In 225 Bc central Italy was faced with an invasion of Celtic war-bands. The Romans crushed them at the Battle of Telemon and exploited their advantage by conquering the Po valley and establishing Roman colonies at Cremona and Placentia (218). Roman control of the valley was still precarious, however, as was seen in 218 when Italy was unexpectedly invaded from the north by a Carthaginian army led by Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar.
In the years after their defeat the Carthaginians under Hamilcar had been energetically building a new empire in Spain, whether as a replacement for their lost territories or to gather resources for a new war is not clear. One of Rome’s oldest allies, the city of Massilia, had clearly become concerned about the expansion. Rome needed her support against the Celts and it was probably for this reason she made an agreement with the Carthaginians that they would not move north of the river Ebro. During these years, however, Rome also made an alliance with the town of Saguntum, well south of the Ebro, evidence that she was concerned about Carthaginian resurgence. When Hannibal, who had succeeded his father, besieged and took the city in 219, probably in the belief that Rome had given him a free hand as far as the Ebro, Rome quickly protested. Neither side appears to have had any inhibitions about going to war again and the Second Punic War (218-202) was the result.
Rome’s first plans were ambitious, to go on the offensive and fight the war in both Spain and Africa. An army and fleet under Publius Cornelius Scipio, the consul for the year, was sent round the coast to the north of Spain with the aim of defeating
Hannibal there. Hannibal, however, had also decided that his best strategy was an offensive one, to strike at Italy, in the hope of humiliating Rome and destroying her links with her allies. As his army made its way eastwards, crossing first the Pyrenees and then moving towards the Alps, it just evaded the Romans crossing in the opposite direction. Scipio, however, made the courageous decision to send the army on to Spain under his brother Gnaeus and to return himself to meet Hannibal in northern Italy.
Hannibal was one of those men who seem groomed for greatness. His father had been a brilliant and energetic commander and also a statesman of vision who had reformed Carthage’s institutions and showed himself a patron of Greek culture. Hannibal had, in fact, a tutor from Sparta and was brought up, as was anyone with military pretensions in the ancient world, to admire the campaigns of Alexander. However, when he trained his army, like all Carthaginian armies one made up of mercenaries, he dropped the standard Greek phalanx of heavily armed infantry and created an army of smaller, more flexible units, each based on an ethnic group. It was this, an energetic cavalry, and Hannibal’s tactical genius which were to underlie his success. (On this war see Robert O’Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, London and New York, 2010.)
It is still not known where Hannibal crossed the Alps. The Col de Clavier is a recent choice of scholars. It was a gruelling ordeal with hostile tribes harassing his men (and the elephants they brought with them) as they slithered down icy precipices. Perhaps a third of his army was lost on the way, with some 25,000 men finally descending on the Po plain, where the Celts rallied to Hannibal as their liberator. In the first major encounter with the Romans at Trebia, west of the new Roman colony at Placentia, over half the Roman army was lost and with it the north of Italy. The next year, 217, Hannibal, now in central Italy, lured a large Roman army into the narrow plain between Lake Trasimene and the mountains and then slaughtered it. A consul, Gaius Flaminius, and perhaps 15,000 men died in the disaster. The only consolation for Rome was that her allied cities of central Italy, those of Latium, Umbria, and Etruria, stood firm. Their traditional fears of the Celts and the belief that the fiery mercenaries of Hannibal were little more than barbarians kept them loyal.
In an emergency such as this the constitution allowed a dictator to be appointed for a limited, six-month, term of office. Quintus Fabius Maximus was chosen and he argued that the only policy was to avoid the fixed battles of which Hannibal was clearly the master and instead wear him down gradually (through what became known as Fabian tactics). A policy of avoiding battle was so alien to Roman thinking that at first Fabius had little support and when, in 216, after his term of office was over, two new consuls were appointed to replace him they resumed the traditional policy of direct confrontation. According to one source, the senate raised eight legions each of 5,000 men and, together with allies, 80,000 men marched south to Apulia where Hannibal was ravaging the land. Hannibal drew the Roman armies on to an open plain at Cannae where he knew he could use his cavalry effectively. The Romans hoped that the sheer weight of their numbers would be
Enough and drew their infantry together in a close formation so that it could overwhelm the Celts and Spaniards who were holding Hannibal’s centre. However, although the Carthaginian centre retreated it did not break, and the Romans found themselves enveloped by African infantry stationed on the two wings and the Carthaginian cavalry who had routed their Roman counterparts. In a devastating defeat all but 14,500 of the Roman army was wiped out.
