Hannibal's dynasty

HANNIBAL”S

DYNASTY

HAN N IBAL’ S DYNASTY

HANNIBAL’S DYNASTY Power and politics in the western Mediterranean, 247–183 BC

Dexter Hoyos

First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2003 Dexter Hoyos All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-41782-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-41929-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–29911–X (Print Edition)

CONTENT S

Acknowledgements Plates

vii between pages viii and 1

Introduction

1

I The heights of Heircte and Eryx II Carthage

7 21

III The revolt of Africa

34

IV Barca supreme

47

V Hamilcar in Spain

55

VI Hasdrubal’s consolidation

73

VII Hannibal in Spain

87

VIII The invasion of Italy

98

IX Three great victories

114

X Hannibal’s Italian league

122

XI Indecisive war

134

XII The defeat of Hasdrubal

141

v

CONTENTS

XIII Africa invaded

152

XIV Defeat

164

XV Postwar eclipse

179

XVI Hannibal sufete

190

XVII The end of the Barcids

203

XVIII Sources

212 223 233 237 285 296

Appendix: special notes Time-line Notes to the text Bibliography Index

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEME N TS

It is a pleasant task to acknowledge the people and institutions who have helped to make this work possible. My earliest debt is to Richard Stoneman, who expressed interest in the theme of Hannibal’s dynasty even before I began writing; and his support since the book was completed has been just as valued. The rest of his team at Routledge, and Frances Brown and Carole Drummond at The Running Head Ltd, have been consistently helpful and informative on every aspect of publication. I should like to express my appreciation to the scholars, publishers and archivists who made available several of the illustrations for this book. In alphabetical order they are Archivi Alinari and Archivio Brogi of Florence, Italy; CNRS Editions, Paris, and Prof. M. H. Fantar; and Dr Matthias Steinart of the Archäologisches Institut at the University of Freiburg, Germany. I am grateful too to Sydney University for its continuing commitment to Greek and Roman studies, a rather endangered species in Australia, and its aids to research through grants of study leave and travel funds. Invaluable again have been the interest, courtesy and expertise of the University Library staff at every level, for without these my research task would have been hard indeed. As always, it has been my wife Jann and our daughter Camilla who made it both possible and worthwhile. Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal and his brothers have not been the centre of their attention, but if Barcid family life was at all similar they were fortunate men. Dexter Hoyos

vii

1 Hannibal—bust found at Naples in 1667: identification not certain (reproduction courtesy of Archivi Alinari, Firenze)

2 Carthage in Hannibal’s time: the ports region (reconstruction) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Naval port The admiralty island The admiralty pavilion Merchant port The ‘Fabre quadrilateral’ (ancient quay) Lower city: artisans’ and commercial district Agora (central square) Senate house Public buildings Coastline City wall

From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique (courtesy of CNRS Editions, Paris)

3 Carthage (ca. 1890)—View from Byrsa hill towards the lagoons (the ancient artificial ports); on the horizon, the Cape Bon peninsula

4 Carthage (ca. 1990)—aerial view from the south: in the middle distance, Byrsa hill (Colline de St-Louis) from M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique (courtesy of CNRS Editions, Paris)

5 Antiochus III (l.) and Masinissa(?) (r.)—portraits (presumed) in the Louvre and Capitoline Museums respectively

6 Gallic warrior (third century BC)—detail of the famous statuary-group of a Gallic warrior slaying his wife and himself to avoid capture: from the Altar of Attalus I of Pergamum

7 Marcellus—Hannibal’s vigorous opponent, killed in ambush in 208 BC: a late Republican or early Imperial statue

8 Scipio—presumed portrait, in bronze (reproduced courtesy of Archivio Brogi/Archivi Alinari, Firenze)

9 Philip V of Macedon— two coin-portraits of the king in his prime

10 Polybius—commemorative stele from Kato Klitoria, in the Peloponnese, set up by a first-century AD descendant (reproduced courtesy of Dr Matthias Steinhart, Archäologisches Institut, the University of Freiburg)

INTRODUCTI ON

Hannibal is the only Carthaginian who is still a household name. As leader of the Carthaginians and their empire in the Second Punic War from 218 to 201 BC, he made it touch and go whether they or the Romans would come to dominate the Mediterranean west, and after that, more or less inevitably, the east. He belonged to a remarkable family. Had the Carthaginians won the war and changed the course of ancient history, the victory would have been due in great part to Hannibal and his kinsmen, who had rebuilt Carthaginian power after its catastrophic defeat in 241 at Roman hands. In taking his city to its most extensive and eventful level of power Hannibal was the third, the greatest and the last of a republican ruling dynasty. His father Hamilcar, nicknamed Barca (hence the convenient family sobriquet Barcid) came to prominence in 247, the year Hannibal his eldest son was born. Hamilcar and his son-in-law Hasdrubal preceded Hannibal between 237 and 221 as effective rulers of Carthage and creators of a land empire that replaced—and outdid—the city’s lost island possessions. Hannibal built on their base. How the Barcids’ dominance was founded and how maintained, what each leader in turn aimed to achieve with it, what they actually accomplished, and how and why Barcid supremacy in the end collapsed—and then staged a brief revival—are the themes of this study. The theme involves politics, international relations, strategy and geography, for the Barcid generals were not only Carthage’s de facto leaders of government but her official commandersin-chief, and the two rôles were bound closely together. The Carthaginian state had enjoyed success before, but never on the Barcid scale or with the potential to change all of ancient history. This achievement was the more remarkable as Hamilcar and his successors, uniquely in Punic history, exercised decades of dominance not from their home city but from hundreds of miles away, first in Spain and then in Italy. Hamilcar’s adroit handling of the war against rebel mercenaries and subject Libyans in North Africa, from 241 to 237, made him supreme in Punic affairs, and his successes in Spain followed by Hasdrubal’s consolidation cemented the Barcid supremacy. Yet they and then Hannibal were not military dictators: all three 1

INTRODUCTION

were elected to their commands by the citizens of Carthage as well as by their armies, and all relied on a supporting network of kinsmen, friends and supporters to sustain their political dominance at Carthage. Barcid expansionism interestingly involved a measure—or at least a show—of co-operation with their non-Punic subjects and dependants too. Hasdrubal not only struck treaties and practised conciliation, but also arranged to be chosen supreme leader by the peoples of Punic Spain—a symbolic act, but one obviously judged worthwhile for building Spanish loyalty. Marriage-alliances contributed too, in both Africa and Spain: Hamilcar married daughters to Numidian princes, while both Hasdrubal and Hannibal took wives from lordly families in Spain. Alexander the Great and his successorkings had acted similarly in the east. The Romans by contrast, when their turn at world empire came, took much longer to make use of such methods. The generals’ long-lasting control of home affairs depended on continuing success abroad, which in turn required resources from Africa—officers, soldiers and war-elephants, colonists for new cities in Spain, and funds too at times. The drive to continental empire moreover aimed at benefiting the Carthaginian state, not solely the dominant family and their friends (otherwise the generals could have set up a breakaway state in Spain, and the Carthaginians at home could have ignored Hannibal’s later collision with the Romans). The new cities, capped by Hasdrubal’s New Carthage, opened handsome opportunities to Punic settlers. Wealth, as Hamilcar’s later Roman biographer Nepos noted, flowed in turn from the new conquests to Africa. Carthage’s famous enclosed harbours, naval and commercial, which the historian Appian described and archaeologists have excavated, are very likely the most enduring monuments to those Barcid-garnered riches. The new imperial expansion kept Carthage as a great power on a par with the others around the Mediterranean—most crucially of all with the Romans, who not only had driven the Carthaginians from Sicily in the first war but afterwards took advantage of their weakness to extract Sardinia too. Barcid military activities interacted closely with Punic foreign relations. Both Hamilcar and then Hasdrubal extended Punic control in Spain through treaties and alliances as well as campaigns (though the conventional picture makes Hamilcar do the fighting and Hasdrubal the negotiating). The Romans’ sporadic attention to them was always expressed in strategic and territorial terms: the seizure of Sardinia in 237, the Ebro accord 12 years later and, in Hannibal’s time, the episode of Saguntum. Each Roman intervention confirmed Barcid political dominance, even at the price finally of a new war with the old enemy. In its turn, Hannibal’s grand design of 218 required not only military victory but ensuing diplomatic successes, and had an equally blended goal: an Italian, or at any rate southern Italian, alliance system backed by Punic arms, to keep the Romans in permanent check and guarantee hegemony over the western Mediterranean to the Carthaginians. In both war and alliance building he was impressively and yet incompletely successful. At the height of 2

INTRODUCTION

their success, between 216 and 209, the Carthaginians held sway over North Africa, the rich southern half of Spain and most of the south of Italy, while continental north Italy and much of Sicily were in revolt against the Romans. Thanks to the Barcids’ qualities as generals, paradoxically Carthage the quondam sea-power came close to overthrowing the Roman republic—long dominant in land warfare—through war on land. As a result Roman victory in the second war, even more than in the first, was not preordained or predictable. Many observers reckoned on a Punic triumph. Two Greek states, Macedon and Syracuse, thought it profitable to ally with the prospective victors and share the coming spoils. That the momentum of victory slowed and then reversed was due as much to Barcid miscalculation—and overconfidence—as to the enemy’s dogged perseverance. Another Barcid paradox was their lack of experience as admirals: and as a result the Romans, comparatively new to naval warfare, outclassed the veteran mistress of the seas on the water from start to finish, with the innovative naval port at Carthage no help even if it was a Barcid (or Barcid-approved) creation. Hannibal in his later years was to show a touch of skill and resourcefulness as a naval commodore, but his lack of anything like it during his own war contributed to his and his city’s failure in their greatest enterprise. Stalemate in Italy and a seesawing military situation in Spain, along with inability to master the seas, forced Barcid kinsmen and supporters at home to share supremacy (so it seems) for the first time with another political group, centred on the non-Barcid general Hasdrubal son of Gisco. After Hannibal’s return and final defeat, even shared pre-eminence was gone—though not to the son of Gisco’s benefit. Still, enough glamour, wealth and nostalgia survived to bring Hannibal back to the helm in 196, and it took yet another hamfisted Roman intervention to dislodge him for good. Even then the Barcids left a legacy: no bloodshed or revolution, and a state and society prosperous and stable enough to endure—at any rate until the Romans chose to act one more time. The Barcid style in government, exploiting the lustre of successful war and conquest to focus authority on one vivid figure, well fitted the third century— the zenith of the Hellenistic era in the eastern Mediterranean, where great (and not so great) states likewise acknowledged long-term leaders with similar claims to glory. Military command, rather than naval, typified them and equally their Punic counterparts: as just noted, Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal, and Hannibal’s brothers too—all leaders or deputy leaders of the Mediterranean’s oldest sea-power—were devoted land generals. All the same, unlike the major eastern powers which were monarchies with Greek or Hellenized élites, Carthage remained a republic and, while influenced by Hellenistic culture, kept a civilization and leaders that were distinctively home-grown. Set up through military success, exploiting the charisma of victory and conquest and the profits deriving from these, and relying at home on support 3

INTRODUCTION

from citizens as a whole as well as allied or opportunistic fellow-aristocrats, Barcid dominance of the Punic world in some ways prefigured the supremacy established two centuries later by Julius Caesar and Augustus over Rome—a historical irony, since it was by defeating Barcid Carthage that the Romans began to build their own continental empire which, in time, was to set in train the transformation of Roman republic into Caesarian monarchy. It was appropriate, in a way, that Rome and the Roman world should later come under the rule of Caesars from North Africa and that the first of that dynasty, Septimius Severus, should commemorate the last of the Barcids with a splendid monument on the spot where Hannibal died. Once they had driven their old enemy to suicide in 183, the Romans chose to remember him with tempered but genuine admiration, a compliment they extended to his family. Hannibal’s war was enshrined in memory as the testingtime of the Roman people and their victory as the warrant for world mastery. The Barcids aroused admiration too among Greeks, whose many and fractious states, in losing their own wars against the Romans, cost these nothing like the effort they had needed against Barcid Carthage. The second-century Greek historian Polybius judged Hamilcar the outstanding general of the first war, and plainly reckoned Hannibal inferior to none in the second except Scipio Africanus who finally defeated him (and whose family later befriended the historian). This impact on Greeks and Romans was much to the Barcids’ posthumous benefit. Almost nothing survives of Carthaginian records—a few quotations, paraphrases and references in later authors—and little of contemporary Roman or Greek ones either. But all were used, in varying degrees of detail and prejudice, by later authors whose accounts do remain. These record much about Hannibal, a good deal about his father Hamilcar, and rather less on the other notable Barcids. At the same time they can be problematic. Some do not survive in full: for instance Polybius’, Diodorus’, Livy’s and Dio’s histories of the period. Others are short, like Nepos’ biographies of Hamilcar and Hannibal, Plutarch’s of Fabius Cunctator and Marcellus, the treatments by Appian of Roman wars in North Africa, Spain, Sicily and against Hannibal, later epitomes of past history like those by Eutropius, Justin and Orosius, and those—late Roman and Byzantine respectively—of Livy and Dio. The farther away from the period, the more necessarily reliant these authors were on previous sources, while their own knowledge of the details of politics, society and warfare (even on the Roman side) varied from extensive to imaginative. Most applied a pro-Roman tint to their narratives because the bulk of their sources had it, or because they accepted a teleology of Roman triumph and Carthaginian defeat. More crucially still, nearly all were writing to illuminate not Punic history but Roman. Features of Punic government, society and economy could be ignored except when some detail was needed to clarify a situation; and then the detail—even if taken from an early and informed source—might not be too accurately relayed. 4

INTRODUCTION

To interpret the Barcids, and even to reconstruct what they did and how it was done, calls then for careful detective work. Hamilcar’s first decade in military affairs (for instance) is known in some detail, but less clearly his political and social connexions. Then for his and Hasdrubal’s empire-building in Spain we have to rely on an array—a small one at that—of disconnected notices in Polybius, Diodorus and others. And while the military history of Hannibal’s war on the Romans is a well-recorded saga, its technical details (especially in his famous early victories) tend to attract more interest and analysis than the next decade and a half, the years first of Carthage’s maximum extent of power and the Barcids’ own zenith, and then of decline in both. Hannibal’s own deserved reputation as military leader, which loses nothing in Polybius’ and Livy’s telling, can prompt over-easy generalizations—dogged Romans and unsupportive home authorities—about why he and his city finally failed. In all these areas, and others, established dogmas and issues still under debate both need a fresh look. As usual in such analyses, much depends on what the ultimate sources were or may have been for the accounts that survive. Yet identifying them solves only part of each problem, for like the survivors even the earliest accounts were partisan to one degree or other. The limited evidence for much of Hamilcar’s and most of his successor Hasdrubal’s doings compounds the difficulty. The activities of Hannibal and his brothers, while more fully reported, largely come filtered through Roman historical tradition rather than direct from Barcid informants, with much resulting distortion suspected by moderns—and sometimes proved. Even Polybius, our earliest surviving source and a writer not only conscious that objectivity was difficult but still keen to achieve it, needs to be assessed with care. Admiring both the Romans and the Barcids does not guarantee invariable impartiality, clear exposition or persuasive analysis, and one or other of these qualities goes missing rather often in his narrative. The issues that arise over the Barcids and Barcid-era Carthage are therefore important and taxing. Judgements have to be made according to the quantity of evidence, the coherence of one source compared to another’s where different sources make differing claims, how well the various solutions to a problem fit in with factors otherwise known, and occasionally even on how a textual passage is to be read. Much of the time an author has to settle for probable answers rather than certainties, and inevitably they will be subjective to an extent, however great his effort, Polybius-like, for objectivity. For the reasons mentioned earlier, the effort is still worth making.

Citations and references Hannibal, his family and Carthage interest not only specialists in ancient history but, rightly, a broader range of readers too. In the main text therefore sources are quoted in translation, with the Greek and Latin originals given in 5

INTRODUCTION

the notes when it seems useful. The notes supply detailed references to ancient sources and important modern discussions, with the latter cited by author’s name and date of publication (or a few by initials like CAH2). Technical points too complex to fit comfortably in the text are likewise discussed in the notes, apart from some that need detailed treatment—these have been reserved to the Appendix. Full details of the abbreviations used in the notes, and all the ancient sources, are included in the Bibliography. All dates, unless accompanied by ‘AD’, are BC.

6

I THE HEIGHTS OF H E IRCTE AND ERYX

I The safest time to sail along an enemy coast is at night, so that was probably when the Carthaginian ships entered the little Sicilian bay between its two steep and massive headlands. They anchored close to shore and Hamilcar the general gave the order for his troops to disembark. The Carthaginians knew this area well. Not far to the south-east on its coastal plain, the city of Panormus had once been the jewel of Punic Sicily but for seven years now had lain in the Romans’ hands, along with most of the old Punic province. In the pass leading down to the little bay between the two mountain headlands stood the fort of Heircte, still held for Carthage. The Romans had once tried to capture Heircte and failed. After that they ignored it—something they would now rue. Probably as dawn broke the troops climbed the tracks up the steep-sided mountain that loomed above Heircte and the bay on the western side, to gain the summit. This was a broad, undulating plateau with a rim measuring 100 stadia—more than 11 miles, or 18 kilometres. The heights had broad meadows, no dangerous creatures, healthy winds from the sea and access to plentiful water. There were only two paths up on the land side and one from the shore; much of the summit was edged by cliffs, the rest easily fortifiable. A hillock on the plateau gave the occupiers a panorama of north-western Sicily and the Mediterranean beyond: to the east Panormus and its fertile plain bounded by uplands; over to the west a deeply indented coast backed by serried hills; on the south yet more heights, plateaux and valleys dotted with small villages and scattered stone-walled towns. The heights offered a bastion in the heart of Roman-held Sicily, yet one that was virtually impregnable. The year was 247, the eighteenth of the longest war in Carthaginian history. The war was at a stalemate. Hamilcar, recently appointed to command in Sicily, was trying something new.1

II The Carthaginians had not wanted to fight the Romans in 264. Nor had a Punic war been on the Romans’ minds. For two and a half centuries the two 7

THE HEIGHTS OF HEIRCTE AND ERYX

states had had trade and treaty relations, and they had recently renewed these. In 264 the Romans meant to intervene in Sicily against the reviving might of Syracuse and in search of easy plunder in the island’s east. But when they made allies of Syracuse’s enemies and the Carthaginians’ own protégés the Mamertines of Messana, the Carthaginians abruptly turned against both. They allied with the king of Syracuse to keep the Roman legions out of Sicily. But the legions did cross and King Hiero soon came to terms with them. From mid-263 the Carthaginians were faced with Roman dominance over eastern Sicily and no certainty about their ultimate aims. The Roman republic had come a long way from the medium-sized central Italian state which had made those earlier treaties. By 264 Roman territory covered a third of peninsular Italy, and the republic dominated the rest. Etruscans, Samnites, the Greek colonies of the south and all the other onceindependent peoples of the peninsula were its obedient allies. Most of this expansion had taken place in the last forty years and it was barely complete when the Mamertines’ troubles with Syracuse gave the Romans an opening into Sicily. The prospect alarmed the Carthaginians; they had not wanted war with the Romans, but did not want them in the island either. By mid-263, with Hiero out of it, the war was purely Carthage versus Rome.2 The Romans in turn, to judge from their actions, had had no wish to make war on the premier sea-power of the western Mediterranean. But just as the Carthaginians would not stand for Roman influence in eastern Sicily, so too the Romans would not accept a Punic threat to their alliance with Messana and taming of Hiero. Neither side made a peace move. Instead the war broadened. Over the years it cost both sides heavily. Sicilian towns and cities were sacked, like historic and splendid Agrigentum (Greek Acragas) which suffered first at Roman hands and later at the Carthaginians’. Each raided the other’s coasts in Italy and Punic Africa. Overall the war went badly for the Carthaginians. An unpleasant surprise befell them four years into the war: not only were their enemies militarily superior on land but now they created a major war-fleet for the first time in history, and between 260 and 255 inflicted one naval defeat after another on the one-time masters of the western seas. In Sicily the Carthaginians lost strongpoint after strongpoint, despite some intermittent successes. After 252 they held on to only the heavily fortified west-coast ports of Drepana and Lilybaeum. The Romans, in spite of their territorial successes, suffered repeated blows too, especially from 255. An invasion of North Africa in 256–255 ended in catastrophic defeat. Two powerful fleets then foundered in storms off North Africa, with huge loss of sailors’ and soldiers’ lives. In 249 came their worst and the Carthaginians’ finest hour. A fleet under one consul was defeated just off Drepana, and soon afterwards the other consul’s fleet was manoeuvred by a second Punic commander into a shattering gale off Cape Pachynus south of Syracuse. The losses, both in men and ships, were catastrophic again. All told, the figures reported for losses at sea between 255 and 249 8

THE HEIGHTS OF HEIRCTE AND ERYX

were 550 ships and more than 200,000 men, numbers gigantic in any age— and almost ruinous when the total population of the Italian peninsula hardly exceeded 3 million. Small wonder that the Roman census of 247 recorded a drop in registered male citizens of 50,000 compared to the last prewar census.3 Even so the Romans refused to abandon their sieges of Drepana and Lilybaeum, begun not long before. They had taken the decision long before, after capturing Agrigentum in 261, to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily and they held to it. This was not so much because they wanted to exploit the island for themselves: during the war the Sicilian communities, even apart from Hiero’s niche realm of Syracuse, enjoyed a good deal of autonomy, and afterwards the Romans would pay them only limited attention for nearly 15 years. But from the Roman viewpoint even a loose hegemony in Sicily could not coexist with a continuing Carthaginian presence—not even if this stayed in the western region of the island where it was three centuries old. How many times, after all, had the Carthaginians sallied forth from there to make war on Sicily’s Greeks and come near to making satellites of them all? The Carthaginians were no more inclined to compromise. By contrast with the island’s Greeks, Sicels and Elymians—their sparring partners or intermittent allies over those centuries—the Romans were uncomfortable neighbours, as the other communities of Italy had found. Entrenched Roman influence in even a corner of the island (the Mamertines had become members of the republic’s network of alliances) would be a permanent threat. As early as 263, cities in the Punic-dominated west had made overtures to the newcomers: Segesta for instance, which claimed a shared Trojan ancestry, and Halicyae its neighbour. The Carthaginians could expect some of these ties to have been strengthened in the decade and a half since. Besides, the Romans held a notorious interest in war-booty—it had been one of the enticements proffered by those urging a Sicilian intervention in 264—and this alone would make any neighbour of theirs nervous. If the Carthaginians wished to stay in Sicily, they had to ensure that the Romans left. Their resolve on this did not waver, it seems, even when the position was most desperate. When the consul Regulus’ invasion army was carrying all before it outside their walls, they sought his terms but then rejected them as too harsh. Regulus demanded (according to our limited evidence) an indemnity and Punic withdrawal from Sardinia and Sicily. An indemnity could be haggled over, and Sardinia with its Punic territory in the fertile south was a secondary though valuable possession; if any demand really was too harsh for the Carthaginians, it must have been the one for Sicily. Close to ruin though they were, they went on fighting. They soon turned the tables on Regulus too.4 It is a surprise, then, that they did so little to follow up the smashing successes of 249. Good commanders were on hand—Adherbal and Carthalo, the victors at Drepana and Cape Pachynus, and the soon-to-be-appointed 9

THE HEIGHTS OF HEIRCTE AND ERYX

Hamilcar. The enemy was disheartened and short of money. Yet it proved impossible to break the sieges of Drepana and Lilybaeum or Roman mastery of the countryside; and the only other Punic move was a raid on the Italian coast—perhaps near Rome—that fizzled when Roman defenders approached. The probable reason for this anticlimax was lack of funds. A few known items point to this. Around 250 (according to a late source, Appian) the Carthaginians had sought a loan of 2,000 talents, equivalent to 12 million Greek drachmas or 120 million asses in third-century Roman money, from Ptolemy king of Egypt. He politely rebuffed them. In 248, following Carthalo’s abortive expedition to Italy, his troops mutinied for lack of pay. He took drastic measures, such as marooning some of them on deserted islands and sending others (ringleaders probably) to Carthage under arrest, but the rest were still rebellious when his successor Hamilcar arrived. Not paying your soldiers, when they constituted more or less your entire overseas army—and numbered little more than 20,000—was an unwise policy: the Carthaginians had to have good reason for it. Another pointer to money woes is the decrease in the number of Punic ships on active service. The powerful fleet of 170 quinqueremes was mothballed, apart from the force used for raiding the Italian coasts and keeping Lilybaeum and Drepana supplied. Nor was the docked fleet maintained in fighting trim at Carthage: when relaunched many years later for fresh fighting, it was undermanned and such sailors and marines as it had were newly levied and poorly trained. Plainly not much money had been spent on it. This economy was safe enough at first: Roman losses had been so heavy in 249— by one calculation, they were left with a mere 20 quinqueremes in service—and Roman resources so depleted that the Carthaginians had little naval opposition to face. The best the Romans could do in these years was to lend individual ships to citizens to launch privateering raids on North Africa’s coast.5 There is other evidence too for financial straits at Carthage. In or not long after 247 another general, Hanno, captured the wealthy inland town of ‘Hecatompylus’, a Greek name for Theveste, today’s Tebessa 160 miles (260 kilometres) south-west of Carthage, with frankly imperialist aims according to the historian Diodorus. Why a war in Africa when the one for Sicily was still unfinished? Strategic and political reasons may have contributed—Regulus’ invasion had encouraged Carthage’s Numidian neighbours to attack Punic lands—but Diodorus implies the importance of booty and extra revenues in the Carthaginians’ thinking around 247. In these same years their own native Libyan subjects were charged taxes so oppressive that in the end they were ready to revolt. The Carthaginians, ‘thinking that they had rational grounds, governed the Libyans very harshly’, comments the historian Polybius drily. Hanno again was a noted practitioner of such revenue-raising.6 Much if not most of Carthage’s wealth and revenues flowed from trade— or had flowed before the war. Some of it was exotic: men told stories of 10

THE HEIGHTS OF HEIRCTE AND ERYX

barter with tribes on the West African coast, journeys to the Tin Isles north of Spain, far-western sea routes jealously guarded and intruding ships sunk. But the bulk of Punic commerce was with other Mediterranean lands, west and east, and it is very likely that this suffered from the interminable war. The occasional Roman fleet raiding on the coast would have had only passing effects on trade, but privateers could pose a bigger deterrent if they plundered widely and repeatedly. The biggest blow, though, would have been the closure of Sicily and Italy to Carthaginian merchants. Not only were these lands commercially important themselves, but ancient merchant-ships also needed to put in to land regularly on long trips, for fresh stores or to avoid rough weather. Now no Punic merchant could safely use landing-places under Roman control. Trade especially with the eastern Mediterranean and beyond must have suffered, though it was still possible to get to and from such places by sailing eastward along the Libyan and Egyptian coasts—a longer route. When the Romans finally built a new fleet in 242, the Carthaginians seem to have learned this not from merchants or intermediaries but on its arrival outside Drepana. All this would damage revenues, credit and war-making; and nothing suggests that doubling the Libyans’ taxes and annexing new territory made up for all the damage. Hamilcar, taking over from Carthalo in Sicily, thus had an unenviable mission. He had limited money, limited forces and only two surviving strongpoints. The enemy controlled the rest of the island and every year still sent two consular armies there, some 40,000 Roman and allied Italian troops. Realistically then his task was not so much to win the war as to avoid losing it. Big battles and large-scale campaigns were out of the question. At best he might wear the Romans down to a point where they were finally willing to make peace. At the least, he must keep the fight going one way or other until the Carthaginians had the means for a major new effort, or till something else turned up: for instance problems for Rome from some other quarter— restiveness among the hard-pressed Italian allies, or moves by their old foes the Gauls in Italy north of the peninsula. To old, experienced Carthaginian generals this may have looked like a poisoned cup. Hamilcar was young and confident, and had his own ideas of how to carry out his mission. First he quelled the still-restive soldiers, with methods much harsher than Carthalo’s. He ‘cut down many of them one night and had many others thrown into the sea’, writes Zonaras in his résumé of the historian Cassius Dio. But Hamilcar then, according to Zonaras, failed to recapture one of the islets just outside the harbour of Drepana after the besieging consul seized it. When he tried to retake it, the Romans drew him off by launching an assault on the town. The story looks a little suspicious: Zonaras claims that capturing the islet helped the Romans’ siege-efforts against the town, but in fact Drepana remained firmly in Punic hands for years to come. If the islet was lost, the blow was not so damaging after all. Still the episode, if true, illustrates 11

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Hamilcar’s problems with manpower and could help explain his coming change in strategy. Now he led a new naval raid on Italy, moving along the toe of the peninsula through the lands of Locri and the Bruttians, meeting it seems little resistance. There was no Roman navy to worry about and Hiero of Syracuse—despite becoming a permanent friend, amicus, of the Romans the year before—no doubt thought it rash to challenge Hamilcar’s warships with any of his own. It was on the return trip to Sicily that the new general pounced on the heights of Heircte.7

III Just where Hamilcar’s mountain stronghold was is still debated. Not, as originally thought, Monte Pellegrino, the mountain on the shore just north of Panormus: it is too small for Polybius’ specification of a 100 stadia rim, not to mention too close to the city, too sheer nearly everywhere, and without access to a proper haven. More recent candidates lie some 12 miles (16 kilometres) across the mountains to Panormus’ west, overlooking the gulf of Castellammare—steep and narrow Monte Pecoraro rising to nearly 1,000 metres above Terrasini or lower Monte Palmita to its south. But again, both are too small, Pecoraro too steep. Since Hamilcar could not have stationed all his army on the heights themselves as Polybius states, some (or most) of it must have camped on the coastal lowlands beside them, and the 100 stadia would then have to include these. Polybius’ emphasis on the nearness of Panormus becomes incomprehensible. The heights of Heircte were most probably the broad and lofty mountain mass bounding the plain of Panormus 5 miles (8 kilometres) west of the city, its highest point being the 809-metre Monte Castellaccio. Much of it is steepsided but paths, one of them starting from the shore below, lead up to the undulating plateau on the crest. To the south lie even higher mountains. Below its eastern flank a pass separates it from the smaller but even steeper cape of Monte Gallo. The pass may be where the fort of Heircte stood; the small bay and sheltering island at the foot of the two headlands will have been where Hamilcar’s fleet moored. Water is available at the harbour, as Polybius states. The heights are about 100 stadia in circumference, with pastures and with a suitable lookout on Monte Castellaccio.8 Hamilcar’s move was unexpected and debatable. Polybius stresses his isolation from Lilybaeum and Drepana. He could not defend them from assault where he now was; pressure on the enemy could only be indirect. But with the forces available, that was going to be true wherever he was. Carthage’s Sicilian field army, which in battle outside Panormus only three years before had numbered about 30,000, now probably amounted to some 10,000 infantry, mostly professional mercenaries from all over the western Mediterranean (including at least 3,000 Gauls, we learn later), and a few 12

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hundred cavalry. For at war’s end 20,000 mercenaries left Sicily for North Africa and these included the unbeaten garrisons of Lilybaeum and Drepana, who must have numbered 10,000 or more. Losses over the years must be allowed for, but given this total Hamilcar’s force too cannot have been substantially bigger. Besides, if it had been, he would have enjoyed much greater flexibility. He could have pounced on Panormus or tried more aggressively to raise the siege of Drepana. The Romans reacted by camping a force close to his, it seems on a lower hill to the south. Only 5 stadia, or about a kilometre, separated the camps, but not much aggressive Roman élan was shown. Assaulting the Punic eyrie was clearly an option with little appeal even when Hamilcar was away on one of his raids. The Roman force was about the same size as the Punic and served chiefly to protect Panormus, although constant skirmishing occurred. After all, the bulk of the two consular armies sent yearly to Sicily, four legions plus Italian allied contingents, was tied down outside Drepana (where the Romans were also occupying the nearby heights of Eryx) and Lilybaeum. Hamilcar felt secure enough to sail out, no doubt with only part of his force, on a new sweep of the Italian coast, this time as far north as Cumae on the bay of Naples. The resulting booty and prisoners it seems cheered his mercenaries substantially: we hear of no more grumbles.9 Further Italian raids may have been made over the next three years, though we are not told of any. The Romans founded new defensive centres on their coasts in these years: citizen colonies, Alsium and Fregenae, on the Etruscan coast near the Tiber in 247 and 245 or 244, and a colony of Latin status at Brundisium on the Adriatic in 244. The first was probably a response to Carthalo’s raid, but Fregenae even nearer to the Tiber suggests that still more security was found necessary for the coast close to Rome. Does the colony at Brundisium imply that Hamilcar had made descents in that area in 246–245? Quite possibly: after his visitations to the Tyrrhenian side of Italy it might have been a good idea to try a coast where he was less expected. At Heircte itself Hamilcar handily held off the enemy troops over the way. Polybius limits himself to generalizing about the two sides’ ambushes, stratagems, sorties and counterattacks. The Carthaginians may have operated more widely too. Diodorus, in another opaque and short excerpt, reports ‘Barca’ attacking ‘Italium, a fort of Catana’s near Longon’ (the outcome is not known). Catana lay on the other side of Sicily, a long way from Heircte though not impossible for a general accustomed to hitting at Italy. But no Longon is known in that area, whereas a town Longane existed by a similarly named river close to Mylae and Messana—the historic river where Hiero of Syracuse had once shattered the Mamertines of Messana in battle and led them to call in the Romans. Diodorus’ later copyist may have mistakenly replaced Messana with Catana. Likely enough the Mamertines held the area for their Roman allies to guard the coast-route to the west. The fort’s name would fit Mamertine occupiers, as they originally hailed from Italy.10 13

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From time to time he may also have sailed over to the besieged towns on the coast to keep up the defence; and occasionally too to Carthage itself. His eldest son had been born in 247 but another arrived during the 240s (both were to be with him on campaign in Spain in late 229 or early 228), and it is not at all plausible that his wife was with him in his mountain camps. The children—there were daughters as well—may have found him something of a stranger, if an affectionate one, but their father must have welcomed the brief respites from warfare, especially the piecemeal kind of warfare he was waging. Hamilcar may have aimed to obstruct Roman forces and supplies moving to the sieges at Drepana and Lilybaeum, a reasonable strategy as we have seen, given the resources he had. Already his presence near Panormus made the coast road beyond there impossible for the enemy. Inland, the roads zigzagged around one mountain ridge after another (and maybe with Punic attackers lurking round the other side) or else a time-consuming detour was required via Agrigentum and the south coast (the Romans had built a road linking Panormus and Agrigentum some years earlier for other purposes). The sea was a much easier way of travel and transport, but Hamilcar could hit at ships too. Besides, ships had to put in regularly to land, and the sea itself was perilous between autumn and spring of every year. Hamilcar’s guerrilla methods thus had promise. These methods probably earned him his famous nickname. A Carthaginian had only one proper name but nicknames were often used—partly to sort out different bearers of the few names common among leading men. Hamilcar went down in history as ‘Barcas’ to the Greeks and ‘Barca’ in Latin. This reflected most likely the Punic word for lightning, like the Semitic brq (with vowels added, baraq). Hamilcar’s swift and scorching sorties by sea and land would fit it well. He had less scope for these, as we shall see, from Eryx later, and so his countrymen probably attached it to him during his Heircte years. Scintillating stories of his exploits circulated at Carthage. Beyond the city too, for a few years later a Numidian prince was keen to ally himself—at some risk—with a leader who had so roused his admiration.11 Yet all he achieved was a stalemate. The Romans could not take Drepana and Lilybaeum, but neither could he force them to lift the sieges. Coastal defences in Italy, as mentioned, were being improved. His forces were thinning through military action and because, with funds short and pay already falling into arrears, few recruits came his way. The besieged strongholds on the west coast may have been in worsening straits too. One spring or summer morning in 244 the Roman troops opposite his position awoke to find it empty and no Punic ships in the bay. A fast rider would be sent off at once to inform the consuls besieging Drepana and Lilybaeum, but they knew already: the lightning had struck near Drepana.

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IV Mount Eryx or Monte San Giuliano rises isolated to over 2,000 feet (750 metres), just inland from Drepana: a broad ridge with a vast view over both coastal plain and sea—which may explain Polybius’ notion that it was the second highest mountain in Sicily. On its crest stood a renowned temple of the goddess known to Phoenicians as Astarte, Greeks as Aphrodite and Romans as Venus, whose servitors included priestess-prostitutes. On a shoulder below stood a little town also named Eryx, while a low spur jutting in Drepana’s direction was called Aegithallus. The Romans had captured the position in 249, their only success amid the disasters of that year (what their view of the priestesses was we do not know). Hamilcar sailed in at night to another small bay north of the mountain, took his men up the zigzag road to the town and slaughtered the garrison. Captured townsfolk were marched down to the ships and taken over to Drepana—for some of them a second forced removal, as another Hamilcar had shifted the entire citizenry of Eryx to the port 16 years earlier. If he had planned on retaking the summit as well, he failed; Roman troops still held it, and Aegithallus too. But the town of Eryx now became Hamilcar’s stronghold. This was a far more ticklish, and puzzling, position than the heights above Heircte. He was wedged halfway up a mountain, between two tenacious enemy garrisons, with one twisting path down to his anchorage. On the plain below him a Roman consular army was encamped, though facing it were his forces in Drepana. Even if he had captured the summit as well, it would not have added greatly to his flexibility of manoeuvre. Yet Hamilcar both chose this position as his new base and maintained it for more than two years. The change suggests that Heircte had become too remote and Drepana, at least, too heavily pressed. If his losses were not being replaced then the range and impact of his actions would be narrowing. The alternatives were unappealing: either shut his field forces up in one of the two ports with the garrison there or move around the open country harassing the besiegers and their lines of supply. With his current strength the second option would court disaster: even if the enemy detached only part of their armies against him, one pitched battle could mean the end of his army. The other option would concede all initiative to the Romans and leave the besieged ports with even gloomier prospects. But the problem at Eryx, which Hamilcar never really solved, was how to use the position to make a real impact. He was supplied by sea, like the besieged ports, but nothing more is heard of naval raids and by mid-242 there were no Punic ships at all in Sicilian waters. On land his numbers and site hardly allowed him to range too far from the area. At best he eased the plight of the besieged by giving the besiegers plenty of trouble. Polybius again merely supplies unhelpful generalizations about both sides experiencing ‘every kind of privation’, ‘every means of attack and every 15

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variety of action’. But an excerpt of Diodorus tells how a Punic officer named ‘Vodostor’—probably a version of the Carthaginian name Bostar—after a victory suffered heavy losses by letting his men plunder against Hamilcar’s orders; the total loss of his infantry was prevented only by the discipline of his 200 horse. Plunder after victory and cavalry rescuing infantry point to an action on the plain, most likely an attack on the Roman siege-camp. Hamilcar then sought a truce from the consul in command, C. Fundanius, to bury his dead, thus conceding defeat. Fundanius brusquely refused, only to be forced to make the same request when he in turn suffered heavy losses. He must have tried to follow up his success against Bostar by launching an attack of his own, either on Hamilcar’s position or on Drepana, without success. Hamilcar set him an example of civility by granting his request, ‘stating that he was at war with the living, but had come to terms with the dead’. This will have been in 243 or early 242, for Fundanius presumably took up office around 1 May 243, the normal period in this era, and left it 12 months later. Polybius does tell a story, in another place, of the 3,000 Gallic mercenaries in Hamilcar’s army. Some at least were notching up 20 years in Punic service, and a thousand or so of them found their situation on the mountainside irksome: no plunder worth mentioning and probably no pay either. They plotted to betray Eryx town, and their comrades, to the enemy. Had they succeeded, Hamilcar Barca would have been led in a consul’s triumphal procession through Rome and then put to death. The history of Carthage, Rome and the Mediterranean would have been tantalisingly different. Instead, but not too surprisingly, the scheme foundered and the malcontent thousand merely deserted to the Romans. These could think of nothing better to do with them than station them on the summit of the mountain in place of its Roman garrison. Embarrassment ensued when the irreverent Celts looted the sacred and wealthy temple. Still, there they had to be left while the war lasted (at its end the Romans hastily sent them packing)— giving, we may surmise, little trouble to their former commander.12 The other 2,000 Gauls under their chieftain Autaritus remained loyal. All the same, Hamilcar’s force was further reduced. In practical terms he was having no effect on the war. In fact the entire Carthaginian war-effort in Sicily kept going only thanks to Roman forbearance in not building a fleet to cut supply-links from North Africa. This forbearance ended in 242.

V A patriotic loan enabled the Romans to build a brand-new fleet of 200 ships to an excellent design (ironically, that of a famous Carthaginian blockaderunning quinquereme captured back in 249), and in mid-242 the consul C. Lutatius Catulus arrived with it on the western coast of Sicily. This seem16

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ingly was the first the Carthaginians knew of the new fleet, a striking sign of the shutdown of their normal overseas contacts. Their reaction was oddly lethargic. For years the bulk of their war-fleet had been moored in the well-protected harbour of Carthage; yet the sailing season closed in October without it setting sail. When it did sail, as early in the new year as was safe, it was undermanned and its crews untrained. In other words, even after eight or nine more months these had only just been gathered, nor can all that many of the seamen have been veterans of 249. On top of this, the warships were overloaded with supplies for Sicily even though it seems they were accompanied by transports with other supplies. This can only be a sign that the situation in the besieged ports—and maybe at Eryx too—was now truly desperate. Everything had been left to the last minute. This sorry response to a development that for years had been liable to happen suggests a bemusing level of complacency—if not fecklessness—in the governing élite at Carthage. If this was due to financial reasons it ranks as one of the most disastrous economies in history. Common sense should at least have dictated keeping the fleet in enough trim to be launched as soon as possible once the Romans reappeared on the sea, and in as battle-worthy a condition as possible. Instead Lutatius could blockade both the harbour at Drepana, probably by seizing the islands at its mouth, and the roadstead at Lilybaeum, and press the siege of Drepana even more closely. Too closely for his own health, for he suffered a severe wound in an assault. If this involved Hamilcar, it was the general’s last coup—and an unprofitable one again, for Lutatius’ deputy, the praetor P. Valerius Falto, was just as energetic. Hamilcar could not of course have foreseen when the enemy would launch a new naval effort (though this would not deter enemies from blaming him for not foreseeing it). But it would be interesting to know whether he had condoned or criticized the laying-up of the fleet. There must, of course, still have been a few warships in commission down to 242 to maintain a trickle of supplies from and contacts with Carthage, even if raids on Italy had stopped. Perhaps he and like-minded Carthaginians had reckoned that if the main fleet did put to sea it would achieve little while costing much, since the war was now confined to western Sicily and there were no resources to widen it effectively. On the other hand his own experience and good sense would have made him wary of lowering the fleet’s combat-readiness to the level it had now reached. If he did criticize, his criticism was discounted. The Punic fleet in its less than satisfactory condition sailed for Sicily at the very start of the sailing season in 241, under the command of one of Carthage’s many Hannos. Despite the Romans’ naval presence there must have been intermittent contact with Hamilcar in the previous months, for a plan had been arranged: Hanno would race to Hamilcar’s bay, unload the supplies, take aboard the veterans of Eryx as marines and then turn to fight Lutatius’ fleet. This called for both luck and enemy incompetence. Instead 17

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the consul and praetor intercepted him near the Aegates islands just off Drepana on the blustery morning of 10 March 241. Hamilcar could watch it all from his stronghold. Lutatius and Valerius had used the months of Punic unresponsiveness to train and exercise their fleet and crews to an unusual height of skill. The Carthaginians fought strenuously but succumbed after a long day. Hanno got away to Carthage with some 50 ships—to meet the usual fate of a beaten commander, crucifixion, which can hardly have surprised him. The Romans sank or captured 120 other quinqueremes and took 10,000 prisoners. As the sun went down behind the Aegates islands, Hamilcar must have recognized that the war was lost. Later writers fancied not. They supposed that he wanted to carry on, believed victory could yet be won, and was let down by the spineless authorities at home. This is part of the hostile and romantic notion that no sooner was the first war with Rome over than Hamilcar Barca began plotting the second. In reality, not only could hungry Drepana and Lilybaeum (not to mention Eryx) now be starved out before the Carthaginians could hope to build a new navy and find crews for it, but the Romans were in a position to repeat Regulus’ invasion of North Africa. Hamilcar could see that as well as or better than anyone over at Carthage. Even if he beat off a new Roman attack on his stronghold, as a late writer implies, it made no difference on the larger scale. The Carthaginians decided to seek peace terms. Whether they were able to consult Hamilcar is not known, but it was Hamilcar they appointed to negotiate with full powers. His feelings may well have been mixed. He had commanded longer than any previous general in Sicily, knew the enemy well and had earned their respect; nor was he someone easily browbeaten. At the same time he had commanded on a shoestring, his veterans had again not been paid for years, and his political standing at home (as we shall see) had fallen away badly. He would be an easy target if the terms were harsh. But to refuse would mean handing over the decisions on Punic Sicily, his men and himself to some other negotiator, very possibly a political enemy. Hamilcar accepted his appointment. He sent Gisco, the commandant of Lilybaeum, to ask the consul’s terms. Lutatius put various predictable demands: Punic withdrawal from Sicily, the return of all Roman prisoners without ransom (the Carthaginians being of course expected to pay ransom for theirs in the usual way), a guarantee not to make war on the Romans’ ally Hiero of Syracuse and an indemnity of 2,200 Euboic talents—13,200,000 drachmas or 132 million asses—payable over 20 years. These terms may well have been more restrained than Hamilcar had expected. Sardinia was not demanded too and nothing was said about the Punic fleet or home territory. One other demand he did reject: the handover of all his troops’ weapons and all deserters. He was making peace, the Carthaginian stated, not surrendering. It was probably now too that he 18

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reconciled his unbeaten but restive men—on the mountain, at Drepana and at Lilybaeum—to defeat by promising them fair treatment once they returned to North Africa. Lutatius did not press the point. His year of office would expire soon, an agreement still had to be sent to Rome to be ratified, and he could not be sure how far the Carthaginians could be pushed without reviving their will to fight. Regulus had pushed too far and paid for it, and Polybius insists that even now the Carthaginians were ready to fight on but had simply run out of resources. The draft peace terms, minus the offending demand, were sent to Rome. There they met opposition. The sovereign People thought them too easy on the Carthaginians, refused ratification and sent a commission of ten (no doubt senators) ‘to examine the situation’, as Polybius puts it. For a while the issue of peace or continuing war hung in the balance. But in the end the commission only heightened the money terms and made a couple of other changes. One even benefited the Carthaginians: not Hiero alone but all the allies of either signatory should be safe from attack by the other, and neither side should involve itself in the other’s territories, recruit troops there or form alliances with the other’s allies. This was the only concessive crumb Hamilcar could win for his city. A new clause added the islands ‘between Italy and Sicily’, in other words the Aegates and Lipara groups, to the Punic withdrawal from Sicily. But the revised indemnity clause made the most difference. The 2,200 talents must be paid in ten yearly instalments, plus 1,000 (60 million asses) payable immediately. This heavy lump sum both made it easier to reimburse the Roman citizens whose loans had created Lutatius’ victorious fleet, and at the same time made it harder or impossible for the Carthaginians to renew warfare. Nothing suggests that they would have, but the commissioners could not read minds. They were, after all, letting Hamilcar’s veterans go and there was plenty of wood in North Africa for building new fleets. As it turned out, the payment also made it hard or impossible to pay the Punic mercenary forces their long-overdue arrears, with consequences that would be calamitous not only for Carthage but, in the long run, even for Rome.13 The People’s assembly at Rome ratified the satisfactorily revised treaty. For the first time since 264, the one-time Mediterranean friends were at peace. Hamilcar led his men down from the mountain, and no doubt those from Drepana, over to Lilybaeum. He put the Lilybaeum commandant Gisco in charge of evacuating all 20,000 troops to Africa, and sailed for Carthage ahead of them. This prompt self-removal from the scene did not impress the veterans and looks unimpressive even now. Hamilcar might argue that, with the war and the negotiations both complete, his generalship had terminated, but no such automatic cut-off of command is known in the Carthaginian republic. True, he now had to undergo an official scrutiny at home on his conduct of affairs; 19

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every general must. But he could have stayed on in Sicily for a time to see what he could do for the men, whose needs and grievances he knew better than most. The pull of homesickness may have been too strong; an even stronger pull, perhaps, the danger developing against him politically and personally as the general who had failed to win the war. At all events he chose to suit himself rather than others.14 Polybius judges Hamilcar’s performance in the war very highly. ‘He put to the test all chances of victory in warfare, if ever a leader did’, and was ‘the general to be ranked as the best, both in genius and in daring’. These accolades seem excessive. Hamilcar’s most notable distinction was that in six years he had never been defeated, either at sea or on land. Yet except for the first couple of years at Heircte, his command had been strategically defensive. He had run essentially a holding operation; but instead of winning time for Carthage’s resources to improve or the Romans’ resolution to wane, had seen his own strength and opportunities thin out to little more than nuisance value. If the Romans had decided on a new fleet sooner, his command might not even have lasted the six years it did. When it ended he left behind discontented and disaffected troops. Polybius’ verdict reflects, partly at least, admiration for Hamilcar based on his later exploits. The war-effort had been pared down too far. Hanno, the successful general in North Africa, may share the blame, since he seems to have been the dominant political force at Carthage in those years. It is not certain, though, that he was a political rival of Hamilcar’s already (as often surmised): we shall see that there is rather more reason to think the opposite. But at all events the home authorities had not been strongly disposed to add to Hamilcar’s dwindling strength. His own lack of major successes no doubt had had something to do with this unenthusiasm. Whatever his own political influence at the start of his command, it was much impaired by 241. There were lessons in all this—about politics, leadership and resources—useful to an ex-general in his prime.15

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I Hamilcar Barca belonged more or less certainly to Carthage’s ruling élite. His family’s social distinction is suggested for instance by the Roman poet Silius’ claim that they were descended from a brother of Dido, the exiled princess of Tyre who in legend had founded the city around the year 814. The claim probably dates from Hamilcar’s or his sons’ time: Belus, Dido’s father, has the name not only of the chief Phoenician god Ba’al but also of a known (though later) king Ba’lu of Tyre, while her brother in the tale is named Barca, which was merely Hamilcar’s nickname. All the same, his appointment to a major military command while still fairly young suggests, though it does not prove, that his family was already an established one. Whether he and his father Hannibal were kin to any of the numerous other Hamilcars and Hannibals of Punic history, including several active in the first war against Rome, cannot be known. Those names and a few others— Adherbal, Bostar, Bomilcar, Carthalo, Gisco, Hasdrubal, Himilco, Mago and commonest of all Hanno—were almost the only ones used by the Carthaginian ruling élite. Telling them apart is often a problem. Thus Hamilcar Barca himself: he can hardly be the same Hamilcar as an able general active in earlier years of the war with Rome, but a few writers ancient and modern think he was.1 Hamilcar was ‘fairly young’ when appointed to Sicily, according to Cornelius Nepos’ biographical sketch. Nepos probably exaggerates for effect. True, Hamilcar’s eldest son later did become general-in-chief in his midtwenties, but that was to be after more than a decade and a half of his family’s dominance in Carthage’s affairs. If the later historian Appian can be believed, Hannibal already in 218 had a nephew, Hanno son of Bomilcar, old enough to command a cavalry corps: in other words a sister’s son (Hannibal had no brother named Bomilcar) who should by then have been at least twenty years old. This would mean that by 238 Hamilcar had a daughter already married and a mother. This chimes with other facts. Around 240 he did offer a daughter in 21

