Hannibal’s Last Battle Read online

  What is perhaps most surprising is the amount of battlefield success the Carthaginian army had despite its multinational composition. Coordinating such an exotic mix of warriors, with their different languages and weapons, is difficult in any age, and even more so in classical warfare with the limited command, control and communication devices available to commanders. The sounds of drums, trumpets and flutes which commanders used to orchestrate troop movements could easily be drowned out by the din of combat, while standard bearers could be cut down or lose their will to fight.32

  But, like great commanders of any age, Hannibal was known for his personal courage in battle which endeared him to his troops. He demanded absolute obedience, sometimes disciplining his troops with beatings and death sentences by crucifixion. These challenges were further exacerbated during his campaigns when he had to replace so many of his troops after crossing the Alps in late 218 with new, barbarian recruits. It is testimony to the brilliance of Carthaginian commanders who, over the course of the third century and two Punic Wars, fielded these kinds of armies with great success against the rising power of a new and formidable enemy, the Roman Republic.33

  The Organization and Tactics of the Roman Army

  When Rome appeared as a city-state in the Tiber valley sometime in the middle of the eighth century BCE, its first army differed little from those of other small communities in Latium. It is believed that Rome’s first military organization was based on the tribal system, reflecting the three original Roman tribes (the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres).34 Each tribe provided 1,000 infantry towards the army, made up of ten centuries consisting of 100 men each. The tribal contingent was under the command of a tribunus or tribal officer. Together, these 3,000 men made up a legio or levy. This infantry force was supplemented by a small body of 300 equites or ‘knights’, aristocratic cavalry drawn equally from the three tribes.35 Thus, from the very beginning of Roman military tradition cavalry was not held in high regard and would remain a subordinate arm to infantry during the Archaic and Republican periods (c.750–31 BCE). As we shall see, inferior cavalry units will hinder Roman efforts against Hannibal in the Second Punic War.

  Initially, the organization of the early Roman army was heavily influenced by their powerful neighbours to the north, the Etruscans. Etruscan civilization emerged in Etruria around 900 BCE as a confederation of city-states. By 650 BCE, they had expanded in central Italy and became the dominant cultural and economic force in the region, trading widely with Greeks and Carthaginians on the Italian peninsula. Under direct occupation by the Etruscans between c.620–509 BCE, Rome benefited greatly from this cultural exchange, with Roman villages transformed into a thriving city-state.36 And although these Etruscan city-states were united in a league of usually twelve cities, they seldom operated together unless faced with an outside threat. Like the Greek poleis to the east, the Etruscan cities spent most of their energy fighting each other.

  Sometime in the sixth century BCE, the Etruscans adopted the Greek method of fighting and organized their militia-armies into phalanxes. After conquering the Roman city-state in the late sixth century BCE, the newly created Etrusco-Roman army was composed of two parts: the Etruscans, and their subjects the Romans and Latins. The Etruscans fought in the centre as heavy infantry hoplites, while the Romans and Latins fought in their native style with spears, axes and javelins on either wing.37 The army was divided into five classes depending on nationality.38 The largest contingent, or first class, was composed of Etruscan heavy infantry armed in Greek fashion with heavy thrusting spear and long sword and protected by breastplate, helmet, greaves and a heavy round shield. The second class were spearmen conscripted from subject peoples and armed in Italian fashion with spear, sword, helmet, greaves, and the oval shield or scutum, probably of Samnite origin. The third class was lightly-armoured heavy infantry spearmen with the scutum, while the fourth and fifth classes were light infantry javelin throwers and slingers.39

  The second of the Etruscan overlords in Rome, Servius Tullius (578–535), is credited in the middle of the sixth century BCE with attempting to integrate the population by reorganizing the army according to wealth and not nationality.40 The Servian reforms reflected an old Indo-European custom where citizenship depended on property and the ability to maintain a panoply and serve in the militia. The reforms segregated Etrusco-Roman society into seven groups.41 The wealthiest group formed the cavalry or equites, made up of Etruscan nobles and members of the Roman upper class. The equites did not act in the capacity of heavy or light cavalry, but served as mounted infantry and scouts.42

