In addition to Iberians and Gauls from the west and northwest, Germans from the north and Scythians from the east, the Romans also had potential enemies from Africa in the south. Egypt, whose early civilization was a constant source of admiration to the Greek and Roman world even when its political power had long since waned, was always important strategically, as the episode of Antony and Cleopatra indicates. In the third and second centuries BC, the more immediate threat was from Carthago or Carthage in Numidia. Carthage stood where Tunis now stands, only a few nautical miles from Sicily. From 264 to 146 BC a series of wars, known as the Punic Wars, took place between Rome and Carthage. (Punic is a variant form of the adjective Phoenician, and refers to the language spoken in ancient Carthage.)
Of these, the most important for our present purpose is the Second Punic War of 218-201 BC, which brings together the famous story of Hannibal and his elephants and the less well-known story of the Celtic tribes which took part in the campaigns.
Hannibal, born in 247 BC, was the son of the Carthaginian leader Hamilcar Barca. When he was only 9 years old, his father brought him to Spain and trained him in the arts of war, after making him swear an oath of eternal hatred against Rome. Hamilcar was killed by the rebellious Oretani in 229 and succeeded by Hannibal’s brother-in-law, Hasdrubal. When Hasdrubal died in 221, Hannibal, at the age of only 25 assumed command of the army and the province of Spain. From 221 until his suicide in 183 BC, Hannibal conducted a relentless and inspired series of military campaigns against Rome.
Livy gives us a vivid description of Hannibal’s complex character:
His time for waking, like his time for sleeping, was never determined by daylight or darkness: when his work was done, then, and then only, he rested, without need, moreovei; of silence or a soft bed to woo sleep to his eyes. Often he was seen lying in his cloak on the bare ground amongst the common soldiers on sentry or picket duty. His accoutrement, like the horses he rode, was always conspicuous, but not his clothes, which were like those of any other officer of his rank and standing. Mounted or unmounted he was unequalled as a fighting man, always the first to attack, the last to leave the field. So much for his virtues - and they were great; but no less great were his faults: inhuman cruelty, a more than Punic perfidy, a total disregard of truth, honour and religion, of the sanctity of an oath and of all that other men hold sacred.
We know that Hannibal was holding tactical discussions with Celtic delegates of the Boii as early as 219 BC. They were considering a joint expedition through southern Gaul and into northern Italy, and discussion was necessary since the first part of the expedition would cross Boii territory. King Magalos allied the Boii to Hannibal’s cause in 218 BC.
Other Celtic tribes, however, were either indifferent to Hannibal’s campaign or actively hostile to it. Only the Boii appear to have supported Hannibal from the start. Ten thousand Celtiberians deserted the expedition before it had even crossed the Pyrenees. Some of them even acted as scouts for the Romans, and sent reports via the Hellenized town of Massilia (modern Marseilles) of Hannibal advancing with gigantic grey pack animals across the mountains. Naturally, the reports used the Greek word for these previously unseen animals: elephantoi. The Romans had never seen these animals either, so their consternation was great, since the reports seemed to suggest that each of these monsters had an arm on the front of its head which could lift a man and throw him bodily to the ground, and that they had skins of such tough leather that neither swords nor even lances could pierce them. Livy gives us a detailed account of how Hannibal transported his elephants across rivers by raft, and of how he coped with the panic and confusion when the terrified animals fell off the rafts into the cold, swift-moving water.
The Allobroges, who had been defeated and driven back to the Alps by Rome, might have been expected to join Hannibal, but they did exactly the opposite; they resisted his advance, until a successful night raid scattered their forces. The Ceutrones supplied Hannibal with provisions, but later - presumably because they felt that they had been insufficiently paid, or because some debt of honour had not been properly satisfied - they ambushed the Punic army on a narrow mountain pass. Hannibal suffered some loss of men, but more of horses and elephants. There must have been some rare dinners of elephant steak during those few days and nights, while the Ceutrones nursed their wounds and their grievances. The Taurini, who lived in what is now Piedmont, also showed signs of ambivalent support for Hannibal, but Hannibal had by now lost patience with the treacherous barbarian Celts: he stormed their capital. However, instead of the routine slaughter and burning which usually followed such victories, he showed a remarkable understanding of the Celtic character. He offered each captive member of the Taurini a chance to fight in individual combat against one of his own men, with a horse, weapons and freedom to leave as the prize for the victor. To a man, the Celts accepted his offer, and, after a few deaths had proved that he was in earnest, and after he had offered them Carthaginian citizenship once Rome had been defeated, the Taurini pledged allegiance and joined Hannibal’s campaign. It is said that during this period of enthusiastic cooperation Hannibal even learned some phrases of Celtic and conversed with tribal kings without an interpreter.
In the event, it was the Celts who finally let Hannibal down and led to his defeat. At a battle fought in a driving blizzard on the Trebia, a tributary of the Po, Celtic mercenaries were supposed to hold the centre while the Carthaginian army advanced in a pincer movement, but the Celts crept away under cover of the blinding snow. This was an unusual event, since the Celts were famed for their zeal and almost insane bravery in battle. Pausanias’s account of the Celtic raid on Delphi in thunder and lightning, mentioned earlier, and Livy’s account of the dismal scattered retreat in the blizzard on the Trebia both reinforce the classical notion of the Celts as desperately fickle and superstitious in battle, ready to accept defeat at the merest hint that the gods who control the wind and the rain might be against them. Describing an earlier battle, Livy talks of Hannibal’s conviction ‘that there was more smoke than fire in Gallic resistance’. The Carthaginian army survived, but the decisive impetus was lost. Rumours spread among the Celtic tribes that Hannibal had deliberately put the mercenaries in the most dangerous positions since they were considered to be more expendable. A general disaffection with Hannibal became widespread. The war degenerated into a series of guerrilla campaigns. Hannibal was finally defeated at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.
The Boii and the Insubres were subdued within the next decade, and those who were not physically annihilated were culturally absorbed. Gradually, Gallia Cisalpina became Gallia only in name: all that was Gallic and Celtic was subsumed into the rapidly expanding territory of Rome.
Hannibal’s erstwhile and half-hearted Iberian allies did continue to resist Rome for many more years, and there remains to this day a small enclave of Celtic culture in Galicia in northwestern Spain (compare the name with Galatia), with its own Celtic dialect gallego (Gallic), and a distinctively Celtic style of music and dancing.
World History