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marriage to a Numidian prince, and a few years later married another to his close political ally Hasdrubal. In other words by the later 250s he had already become a father. He must have been born by 275, or rather earlier. A man of thirty could still—for literary effect—be called ‘quite young’. When Hamilcar left for Sicily, his wife was expecting another child. Probably late in 247 the birth took place. Hamilcar must have been particularly satisfied: this was a boy, his first son. He named him after his own father, as was customary. But he seldom saw the little Hannibal for years to come. He was at war abroad and it is very unlikely that the boy and his mother went with him—especially as another baby, Hasdrubal, followed around 244. This supports the possibility noted earlier of occasional visits home. A third brother, Mago, was born probably around 241 or 240, as he too held an important command in his brother’s army by 218. So as the 230s opened, Hamilcar was the father of three growing sons and perhaps as many daughters, an unusually sizeable brood in ancient times.2 The family was not just socially prominent but rich too. Early in the next century, after 40-odd years when most of its male members had been at war away from home, Hannibal owned estates in the fertile territory of Emporia, the later Byzacium by the gulf of Hammamet, 120 or so miles (200 kilometres) south of Carthage. The spoils of war quite likely contributed to such holdings, but from the start it was virtually essential for Hamilcar to be rich if he meant to take part in public life. A century before, Aristotle had reported that Punic officials, especially the highest ones, were chosen on the basis of birth and wealth together—partly because bribery was taken for granted, as it still was in Hamilcar’s and his sons’ day. At the same time, degrees of wealth no doubt existed, and before he died Hamilcar was to become much richer.3 To be appointed general in Sicily against the Romans and hold command for six years implies strong political connexions, especially if the appointee was still relatively young. A well-connected marriage may have helped, though nothing is known of Hamilcar’s wife. His father Hannibal too may well have been or still was a man of consequence at Carthage, but it is typical of our limited knowledge of affairs there that all this is guesswork. As we saw, Hamilcar’s appointment coincided with a distinct runningdown of his country’s effort in the Roman war in favour, it seems, of expansionist campaigning in the Carthaginian hinterland. As we saw too, the leading figure in this expansion was Hanno, mysteriously dubbed ‘the Great’ by some ancient writers, who is widely suspected of instigating the rundown of the war-effort in Sicily during the 240s. Did Hamilcar, then, already belong to a faction or clique politically at odds with Hanno’s, and was he given the Sicilian command as a poison cup to oblivion? This is possible, but not probable. The slackening of effort there had begun before he arrived, for the victories of 249 were not followed up effectively. It is just as likely, or even likelier, that Hamilcar was appointed because he convinced the Punic senate that he could make a difference with the 22

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limited resources available, while expansionism and exploitation at home would build up the resources for a bigger effort to come. Given Hanno’s current eminence in the state, it might surprise that he did not block the appointment—if Hamilcar was already his enemy. That the appointment went through and was continued for six years suggests the two were not the foes then that they later became. Hanno’s view of the situation very likely chimed with Hamilcar’s in those years. Hanno’s was the successful war. He operated close to home and won glamour, plaudits and extra revenues; when the mercenaries rebelled later on he was the obvious choice to command the Carthaginians against them. All points to his being the senior political figure of the day. To gain the command in Sicily, Hamilcar would need his support. Nothing suggests that they were hereditary enemies—certainly no ancient writer does. In 247 Hamilcar may even have been a vigorous new member of Hanno’s own political circle. By contrast Adherbal and Carthalo, his predecessors in Sicily who disappear from record after 249–248, may have belonged to a different circle which could not stand up to Hanno’s revitalized group. The young general was able and ambitious, and Punic politics were no more governed by party-affiliations or a permanent pecking-order than Roman or Athenian. He would naturally hope to win a greater level of eminence and influence as time went by. But the war in Sicily brought less and less prospect of these. As suggested earlier, Hamilcar’s political standing went down rather than up as the years dragged on. If Hanno failed to support him strongly, that should hardly surprise; Hamilcar was going nowhere. What should be noted is that even so the Carthaginians never moved to appoint a new general, and still judged him highly enough to make him their plenipotentiary in the peace talks during 241.4 But the ending of the war and the crisis that it brought on completed Hamilcar’s eclipse. He could argue that he had given up nothing that his countrymen had not already lost, that Sardinia and the western seas were untouched, an indemnity was normal, and it was the home government that had failed to pay his troops for so long. His critics, by contrast, could retort that he had made no impact on the enemy’s war-effort for years; then had neither bargained the Romans down in the peace talks nor even prevented them from worsening the indemnity; had made promises to the veteran mercenaries in the name of Carthage that Carthage could not possibly honour—and had now given up his post and left the task of coping with the restive men to others. But these were not indictable failings, and Hamilcar had enemies who wanted to be rid of him. Actual criminal charges were prepared against him for stealing public funds during the war. As he walked the streets of his city in the first weeks of peace, looking for support, Hamilcar must have wondered whether he faced the same fate as so many of his military predecessors— crucifixion for failure. 23

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II Hamilcar’s Carthage stood on the southern side of an arrow-shaped peninsula beside the gulf of Tunis. On its north side it was bounded by a large bay (now a silted-up swamp); on the south by the gulf and the lake behind this. A broad flat isthmus between these waters joined the arrowhead to the mainland, and a range of low hills edged its coast. At the southern end of the range, on Byrsa hill, stood the temple of one of the Carthaginians’ chief gods, Eshmoun. Northwards along the hilltops lay the city’s ancient burialgrounds, while on the watery plain between Byrsa and the lake of Tunis was the sacred sacrificial ground, the tophet. The city spread down in narrow, often steep, but straight streets from the hills to the sea, and over the hills westward to the isthmus. The ground between Byrsa and the shore, the Old City, was of course the most closely settled. Temples, public buildings, workshops, houses and high apartmentblocks lined the streets. Over the hills lay the suburb of Megara, a broad domain of villas, gardens and orchards intersected by canals. The massive fortifications ringing the whole city measured more than 18 miles (30 kilometres) around. The best-known feature of Carthage was the pair of landlocked artificial ports in its south-east corner, existing today as a couple of shallow lagoons. Appian vividly describes them as they were in the mid-second century: first a rectangular merchant-haven reached from the sea by a channel 70 feet (22 metres) wide, then, via a further channel from the merchant-harbour, the circular war-haven with the fleet commander’s island at its centre (the island too survives). Both the ports and the island were lined with boat-houses framed by columns. The circular port’s capacity, according to Appian, was 220 ships. Archaeology confirms his essential accuracy, though the war-haven’s claimed capacity looks exaggerated. At some date the Carthaginians decided that their existing coastal installations were not enough, developed though these were. They then transformed a narrow silted-up channel, which had once extended northwards for about 400 yards (365 metres) from the city’s southern shore past the tophet, into this elaborate installation. But they did so at a fairly late date: possibly only a few years or decades before the Third Punic War or, more likely on historical grounds, during the Second Punic War. In 241 the project was probably no more than an idea in some enthusiast’s head, at best.5 The peninsula had been a strong and safe site for Phoenician traders and settlers in early times. Qart-hadasht, ‘New City’ in Phoenician, was supposedly founded earlier than Rome or any western Greek settlement, in 814 or 813 according to the early third-century historian from Sicily, Timaeus. The Greeks and Romans of later ages, probably elaborating a Carthaginian tradition, told the story of Elissa or Dido who established the new city on the site of Byrsa. Archaeological finds do show a city existing by the earlier half of 24

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the eighth century, which brings us quite near to Timaeus’ date. But Carthage was almost the youngest of the Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean; younger for instance than Gades, beside the Atlantic in southern Spain, and Utica a few miles up the coast from Carthage. Other important Phoenician foundations were Hippou Acra west of Utica, Lepcis on the Greater Syrtes gulf, the gulf of Sirte to the south, Panormus in Sicily and Malaca in Spain. Like Carthage they were created to trade and many did so very successfully. But Carthage prospered more than any of them, thanks to her central Mediterranean position and the Carthaginians’ talents in seafaring, commerce and (increasingly) agriculture. The city spread northwards beyond the hill-cemeteries. In the sixth and fifth centuries a Punic empire, too, began to grow. By the start of the fifth century this embraced the far west of Sicily with its old Phoenician settlements and natural wealth, Sardinia’s southern coastal lowlands, and Carthage’s own hinterland with its people the Libyans. The Libyans paid taxes and Libyan conscripts were an important component of Punic armies. On the plateaux and in the mountains beyond, the Numidian peoples under their various kings varied between friends and vassals of the Punic republic, depending on distance and Punic assertiveness. The other Phoenician colonies, including the Spanish ones, became allies or friends with degrees of dependency that no doubt lessened with distance. Along the Algerian and Moroccan coasts of Africa a chain of small trading stations— for instance Rusicade, Tipasa, Iol and Lixus—extended Punic trade and influence to the straits of Gibraltar and beyond. Punic traders ranged more widely still, from working the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Spain to gathering products of Egypt, Phoenicia and Asia Minor. They dealt with the Etruscans of Italy, as inscriptions illustrate from Pyrgi, port of Caere, engraved on sheets of gold in Etruscan and Punic around the year 500: these record Thefarie Velianas, lord of Caere, consecrating a shrine to the goddess Astarte. Near that date too the Carthaginians struck a treaty with the Romans, quoted by Polybius in Greek translation along with its successor of 348. These treaties restricted where and how Romans might trade or get supplies in Punic-dominated territories, and Carthaginians in Roman, while recognizing the Romans’ control in their hinterland Latium. As well as showing that trade between the two states went back centuries, they illustrate how Hamilcar’s and his fellow-citizens’ ancestors dealt with other Mediterranean states less powerful at sea but important enough to deserve respect.6 Carthaginians were no more ethnically or racially exclusive than Romans or Greeks. They often found wives or husbands from Numidian peoples and Greek cities, for instance. A King Hamilcar who wrought fire and slaughter in Sicily in 480 had a Syracusan mother. During the war with the mercenaries soon after 241, Hamilcar Barca offered one of his daughters in marriage to his admirer the Numidian prince Naravas, and in a later decade a granddaughter was married to a Numidian king. The famous Sophoniba, daughter 25

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of another general during the Second Punic War, was the wife of two other Numidian kings in succession, the second time tragically. Two of Hannibal’s agents in Sicily in the same war were born at Carthage, had a Punic mother but a Syracusan exile grandfather, bore Greek names and were at home in both cities. Hannibal himself, and before him his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, married Spanish wives. No Carthaginian, though, is recorded as married to a Roman.7 The Carthaginians’ relations with their neighbours were not always this pacific. Every so often there were clashes with the Numidians: who for instance took the opportunity of Regulus’ invasion in 256 to revolt against Punic domination and afterwards were harshly repressed. On the western seas, the Carthaginians left a reputation to later ages of jealously guarding their supposed monopoly of trade, stories much exaggerated all the same. In Sicily from 480 on, wars were repeatedly waged with the island’s Greek states, notably Syracuse and Agrigentum. The Carthaginians won varied and sometimes impressive successes, but were never able to extend lasting control beyond the western quarter of the island. On the other hand they fought Greeks only in Sicily, where Punic and Greek territorial borders and opportunities met. Cyrene, wealthy but over 1,000 coastal miles (1,600 kilometres) away towards Egypt, and Neapolis, Tarentum and other notable Greek cities of Italy aroused no hostilities. And though in the sixth century the Carthaginians had joined forces with the Etruscans to thwart Greek settlement in Sardinia, only a single clash is heard of with Massilia, the Greek colony in southern Gaul—and that not for certain. Most of the time Punic dealings with the Greek lands were mercantile. In return for products from Punic North Africa—purple dyes and fancy cloths were noteworthy, and pomegranates which the Romans called ‘Punic apples’—and goods from other lands merchandised by Carthaginian dealers, the Greeks supplied wine, oil and ceramics to North Africa. These items were not all they supplied. Greek culture had many attractions to offer even to an independently vigorous community and, from the fourth century on, the Carthaginians showed themselves receptive. In 396 they ceremoniously adopted the cult of Demeter and Core, goddesses of grain. Greek artworks and artistically decorated utensils were among their imports. Greek art motifs were imitated, for instance on Punic glass vessels, ritual razors, grave stelae and sarcophagi, as Egyptian forms already were. Punic houses borrowed Greek features: the peristyles, the pavement mosaic (but in a plainer local style of pottery and limestone fragments embedded in the floor-surface), even bathrooms with bathtub and washbasin. Hamilcar engaged a Greek tutor for his heir and cannot have been the only Carthaginian to do so. Again, from early in the fourth century the Carthaginian state began to issue coins: only in Sicily at first, to pay the mercenary troops, then later in North Africa as well. From the start they were based on Greek models and well produced.8 All this did not turn the Carthaginians into a Hellenized community. They 26

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had other sources of inspiration, Egypt for instance, and they kept close links with their mother-city Tyre. Above all, language and religion, both descended from Phoenicia, sustained cultural independence. Supreme among Punic deities were Ba’al Hammon the god and his consort Tanit, whom the Carthaginians often entitled pene Ba’al, ‘Face of Ba’al’. Other divinities included Ba’al Shamim, Melqart whose name means ‘lord of the city’, Eshmoun with his temple on Byrsa hill, Reshep, and others unsatisfyingly shadowy. The Carthaginians were strongly religious, not always along lines that appeal to moderns. Notoriously they sacrificed small children to the gods to avert catastrophes: not children of slaves, Libyans or foreigners, but their own. Plentiful archaeological evidence from the tophet suggests that the rite, called molk, increased over the centuries and that rich Carthaginians were specially assiduous. It may be that only stillborn babies, or those who died very young, were offered, but no ancient writer suggests it. The most striking molk on record took place in 310 when the city was menaced by Agathocles’ expedition from Sicily—reportedly 500 victims all told, and all from aristocratic families. Melqart must have been appeased: Agathocles’ expedition went down to disaster. Carthage was under threat again half a century later, from the invading proconsul Regulus, but no mass molk is reported. Individual child-offerings were certainly made down to Hannibal’s own lifetime (so the finds show). Maybe the community had outgrown the need for mass immolations, or was embarrassed by them under the eyes of the Hellenistic world.9

III Carthage was now one of the greatest cities of the Mediterranean. Her state revenues at the outbreak of the war with Rome may be estimated at some 2,000 talents a year—12 million Greek drachmas—sparse though the evidence is. According to the historian Livy, by 193 the wealthy and tributary city of Lepcis was paying one talent a day in tax: our one explicit revenue-figure. Lepcis, later Lepcis Magna famous for its Roman remains, stands east of Tripoli on the Greater Syrtes shore, today’s gulf of Sirte: but as Livy sites it by the Lesser Syrtes, today’s gulf of Gabès, in the fertile Emporia region, he may have confused it with Leptis Minor, between Hadrumetum and Thapsus, and at any rate not too far north of the gulf of Gabès. Whether Lepcis or Leptis, the tribute may in fact represent what the whole region paid, with one of those cities as the collection-centre (the Emporia coast did stretch as far as Lepcis Magna). At a guess, all the rest of Punic North Africa— Carthage’s own customs and harbour-dues, the tribute paid by the Libyans, any dues or levies extracted from allies like Utica and Hippou Acra, and whatever taxes were exacted from Carthaginians themselves—should have added up to maybe three times as much again.10 27

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This rough-and-ready calculation gives Hannibal’s city an annual revenue of 1,400–1,500 talents in 193: between 8,400,000 and 9 million Greek drachmas or recently established Roman denarii. Uncertain though it is, this estimate is plausible. In the early decades of the same century, the Roman republic’s income, including indemnities and war-booty, has been reckoned as averaging 13–14 million denarii a year, in other words well over 2,000 talents. To Rhodes, a rich trading-city but hardly comparable even with second-century Carthage in size or possessions, her mainland territories in Asia Minor were paying 120 talents a year in the same period and her own customs-duties bringing in a million drachmas or about 167 talents—thus a total of just under 300 till Roman ill-will after the Third Macedonian War took away the former and slashed the latter. In 264 Carthage’s empire had included western Sicily and southern Sardinia, and her trade and agriculture were flourishing, so revenue of well over 2,000 talents in that era seems a reasonable though speculative estimate. This was a sizeable income, larger than the 1,000 talents estimated for Athens at the peak of her power and empire around 431. It would have fallen after 241, but in the 230s and 220s the new Punic empire in Spain as well as the annexations in Numidia must have added sizeably to revenues again, conceivably raising them over 3,000. The indemnities that the Carthaginians later had to shoulder are compatible with this. After 241—or more probably 237—they had to pay the Romans 220 talents a year for ten years, after an opening payment of 1,000 and with a further 1,200 to be squeezed from them in 237. The indemnity after Hannibal’s war, 200 a year, was equivalent to 12 million Roman asses or 1,200,000 denarii—less than after 241, but the Carthaginians had now lost Spain. By contrast Syracuse in Sicily was required to pay only 100 talents over 15 years when it made peace with the Romans in 263.11 In 241 there were probably close to 200,000 Carthaginian male citizens. There are no contemporary statistics but the geographer Strabo reports that at the start of the Third Punic War, a century later, the city was home to 700,000 people. Probably he means free persons, since ancient population statistics (and ancient guesses) rarely include slaves, but whether nonCarthaginian residents are also counted in we cannot say. Strabo must have got his figure from a writer on that war: it could have been Polybius, who was at Carthage in 146 as it died. The total is impossible for the city alone, whose built-up area was too small on any calculation. Nor can the people living in the spread-out garden suburb of Megara have been very numerous. Modern estimates for the city itself vary widely, from as few as 125,000 residents to more than double that. But if Strabo’s statistic means residents and their families living both in Carthage and in its own surrounding territory—distinct from the territories of sister cities like Utica and of the subject Libyans—it may be accepted as a round figure. 28

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As Carthage was formidably prosperous in the last half-century of its existence, between 10 and 20 per cent of residents would be non-citizens (assuming that Strabo includes them, knowingly or not). On a conservative estimate, citizens and their families in Carthage and its surrounding territory would then total around 575,000 in 149, with adult males numbering between 160,000 and 175,000. Ninety-two years earlier, when they were a great power but at the end of a harrowing war with the Romans, the total would hardly be lower. Also to be reckoned in would be a number of citizens living elsewhere—traders, farmers, administrators—in North Africa, Sardinia and Spain, even if Sicily was now closed off. Aristotle in fact twice stresses the Punic state’s habit of relieving social strains at home by sending out ordinary citizens to neighbouring towns to ‘make them prosperous’. At a very conservative guess, the Carthaginian citizens living elsewhere might total 10,000 to 15,000, plus their families. Punic human resources naturally included the other peoples under Punic control: the allied Phoenician cities and, above all, the subject Libyans. The wealth of the state also allowed it to hire mercenary troops (something never done by the Romans). Slaves were a further human resource. Little enough is known about them, but at least tens of thousands existed in Punic lands, and probably hundreds of thousands. The Punic state and its empire must have included some millions of people in 241, even after the loss of western Sicily. For comparison, 241,700 Roman citizens—adult males again—were registered in the census of 247, growing to 273,000 twenty-two years later. Polybius perhaps exaggeratedly reckons the Italian allies of military age in 225 at another half-million. In numbers at least, though not in militarized or geographic cohesion, the Carthaginians were still a match for the Romans.12

IV To the contemporary Greek world the Carthaginians were barbarians just like the Romans. Neither people spoke Greek (a fatal flaw) and, even by the midthird century, neither had anything that could be called a literature. None the less Greeks put the Carthaginians in a special category long before they did the same for the Romans. In the late fourth century Aristotle, analysing and classifying states’ constitutions, included the political system of Carthage for discussion—the only non-Greek state to qualify. It had stable institutions with many Greek-like features: elected magistrates, a council or senate, a citizen assembly—all these could be found at Rome too, though Aristotle was uninterested—and even a few social features reminiscent of one Greek city or another. Men’s meals in communal clubs recalled those at Sparta, for example. To Aristotle the Carthaginians’ political system, in spite of its partiality to money, was ‘aristocratic’, meaning government by the best men: it had ‘a threefold aim, wealth, virtue and the good of the people’. He approves of it. Details, of course, and emphases differed. Originally the city had had kings 29

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like its mother Tyre, but monarchy had eventually given place to aristocratic rule. In Hamilcar’s time the republic was presided over by two annually elected sptm or shouphetim, ‘sufetes’ in the Latin form (a kin-word to Hebrew shophet, judge). Whether these had replaced the king, or whether a nominal king still existed, is one of the many Punic unknowns. Greek and Roman writers often use the term ‘king’ without making clear whether they mean it literally or as a misnomer for sufete. (A complication is added by various lesser officials also, it seems, called sufetes.) Military commands were entrusted to generals elected by the citizens for particular theatres of campaigning, as Hamilcar was for Sicily. It looks unlikely that someone could be both sufete and general at the same time—no one is known who did—but Aristotle does emphasize that a Carthaginian could hold more than one office at the same time. The precise powers and range of Punic executive offices, military and civil, are obscure too. Punic generals, according to Greek observers, had ‘kingly’— no doubt meaning absolute—authority on campaign. The record shows that they could make pacts with foreign states, though these may then have had to be ratified at Carthage. Their power was matched by the risk they ran if they failed. Unusually in a republic, a defeated general was liable to be recalled and put to death: the fate of Hanno who lost the battle of the Aegates in 241.13 The collective political wisdom of the Carthaginians reposed in a council or senate of several hundred, many of them no doubt former sufetes and generals. The senate’s formal collective name was ‘The Mighty Ones’ (h’drm or hadirim)—a noteworthy forerunner of de Hoogmogendheden, ‘the High Mightinesses’, the formal epithet of the Dutch States-General three centuries ago. How were senators recruited? We are not told. Tenure of one of the various official posts, for instance as a rab (a title much attested on Punic inscriptions though its functions are not clear), public scribe, or market inspector, or membership of what Aristotle calls the ‘pentarchies’, administrative Boards of Five, may have been the regular way in. The senate, the Mighty Ones, dealt with questions of peace and war, and the overall direction of policy. Apparently it could interest itself in any aspect of internal affairs—once even forbidding citizens to learn Greek (a Roman writer claims), a ban not likely to have lasted long. The senate had an inner ‘sacred council’ by the third century, apparently 30 strong, whose authority Livy stresses. Just what it did is unknown: it may have organized the agenda of the Mighty Ones, and acted too as an executive committee.14 This inner council was an institution peculiar to the Carthaginians. So were some others, above all the tribunal of One Hundred, or One Hundred and Four. This was set up 150 years (or more) before Hamilcar’s time to supervise and where necessary to discipline generals. According to Aristotle, members were chosen not by the senate, but by the Boards of Five from among the senators, and purely on merit (process unknown, as usual). He calls the Hundred and Four ‘the highest authority’ at Carthage—arguably an over30

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statement since he applies the same term to the chief magistrates. Perhaps by his day the tribunal had extended its jurisdiction, though we can only surmise in what directions: for instance scrutinizing the work of civil magistrates, sufetes included. Though not mentioned in events of the century and a quarter after Aristotle, it was probably enough the same tribunal which convicted the hapless generals put to death at various times for failure, and likely enough it was the one whose judgement Hamilcar risked facing in 241. Livy’s ‘order of judges’ appointed for life, reportedly the most powerful institution in the state soon after the Second Punic War, was very likely though not definitely the same body. Its powers may have fluctuated over that length of time too, as we shall see.15 The ordinary Carthaginian male citizen had a voice in government too. The citizen body was fairly limited: women had no vote, nor of course did slaves. Perhaps too Punic men of low economic status, like poor artisans, were excluded, but the evidence is too indirect to be reliable. Citizens themselves no doubt had to reach legal manhood, whatever age that was, before they qualified as voters. The men of Phoenician towns like Utica and Hippou Acra—not to mention the millions of subject Libyans—were not Carthaginians, though each may have had suffrage in his own community. But nobody expected that even the existing 180,000 Punic citizens would or could all take part in voting, any more than all citizens could at Rome. The central square below the Byrsa hill, however big, would not have held more than a fraction of them. Plainly only limited numbers took part. The citizen assembly, meeting in the square, elected sufetes and generals, and passed laws. What procedures were followed and what determined a candidate’s eligibility for office are predictably unknown, but the lavish spending which our informants insist was taken for granted meant that only rich men could compete. This in turn is a clue, both to sharply marked patron–client relationships between the powerful few in public life and many if not most ordinary voters, and at the same time to constantly fluctuating political cliques and followings—the great men manoeuvring for allies and against opponents; friendships, enmities (and clientships) very changeable; and voters on the lookout for the biggest or most ingratiating offers. The assembly’s powers were oddly qualified. If the sufetes—Aristotle calls them the ‘kings’—and the senate agreed on referring a matter to the people, this was done. Likewise if sufetes and senate disagreed over referral; and (presumably) so again if one sufete and the bulk of the senate were at odds with the other sufete. When consulted, the citizens had more freedom to discuss and decide than for instance Romans did in their assemblies. But Aristotle equally implies that sufetes and senate, if they saw eye to eye, could take decisions without consulting the citizens at all. How often this happened we do not know, but happen it did: memorably in 218 when the Romans’ declaration of war was vociferously and fatally accepted in the senate.16 31

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V This fairly tidy, and to Greek theorists impressive, political setup must not obscure one important reality. For much of their known history, the Carthaginians had in practice been governed by dominant individuals and their close kin. Whether or not it was a monarchy in its beginnings, virtually on its first appearance in the historical record the Punic state is reported as falling under the control of a rebellious general, Malchus—a name that seems a Latin version of Phoenician milk, ‘king.’ In rather more detail the same source, Justin, then tells of the rule of Malchus’ successor Mago, another general, and Mago’s descendants after him. One of his sons was the half-Syracusan Hamilcar of 480, whom Herodotus terms ‘king’, so these rulers belong to the sixth century and after. They were seen by at least some foreigners as royal: Diodorus describes two of the dynasty as kings ‘according to the laws’. Just what this title really meant is not clear, but its implication is plainly that the Magonids dominated the affairs of city and empire. It may be that by now the kingship had become elective, though held for life and remaining in the hands of one family. The Magonids’ known activities were military, and it was military defeat abroad that finally broke the dynasty’s dominance at home some time in the early fourth century. For the same reason the tribunal of the Hundred and Four was created, to control future over-mighty generals. Yet not every ambitious Carthaginian was deterred from hopes of Magonid-style domination. Later in the century the most eminent citizen was one Hanno—styled the Great like his namesake a century later—who, after holding high military command in Sicily, was accused of plotting to make himself master of the state and was put to death with many of his kinsmen and supporters. His family remained powerful even so, providing other notable generals (none of them very successful) against the Greeks until Agathocles’ time. But in 308, just after Agathocles’ invasion failed, one of them conspired to make himself master of the city by a military coup. In an episode vividly recorded by Diodorus, Bomilcar’s attempt was thwarted and he was executed on the cross. This was the end of the Hannonid ascendancy.17 These later efforts at dominating the state may have been partly encouraged by the examples of successful autocracy that Punic aristocrats could see across the water, not just in Greece (like Jason of Pherae in the 370s and of course the Macedonian kings) but equally in Sicily—above all the triumphant four-decade rule of Dionysius the Elder at Syracuse, later too that of Agathocles. Autocrats and kings were now in the ascendant in much of the Greek world. Their glamour and power might well incite men of wealth, status and following at Carthage, who in any case had the recent memory of Magonid dominance as a spur. But such moves failed against resistance from the bulk of the city élite. These had earlier grown strong enough to limit and then 32

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discard entrenched Magonid supremacy. They had refined the complex republican institutions that reinforced oligarchic control and attracted Aristotle’s approval. They now showed they could cope effectively with the ambitions of even so eminent a figure as the conspirator Hanno and so unscrupulous a general as Bomilcar. We can infer that whatever these men’s resources in funds and followers, they did not outweigh those of the other grandees united against them. In the more than sixty years since Bomilcar’s failure the oligarchic republic suffered no more pressure from over-mighty citizens, or at any rate none is reported. Leading men and lesser ones no doubt competed or co-operated to win office and influence at different levels. Each would have his group of friends and followers, possibly also more formally recognized clients or social dependants. To judge by the past cases of Magonids and Hannonids, and the coming one of Hamilcar and his family, such allegiances were very often hereditary—though it would be rash to suppose that they bound everyone, grandees and ordinary voters alike, in unloosable fetters or for unchanging generations. But how competition and co-operation worked, how changeable or stable the political groupings were, how much based on family allegiances and how much on policy issues—not to mention what family groups existed, where each came from and what it took for a family to rise into, or fall from, prominence—all these issues remain, once again, largely unknown. It seems likely that the war with the Romans brought about a fair degree of solidarity in the ruling élite. Some defeated generals might be crucified, but even in the darkest days of Regulus’ invasion no bickerings among Punic leaders are heard of, and no hints of treachery or unrest. Competition for office, all the same, surely continued; and, after a decade and a half of fighting, views on how to wage the war could well start to diverge. The rundown of effort after the victories of 249, accompanied by the removal of both the victorious commanders in favour of Hamilcar Barca, may signal a change in political fortunes for rival groups: Hanno and his allies—Hamilcar conceivably among them—now winning pre-eminence over whoever had enjoyed it earlier. We have already seen that Hanno’s group apparently then kept its preeminence until the war ended. But this was not to last much longer. The loss of the war in Sicily more than counterbalanced the gains in Africa, and brought on a crisis that permanently shifted the structure of Punic politics.

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I Not only had the Carthaginians lost the war and their possessions in Sicily; they soon found themselves in danger of losing everything at home too. The 20,000 soldiers evacuated from Sicily—mercenaries from all round the western Mediterranean and conscripts from among the subject Libyans of Punic North Africa itself—had plenty of grievances, especially over their unpaid arrears (the size of which lost nothing in the telling). They were suspicious, unruly and armed. They found a republic both too impoverished to pay them and too maladroit to fob them off successfully with promises or part-payments. Gisco’s careful efforts to prevent them from uniting into one body were discontinued. The men were vexed by being sent inland to the distant city of Sicca and soon marched back to Tunes near Carthage. Then insistent official haggling over the payments combined with agitation among the men to cause an explosion, and their resort to arms gave a signal to the oppressed Libyans. All at once, the lands around Carthage and her fellow-Phoenician cities Utica and Hippou Acra erupted in revolt. Utica and Hippou Acra, on the coast to Carthage’s north, were laid under siege. A rebel corps blockaded Carthage from Tunes a few miles away, cutting access to the city at the western end of the isthmus. Coins and Polybius’ account show that the rebels obtained good sources of funds and presented themselves to some extent as a conscious political force—‘the Libyans’, and perhaps also ‘the army’—opposing their oppressors. The haggler for the Carthaginians had been Hanno, still the general in charge of Libya. He was now given command against the rebels. It is reasonable to infer that the muddle and (in the soldiers’ eyes) the bad faith of the Carthaginians’ dealings with the returned veterans was his and his faction’s doing. That there may have been sound financial reasons for haggling is not much of a defence.1 Another mistake, or so the troops saw it, was not to make Hamilcar and Gisco the negotiators from the start. Gisco had finally been sent to them and 34

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almost succeeded in reaching an agreement, but feelings ran so high by then—especially among the Libyan troops—that talks broke down. Hamilcar did not put in an appearance at all, partly no doubt because he knew of the troops’ irritation with him. Gisco, who had repeated his chief ’s promises when evacuating them, they arrested when the talks broke down—and he later suffered a hideous fate at their hands. Had Hamilcar been with him, Punic and not only Punic history would have progressed very differently. But Barca probably had a further reason for not involving himself in the talks. His enemies (it seems) launched a prosecution against him, alleging misconduct during his Sicilian command. This is an inference from Appian, the only writer to mention a prosecution. He has it happen after the war in Africa ended, thus during 237; but chronology is very much against so late a date. Besides, by then Hamilcar was the saviour of his country. Lodging charges in 237 based on Sicilian events of the 240s would have been a fairly predictable waste of effort. Hamilcar’s rather inglorious return in 241 and immediate disappearance from the public scene offer a more convincing context. Appian often gets details in this era confused (for instance, the terms of the original and the revised peace-terms of 241, and the course of postwar relations between Carthage and Rome), so a mistake in chronology may well be another.2 Prosecution for wartime misconduct or theft of public funds (Appian has both, in different works) suggests a case before the tribunal of One Hundred and Four. Notoriously a guilty verdict could mean crucifixion or else a flight into exile. But Hamilcar won the support of ‘the leading men’, writes Appian—or his term may even mean ‘the men in power’—and the case failed. Who the enemies were is not stated, and of Hamilcar’s rescuers the only one named is Hasdrubal, who then or later became his son-in-law. Appian adds that this young man was ‘the most popular’ of the ex-general’s supporters. Enemies then or later claimed a homosexual relationship originally existed between the two men, but there is no evidence in support. Hasdrubal is usually thought to have allied himself with Hamilcar only after the war with the mercenaries and Libyans. But this depends on combining Appian’s date for the prosecution with Diodorus’ report (which clearly comes from a better-informed, or at least better-organized, source) that, after the war, Hamilcar founded a villainously democratic party and thus gained wealth and power. Yet not only is Appian’s dating probably wrong but Diodorus does not mention Hasdrubal amid these later events at all. Hamilcar by 237 was popular on his own account. If he needed a popular ally or allies, it would have been in the postwar months of 241. Another such ally may be suggested: Hanno the Great, the commanding political and (at home) military figure of the day. Although his poor negotiating skills helped to provoke the mercenaries into rebellion, his repute was still high—for he was promptly given the command against the rebels. Had Hanno been one, presumably a leading one, of the enemies behind the 35

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prosecution, Appian’s phrase for Hamilcar’s rescuers is harder to account for and so is Hamilcar’s escape from danger. What then about Hasdrubal’s superior popularity, if that is what Appian implies? It could be a touch of exaggeration, allowing the author to introduce the future second leader of the Barcid dynasty at a dramatic point.3 If not an ally of Hamilcar’s over the trial, Hanno probably stayed neutral at least. Whether he owed a favour to the ex-general, or simply thought the attack on him mischievous, or felt that now was not the time to destroy a talented commander whom the state might soon need (the great rebellion was surely looming or had already broken out), we do not know. But it would be a mistake to assume that the two were already divided by bitter rivalry.

II Hanno had done very well fighting Numidians and taxing the Libyans, but he was a good deal less successful against the veterans. His level of incompetence is no doubt overstressed in Polybius’ account, which draws on a strongly pro-Hamilcar tradition. Even so things soon reached a point, probably early in 240, where Hanno’s efforts had been stymied and he may even have been cut off from Carthage, on the far side of Utica and, if so, dangerously positioned between the rebels besieging that town and those beleaguering Hippou Acra to the north. The Carthaginians decided to appoint a second general as well. Hamilcar Barca was the choice. Hamilcar was not given Hanno’s army but commanded a second one, which the Carthaginians had been gathering (like Hanno’s) from mercenaries, rebel deserters and citizens. He himself may well have been responsible for putting it together. The alternative—Hamilcar, though out of judicial danger, staying in retirement while some other person recruited and trained the force, then stepping forward to take command—seems less likely. As the other top general of Carthage he was the obvious man for the task of raising and then leading a second army. Its original aim may have been to confront the rebels at Tunes who had cut Carthage off from the rest of the country (though not from access by sea) but, if so, Hanno’s predicament changed this: Hamilcar broke out towards Utica. Two generals in the field together for a major campaign was not a novelty. Even three had operated jointly on occasion. At times too, one general seems to have held the superior authority: in 250 and 249 Adherbal apparently had overall authority while others, including Carthalo, were his deputies. This seems not to have happened now. At first Hanno operated on his own and Hamilcar does not seem to have had the power to give him orders. When the rebels murdered Gisco and his fellow-prisoners, the authorities at Carthage urged each general to take action; they did not urge one to do so and leave it to him to direct the other. Hamilcar did then ‘call Hanno to him’ so as to unite the two armies, but this was probably a request or suggestion. For when 36

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the two did join forces only to quarrel bitterly, the only solution that the authorities in Carthage could devise was to let their two armies decide who should stay in command and who should retire. Later on, with Hanno holding a command once again, it took a delegation of senators to persuade the two to bury their antagonism in the national interest. It looks, then, as though the two men were originally equals in command. This, plus the fact that their quarrel seemingly took the Carthaginians by surprise—hence the desperate and unprecedented solution of letting the troops decide—also adds some support to the view that the two men, up to then, had been political allies or at least had co-operated politically.4

III Once appointed general, Hamilcar won some quick successes. He raised the siege of Utica—and probably gave back to Hanno his strategic freedom of movement—by a victory on the bank of the river Bagradas nearby, then reconquered parts of the Libyan hinterland. This endangered rebel supplies and reinforcements, so forces from Tunes set out after him, led by two of the original ringleaders of the revolt, Spendius the Campanian and Autaritus the Gaul. This reaction may have been one of Hamilcar’s hopes in marching inland: as well as recovering subject territory and harassing supply-routes to the enemy, he was dividing rebel forces, which could make them easier to destroy. If Polybius is correct that 70,000 Libyan recruits had joined the 20,000 veterans—or even if he exaggerates—thinning such forces offered the Carthaginians the only hope of conquering them.5 Very luckily for the Carthaginians, they had the Romans on their side. They nearly did not. When the revolt broke out, the Carthaginians still had enough naval strength to begin intercepting traders from Italy (probably from other lands too) who supplied goods to the rebels, and the haul of Italians and Romans had reached more than 500 when a stiff protest arrived from Rome probably in spring or early summer 240. Hanno, Hamilcar and the other Carthaginian leaders recognized that to antagonize their ex-enemies would be the last word in folly. The offenders were set free, no doubt with apologies as fulsome as could be penned. The soundness of this response was soon proved. The Romans in turn released 2,700 remaining Punic prisoners of war ransom-free (the Carthaginians had not the money to ransom them), banned Italians from doing business with the rebels, and complied with other requests—for instance, so Appian and Zonaras report, waiving the clause in Lutatius’ treaty forbidding one state from hiring mercenaries in the lands of the other. The freed veterans look like Carthaginian citizens, who would be a welcome addition to the city’s hard-pressed military resources. Roman goodwill turned out to be one of the decisive factors in a struggle that grew more and more bitter. It also encouraged Hiero of Syracuse to 37

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continue his own helpful efforts, which were equally vital. His motive, pragmatically set forth by Polybius, was to make sure that Carthage remained in existence as some sort of balance to the might of Rome. The Romans too were hardly motivated by simple generosity: they took an austere view of rebellion by subjects and allies (they had had to crush one themselves just after Lutatius’ peace) and probably worried too about a dangerous powervacuum in North Africa if the Carthaginians were overthrown. Not to mention that they would not be paid their yearly war-indemnity, though they may have waived its payment during the revolt. Hamilcar’s operations were not risk-free. Spendius shadowed him but kept to higher ground, avoiding pitched battles and harassing the Punic army on its march—tactics much like those later followed by Fabius Cunctator against Hamilcar’s son. When Libyan and Numidian reinforcements joined him he was even able to entrap Hamilcar’s army, and with superior numbers.6 Hamilcar may well have expected destruction, but his carelessness or error was counterbalanced by his good fortune. One of the Numidian leaders, the young prince Naravas, brought his 2,000 horsemen over in eagerness for the general’s friendship. Hamilcar’s anxiety about the situation he had got into is suggested by his enthusiastic reaction—he promised not only to make Naravas his partner in action but also to give him a daughter in marriage. The two of them then smashed the rebels and their remaining Numidian allies in a spectacular victory. Having pulverized this enemy army Hamilcar began a much-publicized policy of freeing prisoners unharmed and even accepting them into his own forces if they wished.7 What Hanno was doing meanwhile we are not told. Polybius is our only source and his strongly pro-Hamilcar account has little time for other generals or operations. The other rebel leader, Mathos, had taken charge of the forces blockading Hippou Acra while a third rebel force remained at Tunes. Most likely then Hanno made himself useful by offering threats to both sets of rebels—possibly using Utica, halfway between them, as his base—to prevent them from pressing their own efforts or sending reinforcements to Spendius. They certainly made no progress against Hippou or Carthage.8

IV But at this point, probably around the end of 240, the struggle took on an even uglier colour. To counter Hamilcar’s successes, and stimulated by the mercenaries in Sardinia who had seized that island for themselves, the rebel leaders tortured to death their long-held Punic prisoners (including their old and respected commandant from Lilybaeum, Gisco) and began to treat other Punic captives in the same way. Hamilcar, still operating away from Carthage, abandoned his mercy policy for one of no quarter to prisoners—which meant putting some to the sword and throwing others under the feet of warelephants, following a precedent from Alexander the Great’s time. 38

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Polybius sees this change as not just understandable but necessary, but it may well have been counterproductive. Rebels now had to choose between being slaughtered and fighting on. Some rebel areas that had previously yielded may have taken up arms again: for much of Libya and ‘most of its cities’ were still in revolt well over a year later.9 Hamilcar plainly found himself under some pressure again, for he now thought it desirable for Hanno to join forces with him. This may also have been how he interpreted a new message from the authorities at Carthage, urging both generals to avenge Gisco and his companions, and in any case he would be forming plans for the new campaigning season of 239. Just what move he had in mind for the joint army we are not told—it would still have been fairly small, probably not much over 20,000 men—but at a guess he aimed to pounce on the different rebel camps in turn before they could try any union of forces in turn. Instead and ironically, the union of the two Punic armies led to disunion between the two generals. It may have been due to an entirely personal matter. But, rather likelier, they may have disagreed on strategy and methods. Hanno, for instance, may not have liked his colleague’s unalloyed frightfulness: whatever his talents for squeezing taxes out of subjects, in his capture of Theveste he had shown a preference for leavening severity with moderation. Or—even though he had agreed to join Barca—he may have felt they ran a serious risk in taking the bulk of Carthage’s field forces well away from the city and the coast, while Tunes remained a rebel centre and Hippou under siege. On both of these counts Hanno would have had good grounds for criticism. He may well have been unhappy too about his colleague’s strategy for the coming campaign. At all events he refused to co-operate with Hamilcar, and without Hanno Hamilcar thought it too risky to act. The paralysis was broken only when ‘the Carthaginians’—we may infer the senate seconded by the people’s assembly—ordered the troops to determine which of the two should stay in command and which step down. Just who did the choosing we are not told. Maybe the entire army, Carthaginians, mercenaries, allies and any Libyan levies: after all who their leader was would have a direct bearing on whether they all won or lost. Yet legally the position was a Carthaginian office, and normally the citizen body of Carthage chose the holder. Mercenaries were hired professionals; allied and Libyan troops served because they had to. Most likely then it was the citizen soldiers and officers who decided between Hanno or Hamilcar—though their choice was probably encouraged by the other troops too. The men kept Hamilcar. This was testimony, from the judges best qualified, to the quality of his leadership compared with Hanno’s. Hanno’s defects are no doubt too gleefully stressed by Polybius, but if he had achieved anything so far in the war it was limited: preventing the rebels from capturing Utica and Hippou Acra. Hamilcar, despite his propensity for risk-taking and occasional misjudgements, had inflicted real hurt on them. Had the troops 39

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voted the other way it is far from certain that the Carthaginians would have won the war.10 Hamilcar’s position was significantly enhanced by this step. He was now in supreme command. Another general, Hannibal by name, was soon sent out by ‘the citizens’—but he held a clearly subordinate authority and quite likely was chosen at Hamilcar’s request. Barca thus took over the military and political position that Hanno had enjoyed for most of the past ten years, and with the extra advantage that there was no other general, in Sicily or anywhere else, to match him. At Carthage his interests would be looked after by his friends and associates, notably Hasdrubal. It might look as though he was now supreme politically as well as militarily—and that Hanno from now on was a mortal enemy. This is too simple a reading of events. Hanno still had strong support at home, for some time later (probably during 238) he was not only reappointed to a generalship but, it seems, again on an equal footing with his rival. More than this, he and Hamilcar from then on ‘co-operated singlemindedly’ until the war was won. In other words they were still prepared to collaborate despite what had happened. Again, if Hamilcar already had the political muscle to oust Hanno at the time they quarrelled, why use the roundabout—and risky—method of letting the troops choose between them? Of course it may be that he knew the troops were for him, while at Carthage Hanno’s support equalled his. But if so, Hanno’s supporters in their turn had no reason to agree to the measure, which (moreover) was unprecedented. More probably then the move was a genuine effort to cut the Gordian knot of deadlock.11

V Centralized command was certainly needed now, for more disasters struck the Carthaginians. A laden supply-fleet coming up from the Emporia region was lost in a storm: a spring storm, for the year 239 should have begun by now. Even worse, their last two loyal allies, Hippou Acra and Utica, defected to the rebellion. Polybius presents this turnaround as inexplicable ingratitude, but some of its reasons may be guessed. Hippou had been under siege from the beginning, with Mathos himself in command of the besiegers, and Utica, though relieved earlier by Hamilcar and then it seems protected by Hanno, was again exposed—probably again besieged by the enemy—when the two generals united their forces elsewhere. The paralysis of Punic effort caused by their quarrel was surely the last straw. The two cities could envisage the Carthaginians’ resistance soon falling apart and themselves being easy meat for the rebels. Perhaps the pro-Carthage faction in each lost power to rivals who then led the defection. 40

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As a result the rebels could now beleaguer the walls of Carthage herself. This was probably around the middle of 239.12 The city was far from defenceless. It had its large population and at least a modest navy; sea communications were open and so food and fresh mercenaries could be obtained; the king of Syracuse and the Roman republic both supplied help. Hamilcar’s son-in-law, later famous as a master diplomat, may have contributed to these relations working smoothly. Hamilcar and his deputy Hannibal, too outnumbered to tackle the besiegers directly, instead harassed their communications with the rest of the country, while Naravas the Numidian continued his invaluable support. Rather like Caesar’s legions outside Alesia two centuries later, the besiegers in effect became besieged. The siege probably lasted some months. Hamilcar’s attrition strategy was bound to be a slow process: his forces were not large and the small Punic navy likewise could not hope to cut off all supply by sea to the rebels. Yet the Carthaginians, masters of their seas and of much of the countryside, could afford a slow-strangulation struggle better than their foes. In these conditions, the siege was even an advantage to them. By contrast Mathos and his colleagues no longer had much choice of strategy. To abandon the siege would be a heavy blow to morale. Besides, the only alternative would be to try to crush Hamilcar himself, and he had shown how dangerous that would be. They hung on grimly outside Carthage, with numbers no doubt thinning from sickness and desertion as Hamilcar’s pressure tightened. If they kept the siege going through the winter of 239–238, the starvation their troops came to suffer is all the more readily explained. Supplies to Carthage too probably lessened, but with the return of spring they would grow again and the rebels’ spirits could only sink further. Finally they did give up the siege. All they could do now was go after their tormentor. The breakout at least allowed them to collect some new recruits, though Polybius’ figure of 50,000 looks grossly inflated. Not much imagination was shown. Mathos held the rebel headquarters at Tunes while once more Spendius and Autaritus led an expeditionary force inland, now with a colleague, Mathos’ fellow-Libyan Zarzas, who was probably one of the new arrivals. Once more they tried Fabian tactics in hopes of trapping the Carthaginians amid hills or in a pass. But this time Hamilcar harassed them. What was virtually a guerrilla campaign, most likely during the spring and early summer of 238, steadily whittled down their numbers. Mathos remained immobile at Tunes, which suggests that another Punic force (the garrison in Carthage?) was pinning him down. At length Hamilcar succeeded in manoeuvring the whole rebel army into an escape-proof trap at a place called The Saw, probably a razorback mountain ridge—much like the trap in which Spendius and Autaritus had once shut him up, but there was no Naravas to rescue them. The general’s later Roman detractors probably made much of what ensued. Even though we have only Polybius’ friendly account, his behaviour hardly 41

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shines. Having eaten all their stores and even their prisoners and slaves, the rebels sent out ten delegates—Spendius, Autaritus and Zarzas among them— to ask for terms. Hamilcar promised to release the entire army except for ten whom he would choose. The ten delegates must have known what was coming but, heroic in their way, they accepted and of course were seized. Hamilcar did not tell the suddenly leaderless rebels what had been agreed; instead, when they sprang to arms, they were slaughtered to the last man.13 Hamilcar was taking the policy of frightfulness to its extreme. The murderers of Gisco did not in his view deserve civilized handling. Promises to and pacts with them need merely be manoeuvres. His harshness was not played out, either. While he and Hannibal brought most of rebel Libya back under control, Spendius and his nine confrères were kept to become a public show. At length—probably it was the middle of 238—the victorious generals marched back to Tunes, boxed Mathos’ camp in between their two forces, Hannibal on the Carthage side of the position and Hamilcar on the southern, and nailed the ten rebel leaders to crosses outside Hannibal’s camp, in sight of their remaining comrades. This public gesture of how the republic punished rebellion and treachery backfired right away. The infuriated Mathos fell on Hannibal’s camp, routed his men and captured the general himself, without Hamilcar on the opposite side of Tunes learning of it until too late. In grim parody of a sacrificial rite Hannibal was tortured at the foot of Spendius’ cross, then nailed to it alive in place of the Campanian, while around the dead rebel leader’s body thirty high-ranking Punic prisoners were slain. With Hannibal’s force fled, Hamilcar found it necessary to retreat with his own troops northwards to the mouth of the Bagradas. The siege of Tunes was over. This defeat probably came about because he and his deputy had been more concerned with making a propaganda point—punishing the rebel leaders— than with keeping proper watch on Mathos. Their forces may have been equal, or even superior, to his (an encouragement to overconfidence), but by separating them too widely Hamilcar had handed a tactical advantage to the enemy. He had not made that mistake when surrounding Spendius and company at The Saw. All the same it was a defeat, not a disaster. Hannibal’s camp had lain between Tunes and Carthage, and his army was routed but not destroyed. Much or most of it could escape to the city or else the coast beween Carthage and the Bagradas. Carthage itself had its own defenders, whom Mathos had not been able to defeat while the Punic field army was away. The most pressing needs would be to gather up Hannibal’s surviving troops and prevent Mathos from fleeing to, or drawing any aid from, Utica and Hippou Acra (not that these places ever had given the rebels much help, so far as we know). This would explain why Hamilcar marched northward rather than, for example, moving to shield Carthage. Mathos had won himself some breathing-space but that was all. Hamilcar still held the strategic advantage.14 42

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It did not seem so reassuring to the people in the city. Yet again the war had taken an unexpected and frightening twist. Thirty chosen senators and a force of citizen troops escorted his old colleague Hanno out to Hamilcar’s camp, with a mission to persuade the two men to be reconciled and to cooperate for the sake of the state. By going with them Hanno already showed he was willing, but Hamilcar took a deal of persuading. None the less, from then on he and Hanno did co-operate smoothly to bring about final victory.

