Rome’s second war with Carthage marked a further escalation in the scale and scope of its campaigns. After the end of the Mercenary War, Carthage began to strengthen its position in Spain, a potential recruiting ground for its armies and a source of timber and metal for ships and other equipment of war, and dispatched Hamilcar Barca, its most successful general in Sicily, as its chief commander. Over the next decade, Hamilcar built an empire that included the valley of the Baetis River, the richest region in the peninsula, and the south coast from Gades to the east. His successors - first, his son-in-law Hasdrubal and then his son Hannibal - maintained this position of power and even campaigned on the central plateau. The formation of this Spanish empire, and the Roman elite’s reactions to it, formed the background to the war.
The events that led to the war’s outbreak are reasonably clear, although the chronology and the motivations behind them have long been controversial. Polybius, our chief source, placed the war’s roots in Hamilcar’s hatred of Rome, which he allegedly shared with his son Hannibal, the enmity that members of the Carthaginian elite felt toward the city as a result of the Sardinian episode, and the great success of Carthaginian forces in Spain which increased Carthaginian power.5 The Roman elite, on the other hand, had come to regard the revival of Carthaginian power with suspicion. In 226 or 225, the Senate dispatched ambassadors to Spain, where they concluded an agreement with Hasdrubal in which the Carthaginian commander promised that his forces would not cross the Ebro River. Massilia, a Greek city in southern Gaul that had ties of friendship with Rome, may have had a hand in the matter: small Greek settlements, colonies of Massilia and under its protection, dotted the Iberian coast north of the Ebro.6 At some uncertain date, the Senate also established some form of relationship with Saguntum, a town well to the south of the Ebro River. The Saguntines, now under Roman protection, then attacked a neighboring community that either had Carthaginian protection or soon would have it. The Senate sent ambassadors warning Hannibal against attacking Saguntum, but he ignored their demands and attacked the city, which his soldiers sacked. The Senate then dispatched envoys to Carthage demanding that the Carthaginians surrender their commander or face war. This ultimatum, given without the possibility of discussion, shows that the Senate had resolved on war.
The assignments that the Senate gave to the consuls of 218 reveal senators’ hopes for the war: Ti. Sempronius Longus received Sicily and Africa with the expectation that, like Regulus, he would attack Carthage; P. Cornelius Scipio obtained Spain. Hannibal’s own plans, however, disrupted Roman intentions to carry the war to the centers of Carthaginian power. Leaving his brother Hasdrubal in charge in Spain, Hannibal led the bulk of his army in a long march across the Pyrenees and Alps and into Italy. Scipio sent his army on to Spain under the command of his brother Cn. Scipio and returned to take command himself in northern Italy. Hannibal entered northern Italy late in 218, where he encountered a region in turmoil, disrupted by wars between Romans and Gauls. Earlier in the year, the Boii and Insubres had attacked the colony of Placentia, forced its temporary abandonment, and ambushed a Roman force that was marching to the colonists’ assistance. Scipio took command in the north, but his army suffered a defeat near the Ticinus River. Retreating from the battlefield, Scipio took up position at the Trebia River near Placentia, where Longus joined him. Late in December, Hannibal defeated their combined armies.
The Romans and the Carthaginians fought the remainder of the war in a number of distinct theaters with their own rosters of allies and enemies. In Italy, Hannibal moved south in the spring of 217. In Etruria, he ambushed the army of C. Flaminius (cos. 217) on the shores of Lake Trasimene, killing the consul and virtually destroying his force. In 216, Hannibal won another major victory, defeating both consuls near Cannae in Apulia. After Cannae, Capua and portions of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Brutii came over to Hannibal, a sign that their absorption into Rome’s network of alliances and of shared citizenship had not eliminated their local identities or their ambitions. And in 212 Hannibal captured Tarentum, aided by a faction in the city, although a Roman garrison continued to hold a fortress controlling the harbor. For the remainder of the war, the Senate, fearing further defections, sometimes kept suspect towns under surveillance. Slowly but steadily, Roman forces prevailed. Capua fell in 211 and Tarentum two years later. The decisive battle took place in 207. Forced to abandon Spain (see below), Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal, led his army into Italy to join his brother, but he was intercepted by two consular armies and defeated at the Metaurus River. Two years later, Mago, another of Hannibal’s brothers, landed in Liguria in an apparent effort to keep the war between Romans and Gauls alive in the north; he too was defeated and killed in 203. Soon after, Hannibal was recalled to defend Carthage, leaving the bulk of his army behind.
In the aftermath of Cannae, the war also spread to Sicily. After the death of Hiero in 216 or 215, Syracuse entered a period of political turmoil, and some factions began to negotiate with the Carthaginians. Ap. Claudius Pulcher (pr. 215), who had crossed to Sicily after Cannae, blocked Carthaginian landings on the island and sought unsuccessfully a settlement with Syracuse. M. Claudius Marcellus (cos. 214) began to besiege the city in 213, while a large Carthaginian force landed in Sicily and soon captured the major city of Agrigentum, which may have come over to the Punic side voluntarily. Other Sicilian cities soon followed. In 212, a new Carthaginian commander failed in an attempt to land reinforcements on the island. Syracuse fell in 211 and Agrigentum in 210. With these victories, fighting on the island ended, but the Roman position on the island had proven vulnerable.