His victory at Cannae now allowed Hannibal to consolidate his position in southern Italy. His greatest prize was Capua, the second city of Italy, and a number of other cities of Campania either came over to him or were captured in the aftermath of the battle. Hannibal was now in a position to march on Rome but he never made the move. He must have realized that the subjection of the city would be a very different matter from defeating its forces in the open field and there is no evidence he wished to destroy Rome. He appears to have stuck to his original aim of humiliating her and scattering her allies, probably in the hope that she would be forced to surrender Sicily and Sardinia and be reduced to her original territory in Latium.
In Rome the news of the catastrophe shocked the city. It was hard to escape the feeling that the gods had deserted Rome. Even the oracle at Delphi was consulted as to the correct procedure for regaining their trust, and there was a ritual sacrifice of appeasement in which a pair of Gauls and a pair of Greeks were buried alive in the Forum. Yet Rome’s nerve held. The historian Polybius later picked this moment as the one in Rome’s history when her resolution was at its strongest. Hannibal had sent to ransom his prisoners, but the senate refused to make any concessions, to the despair of the prisoners’ families. Instead four new legions were raised from the city’s youth and 8,000 slaves were freed for service. The policy of Fabius (who was to serve as consul twice in the years immediately following Cannae and again in 209) now became predominant as the Romans counted their advantages. Whatever the losses in the south, the centre of Italy with all its manpower remained loyal and the Roman armies could be rebuilt. Most significantly Hannibal held no major ports. He captured the town of Tarentum in 212 but the Romans managed to hang on to its citadel and with it control over its important harbour until Fabius recaptured and sacked the rest of the city in 209. In 212 Capua had also come under siege and the following year Hannibal marched on Rome in the hope of forcing the Roman armies to raise the siege. When he saw how confidently the city was defended he retreated and Capua fell. Hannibal was now on the defensive and it was significant that each winter he was now forced to withdraw to the south of Italy. In a final attempt to break the deadlock Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal marched from Spain to join his brother but he was intercepted in the north of Italy by both consuls and defeated at the Battle of the river Metaurus in 207. This was the last major engagement of the war on Italian soil. It left Hannibal unable to break out of southern Italy.
Meanwhile, the most significant fighting of the war was taking place in Spain. It was difficult country for both Romans and Carthaginians not only because of the terrain but because the local tribes were hostile to outsiders (the Carthaginians had treated them particularly badly) and unrest was common. The Romans enjoyed an
Unbroken run of successes until in 211 three separate Carthaginian armies converged on their forces, which had been split into two under Gnaeus Scipio and his brother Publius (sent by the senate to join Gnaeus in 217). At the ensuing defeat, which saw the deaths of both Scipios, the Romans almost lost their hold on Spain. The situation was saved when Publius Cornelius Scipio, the son of Publius, was appointed to take command. It was a major break with precedent as he had not yet held either a consulship or praetorship.
Scipio was perhaps the most brilliant Roman commander to date, energetic, charismatic, and imaginative. In 209 he achieved the capture of New Carthage, a supply base of immense strategic importance, by launching a surprise attack across a lagoon at low water. (His claim that Neptune, the god of the sea, had promised him success in a dream led to rumours that he was divinely inspired.) A decisive victory at Ilipa in 206 and the surrender of another strategically important port, Gades, saw the end of Carthaginian dominance in Spain and the beginning of centuries of Roman hegemony in the peninsula. Scipio had himself hailed as imperator, a title of honour offered by troops immediately after a victory. He had now gained the status with which to return to Rome and be elected consul in 205, despite the fact that he had never been praetor, a normal precondition for election.
Scipio now argued that he should take the war to Africa. There were those who opposed him, worried over the growth of his personal power and concerned that Hannibal, still at large in Italy, should be defeated first. However, Scipio set off for Africa in 204 and it was his first success there that forced the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal (who had not been ‘home’ since 237 when he was a child of 9). The final showdown between the two commanders came at the Battle of Zama (202). For the first time the Roman cavalry played a major part in a victory. Scipio’s horsemen drove the Carthaginian cavalry off the field and the Roman infantry was able to hold the Carthaginian lines until the Roman cavalry returned from the chase to attack them from behind. Hannibal’s army was destroyed and the war was effectively at an end.
In the settlement, Carthage was reduced to her territory in Africa, from which she was forbidden to expand, and she was burdened with an indemnity of 10,000 talents to be paid over fifty years. Rome inherited her empire in Spain. In Sicily, Syracuse, which had joined the Carthaginians, had been taken and sacked by Romans in 212. The most notable casualty was the celebrated scientist Archimedes, whose ingenious war machines had delayed the city’s capture. Scipio himself was awarded the name ‘Africanus’ in recognition of his victory.
World History