VI Hanno had masterminded a skilful comeback, or so it might seem. Polybius specifies that when he went out to Hamilcar he was general once more; and the stress on their reconciliation and co-operation indicates that, as before, the two were equals in authority. The death of Hannibal had probably left the way open for him to win re-election, if only because there was no other leading commander available. Yet even with Hamilcar’s prestige temporarily dented it would have been fatuous, not to mention perilous, to appoint to equal rank someone guaranteed to wrangle with him and oppose his plans. Obviously he did have a following among the citizens, but so did Hamilcar, whose interests were being sustained by Hasdrubal and others. And Hanno’s troops would be those sent from Carthage, no serious match for Hamilcar’s veterans in numbers and experience. By going to Hamilcar with the 30 senators Hanno was not just signalling his readiness to co-operate for their country’s good but, in effect, conceding the other’s political superiority. At the same time he made it clear, through his equal status as general and the troops he brought with him, that he was still a force to be reckoned with. This was an arrangement that Hamilcar could accept, quite likely under advice from his son-in-law (who may even have been one of the 30), even if it took some effort—‘many and varied arguments’, Polybius writes—by the envoys to bring him round. The war entered on its last stage, probably around autumn 238. As the Carthaginians could send city troops to Hamilcar, clearly as reinforcements, the rebels had probably abandoned Tunes. Certainly they neither attacked Carthage nor threatened Hamilcar after their success, and they are next heard of near Leptis Minor, in Byzacium to the south—an obvious refuge since the Punic field army barred the way northwards. No longer able to threaten Carthage or bring help to Utica and Hippou, their only hope was to try to rouse the Libyan hinterland anew. But like Spendius and his confrères earlier in the year, they were harried relentlessly until driven to stake everything at last on a pitched battle. Polybius mentions skirmishes ‘around Leptis and some other cities’ and then a final calling-in, by both sides, of all available allied and garrison troops. This suggests that the campaign went on for some weeks or months. What garrison troops the rebels might still have by then is not clear—but there were 43

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some in towns in Byzacium, one of which became their last refuge—while for allies they were probably limited to some Numidian chieftains plus Utica and Hippou, none of which seems likely to have furnished many men. Hamilcar and Hanno by contrast would have few problems maintaining or even adding to their numbers and keeping them well supplied. When the last battle came, it is no surprise that they won. The rebels who survived fled to a nearby town (we are not told its name) and then gave themselves up. Mathos, captured separately, was taken back to Carthage for a horrific death-march through its streets some time later, apparently as part of Hamilcar’s and Hanno’s triumphal parade. The whole of the Libyan hinterland was now back under Punic rule. The last stage of all was forcing Hippou and Utica on the coast, Carthage’s sister cities, to yield. They were fearful of surrendering because their treatment of the Carthaginians in their midst had been so merciless—but it was not long before Hanno outside one city and Barca outside the other prompted a change of mind. Quite possibly the generals offered mild terms, for Utica at any rate kept its special relationship with Carthage. Indemnities (noted by Polybius) and the handover of the rebel faction leaders can be surmised. At some point too, perhaps when reasserting Punic control over the Libyan hinterland, the generals may have extended the boundaries of control over some of the Numidian peoples who had miscalculated which side to back in the revolt. The Carthaginians were unforgiving. One tribe, the Micatani, Diodorus mentions elsewhere: it suffered wholesale slaughters, women and children as well as menfolk. Hamilcar no doubt found Naravas an invaluable ally for this too, though (rather oddly) the young Numidian lord never reappears in our sources. The great revolt, begun in the late months of 241, had lasted three years and about four months—so Polybius records. Early in 237, then, North Africa was again at peace. This left only Sardinia to be dealt with, and its recovery now looked all the easier: the native islanders had recently been so provoked by their mercenary occupiers that they had risen up to drive them over to Italy, whose rulers had recently shown them no sympathy at all.15

VII The effects of this lengthy struggle are hard to gauge in detail. Besides the main campaigning that we hear of, there must have been many smaller conflicts and scuffles around Punic North Africa—loyal Punic groups versus rebel ones, defecting Libyan communities confronting loyal ones, deserters and brigands operating impartially at everyone’s expense—not to mention the marches, countermarches, raids and skirmishes by the field armies in their excursions into the hinterland. Some regions may have remained fairly untouched, like the Syrtes coasts, or lightly affected (Byzacium, and other places well removed from Carthage’s environs like Thabraca, Thugga and 44

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Theveste). Yet losses in men, animals and goods must have been heavy on both sides. So too the money costs: as one indicator, the gold and silver coins struck by the Carthaginians and rebels during the war seem even worse debased than those of Carthage in the war with Rome.16 The Carthaginians had been at war, in practice, for 27 years: first with the Romans, then with their own rebels. They had lost territories, and their own countryside had been fought and refought over. They can scarcely have kept their trade and finances flourishing at the levels of 264. Across the Mediterranean they had a former enemy, even if now a friend, with might and resources much greater than in 264 and a vigorous commercial community in its own right. To avoid becoming by default a satellite of Roman power, the Punic state had to recover from its trials as fast as possible. Recovery depended on making fullest possible use of what advantages remained. The city was essentially untouched, so far as we can tell. Trade and a small navy had operated throughout the war; and revenues, indemnities and fines could now flow in from the reconquered territories (nothing suggests that the Libyans were let off lightly). But more was surely needed to pay for restoring what had been lost and to rebuild prosperity—not to mention paying the Romans their war-indemnity, whether or not this had been suspended in the meantime. New and copious sources of wealth were needed. Sardinia might be retaken and there were plenty more of Numidia’s broad uplands that might be annexed, but the island’s wealth was limited and the Numidians were not easy to hold down against their will. Hamilcar had a different project in mind, one he probably formed before the war ended but when its end was in sight: the Carthaginians’ major move should be into Spain. Spain, or Iberia to the Greeks, had long been part of their western network of trade and influence, with its Phoenician colonies stretching along the south coast to the Atlantic at Gades, and its wealth in precious metals and agriculture. Mercenaries from Spain—Iberians and Celtiberians—were important elements in Punic armies (and in the recent rebel forces). The Carthaginians’ special interest in southern Spain was shown, for instance, in their second treaty with the Romans, struck around 348: not only were Romans barred from sailing along sensitive North African coasts as in the first treaty, but now they were barred too from sailing beyond ‘Mastia Tarseiou’—probably if not certainly the port of Mastia in south-eastern Spain, today’s Cartagena. But the Carthaginians had never directly conquered or settled Spanish territory. An expedition to save Gades from enemy neighbours is mentioned, probably in the time of the early Magonids, but once the danger was over the force went home. Gades and other Phoenician settlements in Spain were probably allies of Carthage, but on terms looser than the ones binding the settlements in Africa (for instance they did not fight in Punic wars). Hamilcar’s grand design was to transform these light and indirect relationships into 45

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direct and firm domination. What his predecessors had done in Libya— Hanno among them—he would do across the Mediterranean in southern Iberia.17 The benefits would be enormous. Spanish wealth could be exploited and also further developed. Carthage’s trading position—damaged by the war with Rome, which for instance had effectively abolished the treaty of 348— would be strengthened. Iberians could be recruited not only as mercenaries but if necessary as conscripts, like the Libyans. The result would be a great increase in Punic military resources, a factor particularly important now when the republic, under the eyes of the entire Hellenistic world, had lost and suffered so much in its two ordeals of fire. The benefits to Hamilcar and his group of friends and supporters would be enormous too, so long as they were given charge of the project. Whatever Hanno’s recent services were, it was Hamilcar who enjoyed the lion’s share of public favour as saviour of the city—deservedly. He saw no reason to include Hanno and Hanno’s faction in future activity. Before the war was fully over he was busy planning the expedition to Spain and making his own faction dominant in affairs at home: a combined political and military initiative that would affect the history of the rest of the century.

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I With the close of the Mercenaries’ War, events both at home and overseas collided in yet another crisis. Preparations to recover Sardinia and invade Spain were disrupted by a totally unexpected confrontation with the Romans that ended in yet another Punic humiliation. But when Hamilcar did at last set off on his grand design, he was unmistakably the political leader of Carthage. As we saw earlier, the time indications in the ancient accounts point to the war ending early in 237, and Hamilcar being in Spain before mid-year. This shows that events moved fast and that domestic events overlapped with foreign, which need not be a surprise. It implies too that some moves must have got under way before Hippou Acra and Utica capitulated, again no surprise since their resistance was limited to their own walls. The generals hardly needed to share the entire Punic field army, by now 30,000–40,000 strong, between them to besiege the two cities. Some troops could be detached to prepare for the retaking of Sardinia at least. Politically Hamilcar moved to confirm his pre-eminent position. Diodorus, whose history for this era survives only in extracts and snippets but was plainly based on circumstantial sources, reports that after the war’s end Hamilcar ‘formed a political group of the lowest sort of men, and from this source, as well as from the spoils of war, amassed wealth’. He capitalized on the popularity won by his successes—‘currying favour with the populace’, in Diodorus’ pained phrase—to have the people grant him ‘the generalship of all Iberia for an indefinite period’. The text is faulty but this is the best interpretation of it.l This was not the same episode as the one Appian records, of him being saved from a messy trial by ‘the leading men’. As shown earlier, Appian’s story should belong to the aftermath of the war with Rome. By 237 Hamilcar himself was the leading man, in fact was acclaimed (by many though not all) as saviour of his country. His purpose was now very different. Punic generals were normally elected for the length of a war. When the 47

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war ended, so did their command—a practice Hamilcar himself had taken advantage of in 241. On the surrender of Hippou and Utica, then, both his and Hanno’s generalships would lapse. Hanno might have hoped that they would both then retreat into more discreet, elder-statesmanlike rôles, leaving centre stage to a new generation. Instead Hamilcar exploited his own popularity, and (a point worth noting) the wealth he had accrued, to win election to a new command, one effectively open-ended. Using wealth to gain office was a time-honoured aspect of Punic public life, as Aristotle had stated 100 years earlier. The note of disapproval comes from the source Diodorus followed, one friendlier to Hanno’s side than to Barca’s. Who was to command the expedition—no doubt a smaller one—to retake Sardinia is unknown. Hamilcar very probably intended it to be either himself or a supporter, and Hanno’s position was probably too weak to prevent this. Certainly Hamilcar was so confident of his own dominance over Punic affairs, only a few weeks or months later, that he took his popular son-in-law Hasdrubal with him. But meanwhile the recovery of Sardinia had been aborted, and the Spanish expedition made more urgent, by the confrontation that came out of the blue with Carthage’s hitherto helpful ex-enemies.2 News arrived that not only had the mercenaries driven from Sardinia been sympathetically received now by the Romans, but these were readying their own expedition to the island. The Carthaginians reacted angrily and no doubt quickly, sending off envoys to advise their former foes of the true situation—the mercenaries were rebels, Sardinia was a Punic territory and in fact a force to bring it back under Punic authority was being readied. What came back was a thunderclap. The Senate and People had denounced the preparations at Carthage as being aimed against the Romans themselves and had gone on to declare war. This extraordinary—and to the Carthaginians surely appalling—news was brought, it seems, by a Roman embassy. Its audience quite likely found it hard to believe their own ears. The Romans had been full of helpful concern for Carthaginian fortunes almost up to the present; had refused to accept Sardinia from the rebel mercenaries while these were actually in possession of it; but now had declared war on the basis of preposterous allegations. If they were serious—Hamilcar and the rest of the ruling élite may have wondered whether they could be serious—this had to be settled urgently and at any cost, for it was an utter impossibility that the Punic state could go to war with the Romans. The field forces, even if veteran and loyal, were at best equivalent to two consular armies, and there were few reserves. The naval forces were totally outclassed. And the moment Roman ships and troops touched land in Africa, most or all of Libya would go over to them (or so the Carthaginians could reasonably fear). A new embassy was deputed to travel to Rome. It included, at least according to the very late writer Orosius, the ten most eminent men in the state—though there is no evidence that Hamilcar, Hasdrubal or even Hanno 48

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the Great was a member. Whether or not it was dawning on Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and their associates that the Roman accusations camouflaged a hidden agenda, they had little choice but to try to mollify the other side. The Carthaginians ‘at first sought to come to an agreement on every point, expecting that they would prevail on the merits of the case’. After all it was easy to show that Sardinia had been a Punic possession from time more or less immemorial, the mercenaries there had been rebels, and the force being readied to recover it was far too small to look like a threat to the Romans or any of their allies. The response was a switch in the Romans’ accusations: now they complained about the traders arrested early in the recent war. These supposedly had been ill-treated, some even murdered; now compensation must be paid—to wit, Sardinia and 1,200 talents in cash. This unconvincingly trivial allegation unveiled what the other side really wanted. Why they wanted it they did not say. Ancient historians fail to tell us too: Polybius simply denounces the affair as unjust while later writers, all of them of course pro-Roman, either swallow the traders story or (even worse) offer the fiction that Sardinia and its neighbour Corsica had been ceded with Sicily in 241. It is easy but misleading to suppose that the Romans had abruptly realized how strategically useful Sardinia could be to them—as though it had not figured repeatedly in their old war with Carthage—or how economically valuable its cornlands and metals, as though they had not had trade relations with the island since the time of their earliest treaty with the Carthaginians. If they wanted Sardinia now after turning it down two years earlier, something had made the Romans change their minds. The most obvious factor was not the Punic victory over their rebels at home, for the Romans had actively supported this, but that they had done it chiefly thanks to Hamilcar Barca; more disturbingly, under his leadership they were already busying themselves with renewed expansionist projects. Parts of Numidia, now Sardinia, and a bigger scheme stood behind that. These preparations, involving ships, equipment, animals and stores (not to mention the troops), were no doubt open to view: the Carthaginians had nothing to hide. But even if Spain was mentioned as the major goal—and even if the Romans believed this—all this activity sharply revealed that the Punic state was not at death’s door after all. The Romans, it would seem, put two and two together and got five. Hamilcar, the new leader and their undefeated opponent in Sicily, stood for rebuilding Punic power and plainly his city had the ships and men to start doing it (it was easy enough for outsiders to overestimate the strength of those forces). If Sardinia was the Carthaginians’ goal now, Sicily the former jewel of their empire, where Roman rule was still recent and fairly light, might well follow, with Sardinia serving as an extra strategic base for reconquest. They had no intention of losing a territory they had fought a 23-year war over. Therefore they would prevent Sardinia from becoming Punic again 49

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even if they had to use specious pretexts—and only the Carthaginians and Romans themselves, not the rest of the watching world, would know for certain how specious they were. The Romans might overestimate Punic strength, but they could calculate (rightly enough) that it was not as great now as it would be when recovery had progressed. The time to strike therefore was now. The armament they had been readying for Sardinia did not leave port: it waited, some or all of it probably at Ostia for the Carthaginians’ envoys to view on arriving from North Africa. To them the Senate presented the Roman republic’s demands, that the Carthaginians not only abandon Sardinia but also pay over 1,200 talents—a bigger lump sum than had been paid in the peace of 241. The finances to pay for any central Mediterranean ventures were being confiscated.3 Whether the second Punic embassy was empowered to accept these terms or whether it needed to take them back to Carthage for discussion, the outcome was inevitable. A new war with the Romans was out of the question. Hamilcar could see this as plainly as anyone. He would not be the only Carthaginian to feel deep and lasting anger—though he was to dramatize it more memorably than any of them—but he too had to accept submission to the Romans’ terms. Peace was declared anew, and an extra clause annexed to Lutatius’ treaty which summed up the Carthaginians’ capitulation in lapidary simplicity: ‘the Carthaginians are to retire from Sardinia and pay a further 1,200 talents’. The immediate loss was the money: there cannot have been much left in the Punic treasury after it was paid. But more funds could be gathered in time. A worse blow was to Punic maritime power. The prewar overseas empire had now shrunk to a few small islands like Malta, and of the former sphere of dominance only the western half remained—Ebusus, the trading stations along the African coast, and the friendly cities of south Spain. Punic prestige and self-confidence were injured, just at the moment when the Carthaginians had begun to restore them. Alarming too must have been the realization that the Romans, whatever their veneer of goodwill, could still harbour suspicions deep enough to erupt without warning into ruthless confrontation—at least if they thought their ex-enemies would hesitate to fight back. The Spanish expedition was more vital than ever.4

II Rather surprisingly Hamilcar took his son-in-law with him. Now, or less probably later, Hasdrubal was appointed trierarch, naval commander, which suggests Hamilcar was attentive to his communications with Carthage. But it suggests too that Hasdrubal was not politically indispensable at home and others could take over the job of nurturing Barca’s political position in the 50

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city. They too may have been relatives by marriage or blood (these would be the strongest bonds) but we know hardly anything of such people—nothing for instance of brothers, sisters or cousins apart from a relative named Mago, whom the Romans captured in Sardinia in 215. One of Hannibal’s oldest and most durable friends was the Mago nicknamed ‘the Samnite’. They enjoyed a friendly and military rivalry from their earliest years, according to Polybius. This Mago was obviously then close to the Barcid family though, to judge from Polybius’ silence, not a kinsman by blood or marriage. His family must have been important among the supporters of the Barcid ascendancy in Punic politics. In turn, speculation or imagination can play only with the Bomilcar who, if Appian is right, must have married one of Hamilcar’s daughters and whom Polybius calls ‘king’: his real political standing remains a guess. If the ancient kingship still existed it may well have been limited to religious matters; equally Polybius may use the word to mean sufete, and he or his source need only have meant to convey that Bomilcar was sufete at the time his son is mentioned. Apart from later officers in Punic armies or fleets like Mago the Samnite, the famous cavalry general Maharbal son of Himilco and an admiral also named Bomilcar (he may have been the brother-in-law for all we know), the only high-ranking supporters of the Barcid faction who earn any mention are a few senators. A Himilco, perhaps Maharbal’s father though Livy does not say so, supposedly mocked old Hanno after news of the victory at Cannae, and the inventive poet Silius credits an even more shadowy ‘Gestar’ with an earlier outburst against the same target. Hanno in turn is found, in Zonaras, rebuking a war-enthusiast named Hasdrubal in 218 who may or may not have been the later well-known general, Hasdrubal son of Gisco. That Hamilcar had many and keen supporters at Carthage, both among ordinary citizens and in the senate, can be assumed even if just who they were cannot be said. Connexions between Africa and Spain were maintained in various ways and at every level. The high officers in the army, like those already mentioned, were Carthaginians; surely too some of the lesser ones, and others might include citizens from allied states like Utica and Hippou Acra (like an officer of Hannibal’s many years later). Carthaginians and others from Africa helped populate the new cities founded by Hamilcar and his successors. The Barcid generals themselves, to judge from a few items again in Hannibal’s time, had senators from Carthage among their councillors. How they were chosen, whether they were rotated, and what positions they held from time to time at Carthage and in the army we do not know: but it makes sense to infer that they were important—arguably the most important—links in Hamilcar’s and his successors’ relations with their homeland.5 According to one Roman historical tradition, though, Hamilcar did not go to Spain with the ruling élite’s blessing. This claim might go back to Fabius Pictor, the earliest Roman historian and a younger contemporary of 51

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Hamilcar’s—who did find things to criticize in Barca’s successors—but more likely it was invented later. Polybius tells us of Fabius’ strictures on Hasdrubal and Hannibal but not of any against Hamilcar. Livy, implicitly rejecting Fabius’ version, presents a Barcid faction dominant in Punic affairs from Hamilcar’s day till the last years of the second war with Rome. The claims of opposition between generalissimo and home authorities turn up in late writers, Appian and Zonaras. No trust can be put in them. Nor, for the same reasons, can it be believed that Hamilcar and his successors set up a Spanish principality or fiefdom virtually independent of the Carthaginian state. Obviously Hamilcar had to work hard to keep himself and his faction in the ascendant. He and his closest collaborator, Hasdrubal, were far away, and with them his two older sons. His domestic grip had to be fuelled with more than victory bulletins, especially in a republic where money was a crucial ingredient. His biographer Nepos notes that with the spoils of his victories ‘he enriched the whole of Africa’. Appian more precisely reports largesse to political supporters. So far as we can see, the method was a success. Others besides Barcid supporters may have won offices from time to time, but not enough to upset the dominance achieved by Hamilcar: a dominance he was able to pass on first to his son-in-law and then to his eldest son. As time passed, the offices of state and the senate will have taken on a more and more Barcid-friendly cast. For the first time since the Magonid dynasty Carthage was firmly in the hands of one family and its supporters. It would be interesting to know whether Barca’s prospective son-in-law, Naravas the Numidian, went to Spain too; but no ancient writer mentions him after the African war. The marriage may well have taken place, for Hamilcar’s family kept up a close connexion with Naravas’. During the next war against Rome one of (it seems) his brothers fought for the Carthaginians in Spain, and another married one of Hannibal’s nieces. Naravas, though, quite likely preferred or needed to stay in Numidia, where rivalries between tribes and chieftains, and pro- and anti-Punic groupings, kept the North African uplands unstable; his energy and resourcefulness would be valuable to his own people.6

III With the general and trierarch went the general’s eldest son. Hannibal was nine years old. Hamilcar must have been an absentee father for much of the boy’s life—only during his retirement from public office from mid-241 to mid-240 can he have lived at home—but his impact on his sons was deep. All three followed in his footsteps to become generals and leaders, none of course more memorably than the eldest. Even at nine Hannibal was strongly attached to his father, for whom no 52

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doubt he felt a blend of love, admiration and awe. A famous episode took place just before Hamilcar set out for Spain. He performed sacrifice to Ba’al Hammon (or Ba’al Shamim) for divine favour, and when the omens proved favourable ‘he ordered the others who were attending the sacrifice to withdraw to a slight distance and calling Hannibal to him asked him kindly if he wished to accompany him on the expedition’. The boy accepted eagerly: whereupon his father made him lay his hand on the sacrificial victim and swear an oath ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’. Hamilcar himself told the story to King Antiochus III 44 years later, as an assurance that his attitude was unchanged. It has been disbelieved from time to time, on the arguments that it smells of a historical novel rather than history, or comes from supposedly tainted sources—Hannibal himself, anxious to win the royal trust with an inventive lie, or imaginative Roman writers prone to dramatize everything they could about his life—or because it would make sense only if Hamilcar were seeking to bind a son he was leaving behind. But the story has no blatantly false features. The oath as Hannibal reported it, ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’, was so limited that later Roman tradition had to sharpen it for drama’s sake and make him swear to become their enemy. Hannibal himself, if he were inventing it, might well have phrased it the same way—after all King Antiochus was at the time close to war with the Romans, and the exile from Carthage was trying to win his favour.7 The story as he told it did convince Antiochus, an experienced and successful ruler. Nor does it require a parting between father and son to be convincing. Whichever Punic god was involved, he was one of the city’s principal deities (Nepos translates him into ‘Jupiter best and greatest’, the supreme one at Rome) and it was during a peculiarly meaningful rite, initiating a wholly new venture by Carthage and its general. And the venture was made all the more necessary by the Romans’ sudden and opportunistic betrayal of the goodwill they had previously shown. If true, the episode casts light on both father and son. Hamilcar had the Romans much on his mind at this time, and the oath he made his son swear reflects his bitterness. As his city’s supreme general he had shared personally in the frustration and humiliation of the Sardinia crisis. The Romans had shown that their seeming goodwill of recent times had been a sham: beneath it still lurked the ill-will of the war years, now compounded by treacherous amorality. No Carthaginian could ever again feel well disposed towards them. To bind his eldest son by such an oath, in turn, was a public as well as personal gesture. Hamilcar was telling his family, followers and fellow-countrymen both of his own present feelings and also that the price of renewing Carthaginian greatness was perpetual watchfulness against their former (who might seek to become their future) enemies. Obviously the oath made a lasting psychological impact on the boy who took it: it would still be meaningful to him more than four decades later. He 53

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was already devoted to his father, as his keenness to go with him shows. The oath (negative and limited though it was) strengthened the bond between them—no doubt more because of its solemnity and the trust being ceremoniously placed on him, than because Hannibal at nine could have any clear idea of who or where the Romans were. Ancient writers emphasize his lasting enthusiasm and loyalty to his father’s guidance. From that day on he was never far from Hamilcar’s side.8

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I The army Hamilcar took to Spain cannot have been very large. For one thing, given the costs of the African war and the new indemnity over Sardinia, the Carthaginians could hardly afford to keep under arms all the 30,000–40,000 troops they probably had in the field by late 238. For another, Hamilcar had to leave some forces at home to maintain order and security: not all Numidians were allies or subjects, and there was no certainty what the Romans might try next. When facing a war with them two decades later, his son would station some 16,000 troops in Africa. In a season of peace, guarded though it was, 10,000 or so might do. In Spain ten years later, after economic recovery and much power-building, Punic forces totalled 56,000 according to Diodorus. On a reasonable estimate Hamilcar’s expeditionary force in 237 can be put at around 20,000, 2,000 or 3,000 of them cavalry, and no doubt a corps of elephants. This was sizeable enough for the purpose, and he could expect to recruit Spanish mercenaries and allies before long. As soon as the crisis over Sardinia ended he embarked for Spain, as Diodorus reports, sailing along the African coast to the straits of Gibraltar and then crossing to Gades. The transport ships were available—especially as there was now to be no expedition to Sardinia—and the trading-stations along the coast would provide stops for rest and resupply. It is very unlikely that Diodorus is wrong and that he marched by land along the coast to the straits. That would have taken far longer, would have worn down his forces to no appreciable benefit, and by the time they reached Spain he would have lost most of his first campaigning season.1 Spain was a busy jumble of towns (including the many Phoenician and Greek colonies along its southern and eastern coasts) and rural cantons. Many were prosperous or even rich, especially in the south across the broad fertile basin of the river Baetis, now the modern Guadalquivir, and along the Levant coast from Cape de la Nao to the Pyrenees. Tougher terrain and lifestyles prevailed farther inland and along the north-western coasts. Some relatively sophisticated communities were republics of varying forms, 55

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with regularly chosen officials and senate-like councils: for instance not only Gades and probably the other foreign colonies, but also an Iberian city like Saguntum. Even such places were probably run in practice by their small local élites. In other communities the oligarchic, even feudal element would be still more dominant, often with ‘kings’ at the top. Political structures more extensive than the individual community were loose and changeable. Outsiders like the Greeks and Romans, and probably the Carthaginians, did identify major groupings of peoples—Iberians across the south and east, Celtiberians on the plateaux and uplands beyond the river Tagus, Lusitanians over in the west, Cantabrians and Gallaecians and others in the mountainous far north. These they subdivided into various smaller regional ‘tribes’, for instance Turdetanians in the Baetis valley, Vaccaei around the river Durius (today’s Duero), Bastetani in the south-west corner of the peninsula, Contestani and Edetani along the east coast. Religious practices, dialect and old traditions may well explain such groupings. But in political and military affairs the individual communities were their own masters. Some might form alliances, or be united under a successful leader for a time. In the dim past the region north-west of Gades had formed a kingdom of some kind, called Tartessus by the Greeks (and possibly Tarshish in the Old Testament), but little is known of it apart from the exaggeratedly fabulous wealth of its silver mines in the Río Tinto area, and by Hamilcar’s time it was three centuries gone. The disunion and quarrelsomeness of peninsular states made them relatively easy targets for a determined Punic expansionist. Their high cultural level (visible still in pottery, architecture and surviving sculpture like the fourth-century ‘Lady of Elche’), widespread natural wealth and welldeveloped military prowess were, in turn, powerful attractions to such an expansionist. Hamilcar could count on the Phoenician towns of the south coast as allies, supply-bases and anchors for his communications with home. Some Iberian states too may already have been well disposed: with warfare so endemic in the peninsula, he needed only to assure the ones whose alliance he wanted that he would back them against their enemies.2

II A paragraph of Diodorus and generalities in other writers are all we have on Barca’s doings in Spain. Diodorus is coherent and plainly well informed, but only a few events in the nine-year saga are described. The first is Hamilcar confronting a coalition of the Iberians and ‘Tartessians’, together ‘with Istolatius, general of the Celts, and his brother’. The realm of Tartessus no longer existed but, if ‘Tartessians’ is not just a cloudy misunderstanding, the term should mean people in south-western Spain and Portugal: that is, northerly neighbours of Gades. In later times most communities of that region were covered by the general names Turduli 56

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and Baeturii. It is much less plausible that Diodorus, or the source he used, really meant Turdetani—the later broad term for virtually all the Spaniards in the Baetis valley and the mountains north and south of it. Rather these, and probably only some of these, were the ‘Iberians’ in the hostile alliance. For the newly arrived Hamilcar to be confronted by an anti-Punic coalition is not surprising. A veteran army landing in the richest region of Spain would look like nothing but trouble to peoples not already allied with the invaders or disposed to submit to them. Gades itself probably had a number of regional enemies (just as when the Magonids had intervened in the distant past); they would be very alarmed at Hamilcar’s coming, and so would other communities. More than that, the ‘Tartessians’ give a clue to Hamilcar’s opening strategy. The wealth of ancient Tartessus lay in its silver and copper mines in the country along the river now called Río Tinto, only 60 miles (100 kilometres) or so north-west of Gades. These remained productive, as they would into modern times. They were an obvious—and pressing—attraction to a Punic conquistador. Other sources of precious metal existed, but were farther off to the east and needed development; not so the long-established Tartessian workings. Nor could Hamilcar afford to wait, either financially or strategically. This first coalition against him may have been fairly limited. Communities in the eastern half of today’s Andalusia would be worried about Punic intentions, but would not be likely to risk sending forces far to the west in aid of the peoples there. They rarely tried such co-operation even in the next century during the Roman conquest. Perhaps too not all the communities in Hamilcar’s area of operations chose to resist; as mentioned earlier, some may even have been willing to collaborate. Those who did resist had the help of the Celtic chieftain Istolatius and his unnamed brother. Diodorus’ phrasing strongly implies that these two were, in effect, mercenary condottieri—no doubt leading a contingent of Celtic warriors. This can be believed, for a branch of Celtiberians, called Celtici by later writers, dwelt in the south-west between the Sierra Morena, the river Anas (the Guadiana) and the Atlantic coastline. Celtiberian war-bands, like Iberian ones, are found on other occasions serving for pay outside their home territories, including in Carthaginian armies. On this occasion it looks, too, as though the two Celtic chieftains were given command of the allied forces. A different excerpt in Diodorus plays up the boastful overconfidence of the Celts and how much they outnumbered the Punic forces. Whether this is accurate reporting or exaggeration for effect is impossible to tell. If Hamilcar was outnumbered, one reason may be that he had stationed part of his army elsewhere—for instance to protect Gades or new and hesitant allies in the lower Baetis valley, a job he could leave to Hasdrubal. He himself smashed the enemy allies in a bloody battle. The two Celtic generals and ‘other very 57

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distinguished leaders’ were among the dead. Three thousand of the defeated army were promptly enrolled in his own. This not only added to his military strength but was useful propaganda: a general both humane and, when it came to judging military worth, impartial would greatly impress the Spaniards. The results of the victory are not stated, but quite likely it brought under his control the territory Barca aimed at, stretching from Gades to the Tartessian mines along with some of the lower Baetis valley—districts conquered in the campaign or within a few days’ march of his Gaditane headquarters. Gades soon began issuing a new, high-quality silver coinage. He could now direct his energies to the rest of the Baetis valley and its neighbouring highlands.3 The Baetis valley stretches over 250 miles (400 kilometres) from the Atlantic coast to the edge of the vast mountain- and plateau-lands of southeastern Spain. Fertile and well populated, it had the potential for stiff resistance to the Carthaginians if enough of its towns and peoples held together. To the Carthaginians the same endowments were a powerful attraction, and more powerful still the silver workings in the mountains north of the river: the Mons Marianus of Roman times, today’s Sierra Morena, and the even richer ones to the east around the important town of Castulo. In Diodorus’ account Hamilcar next confronted a leader named Indortes. This chieftain’s connexions are not described but must have been extensive: the army he commanded is given as 50,000 strong. If Hamilcar was now ranging eastwards, up the Baetis, Indortes’ resistance probably drew on the communities of the central and eastern districts of the valley. After all, they were next in the path of the lightning. Yet Indortes’ army and campaign collapsed before he could fight a battle. Diodorus fails to explain why, but one obvious possibility is desertion. Barca may have enticed some of the large but heterogeneous Spanish force to join him, or at least to go home. Indortes judged retreat the best option with the troops still loyal to him. Diodorus describes him as routed, but since he was able to concentrate his remaining force on a hilltop a rout seems exaggerated. All the same, Indortes only postponed destruction. Once again, rather like the African rebels at The Saw, Hamilcar succeeded in surrounding an enemy army. This time they tried to break out, only to be slaughtered or captured. One of the prisoners was Indortes himself. Hamilcar made a ruthless example of him. The Iberian leader was blinded and mutilated—probably much as the African rebels had treated Gisco and their other Punic prisoners, cutting off hands, feet and private parts—then crucified. Yet the ordinary prisoners, no fewer than 10,000, were set free. Hamilcar plainly meant Indortes’ fate to carry a warning to other Spanish leaders who might be considering resistance, and that of the ordinary prisoners to reassure their peoples.4 Diodorus’ extracts give no chronology for these campaigns, and any estimates of time based on Punic Spanish coin-series are guesswork. But it would be surprising if the fighting against Istolatius and then Indortes lasted 58

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beyond 236 or at latest 235. After that Hamilcar fought further campaigns and scored diplomatic successes, but Diodorus offers no details. He simply affirms that the general, partly through diplomacy and partly by fighting, brought ‘many cities throughout Iberia’ under his power. Still, as the last drama in Barca’s life was played somewhere in the south-east, we can infer that from about 235 on his activities, military and civil, spread across the Baetis lands including the silver-rich Sierra Morena. With Hasdrubal a reliable deputy and their military strength growing, expansion and consolidation could take place together. The proceeds of conquest that began to accrue— some of it sent over to Africa—were phenomenal: horses, weapons, men and money, writes Nepos. Strabo tells a story of Hamilcar’s expedition finding that the Turdetani used feed-troughs and wine-jars of silver, not a literal but a proverbial way of highlighting the mineral wealth of southern Spain. Of course Punic rule in some of the more difficult mountain or desert regions, for instance the Sierra Nevada, the neighbouring Alpujarras and the semidesert region inland from modern Almería, may not have been much more than nominal. Such places were hard to get at and there were few mineral riches to attract sustained attention. Equally difficult was much of the south-east’s interior, where the Sierra Morena range meets the complex massifs that separate the Baetis valley from the coastal plains of Murcia and Alicante. Hamilcar, as we shall see, perished while campaigning to bring these under control for strategic reasons.5

III At some stage the general was distracted by news from Africa. The Numidians, or many of them, had risen against Carthage (again). The résumé in Diodorus gives no reason. After the drubbing many had suffered for backing the losers in the African revolt, the cause must have been specially pressing. The drubbing itself may have been the cause—we saw earlier that Hamilcar and Hanno had not been mild. As generalissimo of the republic Hamilcar was responsible for Africa as well as Spain. How seriously he viewed the situation is shown by his reaction: he sent Hasdrubal his son-in-law to take command. Hasdrubal had probably added to his military experience through the recent Spanish campaigns (he had not had much opportunity before). In his war with the Numidians Naravas’ people, the Massyli, may well have been allies again, for the prince’s family continued to rule their region of the country and be loyal to Carthage until late in the Second Punic War. Certainly Hasdrubal must have had efficient cavalry, and therefore local auxiliaries. He succeeded in bringing the hostile Numidians to a decisive battle, in which 8,000 of them were killed and 2,000 captured, and the revolt was over. The subdued Numidians were firmly treated. ‘The rest were made slaves and liable to tribute’, Diodorus rather contradictorily puts it. Enslavement of 59

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all the defeated tribes and clans is more than unlikely, so it is better taken as a rhetorical touch which the mention of tribute then more mundanely explains. Reprisals after the earlier war may have involved fines and levies rather than tribute, or else their new tribute was heavier than the old. How Hasdrubal’s arrangements related to the later known situation in Numidia can only be surmised. The rebel territory was obviously too large, and not productive enough, to annex—and too risky to give to the Massyli. When the region earns more detailed mention 20 or so years later, the proCarthaginian Massyli in its east are balanced by the larger (but probably not more populous) kingdom of the Masaesyli in the west under Syphax. This uneasy consolidation of Numidian territory into two realms may have been Hasdrubal’s doing, possibly too the installation of Syphax or his father as the western king. Certainly the Masaesyli make their appearance only after this time. They, like the Massyli, furnished Carthage with troops in 218, but Syphax’s attitude to the Carthaginians was variable—hostile enough some years later for these to arrange with the Massyli to attack him, yet after a time he became their ally again. In the circumstances Hasdrubal did reasonably well, for both kingdoms remained true to Carthage for the next two decades.6 His success surely reinforced the Barcid group’s prestige and popularity at home too. The impact of Spanish victories and wealth could easily have been blunted (or worse) by a serious continuing threat to Carthage’s territories in Africa. Hasdrubal averted the risk, and a stay—even a short one—in the city must have enabled him to strengthen his and Hamilcar’s grip on domestic politics. When he reported to his father-in-law on returning to Spain, the general would be well satisfied.

IV During all these years of expansion Hamilcar not only had to nourish his power-base at home—successfully, as we have seen—but to keep an eye on the Romans. After their chicanery over Sardinia, he might well feel wary. They traded with North Africa and the eastern parts of Spain too, so that care was always needed in handling their merchants in Punic territories. Hamilcar would not have forgotten the dispute over these in the early days of the African revolt and the use that the Romans afterwards made of this in the Sardinia affair. Some new unpredictable coup against Carthage, or directly against his growing empire in Spain, could never be ruled out. As it happens, one or two late Roman writers tell stories of repeated confrontations between the Romans and the Carthaginians in the later 230s, which if true would reveal almost a cold-war climate in the western Mediterranean. But in fact the stories are either confused repeats of the Sardinia crisis—misdating it to 236 or 235—or grotesque misrepresentations of other events. The Roman statesman Q. Fabius Maximus (for instance) is reported as sending an ultimatum to the Carthaginians when consul in 233, 60

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commanding them to choose between war and peace. This tale was obviously concocted from the famous ultimatum on war and peace presented at Carthage in 218 by another Fabius, then a Roman envoy. Again, in an episode Zonaras dates to 230 the Romans are represented as marching to fight the Ligurians (of northern Italy) via Punic North Africa; a charitable excuse might be that somewhere along the line a copyist wrote Carthaginians where he should have written, for example, Boii—a Gallic people of north Italy— but incompetently inventive malevolence by some propagandist might be the explanation instead. Another story directly involves Hamilcar. In 231, again according to Dio, the Romans sent over envoys to see what he was up to in Spain. Hamilcar received them cordially and explained that he was seeking the means to pay the indemnity imposed by Lutatius’ peace. The envoys, Dio affirms, could not find anything to criticize in this. The tale is hardly the stuff of high drama (Zonaras did not think it worth including in his précis of Dio) but basically is another confrontation story from the same source as the others. It arouses suspicion. No other writer knows it, and the nub of it is one side making a neat response when pressured by the other—just as in the other confrontations. Dio concedes that the Romans had previously had no interest in Barca’s doings and implies that they left him alone again after this. In sum, the embassy story is no more believable than the other confrontations. The Romans no doubt knew about Hamilcar’s expansion. Not only did they trade with Spanish ports as well as North African, they were on good terms too with Massilia, which had its own wide-ranging trading network. Even if their embassy to Hamilcar had taken place it would have been the only recorded official contact between the two powers after 237 and before 225—that is, in a dozen years. This does not square with sustained or anxious suspicion. Rather, the Romans were prepared to let their ex-enemies do as they wished in their quarter of the world, so long as they themselves could get on with doing as they wished in and around Italy.7 Some Romans even then may have admired Hamilcar, as we know Cato the Censor (a younger contemporary of his son) did later. But after a time— maybe even within Hannibal’s lifetime, once the story of his boyhood oath became known—Romans and Greeks came to believe that Hamilcar’s doings were the start of a carefully worked-out scheme for a fresh war against Rome. Infuriated by the defeat of 241 and then by the rape of Sardinia, he and his countrymen supposedly built their new empire in Spain for this purpose, with the war finally being launched by Hannibal. Polybius states this as a fact and nearly all other ancient sources follow suit.8 This was not the predominant view among the Romans at the time. Certainly the Sardinia crisis had shown that concern about Punic moves might flare if these looked like coming close to Italy and Sicily, and no doubt some members of the Roman Senate did feel a continuing antipathy for their ex-enemies. The same thing was to happen in 225, as we shall see. No doubt 61

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too critics of Barcid activity and Roman unconcern made themselves heard from time to time. But the Romans’ general inattention to Barcid affairs and to Carthage for nearly 20 years until 220—only the brief business of the ‘Ebro treaty’ in 225 was to punctuate it—reveals that any such criticisms failed to affect Roman policy-making. Fabius Pictor, the Barcids’ senatorial contemporary, blamed the war in general terms on ambition and greed in Hasdrubal and Hannibal his protégé, not on a war-scheme handed on from Hamilcar. One line of thought, surfacing in Appian’s history, even limited the blame to Hannibal himself, as a device for turning the tables on his hereditary enemies at home—though how far back that idea went we cannot say.9 Hamilcar surely had little liking for his old enemies, as the oath he administered to Hannibal shows. He may well have believed too that, one day, another war would come. But his programme was to rebuild Punic strength and wealth, a pragmatic and defensive aim. If the Romans should choose to bring on some new confrontation, a possibility no Carthaginian leader could dismiss, the Punic state had to be able to stand up to them as it had not been over Sardinia. But that was quite a different aim from a revenge-war. Another war would call for large resources to match those of the Romans, and also a set of alliances with states around Italy, either to support the wareffort or at least to distract the Romans. Of course Hannibal was to invade Italy with a small army and few allies—but no long-term planner would rationally aim at waging war on those terms. Hamilcar made no such alliances. Nor did his successor Hasdrubal; and Hannibal was to seek them, with the Gauls of north Italy, only on the eve of war itself. Planning a new war would also require readying a fleet. True, neither Hamilcar after 244 nor his successors showed any enthusiasm for naval warfare. But even negatively a fleet was a plain necessity, for the Romans could be counted on to launch their own powerful navy for invading North Africa and Spain as soon as war came. Arguably, of course, building one might invite as hostile a Roman reaction as preparing to retake Sardinia had done, and this might explain the Barcids’ avoidance of it. But if they were seriously bent on war it was a necessary risk. In any case suspicion could be disarmed by putting off the actual fleetbuilding until the war was fairly near. It had taken the Romans only a few months to construct their first-class war-fleet, 200 quinqueremes strong, in 243 or 242. So we could expect Hannibal to start laying down keels at any rate during 220 or 219, when a clash over Saguntum became predictable. Some naval craft should already have been available: the warships used during the African war plus any built (as some surely were) for the aborted Sardinian expedition afterwards. Yet the Punic war-effort at the start of 218 had available only 105 quinqueremes and a few smaller ships, with just 87 of the quinqueremes properly equipped. Their enemies launched 220. It could hardly be that the Carthaginians had defective information about 62

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Roman naval strength. When the Romans warred on the Illyrians across the Adriatic in 229 they equipped 200 ships, and the second Illyrian war ten years later (again involving both consuls with fleet and army) no doubt saw a similar armament. Anyone intending to bring on a new war against them had to count on a Roman navy of some such size and aim to counter it. Hamilcar did not. After him Hasdrubal—despite having been his father-in-law’s naval commander—did not; nor again did Hannibal. The only persuasive inference is that their plans never included a Roman war.10

V Hamilcar’s next reported measure was to found a city, a very large one according to Diodorus. He does not state where it was but its name was Acra Leuce, meaning ‘White Fort’ or ‘White Cape’. The Carthaginians had founded a few colonies in past times, like the one on the island of Ebusus off the east coast of Spain, but founding cities had not been a habit of past Punic leaders, not even the Magonids. On the other hand it was a notable characteristic of monarchs of Hamilcar’s own era, starting with Alexander the Great himself whose most famous creation, Alexandria in Egypt, stood on Africa’s Mediterranean coast like Carthage itself. The Roman republic too was a notable city-founder within Italy, its Latin and citizen colonies planted at strategic locations on the coasts and in the countryside of the peninsula. Hamilcar, generalissimo and chief executive of a republic, founded a centre with resemblances to both types. Unlike Hellenistic rulers with their Alexandrias and Antiochs, it did not perpetuate his own name. Like their foundations and Roman ones, it held a site important strategically and economically. Unlike Roman creations, it advertised the success and the promise of his political mastery of Carthage, and no doubt others would have followed had he lived. Archaeological finds starting from the later half of the third century show towns, especially in the upper Baetis region, improving many of their features—both private homes and public structures like walls and sacred shrines. Hamilcar and his successors quite likely encouraged these upgrades. Better amenities could claim to advertise the new prosperity and security under Punic rule. Improved urbanization in turn could help to make that rule more effective, at any rate so long as the dominant levels of Spanish society were won over. Hamilcar, who achieved much using diplomatic tactics as well as military, would not find that difficult to do.11 Acra Leuce is generally identified as the south-eastern coastal city which the Romans called Lucentum, today’s Alicante. Rising over this is an imposing headland of bare rock, a natural (and long-used) citadel. If the identification is correct, Acra Leuce formed a new power-centre on the eastern side of Carthage’s new province, to balance—and even outshine—old Gades on the western. 63

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This identification has been disputed. No Punic remains have been unearthed at Alicante, though there was a Phoenician trading-post at nearby Tossal de Manises. That the Roman name Lucentum derives from the verb for showing light, lucere, has been questioned—and thus any connexion with Acra Leuce. These objections are not compelling. Archaeological finds at, or rather under, existing cities are erratic, all the more so if the Punic character of a place lasted three or four decades at best: and 30 years later Acra Leuce was in a Roman province. At New Carthage (as the Romans were to call it), founded later on by Barca’s son-in-law farther down the coast, Hasdrubal built a splendid hilltop palace for himself which Polybius saw, but of which no trace now survives. The Greek name Acra Leuce described the site, according to Diodorus— wherever it was. It does not suggest that a Greek colony or trading-station already stood there. True, Massilia in Gaul had founded three very small colonies on Spain’s east coast, but Strabo the geographer, who tells us so, also implies that they lay between Cape de la Nao and the river Sucro, today’s Júcar. That zone lay well north of any district Hamilcar can have reached. The Greek name may simply translate the Punic one, just as the Punic may have translated a native one. Hamilcar himself may well have encouraged both the Punic and Greek forms. Hippou Acra is the Greek name of a North African port whose Punic name may have been Hippo Zarytos. In turn Roman Lucentum might conceivably derive not from the Latin for light but from Leuce, with a Latinized ending.12 There are more objections. Hasdrubal’s more southerly creation, the modern Cartagena, stands on a harbour much better than Alicante’s and had a rich hinterland including silver mines. That Hamilcar should ignore the advantages of such a site in favour of lesser ones farther north may seem too much to swallow. On this argument, since he did not site his city at Cartagena he cannot have sited it at Alicante, and we should look elsewhere for it. All this is close to a non-sequitur. Hamilcar may well have had reasons for preferring the more northerly position, even if we discount mere oversight of the site of Cartagena. The Alicante site has a good harbour and would give a shorter run to and from the island of Ebusus, a prosperous Punic colony with busy connexions to Carthage. Again, the Cartagena site housed or at any rate belonged to the people of Mastia, mentioned as long ago as 348 (in the second Punic treaty with Rome) as being within Punic-protected waters. They would contribute a contingent to the Punic war-effort in 218. Hamilcar may not have judged it politic to force an old Spanish ally to give up its rich territory and harbour to new residents (even if Hasdrubal later did). Nor of course need we imagine that to found New Carthage Hasdrubal would have had to give up Acra Leuce, were this at Alicante, and the territory in between—another objection offered.13 Another alleged difficulty is linked with how Hamilcar eventually died. He 64

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was besieging a city Diodorus calls Helice; with winter coming on he sent away the bulk of his forces, elephants included, to winter-quarters at Acra Leuce—a fatal move, as it turned out. Helice is generally identified with the Roman Ilici, today’s Elche famous for its fourth-century BC Iberian noblewoman’s statue and equally for its broad palm-groves, the most extensive in Europe, that surround the city. But Elche is only 13 miles (21 kilometres) south-west of Alicante. It is hard to believe that Hamilcar could safely found a major city in the farthest region of his new province with a powerful hostile centre standing so near—blocking, in fact, direct land-communication with the rest of Punic Spain. Elche incidentally has warmer winters than Alicante. These arguments might suggest that Acra Leuce really lay somewhere else in Hamilcar’s province—closer to the heartland or close to the inland frontier. Livy names a site, seemingly near Castulo in the eastern Sierra Morena, as the place where Hamilcar died, and its generally supposed name Castrum Album (‘White Fort’) could obviously mean much the same as Acra Leuce if this meant ‘White Citadel’. This might seem to clinch the matter: Hamilcar’s city would be not on the coast at all, but at a strategic strongpoint in silvermining territory and pointing the expansionist way to the plains of La Mancha and central Spain. But Hamilcar did not die at Acra Leuce. Diodorus’ account shows him cut off from there as he retreated from Helice. And the argument from Livy turns out to be circular. In all Livian manuscripts the name is Castrum Altum, ‘High Fort’. Text-editors supposed a connexion with Acra Leuce and changed Altum to Album—even though Acra Leuce was identified with Alicante while Livy is plainly narrating events inland. In other words ‘Castrum Album’ is only a mistaken inference from Acra Leuce and cannot be used as evidence for it. What Livy does imply is that Hamilcar’s Helice is not Elche but some place farther off, as we shall see.14 Acra Leuce, then, can remain identified with Lucentum and Alicante. Its foundation should date to the last years of the 230s: Hamilcar would have taken time to come round to that region, very likely via the coast, and his next recorded move was into the inland mountains of the south-east. The settlers probably were a mixture: loyal natives, people from Gades and other Phoenician towns, a sprinkling of outsiders (for instance from Ebusus), and no doubt an element of Carthaginians in the governing élite. The town’s position at the eastern end of the Punic province, and its use as a base for further operations, suggest that Hamilcar had only recently conquered the area. It protected the productive south-eastern coastlands and, with Gades, Malaca, Abdera, Mastia and the other Phoenician or allied Iberian ports, completed a semicircular chain of secure points around the province. And with the interior of the south-east a harsh tangle of mountains and valleys and even some deserts, Acra Leuce was an anchor for the vital coastal roadway that linked the south-east to the rest of Punic territory.