  The second wealthiest group acted as heavy infantry, fighting in the phalangeal formation and armed as before in the Greek manner. The third through sixth groups were armed in native Italian fashion identical to the pre-Servian period. The seventh class, or capite censi, were too poor to qualify for military service.43 Tactically, the Servian army fought as before, with heavy infantry in the central phalanx, protected by lightly-armoured heavy infantry on the wings and light infantry skirmishers in the front until the phalanx engaged. There is no mention of archers in the Servian reforms. Like the Greeks, the Romans seemed to disdain the bow and arrow as a weapon of war, preferring it for hunting.44

  The early Republican army was a citizen army. In fact, the original meaning for the word legio (derived from legere, Latin for ‘to gather together’) was a draft or levy of heavy infantry drawn from the property owning citizen-farmers living around Rome.45 The army continued to adhere organizationally to the Servian reforms and consisted of three legions, each of a thousand men, supplemented by light infantry provided by the poorer citizens and cavalry by the wealthy class.46 Divided into ten centuries of a hundred men, each legion was commanded by a military tribune appointed from the senatorial class, while each century was commanded by a centurion promoted or elected from the ranks of the legionaries.47

  During the first century of Republican rule, the Roman army continued to utilize the phalanx-based tactical system. But the battle square proved less effective against opponents unaccustomed to the stylized hoplite warfare favoured by the Mediterranean classical civilizations. When, in 390 BCE, 30,000 Gauls crossed the Apennines in search of plunder, the defending Roman legions were pushed against the Allia River.48 The Roman phalanxes, outnumbered two-to-one and overwhelmed by the ferocity and physical size of the Celtic marauders, were defeated, unable to cope with the barbarians’ open formation and oblique attacks.49 The sack of the ‘Eternal City’ in 390 BCE left a lasting impression on the psyche of Roman civilization. The surviving Romans who witnessed the violation of their city from a nearby hill vowed never again to fight unprepared. The military reforms of the early fourth century BCE are associated with the leader Marcus Furius Camillus, a man credited with saving the city from the Gauls and remembered as a second founder of Rome.50 Although history cannot precisely answer if Camillus himself was responsible for the Camillian military reforms, the changes that bear his name dramatically altered the character of the Roman legion in the fourth century BCE.

  The Roman army’s experience against Gauls in the north and campaigns against the Samnites (343–290 BCE) in the rough, hilly terrain of central Italy forced a change in tactical organization, with Roman commanders altering the panoply and tactical formation of the legions to meet the different fighting styles of their opponents, whether barbarian or civilized, giving individual legionaries more responsibility and greater tactical freedom. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Polybian’ legion, so named because the historian Polybius gives us the most detailed description of its workings. During this time the Roman army expanded from three to four legions, and the number of legionaries per legion grew to 4,200 infantry, supported by 300 Roman cavalry.51 As before, the wealthiest men made up the cavalry (equites), divided into ten groups or turmae, commanded by decurions. These men were armed and armoured in Hellenistic fashion with spear and sword and protected by helmet, cuirass and small circular shield.52


  As part of the reorganization of the ‘Polybian’ legion, the Roman century had been reduced from one hundred to sixty men apiece.53 Each of these centuries was commanded by a centurion and a hand-picked assistant, or optio, members of a professional veteran officer class who drilled the legionaries and commanded them in battle. The centurion led his troops from the front, while the optio stood at the rear of the formation to maintain order. Centurions also administered discipline to the troops when necessary. Roman discipline was usually corporate in nature, though extraordinary circumstances could require a capital punishment known as decimation. It was inflicted on legionaries who had given ground without cause in combat or exposed their neighbours to flank attack. The process of decimation took place after the engagement, when a tenth of the offending unit was chosen by lot, then clubbed to death by their own comrades.54