The First Macedonian War (214-205) was another consequence of Hannibal’s presence in Italy. Philip V, the young king of Macedon, attempted to reassert
Macedonian power in Illyria and Epirus, where Rome had formed friendships and dependencies after the two Illyrian wars, perhaps intending to profit from the Senate’s distraction. After Cannae, Philip dispatched an envoy to Hannibal in Italy, where he concluded an alliance in which the king and the general agreed to regard Rome as their common enemy and arranged that the Romans, upon their expected defeat, be forced to abandon their position in Illyria and Epirus, the likely source of Philip’s displeasure (Polyb. 7.9). The Senate, however, learned of the treaty when Philip’s envoy was captured during his return journey, and in 215, they dispatched a praetor to Brundisium to guard against any incursions into Italy. The Macedonian monarchy had its own allies and enemies in the Greek world, so that Roman commanders made war along with a number of anti-Macedonian states - among them, the Aetolian League and Attalus, king of Pergamum - which provided the bulk of the forces. When the Aetolians withdrew from the war in 206, negotiations began. The ensuing Peace of Phoinike largely preserved the status quo.
Spain proved to be the decisive theater. For several years after the outbreak of war, P. Scipio (cos. 218), who had rejoined his army, and his brother Gnaeus campaigned in the peninsula, primarily along the coastal plain south of the Ebro River. Then, in 212 or 211, they led their armies into the Baetis valley, one of the centers of Carthaginian power, but, in the face of three Punic armies, they were abandoned by many of their local allies, defeated, and both were killed. The battle virtually destroyed the Roman position in Spain. The next commander, P. Cornelius Scipio, son of the consul of 218, began the recovery. Scipio launched a successful attack in 209 against the city of New Carthage, the main Carthaginian base in the peninsula. In the next year, Scipio and his army, now dominant on the eastern coast of Spain, pushed into the Baetis valley and defeated Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal at Baecula. Soon after, Hasdrubal withdrew to the north, beginning his long march into Italy. In 206, Scipio won another victory at Ilipa, virtually ending Carthaginian power in Spain.
After his victories, Scipio, who had been elected consul for 205, received Sicily as his command in order to prepare for an invasion of Africa. As part of his preparation, he confirmed an alliance with Masinissa, son of a ruler of the Massyles of eastern Numidia, whom the Carthaginians had offended by preferring Syphax, ruler of the rival Masaesyles. Early in 204, Scipio landed at Utica, where Masinissa joined him with the cavalry so essential to warfare in the region, and the two laid siege to the city. In the following year, Scipio and Masinissa won two major victories over the Carthaginians and their allies. In this crisis, the Carthaginians recalled Hannibal from Italy. At Zama in 202, Scipio defeated Hannibal, the bulk of whose soldiers were new recruits. In the peace, Carthage retained its civic existence and a restricted territory in Africa and paid a large indemnity, but it was no longer a major power. Masinissa, on the other hand, became the ruler of a much-enlarged kingdom and the chief prop of Rome’s position in the area. Scipio returned to Rome, where he triumphed, assuming the triumphal name of Africanus.
In addition to this narrative of battles and campaigns, other histories can also be written that emphasize the strains that the war placed on Roman institutions. Throughout the war, Senate and magistrates expended great efforts to secure the goodwill of the gods, adjusting older practices and introducing new ones.7 Livy’s Books 21-30, our chief source for the matter, reveal a heightened interest in prodigies and the ritual means for their expiation, public vows on a larger scale, and new festivals and games. Some innovations and ritual performances can be connected with specific events in the war. After the defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217, officials introduced to Rome the worship of the goddess Venus from Eryx on Sicily, and after Cannae, officials again buried alive two Greeks and two Gauls in the Forum Boarium, a rite seemingly performed only when the existence ofthe state was thought to be endangered. And toward the end of the war, officials vowed to introduce the cult of the Magna Mater from Asia Minor.
The war also placed significant pressures on Roman civic institutions. The need for effective commanders placed burdens on traditional patterns of office holding. Iteration or reelection to the consulship became far more frequent, while former consuls sometimes held office as praetor. The extension of terms of command through promagistracies became more common, and individuals sometimes were elected directly to serve as proconsuls rather than as regular magistrates. Some successful commanders, moreover, held continuous commands for relatively long periods - the Scipios in Spain are the clearest example - another departure from past practice. During the war, moreover, Senate and commanders continually pressed allies and citizenry for recruits, taking some whose social status earlier would have excluded them: freedmen, the poor, and slaves.
And then, maintaining large armies and fleets at widely dispersed locations required extraordinary means for their support.8 Before the war, citizens sometimes were required to make extraordinary contributions, tributum, at a rate determined by their census class, in order to finance major wars. In the opening years of the war, payments of tributum were imposed, at least once at a double rate, but the burdens of the war quickly overwhelmed the traditional arrangements for public finance. Straitened circumstances led to innovations. Because of the difficulties in supplying Roman forces in Spain, a praetor in 215 sought public contractors, publicani, to bid for supply contracts with payment to be made later, but the publicani would only bid if they were given exemption from military service and if the state insured all shipments.9 In 214, the Senate imposed an apparently unprecedented liturgy on wealthier citizens, requiring them to support sailors in the fleet. From around 211, Roman officials began to mint new silver coins, denarii, in large numbers, making the currency more suitable for large-scale finance (see also Chapter 3).
World History