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VI It is not certain that Hamilcar treated Acra Leuce as a new capital for Punic Spain, but likely enough. Gades was a very small town on an offshore island and the Gaditanes, though allies, were an independent state; besides, Gades lay inconveniently far off in Spain from Carthage itself. His new city had none of these drawbacks. This then was probably where he and his two eldest sons were based in the last years of his life, although he, his son-in-law and eventually the boys must have spent much of every year on the move around their territories, campaigning and administering. Hamilcar’s second son Hasdrubal came to Spain before his father’s death. It is economical to suppose that the boy came with his brother-in-law and namesake after the older Hasdrubal put down the rebellion in Numidia. Young Hasdrubal had been born around 244, if a late writer is correct in making him three years younger than Hannibal; so he would have been ten or eleven when his namesake came to Africa to deal with the Numidians. Hamilcar had had his eldest son by him from the age of nine, and judged the years of older childhood, merging into early youth, as the right ones to start training each boy in warfare and leadership. At any rate Polybius describes his youngest son Mago as ‘trained from boyhood in military matters’. Mago, born around 241 or 240, will have come to Spain just before or not long after his father’s death. By 218 the younger Hasdrubal was experienced enough, and respected enough, for his elder brother to deputise him to govern Punic Spain while Hannibal was away. Mago, in his early twenties at most, marched with Hannibal and was given crucial tasks like commanding the ambush corps at the battle of the Trebia. Hamilcar obviously meant all three to qualify for high position in Punic Spain and at home. This was a normal enough ambition in any aristocratic leader, and all the more then to be expected in Hamilcar. After all he was now—so long as victories continued and Spain’s riches kept flowing—supreme in the state and the focus of political enthusiasms both at Carthage and in his expanding province. (The story that he claimed he was rearing lion-cubs to ruin the Romans belongs, on the other hand, to the revenge-war legend.)15 Grooming for high position meant training in war primarily, as Polybius writes of Mago. Skill on horseback and with weapons, and in commanding formations large and small, had to be gained, and by the end of 229 both Hannibal and Hasdrubal were campaigning with their father. But literacy and a knowledge of the world, present and past, were equally necessary. Nor could this education be limited to purely Punic matters or be put in purely Punic terms, important though these—like the Barcids’ Punic religion— remained. A good grasp of the Greek language had been desirable or essential to a Carthaginian aristocrat for a long time, given their city’s links in peace and war with the Greek world, Sicily above all. With that world 66

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revolutionized by Alexander the Great and his successors and imitators both eastern and western, the need for Carthaginians to understand Hellenistic civilization had become at least as great as its attractions already were. Hannibal was taught Greek by a Spartan named Sosylus. He seems to have become fluent in the language, so Sosylus probably arrived in Hamilcar’s time. Sparta was no longer the officious military state of older times but Spartan expatriates were well regarded abroad—for instance Xanthippus, the professional soldier who had saved the Carthaginians from Regulus. Sosylus may have known something of war too, to judge from the one surviving fragment of his history of the Second Punic War. He became a devoted friend of his pupil, went with him on his epic quest against Rome, remained with Hannibal ‘as long as fortune allowed’ (Nepos writes) and then wrote his history, which irritated Polybius but was still read 200 years later. At some date Hannibal’s circle was joined by another notable Greek. Silenus, of Cale Acte in Sicily, also followed him ‘while fortune allowed’. Later he too wrote an influential account of the war against Rome, though neither it nor Sosylus’ survives. The two men’s association with the Barcid family illustrates the family’s Greek connexions and interests. Hannibal in later years would deal with Greeks, in Italy and Asia Minor, easily and on the same cultural level; his military talents and methods matched Alexander’s. Even so the connexions need not be overestimated. Greece was still producing mercenary officers, not just soldiers, but though Punic armies continued to hire the soldiers no Greek (not even a Spartan) ever held a high command again.16

VII Hamilcar next struck into the hinterland of Acra Leuce. It was late 229 or very early in 228, since Polybius writes that he spent nearly nine years in Spain and perished ten years before the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218; and Diodorus shows that his death took place in winter. Polybius and Livy also attest that his successor Hasdrubal held power for eight years before being assassinated late in 221. Hamilcar met his end probably not long into the winter of 229–228, as we shall see. His sons Hannibal and Hasdrubal accompanied him while his son-in-law held a separate command elsewhere. As Diodorus tells it, he laid the town of Helice under siege but then sent the bulk of his army and the elephants to winter-quarters at Acra Leuce. With the remaining Punic forces thus weakened, a new danger arose. The ‘king of the Orissi’ arrived with an army, feigning a wish for friendship and alliance with the Carthaginians but in fact aiming to help the besieged. At the right moment he attacked Hamilcar’s troops and put them to flight. Barca saved his sons and his friends by sending them off on one road while he took a different one to draw off the pursuit. As the enemy, led by 67

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their king, were about to overtake him he plunged on horseback into a broad flooding river to perish. But Hannibal and his brother escaped to Acra Leuce, where their brother-in-law Hasdrubal soon joined them with other troops. ‘Helice’, the town Hamilcar was besieging, can hardly have been Ilici, the modern Elche: as mentioned earlier, this lay only 12 miles (20 kilometres) or so south-west of Acra Leuce and astride the road to the rest of Punic Spain. It would have been strange, and hard, for Hamilcar to found his city if a strong hostile centre stood so near. Nor was there much need for winterquarters in those parts, a district where Europe’s biggest palm-forest has flourished for a millennium, or much difference between the climates of the two towns. Again, if Ilici had submitted at first to Punic domination but now revolted, it was acting in dangerous isolation. The only help came from the Orissi, in Roman times called Oretani, whose territory lay on the plateau of La Mancha and in the eastern Sierra Morena over 100 miles (160 kilometres) distant in a straight line—and in reality a much longer and more difficult route, across the mountains.17 Hamilcar’s target was probably a different ‘Helice’ inland. The trouble is that there is no place known by that name. Ilucia, a stronghold of the Oretani themselves according to Livy (in a later context), does not suit. Diodorus implies, if anything, that ‘Helice’ was not Oretanian—and if it was, the Oretanian king would hardly turn up to help one of his own towns only when a siege was well under way. Nor would he have then been able to put Hamilcar so completely off his guard. Less likely still is it that ‘Helice’ stood somewhere near the river Iber (the Ebro) far to the north—although the Byzantine versifier Tzetzes so names the river that claimed Barca. Tzetzes is just guessing wrongly. The Ebro valley lay beyond the Carthaginians’ attested areas of action until the end of the 220s, not to mention lying even further from Oretanian territory than Ilici did. In turn it would be incomprehensible that Hamilcar should choose to send the bulk of his forces (elephants included) all the way back to Acra Leuce and maroon himself with the rest hundreds of miles away in hostile country. For the same reason we must rule out Alce, a Celtiberian stronghold about halfway between the upper reaches of the rivers Anas and Tagus, north of the Oretani.18 As it happens, there is a second Elche in the south-east: the small town of Elche de la Sierra, in dramatically wild terrain in the heart of the mountains, about 65 miles (115 kilometres) west of the first and only 3 miles north of the river Segura, the ancient Tader. There are drawbacks: its ancient name is unknown (even assuming the town existed then) and the region gives no good access westwards. But only 20 miles (32 kilometres) to the east, today’s Hellín is probably ancient Ilunum, on the route southwards from Saltigi (Chinchilla near Albacete) to the coast—later to be a Roman road. This inland route linked up at Saltigi with an east–west one, another Roman roadto-be, giving access to the plain of La Mancha and the upper reaches of the 68

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river Anas. Tobarra, on the same road a few miles north, was very likely the Turbola listed by the geographer Ptolemy among the Bastetani of southeastern Spain; and the town of Cieza, on the road 30 miles (50 kilometres) south across rough but low-lying country, may have been ancient Segisa, another Bastetanian centre. Ptolemy also lists two places called Arcilacis, giving one to the Turduli and the other to the Bastetani. He is probably repeating one and the same place. It cannot be located with any exactness, but the name is noteworthy. Greek and Roman writers rendered Spanish place-names in varying ways (especially the obscurer ones): as an example, the towns of Aurinx and Orongis that Livy mentions in different passages were probably identical—and may in fact have really been Aurgi, modern Jaén. ‘Helice’ could well be a different form of Arcilacis; or else Diodorus’ source mistakenly supposed that Arcilacis and Ilici were the same.19 Livy, as noted earlier, names the place where Hamilcar died as Castrum Altum. Some distance away was a Mons Victoriae or ‘Victory Mountain’, though that need not have been named from his defeat. The names point to mountainous terrain for Hamilcar’s end. Livy’s own context is military operations in the south-east in the Second Punic War. These operations afterwards involved the towns of Castulo in the eastern Sierra Morena, Iliturgi on the Baetis not far from Castulo, and Bigerra, identified either as a place not far east of Castulo and Iliturgi or as one in the mountains west of Ilunum and north-west of Elche de la Sierra. The campaign itself is debatable but it seems, all the same, that Livy’s source used actual topographical names. They indicate that the upper Baetis valley was strategically accessible from the region where Barca met his death.20 ‘Helice’ then may well have stood somewhere in the rugged country south or south-west of Saltigi, whether or not Elche de la Sierra marks the site. It would have been a strongpoint—not necessarily the only one—from which the local tribe dominated the route between the coast and the inland plains, or at least their refuge when things went badly. Barca’s strategic plan can be reasonably inferred. He meant to subdue the hinterland of Acra Leuce, moving through the high country to the eastern reaches of the river Anas. Since his first campaign had brought the lands around the lower Anas into his power, the final goal of this new drive may have been to round off control of the entire river north of the Sierra Morena. Access from beyond that range to the ore-rich areas around Castulo was (until quite modern times) chiefly by the pass of Despeñaperros, 30 miles (50 kilometres) or so north of Castulo. Mastery of the Anas riverlands would safeguard Punic possession of the silver-bearing mountains on their northern side. Equally it would mean a convenient start-line for further annexations, if and when they were wanted. Hamilcar surely saw no need to stop his empire-building at the Anas—or even at the Tagus. Central and 69

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north-eastern Spain was the homeland of the warlike Celtiberians, valuable as allies and dangerous if hostile. To their west on the plains around the river Durius (now the Duero), the Vettones and Vaccaei grew plentiful harvests of grain. With all of these the Carthaginians would have had long-standing contact through trade and mercenary-recruiting. Before 229, too, Barca may well have sought closer links with communities north of the Sierra Morena. Almost certainly the town of Castulo, in the heart of the silver-lands of that range and an Oretanian city according to later writers, was within the Punic area of dominance by then—otherwise his activities over on the east side of Spain, with so glaring a gap in his control of the Baetis heartland, are inexplicable. Larger or stronger towns within a Spanish tribal region did act fairly independently (Numantia in Celtiberia is an obvious later case) but, if Punic hegemony had now spread to their southern kinsmen, the Oretani-Orissi beyond the Sierra Morena too may well have struck up a friendship or alliance with Hamilcar. This would help explain why he was taken in by their king when that person arrived offering military support against the enemy at ‘Helice’. But not every Spanish leader or people welcomed being under Punic domination, however mild. The people of ‘Helice’ did not; nor did the Oretani-Orissi, who faced the prospect of firmer control or even ultimate conversion from allies into tribute-paying subjects. Significantly, the siege of ‘Helice’ was still on when winter caught up with the Carthaginians. If campaigning had begun in spring 229 as usual, Hamilcar must have reached the town only after working through other areas— starving out or storming places like Segisa, Ilunum and Turbola one after the other. Plainly ‘Helice’ was both well sited and held by a fairly small though hardy force. This would account for Hamilcar deciding to send most of his army back to the coast even though the town was holding out. He did not expect to overwhelm it by weight of numbers but would let a winterblockade do the work. Sending off the bulk of the army, including the elephant corps, eased his own problems of supply and was done probably at the start of winter, late in 229, for to leave it until well into the season would have been undesirable (especially for the animals). Diodorus moreover implies a certain amount of time between the ensuing disaster and Hasdrubal’s vengeance on the Orissi, which was the new general’s first military move in 228. Despite his reduced strength Barca can hardly have thought there was much danger, for he kept both sons with him. The arrival of the Orissi with their king did not alarm him: had he been expecting their support and thus felt able to send away so many of his own force? At all events he accepted their supposed help, to his own destruction. Later writers tell an elaborate tale of oxen being yoked to blazing wagons and sent charging against his panic-stricken troops, and Hamilcar being killed 70

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in the battle that followed. It is not easy to accept this alongside Diodorus’ differing and matter-of-fact report. Nor is Nepos’ naming his attackers as Vettones (who dwelt far to the north between the Tagus and Durius) any more believable. But we can accept that in December 229 or January 228, in a swollen stream—probably the Segura—in the uplands of today’s province of Albacete, the founder of Barcid supremacy found his end. He was 50 or 51.21

VIII Hamilcar’s achievement was great. He had not only saved the Carthaginian republic but rebuilt it as a first-class power. The new mines and tributerevenues from Spain brought new prosperity; some of it may have trickled across to allies like Utica and their Libyan subjects too, if it is true that the conquests enriched ‘all Africa’, while Punic Spain opened up fresh opportunities for citizens prepared to venture there. Over his home country Hamilcar skilfully set up and maintained a political dominance not seen since the time of the earlier Hanno the Great—or even the Magonids—and left it secure enough to be passed on first to his son-in-law and next to his son. Ancient observers found him both attractive and enigmatic. Naravas was impressed enough by his fame to become his ally and kinsman; Polybius, rather exaggeratedly, sees him as the best general on either side in the war with Rome, admires his leadership in the African revolt and in Spain, and— again admiringly rather than in hostility—judges him the ultimate inspirer of the Second Punic War. In Diodorus he is both the saviour of his country and the practitioner of dirty politics. Romans judged him variously: Cato put him on a par with Pericles, Epaminondas, Themistocles and the Roman hero Dentatus, and in Nepos’ short biography he is a mighty figure; then as the notion spread of his ultimate responsibility for Hannibal’s war, for Livy he is a great-souled leader driven by anger against the Romans, and for the later poet Silius a grim patriarch likewise typified by resentment against them, even as a spirit among the dead.22 There were less splendid aspects of Barca too. He was ruthless whenever he felt it suitable: with mutinous troops in Sicily in 247, towards captured rebels in the later stages of the African war, in his treatment of Indortes. His generalship could be ill judged, careless or both—the unprofitable years on the heights of Heircte and Eryx come to mind, so too his narrow escape (thanks to Naravas) from Spendius and Autaritus’ encirclement, his other setbacks from the rebels, and the miscalculation at ‘Helice’ which led to his death. He did not always feel it necessary to be over-scrupulous or avoid chicanery: he made promises to his mercenaries in Sicily and then left others to cope with them, and he liquidated the rebels at The Saw by—at best— questionable dealing. Hamilcar, rather like Philip II of Macedon a century earlier, built a powerstructure—domestic and imperial—that his son and successor would exploit. 71

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His achievement was not as enduring as Philip’s because the war his son launched was finally lost, and with it the Barcid empire. Yet in establishing a foreign dominion in Spain, levying tribute and exploiting natural and human resources, cultivating natives as allies as well as subjects, and founding a city, he not only made Carthage an imperialist power in the mould of those in the Hellenistic east but created a provincial system that could be taken over and developed by (ironically) the Romans in their turn. He was not and probably never intended to be a king, though in Spain he held virtually monarchic power (as Roman proconsuls would in their provinces). His position rested on an elected command, and so did that of his successors in it. The historian Fabius Pictor would criticize Hasdrubal, not him, for supposedly monarchic pretensions and evil influence on Hannibal. As noted already, their younger contemporary Cato—not normally pro-Carthaginian in his views—ranged Hamilcar with great Greek and Roman republican leaders in favourable contrast to kings. Rather like Athens under Pericles, Barcid Carthage could be described as a republic ruled in fact by its first citizen. Whether Hamilcar and the other Barcid generalissimos are portrayed in regal style on the fine series of coins from their Spanish mints is still, and no doubt will always be, disputed. Probably not: none offers even an initial to tell a user that it depicts a Barcid ruler; the supposed ‘Hamilcar’ and ‘Hannibal’ portraits bear the symbolic club of Hercules who was identified with Carthage’s city-god Melqart; other Barcid coins portray female divinities as Carthaginian coins had done for generations. But the coinage, Hellenistic in style and associations, advertised the financial and cultural dynamism of the Barcid province. It fits in with the other Hellenistic associations cultivated by Hamilcar’s family, all of them put to use to serve the Punic republic and its de facto rulers.23 In Hamilcar the Carthaginians found the right man for their times. He gave them both leadership and vision. Within ten years after the two most draining wars in their history they had returned to wealth, prestige and power, travelling an expansionist path very different from Carthage’s old island-bound and trade-based hegemony, and on a par militarily and territorially with the other great Mediterranean powers. Where the path was to lead, probably even Hamilcar did not know, though likely enough he expected all of Spain to be conquered in due course. Likely enough too, considering his attitude to the Romans, he judged it highly possible that one day they would again intervene somewhere against Carthage’s interests: if so, the Carthaginians must be as strong as possible so as to deter the threat or else defeat it, while meanwhile keeping on amicable or at least respectful terms with their ex-enemies to allow Punic strength to develop. Polybius reports just such advice from him to his successors, though misinterpreting it as part of the supposed master-plan for a war of revenge.24

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I Hasdrubal had not accompanied Hamilcar against ‘Helice’, nor was he at Acra Leuce. He was commanding another force somewhere in the province, for Diodorus writes that as soon as he learned of the disaster he ‘broke camp’ and hurried to join Hannibal and his brother. Most likely he had been watching over the province while Hamilcar operated on its fringes, and gathering extra forces: for Diodorus adds that he brought 100 elephants with him, giving him 200 altogether in his first campaign as the new general—one of the largest elephant corps on record. The town of Lascuta east of Gades, the only Spanish town to put an elephant on its Punic-era coins, may have housed the elephant corps and was centrally enough sited to keep watch over all four quarters of Punic Spain. From there Hasdrubal could take the coast road via Malaca and Abdera to Acra Leuce. Some reinforcements were later sent from Africa too, if Appian can be trusted. There were certain things to do before Hasdrubal could retrieve the disaster to Hamilcar—above all, ensure Barcid continuity. Hamilcar had of course not expected to die in his prime and may well have planned on being replaced as generalissimo, when the time came, by a mature eldest son. But war by definition is unpredictable and in 228 Hannibal was still in his teens. Now aged around 40, Hasdrubal was the obvious choice.1 According to Diodorus he was ‘acclaimed general by both the army and the Carthaginians’. This adds valuable detail to Polybius’ statement that ‘the Carthaginians entrusted the generalship’ to him, which Appian more or less echoes. The soldiers making the decision were probably—as in the army vote on Hanno and Hamilcar during the African war—the citizen officers and troops, not the mercenaries and levies (Libyan and Spanish) as well. Their numbers may not have been large but that was irrelevant. Hasdrubal had no trouble making the arrangements, as it was still winter and plainly the Orissi and the men of ‘Helice’ did not follow up their success. To judge by Diodorus’ wording and Hannibal’s later election, the army in Spain made its decision first, then (in the spring) referred it on to the citizen 73

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body at Carthage for ratification. Hamilcar’s victories and the shock of his loss guaranteed Hasdrubal’s confirmation, even though Hanno and other opponents surely argued against installing, in effect, a dynasty over the Punic republic. To prove the voters—and the army—right in confirming him, though, Hasdrubal had to avenge his father-in-law as well as continue his policies. A visit in due course to Carthage would not come amiss either, especially if he had not been there since the Numidian rebellion five or six years earlier.2 The Orissi were soon brought to heel. With part or all of an army of 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and the 200 elephants Hasdrubal marched into the land around the upper Anas and ‘killed all who had been responsible for Hamilcar’s rout. He acquired,’ Diodorus continues, ‘their twelve cities and all the cities of Iberia.’ The first part of this blend of precision and vagueness may be correct—the geographer Ptolemy credited the Oretani with 14 towns four centuries later, one of them Castulo—though obviously not the second, which reads at best like an exaggerated summing-up of his whole career. Given their treachery to Hamilcar, the Orissi were most likely made tributary subjects rather than being left as allies, no doubt after condign slaughter, sackings and enslavements. So the avenging of Hamilcar usefully extended the north-eastern reaches of the province to the lands of the upper Anas.3

II Avenging Hamilcar had been not merely a family duty but a political necessity. It retrieved the blow to Punic and Barcid prestige and showed that the new general was as decisive a leader as his predecessor. But Hasdrubal was not just a carbon-copy continuator. Younger, originally a popular politician, he was more assertive and publicity-conscious and he took a rather different approach to ruling Spain. According to Diodorus it was after wreaking vengeance on the Orissi that the new general took an Iberian king’s daughter as his wife, then was acclaimed by ‘all the Iberians’ as ‘general with supreme power’ (Diodorus uses the Greek term strategos autokrator). Diodorus’ text—nothing more than a set of often clumsily made excerpts from two Byzantine collections—is thus tantalizingly silent on context, calculations and even names. Hasdrubal may or may not have been a widower by now, for Carthaginians were monogamous; even if not, he might well put raison d’état ahead of custom, like the elder Dionysius of Syracuse and Philip of Macedon in the previous century. A royal Spanish wife created a closer link with (at least) the communities in his province who counted as allies. She symbolized a commitment to the lands he ruled, a relationship more appealing than the plain exploitation which is all we know for Hamilcar. The same symbolism recurred some years later when Hannibal in his turn took a Spanish wife. Hasdrubal’s next move reinforced the bond between Punic general and Iberian peoples. How he arranged to be acclaimed supreme general ‘by all the 74

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Iberians’, and just who these were, again can only be surmised. One suggestion is that he summoned a congress of representatives from the peoples under Punic rule and prompted them to elect him. Or perhaps he arranged for the Spanish contingents in his army to make the acclamation. They would be varied enough to allow a propaganda claim that ‘all the Iberians’ had acted, and for the native troops to do so paralleled suitably his earlier election as Carthage’s general by the Punic soldiery. As often pointed out, this was a gesture immediately recognizable beyond Spain too, and for more than one reason. Syracusan leaders had often been elected strategos autokrator: Dionysius the Elder, Dion the liberator, Agathocles and probably Hiero had all been. Obviously Hasdrubal would not use the Greek term officially but will have styled himself ‘supreme general’ (or leader) or the like in Punic, Iberian and the other languages of his territories. On the other hand when writing in Greek he may well have used the term, and historians after him could follow suit, like the pro-Barcid Silenus and Sosylus.4 Election or acclamation as leader by an alliance was also common in the Hellenistic world. Alexander the Great had been leader, hegemon, of the League of Corinth against Persia a century earlier; Pyrrhus seems to have been leader of the Sicilian Greeks against the Carthaginians before getting himself acclaimed their king; and the continuing use of both these Greek terms in Hasdrubal’s day is shown by the Macedonian king Antigonus Doson’s election in 224 as hegemon of the Achaean League around the time that the Achaean statesman Aratus had been appointed its strategos autokrator. Hasdrubal’s signals were both to his own political world, in Spain and North Africa, and to the world outside: he was the leader of two peoples— Carthaginians and Spaniards—with the interests of both at heart; and was the chief of a major state, a power on a level with the other major powers and with a similar coalition of dependent allies and subjects. Of course to the allies and subjects this remained essentially a gesture. The high command of the army and even of Carthage’s thinned-out fleet continued to be exclusively Carthaginian. Like Hannibal after him, Hasdrubal no doubt had senators from Carthage in his advisory council along with his chief officers. The reality of dominance was much the same as that which the Romans and the kings of Macedon enforced over their own hegemonies.5

III Political considerations also prompted the new general, it seems, to visit Carthage soon after. For this we have only a report by the unfriendly Fabius Pictor relayed by Polybius. Hasdrubal, ‘after acquiring great power in the Spanish lands’, travelled to North Africa, in a move to overturn the laws of Carthage and transform its political system into ‘monarchy’. If Polybius relays Pictor correctly the 75

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wording suggests that the visit followed the new general’s opening measures in Spain, including his acclamation as the Spaniards’ strategos autokrator—but not a long time later, since Pictor also implied that he went on ruling Spain for quite some while afterwards. As for his supposed goal at Carthage, the Greek word monarchia need not mean actual kingship but, literally, one-man rule: Pictor’s obvious point was that Hasdrubal wanted autocratic power over the republic. But ‘the leading men in the state, foreseeing his scheme, got together and opposed him; Hasdrubal, feeling suspicious, departed from Africa and thereafter governed Spain according to his own judgement, paying no attention to the Carthaginian senate’. Pictor blamed Hasdrubal, too, for passing on his acquisitiveness and arrogance to Hannibal, with the Second Punic War the result of these vices.6 Polybius may overcompress this report but he does not deny Hasdrubal’s trip to Carthage (his interest is in denying Pictor’s claim that the Carthaginians at home were hostile to Hannibal). How Hasdrubal meant to carry out his supposed coup, and who its opponents were, Polybius does not state, although Fabius Pictor himself may have offered fuller details. Worth notice, though, is the comment about the general ‘feeling suspicious’, presumably of his opponents. It implies a scenario of intrigue and uncertainty, suitable enough to the story. Certainly Hasdrubal would not have arrived in Carthage trumpeting a plan to overturn the existing constitution and make himself legally the autocrat of the state. At most he would urge fair-sounding reforms, even if he had a hidden agenda. Nor could opposition to his supposed scheme have been overt if it simply roused his suspicion. In other words, Pictor knew of some sort of muffled political contest between the new general and anti-Barcid interests, and inflated it into a supposed coup-attempt on the model of Peisistratus or Dionysius the Elder. A more plausible picture can cautiously be drawn. Hasdrubal sailed over to Carthage late in 228 (staying for the winter, maybe, as campaigning in Spain would be in recess) or else during 227. Later than 227 is not likely, both for the reasons already mentioned and because on returning to Spain he launched his biggest project, a new city-foundation which was well under way by 226. Essentially the purpose of his visit home must have been to confirm his political grip there, so it was not one he would make until he had an opening military victory—the avenging of Hamilcar, at that—to his credit. But he may well have had some domestic measures that he wished to enact too, measures political enough to prompt Pictor’s notion that he was aiming at ‘monarchy’. It is hardly likely that Hasdrubal was forced to abandon them, though Pictor obviously suggested this, and retreat in dudgeon to a quasi-kingdom effectively divorced from his mother city. Hannibal’s smooth succession in 221 at Carthage as in Spain is the best token of the Barcids’ continuing grip on the state. On all the evidence, both of Hamilcar’s successors were the 76

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elected supreme generals of the republic, governing lands and waging wars and making treaties on its behalf just as Punic generals had done down the ages. Thus Hasdrubal’s proposals probably did not include adding to the powers of the generalship. Nor do the functions of the Punic senate seem impaired in the glimpses we get of it over the next quarter of a century, so it is unlikely that Hasdrubal mooted any measure affecting it either. Any proposals he had would aim elsewhere. Polybius writes (disapprovingly) that by 218 ‘among the Carthaginians the people had already acquired the most power in deliberations’. Since there is no evidence of this in reality, arguably he viewed the elected and popular Barcid supremacy as embodying popular supremacy. But arguably again there was rather more to it. Not a full-blown democratic revolution as sometimes claimed for 237 but, at some date before 218, adjustments to the working of the citizen assembly (greater freedom over its own agenda, for instance) or indeed to the citizen-body itself. It could be attractive, for example, to make Punic citizenship more accessible to deserving foreigners, especially ones sponsored by the supreme general. The Roman poet Ennius not many decades later portrayed Hannibal promising his men that whoever showed valour would for him be a Carthaginian, whatever his origin, and Livy very similarly reports the promise of citizenship just before his first battle in Italy. In other words, citizenship was something likely to appeal to nonCarthaginians in Carthage’s service, and could be a valuable patronage tool to a political leader.7 One other institution might well attract Hasdrubal’s attentions. The tribunal of One Hundred and Four existed to scrutinize how generals had behaved at war, and Hamilcar quite possibly had risked being prosecuted before it in 241. But after that nothing is ever heard of this function. When the unlucky general Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, fell foul of his countrymen in 203 or 202 he had a death sentence decreed—and afterwards repealed—by the people, or so it seems in our only source, Appian; and according to Appian again the hapless man was later on hunted down and murdered by citizens after a tumultuous assembly-meeting. Livy does record the power and arrogance of an ‘order of judges’ dominating the Punic state by 196—a period when the republic, now shorn of practically all war-making capacity, would have had minimal work for the Hundred and Four in their original rôle. As remarked earlier, it is an obvious though tentative inference that the tribunal still existed in 196, was still powerful (especially after the disaster that Hannibal’s war inflicted on Barcid interests), but by then judged non-military issues. Already by Aristotle’s time it may have widened its functions, but the loss of its supervision of generals must have come later. To Hasdrubal, the Hundred and Four could seem potentially irksome even if they had no power to investigate him until—if ever—he stepped down 77

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from command. Many of them would have joined the tribunal before 237 and even some of the recent entrants need not have been too submissive to Barcid blandishments. Unlike other senators, who still had careers to pursue and so had to stay on Hasdrubal’s sunny side, the Hundred and Four as a body could afford to be relatively independent, just as Livy portrays them in 196. So Hasdrubal might have sponsored, for instance, a scheme to take away their jurisdiction over generals. His opponents and unfriendly Romans, in turn, could easily paint such a proposal as overturning the laws and pointing to one-man rule. But abolishing this rôle would surely have sparked opposition too overt to make him merely suspicious of his opponents. There were other ways of bringing the tribunal safely to heel: for instance a measure that would stack it with Barcid supporters, or one to widen its competence in administrative areas and so deflect its focus from politics.8 The first seems less plausible than the second, for a court progressively stacked with supporters over the next quarter-century should not have been that hostile to Hannibal in 196. By contrast, widening its competence could be presented as a good thing. The return of prosperity and the growth of the empire must have increased judicial activity, whereas there was no prospect of the Hundred and Four investigating the current general’s doings for a long while at best. If such a modification seemed reasonable to most Carthaginians and not just the Barcid faction, its opponents would certainly be as circumspect as Fabius Pictor implied, working behind the scenes rather than publicly attacking it. Fabius implied or stated that Hasdrubal failed to get his proposals through. Yet, as noted earlier, nothing suggests that Barcid dominance at Carthage was dented. So Fabius may simply be wrong, just as he is wrong to imply that Hasdrubal was independent of the Punic state. Or maybe the general did decide that the time was not ripe and shelved his proposals—only to revive and enact them quietly later on. Either way, critics could later misrepresent him as suffering a defeat and retreating to Spain to act in virtual independence. That sophistry meant in turn that the sole blame for the Second Punic War could be laid on his successor and imitator in wilfulness, exonerating the rest of the Punic oligarchy. According to Livy these began blaming Hannibal even before the war was over: the same view that Fabius was to urge on his readers. Fabius’ source was very probably Carthaginian and maybe not all that far from the circle around Hanno the Great. Hanno’s basic attitude to any proposal put up by Hasdrubal does not have to be guessed.9

IV Hasdrubal, his political supremacy at home confirmed, sailed back to his province, likely enough in spring or summer 227. He had another important 78

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project to carry out in the service of its development and the Barcids’ glory. Like Hamilcar he founded a city. This was ‘a city by the sea’, Diodorus writes, ‘which he named New Carthage’: today’s Cartagena, 60 miles (100 kilometres) south of Alicante. This was the site, as noted above, of an earlier Iberian town called Mastia. New Carthage was in reality the Greek and Roman version of the name, and here Polybius is more informative: it was ‘called by some Carthage, by others New City’ (he normally uses this second version himself). In Punic ‘New City’ was a single word—Qart-hadasht. Hasdrubal’s new city was in fact another Carthage.10 This might look like a challenge to old Carthage, or a declaration of independence from it. Some at the time probably did see it so: we remember Fabius Pictor’s later claim that after returning from North Africa Hasdrubal ‘governed Spain according to his own judgement, paying no attention to the Carthaginian senate’. Some modern historians see it in the same light—the visible evidence of a virtually separate Barcid kingdom, Hasdrubal’s more or less private domain.11 The inference is not warranted, even though the governmental palace that Hasdrubal built there did strike some at the time as betraying royal ambitions. We have seen that like his predecessor he kept a firm grip on affairs in North Africa as well as Spain—and as Carthage’s generalissimo, not as king. Equally we cannot read too much into his new city’s name. A new Carthage it certainly was: but it was not the only Qart-hadasht in old Carthage’s territories. Fifty miles (80 kilometres) by air from Carthage, just north of the gulf of Hammamet, stood the coastal town of Neapolis (Nabeul today), a Greek name which in Punic can have been no other than Qart-hadasht again. On the coast to the south lay another town called Neapolis by Greeks, then known in Roman times as Macomades, a Phoenician name (Maqom-hadasht) meaning very similarly ‘new place’—no doubt its original name persisting. Nor was this the only Macomades in the region; there was another in Numidia and a third to the east of the famous city of Lepcis Magna, halfway between Carthage and Egypt. Lepcis Magna itself was also called Neapolis according to various Greek geographers, including one in the fourth century BC. The geographer Ptolemy even mentions an ‘old Carthage’, which would be yet another Phoenician or Punic ‘new city’, in north-eastern Spain, in the land of the Ilercavones around the mouth of the river Ebro. Ptolemy’s item must be a mistake or misunderstanding: it was probably a town that Strabo records as Cartalia. But names like New City and New Place are typical enough for colonies. The Phoenicians had so named the town in Cyprus afterwards called Citium. We recall that Aristotle in the fourth century reported the Carthaginians periodically sending out citizen colonists. They went normally to an existing centre, but their numbers and dominance might sometimes prompt a renaming (formal or informal). At Carthage itself a new quarter existed by the fourth century which Diodorus names Neapolis, 79

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another ‘New City’. The Carthaginians presumably called it Qart-hadasht too, or else Maqom-hadasht. Obviously the duplication or near-duplication did not bother them.12 Hasdrubal’s reason, then, for naming his new foundation after his home city was not a declaration of independence but a natural enough, almost a traditional, choice. An alternative would have been to keep the old name Mastia, but this surely had little resonance for Carthaginians. Calling it Qarthadasht had extra propaganda value, symbolizing the Barcids’ linking of Spain with Africa and the strength of the Carthaginians’ stake in their new province. More subtly it advertised to a suitably impressed world the renewed power of Carthage: not one but two strong and rich Qart-hadashts would sustain and reinforce it. The people Hasdrubal most wanted to impress were surely the Romans. He succeeded.13 New Carthage was impressive from the start. It stood on four hills dominating a safe southward-facing harbour at the head of a deep gulf of the Mediterranean, just short of Cape de los Palos where the Spanish coast turns northwards. The westernmost hill was crowned by Hasdrubal’s citadel and palace. On its north side lay a broad lagoon, linked to the sea by a canal that protected the city’s western flank. An ideal site for commerce and fisheries, its wealth was multiplied by the rich silver deposits in the hills to the east. Communications with the rest of the Punic province were rather shorter than Acra Leuce’s, and those with North Africa and Ebusus not much lengthier. Altogether it was an inspired choice as the site for a capital.14 According to Diodorus, Hasdrubal founded another city too, though he does not give its name. The early Byzantine geographer Stephanus lists an otherwise unknown city called Accabicon Teichos, or Fort Accabicon, which he claims the Carthaginians founded by the straits of Gibraltar; this has been suggested as Hasdrubal’s other creation. But such very late evidence is obviously dubious when no other trace of the supposed city exists. Even if genuine, ‘Accabicum’ may have been a Punic epithet for a known city.15 Diodorus’ words do not rule out an addition to an existing town—rather as New Carthage itself seemingly was to old Mastia—though this time the old name might have persisted. Hasdrubal may have chosen a site inland, for instance to reinforce his control in the Baetis valley. Or, another possibility, he was the founder or refounder of the small town of Tiar or Thiar, known to have stood near the coast between New Carthage and Ilici to its north. Tiar seems unusual as an Iberian name-form, but instead could be similar to the names Gadir, the Phoenician and Punic form of Gades, and Tharros, a Phoenician (or Punic) colony in Sardinia. If so, Hasdrubal’s aim would have been to protect New Carthage’s communications up the coast to Acra Leuce, now that the eastern side of his province was growing in population and wealth. The notable salt-marshes of Torrevieja and La Mata, valuable for fisheries and 30–40 miles (50–60 kilometres) north of New Carthage, may have been another attraction.16 80

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V These creations, of course the new Carthage above all, impressed Spaniards and non-Spaniards with Barcid achievements to date and ambitions for the future. The Romans paid particular notice. According to Polybius, it was because of the new city and Hasdrubal’s powerful military forces that they ‘made haste to busy themselves with the affairs of Spain’ which they had hitherto ignored. They had other worries which reinforced their concern. Their activities in the north of the Italian peninsula had upset the Gauls of the Po river-lands, dangerous warriors whose ancestors had sacked Rome itself a century and a half before. As the year 225 approached, a massive Gallic army gathered to invade Italy. As a result, along with their military preparations the Romans sent an embassy to Hasdrubal, very likely early in 225.17 Polybius does not fully explain why a looming northern invasion of Italy should prompt an approach to the Carthaginian generalissimo in Spain. He certainly implies that, without the invasion, the Romans themselves would have imposed demands or even made war on Hasdrubal; but he claims that instead they decided on ‘petting and conciliating’ him. Logically, if they had simply decided not to make demands or war they need not have approached Hasdrubal at all, so Polybius fails to account properly for why they did. His thinking has to be inferred from what he claims later: that not only did the Barcid generals plan a revenge-war against the Romans but (by implication) the Romans suspected so. If they did, it would be natural to try to conciliate Hasdrubal in such a critical moment. We saw earlier that not only is there nothing to suggest a real Barcid warplan, but nothing points to Romans at the time believing there was one. Still, Polybius did not jump to a simply unwarranted inference about the Romans’ anxieties. Besides readying troops against the Gauls in the north and to protect the City itself, they sent substantial forces—four legions altogether—to Tarentum, Sicily and Sardinia. The only sensible explanation for this dispersal of strength must be that they aimed at deterring misbehaviour from the Illyrians across the Adriatic (whom the Romans had recently warred on) and from the Carthaginians. As events between 241 and 237 had shown, the Romans paid their ex-foes real attention only when unusual happenings cropped up. The rape of Sardinia suggests too that they had been worried lest the victorious Carthaginians be tempted, at some stage, to recover their lost Sicilian ground. The military arrangements in 225, plus the military promise they coaxed from Hasdrubal, point to a similar type of worry: that the Carthaginians (and Illyrians) might try to take advantage of the Gallic distraction. In Carthage’s case this could mean having a go at Sardinia and Sicily, but there was another calculation bothering the Romans. In the accord he made with them Hasdrubal guaranteed that he would not move militarily north of 81

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the Ebro river. This points to them feeling concern that he might lead an expedition, not just into north-eastern Spain (which from their strategic viewpoint in 225 was neither here nor there) but into the south of Gaul or even into north Italy, which the Romans called Cisalpine Gaul. Not specifically as an ally of the Gauls; there is no evidence that he had any Gallic contacts, and even in 218 the Romans were not aware—until too late—that Hannibal had just developed some. But should the Gauls bring chaos down on Roman Italy, who could prevent an ambitious Punic leader from moving to take advantage—either as selfimposed peacemaker and arbiter or simply as opportune exploiter? Looked at coldly, of course, the odds on any such event were small to vanishing. But the Romans, viewing their chances against the Gauls alone as balanced on a knifeedge, were scarcely disposed to look at the odds coldly. At all events they judged it worthwhile to send envoys to sound out the Carthaginian commander-in-chief in a friendly manner.18 Hasdrubal surely found this gratifying. By sending the envoys to him in Spain, and not to the authorities at Carthage, the Romans were plainly recognizing his pre-eminence over Punic affairs. This in turn could only enhance his pre-eminence, especially if he struck a successful agreement with his visitors. Since he obviously harboured none of the schemes they seemed to fear, an agreement was easy to make. All he had to do, in fact, was promise that ‘the Carthaginians are not to cross the river called Iber in warfare’. Why the Ebro and not, rather, the Pyrenees which were a much more obvious barrier? Perhaps because it was precisely southern Gaul, on the other side of those mountains, that the Romans wished him to abstain from. Moreover they were probably already friends with the little Greek port of Emporiae in north-eastern Spain, a potentially useful observation post, and wanted to preserve it from Punic hegemony. At the same time the Ebro at its nearest was more than 220 miles (350 kilometres) from his new city and there was plenty of intervening Spain to occupy him. Hasdrubal had no trouble agreeing. The envoys promptly left for home; and in due course—and the nick of time—the consul sent to Sardinia sailed back with his legions and helped his colleague entrap the Gauls into annihilation in Etruria. Both sides could congratulate themselves on an accord well made. The Romans had been relieved of their Punic worries: Hasdrubal, attractive in personality and subtle in diplomacy, no doubt contributed greatly to this in his talks with the envoys. He in turn had Roman acquiescence in treating the great bulk of Spain as free range for further expansion: for the accord plainly implied—and the envoys surely discussed this face to face with him too— that the Romans would complain only if he were ‘to cross the river called Iber in warfare’. Given their intermittent sensitivity to potential Punic initiatives, it was an implication worth having. They in turn could feel reassured that Carthage was under sensible government, with no inclination to get involved in Rome’s regional affairs, while he could feel not only 82

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correspondingly reassured over Spain but also domestically strengthened thanks to this proof of Roman recognition and respect. Neither side paid the other diplomatic attention after this. The Romans went on to conquer Cisalpine Gaul, Hasdrubal to consolidate the Punic dominion in southern Spain. They had no more dealings with each other during his lifetime.19

VI According to Appian, Hasdrubal conquered Spain ‘up to the river Iber, which divides Iberia more or less through the middle, five days’ journey from the Pyrenees, and flows to the northern ocean’. This Appianic mélange of precision and confusion suggests that he really means the Tagus but—either by his own effort or thanks to his source—has worked in a careless recollection of the Ebro, which does lie about five days’ distance (on foot) from the Pyrenees and, as we have just seen, did mark the limit of Hasdrubal’s potential expansion after 225. That the Tagus was the furthest north of Punic control under the second Barcid is confirmed by Hannibal’s campaign of 220, launched into the lands beyond its middle reaches. Just what such a frontier meant is a rather different question. Hasdrubal left behind a reputation as both a military man and, even more emphatically, a supple and appealing diplomat. Just as Hamilcar had done, but apparently more often, he used persuasion and alliances in lieu of armed might to extend Punic dominance. Such links would be most prevalent in the outer reaches of his province, though not there alone. The Tagus then would not be a patrolled border strictly marking off Punic from non-Punic territory, but rather would mark the furthest zone (so far) of communities friendly with— or in some cases firmly subjected to—the Carthaginians. Punic dominance extended across southern Lusitania to the Atlantic coast. Hamilcar had secured the lower reaches of the river Anas, and during the Second Punic War we find Punic armies wintering comfortably among the Conii in the Algarve and by the mouth of the Tagus. The gold washed down in some Lusitanian rivers, notably again the Tagus, may also have drawn Punic notice.20 East of the Toletum district the Tagus flows from the north-east, rising as it does in the mountains of the Cordillera Ibérica or ancient Mons Idubeda. In these upper Tagus lands—the nearer parts of Celtiberian Spain— Hasdrubal may well have enjoyed friendly relations with what communities there were, but nothing suggests Punic dominance or any need, strategic or commercial, for it. The Carpetani, who dwelt on the plains by the Tagus with Toletum as their strongest town, may have maintained friendly or at least correct relations, but were outside any real control, as they showed in 220 and still later. In Polybius’ roster of subject or allied troops under Hannibal’s command at the start of 218, the most northerly contingents (apart from the 83

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pro-Punic Ilergetes beyond the Ebro) are Oretani and Olcades, both certainly or probably dwelling south of the river. And though Hannibal campaigned across central Spain in 220 and in theory imposed control up to the Ebro and Duero, many Celtiberian communities switched support to the Romans during the Second Punic War. Those who served in the Punic army did so, it seems, for pay as professional mercenaries. But friendly contacts and commerce did not stop in central Spain. The accord with Rome had no bearing on these. The little Greek colony of Emporiae on the coast well beyond the Ebro used a Punic standard for its coins although, as noted earlier, it was very probably on good terms with Rome too. The Ilergetes in the middle Ebro region not only had a small contingent in Hannibal’s forces at the start of 218 but fought against the Romans in most stages of the ensuing war (even after Punic Spain itself had been overrun). They, and especially their energetic chieftains the brothers Indibilis and Mandonius, must have formed strong bonds with Barcid Spain a good while before Hannibal took command.21 On the east coast the Saguntines, at least, had a different view. Small but prosperous, their town traded with the Punic province as with other regions, but in diplomacy and policy they stayed at arm’s length. At some date— hardly earlier than 225—they in fact struck up friendly contacts with the Romans. This link was one-sided in practice. The Saguntines every so often sent word to Rome about developments in Punic Spain, obviously with an eye to their own interests, but were paid no attention apart from (presumably) a polite acknowledgement. Not that they were in any danger, for Polybius indicates that down to 220 the Carthaginians maintained peaceable relations. Nor did Punic dominance otherwise extend as far as the Ebro before 220, as Polybius also makes clear. On the other hand the Saguntines did have disputatious neighbours (as we shall see) and, on the principle that your enemies’ enemies or potential enemies may as well be your own friends, these very likely kept up good relations with New Carthage. When they became Punic subjects is not clear, though Hannibal described them as such in late 220: probably during 221 or 220 when with torrential speed he spread his hegemony across Spain up to the Duero and Ebro.22 The northern bounds of Hasdrubal’s province, then, stretched seemingly along the Tagus to about the centre of Spain, and from there roughly along the ranges separating the middle Tagus and upper Anas; next eastwards across the southern plains of La Mancha, either to the lower reaches of the river Sucro and along this to the coast, or else turning south-eastwards to meet the coast around Cape de la Nao. He may not have directly controlled the eastern regions of the Tagus (the Toletum district was independentminded Carpetanian territory, as mentioned earlier, and beyond it the river-line turned to the north-east), but Hasdrubal thus had a grip on the routes from the south and south-east into the interior. Only the east coast up to the Ebro remained outside his control. 84

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Expansion in that direction could wait, or so he might reckon. By 221 he had charge of nearly half the Iberian peninsula: on a rough estimate, over 90,000 square miles (or 240,000 square kilometres). This was an area greater than Punic territory at home, even including the subject Libyans. Administration, exploitation and political relations—between the inhabitants and the Carthaginians, and no doubt among the variegated communities themselves—needed constant attention. Mineral exploitation continued, not only in the area of New Carthage but in other districts like the Sierra Morena. Hannibal pushed it forward energetically, according to Pliny the Elder. Pliny adds that the great mine of Baebelo—its shafts running up to a Roman mile and a half into the mountain—yielded 300 pounds of silver a day to Hannibal, the one such statistic surviving from Barcid times. Despite Pliny, this mine was probably not first opened during Hannibal’s governorship, which in Spain lasted only two and a half years. It more likely dated from Hasdrubal’s time, though Hannibal may well have improved it to that impressive level.23 Affairs at Carthage needed supervision too, though in detail they could be left to Barcid kinsmen and allies to look after. Steady progress in Spain and the successful accord with the Romans can only have enhanced Hasdrubal’s dominant position over both these allies and the republic as a whole. Such criticism as there was came, as usual, from Hanno the Great and his friends, but their influence was now at a nadir. Livy tells a story of Hasdrubal sending to Carthage in 224 for a ‘hardly yet adult’ Hannibal, and Hanno opposing it on the moral ground that Hasdrubal had the same homosexual designs on his brother-in-law that Hamilcar allegedly had once had on him, and the political ground that Hannibal was being groomed for virtual monarchy. In reality Hannibal had been in Spain since 237 and in any case was a man of 23 by 224. At some stage Hasdrubal appointed him commander of the cavalry, and effectively his deputy: this quite likely happened in 224. The kernel of truth in Livy’s tale then may be that Hanno objected emphatically to the promotion and claimed that the republic was becoming a de facto monarchy. True as this might be, it would hardly be news to his hearers. The Hannonites remained mired in impotence.24

VII In Spain, whatever Hasdrubal’s later reputation as a lover of peaceful solutions, warfare did not fully cease. There may have been less fighting than in Hamilcar’s time, but Hasdrubal’s military strength grew. From 50,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry in 228, he commanded 60,000 and 8,000 respectively during his later years according to Diodorus, and the 200-strong corps of elephants continued in service at least for a time. Hannibal’s appointment to be cavalry commander was a far from ornamental post, as Livy’s glowing description of his military prowess shows, not to mention Appian’s remark that ‘where force was needed he [Hasdrubal] made use of the young man’. 85

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Polybius confirms the picture obliquely: he mentions how Hannibal and his friend Mago each captured cities in Spain (never together, to avoid disputes over booty), and given Hannibal’s age this can only point to exploits in Hasdrubal’s time. Again, as soon as Hannibal became general late in 221 he launched and won a lightning war against a hostile Spanish people—showing that Hasdrubal’s military machine was in first-class condition, perhaps too that the Olcades had been the murdered leader’s next war-target. Nor was Hasdrubal’s treatment of his Spanish followers always mild. He had shown his harsh side in dealing with Hamilcar’s slayers (not to mention the rebel Numidians years earlier). The poet Silius may not just be inventing that he wished to be feared, even if Silius overdoes it into caricature. In 221 a particular act of sternness rebounded fatally. He put to death a Spanish chieftain for some offence, only for one of the man’s loyal followers to break into his quarters and murder him in his sleep. This may have happened in the palace at New Carthage, or a country villa since Appian has it done on a hunting expedition. Hasdrubal had been general for nearly eight years. The season was autumn 221, for Hannibal on becoming general still had time for a first campaign. In southern Spain, warfare could run until quite late in the year, as Hamilcar’s last campaign showed; if Hannibal spent six to eight weeks on his fighting and ended it sometime in November or even early December, we can put Hasdrubal’s death in September or October. He was probably still in his forties.25 The Carthaginian state and empire that he left behind was at least as strong and rich as it had been in 264—in some ways stronger and richer. At home Punic territory had been enlarged, and relations with the Numidian princes seem to have been more peaceable than for a long while past. Overseas, for the first time in the republic’s history it controlled sizeable continental territories, whose tribute and trade very likely outclassed the returns garnered before 264 from Punic trading-stations and island possessions. The still uncertain Punic predominance over southern Spain in 229 had become firmly established by 221, while trade with other lands no doubt continued as before, including Italy and Sicily and probably even Africa’s Atlantic coastlands. Finally, the republic had large, highly trained armed forces, whose use of cavalry and resulting mobility—tactical and strategic—were superior to virtually any other Mediterranean military establishment, a corps of officers who, as the future would show, were probably the ablest of any army of that age, and leadership of the same order. In sum, what Hamilcar had aimed at, Hasdrubal achieved. The Carthaginians were again a first-class power whom no one could browbeat or victimize, not even the Romans. The new general and leader would put this regained strength to its utmost test.

