livy adds, that “the defeat at Cannae had not been due to their cowardice, and that there were no other equally experienced soldiers in the Roman army.”
4

Yet at this point the military disaster was eleven years in the past, and many would have reached the age of marginal military utility; hence Scipio inspected the men individually, replacing those he thought unfit with the volunteers he had brought from Italy. This process generated two exceptionally large legions, which Livy sizes at sixty-two hundred foot soldiers and three hundred horse apiece—a figure that is open to debate by modern historians but that probably reflected the general’s innovative approach and the danger he faced.
5
It also left him with units that would have been to some degree heterogeneous, and certainly unacquainted with his tactical innovations. In all probability, then, he began training them early, and this process consumed much of the time it took to get ready for the invasion.
6

Livy also adds that upon selecting the veterans “he then billeted his troops in various towns,” which was significant, since earlier the
Cannenses
—when they’d been joined by the survivors of the First Battle of Herdonea—had been burdened by the senate with the additional indignity of not being allowed to winter in any settled area.
7
In countermanding this prohibition, Scipio not only thumbed his nose at the establishment along the Tiber, but demonstrated yet again his keen understanding of how to build loyalty. Livy describes the
Cannenses
ready to depart for Africa as “sure under Scipio and no other general, they would be able … to put an end to their ignominious condition.”
8
For these men understood what they would be up against with Hannibal—had already been served a bitter draft of his trickery—and therefore must have seen Scipio and his new model for fighting as their vehicle to revenge and rehabilitation.
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Unexpectedly, though, they would have the opportunity of returning the favor, of saving their commander from disgrace, long before they had the chance to confront their Carthaginian tormentor.

It all began with a target of opportunity. Late in 205 a group of prisoners in Scipio’s camp, a group from Locri—deep in Bruttium on Italy’s toe and one of the last cities loyal to Hannibal—offered to betray its citadel to the Romans. Scipio jumped at the opportunity, sending a force of three thousand from nearby Rhegium under two military tribunes, with one Quintus Pleminius acting as legate and overall commander. After some complications, Locri was taken, with the physical abuse and looting proceeding in a particularly brutal fashion, including even the plunder of the famous shrine of Persephone. But that was just the beginning. The Roman garrison formed two rival gangs, one loyal to the tribunes and the other to Pleminius, and began openly fighting over booty. As a result, Pleminius had the tribunes flogged—highly unusual for men of their rank—and was in turn beaten nearly to death by the other side.
10

When Scipio got wind of the situation, he hopped a galley to the mainland and sought to slap a tourniquet on what at this point was merely a distraction, acquitting Pleminius and having the tribunes arrested. He’d made a bad choice. After the general returned to Sicily, Pleminius had both tribunes tortured and then executed, and did the same thing to the Locrian nobles who had complained to Scipio in the first place.
11

Word of these outrages reached the senate in early 204, and Scipio’s enemies, led by Fabius Maximus, leapt at the chance to exploit the situation. Compounding matters, the senate had been primed by a string of scandalous rumors pertaining to Scipio’s conduct, the source being the quaestor in Sicily, Marcus Porcius Cato, destined to become Scipio’s lifelong enemy. Cato is known to history as a stern embodiment of austere Roman virtues and as an inveterate hater of things Greek, and of Carthage and Carthaginians. According to Cato, Scipio had been cavorting in Syracuse like a Hellenistic dandy—dressed in effete cloaks and sandals, spending way too much time in the gym, and lavishing money on his soldiers, who were using it to wallow in corrupting activities.
12

In his denunciation of Scipio, Fabius fastened onto this last aspect. Reminding his colleagues of the mutiny in Spain, which he maintained had cost Rome more troops than had been killed in battle, Fabius argued that Scipio “was born for the corruption of military discipline” and therefore should be relieved of his command forthwith. Pleminius and the situation in Locri were bad enough, but claiming the discipline of the entire expeditionary force had been undermined by indulgence, when that force was largely made up of suspect
Cannenses
, would not be overlooked.
13
Scipio’s ally Metellus did what he could in the way of damage limitation, but in the end the senate took a very senatorial tack, sending a commission of ten to Sicily to judge Scipio’s culpability and, more to the point, to examine the readiness of his forces. Ready or not, now was the time for the ghosts to step into the limelight.

