Hannibal’s Last Battle Read online

  205

  First Macedonian War ends. Scipio elected consul and prepares invasion of North Africa from headquarters in Sicily. Scipio’s legate Gaius Laelius raids North Africa. Romans recapture Locri and Scipio weathers Pleminius scandal. Mago Barca (brother of Hannibal) invades Italy, landing near Genoa.

  204

  Scipio invades North Africa, landing near Utica. Scipio sets up camp (castra Cornelia) outside of city.

  203

  Scipio destroys enemy winter camps and defeats Carthaginians at Battle of the Great Plains. Hannibal and Mago recalled from Italy. Mago killed in retreat, but his army returns to North Africa.

  202

  Scipio defeats Hannibal at the Battle of Zama.

  201

  Peace treaty ratified by Roman Senate. End of Second Punic War. Scipio returns to Rome, given triumph and takes cognomen ‘Africanus’. Hannibal elected as chief magistrate of Carthage and reconstructs the Carthaginian economy in order to pay the high reparations demanded by Rome.

  200

  Second Macedonian War between Rome and Macedon begins (200–196).

  197

  Consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus defeats King Philip V of Macedon at the Battle of Cynoscephalae.

  196

  Second Macedonian War ends.

  195

  Hannibal Barca exiled from Carthage, travels to the court of Antiochus III of Syria.

  193

  Scipio Africanus and Hannibal meet at the court of Antiochus III in Ephesus.

  192

  Syrian War between Rome and Syria begins (192–189).

  190

  Consul Laelius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus– brother) defeats Antiochus at Magnesia in Anatolia. Syrian War ends.

  184

  Scipio Africanus dies in exile at Liternum in northern Campania.

  183

  Hannibal Barca commits suicide at his villa in Bithynia.

  172

  Third Macedonian War (172–167) begins between Rome and King Perseus of Macedon.

  168

  Consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus (later ‘Macedonicus’) takes over command of Roman forces in Macedon.

  167

  Paullus defeats Perseus at Pydna, ending the Third Punic War. Kingdom of Macedon dissolved, replaced by four republics.

  151

  Carthage declares war on King Masinissa of Numidia.

  149

  Third Punic War begins between Rome and Carthage (149–146). Both Roman consuls, Lucius Marcius Censorinus and Marcus Manilius, invade North Africa and besiege Carthage. Siege bogs down. Fourth Macedonian War (149–148) begins between Rome and Macedon when Andriscus invades Macedon.

  148

  Roman siege of Carthage continues. Fourth Macedonian War ends.

  147

  Consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (Africanus’ grandson) elected consul and given command in North Africa. Arrives at Carthage with new army and tightens siege.

  146

  Scipio Aemilianus captures Carthage. Carthage is destroyed, along with allied cities in region. Third Punic War ends. Roman province of Africa established.

  Introduction: A Clash of Civilizations

  The Battle of Zama as Turning Point

  [T]here are times when Fortune thwarts the plans of the valiant, and others when … a brave man meets one stronger than himself. – Polybius on Hannibal’s loss to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama.

  On a spring morning in 202 BCE, two of history’s greatest generals reviewed their troops on the dusty plain of Zama, located five days march southwest from the ancient capital of Carthage in North Africa. On one side, the great Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca (247–183 BCE) arranged his multinational army in three long lines and prepared to meet an experienced Roman army commanded by his rival and equal, Publius Cornelius Scipio (c.236–184 BCE). Rarely in history do generals of similar military genius meet on a battlefield to decide the fate of their own civilization. The Battle of Zama would be such an engagement, a turning point in the history of western civilization, for to the victor would go the riches of the western Mediterranean and the resources to build an enduring empire, and to the vanquished a diminished state and eventual eradication.

  The Battle of Zama was the climax of the Second Punic War (218–202 BCE), a seventeen-year struggle between the Roman Republic and the maritime power of Carthage and the second conflict in a generation. The First Punic War (264–241) witnessed a Roman victory and the expansion of Roman imperium into Sicily (and later Sardinia) and the reduction of Carthaginian territorial and economic hegemony in an area with very old Punic ties. Although Rome was able to enforce an unequal peace, Carthage bounced back by investing Spain, putting itself again into the path of Roman expansion. A second Punic war was inevitable.