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I The same procedure for replacing Hasdrubal was followed as for Hamilcar. ‘The forces’ in Spain—Polybius assures us, and so do later sources— unanimously chose Hannibal as their new general. As before, this choice was most likely made by the Carthaginian troops and officers, under arrangements equally unknown. Then, when the events in Spain were reported at Carthage, the citizen assembly ratified the appointment. Of course there was no question of other candidates or any competition. Thus a third Barcid took control of the city and the empire, confirming the de facto monarchy into which the republic had evolved. If Hanno the Great protested this time, it went unrecorded. Livy draws a famous and biased character portrayal of the new leader, supposedly at the time he became Hasdrubal’s subordinate. Hannibal’s vividly described warlike qualities are convincing enough, partly because they fit many of his recorded doings. To the old soldiers (Livy writes) he recalled his father Hamilcar in looks and energy, he showed superb qualities of leadership, bravery and endurance, and yet—the Roman historian insists—he was a tissue of cruelty, treachery and atheism. The alleged vices are briefly listed and generalized, nor does Livy mention a failing that Polybius later stresses, greed for money. Even at this point to accuse Hannibal of atheism reads oddly when, just a couple of chapters earlier, the historian has told the story of his boyhood oath and plainly means us to take it seriously. A few pages later he then tells how the general went to Gades to make vows at the temple of Hercules, meaning Melqart, in preparation for his expedition to Italy. The vices in the portrayal obviously owe more to Roman tradition than to accurate reportage, even though there is no reason to imagine that Hannibal was a saint.1 Hannibal in a real sense was entering on his inheritance. Having accompanied his father and brother-in-law to Spain he had seen every stage in the development of Punic power there and had contributed to much of it. What his long-range aims were at this point, if he had any, is not reliably recorded. Fabius Pictor, then Polybius, and afterwards other writers, stressed how 87

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deeply the new general had been conditioned by his predecessors: to equal either Hasdrubal’s supposed level of arrogance and acquisitiveness (as Pictor claimed) or, as Polybius and later writers saw it, Hamilcar’s determination to revenge on the Romans all the wrongs they had done to Carthage. But these notions were formed in hindsight and prompted by the war of 218. Hannibal’s expectations in 221 were probably different. By now he had a Spanish wife, a girl from Castulo, the silver-mining town in the Sierra Morena. Silius the later epic poet names her Imilce, claims noble birth for her, and avers that during 220 she bore him a son—items that may all be true though Imilce is actually a Carthaginian name; but where Silius got them from is unknown. Like Hasdrubal’s marriage in 228, this would strengthen Barcid ties with their Spanish subjects and allies. It might even suggest that Hannibal expected to continue a mainly Spanish rôle, like his predecessors. For when his plans changed and he marched for Italy, neither his wife nor his son (if the child existed) went with him. With him in Spain he had both his brothers, Hasdrubal the younger and Mago, and (if Appian is right) an already adult nephew named Hanno—all of them holding high rank in the army. This concentration of family strength is striking, all the more as we know of no kinsmen at Carthage apart from another Mago, who does not seem all that prominent. But the Barcid generals had built up a broad network of political alliances at home, as the impotence of Hanno the Great’s group shows, and Hannibal very likely had other relatives or relatives-in-law there helping to keep the family’s grip firm: Bomilcar his brother-in-law for instance. Among political allies we might guess at Himilco, the father of his cavalry officer Maharbal, if he still lived. His close friend and lieutenant Mago the Samnite surely had family connexions at home too that were important to Barcid dominance, and so too a tough officer and friend also named Hannibal with the sobriquet Monomachus, or Gladiator. Gisco, a senior officer mentioned only at Cannae, Plutarch terms ‘equal in status’ to the general—an unexplained but striking description that again suggests more than just military importance.2 Hannibal probably had a particular need for vigorous political aides and allies at Carthage. Like his brother-in-law and father, he had never held a civil magistracy there. But unlike them he had spent no time there as an adult, so his knowledge of and dealings with his fellow-countrymen were at long range and at second hand. This was not a crippling disadvantage. Barcid dominance rested on military success and imperial profits, and was institutionalized in the office of general and the military posts subordinate to this, all of them in safe hands. So long as success and its profits continued, so would the dominance. Again, Hannibal may well have meant to visit his home city after a while—as Hasdrubal had done early in his command—to strengthen his ties with important individuals, the institutions of state, and his fellow-citizens overall. Meanwhile, though, he would be very reliant on the Barcids’ leading supporters there. 88

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As a result, on some matters he may have been readier than either predecessor to follow their advice: for instance about constructing the city’s famous artificial ports. These, the rectangular outer one for merchant shipping and the circular inner one for warships very possibly date to the period from 218. Though Appian (probably following Polybius) describes them in the context of the Third Punic War, and archaeological remains earlier than 200 are very scarce, after 201 the Carthaginians neither needed nor were allowed to have a navy. Nor did they have a significant one between 241 and 218 as we have seen—in 218 Punic naval strength in Spain and Africa together amounted to fewer than 100 ships ready for service. By contrast, once they had to wage the new war with the Romans they needed and did develop large naval forces (not that these ever performed impressively). But Hannibal by 218 was busy with land campaigning and anyway, like his predecessors, rarely showed much commitment to sea-power. A project like the double port was more likely the brainchild of supporters at Carthage, who saw the need both to strengthen Punic naval efforts and also to protect Punic commercial shipping against Roman raids. Hannibal never in fact got to Carthage while the war lasted, and keeping in touch with Africa from Italy must have posed as much of a problem as with Spain. Inevitably he would have to leave a good deal of local decision-making to the city authorities, even though the overall direction of the war remained with him. Now and then bigger responsibilities too may have been taken on by the authorities there: in 215 the Mighty Ones sent orders to his brother in Spain to march with reinforcements to him in Italy, while later that year the new king of Syracuse, with the general’s obvious encouragement, sent envoys to Carthage for an alliance. This might be convenient enough—as long as the home authorities continued to be Barcid supporters. But as more years passed and both victories and benefits receded, this crucial aspect might well weaken.3

II Hannibal’s first move as general was a new campaign. Polybius records this after giving details of how the citizen body at Carthage ratified his election in Spain, but that may be simply for neatness’ sake. If Hannibal waited until he learned of the ratification he would lose anything up to a month (depending on winds and waves) of what was left of the campaigning year. As Hasdrubal’s deputy, and at all events general-designate, he was surely free to act. He attacked and stormed the Olcades’ strongest centre, Althia, which was enough to prompt the rest of them to surrender. His swift and sharp offensive suggests advance preparation: as was noted earlier, the Olcades may already have been in Hasdrubal’s sights. They were relatively affluent, for he was able to garner booty and funds, but they are unknown after Barcid times. 89

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Their territory probably lay not on the coastlands just beyond Acra Leuce— that would have made them far too vulnerable to be independent as late as 221—but in the interior, for when in the next year he campaigned towards the Duero, the Carpetani by the Tagus let him go by but then were persuaded by Olcades fugitives (among others) to attack him on his return. This points to the Olcades being not too far from the Carpetani, and to their south since the Vaccaei lived to the north. So it is plausible that the Olcades dwelt on the northern La Mancha plains, between the Oretani and the Carpetani: they may have been related to these latter and lost their separate identity later. It is at least interesting that a town named Alce, or Alces, stood in that area in Roman times.4 Subduing the Olcades brought Punic power close to or up to the middle Tagus. It may also have brought the nearby region up to the Cordillera Ibérica under Hannibal’s influence, which reached the Ebro by the end of 220 though his campaign that year was against the Vaccaei in the west. This second campaign was not a mere outgrowth of the first. Not only were the Olcades and Carpetani warlike and therefore better within his military establishment than outside, but the mountains beyond them were rich in iron and the Celtiberians there skilled ironworkers. Even if conceivably the Olcades had provoked attack in some way, the move against the Vaccaei was simple aggression and, as with the Olcades, produced booty and glory—both of which he needed.5 Aged 25, a virtual stranger to Carthaginians at home, and appointed to his post arguably for no reason but family ties, Hannibal had to prove himself to everyone: to his fellow citizens, his soldiers, Carthage’s Spanish allies and subjects—many of them led by warrior princes—and even the Spaniards outside his province. The one way to do so fast and effectively was by warfare, and this was also where his best talents lay. The Vaccaei were masters of cornlands and livestock on the broad plains spreading up to the middle Duero. Whatever their past relations with Punic Spain, war had not featured. Between them and the Tagus dwelt the Carpetani and, further west, the Vettones, neither of whom were ruled from New Carthage though they may have passed for its friends. So if Hannibal used a pretext, it might be that the Vaccaei had been intimidating these peoples. The Carpetani, who did not bother him on his outward march, were hardly sorry to see him going to teach their neighbours a lesson.6 He stormed two Vaccaean strongholds, Helmantice—in Livy, Hermandica (the later Salamanca)—and Arbucala, which has been identified as the town of Toro on the river Duero. A dubious later tale, not in Polybius or even Livy, has him tricked by the women of Hermandica when the town surrendered: they walked out with weapons under their clothes to rearm their menfolk, who then fell on Hannibal’s plundering troops. So impressed was he by their courage that he gave them back their town and goods. This does not square with him taking both towns by force, as Polybius and Livy record, amassing 90

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booty as Livy affirms, or prompting a flood of aggrieved fugitives from Hermandica to join those from the Olcades in pressing the Carpetani to turn against him.7 These successes were enough for him: he then set out homewards. Yet Hermandica and Arbucala were not the only important Vaccaean centres— so too were Pallantia and Intercatia, both north of the Duero, which in the next century were to give the Romans much trouble. Maybe these two avoided trouble now by a timely submission, though nothing like it is mentioned. More likely the general decided he had done enough for one year’s campaigning. Though Hermandica had been captured in one go, Arbucala had held out and cost him time and no doubt lives. He may have decided that it was time to declare victory and go home, or that further efforts against the Vaccaei must wait until next season. The Carpetani, ‘and likewise the neighbouring peoples gathered together with these’, now turned on him. The arguments used by the fugitive Olcades and Hermandicans to instigate them to do this are not mentioned, but the most obvious one would be the danger to Carpetanian freedom from a toosuccessful Punic expansion. The allied forces pursued the Punic army to a crossing of the Tagus, presumably near Toledo—but were crushingly beaten. Hannibal in this his first major battle showed his tactical skills. Having crossed the river southwards, he turned and marched back to its banks so as to tempt his pursuers to cross for battle; then once they began crossing— thus dividing their strength—he fell on them. Exploiting similar tactics, the Greek leader Timoleon with inferior forces had smashed an army of Carthage in Sicily 120 years before. But Timoleon’s opportunity had come almost by accident. Hannibal made his own. Now he could march untroubled back to New Carthage for the winter.8 Up to a point the successes of his first two campaigns were striking: towns stormed, booty and captives gathered, and now ‘none of the peoples south of the Ebro ventured lightly to confront the Carthaginians, except the Saguntines’. Closer study might modify the picture a little. The town-captures in both campaigns relied on direct assault, single or repeated—for in contrast to his genius with armies, Hannibal’s siege-skills would always be limited. The Vaccaei had not been annexed, indeed may not even have been forced into dependence. The Carpetani and their allies were no doubt taught a lesson; but they had not been hostile before 220 so, in effect, Hannibal had simply restored the status quo with them. And the operations in 220—two towns stormed and one battle won—are surprisingly few for a whole campaign year: a hint that they were not the blitzkrieg that Polybius’ and Livy’s brief reports might suggest. It looks as though the Vaccaei, even apart from Hermandica and Arbucala, put up some serious resistance, and may even have foiled a completer success. The booty and fame, though, and the intimidation of northern central Spain were valuable for reinforcing his authority as new Punic leader. Hannibal may 91

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have intended to return in 219 in greater strength to impose more thorough control. But his exploits had other and fateful repercussions. The antagonistic neighbours of the Saguntines, probably the Turitani at the town of Turis, a few miles down the east coast, now if not earlier entered under Punic tutelage along with the rest of ‘the peoples south of the Ebro’. And the Saguntines themselves, who for some time had been informing the Romans of Barcid activities, were finally rewarded with a pair of Roman ambassadors being sent to look over the situation and meet the new general. When he returned to spend the winter at New Carthage, he found the two waiting for him.9

III Probably deliberately, Roman historical tradition afterwards distorted the facts about this embassy. This was to give the impression that during the next year’s long siege of Saguntum the Romans did not leave their Spanish protégés entirely in the lurch. Supposedly (so Livy tells it) they voted the embassy in 220, but Hannibal launched the siege too quickly and the envoys had to travel to his camp outside the town—only to be turned away. This story gathered increasingly implausible features as it went on, including a band of Saguntine envoys able to get out of and back into their town at will. The versifier Silius economically then blends this ‘siege-embassy’ with the war-embassy of 218. Only Polybius has the persuasive version: envoys arriving in late 220 to interview the new Punic leader. But Roman tradition is probably right about their names: P. Valerius Flaccus, very likely the one who had been consul in 227, and Q. Baebius Tamphilus who may have been an ex-praetor.10 These were weighty envoys, and the first from Rome in five and a half years. Hannibal must have heard of their arrival before he reached New Carthage. He probably had no trouble working out why they had come. He surely knew of the Saguntines’ various earlier messages to Rome and he now also had their fractious neighbours under a Punic wing. With the Romans aware that his influence—either firm or fluctuating—now reached to the river Ebro, they might well want to discuss the future of Hasdrubal’s fiveyear-old agreement. Maybe the future of Saguntum too, small, independent and now surrounded by Punic subjects or dependants. The Romans wanted, he might reckon, to establish a working relationship on these and other matters with the clearly energetic successor to their old negotiating partner. Now from Hannibal’s point of view the Ebro and Saguntum were ticklish topics. Once he finished nailing down Punic dominance over Spain beyond the Tagus, and that would take only another campaign or two, the obvious ground for further conquests lay over the Ebro and up to the Pyrenees. After all, the only alternatives were the harsh mountain-lands of Spain’s north-west or the North African hinterland of Carthage—or for Hannibal, less than two 92

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years after assuming command, to give up warfare and turn his leadership into purely peaceful and civilian paths, something not even Hasdrubal had done. None of these choices, it is clear, appealed to him, least of all the third, which would have brought to a stop the momentum and charisma fuelling Barcid supremacy at home and in Spain. So the Ebro line would have to be reviewed. As for the Saguntines, they had never come up in Punic–Roman relations before. But plainly they had a friendly link with the Romans. Not only were they sending them regular messages on Spanish affairs, but recently— probably just a few weeks earlier—they had invited in Roman arbitrators to settle a bout of domestic political strife, arbitrators who were probably these same envoys or companions of theirs. These had entrenched the diehard pro-independence Saguntine faction in power—putting to death several of their opponents to do so. Those opponents had more than likely favoured bringing Saguntum into the Punic empire as subordinate allies, like so many other Spanish communities, whereas the arbitrators found the faction refusing any accommodation with the Carthaginians more to their taste. This outcome was not as foregone a conclusion as often thought. The Romans would not have been accepted as arbiters if one Saguntine side had seen them as its enemies. Nor had they hitherto shown any interest in Saguntine affairs, even though the town had shown itself aloof and suspicious towards Barcid expansion for quite some time—in other words even though the pro-independence faction had been running its affairs for some time. To come down now so firmly on this faction’s side (even if it was what most Saguntines wanted) marked a shift in Roman attitudes.11 From Hannibal’s point of view, a worrying shift. It suggested that the Romans had decided to keep Saguntum apart from—and not well disposed to—Punic rule in Spain. Moreover by bloodily confirming the proindependence party in power they bound it and Saguntum into dependence on themselves, a move both ironic and dangerous. It signalled, or it seemed to signal, that the Roman republic was tying itself more closely to the Saguntines just as the escalating dispute with their neighbours was threatening to lead them into a confrontation with New Carthage. Hannibal seems, in fact, to have inferred that the Saguntines had become Roman allies. He may also have inferred that the Romans had now decided to take a hand in the affairs of Spain. That would colour his attitude to the envoys waiting for him at New Carthage.

IV As a boy Hannibal had no doubt often heard of how the Romans’ decision to get involved in Sicily in 264 had led to Carthage’s most disastrous war. He himself had seen how their out-of-the-blue move to take a hand in Sardinia in 237 had precipitated a crisis costly and humiliating to his people. Even in 93

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225 the agreement with his brother-in-law had been, in effect, a one-sided Roman initiative prompted by Roman self-interest. To be faced now with what looked like a fresh bout of unprovoked intervention—Polybius emphasizes that up to now Hannibal had avoided any confrontation with the Saguntines—could understandably arouse both irritation and suspicion. Nor did the envoys Valerius and Baebius behave ingratiatingly: a contrast to their predecessors in 225 whose job had been ‘petting and conciliating’ Hasdrubal. The present ones ‘solemnly called on’, or in a different translation ‘emphatically warned’, the new general to do two things: keep clear of the Saguntines, ‘for these lay in their [the Romans’] trust’, and keep firm to Hasdrubal’s promise not to cross the Ebro. 12 Polybius does not elaborate, but by their very nature neither of the two demands was flexible or conciliatory. Why the Romans took this line needs to be surmised. It had not been forced on them by circumstances. Saguntum had been of no interest to them hitherto and the Ebro was not much more meaningful, from a standpoint in Italy, than the Pyrenees. If they had wanted to cement friendly relations with the Barcid régime and the new Barcid general, they could have asked (for instance) whether he wished to renew Hasdrubal’s agreement or else discuss a replacement for it, and if he was willing to give a safety-assurance to the Saguntines—in return, say, for an amicable settlement of their dispute with the Turitani. Even if in fact they had expected Hannibal to be hostile on both counts, it would have done no damage to make a show of supposed Roman reasonableness. To level two non-negotiable demands on such immediately relevant issues, at this first meeting between spokesmen for the Roman state and the new leader of the Carthaginians, points to quite a different motive. Not to provoke war (as sometimes thought), for when Hannibal did offer his own provocation by attacking Saguntum the Romans did nothing about it; but instead to ensure that the new leader was as willing as his predecessors to accommodate Roman concerns. The démarche was most likely meant not to challenge Hannibal to a new confrontation, but to put him and his state in their proper place—independent, indeed, but confined. Then the Romans could go about their affairs in northern Italy, the Adriatic and neighbouring lands without having to keep an eye out for possible Iberian difficulties. But their demands concerned his own region of operations, not regions of possible mutual interest further away like southern Gaul or Liguria. If he agreed to them, he would certainly relieve the Romans of concern about Spain, but would be granting them—in effect—the right to curb what the Punic state did in its own part of the world. A right which, of course, the Romans would never have dreamt of conceding in reverse to the Carthaginians. Had he or Hasdrubal sent over demands about the future of Syracuse (where King Hiero was nearing 90) or about Roman campaigning north of the river Po, the people on the Tiber would have been seriously offended; indeed might have judged it a deliberate provocation. 94

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But the Carthaginians had been defeated in war once, had been forced to surrender territory twice, and a few years ago had agreed to soothe Roman concern about Spain and Gaul. The Romans no longer saw them as on a completely equal footing with themselves, any more than they so saw (or would in future see) other defeated states inside or outside Italy. It was quite in order to put demands to them to satisfy Roman convenience.13 Nor does Polybius’ term for the ambassadors’ manner suggest a friendly delivery or any effort to mollify the import of their démarche. To two senior senators, a general not yet out of his twenties in command of a bi-continental empire may have seemed just the sort of Hellenistic virtual king who had to be spoken to firmly and made to recognize his duties. Hannibal quite clearly found both their message and their manner offensive. But to him the envoys’ manner was probably the lesser evil. It must have been at this interview that he concluded that the Romans were aiming to destabilize Punic Spain or even provoke a war. Nothing they had done previously suggested such a goal—even as recently as Hasdrubal’s murder they had not tried to sow mischief—but this only strengthened the abruptness of what he took to be their volte-face. Here were the Romans, who in previous years had sponsored contentious friends to Carthage’s hurt—Mamertines in 264 and mercenaries in 237—and who had laid down for Hasdrubal a military ne plus ultra to spare themselves worry, seeking to entrap him in the same way. To him that would explain both the sudden championship of the Saguntines whose leaders they had now firmly re-established in control, and the suddenly renewed line of the Ebro, a line whose original significance for them was long past. Though the Barcid generals had never planned a Roman war it was always, after 237, a contingency which they had to bear in mind. Now, so far as we can tell, Hannibal judged that the contingency was real and his duty lay in confronting it. No surprise then if he was angry and showed it. Still, to confront envoys who had come on a limited if imperious mission, the first in half a decade, with the accusation that their state was seeking to provoke war would have been wildly impolitic. Nor would Polybius’ suggestion, that he should have complained about the events of 237, have been any more suitable. (For Polybius, of course, Hannibal was planning a justified revenge-war, the Romans knew it, and the envoys’ interview with him merely confirmed that he would launch it: none of which is plausible.) Instead the general ‘affected to be guarding the interests of the Saguntines’ and complained that in the recent arbitration the Romans had unjustly executed leading men of Saguntum and ‘these treacherously treated men he would not overlook, for it was an ancestral principle of the Carthaginians to overlook no one who had been unjustly treated’. This was unmistakably a dig at the Roman claim that the Saguntines ‘lay in their trust’, their fides, a virtue that was one cornerstone of their revered mos maiorum or ‘ancestral principles’. It was a bitter dig, for fides had been invoked to justify their helping the 95

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Mamertines, and maybe the Sardinia mercenaries too. Hannibal was turning a Roman shibboleth against its users.14 More ominously, he thus openly signalled that he meant to intervene in Saguntine affairs to champion the supposedly victimized faction. In itself this may not have been a spur-of-the-moment decision. From the time the Turitani came under his sway he must have seen a showdown with Saguntum as likely, and what he learned of the Roman arbitration would only confirm this. But the envoys’ demand obviously crystallized his thinking. He signalled to them that he would act and, a few months later, act he did. On the other hand, though he may indeed have been angry he was not mindlessly so—contrary to Polybius’ notion. He did not mention the Ebro at all. Not only was it plain there would be no Roman negotiating over that, but as an issue it had just lost its primacy to Saguntum. And his one accusation against the Romans was that they had abused their trust as arbiters, not (as sometimes supposed) that they had no right to arbitrate at all or had violated some treaty in doing it; still less that their actions amounted somehow to antiCarthaginian aggression. He thus laid down a limited challenge. He would impose Punic hegemony on Saguntum now that the place had clearly become a problem. By implication, if the Romans chose to support it they would ignite a new Roman–Punic war—one which, plainly, he judged himself and Carthage capable of waging victoriously. At the same time he may have reckoned that a policy so abruptly begun at Rome might be just as abruptly reversed if resolutely confronted: another reason for letting his anger show impressively. Saguntum was small, surrounded by Punic territory and (he may have reckoned too) not harder to subdue than earlier strongpoints like Althia and Hermandica. A vigorous stroke could neutralize it before the Romans could intervene militarily, and then conceivably they might decide that it was futile to fight over a faraway ex-protégé of which most Romans knew nothing. If they did want war, at all events he would thus gain the strategic advantage.

V The Roman ambassadors must have been dismayed at the reception their straightforward demands about Saguntum and the Ebro aroused. A furious generalissimo virtually promised to annex Saguntum and totally ignored the Ebro. Later on they may well have convinced themselves that Hannibal’s outburst had made it clear ‘there must be war’ between Rome and Carthage. But though Polybius has them thinking so at the time, this is not likely, for what followed in 219 shows that the Romans were not in fact inclined to fight. On the other hand the outburst told Valerius and Baebius that, instead of achieving a simple confirmation of the diplomatic status quo between the two republics, they had tapped an unforeseen vein of resentment. This was obviously going to lead to complications: if nothing else, an imminent attack on Saguntum. 96

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Valerius and Baebius had no leeway to negotiate, even if they had wanted to. The Senate had sent them to put simple requests to the general and accept his compliance. Failing to get this they could only take their leave. They sailed, not back to Rome, but over to Carthage in Africa, ‘wishing’, Polybius writes, ‘to put the same demands’ (or ‘warnings’) there. Without a doubt their ship from Spain to Africa was paced or outpaced by a couriercraft from Hannibal to the home authorities. Polybius does not tell what answer they were given at Carthage but almost certainly it was non-committal (had the sufetes thrown a Hannibalic tantrum or disclaimed all responsibility for their general, this would surely have got a mention). There was no gain in having the Punic state officially repeat what Hannibal had forecast about Saguntum: far better to leave the other side guessing. This must have been nearly as unsatisfactory to Valerius and Baebius, who had to travel home with their mission effectively in ruins. Hannibal had sent home another message too, this one surely for public attention, as its language shows. The Saguntines, ‘relying on their alliance with the Romans’, were harming Punic subjects (the fractious neighbours in other words) and he wanted instructions on what to do. Now a Punic general did not have to ask for guidance on how to treat provincial aggressors. Nothing suggests that he or Hasdrubal had waited for orders before dealing with, for instance, the Orissi or the Olcades. This message was to alert his fellowcitizens to a confrontation potentially very different: a signal (probably the first) that the new affair could involve great-power politics.15 Naturally he was given a free hand by the authorities. These messages back and forth must have taken place while sailing was still practicable, and so in the autumn of 220. Appian’s report of him then making a pretended offer of arbitration in his turn, this one to sort out the quarrel between the Saguntines and their neighbours, may be correct: he had the winter to do it in, and some show of justification was desirable before he launched his attack on the town in the spring of 219. The Saguntines were predictably immune to either cajolements or threats. Very possibly they sent word to Rome about his offer too, as Appian states (though in winter the messengers would have had to travel by land), but after what had happened at New Carthage it must have been all-but-expected news. What is more striking—and less expected—is that when news of the attack itself arrived the Romans did nothing. And over the eight months that it progressed, they went on doing nothing.16

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I Hannibal besieged Saguntum from about May 219 to the end of the year or the start of 218. This can be worked out from the rather sparse time-details in Polybius. Hannibal moved at the start of the campaigning season and ‘when summer already had begun’, and spent eight months on the siege. So the town fell during the winter following. The Romans reacted as promptly as was practicable, sending an ultimatum to Carthage virtually as soon as the envoys could sail.1 The siege did not show Hannibal’s military skills in the best light. Eight months was a long time to beset a small and friendless city, however strong its hilltop site and defences—even longer than Alexander the Great had taken to capture Tyre, a city on an island. Polybius limits himself to a general picture of the general’s leadership and bravery, and stresses the ‘hardship and anxiety’ of the siege. Livy tells a stirring story of assaults and counter-assaults, Punic siege-engines and Saguntine heroism; and (even if embellished by Roman historical tradition) something of the sort must have occurred across the eight months. Early on, again according to Livy, Hannibal was badly wounded by a javelin in the thigh, and later he was called away to put down restiveness among the recently conquered Oretani and Carpetani, leaving his vigorous officer Maharbal, son of Himilco, to maintain the siege. If accurate, these details only illustrate the dangerous frustrations of a long and fixed commitment. Against resolute resistance, the Carthaginians had only attrition to use.2 Whether or not the Saguntines themselves got a message out to Rome, the Romans certainly heard about the siege. Yet, while month after month the town that Valerius and Baebius had warned Hannibal not to attack kept fighting off Hannibal’s attacks, they did nothing to help. This inactivity was covered up by later Roman tradition in inventive ways. For instance, as noted earlier, Valerius’ and Baebius’ mission was redated to 219 and during the siege. A different excuse is Polybius’ claim that a new Illyrian war launched by the Romans during 219 prevented them intervening in Spain. This might be 98

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true up to a point but hardly as a complete excuse, given that the war was over by late summer and—in any case—some of the Roman forces could have been released early for tasks elsewhere. The likeliest reason why nothing was done for Saguntum was that the Roman Senate was deadlocked over whether to act. Glimpses of inconclusive debate are given by more than one writer drawing on Roman historical traditions, not only Livy but also Silius and Appian, all of them firmly placing the debate in 219. Dio, later than any of these, is not to be believed when he transfers debate to 218 when Hannibal was on his march to Italy: he may be following a chronicler who wanted to have the Romans discuss peace or war with Carthage at a more dramatic moment. On the other hand Dio may be right that the most forceful speaker for intervention was L. Cornelius Lentulus, for Silius’ pro-intervention spokesman is called Lentulus too—probably the Lentulus who had been consul in 237 when Sardinia was seized. And like Silius again, Dio’s spokesman for restraint and caution is named Fabius, though probably not the famous and equally cautious Q. Fabius Maximus who later campaigned against Hannibal.3 Opponents of intervention in Spain need not have been all that many so long as they included ex-consuls of high standing and influence, for the Senate worked by consensus whenever possible—especially on major issues like peace and war. Arguments against intervening would include how recent the Romans’ link with Saguntum was and how unclear Hannibal’s intentions were. Maybe too Fabius the spokesman alleged that relations between New Carthage and old Carthage were rocky—this was what the historian Fabius Pictor, a senator at the time, was to claim—and that a restrained reaction from Rome now could split the two and enable the Romans to tackle Hannibal on his own soon. Events would show that there was no basis for such a conceit but, just as Pictor held to his view of antagonism at Carthage versus the Barcids, so too it may well have been held by others in 219 with a hope that something could be made of it to Rome’s advantage. When it turned out false, the easy explanation was that Hannibal had dragged the leaders of Carthage all unwilling into his war.4 Saguntum’s long resistance must have been an unpleasing surprise to the Punic commander. There had been nothing like it in Barcid Spanish warfare before. It wore down men, equipment, supplies and money. Nor could he be sure, at first anyway, that he was safe from a Roman expeditionary force arriving to help the besieged. Not sending one was a serious missed opportunity for them, as he could appreciate better than most. They could have caught his army immobilized around a fiercely resisting stronghold, with little freedom to manoeuvre, and could have mauled him badly with Saguntine help before he got free; or could have landed somewhere else in Spain to make mischief in his absence. On the other hand, the longer no help arrived the more secure he must 99

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have felt, especially after learning of both consuls’ departure for Illyria; nor can he have missed hearing of the Romans’ debate or debates over Saguntum. In the end the town fell when part of its walls collapsed under battering-ram attack. Many Saguntines, unyielding as ever, destroyed as much of their possessions as they could and then killed themselves and their families. By then it was long past any chance for the Romans to intervene.

II How these would react to the loss of their supposed protégés neither Hannibal nor his fellow-citizens could be certain, but his measures over the following winter and spring show he presupposed war. The booty from Saguntum, large in spite of the destructive efforts of some Saguntines, was shared out—Hannibal keeping for his treasury the money garnered from the town and from sales of plunder, rewarding his officers and men with enslaved townsfolk, and sending further goods and valuables to Carthage to sharpen support there. The troops were then given a well-earned winter rest, while he set about preparing for what was likely to happen in 218.5 First his brother Hasdrubal was appointed, in effect, his deputy and empowered to take over command in Spain ‘if he himself were to be somewhere else’. Presumably Hannibal had done without a second-in-command for his first two years as general. Next he arranged some transfers of troops: some 16,000 Spanish soldiers to Africa including Carthage, and some 15,000 from Africa to Spain, the idea being that this would bind the two lands more effectively. Carthage too received a garrison of 4,000 other African troops. These could march there as soon as their muster-rolls were complete, but the transfers across water very likely waited until it was safe again to sail, in February or March 218. Hasdrubal was also assigned 21 elephants, while for his own expedition Hannibal earmarked 37. This seems all that still existed of their brother-inlaw’s great 200-elephant corps; given its size and the nature of the warfare in rugged Spain, it looks as though downsizing had taken place. Hasdrubal took charge too of what passed for the Barcid navy in Spain: 32 quinqueremes and five triremes, all properly manned, plus 18 quinqueremes (and a couple of quadriremes) that lacked full crews. At Carthage naval strength was a little better, since a few months later 55 warships were available for failed missions to Sicily and Italy. Very likely, orders for fresh shipbuilding went out about this same time or not long after, for any war with the Romans would need far more than 100-odd vessels. The Romans, in fact, already had 220 quinqueremes in commission.6 Hannibal’s third measure points most clearly of all to him expecting a Roman war. He sent agents into the western Alps and north Italy to sound out the Gallic peoples there about him passing with an army through their 100

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territories, and to win their agreement ‘promised everything’ (writes Polybius). This was not a move to be put off until he knew for certain that war existed, but equally there was no point in it if he was not fairly sure that war was coming. The general was already well informed about the people and resources in north Italy and (Polybius expressly adds) about how much the region’s Gauls loathed the Romans who had made victorious war on them only four or five years earlier. His agents now reported back that the Gauls were keen to join him if he came. These soundings must be decisive against the idea that he began 218 aiming only at subduing Spain beyond the Ebro, but changed his plan to invading Italy when he learned of the Romans declaring war. Yet Hannibal did nothing after Saguntum to provoke them or bring on hostilities. He sent his troops into winter-quarters or (the Spanish ones) to their home towns for rest and relaxation; and reassembled them at New Carthage for a military review only after hearing from Carthage that a Roman embassy had declared war. Even then his next move was to dismiss them again—presumably back to their encampment—with orders to be ready to march on a fixed date.7 All this deliberateness confirms that he had meant the sack of Saguntum as a challenge to the Romans, which they could choose to take up or ignore. Of course he expected them to take it up—and, in any case, as a responsible leader he had to be ready if they did. In other words he had to have a warplan. This in turn was dictated by strategic, logistic and above all political realities. Standing his ground and fighting in Spain was not a serious consideration. No doubt he would defeat any Roman invasion, but meanwhile there might also be a Roman invasion of Punic Africa. No amount of victories in Spain would compensate for Carthage being blockaded and starved into surrender. And even if the Romans were to concentrate all their efforts against Spain, defeating them would not end the war: he would still have to carry it to them to achieve that. The earlier war had told the world how all but inexhaustible were Roman resources of manpower and munitions. Although every attack on every sector of Carthage’s dominions might be beaten back, that would only mean fresh attacks before long. Even if in the end the Carthaginians won through, the price could (or must) be exhaustion. No less worrying, such a war—long, costly and draining—risked undermining the position of the faction that had brought it on. Barcid control, in other words, might not survive a war of attrition. Everything thus pointed to his invading Italy. Pretty certainly Hannibal was well informed on affairs there: travellers, traders, Carthaginians with Roman guest-friends, and Silenus the Sicilian his own close friend could all supply facts. Even though the other Italian states had shown their loyalty to the hegemonic Roman republic throughout the first war with Carthage and had stood shoulder to shoulder with it against the great Gallic invasion of 225, 101

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this alliance system had originally been imposed by Roman military might and it was still relatively new to some areas. For instance the grandfathers of the warlike Samnites of the central southern mountain-lands had been at war with the Romans until 290 while the Greeks in the south had come under Roman domination only after 280. At least a few members of the ruling élite of Capua, the wealthy chief city of Campania, felt that Capua rather than Rome ought to enjoy Italian predominance: something Hannibal may or may not have known. Certainly he reckoned that a successful invasion would disrupt the Romans’ alliance system and at the same time enable him to build a Punic one. This was the policy he followed as soon as he reached Italy. Victories over Roman forces under the Romans’ and their allies’ own eyes, combined with benign treatment of allied land and prisoners, must prompt defections, and the defectors would have no choice but to join his side. His military and political strength would wax as the Romans’ strength waned, with his brother Hasdrubal joining him with fresh forces at a convenient time and other reinforcements coming over from Africa. In the end, a definitive peace settlement would not merely reverse the verdict of 241 but establish a new Punic-dominated alignment of power across the western Mediterranean— one dominated, in turn, by the Barcids and their friends.8

III That would be the grand strategy. More immediate were the needs of ordinary strategy: above all, how to reach Italy in fighting trim when seaborne transport was out of the question. A large army and a high level of resourcefulness were required (and, fortunately, both were available). But it was just as important to calculate the enemy’s possible moves. Hannibal had to expect either simultaneous offensives against North Africa and Spain, or else a concentrated assault on Spain with a smaller push against Africa. His planning probably or certainly depended on finding out which alternative it would be. This helps account for features of his own movements in 218 that puzzle historians. Although the Romans declared war at Carthage in March and he received word of this ‘early in the spring’, probably around 1 April, he did not march from New Carthage until late May or even early June. In other words he set out surprisingly late. Then after crossing the Ebro three or four weeks later, he spent a rather long time in north-east Spain between the Ebro and Pyrenees—some two months, subduing some fairly obscure peoples who fought hard but whose military importance was scarcely high. He did not leave for Italy until late August or early September. Yet the north-east was hardly of prime strategic value to his expedition, given that he and his men were abandoning Spain and any supplies from there to live off the land en route to Italy. If urgency was supposedly the keynote of their march, it is surprising too that he fought this preliminary 102

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campaign himself. If the region were strategically or economically important to his brother’s defence of Punic Spain, the conquest could have been left to him, or a lieutenant like Hanno whom Hannibal then put in charge of the territory with a corps of 11,000 from the grand army. But even a defensive importance is to be doubted. No move was made against Emporiae on the coast, the Greek port allied to the Romans, a potential bridgehead into Spain as any general could foresee—and one duly used a few months later by the arriving Roman forces of Cn. Scipio.9 Various explanations have been offered for all this: the Spanish rivers needing to subside from their spring flooding, the army having to wait until enough food and fodder were available en route, the north-eastern conquests having to be organized and the army reconsolidated, or a wish to lull the Romans into a false sense of security. Some of these features may well have contributed. Rivers may have been in flood that winter (we can recall how Hamilcar died in winter 229–228) and certainly food and fodder needed to be available in quantity, since the expedition could not be reliably supplied by sea. But if those were the chief factors, late August or early September—or even a month or so earlier, on other calculations of the chronology—is unconvincingly late for marching from Spain. Rather it looks as though Hannibal was deliberately taking his time about leaving. Early in the new consular year, in other words after 15 March, the consul P. Cornelius Scipio, Cn. Scipio’s brother and superior, had been commissioned to take an army and fleet to Spain—only to be delayed by the Gauls in north Italy rebelling—and his colleague Sempronius to ready an invasion of Africa from Sicily. The preparation and indeed destinations of these forces could scarcely be hidden. Probably in June or July the consul Sempronius set out for Sicily, but Scipio got going only in August or early September. And Hannibal himself started for the Pyrenees and Italy around the same time, for two months later he descended into north Italy.10 Marching through southern Gaul he used the coastal route as far as the Rhône, the same route that Scipio was heading for in the opposite direction. Nor did he press his troops unduly, if the pace Polybius records for a late stage of the march across Gaul—800 stadia, or 90 miles, in ten days—applies more or less to the whole of the march until they reached the Alps, as has been inferred. Roman imperial armies, fully equipped, averaged up to 15 miles (23 kilometres) daily on good terrain, and southern Gaul was easy enough going. By the stage Polybius mentions, Hannibal knew that the Romans under Scipio were no longer pursuing him and so may have allowed his men a more relaxed pace before they moved into the Alps; but, on the evidence, they had not moved with any urgency even between the Pyrenees and the Rhône.11 Why these late departures and relatively unhurried movements? The likeliest explanation is that Hannibal first waited to learn of the Romans’ general military dispositions. If both consuls were sent against him and he destroyed 103

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their armies, preferably in southern Gaul away from his own territories, and then invaded Italy, the impact on the Romans and their allies would be gigantic. If only one consul came, he could either handle him similarly or let him reach Spain—where Hasdrubal could deal with the intruder while he himself still fell on Italy. In either case the shock could prompt the Romans to abort any plans for attacking North Africa, lower their morale and achieve a Carthaginian victory more swiftly. By contrast, if the enemy learned too early that he was moving on Italy, they might well stand on the defensive and, worse still, raise even larger forces than usual in the hope of overwhelming him. Any such reactions would make his own task a good deal harder and slower—and, most dangerous of all, Carthage itself could be strangled by a Roman expedition while he was still campaigning in Italy. His expedition itself, which transferred the bulk of Punic military strength from Punic territory into the militarily more or less unknown reaches of Gaul and beyond, needed to win successes both swift and smashing to maintain his fellow-citizens’ morale. It had to be nicely timed. A less likely suggestion is that he meant to await the consul P. Scipio in north-eastern Spain, crush him there and then invade Italy, but that on learning of the Gallic revolt (to which Scipio’s original forces were diverted) he decided the Romans would not come after all and so began his own march. If that were true, he must have remained unaware of Scipio levying a fresh army for Spain until he himself was marching through southern Gaul. But this is implausible, for trade between different regions would not have dried up with the declaration of war and the Carthaginians had at least one spy even at Rome (the one detected in 217 after two years’ activity).12 He fairly soon must have learned that Scipio was to invade Spain and Sempronius North Africa; then, not long after, that Scipio had been held up by the Gallic revolt in Cisalpine Gaul (prompted, ironically enough, by Hannibal’s agents earlier). Once he knew the Romans’ initial expeditionary destinations, he could march north from New Carthage; then he paused in the north-east, even after subduing it, because Scipio had been held up in Italy. With one and not two consuls to confront, he could afford to cut the size of his army—by over 20,000, or more than one quarter after its losses in the north-east—to improve flexibility in movement and supply. North Africa would be defended against Sempronius by the forces he had sent, plus any further levies the home authorities made. Finally, when he calculated or learned that Scipio’s expedition was soon to start he marched into Gaul, arguably to waylay the advancing consular army (so there was no need for an urgent advance), destroy it and so both assure Spain’s security and clear his road to Italy. But although his departure from Spain was late, he then made it as far as crossing the Rhône before the consul even drew near. By then autumn was drawing near too; his army’s numbers had fallen, the Boii and their neighbours the Insubres were successfully in 104

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arms, and the Alps were still to be crossed. There was a skirmish between reconnoitering Numidian and Roman cavalry—which his men lost, allowing the Romans to ride briefly up to his camp—but he had to recalculate. If he waited to cross swords now with Scipio’s army he might not reach Italy until the following spring, even if he won. Much might happen before then, including in North Africa. Arguably, therefore, Hannibal now abandoned the plan to intercept Scipio; instead he swung north away from him and struck out for Italy. An echo of the discussion that led to this decision may survive in Livy’s report of how the general hesitated over the two alternatives and was persuaded to head for Italy by the Boian and other chieftains who had crossed the mountains to meet him. But he marched north for only four days more before halting in friendly territory for some time to rest and refit, even though Scipio’s army was in pursuit for all he knew. So he may have been hoping that he might still succeed in enticing the consul after him in search of a battle. In fact Scipio did march fast to reach the Carthaginians’ crossing-place over the Rhône three days later and only then turned away. Hannibal will have learned of this while resting his troops. There would be no battle in Gaul, but neither would he be dogged by the Romans as he crossed the mountains into Italy. Scipio he expected to return there too, Polybius writes, but not at any speed. He would continue to hold the military initiative.13

IV Invading Italy was an immensely bold venture which in the 23 years of the previous war the Carthaginians had never tried. But they did have an old tradition of taking war to their enemies. Their earliest warlord, Malchus, supposedly had led expeditions to Sicily and Sardinia; and down the centuries Punic armies had several times moved against Syracuse and other Sicilian Greek cities. Hamilcar’s expedition to Spain had fitted the same vigorous tradition. Where Hannibal’s was unprecedented was in the great distance he had to travel and the vast resources of his foes. But he could be encouraged by the century-old precedent of Alexander the Great, who with fewer than 50,000 troops had overthrown the Persian empire in three great battles and replaced Persian mastery over the east with Macedon’s. Ironically enough, in this new war the Carthaginians—hitherto renowned for mastery at sea—would be inferior navally to the Romans, who less than half a century earlier had not rated at sea at all. This Roman naval superiority was a drawback, but the Barcids themselves had always been land generals. All the same, the Carthaginians during the next few years did again build up their sea-going forces, so as suggested above Hannibal may now have sent around orders for fresh shipbuilding, as well as for properly manning all the ships already available. He may also have backed the scheme for building the 105

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artificial ports in the southern quarter of the city, if these do date to the period from 218.14 His own concern was the army he was leading to Italy. Made up of infantry from Africa (no doubt mostly subject Libyan conscripts with Carthaginian officers) and Spain, and cavalry partly Spanish and partly Numidian— Numidian horses and their practised riders were arguably the best light cavalry in the world at that time—it numbered 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse according to Polybius and Livy. But as often pointed out, not only are these figures implausibly huge in themselves but they clash with others that the same historians offer. Thus Hannibal reportedly crossed the Pyrenees with 50,000 foot and 9,000 horse, then the Rhône with 38,000 and 8,000 respectively, finally arriving in Italy with 20,000 and 6,000. Polybius drew at least these last figures from Hannibal’s later inscriptional record in the temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium, just as he did his detailed breakdown of the forces transferred between North Africa and Spain, so it is likely that the other totals have the same origin. Therefore if the original strength is correct too, the general’s forces must have fallen by 43,000 men—over 40 per cent—even before he reached the Pyrenees, which is extraordinary. True, he suffered ‘great losses’ in subduing north-eastern Spain and then he left his officer Hanno with 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse to hold the region, while another 10,000 disillusioned Celtiberians were allowed to go home. But that would mean his fighting losses in the north-east were great indeed, over 20,000 men—more than his coming losses at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae. This is not very plausible. Polybius may have drawn, and in his inscription Hannibal may have chosen to give, the wrong impression about the starting total. For although 102,000 as the grand army’s original strength is hard to account for if it actually left Spain numbering only 59,000, such a figure fits fairly well if the 15,000 troops entrusted to Hasdrubal to hold Spain are counted in and if the general lost about 7,000 men subduing the north-east. These plus the 21,000 sent home or left with Hanno add up to 43,000, which would leave Hannibal his 59,000 to lead into Gaul. The only difficulty is with the cavalry, whose various attested figures—Hasdrubal’s 2,500, Hanno’s 1,000 and Hannibal’s 9,000—add up to rather more than 12,000, with at least some hundreds more lost in the campaign beyond the Ebro. But the discrepancy is probably only about 1,000, and some rounding-off of totals (even by Hannibal) can be surmised.15 In other words the original total more likely shows the full military strength that the Carthaginians had in Spain by mid-year. Hannibal himself then probably marched from New Carthage at the head of 87,000 men, including about 10,000 cavalry. He may have chosen to blur this in his Cape Lacinium record to impress readers with both the vastness of his original resources and, contrastingly, the smallness of the army he actually brought into Italy and with which he wrought such monumental havoc on the Romans. All the 106

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same, 87,000 was a massive force: bigger than his brother-in-law Hasdrubal’s largest reported armed strength, twice as large as two full consular armies, larger than either of the armies that the kings of Syria and Egypt would put into the field when they met in battle the year after. Together with the 20,000 troops holding North Africa and Carthage, it means that to confront the Romans in this new war the Punic republic under its Barcid leadership had mobilized 122,000 men on land alone. The Romans with their six legions and allied contingents, some 71,000 all told, were in fact outnumbered in 218.16

V As winter gave way to spring 218 the Punic generalissimo learned at New Carthage of the Roman embassy to old Carthage and its theatrical declaration of war. With Saguntum captured around the end of 219, the earliest that the Romans could send envoys overseas (short of risking their lives and, more important, their mission) was March. This helps explain why two of the envoys were the consuls of the previous year: they left office on 15 March. The embassy’s mission was to demand ‘compensation’ over Saguntum—not help or recompense for the Saguntines, who no longer counted, but that the Carthaginians hand over Hannibal and his senatorial councillors for punishment. When predictably the senate at Carthage rejected this, the leader of the embassy symbolically let fall war from a fold of his toga. Many senators shouted their acceptance: no doubt Barcid kinsmen and supporters especially, but even senators outside the ruling faction might well be antagonized by the Romans’ non-negotiable stance. This outcome to the ultimatum was no doubt expected on both sides. Already Hannibal’s military preparations, and his soundings in Gaul, the Alps and north Italy, were well under way. He had ceremonially visited the ancient temple of Melqart, Carthage’s patron god, on the island where Gades stood, to fulfil old vows and swear new ones in hope of future success (so much for Roman claims of his irreligion). Already too the Romans had authorized Scipio and Sempronius to levy armies and fleets for Spain and Africa. But Hannibal had neatly got them to bring on the war in formal terms, and to do it so gracelessly that even wavering Carthaginian citizens must see their country as a victim of aggression. This plus the wealth from Saguntum united his fellow-countrymen behind him, all at any rate save Hanno the Great and his thinned-out political circle.17 All the same, for the reasons suggested above he did not launch his expedition until almost mid-year and even then did not cross the Pyrenees for another two months or so. No one in his council was under illusions about the risks of the invasion. Polybius even tells a story of how at one meeting the officer Hannibal Monomachus declared that the only way they would make it was to live off human flesh (prisoners’, presumably), though Hannibal refused to consider this. He certainly had to face the possibility of some 107

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opposition en route even though his agents had striven to conciliate the peoples between the Pyrenees and north Italy, and also the dangers of poor supply and—even worse—of desertions. Both Hannibal’s sense of mission and his overall confidence are shown in his visit to Melqart’s temple during the winter and then by his famous dream, recorded by his friend and historian Silenus. On the march up the east coast towards the Ebro, at a place Livy calls Onusa, the general dreamt he was summoned to a council of the gods, whose chief gave him a divine guide for the road to Italy. Bidden to follow the guide without looking back, he nevertheless disobeyed and saw a monstrous serpent ravaging the land. This, he was told, was the fate of Italy. The chief of the gods, naturally called Jupiter in the Roman versions, must have been Ba’al Hammon: so Hannibal could be confident, and could assure his officers and men, that the expedition was blessed by both the supreme deities of Carthage.18

VI Beyond the Ebro the peoples brought into subjection, according to Polybius, were the otherwise unknown Aerenosii and Andosini, the pro-Roman but just as obscure Bargusii, and the ‘Ilurgetes’. Of these Livy gives only the last two and adds the rather better-known Ausetani and Lacetani—who later on that year reappear as Punic allies instead. These two were probably mistaken guesses by a source of Livy’s, baffled by the genuine but unrecognized tribes’ names. As for the Ilergetes, the well-known people whose chief town was Ilerda, modern Lleida or Lérida in Aragon, they were almost certainly on the Carthaginians’ side already, for their powerful leader Indibilis had ‘always’ been strongly pro-Punic (so Polybius affirms elsewhere) and he dominated nearby peoples too, including the Lacetani. Hannibal’s conquest may have been another, smaller community of Ilergetes, perhaps a breakaway branch, attested on the coast between the later cities of Tarraco and Barcino. These may all have put up a fierce resistance and cost him men, but as was noted earlier they cannot be the main reason why he chose to fight them himself and took so long to move into Gaul. As for the 11,000 troops he left behind under Hanno, they were not enough to cope with a consular army but—again as argued earlier—Hannibal himself was expecting to meet and destroy Scipio somewhere in Gaul. In any case it was open to the commanders left behind (Hasdrubal included) to call on allied Spanish communities for auxiliary corps and, of course, to levy further forces from Carthage’s Spanish subjects. The 10,000 disgruntled Carpetani and others whom he released from service may well have found conscription-agents looking for them after a year or two.19 To Hanno he also entrusted all the heavy baggage that the grand army had brought along from New Carthage. With it now more streamlined though smaller, and reckoning that the Roman consul was close to setting out for 108

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Spain, the general marched in three columns through the Pyrenees and into Gaul on the true start of his epic venture. Not everything was or could be planned for a certainty. The Gauls along the route had not agreed in advance to let the army pass, so he had to placate an armed and suspicious warrior assembly gathered at Ruscino (today’s Perpignan) with reassurances sweetened by gifts to their chieftains. Why he had not done this earlier, when he was sending agents to Cisalpine Gaul, is hard to understand. According to Livy he had, though it still needed to be followed up with gold; but if he did seek their agreement earlier he cannot have been very successful, and Polybius in fact mentions him forcing some of them en route to concede it. Rather than a mere oversight, the failure to conciliate the Gauls in advance may have been due to his strategic plan as suggested above. Fighting the Romans in Gallic territory, even if he won the Gauls as allies or kept them neutral, was not a scheme likely to please people whose lands would bear the brunt. Even if he had claimed that he meant to march directly to Italy, they could not be sure the Romans would let him. Only the fresh reassurances, and gifts, at Ruscino won him passage.20 The same suspicions explain why the Volcae on the lower Rhône opposed him crossing their river though they were no more inclined to the Roman side than to his. Hannibal had to disperse them by skilful use of a detached cavalry column under his nephew Hanno, which crossed higher up and struck the Gauls in the rear. Interestingly the Volcae made no other effort against the Carthaginians: news that Scipio was now only a few days’ march away conceivably prompted them to leave the field clear to the two armies to fight it out. But it was at this stage, as argued earlier, that the general changed his strategy. Polybius gives the army’s size at the Rhône as 38,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry. If correct, this means that in his largely unopposed march across southern Gaul Hannibal had somehow lost 12,000 foot and 1,000 horse, yet no ancient source mentions how. One obvious-looking explanation has been suggested: garrisoned strongpoints along the Gallic route. But none is ever mentioned, though if they existed they ought to have given some trouble both to Cn. Scipio awhile later, when his brother the consul sent him with part of the Roman army on to Spain, and again to P. Scipio himself the following year. This service would have been even more vital in 211 and 210 when Roman reinforcements were sent over to retrieve the disaster that had befallen the Scipio brothers. Of course these expeditions went by sea, but ancient ships could not avoid putting in to land every two or three days. Besides, the mere presence of enemy units along the line of communications between Italy and Spain should have aroused Roman concern and some sort of counteraction, but again none is heard of. Nor did the hypothetical garrisons achieve anything positive, for instance like channelling reinforcements to Hannibal in Italy as 109

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the war went on. His only recorded reinforcements came from Africa by sea. In sum, if he did station troops in southern Gaul it was a complete waste of men. But the theory should be dismissed.21 Desertion better accounts for the shrinkage of the army. Already at the crossing of the Pyrenees Hannibal had had to send home a large contingent. As the army left Spain further and further behind, pressing on with meagre belongings and living off the land, disenchantment was bound to grow in some of the men. To some, too, the attractions of life in the future Languedoc and Provence might outmatch the doubtful prospects of warring in a hostile Italy. This sort of wastage was not unique. In another famous invasion, in 1812, Napoleon’s main army fell from 450,000 in June to some 185,000 by mid-August as it marched across western Russia, with half or more of the rest left behind sick or deserted, and this before it had done any serious fighting.22 Four days north of the crossing-point over the Rhône, Hannibal intervened to settle a kingship struggle among the people of a fertile district Polybius calls ‘the Island’, and by winning their friendship was able to rest his men and refit them with food, weapons and footwear. Another ten days’ march brought them east to the foothills of the Alps and into real danger, in the shape of the hostile Allobroges who held the region. Repeated attacks by these and then by warriors farther into the mountains were driven off, but the cost was nearly as heavy to the Punic side as to the Gallic. The danger from humans ended as the army, nine days into its painful ascent, crested the pass—the identity of which remains, and probably will always remain, debated. But the descent was steep and seriously broken in places, and with old snow already covering the ground fresh snowfalls made the going even more treacherous. As a result, Polybius claims, the army suffered losses nearly as heavy as before and the men’s spirits were badly battered—even after the famous moment when Hannibal gathered them (or a lot of them) at the top of the pass and pointed out the plains of Italy spread out below.23 When the general reviewed his badly shaken forces in the fertile countryside of northern Italy some days later, they amounted to 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse (he recorded these figures himself), plus the elephant corps and his Balearic slingers, specialist irregulars who turn up in his ensuing battles but by now would number only some hundreds. The African infantry contingent was now much larger than the Spanish (12,000 to 8,000): a disproportion that probably had not existed when the army left Spain and probably again reflects the impact of desertion, for it was obviously even harder for a disenchanted African than for a Spaniard to consider deserting either for home or for safe parts of Europe. Polybius, apparently still citing the Cape Lacinium inscription, implies that this tally of forces took place not directly after the army came down from the Alps but when it reached the territory of the Insubres on the plains—their 110

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capital was Mediolanum, modern Milan—after crushing the Insubres’ foes the Taurini, around modern Turin nearly 60 miles (100 kilometres) to the west. Desertions during these early days in Italy are not to be ruled out. They may have been low during the Alpine crossing itself, for getting safely out of the mountains would be a problem, but quite a few men must have been tempted as soon as the army reached the amiable terrain below. Only rest, recuperation and then some swift successes could transform the men’s attitude.24 The Taurini, slaughtered in a brutal three-day operation for refusing to become friends, were the first such needed success. Neighbouring peoples hastened to submit and Hannibal pressed on eastwards looking for the Roman forces in north Italy.25

VII Crossing the Alps remains the most famous and mistakenly emblematic of his feats. The stunning victories that followed give a sheen of paradoxical brilliance to this opening venture, enhanced by the exotic image of elephants from the world of the tropics battling their way through snow-covered passes and gorges. The heroism and endurance of general and troops were no doubt underlined in Silenus’ and Sosylus’ histories, and grudgingly or admiringly outlined by Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus and their successors. In reality, not only was the march close to a disaster but its outcome may have cost Carthage the war. As the ancients knew, it was ordinarily no great task for an army to cross the Alps. The Gallic peoples in Cisalpine Gaul had migrated there—armed warriors, their families, wagons and animals—two centuries before. Seven years earlier an army from Gaul, the Gaesati, had crossed to help the Boii and Insubres in their southward onslaught on Italy. Eleven years later, Hannibal’s brother was to march unruffled from Spain without loss. Hasdrubal perhaps managed this because of the lesson Hannibal had taught the locals (though they had seen nothing of Carthaginians since) or because he bought them off. But Hannibal himself had supposedly made arrangements with them through his agents for safe passage. The agents must have been too optimistic, or misleading, when they reported back to him—unless he had originally planned a different route, more to the south in line with his initial strategic plan, and so had conciliated what turned out to be the wrong Alpine folk. Even so, the losses in the Alps were only one part of the total strength lost. To judge from Polybius’ account most of the missing 33,000 went between the Pyrenees and the Rhône or on the descent from the pass. As we have seen, desertion was probably the chief cause rather than battle-casualties (or falls from heights). Those who remained at the end were indeed troops of proven quality and loyalty, one of the finest armies in history; but the quality 111

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of the grand army that crossed the Pyrenees had been high too, according to Polybius. Hannibal realized the impact of the losses. For the next 11 years he looked and hoped for reinforcements, from his brother in Spain or from Africa—reinforcements which in effect would bring his Spanish and Libyan forces more or less back to the strength of the original grand army. With what remained of that army and with his new Gallic allies he won huge victories, detached half of Italy from its allegiance to Rome and hemmed the Romans in with enemies at home and abroad: and yet failed in the end. Had he reached Italy with the army largely undamaged, he might not have failed.26 This suggests some limitations to Hannibal’s leadership in 218. He did not succeed in inspiring enough commitment in all, or even most, of his troops to see them through to Italy; and his preparations for the expedition turned out to be deficient. Just why the Allobroges and the other mountain folk were so hostile is not clear: presumably they suspected the army’s true intentions or resented its intrusion into their territories. Even so it might have been possible to bargain with them—had he had the time. Instead he pressed forward into their lands with no recorded effort at negotiating. It was already autumn, snowfalls threatened to block the passes, and he must have thought he could push through by simple fear or force. There was another, related flaw in carrying out the venture. By setting out when he did, first from New Carthage and then over the Pyrenees, Hannibal added to the risk and dangers that the expedition faced from the seasons. The delay was dictated, as argued earlier, by his original plan to destroy the consul’s expeditionary force in Gaul and so safeguard Spain while clearing the way to Italy. With his timing thus dependent on Scipio’s movements, the consul’s own lateness in turn contributed indirectly to the damage that the Punic army suffered. P. Scipio the elder therefore helped to bring about Hannibal’s ultimate failure, even before any fighting had occurred between the two armies. Scipio’s unwitting service partly mitigates the miscalculation he and the Romans went on to commit. On learning that the Carthaginian army was heading for Italy over the Alps, Scipio decided to go back to confront it himself—but still sent most of his army on its mission to Spain, with his brother Cn. Scipio as commander. He himself took over the legions sent to north Italy against the Gauls. The Senate at Rome, in turn, recalled the other consul Sempronius Longus from Sicily in haste, so that both consuls and two consular armies could confront the invasion. Carthage and North Africa in other words were spared immediate attack, an outcome Hannibal himself no doubt much appreciated. This in reality meant favouring a secondary priority over the primary. Of course Spain was important: the Romans worried about Hannibal drawing reinforcements from there, and steps had to be taken to block any. But Roman forces loose in North Africa, endangering—worse, besieging— 112

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Carthage could have been catastrophic for him. Regulus 40 years before and Agathocles of Syracuse still earlier had brought the Carthaginians to desperation, and in Regulus’ case almost to terms. Sempronius Longus, true, proved no match for Hannibal in battle, but the Carthaginians had no other Hannibals available. It is striking that when Punic Spain was lost in 205 Hannibal and his fellow-countrymen carried on with the war in Italy, even though his own fortunes were plainly sinking—but once Scipio the younger invaded Africa and put direct pressure on the Carthaginians at home, Hannibal was recalled.27 Once Sempronius’ expedition was aborted it was not revived for 14 years. Various raids on the African coast were made between 217 and 205 but had little discernible impact on the Carthaginians’ war-effort. Yet most raids met little serious resistance, some garnered notable booty, and they showed how vulnerable the Punic heartland was. Instead the Romans were fixated on Spain: the brothers Scipio operated there for years and did thwart Hasdrubal’s planned march to Italy in 215 by defeating him in battle. But in the end, seven years later, he broke out, even though by then his Roman opponent was the famous Scipio, Hannibal’s own nemesis.28 Had as much attention from the start been paid to Africa as to Spain—or, arguably, more attention—the war might well have been shorter and Punic defeat have come sooner. Instead, Hannibal’s war would bring untold disasters on the Romans.