  During this time the Roman army abandoned the phalanx altogether in favour of a new linear formation organized around four classes of soldiers defined not only by wealth, but also by age and experience.55 The Greek-style battle square was replaced by three lines of heavy infantry, the first two-thirds were each armed in an innovative manner with two weighted javelins, or pila, and a sword and were protected by helmet, breastplate, greaves and the traditional oval scutum favoured by the lower classes. The ranks of the foremost of these two lines, the hastati, were filled with young adult males in their twenties, while the centre formation, or principes, was comprised of veterans in their thirties. The third and last line, or triarii were armoured as above but armed in the older fashion with thrusting spear and scutum. The triarii consisted of the oldest veterans and acted as a reserve. The first line (hastati) and second line (principes) consisted of 1,200 legionaries each, while the third line (triarii) was made up of only 600 soldiers.56 The poorest and youngest men served as velites or light infantry skirmishers. Armed with light javelins and swords and unprotected except for helmet and hide-covered wicker shields, the velites acted as a screen for their heavier-armed and less-mobile comrades. Each legionary was still responsible for supplying his own panoply, but in order to maintain uniformity within each century, the weapons were frequently purchased from the state.57

  Before battle, the hastati, principes and triarii formed up in homogeneous rectangular units or maniples of 120 men (two centuries probably deployed side-by-side), protected by the velite light infantry. Each maniple was commanded by the centurion from the right-hand century and organized around a signum or standard kept by the signifer, who led the way on the march and in combat. Each maniple deployed as a small independent unit, typically with a twenty-man front and six-man depth and may have been separated from its lateral neighbour by the width of its own frontage, though this is still a matter of some debate.58 Livy tells us that the maniples were ‘a small distance apart’.59 Moreover, the hastate, principes and triarii maniples were staggered, with the principes covering the gaps of the hastati in front, and the triarii covering the gaps of the principes. This checkerboard, or quincunx, formation provided maximum tactical flexibility for the maniple, allowing it to deliver or meet an attack from any direction.60 As Polybius describes:

  The order of battle used by the Roman army is very difficult to break through, since it allows every man to fight both individually and collectively; the effect is to offer a formation which can present a front in any direction, since the maniples which are nearest to a point where danger threatens wheel in order to meet it. The arms that they carry both give protection and also instil great confidence into the men, because of the size of the shields and the strength of the swords which can withstand repeated blows. All these factors make the Romans formidable antagonists in battle and very hard to overcome.61

  Roman Order of Battle. A Roman cohort, organised into three maniples of two centuries each, deployed for battle. The front centuries are comprised of hastati, the middle of principes, and the third of triarii. Maniples of hastati and principes are made up of 120 infantrymen, while the veteran triarii are 60 men strong. Each maniple also has 40 velites who deploy in front of the cohort as a skirmishing and screening element. The checkerboard deployment provdes flexibility and manoeuvre room needed for manipular tactics.

  Roman Order of Battle. A typical Roman legion, consisting of thirty maniples, flanked on the left and right by ten turmae of cavalry, made up of thirty horsemen each. The strength of the legion lay in its flexibility, highly trained legionaries, and the support each element provides to the others by their deployment. The weaknesses of the Roman formation are its lack of shock power compared to a phalanx-type formation and its extremely weak cavalry element, as can readily be seen in this illustration. An enemy army with a robust cavalry arm, such as the Carthaginians, was difficult to pursue with such an undersized mounted force.