  A year before, in 203, Hannibal Barca was called home by his government to lead the defence of his homeland after spending fifteen of the seventeen years of the war ravaging the Italian countryside, a feat unrivalled in the annals of military history. His decision in the late autumn of 218 to cross the Alps and bring the war directly to Italy put the Romans immediately on the defensive, while his early string of victories at Ticinus, Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae in the space of just two years (218–216) brought Rome to the brink of collapse. Hannibal had killed or captured between 80,000 and 100,000 legionaries and their commanders, robbing Rome of a third of its standing military force and most of their experienced officer class.1 Hannibal’s success was so complete that after the debacle at Cannae in 216 the Romans refused to meet him in a set-piece battle on Italian soil.

  Down, but not out, the Romans entrusted a young general named Publius Cornelius Scipio (later ‘Africanus’) with the task of rebuilding an army. Scipio did so, and then used a mirror strategy of attacking Carthaginian Spain to harass the Punic lines of communication while giving his legionaries valuable military experience. Now commanding veteran legions, Scipio prepared his expeditionary force in Sicily and then brought the war to North Africa to threaten Carthage itself. Once in Africa, the Roman general was joined by fierce Numidian mercenaries, the very same mercenaries that had served his foe so well in recent years against Rome. Scipio’s army now swelled to 29,000 infantry and over 6,100 cavalry, smaller than Hannibal’s 36,000 infantry, 4,000 horse and eighty war elephants.

  Confident in his ability to match a numerically-superior army due to the quality of his cavalry, Scipio rode up and down the Roman ranks, encouraging his men to fight. Across the field Hannibal gave his own battle speech. What was at stake was more than the lives of the tens of thousands of men and beasts gathered on the killing field, but the course of western civilization itself. The Battle of Zama was a watershed event in the history of two very different civilizations, one a Semitic thalassocracy or maritime power, the other an Indo-European land power with deep agricultural roots. These differences not only informed the political and economic development of Carthaginian civilization in North Africa and Roman civilization on the Italian Peninsula, but also moulded the way each culture made war.

  Phoenicia’s heir: The Rise of Carthage

  According to legend, the Phoenician princess Dido first set foot on the northeast coast of ancient Tunisia and named it Carthage in 814 BCE. She picked this spot to found a new city because of the presence of fine natural harbours near coastal hills suitable for defence and arable land nearby. Carthage’s placement on a hammerheaded promontory jutting out from the Tunisian mainland was an ideal location for a capital of a sea-borne civilization, reminiscent of the Phoenician city of Tyre in Lebanon.

  Since the founding of Carthage by Phoenician colonists, this Semitic civilization put most of its energy into creating a maritime empire. The Phoenicians were linguistic cousins of the Hebrews who settled along the Lebanese coast of the Levant just north of ancient Palestine. The end of the Bronze Age around 1000 BCE freed this entrepreneurial people from the grasp of their powerful Egyptian and Hittite neighbours, allowing them to use the
valuable cedar trees found in their territory to construct a merchant navy consisting of sleek bireme war galleys and high-decked round ships. From their chief cities of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, Phoenician sailors carried the famous Tyrian purple dye, glass, wine and lumber to markets in Egypt, Syria, and the Aegean coastline. Eventually these ships sailed into the western Mediterranean, past the Straits of Gibraltar and onward into the Atlantic, reaching Britain and the west coast of Africa.

  In the eighth century BCE, the Phoenicians were conquered by the Assyrians, and later, in the sixth century, by the Chaldean and Persian empires. With Phoenicia absorbed into regional Iron Age empires, Carthage inherited the Phoenician settlements on the coasts of western Sicily, southern Spain and on the adjoining isles. These islands were valuable possessions – Malta as a cotton plantation, Elba as an iron mine, and the Balearic Islands of Majorca and Minorca as a recruiting ground for light infantry slingers. They also served as naval stations to preserve Carthage’s monopoly of the sea-lanes.