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I A sharp cavalry skirmish at the river Ticinus, west of Mediolanum, was Hannibal’s first victory over the Romans. The consul Scipio, badly wounded, pulled back south of the river Po to await his colleague, but the doubling of Roman forces that resulted when Sempronius’ army arrived did them no good. On a freezing snow-driven morning in late December, beside the river Trebia a little south-west of Placentia, the 40,000-strong Roman army was largely destroyed by Hannibal’s 40,000. The victory was due to the classic encirclement tactics which have made the Punic general famous among military theorists. His cavalry cleared the enemy cavalry off the field while his infantry battled the enemy infantry, then victory was clinched by a rear-and-flank attack on these—first by his youngest brother Mago from an ambush site, then by the returning cavalry plus skirmishers. The elephants also took part, though this was their swansong as all but one perished in the inhospitable winter following. The only Romans to get away were those who broke head-on through the Gallic infantry they were charging. Hannibal’s losses were thus suffered mostly by the Gauls. With north Italy his, the general could rest his forces over the winter while planning his next move. After the Trebia he developed his liberation propaganda-line, freeing his Italian prisoners without ransom and sending them home with a message which he obviously thought would strike a chord: he had come to free the Italians from Roman rule and (a neat appeal to past grievances) to win back for them the lands they had lost to the Romans. He had been encouraged in his hopes, even before the battle, by the defection of a Brundisine commander who handed over the town and grain-depôt of Clastidium, for Brundisium was not just an Italian ally of Rome but was a Latin colony, one of the 30 privileged city-states that enjoyed a special relationship with Rome and contributed vitally to Roman war-power. But just as the North Italian Gauls had given him support only after he reached their own territories, equally he could not expect any Italian states to join him unless he came nearer—and came as an assured victor. So he had to 114

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march south, seek out whatever armies the Romans next produced, and defeat them. This was what his existing allies the Gauls expected too. For them, invading the peninsula meant booty while staying put meant facing new Roman attacks at home. The Gallic warriors who joined up with him during the winter cannot have expected a mere defensive campaign. Nor had they ideological or emotional ties to the newcomers from Africa and Spain. The self-interest linking the two sides began to fray over the winter lull, if the story in Polybius and others of Hannibal repeatedly donning varied disguises to evade Gallic attempts on his life has any basis (it may exaggerate one such stratagem). But even less hostile expressions of disenchantment, like desertion, would do his cause no good. Invading the peninsula was the obvious move in any case, for to stay in Gallic Italy would achieve nothing and the Romans would certainly counterattack. In late spring 217, with 50,000–60,000 men, he moved south.1

II The invasion of Etruria began badly all the same, with the army forced to march—or wade—for days and nights through the flood-swollen marshes of the middle Arno river to avoid the more obvious open routes, and suffering losses as a result, notably among the Gallic contingents. Even if Polybius and Livy overdramatize the rigours of the marshes, these did take some toll of the men and animals: the most famous casualty being Hannibal himself, who suffered a severe attack of ophthalmia that damaged (if it did not fully destroy) the sight of his right eye.2 But stunning success followed. By arriving in central Etruria he drew the consul Flaminius in pursuit, then ambushed him on a mist-laden June morning as the Roman army marched eastwards along the narrow northern shore of Lake Trasimene. In spite of desperate resistance by the strung-out column, Flaminius and 15,000 of his men were killed, the bulk of the survivors taken prisoner. A few days later the cavalry commander Maharbal in turn defeated and captured a powerful cavalry corps that the other consul, Servilius, had sent over from Picenum to join Flaminius. In half a week the Romans lost nearly 30,000 men dead or captive, much the same number as at the Trebia half a year earlier. The Punic losses were under 2,000 men, mostly Gauls again. With Servilius still in the north, nothing stood between Hannibal and Rome.3 Earlier in the year he must have been able to send messengers off to Carthage. It was important to let his countrymen know of his victories in north Italy, to encourage morale; but his despatches probably dealt with other matters too. Some time in June, a strong fleet of 70 warships sailed from Carthage via Sardinia to the Etruscan coast at Pisae hoping to meet his army, a rendezvous surely prearranged. If Polybius is right that Hannibal was 115

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able to communicate by sea with his home city only when he reached the Adriatic coast after Trasimene, an earlier missive can have got there only via the overland journey to Spain and then on by sea. If so it must have been sent quite some time earlier, while he was planning his move southwards. Polybius connects the launching of the fleet with Hasdrubal’s recent defeat in Spain, but Spain was not its destination even after it left Italian waters. Nor would it have known where to look for Hannibal without being instructed beforehand. A scheme for the army to link up with a fleet suggests that his original strategy for 217 was not just to invade the peninsula but, more specifically, to do so in a combined operation. Such a bold course could have only one goal: the city of Rome. But when the fleet arrived off Pisae it found no sign of Hannibal. He had marched east to the Adriatic instead of west to the Tyrrhenian coast. After destroying Flaminius’ army, even though he soon rearmed his African infantry with captured—and presumably superior—Roman weapons, yet ‘having become very confident about the total situation he decided’, Polybius writes, ‘for the time being against marching towards Rome’. Polybius neither explains why nor mentions the fleet in this context. His phrasing is noteworthy all the same, for it implies both that a march on Rome had been envisaged by Hannibal and that he was still leaving the option open for the fairly near future. These are less likely to be just Polybius’ inferences (for one thing, he knew that Hannibal did not actually march on Rome until 211, and then only as a feint) than to reflect one or more of his Hannibalic sources. Whether Sosylus or Silenus was any more forthcoming about the decision cannot be said. It would be interesting to know whether either of them thought it sound. If Hannibal had been able to link up with the fleet and move fast, while the other consul’s army—shorn of cavalry and cut off from Rome—struggled to find out what was going on, the Carthaginians could have blockaded the city by land and sea. That would have severely hampered, if not prevented, the Roman authorities from organizing fresh forces and concerting further resistance and might have changed the direction of the war. But he may have learned that the Romans had 110 ships available to oppose the Punic fleet, or concluded that his army was too battered for a combined operation to succeed. Yet the substitute decision to march eastwards meant, arguably, a great opportunity missed.4 Polybius certainly emphasizes the army’s battered state as well as its rapid restoration to health, both men and horses, once they reached the prosperous dales by the Adriatic. On the way there they plundered and ravaged the countryside, while ‘the order was issued to slaughter those of adult age who fell into their hands’: plundering, and presumably killing, that continued when they marched south to Apulia. This was normal practice for an invading army, and besides Hannibal needed to reward his much-stressed troops and no doubt replenish his own military treasury. He also aimed to provoke the 116

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Romans to battle again, confident, as Polybius implies, that a further decisive defeat in battle would make them give in. Slaughtering all adults met with en route, though, was an ill-judged policy even if limited to adult men. It was at odds with his freeing of Italian allied prisoners of war, for he was moving through not just Roman but also Italian allies’ lands and an essential ingredient of his war- and postwar plans was to win over as many Italians as possible. The general soon found his confidence frustrated. The new Roman supreme commander, the dictator Q. Fabius Maximus, refused to fight a pitched battle and instead stalked the Punic army around southern Italy in the classic style of harassment-warfare, cutting off stragglers and threatening the Carthaginians’ gathering of supplies. Farmers in districts approached by the Punic army were ordered to destroy their buildings and crops and then leave the area. Unfamiliar and unpopular though this Fabian strategy was with many Romans, including Fabius’ own deputy the master of horse Minucius, it can only have alarmed Hannibal. If he could neither acquire Italian support nor threaten Rome effectively with Fabius’ four legions constantly shadowing him, nor secure reliable contact and replenishment from Africa or Spain, the expedition was in a strategic and political limbo. To stay in it for long would be in effect the kiss of death for him and for Punic prospects—all the more because (as he probably had heard by now) things were not going well in Spain.5 His manoeuvrings in the second half of 217 sought to break this dangerous stalemate. To force on a battle, and at the same time sweep up fresh plunder and provisions for the coming winter, he moved across the mountains and valleys of Samnium and into northern Campania, where his vast garnerings of booty suggest that the dictator’s edict had been poorly obeyed. According to Livy he furthermore had the hope, from three aristocratic Campanians captured and freed after Trasimene, that towns in the region would defect to him. Such defections would have been the first in the peninsula, but none in fact happened. Fabius followed along high ground, did not interfere, and then—when the booty-laden Punic army moved to leave Campania for Apulia—so neatly blocked its intended route through a pass in the hills that it could neither advance nor safely retreat. For once the tables had been turned: but only for a moment. Hannibal used a simple but well-executed night ruse (a herd of cattle with burning faggots tied to their horns and shepherded by some light troops) to divert the Romans’ attention in another direction and achieve an unopposed exit. But he still could not shake off Fabius’ frustrating companionship on the march back to Apulia. There, operations centred on the small town of Gerunium which Hannibal took by storm in the usual style, massacring its uncompliant residents, and for a while he seemed to have fresh opportunity to annihilate an enemy army. Minucius the master of horse, buoyed by a skirmishing success that brought him unprecedented codictatorial status because of Roman irritation with Fabius’ delays, let his forces be enticed into a Hannibalic encirclement. But he 117

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got out of it thanks to Fabius’ prompt intervention with the rest of the Roman army, after which the war settled into further stalemate.

III Irritating as this again was to the Romans, potentially it was a disaster for the invaders. That they had serious problems getting supplies during late 217 and early 216 can be believed: the army stayed at Gerunium till mid-year, though Hannibal then eased its discomforts by capturing a large Roman depôt at Cannae, in Apulia. Had the Romans persisted in Fabius’ admittedly thankless methods till the next winter, Hannibal could not have avoided crises in his army—the Gauls would hardly have clung to him indefinitely and by mid-216 there were even rumours of the Spanish mercenaries plotting to desert—as well as politically, at home and in Spain. It cannot have been easy to get word out regularly to Carthage, nor would the word be very cheering if he did. Besides, his brother Hasdrubal was roundly defeated at the Ebro’s mouth in the spring by Cn. Scipio, so much so that the Romans were emboldened to send Gnaeus’ brother P. Scipio thither with fresh forces. Not only critics of the Barcids like old Hanno the Great, but any Carthaginians who doubted the wisdom of a militarily unsupported expedition into Italy, would feel confirmed in their pessimism about the progress of the war. The Romans came to his rescue. Confident in their manpower reserves, angry and anxious at his menace in their midst, they created for the consuls of 216, L. Aemilius Paullus and C. Terentius Varro, an army greater than any seen before—over 80,000 strong—and sought battle. The Punic general offered it in August with 40,000 foot and 10,000 horse, on an open plain beside the river Aufidus in Apulia, near the hill-town of Cannae. The force arrayed before them troubled some of his own men, and one senior officer named Gisco pointed out its astonishing mass to him as they surveyed the scene from a knoll before battle. Hannibal commented seriously that he had missed something more astonishing still: ‘in all that many, not one of them is called Gisco’. The Carthaginians went laughing into battle. Facing foes lacking in virtually all tactical manoeuvrability except the forward charge, he met their massive infantry centre with his Spaniards and Gauls while on the wings his Spanish, Gallic and Numidian cavalry between them fought and drove off the opposing horse. The enemy centre, over 50,000 men, pushed back the heavily outnumbered Spanish and Gallic infantry for some distance and even broke their ranks; but then Hannibal’s African infantry—stationed on either side of the Punic centre but till now held back—swung in to take the Romans in flank. As the densely ranked legionaries struggled to cope with this new assault, Hannibal’s Spanish and Gallic cavalry in turn left pursuing the routed enemy horse to the Numidians and closed in on the legions’ rear. What at daybreak had been the most confident and impressive Roman 118

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army ever to take the field was by evening a massacred wreck. The garrison left in its nearby camp surrendered. Whether the dead numbered over 70,000 as Polybius claims, or Livy’s more plausible 47,200 (with 19,000 or so survivors taken prisoner), the army had ceased to exist except for some thousands of fugitives scattered over the Apulian countryside. One of the consuls, L. Aemilius Paullus, was dead and so were 29 of the army’s 48 military tribunes, its senior officers; 80 senators and ex-magistrates; and enough Roman cavalrymen, distinguished by their gold rings, to give Hannibal’s brother Mago a bushelful of rings to pour out over the floor of the Punic senate-house at Carthage a few weeks later. Punic losses were under 6,000, 4,000 of them Gauls.7 Once again nothing, or almost nothing, stood between Hannibal and Rome. When the news reached the city, the people there expected him to march directly against it. But he was 250 miles (400 kilometres) away— further away than at Trasimene—a march of three weeks even if unopposed; the army was weary from its strenuous fighting and colossal slaughtering; Rome was massively fortified, and he knew or could surmise that it would be defended—it had a potential reserve in the fleet based at Ostia and could raise levies from its own and nearby residents. He decided not to march.

IV Like the Romans, some of his men expected otherwise. Livy tells of Maharbal the cavalry commander urging him on: let Maharbal go ahead with the cavalry, follow behind and ‘in five days you shall banquet on the Capitol’—then, when the general insisted on putting off a decision, a biting comment, ‘You know how to win a victory, Hannibal; not how to make use of one.’ Maharbal’s proposal, though not the pithy epigram, goes back at least to their contemporary Cato the Elder, writing 50 years or so later, who may have got it from a proCarthaginian source. It may not be strictly true as told: for one thing, Hannibal could not march from Apulia to Rome in five days (though he might have from Trasimene). But it illustrates a point of view that at least some of his officers surely held. Even if Maharbal actually said his say after Trasimene, the point was still more relevant after Cannae and it need be no surprise if Maharbal or others put it to the general once again.8 Modern as opposed to ancient historians mostly commend Hannibal’s decision. Various justifications are mentioned: he could not provision his army along the way; it lacked siege equipment and anyway he and it were not adept at sieges; he realized that once in place before the city he would risk being trapped between it and fresh Roman forces raised outside; he expected that the southern Italian allies would defect more readily if he stayed in their midst.9 Yet all such points, impressive at first glance, fail to convince. True, Maharbal’s proposal might sound overenthusiastic: how could a cavalry corps hope 119

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to capture a major fortified city? But Maharbal cannot have proposed using his troopers’ weaponry or siege-skill. Cavalry’s strategic virtue lay in speed— and therefore surprise. The idea clearly was to reach Rome ahead of or along with any friendlier messengers, and seize the city as disbelief and panic boiled up inside as well as outside. Thirteen years later this happened at Cirta, capital of the Numidian king Syphax, following his defeat and capture by his rival Masinissa and the Roman commander Laelius. Masinissa galloped ahead with his own Numidian cavalry, appeared outside the walls with his prisoner and achieved instant surrender, though Cirta stood on one of the most defensible natural sites in the ancient world. Rome’s residents had been frightened enough at the thought of Hannibal coming down after Trasimene, and five years on he produced great alarm when he did make a march from Campania to its outskirts—even though there were troops within the walls, more on the way, and other Roman armies all over Italy. On the day after Cannae there was no regular army at all left in the peninsula except for the troops with the fleet at Ostia and (maybe) two legions of new recruits at Rome. The only other army nearer than Spain was in north Italy where the Gauls would annihilate it later in the year.10 Nor did sending Maharbal on ahead have to be Hannibal’s only option for approaching Rome. If it seemed safer to keep the cavalry with the rest of the army, nevertheless the army could have reached the city in three weeks or— given that this could be the most vital move of the whole war—even sooner by forced marches. It was high summer and the necessary supplies in Italy’s heartland were available to his foragers, as in 217. Certainly the Romans would have had some time to launch defence measures: at the news of Cannae the praetor Marcellus, commanding the fleet at Ostia, sent 1,500 naval troops up to the city and a legion of them to Teanum in Campania (to try to bar the routes from there northward), and then the new dictator M. Junius Pera began levying fresh recruits. Yet this was no complete answer. Siege equipment could have been manufactured from the woodlands of Latium and Etruria, the extensive city walls could not have been strongly manned, the legion at Teanum was perilously isolated over 90 miles (150 kilometres) to the south-east, and the advance of 40,000-odd enemy troops would have driven refugees from all around its path into Rome—cramming extra mouths to feed into a besieged town was a standard method of war.11 Hannibal may not have been good at sieges and Rome may have been far too large for one anyway, but a blockade was practicable enough. With one in place, efforts by magistrates in the countryside (including the surviving consul Varro in Apulia) to organize fresh resistance would have been hampered by the sealing-off of the political centre. Nor is it certain that Rome would have been immune to treachery, for along with the Roman population there were other residents—Italians, foreigners and slaves (the dictator recruited 8,000 of these for army service), not all of whom need have been 120

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totally committed to the Roman side. Late in 217 two dozen slaves had been put to death for a plot of some sort: Livy does not state what sort, but their comrade and betrayer was generously rewarded. It did not call for more than a few resolute partners to betray a city gate, as 13 did at Tarentum only a few years later.12 Blockading and starving out Rome would have been still more effective if the Punic fleet joined in. That Hannibal, or at any rate his supporters at Carthage, recognized the fleet’s value had been shown after Trasimene, though to no great avail. It could have been summoned again: he was able to send his brother Mago to Carthage by sea not long after Cannae, with his bushel of Roman gold rings and a request for reinforcements and supplies. With the Roman fleet at Ostia weakened by Marcellus despatching thousands of its marines inland, it could have been worthwhile to try running its gauntlet to land the reinforcements and supplies somewhere on the Latin coast (rather than at Locri as was finally done). Failing the fleet, Hannibal’s army could have cut Rome off from waterborne help with some straightforward barriers across the Tiber like chained booms or sunken barges. In turn, Hannibal encamped around Rome and paralysing the Roman wareffort would scarcely discourage wavering southern Italian allies from defecting (as is sometimes argued) even if the city held out. More likely, even more allies—in north and central Italy as well as in the south, and conceivably even some of the Latins—would have come over. In Spain the currently successful brothers Scipio would have found themselves cut off and practically irrelevant. Nor is it likely that the Macedonian king Philip V’s interest in a Punic alliance would have waned if Hannibal stood outside Rome instead of in Apulia. The result of a march on Rome would very probably have been a monumental change to the history of the Mediterranean world. Livy’s verdict, then, should stand. ‘That day’s delay is well judged to have been the salvation of the city and its empire.’13

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I After Cannae, some of the Romans’ south Italian allies at last thought the time had come to change sides. Several Apulian towns declared for Carthage—for instance Salapia, Arpi and Herdonea—then many of the Lucanians. Some weeks later the Bruttians far to the south defected when Hannibal’s brother Mago came among them with a division of the Punic army. Hannibal himself marched into Samnium where two of the three cantons followed suit, the Hirpini and Caudini; only the Pentri stood firm for the enemy. And on the Punic army’s advance into Campania in the autumn he won the greatest prize of all: Capua, the second city of Italy. Like other Campanian towns, Capua held a limited Roman citizenship. Its leader in 216, Pacuvius Calavius, and many other aristocrats had formed links of marriage or friendship with leading Roman families. But the disasters suffered for the Roman cause since 218 and the prospect of taking over as dominatrix of Italy were too much for Capua’s loyalty. The year before, Hannibal’s tentative hope of winning it over had failed but now the Capuans, prompted by Calavius and another leading man, Vibius Virrius, welcomed him in and struck a treaty with him.1 The terms were very good for the Capuans—and contrastingly of limited value to the general. In effect he struck a friendship-agreement with no obligations. The Capuans were guaranteed their self-government and freedom from compulsory military or other services. It was obviously implicit that they would support the Carthaginian side in the war, but nothing was specified, not even a proviso about aiding each other in peace and war (unlike the Punic pact later on with Locri in the south). Nor were there any commitments about supplying Hannibal with munitions or money gratis. In effect what he gained was Capuan neutrality in the war, as likewise that of satellite towns like Atella and Calatia. According to Livy he promptly broke the treaty by arresting a Capuan critic of the city’s defection, Decius Magius, and sending him off to Carthage. If true, it was probably a gesture of intimidation and may not have gone down well. He never repeated it, and 122

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never got much voluntary help from Capua either. The city may have supplied him with goods and provisions over the next few years (there is not much evidence) but he no doubt had to pay good money for them.2 When the Greek city of Locri on the south coast of Italy came over in summer 215, it struck a rather different pact. As at Capua, Locrian autonomy was affirmed, but more explicit provisos were stated too: the Carthaginians were assured of access to the town (in whose citadel they installed a garrison, then or later), the Locrians kept control of the harbour (important for their trade and their links with Greece), and each side was to help the other ‘in peace and war’. With Roman-held Rhegium and Sicily uncomfortably close, it was probably the Locrians who were keen to have this last proviso written in. Some of Hannibal’s other pacts may well have had such a clause too, to judge from scattered but suggestive items. In 215 his new Samnite allies complained that he was not protecting them against Roman attacks even though he had taken their young men to serve in his army. The pro-Punic Bruttians and Lucanians figured in operations outside as well as in their own territories—for instance in 214 an army mostly of their troops, under a Punic general, was marching to join Hannibal when defeated by the Romans at the river Calor near Beneventum, and in 209 a Bruttian force was the main part of the garrison at Tarentum. On the whole, though, separate allied forces figured little in major operations, and Italian manpower—we shall see—was mainly useful to Hannibal as recruits into his own army.3 According to Livy and some others, Hannibal’s appeal to some sections of the Italian population was not just as a champion of freedom from Roman mastery but as a champion of democracy against local oligarchies. ‘A single disease so to speak had overtaken all the states of Italy’, Livy comments with obvious distate, ‘so that the common people were at odds with the aristocrats, the [local] senate sided with the Romans, the commons moved over to the Carthaginians.’ In fact his own narrative contradicts his facile generalization over and over: Capua’s defection, though instigated by the popular boss Pacuvius Calavius (an aristocrat himself), had plenty of aristocrats wholeheartedly behind it, something still truer at Locri where—according to Livy himself—‘the masses were betrayed [to Punic control] by the leading men’, and at Tarentum whose defection in 212 was engineered by a baker’s dozen of young noblemen. At Arpi when the Romans broke in once again, in 213, the ordinary citizens were quickly able to convince them that it was local aristocrats who had sold them out to Hannibal. Indeed practically no recorded defection took place without one or more local notables leading it, and would-be defectors who cropped up unsuccessfully, in places like Nola or (late in the war) Etruria, were the same. Nothing suggests, either, that the general was democratically inclined. At home Barcid dominance did rest on a carefully cosseted popularity, but as noted earlier there was no democratic revolution at Carthage under Hamilcar or Hasdrubal—still less any coup against the aristocracy, to which the Barcids 123

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themselves belonged. In Spain Punic and Barcid rule was authoritarian, indeed military. What mattered in Italy, in turn, was having a city or canton as an ally: how that was brought about and how it was maintained were practical questions, not ideological ones.4

II Hannibal needed to spread defection as widely as he could and, where defection did not occur, he tried force or guile—starving out towns like Petelia in Bruttium and Casilinum, Nuceria and Acerrae in Campania, subduing Consentia in Bruttium, using his agents at Syracuse to steer first its ruler Hieronymus and then (after the boy-king’s murder) the new Syracusan republic into the Punic camp. The strategic and economic importance of Campania led him to make repeated but thwarted efforts to subdue its other leading centres like Naples, Cumae, Puteoli—all of them seaports—and the stronghold of Nola. Likewise he sought to win over Tarentum, first in late 214 and then successfully early in 212, a success that brought over other Greek cities on that coast—Metapontum, Thurii and Heraclea.5 The stir aroused by his invasion and victories had spread abroad too. In 217 a peace conference in Greece was warned by a delegate that those ‘clouds gathering in the west’ might one day settle on Greece; and the young King Philip V of Macedon, one of the conference-participants, was already taking an interest since he had ambitions coveting the Roman-dominated coastlands of Illyria. Cannae prompted him to the friendliest feelings for Hannibal. Though his envoys were afterwards captured by the Romans, the king and the general struck a treaty in summer 215. At Syracuse too Cannae was an earthquake. Though the 90-year-old Hiero II remained loyal to the Roman alliance, dissatisfaction with it had reportedly spread even to his son and heir Gelo. Gelo and then his father died in the months after Cannae but Hiero’s 15-year-old grandson Hieronymus, on the throne early in 215, quickly made it clear that Syracuse was changing its alignment to what it saw as the winning side. Like Philip V, this was in the hope of direct profit: control over the eastern half of Sicily, if not the whole island. Envoys were sent over to Hannibal, who naturally spoke encouraging words and sent them home in the company of an officer of his—Polybius terms him the general’s trierarch—also named Hannibal (quite possibly his friend Monomachus), along with two Syracusan brothers of part-Carthaginian ancestry. A Syracusan embassy to Carthage then resulted in a treaty of alliance against the Romans.6 Hannibal had probably not planned such broad international activity back in 218. His strategy then had been to strike into Italy, shatter the Romans’ military effort and their alliance, and establish peace on Carthage’s (and Barcid) terms. Though he had sent envoys into Cisalpine Gaul before he marched, he had sent none to Macedon. But when Cannae brought victory seemingly 124

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within his reach and attracted new friends, he readily expanded the scope of his thinking. As we have seen, he was pretty clearly looking ahead to the postwar containment of the Roman republic as much as to its early capitulation.

III Immediately after Cannae he did expect a fairly prompt peace. As well as releasing all his Italian prisoners once again, he spoke amicably to the Roman ones for the first time (those from earlier battles he had simply sold as slaves), assuring them, Livy writes, that this was a war not to the death but for honour and power. More mundanely, he allowed them to send delegates to Rome to ask for ransom, and they were accompanied by an envoy of his own, an aristocrat named Carthalo, to see if the Romans were now disposed to peace and to offer terms if they were. There is little point in supposing Carthalo’s mission a later Roman fiction to illustrate the Senate’s firmness in the face of disaster. His brief was not to make peace-overtures but to put his general’s terms if the Romans made them. Hannibal’s battle-methods were original but he relied on his opponents to be conventional, and not only in war. Crushing victories normally led to the losers asking for terms or being forced to ask. Alexander the Great’s father had become master of Greece with his triumph at Chaeronea five generations earlier; Alexander had become lord of Asia with his three victories over the Persians; the ambitions of his most powerful successors Antigonus and Demetrius had been shattered at Ipsus. Carthaginian war-efforts had sometimes suffered the same fate, as in Sicily both in 480 at Himera and again in 341 at the river Crimisus—not to mention the naval catastrophe off the Aegates islands that lost them the First Punic War. Now it was surely the Romans’ turn.7 True, Hannibal very likely knew that they had seldom obeyed this convention. Repeated disasters against Pyrrhus and in the First Punic War had not brought them to terms. After Cannae they repeated this inflexibility. They refused to let Carthalo stay in Roman territory, far less talk of terms; refused even to ransom their captive citizens. On the other hand, as Hannibal also may have known, they had actually negotiated with Pyrrhus after two heavy defeats, and he could reckon that their situation now was unprecedentedly desperate—massive human losses, ally after ally defecting, nearby foreign states wavering or hostile. Many or most outside observers probably gave them little chance of holding out for long. His own treaty with Philip V shows that in 215 he was expecting them to come to terms: his terms. Polybius’ verbatim quotation of this treaty-text, with the oath to it sworn by Hannibal and his Carthaginian councillors and troops, is the one piece of writing by the general that survives, at any rate in a Greek version. The treaty bound not just the expeditionary army in Italy but the Punic state and its allies, with a matching obligation on Philip, the Macedonians and their allies. It 125

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declared mutual friendship and enmities, stipulated that Philip would give military aid to the Carthaginians if asked, laid down that ‘if the Romans ask us to come to terms of peace’ specific territorial benefits in the Illyrian region would flow Philip’s way, and promised that ‘if ever the Romans make war on you or on us, we will help each other in the war as may be required on either side’. In practice the treaty was never more than a paper statement, for Philip was never asked for help and peace on Punic terms was never signed. Macedon was to pay heavily in a later age for this empty flirtation with the invader of Italy. What was really significant was that it occurred at all. The king’s tentative naval intervention in Illyrian waters the previous year had dissolved in panic at the arrival of just ten Roman warships: now he was ready to declare himself their enemy’s ally and make military promises against them. More vividly even than the defection of half southern Italy and Campania, his move shows how convincing was the impression after Cannae that the power of Rome was broken and the time of Carthage had arrived.8 The treaty also hints how its makers envisaged the postwar position of the Roman republic. It would have to give up its area of hegemony across the Adriatic but, far from being destroyed, would remain able to make war against a major foreign state. This chimes with the attitude Hannibal showed to the Romans after Cannae: he was fighting them not to the death but ‘for honour and power’, in other words the honour and prestige of the Carthaginian state—not to mention its Barcid leadership—and its hegemony over the lands at issue. Both aims were perfectly acceptable to the Mediterranean world of his time, just as in other eras.9 But if the Roman republic stayed in being, and especially if it stayed capable of fresh war-making, it had to be constrained. Otherwise the whole expedition, the Alps and the Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae, would have been for nothing. This was to be the crucial rôle of Hannibal’s new alliances within and beyond Italy. They were not just for winning the war but—more important— for maintaining his peace. The postwar provisions of the treaty with Philip V show this feature plainly and so does the logic of the situation. A lasting Punic alliance-system in Italy would deprive the Romans of the massive manpower that underpinned their military might, would hem them in geographically, and would immediately give the Carthaginians the strategic upper hand if a new war broke out. Just how all this would work in practice was never of course tried, nor was the question explored while the war was on. The vagueness was convenient and necessary, for Hannibal’s new Italian friends—some of them anyway— had expectations rather different from this. Livy reports the Capuan leader Vibius Virrius assuring his countrymen that ‘once the war was finished and Hannibal departed victorious to Africa and removed his army’, they would be left as masters of Italy. Hannibal himself (again according to Livy) confirmed this to the Capuan senate. Quite possibly he did encourage the Capuans in 126

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this bracing notion—though Capuan hegemony was hardly a scenario to appeal to Bruttians, Samnites or Tarentines. Some Italians thought the new situation ideal for settling scores. The Bruttians fell first on their own kinsmen of Petelia who refused to defect, then on Greek Croton which was an old foe, and they were prevented from sacking Locri only by its timely defection to the Carthaginians. No doubt particular defector-states looked for particular benefits from a postwar Italy, but overall they probably expected the sort of Italy that had preceded Roman hegemony—in effect a cheerful anarchy. None of this would suit the Carthaginians. Quarrelsome disunited Italians left to themselves would be a power-vacuum guaranteed to entice and revive Roman power, or else attract into Italy a third force like Philip V. Hannibal himself need not have intended to stay on indefinitely, but his and Carthage’s interests plainly required some continuing Punic presence in the peninsula. It would make sense for him to leave forces there to protect his allies from both the enmity of the Romans and the dangerous friendship of Philip.10 Just possibly he meant to annex some Italian territory as a Carthaginian possession. Not only is there a Roman tradition that he promised to reward his soldiers with Carthaginian citizenship, but another tradition represented him as claiming all of Italy in right of victory. Polybius reports him promising this to his army a couple of days before Cannae, Livy and Zonaras set it out in distorted versions of the treaty with Philip, and Livy depicts the defeated consul Varro forecasting Italy as a province ruled from Carthage. Strikingly too, Livy has Hannibal make a detailed list of promises to his army (and affirm them with a religious rite) in autumn 218 just before the skirmish at the Ticinus—citizenship, land in Italy, Africa or Spain, money in lieu of land if preferred, even rewards for loyal slaves. Much of this would be Roman propaganda, and the promise made before Cannae might be just Hannibal’s way of enthusing his men, but these varied items all share the theme of direct annexation. Conceivably they draw on a kernel of fact: conceivably, for example, he meant to acquire a stretch or stretches of Italian land centred on ports in easy communication with North Africa, Sicily and Sardinia, paying some sort of taxes and settled with veterans as well as, no doubt, civilians from Carthage and its other provinces. Livy’s Varro finds the thought repulsive, but it would simply have been an extension to the Italian peninsula of Barcid methods of governance. If Punic forces and a Punic general were to be left in peacetime Italy, basing them in Punicgoverned territory with at least some local funding made ample sense.11

IV To bring about all these aims, military, political and diplomatic, a strong army-in-being was essential. And the more so as time passed and made it clear that the Romans were far from giving in despite all their disasters. 127

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How Hannibal kept up his military strength is another debated question. Every battle imposed some losses, though they were low compared to Roman losses and—down to 216 anyway—fell mostly on his Gauls. Wounds, illnesses, desertions and mishaps must have taken further tolls. After Cannae he called for reinforcements from Carthage and 4,000 Numidian cavalry and 40 elephants, plus large funds, were sent over in 215 under an officer named Bomilcar. But the 13,500 infantry and cavalry, 20 elephants and further funds that were to follow these went instead to Spain, to offset a big Roman victory over his brother Hasdrubal, and a similarly strong force was voted for Sardinia to support the rebellion there. Their other brother Mago was sent to Spain to raise fresh troops for Italy, but none actually went. Bomilcar’s corps was the only reinforcement Hannibal ever had from abroad.12 Yet the general obviously kept a powerful army in being. He attacked major towns like Neapolis, Nola, Nuceria and Tarentum—not to mention marching on Rome itself in 211—and fought big battles, like those around Nola in 216–214 and at Herdonea and Numistro in 210. From 216 to around 211 he could divide his field forces into a main northern army under himself and a smaller southern command led first by his brother Mago and then by Hanno, whom Appian calls his nephew. More than that, he installed garrisons at many allied towns, not just Capua: Arpi reportedly housed 5,000 Punic troops in 213, Salapia 500 Numidians in 210, and a couple of Samnite towns were garrisoned by 3,000 men that same year; at Tarentum a year later there was a garrison partly of Bruttians and partly of ‘Carthaginians’, probably meaning non-Italian troops. A passing comment in Livy implies that even as late as 207 Lucanian, and presumably other Punic-allied, towns normally had Punic garrisons, and at Locri in 205 a Punic force was holding the citadel when the Romans recaptured the town. To judge from all this, the Carthaginians’ total forces in Italy from 215 to at least 207 must have been sizeable, even if they lessened as years went by and Punic fortunes gradually waned. Between 216 and 211, when two field armies as well as garrisons were operating, Hannibal overall may have had as many as 60,000–70,000 troops in arms between Campania and Bruttium. Yet his reinforcements from abroad were minuscule. The answer must be that he replaced losses among his original troops with mostly Italian recruits. Mercenaries from abroad may have made their way to him too but cannot have been all that numerous, while for Italians in the Punic army there is a fair amount of evidence. As mentioned earlier, Samnite spokesmen as early as 215 put it to him that all their young men were serving with him (no doubt an exaggeration). In 214 his lieutenant in the south, Hanno, had 17,000 largely Bruttian and Lucanian infantry and ‘a few Italians’ in his 1,200 cavalry, when the proconsul Ti. Sempronius Gracchus badly defeated him at the river Calor near Beneventum. This was not Hannibal’s own army but it suggests that he too could recruit locally. By 207, when his area of control had shrunk to little more than Lucania and Bruttium, he is in 128

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fact recorded sending Hanno, still in harness, to raise fresh levies from the Bruttians.13 Nor is that the end. At his departure from Italy in 203, hostile Roman tradition claimed, he massacred Italian troops who refused to sail with him—20,000 according to a credulous Diodorus. If this atrocity tale is based on anything, it may be that he did put to death some recalcitrants (who would count as mutineers); at all events the story presupposes he had Italian troops to punish. Then Livy describes his reserve corps at the battle of Zama—the veterans from Italy—as mostly Bruttians. Polybius more carefully calls them ‘the ones who came over with him from Italy’. Though he has Hannibal make them a speech recalling their past glories as far back as the Trebia, the corps was most likely made up not just of the survivors of that and the other battles but of later, mainly Italian recruits as well, and these were probably the majority. Like any well-knit army they would have taken on the esprit and traditions of their older comrades. Appian, for what his word is worth, stresses their military quality. The population of the Italian defector-states, then, probably did supply manpower to Hannibal’s army, not in separate allied contingents but as volunteers under direct Punic command. This surely suited him much better, for otherwise he would have had to cajole semi-autonomous contingents out of his allies, with the inevitable headaches that that would have entailed. Like the Spanish and African infantry, Numidian cavalry and Balearic slingers, his Italian troops were probably organized in regional units, for instance the Bruttian force at Tarentum. Overall, the part played by Italian troops in his operations from 216 on is not to be underestimated. Although Hannibal called for reinforcements from home directly after Cannae, this was at a stage before such recruiting can seriously have begun. By mid-215 it was probably well established, since the further reinforcements being readied for him at Carthage were diverted to Spain without any known protest from him or noticeable damage to his own campaigning. In the first half-decade or so after Cannae his areas of recruitment would have been widest, which explains how he could afford so many garrisons and—strikingly—could maintain both a northern and a southern field army for some years. In the last years, by contrast, his range of both operations and recruiting shrank: as a result so did his forces, even if he kept them well-trained and tough enough to be the mainstay of his army at Zama.14

V Italian recruitment to Hannibal’s forces explains why the Carthaginians used their other military resources as they did. In 215, as noted, the much larger army due to follow Bomilcar’s initial cavalry reinforcement to Italy was rerouted to Spain instead. Another army, just as large, was sent to Sardinia to help the rebellion there. Two years later 25,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 12 129

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elephants (forces larger than Hannibal had brought to north Italy in 218) arrived in Sicily to support the Syracusans in their new Roman war. In Spain strong Punic armies regularly operated down to 206. This was not because Hannibal had lost control of the Carthaginian wareffort, still less because a hostile or suspicious home government starved him of forces. If he could recruit enough troops for his own army where he was, he could let other forces be deployed where they could be useful—not that they always proved to be so, notably in Sardinia and Sicily. Polybius emphasizes not only how he kept overall direction of the war but the obvious point that many of the other commanders were relatives, like his brothers Hasdrubal and Mago, or officers of his like the half-Carthaginian Syracusan Hippocrates, who with his brother Epicydes brought Syracuse over in 213, and Mottones of Hippou Acra who later on operated in Sicily too (only to let Hannibal down).15 The terrific successes of the first three years of war in Italy cannot have weakened Barcid political dominance at Carthage, even if things were going less well in Spain. There is no reason to visualize the Mighty Ones, magistracies and official boards as packed wholesale with Barcid nominees, for other aristocratic families and interests still existed, like Hanno the Great’s, even if his was the only one overtly critical. But 20 years of victory and wealth can only have produced a large pro-Barcid majority, in which relatives and friends no doubt enjoyed prime status. It must as always have meant supporters winning offices and—just as important—other office-winning and place-holding aristocrats continuing to see it in their own interest to give support too. The first years of the new Roman war probably brought this dominance to its zenith. Livy’s picture of the Punic senate joyfully receiving Mago’s account of Cannae—with only Hanno the Great like a wise but tiresome old owl counselling caution and indeed peace—may be embroidered but can hardly be far from the truth. Like the general himself, everyone expected ‘that the war would soon be ended if they were willing to make a small extra effort’. Solidarity on the home front was strengthened by the tasks that Hannibal gave the authorities to do: for instance, preparing reinforcements and funds for the war-effort overseas. Such delegation of tasks was probably well established by now. As mentioned earlier, Hannibal from the start may have listened to suggestions by Barcid supporters at Carthage, for instance on questions like the city’s ports and fleets. Naval operations too from North Africa must have been organized, and presumably were authorized, at Carthage. Once Hannibal had accepted that such operations had a rôle to play, this arrangement made sense, even after he was able to re-establish regular contact with home from southern Italy. So too with other theatres of war. As long as loyal men were in charge at home, it made sense to leave many tasks to them, though under direction from him if he chose to exert it. 130

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So too with the generals in other theatres. Some were members of the Barcid group by definition, including Hannibal’s brothers Hasdrubal and Mago, and subordinates of his in Italy like Maharbal and nephew Hanno; others, during the early and middle years of the war anyway, were probably either members of the group too or else allies—a distinction that may not have been too sharp in some cases. Notable among them were Hasdrubal (nicknamed ‘the Bald’, for reasons perhaps obvious at the time), sent to Sardinia in 215, and Himilco and Hanno the successive commanders in Sicily in 213 and 212. Probably an ally—a leading figure with his own independent connexions—rather than a group member was Hasdrubal son of Gisco, as we shall see in a while, but he too was part of the war-effort led by the Barcids at Carthage and supervised by Hannibal.16 On the other hand, as just noted, Hannibal sensibly left theatre operations to the local commanders and intervened rarely, just as he left to the authorities at Carthage tasks best performed there. Thus most obviously the dealings with Hieronymus of Syracuse. These began with Syracusan envoys being sent to Hannibal in Italy. He then despatched his trierarch Hannibal to Syracuse, and this officer in turn accompanied new Syracusan envoys over to Carthage to negotiate an alliance. In 213, with Syracuse now under the proCarthaginian brothers Hippocrates and Epicydes and the Romans preparing to move against the city, a letter from Hannibal seconded a call for military support from the brothers, prompting despatch of the already-mentioned army from North Africa to Sicily. In 212, trying to rescue the situation after the Romans captured Syracuse, the Carthaginians sent over a new general, yet another Hanno, while from Italy Hannibal transferred his able cavalryman Mottones, of Hippou Acra, to serve under him. These two eventually fell out and Mottones went over to the Romans, but his initial appointment shows how Hannibal could intervene as he thought fit. Hanno’s appointment was made at Carthage no doubt because a general officer could not be spared from the army in Italy, and quite possibly it was with Hannibal’s agreement. There is no point seeing him as a latent anti-Barcid: though he despised the non-Carthaginian Mottones, Epicydes—another trusted agent of Hannibal’s—stayed with him throughout.17 Already mentioned too was the scheme that Hasdrubal should march from Spain to join his brother, a prospect the Romans were worrying about as early as 217. Early in 215 the senate at Carthage reportedly sent Hasdrubal his marching orders, and reiterated them over his objection that it was too risky to leave Spain (as it turned out, the brothers Scipio prevented him anyway). It is very unlikely that the Mighty Ones were dealing with so critical a strategic issue on their own. If they sent Hasdrubal orders to join his brother, almost certainly they were doing so at his brother’s behest; besides, it was much more practical for Hannibal in south Italy to communicate with Spain via Carthage than to try doing so direct. Livy or his source may not have appreciated these details—or else, conceivably, Hasdrubal’s ensuing 131

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disastrous defeat at Hibera prompted writers like Sosylus and Silenus later to play down the ultimate origin of the marching orders.18

VI By the end of 215 Hannibal had created an alliance-system covering the bulk of southern Italy. The only exclusions were the Greek cities along the southeastern coast (save Croton, conquered by the Bruttians, and Locri), Rhegium at the straits, and the Latin colonies of Beneventum and Luceria in Samnium, Venusia in Apulia, and Brundisium and Paestum on the coasts. At the other end of the peninsula, Cisalpine Gaul was out of Roman control even if Hannibal did not have regular contact with it. At the end of 216 the Roman army there and the newly elected consul who led it were wiped out in an ambush, yet another catastrophe for the enemy. If a fresh Punic army arrived from Spain—something he and his brother Hasdrubal were already thinking about—the region could serve as a resupply-base as it had in 218. With Macedon too on his side and Syracuse wavering, and even the Sardinians staging a rebellion, he had the Romans virtually surrounded. It was a situation all but unprecedented in their history. It was natural to expect that sooner rather than later they would ask for terms.19 Yet his new alliance system was a flawed mosaic. Important members of it, and maybe some others, had to be won over by guarantees which made them only a passive asset—no longer in the Roman alliance but not contributing positively to the Punic one either. Hannibal in no way held the sort of commanding leadership over his miscellany of allies that Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, or the Athenian state before them, had held over theirs. To the Italians he was paradoxically both necessary and an irritant. Only he could preserve them in their new-found freedom, but he made demands on them (for supplies even if he paid for these, and for recruits even if these were for his own army) and their association with him brought Roman reprisals on their heads. Not surprisingly there is little evidence of real enthusiasm among the defecting Italians for their Punic alliance. At some places pro-Roman factions continued to exist—Arpi, for instance, and Salapia where the pro-Romans would take the city back into the Roman fold in 210. Hannibal found himself in a dilemma with the Italians rather similar to theirs with him. Passive or not, he needed them; but in turn he had to support them against their old hegemon—a disadvantage rather than an asset. The strategic situation would have been easier had the defectors formed a solid block of ground from coast to coast, but instead they were parcelled out over southern Italy with enemy strongholds scattered among them. The Romans continued to hold Nola, Neapolis, Puteoli and the strategic mountain-height of Castra Claudiana between Nola and Capua, Pentrian territory in Samnium, all the Latin colonies, and (till 212) many of the Greek cities on the coasts. 132

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This meant that Hannibal’s alliance had little territorial cohesion and not much chance of—or interest in—concerted action or even mutual support.20 By contrast, with all 30 Latin allies, the Etruscans, and the other central and north Italian states continuing to stand with them, the Romans kept a superiority in resources and a solid and productive mass of territory from which to fight. They reverted to Fabius Maximus’ strategy of avoiding pitched battles with Hannibal and concentrated instead on wearing down his allies. From 215 on, Roman armies operating in several simultaneous theatres around southern Italy laid waste to croplands and villages, attacked towns and generally made the defectors’ lives miserable—as the Samnites appealing to Hannibal pointed out. They even began winning back some centres, like Casilinum (which he had captured in 215) as early as 214 and in the following year Arpi, which had defected after Cannae.21 Hannibal could neither intervene in every quarter nor divide up his forces into enough detachments to cope. Yet the success of his whole venture depended not only on protecting his new allies but, even more importantly, on nurturing their belief that they would do better under his leadership than they had under the Romans. This conundrum was to dog all his remaining years in Italy.

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I The ambitiously energetic Barcid strategy in the years after Cannae was on a scale greater than anything in past Punic history. It marked the zenith of Hannibal’s military and diplomatic power, with the Romans confronted not only in Italy but across the western Mediterranean—in Cisalpine Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, the Adriatic and finally Sicily. But an ever-widening ring of confrontation could not by itself bring victory. The confrontations had to be pressed and be successful. At this crucial level, his and the Carthaginians’ impetus stalled. In one region after another—Spain, then Sardinia, next the Adriatic and even Sicily—the Romans won the upper hand again. In Spain Cn. Scipio’s naval victory in 217 near the Ebro was followed two years later by the rout of Hasdrubal’s army at Hibera, again near the mouth of the Ebro, and then by years of stalemate which strategically was more in their favour than in the Carthaginians’. In Sardinia not only was the local revolt, encouraged from Carthage, a total failure in 215 but the army sent to help was delayed by storms and then met total defeat: even its commander was captured. The Macedonian intervention in the Adriatic fared ingloriously in its turn—Philip V’s operations in Illyria in 214 were wrecked when the Romans made a surprise attack on his camp and then forced him to burn his ships and retreat home. This was not the end of operations in Illyria but it was the end of Philip’s usefulness as an ally. In Sicily too, the Romans checked their enemies’ opening successes. Despite joining the Punic side twice, first under Hieronymus and later when Hippocrates and Epicydes won control, the Syracusans found themselves besieged by the unrelenting M. Claudius Marcellus. Nor did the powerful Punic army sent to their rescue manage to do anything but perish in an epidemic along with its commander.1 Hannibal’s own progress in Italy, apart from recruiting new allies, was hardly different. He spent 215 and 214 moving between Campania and Apulia, concentrating most of his energies on trying to take enemy strongholds and ports 134

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in Campania. He succeeded with Casilinum, Nuceria and Acerrae, but failed at the more important Neapolis, Nola, Cumae, Puteoli and Tarentum—and before long the Romans retook Casilinum. His various encounters with Roman armies outside Nola under the tireless Marcellus equally failed to repeat Trebia, Trasimene or Cannae (even if they were not the victories by Marcellus that Roman tradition later claimed). With the Romans grimly continuing their resistance, the momentum built up by Cannae and its immediate aftermath was plainly running down. Indeed campaigning in the year 213 was more or less at a standstill: its one noteworthy event was Arpi in Apulia going back over to the Romans, a coup by Fabius’ son and namesake. By contrast, every now and then the Romans won successes where Hannibal was absent. Fabius Maximus the Delayer reconquered places in rebel Samnium in 214, including the important town of Compsa, then Aecae in Apulia. The energetic Ti. Sempronius Gracchus in 215 pounced on a Campanian force at Hamae near Cumae, and at the river Calor near Beneventum in 214 he routed the strong secondary army of Bruttians and Lucanians marching under Hanno’s command to join Hannibal in Campania. Then in 213 Arpi rejoined the Romans. Even the general’s own army was not immune from ennui: in 215 about 300 Numidian and Spanish cavalry decamped to the enemy outside Nola, in 213 nearly 1,000 Spaniards in the Arpi garrison did (on condition that the rest of the Punic force went free), and Bruttian deserters over time formed a sizeable body that the Romans were to use in 209.2 Still, even after these frustrations Hannibal was able to score some more successes. The most important was Tarentum defecting to him early in 212—though the Romans kept hold of its citadel—quickly followed by Metapontum, Thurii and Heraclea. In the same year the rest of the Lucanian communities deserted the Roman side too. Now he controlled virtually all the coast of the Tarentine gulf and the Ionian Sea, with their hinterlands: this strengthened his grip on what supply-producing areas there were in southern Italy and also made communicating with Carthage easier than before. And he still won some successes in the field. In 212 if Livy’s report is correct, and again in 210 more crushingly, he defeated Roman armies at Herdonea in Apulia. Smaller victories in the south were won—according to Livy again—by Hanno in 213 and Hannibal himself in 212, 209 and 208 against various corps of Romans or Roman allies operating independently. His battle with Marcellus at Numistro in 210 was another victory or at least a draw, and the following year he dealt the same commander heavy losses in an indecisive tussle outside Canusium. There was even a small naval victory in 210, when a Tarentine flotilla defeated a Roman squadron trying to bring supplies to the Roman-held citadel at Tarentum.3 The half-decade after Cannae, in sum, brought both the high point of the expedition to Italy and yet a strategic stalemate. The Romans could not defeat him, but neither could he break them. Successes on the one side were matched 135

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by successes on the other. He maintained the strength of his armies and garrisons, but the Romans increased theirs until by 212 they had no fewer than 25 legions under arms, four times as many as at the start of the war, and 14 of them in Italy where ten operated in Campania and the south.4

II From 212, in fact, the tide began to turn in Italy, if slowly. Although that was the year Hannibal won over Tarentum and other south-coast cities, it was also the year when the Romans with six legions put Capua under siege and Marcellus in Sicily completed his siege of Syracuse by capturing the hitherto impregnable city. Nothing the Carthaginians did could deflect the besiegers at either place. In Sicily Himilco’s army, sent over from Carthage in 213, did no damage to them and in 212 perished thanks to an epidemic; and then a powerful fleet, the most powerful sent out by the Carthaginians during the war, managed to achieve nothing at all—in the end sailing away rather than battle an outnumbered Roman force off Cape Pachynus. In Italy, the hapless Hanno, trying to get provisions into Capua before the legions closed in, lost his camp (again near Beneventum) and all the provisions to a Roman assault. Hannibal’s foray later in 212 into Apulia and victory at First Herdonea did nothing for the Capuans, though he had probably hoped otherwise; in 211 he tried to break the siege and failed, then led his troops on the famous—and again fruitless—march to the outskirts of Rome itself, provoking much alarm but no wavering either there or among Capua’s besiegers; and just as ineffectual was his extraordinary return march, not back to Capua but down the entire length of southern Italy to Rhegium in the (predictably futile) hope of capturing that.5 These strange manoeuvres virtually symbolize the general’s activity from 212 on: bold and risky moves, impressive-looking coups, even some victories, yet little impact on how the war was really developing. His successes in these years were very different from those that had climaxed at Cannae. The value of Tarentum was impaired by the continuing Roman occupation of its citadel, which dominated the city’s harbour. And with several enemy armies operating in Italy at the same time, beating one or other had a distinctly limited impact—even when, as at the two Herdonea battles, he smashed his opponents. Once Capua surrendered and the Campanian front collapsed, his war-effort was effectively confined to the regions further south, and after the Samnites in their turn gave up the fight in 210 and 209 only Lucania, Apulia and Bruttium remained for campaigning. All his campaigning was now defensive, as indeed it had been since Capua went under siege. His approach to the walls of Rome in 211 (even if it left the Romans with an imperishable memory of danger and alarm, and the proverbial cry ‘Hannibal at the gates!’) would remain the only time he ever sighted his enemies’ city, a futile gesture five, if not six, years too late. 136

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More and more the Romans were waging the war as though Hannibal was not really there, or was there only as a nuisance—like a buzzing wasp—to be ignored or deflected. It still cost them dearly at times, notably in the battles fought in 210, 209 and 208; and yet Hannibal failed to capitalize on the momentary advantages he thus won. Second Herdonea and the death of the proconsul Fulvius Centumalus simply prevented the Romans from taking that town as they had hoped, while the ensuing drawn battle of Numistro against Marcellus merely gave Hannibal the opportunity to retreat out of Lucania into Apulia. These battles were really defensive and reactive: it was the enemy who were now usually taking the initiative and the Carthaginian general who largely had to stand on guard to repel their unending thrusts and slashes at what was left of pro-Punic allied Italy. Likewise his semi-success at Canusium in 209, against Marcellus again, merely gave him the opportunity to march from there into Bruttium to save Caulonia from attack by the Sicilian and Bruttian irregulars—and the upshot was that Fabius the Delayer meantime retook Tarentum. Intentionally or not, the Romans had diverted the general from the main game: he had not been so outmanoeuvred since Fabius had trapped him in Campania in 217. Nor did success attend his ruse to entice the Delayer into moving out from Tarentum against Metapontum or, as we shall see, his stratagem in 208 to recover Salapia nearby.6 Ironically (and he may have been aware of the irony) the man who had effectively launched the entire war was in danger of becoming irrelevant to it. By the end of 208 his one hope of regaining the upper hand in Italy, and with it a last chance for overall victory, rested on his brother Hasdrubal’s longdelayed but now-begun march to Italy with a new army.