  In battle, the maniple legion presented a double threat to its adversaries. After the screening velites withdrew through the ranks of the heavy infantry, the hastati moved forward and threw their light pila at thirty-five yards, quickly followed by their heavy pila.62 Drawing their short thrusting Spanish swords, or gladii hispaniensis, the front ranks of the hastati charged their enemy, whose ranks were presumably broken up by the javelin discharge. When the two formations joined, the legionaries exploited the tears and stepped inside the spears of the enemy front rank into the densely-packed mass and wielded their swords with much greater speed and control than the closely packed spearmen could defend against.63 As the leading Romans thrust into the enemy, the succeeding hastati threw their pila and engaged with swords. The battle became a series of furious combats with both sides periodically drawing apart to recover. During one of these pauses, the hastati would retreat back through the open ranks of the battle-tested and fresh principes and triarii. The principes then closed ranks and moved forward, discharging their pila and engaging with swords in the manner of their younger comrades. If there was a breach in the Roman line, the veteran triarii acted as true heavy infantry and moved forward to fill the tear with their spears.

  The new Roman system had many strengths. By merging heavy and light infantry into the pila-carrying legionary, the Roman army gave its soldiers the ability to break up the enemy formation with missile fire just moments before weighing into them with sword and shield, in effect merging heavy and light infantry into one weapon system.64

  Once engaged, the maniple’s relatively open formation emphasized individual prowess and gave each legionary the responsibility of defending approximately thirty-six square feet between himself and his fellow legionaries, a fact which placed special emphasis on swordplay in training exercises.65 But even if the maniple failed, it could be replaced by a fresh one in the rear. This ability to rotate fatigued legionaries with fresh soldiers gave the Romans a powerful advantage over their enemies.

  One of the keys to the success of the Roman war machine was the adoption of the deadly gladius during the Punic Wars. Twenty inches long and three inches wide, the gladius was primarily a stabbing weapon, and legionaries were trained not to use it for cut-and-slash attacks, the preferred method of their enemies. Instead, Roman soldiers would employ a shield parry, followed by a sharp under-thrust with the gladius into the enemy’s torso, creating the killing trademark of the Roman infantry.66 This tactic was especially effective against poorly-armoured barbarians.

  The ‘Polybian’ legion served the Republic well in its expansion against the Samnites, Etruscans and Gauls in northern and central Italy during the fourth century BCE. But Rome faced new challenges in the third century BCE from the Greeks in southern Italy, the Carthaginians in Spain and North Africa and the Hellenistic Successor States in the Levant. Rome’s martial contacts with these other regional powers would test the effectiveness of the maniple legion against combined-arms tactical systems inspired by the success of the Macedonian art of war.

  The first significant test of the maniple legion came against the Greeks in Magna Graecia, southern Italy, in the Tarentine Wars (281–267 BCE). Rome’s expansion into the lower
peninsula forced the Greeks living there to forge an alliance with King Pyrrhus of Epirus (r.297–272), an ambitious Greek king seeking to emulate the conquests of Alexander the Great. Rome’s struggle against Pyrrhus proved to be a difficult one, and over the course of the war, Rome suffered two major defeats. But poor generalship, rather than an inferior fighting force, was the cause of the failures at Heraclea in 280 and Asculum in 279 BCE. But even while Pyrrhus’ forces were victorious over the Romans, his battles, especially at Asculum, cost him dearly, giving modern historians the term ‘pyrrhic victory’ to symbolize a costly victory. The Romans finally decisively defeated Pyrrhus’ army at Beneventum in 275 BCE, and by 265 BCE southern Italy was under Roman hegemony.67 Rome now controlled Magna Graecia and its many Greek cities, but this victory also brought it into very close proximity with the island of Sicily and Carthage’s economic and territorial interests.

  The First Punic War: The War at Sea and on Land

  The origins of the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) lay in the growing competition between Rome and Carthage for control of the islands and sea-lanes of the western Mediterranean. This war witnessed the maturation of Rome as a regional sea power and the defeat of Carthage on land and at sea. It would also have a profound impact on the conduct of the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) and the Carthaginian strategy envisioned by Hamilcar Barca and implemented by his son Hannibal when hostilities broke out a second time between Carthage and Rome in 218.