  As Carthage’s population grew and outstripped its local resources, it expanded along the littoral of North Africa into a region called the Maghreb (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya), creating a substantial empire by the late third century BCE. The Carthaginians first traded with, and later subdued, many of the indigenous Berber tribes there, building colonies and intermarrying freely with these subject peoples. Those tribes which would not assimilate were pushed to the fringes, where they either raided Punic territory or offered their services as allies or mercenaries. The light horsemen from Numidia are perhaps the most famous of these warriors, serving in the Carthaginian army for generations.

  By 500 BCE Carthage was the largest and richest city in the western Mediterranean, famous for its fine public buildings and luxurious villas. By the third century BCE Carthage’s most impressive and imposing features were its city walls and its complex of docks. The city was built on a naturally-defensible position and then heavily fortified, and it was protected by two restricted land approaches. The northern approach was along a 3,000 yard-wide isthmus protected by three massive defence works towering one above the other. The southern approach was narrower and terminated at the foot of the city walls. The two isthmuses were separated by Lake Tunis, an unfordable body of water, and washed by the sea on their outer shores. A twenty-two mile wall enclosed the great city, the entrance of which lay to the east of the southern sandbar, as well as the citadel which was constructed on the Byrsa hill, overlooking the city.2 The great complex consisted of a rectangular commercial port near the entrance and a circular military harbour protected by a double-set of walls. According to Appian, a second century Graeco-Egyptian writer living in the Roman Empire:

  The harbours had communications with each other, and a common entrance from the sea, 70 feet wide, which could be closed with iron chains. The first port was for merchant vessels, and here were collected all kinds of ships’ tackle. Within the second port was an island, and great quays [docks] were set at intervals round both the harbour and the island. The embankments were full of shipyards which had capacity for 220 vessels. In addition to them were magazines for their tackle and furniture. Two Ionic columns stood in front of each dock, giving the appearance of a continuous portico to both the harbour and the island. On the island was built the admiral’s house, from which the trumpeter gave signals, the herald delivered orders, and the admiral himself oversaw everything.… Not even incoming merchants could see the docks at once, for a double wall enclosed them, and there were gates by which the merchant ships could pass from the first port to the city without traversing the dockyards. Such was the appearance of Carthage at that time.3

  The Carthaginian Empire

  Modern excavations reveal the depth of the original military harbour at only five feet, custom made for Punic warships that only had a four-foot draft.4

  Like city-states in Italy and Greece during the Archaic period (c.750– c.500 BCE), Carthage was ruled by kings with divine right to rule and broad powers in war making, religion and governance. In parallel developments similar to the cities of Rome and Athens, Carthage went through a gradual transformation from monarchy to a bi-cameral legislature consisting of an aristocratic Council of Elders and Assembly of the People very similar to that of Rome, with political power concentrated in the hands of a few very wealthy merchant families.5 Even the Greek philosopher and statesman Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was pleasantly surprised by the democratic nature of the Carthaginian political system.6 Two leaders called suffetes were elected annually from the oligarchy, holding an executive position similar to the position of consul in Roman government, except that suffetes did not normally act as commanding generals. The Carthaginian government hired professional soldiers to fill that responsibility, giving rise to military dynasties whose fortunes rose and fell based on their success in war, the Barca family being the most famous.

  Carthaginian religion was Semitic in origin, being transplanted with the original Phoenician colonists. Prayers were offered to such familiar Near Eastern deities as Baal Hammon, Tanit and Melqart, harsh gods and goddesses who demanded dramatic and severe forms of sacrifices, including child sacrifice. This ritual was condemned by Roman and Greek observers, who thought the practice was barbaric.7 But over time, the Carthaginians gathered other deities into their religious pantheon from wherever they settled, with Greek and Egyptian gods and goddesses being favoured. Though the addition of foreign gods had a moderating effect on Carthaginian religious practices, human and child sacrifice continued in times of national crisis.