III Hasdrubal had become the general in command of the Spanish territories once Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees. He stayed in command for ten years, until leaving for Italy at the end of 208, the longest Spanish tenure of any of the Barcids. The other generals operating with him—Hanno in 218, and later his brother Mago and Hasdrubal son of Gisco—must then have been subordinate to him even though in practice they sometimes acted separately. Polybius offers a glowing assessment of the middle Barcid brother: brave, resourceful, prudent, and throughout his life worthy of his father. But in various situations he emerges less ideally. Notably, he was not good at imposing his supposedly superior authority on his lieutenants. Some years later he reached the point where he could not get on even with his own younger brother Mago (and in his final battle he was completely unable to control his contingent of Gauls). And already in 218 strategic liaison with Hanno, the officer in charge north of the Ebro, was unsatisfactory. When Cn. Scipio arrived with the army sent on by his brother the consul, 137

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the Romans were able to land at Emporiae, make their presence felt as far as the Ebro—180 coastal miles (290 kilometres) to the south—and defeat and capture Hanno at Cissis near Tarraco. Only then did his superior arrive from the south. Unless his information-gathering methods were much more inefficient than his brother’s, it is hard to imagine that Hasdrubal had had no inkling of the approaching invaders while they moved along the south coast of Gaul, and that word of their arrival at Emporiae fell on him like a bolt from the blue. He would know that Hanno’s 11,000 men were bound to be outnumbered, and he could have joined him from New Carthage in just a few weeks. It looks as though Hasdrubal had suffered dangerous complacency.7 Nor did he show himself a first-class commander the following year, when he decided to take on Scipio by sea and land only to have his fleet soundly beaten at the mouth of the Ebro. The catastrophe seemingly cancelled his interest in fighting on land as well: another strategic mistake, since Cn. Scipio was soon joined by his brother with reinforcements. This confirmed the Roman grip on Spain-beyond-Ebro and exacerbated the danger to the Punic position across the peninsula. Then, when in early 215 Hasdrubal received some reinforcements from Africa and again moved north, he was even more soundly defeated on land, at the battle of Hibera near the Ebro again. If nothing else, he was proving that he was no master of warfare like his brother. More important, if Livy is right that he had been under orders from Carthage to lead an army to Italy, then Italy was saved.8 Hasdrubal suffered—or gave himself—trouble too in his treatment of Carthage’s Spanish allies and subjects. The Celtiberians, between the Tagus and the Ebro, were not effectively under Punic control at all and any effect from Hannibal’s lightning campaign of 220 had worn off; reportedly they or some of them turned hostile in 217 and distracted Hasdrubal from his Roman foes for the rest of that year. Nor could he reimpose respect afterwards, even though from 214 to 212 he had the time to try: they were later on happy to sign up—if only temporarily—with the Scipios instead. Again, he so harshly criticized the Spanish captains of the ships captured by Cn. Scipio at the Ebro in 217 that (according to Livy) they deserted and sparked a rising among the ‘Tartessians’ in 216 serious enough to delay his advance against the Scipios; in fact it lasted into 214. Later still, early in 209, Hasdrubal is found campaigning against the Carpetani, so relations with them too had definitely turned negative. Not all of this need have been his fault. If a general could not rebuke his underlings for slack performance in combat, his rôle was compromised. The Carpetani had not relished being crushed by Hannibal in 220 or having a large force of warriors dragged off in 218 to fight outside Spain (these had had to be sent home). With the Romans actually in the country, service abroad no doubt had poor appeal to many other Spaniards too, as Livy attests at the time of the battle of Hibera. Again, when in 209 the northern Spanish lords Indibilis and Mandonius, after a decade or more of enthusiastic loyalty, 138

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were provoked into defection by Punic high-handedness, the culprit was not the governor of Spain but his lieutenant Hasdrubal son of Gisco, who had gone so far as to seize their womenfolk as hostages.9 Even so, these thorny and at times fractious relations with such a variety of Spaniards stand in contrast to how the earlier Hasdrubal, in particular, had handled affairs only a decade before. Nor was it a good sign that in so important matter as dealing with Mandonius and Indibilis—who contributed greatly to the destruction of the Scipio brothers in 211—he could or would not control a subordinate. As for the Tartessians, if the name in Livy is correct these had been Hamilcar’s first conquest: a quarter of a century’s Punic rule plainly had not won them over and, on a reasonable guess, their revolt now may well have been due to Punic demands for money and men, something for which the governor again was ultimately responsible. It is striking too that, with the war intensifying in 217 and 216, Hasdrubal called for and was sent reinforcements from Africa, first a body of 4,500 and then an army under one Himilco. In 215 yet another army was sent under the third Barcid brother Mago: all this even though Spain itself was supposed to be a reservoir of first-class fighting men. This supports Livy’s notices about the Celtiberians turning hostile and the Carthaginians having to combat provincial rebels too. Plainly Hasdrubal’s leadership left something to be desired. Given these stresses in Spain, it is risky to trust Appian’s unsupported claim that Hasdrubal was called back with part of his forces to North Africa to fight the newly hostile western Numidian king Syphax. Syphax’s enmity developed in 213 (fostered by the Scipios, who even sent him an army officer to train his troops) but Appian or his source probably confused Hasdrubal the Barcid with another Hasdrubal: perhaps the son of Gisco.10

IV The Roman invasion thus soon began to have damaging impact on the structure and security of Punic rule in Spain, even if Livy’s account of the Scipio brothers’ campaigns offers too many suspect Roman victories and Carthaginian setbacks. As the case of the disgraced ships’ captains and the Tartessians illustrates, and then later episodes like Hasdrubal’s war in Carpetania, the Roman war shook (predictably enough) the old yet still not very old Punic hegemony, much of which had been imposed by force or the threat of force. And as Punic hegemony faltered so did Hasdrubal’s political authority— to judge from Hasdrubal son of Gisco’s actions and the ensuing bad blood between him, his nominal boss and the latter’s own brother Mago. This all flowed from Hasdrubal’s early failure to repel the Roman invasion. The Scipios’ main achievements were to bar him from Italy and weaken Punic control in Spain. Just how they did it is hard to follow, since Livy’s details of marches, sieges and battles all over southern Spain are too often 139

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questionable—for instance a claimed advance to the Castulo region in 217 after Cn. Scipio’s naval victory, and a sweeping campaign all over the Baetis valley supposedly in 214. Advancing to the Castulo region makes no strategic sense in 217, and according to Polybius the Ebro was first crossed by both brothers together, later that year. Other reports of fighting in 215 and 214 have aroused doubts too, and only Livy’s account of the brothers’ destruction in 211 has been generally accepted (even then, his date of 212 has to be corrected).11 Scepticism may go to excess. Even the impact of the battle of Hibera in 215 is occasionally but needlessly doubted, and the brothers’ rescue in late 217 of the Carthaginians’ Spanish hostages from Saguntum—thanks to a resourceful Spanish chief who tricked the city’s Punic commandant into sending them away—is circumstantially reported by Polybius as well as Livy and can be believed. Even the account of their southern Spanish campaign in (supposedly) 214 offers some plausible-sounding topographical details—for instance Castrum Altum, identified as the site of Hamilcar’s death, Castulo as the hometown of Hannibal’s wife, and Iliturgi nearby—and Appian reports the pair wintering around Castulo. Very likely Livy’s source misdated this campaign from 212, for he adds that the Scipios re-established the surviving Saguntines in their town and that this was seven years after Hannibal had taken it. Besides, Appian has the brothers campaign successfully in the south in 212 before wintering there. Probably they had sought to break the stalemate of 214–213 with an ambitious drive into the Punic–Spanish heartland.12 But after initial successes their momentum faltered. Instead, in 211 Hasdrubal and his confrères scored stunning successes. First P. and then Cn. Scipio and their separated armies were overwhelmed—Hasdrubal’s first and, as it proved, only major victory over Romans—with the sterling aid of the northerner Indibilis and the Numidian prince Masinissa. Yet Hasdrubal’s limitations as general and governor now saved the enemy from total annihilation. The remnants of the Scipios’ forces were able to retreat all the way north, cross the Ebro and regroup; even if Hasdrubal eventually marched northwards in pursuit, as Livy and others claim with decorative fictions about Roman victories, quite plainly the surviving Roman troops were not dislodged from Spain-beyond-Ebro. More than that, reinforcements arrived from Italy: first under C. Claudius Nero and then more in 210 with his replacement P. Scipio, son and youthful namesake of the late proconsul.13 One reason for Punic inattention may have been that the enemy no longer seemed a threat; another, mentioned earlier, was that Hasdrubal and his lieutenants—his brother Mago, and Hasdrubal son of Gisco—quarrelled furiously after victory and each went his own way. These were hardly adequate excuses. Both reveal a surprising level of miscalculation and irresponsibility. Worse still, they fatally compromised Punic and Barcid fortunes in Spain.

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I The Second Punic War most plainly reached stalemate in 211. In Spain, Hasdrubal destroyed the Romans’ invasion of the south and killed the Scipio brothers. In Italy, Capua surrendered to the consuls Claudius and Fulvius, and Campania fell out of Hannibal’s orbit. Syracuse had already been taken by Marcellus; Macedon was no threat to the Romans or help to Hannibal. The Romans maintained 21 legions and 100 or more warships. Stalemate dragged on in 210: Hannibal won at Second Herdonea and effectively at Numistro, but neither was decisive and the strategic reality stayed the same. The Romans might not be able to crush him, but he could no longer threaten them, or even safeguard all his remaining allies from them. Hasdrubal in Spain let the Roman forces keep their coastal footing beyond the Ebro, though they had no strength for wider ventures. Observers of the war might well suppose that it would drag on for a very long time, even a quartercentury like its predecessor. What impact this had at Carthage can only be estimated, but by 210 the war must have stopped looking hopeful. Hannibal no longer won smashing victories; Hasdrubal failed to follow up his defeat of the Scipios. Finances must have been under pressure: there can have been little benefit any more from captives or booty, though a raid on Sardinia in 210 garnered some. At the same time costs were surely higher than ever: troops had to be levied and fitted out in North Africa for expeditions overseas, some to Spain, others to Sardinia and Sicily; funds had to be sent too. Again, by these middle years of the war large and therefore expensive Punic fleets existed. As many as 155 warships operated under Bomilcar’s command outside Syracuse in 212 and later that year 130 sailed to Sicily and Tarentum. True, most other Punic fleets recorded were half this size or less, but they still cost money and no fleet achieved great success. Nor did the Carthaginians even manage to ward off repeated Roman raids on their coasts yearly from 217 to 215 (though in the first two they did inflict some losses when the Romans landed) or fresh attacks from 211 on, which according to Livy inflicted much damage.1 141

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If these unpromising conditions weakened Barcid political dominance at Carthage, it would be no surprise. Hardly anything is known of domestic alignments in these years but it is not plausible that Hannibal and his supporters continued to dominate affairs as easily as before. Other figures, with their own interests, had to be taken into account—Hasdrubal son of Gisco being the most notable. As we saw earlier, he (not Hannibal’s brother) was probably the general sent against the western Numidian king Syphax in 213. He then went to Spain, probably late in 213 or at the start of 212, as a lieutenant of his Barcid namesake, and no doubt as an ally of the Barcids: he would hardly have been sent otherwise. On the other hand, as already noted, he was plainly an independent-minded officer whom the Barcid Hasdrubal found hard to discipline. He must already have held both seniority and prestige, for after Hasdrubal left for Italy in 208 the son of Gisco and not the Barcid brother Mago took over the Spanish command. Livy describes him in Spain as the most distinguished Punic general apart from the Barcids, and in North Africa later as ‘the first man in the state by far’. By 205, in fact, Hasdrubal son of Gisco probably commanded a backing at Carthage equal to the Barcids’. Besides Livy’s description of his eminence the poet Silius, borrowing this or using other information, describes him frankly as the man in charge there. Again, when he commanded in North Africa from 205, he had no known Barcid lieutenants (notwithstanding an officer named Hanno son of Hamilcar) and acted very much as his own man. Then in 204 he was to win the newly reconciled Syphax, who by then had made himself master of all Numidia, as husband for his daughter, the famous and accomplished Sophoniba. Rather than being a follower or protégé of the Barcid group, Hasdrubal looks very much like a high-ranking Carthaginian aristocrat—no less high than Hanno the Great, for example—with his own following and resources. Originally no doubt he had allied with the Barcids for patriotic and personal reasons, but even as early as 211 he had begun to assert his independence. If he could be the prime figure at Carthage after losing Spain, his political position must have been remarkably strong; it would no doubt have been stronger without his unfortunate talent for incurring defeat at Scipio’s hands. A good deal of his support probably came from men who had hitherto backed the Barcids but were growing disenchanted with the war’s progress. The war-effort outside Italy had always had to be left to the local commanders for practical reasons, even if Hannibal remained the final authority, and when the Romans invaded Punic North Africa it was hardly possible for him in Italy to try to direct the defence of the homeland. Hasdrubal son of Gisco, resilient and energetic despite his setbacks, was the obvious one to take charge. He thus became the local man of destiny—briefly. It was his misfortune that, after helping the Barcids to destroy the Scipio brothers in Spain in 211, all his tireless energy never won him another victory over the Romans. 142

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Nothing suggests that he and the Barcids were at loggerheads, even if he was not part of their faction. As just noted, they collaborated in Spain. In Africa, after Scipio the younger destroyed his and Syphax’s armies in their camps in 203, he and the Barcid faction together were to rally the Carthaginians to a new effort, including the recall of Hannibal from Italy. True, according to Appian even when Hannibal returned Hasdrubal continued to operate on his own until he met an untimely death: but quite apart from the fact that independent operations do not prove antagonism, Appian’s details of the war in North Africa need to be treated very cautiously, as we shall see.2 Another hint to a weakening of Barcid dominance at home is the rise in political power of the ‘order of judges’: probably meaning, as we saw earlier, the tribunal of One Hundred and Four. By 196 the ‘judges’ were, Livy reports, the dominant element in the republic—and an arrogant and corrupt element at that. Of course they had always been important (and doubtless arrogant and corrupt too), but this had not prevented the Barcids from controlling Punic affairs since Hamilcar’s time. Many members of the Hundred and Four by 211 owed their position to Barcid support; some surely were kinsmen or close allies of Hannibal; and many other ‘judges’ had no doubt found advantage in being aligned with the Barcids. But Barcid dominance relied on success and its profits and prestige, all of them declining assets after 210. As the war went on, the bulk of the Hundred and Four—all of them senators, and no doubt the senators with most influence and status—probably needed Barcid support less and less. More and more, by contrast, the Barcids would need to bargain to gain support from the Hundred and Four. Hasdrubal son of Gisco looks like the strongest of their allies, and it may be more accurate to see Punic affairs, by 208 if not earlier, as being run not by Hannibal’s family and supporters alone, but by a coalition of Hannibal’s group and Hasdrubal’s.3

II For in 209 the fortunes of war turned against the family and Carthage. After four years on the Punic side, Tarentum in Italy was recaptured by the Romans under Fabius the Delayer thanks to a lovesick Bruttian captain changing sides—a stratagem quite in Hannibal’s own class, and compounded by the Romans’ success in luring him away beforehand into Bruttium. In Spain the three discordant Punic generals had betaken themselves to widely separate locales in the centre and west of the peninsula; they thus allowed an improbable new Roman leader—26 years old, with no previous experience of high office or independent command, notable only for being the son and namesake of the dead proconsul P. Scipio—to lead a bold thrust down the coast from the Ebro and capture no less a prize than New Carthage the day after he arrived outside its walls. 143

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Hasdrubal and his colleagues had managed yet another misjudgement. They must have heard of young Scipio’s appointment to Spain or else his arrival at Tarraco—not to mention the 11,000 fresh troops he brought with him—but they failed to send even a detachment to keep an eye on the Ebro line and left barely 1,000 troops as garrison at New Carthage. To unjustified strategic complacency, in other words, they added a disastrous misestimate of the new general. Maybe they had viewed the appointment of another Scipio to Spain in quasi-Barcid terms—as a political move to ensure the loyalty of Spain-beyond-Ebro that his father and uncle had won, but with his youth and inexperience posing no serious military problems for them. That young Scipio should match the Barcid model militarily too, by proving himself a better general than his father and as much a master of the unconventional as Hannibal, must have come as a shock—including to Hannibal over in Italy.4 Not only was Scipio’s booty from New Carthage colossal but, at a stroke, he effectively cleared the Carthaginians from eastern Spain, threw them onto the defensive and won over a growing number of Spanish peoples and princes. Even the Ilergetans Indibilis and Mandonius, veteran enthusiasts for Carthage though they had been, now decided on a policy reversal. This series of misfortunes paralysed the Carthaginian leaders’ judgement. They not only waited in the south for Scipio’s next onslaught, though he had withdrawn to Tarraco for the winter, but also—because of their continuing antagonisms, according to Polybius—failed to unite their armies or even bring them into supporting distance of one another. As a result, in 208 Hasdrubal confronted the enemy by himself and with inferior numbers. Once he had taken up a hilltop position at Baecula near Castulo, he showed no tactical flexibility (except for extricating part of his army after defeat): Scipio pinned him down frontally and then shattered both his flanks. But the Roman did not pursue the defeated troops as they retired northwards because he would risk attack from the other Punic armies too. This is a damning implication for what the three Carthaginians might have achieved had they co-operated closely against him from the start.5 Even before Baecula, if the sources are correct, the Carthaginians had revived the scheme of Hasdrubal marching from Spain to Italy to reinforce his brother. This had first been mooted in 216–215, only to be quashed by the Scipio brothers’ victory of Hibera. The reason for reviving it now was drastically different—no longer to strengthen a victorious Hannibal as he moved to force their foes to peace, but to bring him help in a last effort to retilt the military balance and stave off final Roman victory. Scipio let Hasdrubal go, confident that the 12 legions in Cisalpine Gaul and Italy would cope with the new invader and intent on prising the rest of Barcid Spain from the Carthaginians’ grasp. His confidence was sound.6

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III By now Hannibal could manage only negative wins. In the same year 208 he mauled, but failed to destroy, a Roman corps marching against Locri. Then an ambush on a hill in Lucania killed Marcellus, again consul, and mortally wounded his colleague Crispinus, but the coup gained little: Crispinus alerted allied communities against deceptive use of Marcellus’ signet ring and Hannibal’s try at capturing Salapia backfired badly. The locals let in his advance body only to shut the gates and slaughter the men. The incident may even have cheated him of a victory over the consuls’ combined armies, for they reportedly had been keen on a battle—one that, judging by past form, he might well have won. If so, Hannibal had defeated himself. Crispinus now took care to avoid fighting. The general did succeed, by a classic speed-march, in sweeping away a Roman force besieging Locri where his friend Mago the Samnite was commandant, another negative win. In effect he was down merely to defending his status quo in south Italy. Plutarch reports that after the loss of Tarentum he had told his lieutenants there was no longer any possibility of conquering Italy: in other words of winning the war. The report may be true, even if the general spoke in a moment of atypical gloom. As noted earlier, Hannibal was in danger of becoming irrelevant to his own war.7 Hasdrubal’s approach therefore offered the last hope for regaining strategic dominance and, with it, final victory. Moreover victory had to be won, and be seen to be won, in Italy. Not only was it virtually impossible to force the Romans to peace through winning in Spain (the events of 211 had shown that); but success in Spain under Hasdrubal son of Gisco, counterbalanced by defeat—or just stalemate—in Italy, would see the Barcids’ already fragile primacy at Carthage collapse. The political and dynastic achievements of Hamilcar, his son-in-law and Hannibal himself were at stake. By contrast, if Hannibal could combine his veteran army with his brother’s new forces he could revive the possibilities of 216 and 215, with better prospects. Forty or fifty thousand trained and experienced troops—plus whatever Gallic contingents Hasdrubal might recruit on the way—would enable him to force battle on the legions that dogged his path yet refused to fight, or open the way to Rome and the blockade that he ought to have mounted after Cannae. It might encourage Philip V to re-enter active warfare against the Romans. The blow to Roman morale and resources, after so many years of struggle, could be terminal. The Romans recognized this well enough. Six legions guarded northern Italy, seven were spread across the south from Capua to Bruttium and two waited in reserve at Rome. For the new consuls of 207 they turned not to well-used veterans like Fabius Maximus, Q. Fulvius Flaccus or M. Valerius Laevinus, but to a surprising combination recommended by the Senate. Along with the competent if unspectacular C. Claudius Nero, who had commanded 145

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in Spain before young Scipio’s arrival and more recently had served under Marcellus in southern Italy, they elected the oddest choice of the whole war— M. Livius Salinator, consul in 219 but afterwards convicted of embezzling booty, and since then a total outsider to affairs. The combination was all the odder because the two men thoroughly disliked each other. What prompted Livius’ fellow-citizens into appointing the two of them to cope with the crisis can only be guessed, but the wily old Fabius Maximus, who through the Senate prevailed on them to accept reconciliation, plainly saw potential.8 Hasdrubal had left Spain during 208 with a rebuilt army, wintered comfortably in southern Gaul and marched for the Alps in spring 207. He crossed these, reportedly by the same route as his brother but without any losses, arrived in Cisalpine Gaul earlier than his foes expected, and added large numbers of Gallic and Ligurian warriors to his forces. This was a textbook example of efficient achievement, very unlike Hannibal’s messy experience 11 years before. Hasdrubal was a skilful general as long as he was not facing opponents. Once on hostile ground he began to make mistakes, his first being an unnecessary siege of the Roman stronghold Placentia on the river Po. His aim was to impress the region’s Gauls, but this backfired since he failed to take it. Worse, it lost him the momentum he had won by his early arrival in Italy. The new consuls had time to join their armies: Livius in the north, Nero watching Hannibal near Tarentum. Hasdrubal gave up the futile siege and moved south-eastwards to the Adriatic coast. Everything now hung in the balance. The fortune and future of Carthage depended on his joining up with Hannibal.9

IV Hannibal knew he was coming. Locri, Metapontum and other ports still gave contact with Carthage, while new prisoners and deserters could tell of the Romans’ plans and anxieties. If he were to stay in Apulia or Lucania, Hasdrubal would have to march most of the length of the Italian peninsula, 250–300 miles (400–500 kilometres), to join him—all the while fending off Livius and the other Roman forces that would swarm to block his path. It would make eminent good sense instead for Hannibal, whose knowledge of the terrain was now unrivalled, to move northwards to link up with the newcomers in or near Cisalpine Gaul. How fast he could move even in these times he had shown in 211 with the march on Rome, followed by the extraordinary lunge down to Rhegium, and again in 208 in his lightning thrust to raise the siege of Locri. As senior general it was his responsibility, too, to fix the arrangements with his brother, if only in broad terms initially while leaving greater precision to when the armies came closer.10 Hannibal did little of either. Livy’s account has some oddities and maybe a textual error, but plainly shows him prowling restlessly around Apulia, 146

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shadowed by Nero and his watchful subordinates and unable to break away. This from the general who had pounced out of the mist on Flaminius and broken free of a trap laid by no less a foe than Fabius. He could not even get messengers or officers through to his brother to concert plans—or he did not try. It was left to Hasdrubal the newcomer to send off half a dozen riders, Numidians and Gauls at that, southwards in search of the Punic army of Italy. They carried a despatch asking Hannibal to link up with his brother’s army in Umbria. Surprisingly enough they did penetrate all the way to Metapontum, where Hannibal had last been reported. But they found him gone—and as they doubled back searching for him they fell into the enemy’s hands. Had Hasdrubal sent Roman or Italian deserters, this setback might have been avoided.11 Hannibal’s behaviour almost gives the impression that he had decided to leave it entirely up to his brother to try to make contact and to propose how to join their armies. Since he sent no messengers to Hasdrubal—or even if he did—he had to expect that Hasdrubal would seek to send some to him; but he left no guides or escorts in any of the allied centres (like Metapontum) where such messengers might come looking for him. He moved around southern Italy, apparently seeking to break away from the Romans but in effect going about in circles. Livy first has him marching from near Larinum in Apulia towards the Sallentine peninsula, the heel of Italy, before the consul Nero’s arrival in the region. ‘Larinum’ may be a textual mistake for Tarentum, but such a manoeuvre looks pointless anyway; if it was a decoy force which later Roman historians misunderstood, the decoy-attempt failed after a collision with a Roman propraetor. Next—wherever he himself had really been—the general swung away south to Bruttium, gathered reinforcements and moved north into Lucania; he fought scrappily with Nero at Grumentum, went on to Venusia and another scrappy encounter, then southwards to Metapontum for more troops (recruited in Bruttium by Hanno). After that he moved once again to Venusia and came finally to rest near Canusium in northern Apulia. Some of these marches and battles may well be Roman exaggerations, as Hannibal’s alleged losses surely are, or else doublets (for instance the double set of Bruttian reinforcements). If all his movements are reliably reported, he must have covered at least as much ground as in a march from Bruttium to Umbria. In any case the outcome is clear. He advanced no further north than to Canusium, and there he came to a stop.12 One view is that, all along, Canusium was where he intended Hasdrubal to join him, contrary to his brother’s call for them to meet in Umbria nearly 200 miles (300 kilometres) farther north, but this is hardly plausible. He may have had a high estimate of Hasdrubal’s abilities, but it would have been asking too much: even supposing the latter could fight his way down the length of Italy he would have arrived with an army shrunken and devastated. Nor can Hannibal have notified his brother of any such intention, seeing that Hasdrubal 147

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was expecting him to come north—yet not to notify him would have been unbelievable folly. Much more likely, the halt at Canusium was meant to give messengers from his brother a chance to find him so that, at last, they could concert their moves. The idea that Hasdrubal’s despatch about Umbria was a deliberate red herring, meant to mislead the Romans, is hardly plausible either. It would mean that Hasdrubal sent off no genuine message at all or, if he did get one through, that it had no effect (for it is quite unlikely that a genuine message would tell Hannibal simply to stay quiet in Apulia while his brother fought his way down). Claudius Nero took the despatch with deadly seriousness. He warned the Senate at Rome to station the urban legions at Narnia and himself took an action that changed history. Hasdrubal’s proposal for a junction in Umbria was asking a lot of his brother, but no more than the task Hasdrubal himself had undertaken. Both were facing powerful enemy forces with limited numbers. Umbria was nearer Cisalpine Gaul than Apulia, but Hasdrubal had crossed over from Spain and now had to make his contested way from the Cisalpine plains through unfamiliar hills, dales and mountains. Hannibal knew the country and had proved to the world his skills in moving swiftly and in eluding foes. If they could join up, Umbria offered a notable strategic advantage: the fertile Tiber valley and the major new road from Ariminum to Rome, the Via Flaminia. This is a clue to Hasdrubal’s thinking, which may well have been his brother’s too if they had been in touch, via Carthage, before the younger Barcid left Spain or while he was en route: the joint armies should make Rome their objective. A vigorous redirection of the war-effort, breaking free from the frustrating cul-de-sac of Apulia and Bruttium, would be a bold move quite in Hannibal’s style. It would not mean abandoning the pro-Punic Italians of the south to Roman mercies. The towns were garrisoned, his indefatigable nephew Hanno could be left with a mobile army once more and, if Hannibal and Hasdrubal did join forces and menace Rome, the bulk of enemy forces in the south would more or less inevitably be drawn northward too.13 Beyond that we can only guess at the brothers’ hopes. To move against Rome would have to mean first defeating the swarms of Roman forces that would gather against them. Hannibal, eager for another and more conclusive Trasimene or Cannae, would be ready for that. A big victory or series of victories in the north might bring over some of the Etruscan cities, wavering and unhappy in their loyalty to the Romans and already a worry to the consul Livius. In fact the Romans knew or at least suspected that some Etruscan help had already reached Hasdrubal: later on a commission was set up to investigate how much and by whom. More Gauls would surely flock from Cisalpina to join the Barcid standards. Hannibal had probably heard too how, in 209, 12 of the 30 Latin colonies had declined to supply further levies for Roman armies, claiming physical exhaustion—a refusal they were still 148

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persisting in. Three of the recalcitrants lay in Umbria and Etruria: a major victory there might entice even them to change sides, and that might draw in others as well. Everything would build pressure on the Romans to concede peace at last. And even if that took time to happen, at Carthage meanwhile the insecure dominance by the Barcids and their friends would be immeasurably fortified.14

V Whatever the possibilities they envisaged, the brothers’ failure to keep in touch—or even to try very hard at keeping in touch—was a planning disaster second only to the costly crossing from Spain to Italy 11 years before. Hasdrubal’s mistake in making only one effort at contact was outdone by Hannibal’s failures, first to make any contact-effort at all and then, far too early in the campaigning season, to give up trying to move nearer the northern theatre of operations. Whether he thought there was still plenty of time—or came to despair of being able to achieve a junction—he thereby made effective nonsense of his brother’s coming to Italy. His inactivity stands in glaring contrast to the consul Nero’s reaction once Hasdrubal’s captured despatch was interpreted. After alerting the authorities at Rome and ordering the urban legions to Narnia, he selected 7,000 men from his army (1,000 of them cavalry), left a subordinate in charge of the rest, and led the select corps by forced marches to join his colleague Livius. Provisioned by the communities along the route and joined by many volunteers, his force swiftly reached Livius’ army near Sena Gallica without Hannibal realizing where he had gone or even that he had gone. Hasdrubal did notice that Livius was reinforced (despite the consuls’ efforts to hide it) but was brought to battle beside the river Metaurus on 22 June. As usual he displayed no great generalship; by contrast, Claudius Nero again did. Prevented by an intervening hill from clashing with the enemy wing opposite, he marched some of his troops round behind Livius’ heavily engaged forces to take Hasdrubal’s Spaniards in flank and rear and roll up the Punic army. Hasdrubal had no flanking cavalry and his elephants proved useless. With the battle and the whole expedition lost, he spurred into the mêlée for an honourable death.15 This self-immolation aroused admiration in Polybius and Livy, and many others since, but arguably was another act of ill-judgement. Not all his army was destroyed and the surviving troops—anything between 5,000 and 15,000—managed to get away as a body, though it seems they afterwards dispersed. Had Hasdrubal survived to rally them in retreat he might have maintained a resistance in Cisalpine Gaul to distract the Romans and then to reinforce his brother Mago when the latter landed in northern Italy two years later. He would have enjoyed much support: much of Cisalpine Gaul was furiously anti-Roman and even after Hannibal’s war ended fighting went on 149

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there, some of it led by a Carthaginian officer who had been there since 205 or even 207. At the least he would have denied the Romans a grisly propaganda coup. Nero bore the dead man’s head back to Apulia and flung it at the feet of a Punic outpost, to be taken to Hannibal.16 Hannibal had sought Flaminius’ body after Trasimene to give it proper burial, and had honourably buried the slain Aemilius Paullus after Cannae and Marcellus the year before this. But it was not for some generations yet that the Romans’ hatred and fear of their invader would change to a grudging admiration. Hasdrubal was the first Carthaginian general in the war to fall in battle against them, in contrast to three consuls and three proconsuls since 217; besides, in the Romans’ eyes he with his brothers had brought on this whole calamitous war. Nero’s barbarism is comprehensible though not laudable.17 Hannibal recognized the import of the gift: he saw in it (Livy makes him say) ‘the fortune of Carthage’. He could not win the war in Italy any more. Now it had always been obvious that defeat for his brother would mean this: which makes it all the more extraordinary how completely he had been outgeneralled by the Romans. Not only had Nero brought him to a stop at Canusium, but the general then let himself be cajoled into remaining there while the consul vanished with a sizeable contingent. Nero supposedly gave out that he was leaving to subdue a still-hostile Lucanian town and its Punic garrison. If this item of disinformation crossed to Hannibal it at least told him that the Romans were dividing their forces right in front of him, and that a nearby stronghold of his was in danger. If he did not hear it, he might at least have noticed afterwards that the enemy forces facing him were fewer and have received some reports or rumours of Nero’s vigorous dash for the north. True, Livy implies that march, battle and return march all took a mere 12 or 15 days, but even that would have given time enough to take advantage of the situation. In any case modern scholars plausibly urge that so short an interval is hardly believable, for Livius’ army and the Metaurus were a good 300 miles (400 kilometres) from Canusium. The longer Nero really was absent, the less can Hannibal be absolved from the error of culpable inactivity. It was his last chance to exploit Hasdrubal’s arrival in Italy: either to strike at the remaining Roman forces in turn (the rest of Nero’s army under an untried subordinate, Q. Catius, and the propraetor Fulvius Flaccus in Lucania) or indeed to imitate Nero and lead a flying column north to join Hasdrubal (Hanno could replace him in the south). The latter move would have been more like the Hannibal of the early days—and would probably have brought about a different outcome at the Metaurus.18 Instead he paid the price for waiting on events. He abandoned Lucania, abandoned even Metapontum—forcing its citizens to follow him—and withdrew into Bruttium, with Croton, Caulonia and Locri his seaports. Roman armies followed, watchful as usual but uninterested in battle. Too weak to 150

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break out, too strong to be attacked, Hannibal and his men would spend the last four years of the epic expedition virtually under open siege in this corner of Italy, while the fortunes of the Carthaginian state went from one disaster to another.

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I After the Metaurus Hannibal made no further military moves apart from guarding his south Italian turf—not always successfully even there, for the rich prize of Locri would fall to the enemy in 205. To judge from his actions, or lack of them, he had decided to wage only a holding action with the forces left to him. He would hold on as long as possible, to distract the enemy from fresh thoughts of invading Africa—though it was being raided almost every year—while hoping that Hasdrubal son of Gisco might somehow turn the tables on young Scipio in Spain, as the dead Hasdrubal had done against Scipio’s elders. This was not much of a hope, for the son of Gisco had shown (and would show) as little aptitude for defeating Romans as Hasdrubal the Barcid had. Nor would the prospect be all that pleasing if he did. Mago was with him, but any lustre he might win would be secondary. A successful son of Gisco would pose nearly as great a danger to the Barcids as would defeats, for it would mean an independent gaining victories while Hannibal could not. This decision for holding tight was a strange one. The Carthaginians’ wareffort was far from exhausted. A new general and new army had been sent to Spain late in 208 or early in 207 and fresh forces were raised among the Celtiberians—even though Livy reports Scipio’s subordinate Silanus as swiftly defeating Mago and the new general and taking the latter prisoner. But Hasdrubal son of Gisco once more raised a powerful army to confront him in battle in 206, an army of colossal strength according to Polybius’ figures— 70,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, almost the size of the mighty Roman army of Cannae. Whatever the right figure, the Carthaginians plainly still had enough resources as well as energy to achieve an armament which they hoped would finally crush the invader. Of course Scipio put an end to that hope at Ilipa and by the end of 206 Punic rule had ended throughout Spain. Hasdrubal betook himself back to Africa, leaving Mago to fight whatever rearguard actions he wished. The youngest Barcid was ruthless—when Gades showed itself fickle, he seized 152

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and crucified its chief magistrates as a payback—and energetic, as in his effort en route to the Balearic islands to repeat Scipio’s coup of capturing New Carthage, but no more successful than the son of Gisco in delaying the total loss of his father’s empire.1 Yet Punic resourcefulness was not finished. When Scipio sailed across to Syphax’s coastal stronghold Siga to try winning over the Numidian (it would have been a major coup if he had), he found Hasdrubal son of Gisco a fellow-guest of the king, and Hasdrubal secured Syphax for Carthage despite Scipio’s charm. Hasdrubal could offer a unique inducement—his daughter Sophoniba as Syphax’s new wife—but more than romance was surely needed to bind the Numidian’s loyalty. He must have reckoned that in Africa at least the Carthaginians’ prospects still looked better than a Roman invader’s. Syphax before long improved his and his new allies’ position by making himself master of all Numidia. Originally he was lord of the Masaesyli of western Numidia, and it was Naravas’ brother Gaia who as lord of the Massyli held the east. He had been firmly loyal to the Carthaginians’ and the Barcids’ cause, and his son Masinissa had rendered years of sterling service in Spain. On Gaia’s death in 206 the old king’s brother and successor Oezalces married a young niece of Hannibal’s—one of his sisters’ daughters—thus carrying on the tradition of Barcid links to Numidian royalty. Hannibal, as head of the family, must have approved the marriage and very likely had initiated it, to ensure that the Massylian alliance would continue in spite of recent Punic disasters. With Syphax on friendly terms too, thanks to Hasdrubal son of Gisco, it meant that all Numidia should be secure against Roman blandishments. But Oezalces’ early death, and contacts between Masinissa and the Romans, brought trouble. Oezalces’ elder son and successor soon fell to the machinations of another ambitious lord, Mazaetullus, who forcibly put the younger brother in place of the elder, became the power behind the new throne and took Hannibal’s widowed niece as his own wife in hope of Carthaginian support—another token of the Barcid group’s continuing potency. Hannibal may have acquiesced in this coup (at any rate Mazaetullus and his puppet king were afterwards allowed refuge in Punic territory), but Masinissa now ousted the ousters to make himself master of the Massyli. Syphax, prompted by his new father-in-law, then ousted him in turn and united the whole of Numidia under his own rule. Hasdrubal’s political strength at home can only have profited from the success of his son-in-law. Nor was Masinissa’s overthrow a blow against Barcid interests: his enemy Mazaetullus had won Punic favour by marrying Hannibal’s niece, whereas his own contacts with the Romans were suspected or known by now at Carthage. The Numidians united under a pro-Punic king were plainly preferable to a Numidia divided and its eastern folk under a dubious or even hostile ruler.2 Mago meanwhile was given command of a new expedition from the Balearic islands to Italy, this time by sea with 14,000 troops, including about 153

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2,000 cavalry. After seizing Genua (today’s Genoa) on the Ligurian coast in 205, he received nearly 7,000 more men and even a few elephants, not to mention substantial funds for hiring extra troops. This again points to collaboration between the Barcids and Hasdrubal son of Gisco: the forces and funds committed were substantial, the military move plainly serious—in fact it was the Carthaginians’ last overseas effort. On the other hand, Mago’s landing in Liguria, 550 miles (900 kilometres) or so from his brother at the opposite end of Italy, was only the latest peculiarity in the war-effort. Had he tried for Bruttium and had just some of his troops got through with or without him, they would have contributed more to Hannibal than the whole force did when deposited in Liguria, too few in number to dent the Romans’ north Italian array and too far away to be any use to the general. No doubt Bruttium would have been a hazardous attempt, with Roman fleets patrolling, but ancient fleets always had difficulties doing this—and in any case in 206 the Roman fleet in Sicily had been cut from 100 warships to 30. In 203 Hannibal would take himself and at least some troops over to Africa quite safely.3 Moreover the Carthaginians still had warships even if no fleet after 211 numbered as many as 100. Despite Roman naval might, in 209 and again in 207 a Punic fleet operated in western Greek waters, intending to support Philip of Macedon’s campaigns in Greece—though it failed in this and its absence from south Italian waters in 209 aided Fabius’ recovery of Tarentum. True, in 208 Valerius Laevinus won a victory (the biggest of the war) over the 80 ships that tried to stop him raiding North Africa. But more ships could have been built and may have been—to judge from the naval activities in following years and seeing that, when peace was made in 201, Scipio had large numbers of war-vessels to burn. In other words, the Carthaginians in these years still had significant naval resources, but used them poorly.4 Now operational matters were still Hannibal’s to direct. This is shown not just by Polybius’ insistence but by such evidence as there is. For instance the expedition to Liguria: it is hard to imagine why an anti-Barcid faction, if it now held power at Carthage, would choose their enemy’s brother as commander. Not only was Mago chosen but he was later reinforced and supplied with copious funds. Hannibal surely had to be consulted at least, and quite probably he was the initiator. Again, on his own return to Africa in 203 he continued in supreme command: Hasdrubal son of Gisco, hitherto in inglorious charge of home defence, had been sacked and his interim replacement was—according to Appian—Hanno son of Bomilcar, who sounds like Hannibal’s nephew (and, if Appian can be believed, it was Hannibal who saved Hasdrubal from vengeful prosecution at Carthage). Obviously the general did not and could not direct operations in detail in other lands and at sea, any more than a Roman emperor did in later times. Details were the business of the commanders in situ. In the same way he had to leave it to the authorities at Carthage to administer Punic North Africa, 154

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gather and embark troops and supplies for abroad, and organize defence against raids or invasion. But ultimate responsibility for major initiatives had to be his. Nothing suggests that he had to impose his wishes on a reluctant home government or was thwarted at times by one—even if later on the Carthaginians chose to claim so. Had he opposed the fleets being sent to Greece, it is hard to imagine they would still have gone. Had he directed the home authorities to send him regular supplies and money, they would have made the effort, as in fact they did in 205. And had he wished Mago’s fleet and the later reinforcements to sail for southern Italy, that would at least have been tried. But on naval matters Hannibal had always been a landlubber. As was suggested earlier, most naval initiatives stemmed probably from Barcid kinsmen or supporters at Carthage, where the main fleets remained based. Even where he probably had originated an initiative—for instance sending a fleet into Etruscan waters in 217, and the fleet that sailed to Tarentum in 211 to prevent enemy ships from resupplying the citadel—he still had to rely on others to carry it out. This was a bad handicap when the quality of Punic naval commanders was unimpressive. Bomilcar, the most active of them, had been energetic but largely unsuccessful and is not heard of after 211 anyway. It may well have seemed attractive, even rational, to send fleets over to Greece in hopes of encouraging Philip V. It may have seemed more sensible too for Mago to head for a part of Italy where he was totally unexpected, avoiding the perils of being intercepted or being confronted by Roman forces as soon as he landed. That such initiatives could only indirectly affect the real war-effort, while spreading around resources that would have better been focussed on south Italy, was a fact that obviously failed to affect the planning. In other words the naval advice offered to Hannibal in these later years, and any naval moves he himself devised, were second-rate—to term it mildly. Opportunities were not taken, bold though risky efforts not even (it seems) considered, and instead available resources were ineptly used. This ineptness, compounded with his own caution on land, reduced his strategic rôle during these years to a nullity.5 The energy and resourcefulness that had once typified him now showed itself instead in the Romans: the consul Nero in 207, and more lastingly P. Scipio the younger in Spain. Scipio, though frustrated in south Spain by Hasdrubal son of Gisco in 207, reinvaded the following year and overthrew the Carthaginians in a mighty battle at Ilipa near either Hispalis (modern Seville) or more likely Castulo. He won by putting his legions on either wing through an involved but skilful manoeuvre which outdid in subtlety anything Hannibal had ever tried and which was too much for the son of Gisco. It must have confirmed to Hannibal that the Romans had produced a commander who could equal him. He surely reckoned it was only a matter of time till they met.6 155

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Scipio’s efficient follow-up to his victory drove Hasdrubal over to North Africa and Mago to the Balearic islands, though Mago did make some lastditch efforts to keep a foothold on the mainland. Once Gades had surrendered, Carthaginian rule in Spain—created by Hamilcar Barca, consolidated by Hasdrubal his son-in-law and extended furthest by Hannibal—was over. Apart from Hannibal’s cramped zone in Italy beside the Ionian sea, Carthaginian territory now was limited to North Africa itself. The Romans’ next target was obvious.