They did not disappoint. After settling matters in Locri, the commissioners crossed over to Syracuse, where Scipio had assembled his entire army and fleet in a state of readiness sufficient to conduct an immediate amphibious operation. The commission was then treated to a rigorous series of maneuvers, not simply parades but actual tactical evolutions and even a mock sea battle in the harbor. After a further inspection of war materiel, the commissioners were convinced that if Scipio and his army could not defeat Carthage, then nobody could. They left in a mood more reflective of victory than simply of good preparations—a view they impressed upon the senate, which promptly authorized the invasion at the earliest opportunity using whatever troops in Sicily the general desired.
14
The
Cannenses
had vindicated their commander and were at least partway down the road to redemption.

Probably sometime in the late spring of 204
15
the invasion force assembled at Lilybaeum on the western tip of Sicily approximately 140 miles across open water from Carthage. Livy’s (29.25.1–2) estimates of the force’s size range widely from around twelve thousand men up to thirty-five thousand, so it’s impossible to say with any precision how big the army really was. But two legions of six thousand, plus two
alae
of equal size, along with cavalry numbering around 2400—basically a pumped-up consular army totaling approximately 26,400—is a ballpark figure. With considerable ceremony—suitable sacrifices, speechifying, and throngs of spectators lining the harbor—the army, along with forty-five days’ worth of food and water, were stuffed into four hundred transports guarded by only forty war galleys. (Scipio may have been short of oarsmen. Besides, the Carthaginian navy had not proved much of a threat.) Then the fleet headed out to sea in the general direction of Africa.

Without navigational equipment, such a voyage was always something of a leap of faith, but after a foggy night, land was sighted early the next day. Scipio’s pilot declared the spot to be the Promontory of Mercury (modern Cape Bon). But rather than head for what Livy says was his original destination—the Emporia, a rich area far to the south
16
—Scipio allowed the wind to take him forty miles west to the “Cape of the Beautiful One” (modern Cape Farina), where he landed. This put him in the vicinity of the city of Utica and about twenty-five miles north of Carthage, which lay at the base of the semicircular Gulf of Tunis bounded by the two capes. It was a good location, close enough to throw a scare into the Carthaginians but far enough off to allow the Romans some breathing room to get unpacked. It worked.

The sight of the Romans, who set up camp on some nearby hills, panicked the entire countryside, sending a stream of inhabitants and their livestock back toward the safety of fortified places, particularly Carthage. Livy tells us that a thrill of dread spread through the city, which spent a night without sleep and prepared for an immediate siege.
17
The next morning a force of five hundred cavalry under Hanno, a young nobleman, was sent up the coast to reconnoiter and if possible disrupt the Romans before they could fully establish themselves.

They arrived too late. Scipio had already posted cavalry pickets, who easily repelled the Carthaginians, killing a good many in the ensuing pursuit, including Hanno himself. Meanwhile, Roman marauders were already abroad gathering up who and what had not managed to flee. This was a substantial haul, including eight thousand captives, which the savvy Scipio promptly shipped back to Sicily as the first fruits of war paying for war.

More good news for the Romans appeared shortly in the form of Masinissa, who arrived, Livy says, with either two thousand or two hundred horsemen. It was probably the latter, since the Numidian prince was basically on the lam from Syphax, but Scipio understood that when it came to Masinissa, numbers meant nothing; he was a veritable “army of one.”

Back in Carthage, plans to resist were plainly in disarray. Hasdrubal Gisgo, the city’s most experienced available soldier, had been sent elsewhere. He’d belatedly been charged with putting together an army, and was camped about twenty-five miles inland with his hastily formed force, waiting to be joined by Syphax’s Numidians before attempting to engage the Romans.
18
In his absence, the Carthaginians almost reflexively threw together another cavalry force under yet another Hanno—this force composed of a core of Punic nobility and apparently just about any local tribesman who could ride a horse and was available for hire—for a total of around four thousand men.
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