  After independence from Phoenicia, Carthage’s main foreign policy concern was the Greek city-state of Syracuse located on the eastern coast of Sicily just across from the toe of Italy. In an attempt to take over the entire island, the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles (r.317–289 BCE) made war against Carthage in the fourth and early third centuries, eventually giving up his claim to western Sicily. His death in 289 inspired Carthaginian expansion on the island, but this came at a time when the region was faced with a new and powerful political player – the Roman Republic.

  Rome: From City-State to Master of Italy

  About the same time Phoenician colonists from Tyre were founding Carthage in the eighth century BCE, villagers along the Tiber River in central Italy were consolidating their distinctive round-hutted villages into a small city-state called Rome. According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BCE by Romulus, who became the first of seven Roman and Etruscan kings in what is known as the Regal Period (753–509 BCE). Practical, innovative, and very hard working, these first Romans were religiously conservative agriculturalists, praying to indigenous deities and to those borrowed from contacts with Etruscans to the north and Greeks to the south. Contacts with the Etruscans led to invasion and occupation around 620 by Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. Etruscan kings ruled Rome until about 509 when the last of these monarchs, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (‘the Proud’), was removed by the Romans.

  The origins of the Etruscans are not clear, but after 650 BCE they became the dominant cultural and economic force in north-central Italy and founded settlements as far south as Capua, giving them direct contact with the Greek colonists living in southern Italy. The Etruscans contributed a great deal to Roman engineering and culture during this century of occupation. They introduced the arch to the Romans, constructed the first road through central Rome – the Sacred Way – and oversaw the development of temples, markets, shops, streets and houses using a grid pattern. The Etruscan toga and short cloak were also adopted by the Romans, with the Roman aristocracy favouring Tyrian purple-dyed clothing as a status symbol. Even the Latin alphabet is of Etruscan origin, a modification of one derived from the Greeks.

  In religious matters, the Romans in the Regal Period were very conservative and pragmatic. They practiced a type of ancestor worship. The gods were viewed as disembodied spirits or powers which could be won over by the right prayers and sacrifices and whose will was revealed in the flight of birds and in th
under. This superstitious belief was so strong that it could determine if or when a battle took place. The Romans viewed their relations with the gods as contractual – if the state did its duty to the gods, then it hoped the gods would be pleased and cooperative. If things went awry, then great pains were taken by appointed officials to restore the gods’ favour through sacrifice and extraordinary vows at public temples. As the Roman kingdom evolved into the Roman Republic, the aristocratic class, known as the patricians, maintained their monopoly of religion over the lower or plebeian class. Roman religion became increasingly a centralized and state-guided endeavour.

  Around 509 BCE, the Romans overthrew Etruscan rule. Newly-independent Rome replaced the Etruscan monarchy with a republic governed by a council of elders drawn from the wealthy class. This council, or Senate, annually elected two consuls as chief magistrates of the Roman state. From 362 BCE, imperium, or the authority to command the Roman army, was entrusted to the consuls, or to their junior colleagues, the praetors. Though the election of co-rulers ensured a balance of political power, it had serious military drawbacks. The two consuls shared responsibilities for military operations, alternating command privileges every other day. Recognizing the inefficiency of this system, Roman law provided for the appointment in times of national crisis of a dictator, for the duration of six months.

  After expelling their Etruscan overlords, the early Roman Republic expanded from a tiny area of Latium in the Tiber River valley using their well-organized and highly-disciplined army and adopting a tolerant policy toward the people they conquered. But the Roman military were not always certain of success. In the fifth century the Romans and their allies the Latins barely held their own against the local mountain tribes. Over the next century the Romans survived and even thrived, pushing north against the Etruscans, conquering Veii in 396, and south against the tribes of central Italy, besting them one by one. They even endured a whirlwind invasion of Celtic tribes in the early fourth century (c.390). Their generally lenient treatment of the vanquished and their tolerance of native traditions and practices made them acceptable occupiers, though the Campanians and Samnites fought for decades against Roman expansion, eventually succumbing to the relentless Roman military machine.