II It would be easy to blame the Barcids’ enemies at home for wrecking Hannibal’s prospects, and their own country’s, through failing to send help to him in Italy and showing greater devotion to the war-effort in Spain. Livy offers the latter claim at just this stage and he and other ancient writers have Hannibal complain in 203 about being denied resources and left in the lurch—thanks to Hanno the Great, Livy has him add. Many moderns agree: Hannibal was let down by the home authorities. The truth, though, looks more complex.7 No doubt Hannibal’s and his supporters’ position at home suffered, probably badly, after the Metaurus. Eleven years after leading the Punic state into war he was holed up in a corner of Italy, and the Spanish empire—the Barcids’ greatest gift to their fellow-Carthaginians—was close to collapse. Hasdrubal son of Gisco had become its prime defender and he, as suggested earlier, was an independent leader in his own right though allied with the Barcids: an alliance probably due to patriotism and expediency rather than any personal or family closeness. Yet this cannot mean that Hannibal’s and his supporters’ influence in affairs collapsed. Livy’s and others’ claims that he lacked home support simply continue the litany dating back to Fabius Pictor (and probably Fabius’ Carthaginian contacts) who blamed the entire war on the Barcids to exonerate the rest of the aristocracy. Even if the home authorities had turned hostile, there was no profit for them or their city in trying to make Hannibal’s life miserable. Were his position to become untenable or he to be destroyed, it would simply free the Romans to unleash their fury on North Africa. In any case the historical record does not support the notion. Least of all did old Hanno the Great and his friends benefit from Barcid misfortunes. The Carthaginians in reality remained full of fight. When C. Laelius raided North Africa in 205 they certainly suffered alarm and fear, but Livy then attests them taking energetic and wide-ranging defensive measures—raising troops, gathering munitions, readying the fleet. With Hasdrubal son of Gisco back home by then and effectively in charge, this vigorously practical reaction is explicable. Livy’s picture of the Carthaginans’ gloomy spirits, even if he based it on comments in an informed source, is at best overdrawn and 156

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certainly is no pointer to anti-war feeling. They were to remain pugnacious even amid disaster in 203, as their spirited reaction to Scipio’s destruction of Hasdrubal’s and Syphax’s camps and armies would make clear; and so did their dealings with Scipio later in 203, as we shall see, even though by then Hasdrubal’s repeated defeats had eclipsed him politically. Even after Zama in 202 a prominent senator urged them to fight on, and when Hannibal unceremoniously shut him up the rest of the Mighty Ones, far from approving, were so annoyed that the general had to apologize. When peace was finally made in 201 a younger leader of the dogged Hanno the Great’s anti-Barcid circle—yet another Hasdrubal, obscurely nicknamed ‘the Kid’—assured the Roman Senate that even though he and Hanno had long been urging peace on the Carthaginians, they had been ignored.8 Interestingly enough, after the Metaurus and Ilipa no one at Carthage seems to have suggested that the time had come to make peace-overtures. In 255 when hard pressed by the invading Regulus, the Carthaginians had offered to talk, and report or legend had it that some years later they sent the same man, now their prisoner, to urge peace at Rome. Arguably it would now be in their own best interests to see whether they could reach some sort of compromise settlement—even if it meant sacrificing Spain. But had any overture been made we should have heard of it, for Roman annalists would hardly let such a sign of weakness slip by unmentioned. Perhaps Hannibal, Hasdrubal and their countrymen felt that the Romans, who had refused to negotiate after Cannae, would take nothing less than unconditional surrender (an opinion almost certainly wrong, as Scipio’s terms in both 203 and 202 were to show). Perhaps they felt too that even now the situation might change if only Hannibal held on. More of the Romans’ exhausted allies might withhold men and munitions, as several had from 209 on; the general might yet win a big victory in the south; in Spain, till 206, or afterwards in Liguria, the other Punic commanders might pull off a lifesaving success; Philip V might somehow master Greece and be able to lend help; Numidia unified under Syphax could help make Africa unconquerable by invaders and that in turn might prompt the enemy to offer terms. Barcid pride and self-interest would contribute as well. Appian tells a story set during the siege of Capua in 211 in which Hannibal refuses to relieve the city because, he says, if the war were to end he would lose his generalship. This looks like an invention or, if based on fact, like an ironic Hannibalic joke put into the wrong context: it would better illustrate his position and his worries around 206. Returning home under a compromise, after all the expectations of victory, would be not just humiliating but politically perilous. It would certainly end his supreme command, and with it what was left of Barcid primacy in the state.9 But refusing to consider offering terms was not just Hannibal’s personal attitude. As mentioned above, his fellow-Carthaginians, senators and ordinary citizens, were ready to fight on. The very fact that their homeland and 157

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city were now liable to be invaded no doubt strengthened their resolve—just as the invasion of Italy in 218 had strengthened the Romans’. Politically the danger may well have buttressed Hannibal’s own authority despite his setbacks and strategic isolation. After all, as war-leader they had no ready alternative: Hasdrubal son of Gisco, however formidable he had become in domestic affairs, still had no aura of victory against the Romans, though he would keep trying. Thus the Carthaginians’ overall commitment to the war meant continuing to support the Barcids in practice—and any others who also devoted themselves to it, the son of Gisco most obviously. By now Barcid political primacy can have rested only on the qualified consent of other leading aristocrats, notably the son of Gisco and his supporters, and so on a great deal of bargaining, compromise and give-and-take; plus the fact (as it seems) that no one wanted to give the primacy to Hanno the Great and his anti-war circle. Whether much enthusiasm continued for Barcid political primacy may be doubted. After 207 all the factors that had brought Hamilcar and his successors their mastery of the state had dwindled: charismatic leadership (with Hasdrubal dead and Hannibal becalmed), continual victories, territorial expansion and regular widely shared booty. All that the Carthaginians had left was the darkening war, and memories. The élite tribunal of One Hundred and Four, in particular, need not have felt that it or the republic owed all that much any more to Hannibal and his family and friends. There was no question of attacking him in the midst of the war, or even of attacking him at all (it did not happen after the war ended). But equally there was no need for sentiment. If he could yet save something from the wreck of Punic fortunes, there would continue to be room for him and his followers at the highest levels of public life. If he could not, he and they need not expect to play a major rôle in Carthage’s future. Many other aristocrats, no doubt including former friends and protégés of the Barcids themselves, were ready to take on that rôle—especially members of the Hundred and Four. In other words, during these years the dominance of the ‘order of judges’, as Livy terms them, was very likely emerging, or more accurately re-emerging after decades of Barcid overshadowing.10

III In 205 P. Scipio, barely 30 and now consul, took command of Roman forces in Sicily with a commission to prepare the invasion of Africa. The opponents of this project, led by the old and cautious Fabius the Delayer, demanded total concentration on Hannibal first: ‘let there be peace in Italy before there is war in Africa’, says Fabius in the speech Livy gives him. Not only would invasion mean a new army outside Italy for the hard-hit Roman treasury to maintain, but the thought of what Hannibal might yet do while their best 158

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general was overseas was worrying to many Romans (in Livy, Fabius frets that he might even march on the city again). Even though the opponents of invasion were outvoted, their worry was clearly shared by others, for Scipio was not allowed to conscript troops but only to accept volunteers, as well as using the forces already in Sicily—the survivors of Cannae and other disasters, some of them already in their twelfth year of service. This gave him some four legions, though he also had a fleet. Hannibal in south Italy was still watched by as many as seven. The sharp anxiety felt by so many Romans about Scipio’s project testifies to the fear that Hannibal still caused. This even though he was doing almost nothing in his region: in 206 he gave the consuls a fright in a gorge near Consentia, then let them bring Lucania back to heel while he stayed quiet in Bruttium. He spent some of his time composing the record of his military career which, the year after, he set up as an inscription in both Punic and Greek in the temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium (now Capo Colonna, the name commemorating its ruins) near Croton. In the far north he had a brother equally cautious or sluggish. Had he shown greater energy and a spark of his old inventiveness, he could well have excited such fresh alarm at Rome that Fabius’ side would have won the debate against Scipio’s. That was surely now a major part of his mission in Italy—to keep Africa free of invasion. Instead of trying to fulfil it, the general busied himself with his memoirs, a discouraging sign. During the year, though, he did come near to a confrontation with his new rival. Locri went over to the enemy but one of its two citadels remained Punic-occupied. The standoff drew both Hannibal southwards from his cantonment and Scipio from Messana in Sicily. The Romans under Scipio made a sortie as Hannibal’s army moved up to the assault—and Hannibal withdrew, followed at night by his Locri garrison. It was a performance neither glorious—Scipio beat him to the city and kept his prize—nor particularly skilful, but fateful. Scipio with a few thousand Roman troops at Locri was surely outnumbered even if Hannibal came south with only part of his army. Destroying him would have prevented Zama and so, even now, have changed history. No further opportunity offered itself. Instead an epidemic of some kind struck the region, damaging both the Roman forces there and—more severely—Hannibal’s, which Livy reports as also short of food. Livy avers elsewhere that the general controlled too little territory to guarantee enough local produce for his men, but since he then seems to have had no food trouble in 204 and 203 maybe the harvest was poor in 205. His shortage would have been eased had a supply fleet from Carthage, 80 strong, made it to his coast but—in yet another lacklustre Punic naval performance—this was blown wildly off-course into Sardinian waters and taken by the Romans.11 In 204 Scipio sailed from Lilybaeum in Sicily to Africa, landing at Utica, 30 miles (50 kilometres) north of Carthage. Although he had only 40 warships 159

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to escort his transports, the Carthaginians’ fleet completely but predictably failed to intercept him or fall on him as he disembarked; and although they had known for a year that he planned to come, they had no proper forces in hand to confront him. This hardly reflects well on Hasdrubal son of Gisco’s leadership in Africa. Instead the city suffered a ferment of alarm and feverish preparation—exactly as one year earlier when Laelius raided—while the Roman army set about establishing itself on Carthaginian soil and was joined by the exiled Masinissa. The first Punic efforts against it were left to small cavalry forces with predictably disastrous results. Then by the time Hasdrubal and his son-in-law Syphax mobilized proper armies, it was winter and—even though they had Scipio cooped up on a narrow peninsula, with his fleet beached and communications overseas seasonally impossible—they were content to set up their camps not far inland from his. Syphax, encouraged by Hasdrubal, even began negotiations with him about a compromise end to the war. Hannibal’s priorities amid all this are a puzzle. During the same year he scrapped inconclusively in Bruttium with the Romans and lost still more strongpoints, including Consentia and Clampetia—probably his last footholds on the western side of Bruttium. The following year’s campaigning was yet more inconclusive (Livy merely repeats some of the events of 204 without noticing the doublets) until he was recalled home. All this while Punic Africa was invaded by the enemy’s foremost general, who threatened Carthage with direct attack and in 203 was to win one victory after another. It is hard to see what prevented Hannibal from returning in 204 rather than waiting, as he did, until his countrymen had suffered these devastations and defeats. Arguably the Romans might have intercepted him at sea en route, but the risk was still there in 203 when he did cross successfully. The squadron guarding the Italian coasts was only 50 strong in 204 (though it fell to 40 in 203); in fact the Romans’ overall naval strength in the earlier year was less than in the later one. Returning in 204 would have put at his disposal the resources and armaments, including the Numidian allied forces, with which Hasdrubal confronted Scipio in 204 and 203—disastrously as usual—and to them Hannibal would have added his veterans from Italy.12 The reason for staying where he was was more likely political than military. As was noted earlier, the leading Carthaginian in North Africa by 204 was the son of Gisco: an independent partner now, with his own friends and following. By 204 Hannibal and his supporters could run Carthaginian affairs only in coalition with such an ally, and this would require allowing Hasdrubal scope to exercise authority. If so, the command in Punic Africa, whatever his actual title and official relation to Hannibal, was Hasdrubal’s price for supporting the Barcids politically. So too with the negotiations over winter 204–203 between him and Syphax on one side and Scipio on the other. Syphax played (or Scipio led him to believe he was playing) the mediator’s part, while it was Hasdrubal who spoke 160

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for the Carthaginians. No doubt, for political reasons, any agreement would have had to gain Hannibal’s approval, but nothing suggests that Hannibal was consulted or even kept informed as the talks proceeded—something the winter would have made difficult anyway. All the same, the terms that Syphax proffered with Hasdrubal’s blessing, and that Scipio for a time professed to find agreeable, were ones that Hannibal surely would approve at this bleak stage of the war. The Romans should evacuate Africa, the Carthaginians Italy, and each side should keep ‘the positions in between’ that they currently held. This effectively meant ceding Spain too to the Romans, even if it was not expressly mentioned: in other words, sacrificing what the Barcids had built. But Hannibal, though he might grieve at the sacrifice, was certainly realistic enough to face what had to be done to achieve peace. He was, it seems, willing to offer much the same a year later when he met Scipio before Zama.13

IV Scipio, it turned out, was using the long-drawn-out talks to lull his opponents’ alertness and spy out their two camps. He finally told them that while he liked the terms, his counsellors did not, and left them to infer that the talks were over. Yet the terms were essentially those he offered later in 203, and close to those he imposed after the battle of Zama in 202, after more battles and vastly more bloodshed. True, these later terms had extra clauses, notably a heavy indemnity and limitations on the Carthaginians’ war-making capacity. By contrast the implication in Syphax’s terms, so far as we have them, was peace on the status quo alone. Did Scipio decide it was worth continuing the war to squeeze those extra concessions out of the Carthaginians, as a way of reducing the Carthaginian state to impotence? That is possible: yet then it is puzzling why even the final terms were not more sweeping. In the peace of 201 Punic Africa was not bound tightly to Roman dominance, for instance by making Carthage and other cities like Utica and Hippou dependent Roman allies, even by annexing some Punic territory. Hannibal himself was left unmolested and free to hold further office—conceivably even a fresh generalship. True, by then Numidia was under the rule of Masinissa, who in the following decades would prove a thorn in the Carthaginians’ side, but this was hardly foreseeable in 201. Masinissa had had close Carthaginian ties before and his notorious episode with Hasdrubal son of Gisco’s daughter Sophoniba in 203 might be a warning that such ties could easily be resumed. Plainly such possibilities did not trouble the Roman peacemaker. Did Scipio have much larger aims initially, say the total dismemberment of the Carthaginian state, and so break off the talks to achieve them—only to find the ensuing campaigns, including the one in 202 against Hannibal, so arduous that he had to scale his aims down to the terms finally imposed? It is 161

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unlikely, for the victories he won were not all that costly to him (even Zama cost only some 1,500 Roman casualties) and after Zama the Carthaginians lay at his mercy. Nor was the notion of dismembering the Punic state ever raised, any more than the idea of sacking and destroying Carthage itself. Did he, then, break off the talks so as to chase military glory against Hasdrubal and inevitably Hannibal? He was running the dual risks of being defeated in battle or being replaced by another ambitious commander who fancied his own abilities (as more than one consul did in the coming years). But if he was anywhere near as confident in his own genius as Polybius, other ancient writers and many moderns believe, these were risks he would judge worth taking for the sake of imperishable renown. He may even have hoped that the surprise destruction of Syphax’s and Hasdrubal’s camps and armies might liquidate those leaders too, putting Carthage with one stroke at his mercy.14 If so he was disappointed, but the survival of both men did them little lasting good. While Hannibal prowled around his virtual cage in Bruttium under the watchful eyes of the usual Roman armies, Hasdrubal energetically as usual—within 30 days if Polybius’ figure is right, but more probably within 50—raised fresh troops from the city and countryside, made a rendezvous on the Great Plains 75 miles (120 kilometres) inland with a new Numidian army likewise put together by Syphax, was also joined by some Celtiberian mercenaries just arrived from Spain, and then with them and Syphax was shatteringly defeated by Scipio all over again. Only the doomed valour of the Celtiberians allowed Hasdrubal and his local forces to escape. Syphax, pursued all the way back to his own land, was soon beaten and captured by Masinissa and Scipio’s lieutenant Laelius, a prize which led his capital, Cirta, to surrender. This brought much of the Numidian kingdom into Masinissa’s hands, with Scipio’s blessing once the new king got rid of Syphax’s wife with whom he had rashly fallen in love, Hasdrubal’s beautiful daughter Sophoniba.15 At the same time the fleet at Carthage bungled an attack against Scipio’s ships at anchor near Utica, an attack that might have done something to redress his land victory if the fleet commanders had fully exploited Scipio’s absence inland. Instead they waited until his return march took him to Tunes, from where he could see their ships put out to sea. They then took overnight to reach the Romans’ roadstead, allowing him to get by land to his encampment and organize defence. As a result the Punic attack was beaten off with limited Roman losses. This last action in the war by the navy of Carthage lived up to the ineptitude it had shown more or less consistently since 218. Hasdrubal son of Gisco now disappears from Polybius’ and Livy’s narratives. Appian may be right that his infuriated fellow-citizens removed him from his generalship, even voted his death—a common penalty in pre-Barcid times for military failure. Much more dubiously, Appian has him raise a rough-and-ready force on his own account, including slaves, and carry on 162

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resistance to the Romans for a time (a friendly tradition may have invented this). During 202, according to Appian, he died—forced to kill himself to avoid being lynched by an angry mob in the city. Dead in any case was his pre-eminence in the state. If his faction did not completely disintegrate, at least many of its members must have betaken themselves elsewhere. With few of them likely to gravitate to Hanno the Great’s peace-group, the biggest beneficiaries of his ruin were probably the Barcids. If Appian is right, the new general by land was Hanno son of Bomilcar, who as noted earlier may be Hannibal’s nephew, last heard of in Bruttium in 207: if so Hannibal must have sent him back to Carthage. But whoever did take over the command plainly could do little except await the enemy’s next move, and press Hannibal to come home.16

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I With their only ally Syphax fallen, Hasdrubal’s generalship discredited, the countryside open to the invader—and already inclined to rebellion, Polybius claims, because of heavy war-taxation—and Scipio preparing to blockade their city, the Carthaginians had only two real alternatives: seek terms from the enemy, or carry on the fight and recall Hannibal and Mago from their useless footholds in Italy. Dispirited yet still pugnacious, the Punic senate promptly did both. This was not due to a compromise between peace-inclined doves and warlike hawks in the aristocracy. Not only was the most obvious peace-group, Hanno the Great and his friends, sidelined as before but such a combination of peace-moves and war-moves was not so much a compromise as a selfcontradiction. Everyone had to be aware that at some stage—not too distant—the Carthaginians would have to choose one course or the other and stick to it. Even if a faction of doves did push the senate into seeking terms, they could have got their way only with support from a majority of senate and citizens: the same senate and citizens who equally supported recalling the Barcid brothers. But though doves there surely were at Carthage (Hanno the Great’s circle at least) they probably played little part in 203. When the time to choose came later that year, the great majority chose war and there is no evidence of opposition from any doves. More likely the decision to seek peace-terms and simultaneously send for Hannibal and Mago was pushed through by the same men: the battered but still vigorous Barcid group of kinsmen and supporters, now probably enlarged by ex-supporters of the fallen Hasdrubal, maybe led by the new Punic field commander Hanno if this was Hannibal’s nephew, and in collaboration with other bellicose senators. This coalition could command a majority in the senate and its inner ‘sacred council’, and hold the support of the tribunal of One Hundred and Four and of the citizen body generally. Hannibal and his supporters thus had one last chance to restore Barcid dominance enduringly—so long as they won the war or, at the very least, did not lose the peace.1 164

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Seeking terms and simultaneously sending for the brothers now became official decisions of the Carthaginian state, decreed by its senate and backed by its citizens. The Romans could scarcely see them in any other light and the Carthaginians never denied it. There was in other words an element of insincerity, if not duplicity, built into the approach they made to Scipio. This makes sense only as a calculated risk. The most that the Carthaginians could now hope for from peace-terms was to keep Punic North Africa intact while giving up everything else, and even this they could not count on. Far harsher Roman demands were conceivable: not only a heavy indemnity but territorial cessions, the destruction of the navy and the ports, even the surrender of Carthage itself to Roman occupation like so many other cities in the war. The only bargaining-chips left were Hannibal, Mago and their armies. Yet for bargaining purposes the brothers were useless in Italy. The Romans had their measure. That summer Mago was defeated and seriously wounded in Cisalpine Gaul, putting an effective end to his expedition and making his brother’s even more questionable. Plainly not even a new march on Rome (even were it feasible, as Fabius Maximus reportedly feared) would deflect Scipio in Africa. If things continued this way, the last three fading foci of Punic power—Hannibal’s army, Mago’s, and Carthage itself—would merely wither separately into ultimate surrender. But if all three could join forces, there was still a chance of ending the war on less than disastrous terms. The fighting spirit at Carthage would be reinforced, Scipio would face the risks of battle against the greatest general of the age and might prefer to compromise on moderate terms, and if warfare did drag on there might yet be pressure at Rome to end it on such terms. There was, too, the possibility of Scipio being replaced by another commander—who more than likely would be easier prey for Hannibal. From the Carthaginians’ point of view it was not just sensible but even essential to recall the Barcids at the same time as they sought peace, and what looked sensible at Carthage cannot have looked otherwise in Bruttium. It cannot be supposed that Hannibal was ignorant of the peace-talks that now opened with Scipio, or disapproved of them. He may even have known (from prisoners or traders, for instance) that by now, in the greatest irony of the war, the Roman Senate was anxious to keep him and Mago in Italy and had ordered the consuls to see to it, obviously to prevent the brothers from complicating Scipio’s life. But it would take time to organize transport to Africa and, if hostilities there were pressed meanwhile, his countrymen— already suffering hunger under the Roman blockade—might yet be forced into capitulation. Peace negotiations made military sense. The same calculations would be obvious to Scipio. But he took a calculated risk too: that if strong enough pressure was put on the Carthaginians before the Barcid brothers could leave Italy, he could force a victorious end to the war. It is much less likely that he wanted a pause merely so that Hannibal could return and be defeated by him. Not only was any battle’s outcome 165

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unpredictable, as Regulus had found in 255, but at least one consul in 203 was keen to supplant him in Africa so as to win that glory for himself, and Scipio had no guarantee that the next year’s pair would leave him alone either. According to Livy, his trusted lieutenant Laelius in person made it clear to the Senate that Scipio did not want Hannibal and Mago back in Africa until peace was made: a comment distorted in Livy’s telling, as we shall see, but in itself probable enough. If peace was made the Barcids would still have to come home, of course—but peaceably. Even after Zama, Scipio was uninterested in capturing or humiliating Hannibal. Had lasting peace been made in 203, he would no doubt have been satisfied with the brothers returning and entering civil life and their armies being disbanded. In sum, an early peace was attractive to him too, so long as it made the Romans’ victory clear. Thus both he and the Carthaginians, for quite opposite reasons, had reason to press on with talks.2

II The talks were not lengthy. The thirty senators of the ‘sacred council’ went to Scipio at Tunes and prostrated themselves Persian-style before him and his war-council—quite possibly an exaggerated flattery for the Romans’ benefit, since prostration is not otherwise known among Carthaginians and, a Polybian excerpt reports, the envoys even kissed the Romans’ feet. This certainly riveted the Romans’ attention. According to Livy the envoys proceeded to lay all the blame for the war on Hannibal and ask for fair terms. Polybius’ account does not survive but, in seeming contrast, the later excerpt has a Roman spokesman remind the Carthaginians that their envoys had accepted all the blame—obviously in the name of the Punic state. Even so this does not disprove Livy’s report. Hannibal was the elected generalissimo of the state, acting in its name and sanctioned by senate and citizenry. Even if they sought to blame him for devising the war, they could not deny that the republic had agreed to it (and had told the Roman envoys so in 218). At worst Livy is guilty of focussing on the envoys’ blame of Hannibal to the exclusion of any broader admission by them. Roman historical tradition, moralizing and cantankerous towards foes, was partial to such an individual focus. As for the envoys, blaming the absent general was a predictable rhetorical and diplomatic ploy which Scipio did not take seriously (his terms for peace said nothing about war-guilt). Later, though, some Romans were to prove credulous, like the historian Fabius Pictor.3 What is noteworthy is Hannibal’s uninvolvement in the negotiations, both now and later at Rome. The sources narrate him and his doings as though these were an entirely separate affair, and none records him being consulted on the transactions or even being told of them. This is hard to believe, given 166

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that the Romans were aware of his relevance and given that he was the generalissimo of Carthage. As suggested earlier, he must in fact have approved of negotiating to gain time. In turn, once negotiations began it was important for him and Mago to reach Africa as soon as possible. This left a critical contradiction at the heart of the ensuing peace agreement. As noted just now, it was obviously necessary for this to require the Barcid brothers to leave Italy but, no less obviously, the Romans expected them to take their armies back for demobilization. After all it would be nonsensical to make peace on condition that the enemy’s overseas forces be brought back but be allowed to continue making war. This inference surely seemed too obvious to need spelling out. But there was no formula in the agreement imposing demobilization. Very oddly, as noted above, our sources in practice treat Hannibal and his men, and Mago’s, as virtually outside the talks and the terms. Even Polybius (but his account does survive only in extracts) seems to view Hannibal as an autonomous player on his return. How this could legally have been so is hard to see, but in practical terms everyone seems to have viewed him as such. Scipio seems to have taken it for granted: he did not call on the Carthaginians or Hannibal himself to make the returned forces obey the terms, or complain that they were not doing so, but instead treated the war as under way once again. By then the Carthaginians had given him other, more overt grounds for doing this, but it was implicit from the moment Hannibal and his army landed from Italy and did not lay down their arms. When in mid-203 the dominant figures at Carthage—the Barcid group and whoever else now gave them support—sought to negotiate, they surely saw these possibilities. So could Scipio; for him the key to achieving peace was to achieve it quickly, so that Hannibal on returning would find a fait accompli. His terms were therefore clear-cut. They were along the lines of Lutatius’ in 241, but of course harsher: Roman prisoners, deserters and runaway slaves to be handed over; the Barcids to evacuate Italy; Spain and all the islands between Italy and Africa (essentially meaning the Balearics and Ebusus) to be renounced, an indemnity paid, and the Roman forces in Africa meanwhile provisioned with substantial quantities of wheat and barley. And, the starkest proof of all that Carthage was beaten and would stay beaten, the navy was to have no more than twenty warships. He gave the Carthaginians three days to accept or refuse his terms. Of course they accepted. An armistice was called, with (it seems) oaths being exchanged to observe it, and envoys were sent off to Rome under escort by a Roman officer.4

III The Punic envoys arrived there some time after Laelius had presented the fallen Syphax to the Senate and news had come in of Mago’s and Hannibal’s 167

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departures. As Syphax had been captured late in June, the envoys reached Rome probably in August or September 203. Both Polybius and a short papyrus fragment of another second-century Greek account make it clear that the Roman Senate and People approved Scipio’s terms. Livy by contrast turns the Punic envoys’ reception by the Senate into burlesque. They ask the Romans to renew the peace-terms of 241, not to ratify Scipio’s—which nobody discusses at all—and are shouted down. Then, following other senators’ sharp comments, Laelius opines that the whole thing is a trick to buy time and that Scipio had counted on the Barcid brothers not leaving Italy; since in Livy’s account the brothers have already left, the plain implication is that Laelius now opposes peace. The Senate finally sends the envoys home empty-handed and authorizes Scipio to prosecute the war vigorously. This rejection is hardly believable, nor is it to be saved by drawing on Appian’s version of events. He has the Punic envoys go to Rome without any terms from Scipio at all, and so the Senate sends over senators to work out terms with him; then, once Scipio announces these—with some extra clauses not in either Polybius or Livy—the peace treaty is agreed. This account matches neither Livy’s nor Polybius’: like Livy it claims that the Senate did not at once ratify Scipio’s terms, but it gives this a different cause (no terms to ratify); from some other source it imports the otherwise unattested senatorial commission sent to Africa, and adds extra clauses to the ensuing terms; then it confirms, as Polybius does, that peace was ratified. Rather than an independently trustworthy narrative this is normal Appianic confusion, due to compiling a single narrative out of several incompatible (and imperfectly understood) sources—including ones used by Polybius and the historical fragment, plus another which added extra provisos to the peace-terms. Yet even Appian has a peace treaty agreed on, unlike Livy. Dio in his turn has ‘the Romans’ (plainly meaning the Senate) refuse to receive the Punic envoys until the Barcid brothers leave Italy; wrangles then follow over whether or not to ratify Scipio’s terms—which Dio has not bothered to detail—till finally their ratification is voted. The wrangling may be authentic (Scipio did not have only admirers among his fellow-senators), but Livy’s report that earlier the Senate ordered the consuls to keep the Barcid brothers from returning to Africa and that, according to Laelius, Scipio agreed with this, make more sense. It was not convincingly relevant, even if Dio thinks it is, that King Pyrrhus’ offer of talks 75 years earlier had been turned down because he was an enemy on Italian soil: the Romans had had no troops on Pyrrhus’ soil, so the strategic situations were quite different. Nothing suggests that the Senate in 203 would prefer upholding a recently minted ‘tradition’ to exploiting realities. Dio quite possibly took the claim from the source Livy was following, but otherwise his account basically conforms with the dominant version of events—that the Romans ratified Scipio’s peace.5 168

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Livy’s version of what happened at Rome can only be following a peculiarly tendentious narrative which would not accept that a peace had been agreed on as early as 203. But even if he was drawing on Coelius Antipater or Valerius Antias, regular sources of his, it does not follow that this version was purely Roman-inspired. As often pointed out, it would have pleased Roman historical tradition much more if the Carthaginians did agree to peace-terms only to break them soon after (confirming the Roman image of ‘Punic faith’). By contrast, to claim that the Romans refused after all to make peace was a line more likely to appeal to pro-Carthaginian writers, for it would explain and justify Hannibal’s continuation of hostilities in Africa. Besides, proCarthaginian accounts did not cover up the armistice with Scipio and the Punic embassy to Rome—these are in all our surviving sources, with no hint of a different tradition—so they would certainly need to lay the alleged failure of the peace at the Romans’ door. Livy’s claim may thus reach back to a pro-Carthaginian account, though he gives it a pro-Roman angle. On the other hand he surely acquired from a Roman writer the supposed details of how individual senior senators reacted to the Punic envoys. Yet what he reports of those senators’ comments, even Laelius’, is not totally hostile to the Carthaginians and not totally improbable. Quite possibly the acerbic Livius Salinator did complain about peace-terms being discussed in the absence of both consuls (he was ignored) and possibly too Scipio’s friend Q. Metellus did urge the Senate to accept what the proconsul decided. Possibly again Valerius Laevinus did grumble that the envoys were just spies and ought to be deported; genuine or distorted, his comments in Livy provide a transition to Laelius’. Laelius avers that Scipio had expected Hannibal and Mago to stay in Italy, and that the Carthaginians would stoop to any trick to drag out talks until the brothers returned home to renew the war. This way of reporting him suits Livy’s claim that the brothers had already gone: in reality they had probably not yet left Italy and the alleged early departure may be another distortion to help along the notion of Punic ill-faith. But in any case it was natural enough for someone to warn against extended negotiations lest these tempt the Carthaginians into recalling the brothers and renewing the war—particularly if Scipio was keen for a swift peace. So Laelius might well state that ‘Scipio had placed his hope of peace on Hannibal and Mago not being recalled’ and obliquely warn the envoys against trying to prolong the talks (for instance by haggling over terms). Later on these comments could easily be turned into the form Livy gives them.6 Similarly with the Punic envoys’ alleged demand for Lutatius’ treaty to be renewed. Quite possibly they did mention that treaty in their opening statement to the Senate, for it was after all the only previous peace settlement between the two republics and it had not curtailed Carthage’s great-power status. Besides, it had been followed by some years of friendly relations between the two, a useful point to put now. Later on, though, it would be an 169

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easy and cheap ploy to represent any such remarks as just a demand for Lutatius’ treaty to be renewed. A Roman writer with access to details of the discussion in the Senate, but anxious to claim that the senators had rejected treacherous Punic overtures, would thus have little trouble adapting such items to the goal of claiming that the Senate had rejected peace. This was—it seems—a writer who could not believe that the wise Senate of those days would be taken in by Punic deviousness and judged his disbelief confirmed by the pro-Carthaginian source who denied (or ignored) Senate approval of Scipio’s terms. When the Carthaginians seized the Roman food convoy afterwards, the writer could report Scipio complaining that they had broken not the allegedly rejected peace but the armistice and the law of nations—as Livy does, in contrast to Polybius who reports the proconsul specifically referring to a violation of the newly ratified peace. Livy himself probably did not originate the alleged non-ratification, for that would mean he found all his sources—Greek and Roman, pro- and antiCarthaginian—unanimous that the terms had been ratified and yet he decided to contradict them. Such a procedure would be unique in his history and it is hard to see why he would want to do it here. By contrast, if he found the story in a respected enough predecessor (or predecessors) he could feel that he was justified in preferring this version to the one in Polybius. At least one of his Roman predecessors is known to have consulted a proCarthaginian source, Hannibal’s friend Silenus in fact, as well as Roman ones. This was Coelius Antipater, an author happy to invent dramatic details elsewhere in his history of the war. But he was not the only pre-Livian historian prone at times to distortion and invention (Valerius Antias was the notorious example), and other Roman historians too may have consulted non-Roman sources. If Livy himself chose to look up such non-Roman sources, he might feel further reassured about the Senate rejecting Scipio’s terms. But wherever the story came from, it is not one to believe.7

IV By the time the Punic envoys returned from Rome, Hannibal and his army had sailed from Italy and landed in Africa (Polybius makes this clear). According to Livy and Appian he had built transports in anticipation of recall, while a naval escort was provided by a squadron under Hasdrubal the admiral. Most of the veterans cannot have been very good as shipwrights, but men from Croton and other coastal towns could have done the work once the soldiers had felled enough trees. All the same, this would mean that the Roman armies were content to look on, throughout the year, while Hannibal’s men went about obviously readying themselves for departure—a move the Roman commanders were under orders to prevent, and one too that would make a Roman offensive harder for him and his preoccupied troops to resist. 170

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Nor did the Romans make naval efforts to raid or harass his ports while a transport-fleet was supposedly taking shape. On balance it is likelier that, even if Hannibal gathered or built some craft locally, most of the transports were sent over with the escort from Carthage, taking the Romans enough by surprise to prevent them interfering with the evacuation. Even so, it may have taken the Carthaginians some time to collect the necessary shipping. The recall to Hannibal was sent soon after they had news of Syphax’s capture, thus probably at the end of May; but he crossed to Africa only in autumn, late September or early October at the earliest. How many ships he needed is not known, but if he took 10,000–15,000 men to Africa he would have to have a fair number. Scipio with about 30,000 troops, plus 2,000-odd horses, had needed 400 transports the year before. After years of war-spending and ship-losses, with shipping and trade surely damaged by Roman raids and Scipio’s devastations, and with Mago’s forces to bring back as well, the Carthaginians cannot have found it easy or cheap to gather the craft needed. Hannibal also had to take care not to provoke the Roman armies around him into trying to throw his evacuation into chaos. That may have meant waiting for word that the Senate and People had agreed to the peace-terms, which required the brothers to depart. If Livy is right that the Senate was displeased when he did sail, the reason quite likely was that he had not made clear that he accepted the peace.8 Anti-Barcid tradition told lurid stories about his departure: how he sent Hasdrubal the admiral around the towns he still controlled to loot them, and massacred soldiers unwilling to serve in Africa. For Diodorus these numbered no fewer than 20,000, while Livy does not state a figure but puts the slaughter in the hallowed temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium. The townlootings may be genuine (Appian adds the detail that Hasdrubal let the inhabitants leave first) for the general himself might see them as legitimate plunder for his troops: if they did not take it the incoming Romans would. He also may have wanted to gather whatever proceeds he could for the coming campaign in Africa, to lighten the impact on Carthage’s own diminished resources. The alleged massacre is another matter. The tale’s genesis seems to have been the reportedly large number of animals slaughtered, including 3,000 horses according to Diodorus, on the eve of departure because there was no room for them aboard ship—an item supported by the fact that Hannibal had to look for fresh cavalry when he reached Africa. Maybe, too, some troops did mutiny at the prospect of leaving Italy and were duly punished with death: hardly a large number all the same, since the rest of his troops (mostly Italians as we saw earlier) would remain the most solidly loyal corps in his army at Zama. Besides, Polybius insists that throughout the Italian years Hannibal never had to face a mutiny, polyglot though his army was. A major mutiny would have made this claim ridiculous, but the historian might ignore a small one.9 171

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V The army of Italy landed at Leptis Minor near Hadrumetum a good way south-east of Carthage, and at some stage was joined by Mago’s returned force. But not by Mago himself. He had died on the voyage from Italy, another casualty of the disastrous war his eldest brother had launched in 218. Of Hamilcar’s three warrior sons only Hannibal was left.10 Hannibal reached Africa before the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome with the Senate’s approval of the peace-terms. Scipio had thus effectively lost his gamble that peace would have been ratified by now. For even though Hannibal made no offensive move now or during the winter that followed, his military preparations were a plain sign that he meant to fight on. Scipio kept to his camp outside Utica, perhaps unwilling to act until he was resupplied and still hoping that ratification would go through once Hannibal had seen the state of affairs for himself. As suggested earlier, Hannibal returned to a homeland still committed to fighting on under the leadership of his family and its political supporters, with peace-inclined Carthaginians a disregarded minority. Hasdrubal, son of Gisco’s eclipse, may even have enlarged the Barcid group into a sort of coalition of national resolve. As usual, though, other leading Barcid associates get no mention in our records and even Hanno son of Bomilcar disappears, presumably becoming one of the returned general’s subordinates. But for the Barcids this had to be the last throw of the dice. Hannibal had come home to atone for six years of calamities, and had nothing to offer but hope. Many leading men—even many long-established Barcid supporters—can have been willing to continue their support only in return for victory over Scipio and a tolerable peace. So the general was able to build up his forces by levying troops locally and hiring mercenaries, which means he could draw supplies and funds from Carthage and its territory (what he brought from Italy cannot have been enough). But some strain in his relations with the ever more anxious Carthaginians in the city can be glimpsed in their urgings to him to confront Scipio, and his testy reply that he would do so when he and not they judged it right. Outside Punic territory, the Barcids’ old links with Numidian princes remained valuable too. True, Masinissa was in the process of imposing his rule over the whole country, nor is anything more heard of Hannibal’s unnamed niece, Oezalces’ widow and Mazaetullus’ wife, but during 202 the Carthaginian army was reinforced by cavalry under one Tychaeus, a relative of Syphax. Appian names the reinforcer ‘Mesotylus’, probably another Appianic confusion since the real Mazaetullus had surrendered to Masinissa and earns no mention now in Polybius’ and Livy’s more detailed accounts—but all the same this suggests a link between Tychaeus and Masinissa’s enemy. The Barcid–Numidian tie that stretched back to the days of Naravas thus revived, in modified form, for the last throw of the dice.11 172

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Before long the war began again. First of all, Roman cargo ships bearing food-supplies were driven by contrary winds to shore, some on the western coast of Cape Bon and others at the island of Aegimurus—now Zembra—a few miles west of the cape and about 30 from Carthage. The hungry citizens pressured the Punic senate to send out Hasdrubal the admiral (now back from Italy) to seize the laden and deserted ships. Then when Scipio sent envoys by sea to the city to complain, these not only were sent away unanswered and insulted but, on the return trip to his camp, were ambushed offshore by some Punic warships and barely managed to reach safety. Scipio marched into the countryside, capturing towns and ravaging fields, while the harried authorities at Carthage sent messages to their returned but inactive general imploring him to take the field.12 The timings of these events are not clear in our sources. Hannibal and presumably Mago’s forces arrived in autumn 203, but it is not likely that the ensuing events happened soon afterwards. Most modern historians agree that the provision fleet must have been sent in spring 202, and certainly for the Romans to send a large supply-fleet during the treacherous winter months from October to March would have been foolish and potentially disastrous. Nor should it have been necessary, for Scipio’s army had been well provisioned by the Carthaginians. By the start of spring, on the other hand, he would be needing fresh supplies. That he had them sent from Italy means in turn he could not replace them locally—another sign that relations with the Carthaginians had turned chilly. The picture is consistent, had always been predictable—we saw Laelius warning against it—and Polybius makes it clear: once the armies from Italy landed along with Carthage’s undefeated supreme commander, a further trial of arms became preferable to a treaty that finished Carthage as a great power. Polybius writes that most leading Carthaginians and senators saw the treaty as too harsh. As noted earlier, they had surely felt this from the start: the armies’ return cannot have wrought sudden enlightenment. Nor, as we also noted, does anything suggest that at this point a ‘war’-faction wrested power back from a ‘peace’-faction: rather, with the military situation restored the Carthaginians’ real attitude could appear. Plainly enough, most ordinary citizens felt this way—so much so that one tradition, in Diodorus and Appian and with a hint in Livy too, could distort it into bellicose Punic commons versus pacific senate. This tradition (not necessarily Roman-originated) reminds us of Fabius Pictor’s anti-Barcid propaganda, which all but certainly drew on anti-Barcid apologetics in postwar Carthage. The Carthaginians maybe reckoned that since peace had not yet been formally ratified, by them anyway, they were not breaking faith: likely enough, as the Polybian-era historical fragment implies, the requisite oaths were yet to be exchanged. Scipio’s protest at the seizure of his supplies, that they had violated ‘the oaths and the agreement’, must have meant either the armistice, if this was secured by oaths as the fragment implies, or else preliminary oaths 173

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sworn at Rome by the Punic ambassadors whom the Senate had heard. Instead of acknowledging this, the Carthaginians refused to give his envoys a reply and, as the fragment puts it, ‘sent out men bearing war instead of peace’—quite likely an epitomised allusion to the attack on the Roman envoys’ ship.13 That this attack was a fiction of Scipio’s, or of later Roman tradition, to justify his renewing hostilities is implausible. There was no need. The seizure of his supply ships and the Carthaginians’ refusal to answer his protest, still less offer apology or compensation, amounted to unfriendly acts at the very least and could reasonably be judged hostile ones. Not to mention Hannibal’s armed presence in the south-east, the steps he was taking not to demobilize but to build up his forces, and his continuing total silence about accepting or even acknowledging the recent peace. Attacking the envoys on the other hand brought no gain to the Punic state itself: it was most likely a hotheaded folly by the admiral Hasdrubal, with or without prompting from diehards in the city. Even without it, Scipio had little choice but to renew hostilities, and he had the right. While Polybius stresses the anger he felt at the enemy’s recent behaviour, and no doubt it was genuine, Scipio was not reacting merely out of emotion. The Carthaginians might feel, as is sometimes suggested, that they were entitled to seize Roman supply-ships because this was not expressly forbidden in the peace-terms: but merely to put the point shows its frivolity (trying to sink ambassadors was not forbidden them either, but that scarcely made it allowable). Another suggestion is that they refused to answer his protest over the seizure because they had not yet heard what their envoys returning from Rome had to report—an odd line of argument in itself, and all the more if it is taken to imply that Scipio was somehow obligated to grant them more time. In any case the Carthaginians, having plundered his goods, were scarcely entitled to expect him still to refrain from plundering theirs. Their action posed a military threat too: it deprived Scipio of needed munitions and strengthened the city of Carthage’s resources, just when Carthaginian forces were being rebuilt by Hannibal—who, it bears reiterating, was not in practice a party to the recent peace and yet was neither disciplined nor disavowed.14 Even now the Roman commander avoided confronting him. Instead he traversed the countryside, spreading damage and terror widely. This might be seen as an effort to draw his opponent away from the coast and onto terrain—deep in the interior, as at the Great Plains earlier in 203—where Scipio conceivably felt more comfortable about fighting and was closer to his ally Masinissa. But in fact Hannibal did not react for months. The climactic battle was not fought until autumn 202, seven or eight months after the supplyships affair and at the far end of the new campaigning season. Throughout that time Scipio continued to avoid confrontation.15 He probably had other reasons for harrying the countryside. First, the 174

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Roman army needed further supplies since (thanks to the Carthaginians) less than half those sent from Italy had come in, and the arrival of spring and then summer made supplies available locally. Another calculation may have been even weightier. Hannibal’s stillness and the Punic authorities’ silence over the Roman protest were not friendly acts, but equally they did not close off the possibility that the Carthaginians might yet steel themselves to peace. What—arguably—was needed to bring them round was some unsubtle physical pressure. So the Romans looted and ravaged the hinterland and enslaved all who fell into their hands. The more the destruction and disruption, the clearer they made it to the Carthaginians and their general how bleak their future was, and how unwise Hannibal was to keep the war going, for even if he won a battle it would merely mean a new invasion and new wreckage. This strategy was obviously risky. As summer wore on without any decisive result, hindsight might suggest to Scipio that he would have done better to attack Hannibal directly the latter arrived from Italy. Then the Punic forces had been fewer, cavalry lacking and the Romans relatively fresh from their dual triumphs over Hasdrubal son of Gisco and Syphax. Now, operating in the interior, Scipio was leaving his bridgehead near Utica vulnerable to attack, when a possible combined thrust by Hannibal and the Punic fleet (stationed near Utica) might cut him off from Italy. This concern may be one reason why his war-fleet was strengthened from 40 in 203 to 70 early in 202, and why the Senate then authorized one of the new consuls to take 50 more to Africa (though he never got there). Of course Hannibal’s past military career showed that he could probably be relied on not to think about a combined land and sea operation. Scipio obviously felt he could risk striking inland. Even then, had Hannibal chosen to force an early confrontation with the Roman army Scipio would have been in a critical position again, for at some stage in 202 the Punic general was able to win the already-mentioned support from the Numidian Tychaeus—2,000 cavalry reputed to be the best in Africa. Scipio was trying to coax Masinissa to rejoin him with auxiliary horse and foot, but the king was busy imposing his rule on recalcitrant parts of Syphax’s Numidia and delayed coming. It was not until autumn that he at last arrived with 4,000 cavalry as well as 6,000 infantry to give Scipio confidence about fighting.16 Hannibal’s inaction was probably caused partly by his need to recruit and train extra troops, both foreign mercenaries and Carthaginian levies, and partly by caution. He was going to fight the one Roman who had won a series of spectacular victories against the Carthaginians, each in a different way and all of them with dazzling resourcefulness. Like Hannibal himself, Scipio had never lost a battle. A too hasty move against him might only add the crowning victory to his record. All the same this caution may have been excessive. Had Hannibal managed to bring on a battle after Tychaeus’ arrival but before Masinissa’s, a Roman disaster would have been much likelier.17

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VI The conclusive battle of the Second Punic War, somewhere in the region of Zama about 66 miles (110 kilometres) south-west of Carthage, was preceded by a face-to-face meeting between the generals. This was sought by Hannibal, reportedly after Scipio caught some spies of his and, instead of killing them, showed them round his camp and then sent them back, an act of bravado that prompted Hannibal’s admiration. In reality it was a stratagem in his own best style. Masinissa, with his infantry and all-important cavalry, did not join the Romans until two or three days later: in other words Scipio was hoping to make these reinforcements an unpleasant surprise for his opponent when battle came.18 Hannibal was not taken in so readily. His tactics at Zama a few days later seemingly included sacrificing his own cavalry so as to draw the enemy’s off the battlefield, and if so it implies that he realized Scipio’s cavalry was now superior. But their interview meanwhile went ahead. There is no strong reason for doubting it, unusual though it was for opposing commanders to meet before battle. To suppose it was invented in imitation of other classic encounters—Solon and Croesus, for instance, or Alexander the Great and the philosopher Diogenes—overlooks that none of these involved two opposing generals just before combat. Nor, in Polybius’ account especially, do Hannibal and Scipio exchange pithy comments or one of them teach the other some sententious lesson, as Solon famously does with Croesus. Instead they discuss the immediately relevant issues of war and peace, even if the writers’ device of giving each man one fairly extensive speech is a literary touch and the original interview probably took a more varied form.19 Hannibal in effect offered Scipio peace on the status quo. The Romans should keep Spain and its attendant islands along with their old possessions Sicily and Sardinia, with the implicit corollary that the Carthaginians would keep their African territory. He said nothing about paying an indemnity or giving up most of the navy (other provisos in Scipio’s now-nullified treaty), but maybe he assumed such matters could be brought up once fresh talks were agreed to. After all he made no reference to restoring Roman prisoners and deserters either, yet this would be an expected proviso too as Scipio’s original terms had shown. Scipio in his turn made it clear that he had not come to Africa and won his victories simply to accept peace on anyone else’s terms; rather, his opponent’s only hope of peace without a battle was to accept the terms already agreed to, which of course were his terms. Plainly Hannibal was not minded to do this, and the interview ended. Did Hannibal seriously think they could achieve peace without a battle? It might seem surprising, when he was facing an enemy whose homeland, power and even existence he had menaced for a decade and a half. The bulk of Scipio’s army was made up of the long-suffering survivors of Cannae, who had their own score to settle. Yet, as it turned out, Scipio’s ultimate 176

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terms of peace would include virtually what Hannibal suggested: in essence the Carthaginians would surrender their empire, becoming a purely North African state, and the Romans would make no African annexations. If Hannibal was also prepared to negotiate on other matters, indemnity, fleet and so on—he did not say so, but that does not rule it out—then Scipio might have got his peace without the cost of 20,000-odd more lives, if also without the glory of a victory over the greatest general of the age. Scipio’s reply in effect demanded a deditio, an unconditional surrender: ‘either put yourselves and your country at our mercy or fight and conquer us’. This was much more sweeping than his earlier terms or even those he would offer after Zama: yet after Zama Hannibal and the Carthaginian state were bereft of their army, their allies, their resources, and hope. Arguably Scipio was concerned by then that if Carthage held out he might yet be superseded by another Roman commander, and so he ruled out demanding deditio again. But he would have had much the same worry just before Zama: so why put this harshest of all demands to his opponent—an opponent at the head of a fresh and sizeable army? The answer must be that he had no further interest in negotiation, that with Masinissa’s reinforcements he was totally sure of victory. He had come to the interview at Hannibal’s request and maybe because he too was interested in meeting his famous foe, but what he wanted now was a military decision. This need not have been due purely to craving personal glory, agreeable though the glory would be. Hardheadedly he could also reckon that, given the recent negotiating fiasco, no lasting settlement could be relied on if the Carthaginians and Hannibal remained able to fight—least of all once the Romans evacuated North Africa, as inevitably they must. A decisive victory on the other hand would finish the war and secure the peace; and of victory Scipio was now so confident that he confronted his opponent deep in the Punic countryside, far from his coastal bridgehead and from any chance of rescue if he lost.20 The battle of Zama was not a foregone conclusion, all the same. Rather surprisingly, both generals avoided complex manoeuvres such as had characterized so many of their previous victories: no doubt each was wary of exposing himself to some unforeseeable coup by the other. Scipio, who had beaten four previous Punic armies in four differently inventive ways, accepted a brutal slogging-match while letting Laelius and Masinissa rout Hannibal’s cavalry and gambling that they would then bring their horsemen back—the same kind of risk, though not using exactly the same tactics, that Hannibal had accepted at Cannae. Hannibal, deploying a large elephant corps for the first time, saw them neutralized by a simple tactical device of Scipio’s, and then committed each of his three infantry corps in turn against the enemy in static linear fashion. This sequence prolonged the fight to little tactical benefit when, arguably, he could have exploited the sacrifice of his first two lines (the mercenaries and the Carthaginian levies) to gain time for his 177

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powerful third corps, the veterans of Italy, to swing out and fall on Scipio’s unprotected infantry flanks in a variant of Cannae or Ilipa. The veterans when their turn came fought long and hard but, unprotected on flanks and rear, suffered their own Cannae once Laelius, Masinissa and their cavalry returned. It is surprising that, after losing his own cavalry, Hannibal had taken no steps at all to organize some sort of protective screen for his remaining troops—had all his elephants disappeared from the field entirely, not to mention all survivors of his first and second lines after each was cut up by the Romans? Scipio’s deliberate slowness in launching his attack on the veterans of Italy almost dared Hannibal to take such a step, and victory, or a draw, would still have been achievable had Hannibal been able to hold off Laelius and Masinissa. Maybe Hannibal knew he had met his match. He left the fighting to his men—Appian’s picture of the two generals fighting hand-to-hand is romantic fantasy—only to see the last army of Carthage cut to pieces by the survivors of Cannae. After defeat he galloped in two days and nights back to the coast at Hadrumetum, over 120 miles (200 kilometres) away, leaving the survivors of his army to the mercy of the countryside and the Romans. He obviously had no mind to imitate his brother Hasdrubal’s self-sacrifice at enemy hands. Nor indeed any wish to continue the war: though he reportedly pulled together what troops he could—6,500 according to Appian—even Appian admits he knew the war had to end. Within days of the disaster, without opposition from their beaten general, the authorities at Carthage once more sent 30 envoys to Scipio, and when the victor’s new peace-terms were brought back Hannibal himself—now at long last in the city he had not seen for nearly 36 years—pulled down from the senate’s rostrum a diehard named Gisco who spoke against them. It would be appropriate if this Gisco was brother (or father) to Hasdrubal son of Gisco whose own will to fight had never faltered, even if his ungrateful fellowcitizens had finally turned on him and driven him to suicide.21 The silencing of Gisco was met by mutters of disapproval from other senators and plainly none of approval, for Hannibal at once felt he had to apologize. After 36 years away from home, he said, he was unused to the ways of the senate but certain that it must accept the terms. This relatively graceful mea culpa was successful and was remembered; less noticed but more important is that Carthaginian senators, even now, were not so cowed by defeat as to share his impatience with someone who talked of fighting on. They had to recognize he was right in insisting on peace but they and the republic owed him nothing more. He was the leader under whom they had waged a losing war for 16 years, for whom they had recently thrown off Scipio’s peace, and who had then led their last army to destruction. Just as Hasdrubal son of Gisco’s influence had most likely collapsed after his defeat at the Great Plains, so too almost certainly did the Barcids’ in the weeks after Zama.22 The dice had been thrown, and the era of Barcid supremacy was over. 178

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I The authorities at Carthage sent 30 envoys to Scipio when he marched back to Tunes, not to negotiate but to listen to his terms and beg for mercy. As it turned out, Scipio’s second peace was not strikingly more vengeful than the first; but its immediate penalties were heavier. The war-indemnity was doubled to 10,000 talents—payable over 50 years but starting at once—and the entire Punic navy save for ten ships had to be surrendered, plus all the warelephants. The Carthaginians also had to give compensation for ‘all the injustices’ committed during the previous truce: Scipio had not forgotten or forgiven the plunder of his supply-ships. Prisoners of war, and deserters, were of course to be given up. Other provisos confirmed Carthage’s demotion to geopolitical insignificance: the Carthaginians must never again wage war outside Africa, and could do so in Africa only if the Romans permitted; they must no longer recruit Celtic or Ligurian mercenaries; and they had to restore to Masinissa whatever property and territory he or his ancestors had once held in their lands—a requirement ominous for the future integrity of their state even if, at the time, meant as no more than a passing concession to the Romans’ new friend. But the city was not occupied, and the Punic republic kept its independence, its home territories and its historic allies like Utica. It was pretty well the best settlement the Carthaginians could have hoped for in their helpless position. The alternative would have been a siege and starvation, and probable destruction in the end. For the settlement they could thank not only Scipio’s concern, real as it was, about being replaced by another general (one of the new consuls of 201 was soon making strenuous efforts to take over) but no doubt too their own strong walls, which had frustrated the besieging rebels four decades before and, half a century later, would hold the Romans themselves at bay for three years. One other factor may have deterred Scipio from trying a siege—Hannibal’s presence within the walls, the obvious leader of a desperate resistance. If so it was one final service the general rendered his homeland before laying down his command.1 179

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Appian depicts the common people even now rejecting Scipio’s terms after days of debate, howling at their erstwhile hero Hannibal when he urged acceptance, and forcing many of the leading men to flee the city. But this lurid scenario is another in the sequence of foolishly fickle Punic mob versus wise, moderate and essentially peace-loving Punic aristocracy—with the general now conscripted into its ranks—which is probably Roman-inspired and has nothing to recommend it, even if it makes use of a genuine detail or two like Hannibal supporting peace. Once the terms were ratified at Rome, early in 201, Scipio towed the warships out to sea, 500 altogether, and burned them in sight of the city. We can well believe that the Carthaginians were heart-stricken, as Livy reports. They would stay free and self-governing, but the blazing hulks of their navy sinking beneath the waters symbolized the end of Punic seaborne power and of the greatest era in their history.2 Before he left for Rome, Scipio also worked out the boundaries of Punic North Africa. Appian claims that he fixed them at ‘the Phoenician Trenches’ (having put the same proviso into his version of the earlier peace) but he fails to explain this term and the claim is dubious. A surviving excerpt from Eumachus of Neapolis and a mention in the Elder Pliny might seem to confirm that the ‘Trenches’ did exist, but no other writer has them in the peace and they certainly did not embrace the Emporia region in the south which still remained under Punic rule. In reality Pliny is writing about a boundary delimited in 146—by Scipio Aemilianus after his sack of Carthage—between the new Roman province and Numidia, and later called the ‘royal trench’, fossa regia. Eumachus meantime, not in his Hannibalic history but in a geographical work, was telling a tale of the Carthaginians finding huge bodies in coffins ‘while digging a trench around their territory’, with no date or site: he might be referring to a much earlier, semi-legendary era and so to a trench much nearer to Carthage. Even if he did mean what Appian calls the ‘Phoenician Trenches’, the latter or his source quite conceivably inferred—wrongly if so—that these constituted the fossa regia and that it was Scipio in 201 who made them the boundary. For even though the Third Punic War arose from later clashes between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, Appian mentions neither the ‘Trenches’ in his account of those events nor the younger Scipio’s delimitation afterwards. If these ‘Trenches’ did exist they most probably had no part in the treaty or Scipio Aemilianus’ ensuing delimitation.3 Ten thousand talents’ indemnity over half a century amounted to 200 a year, a tidy sum (12 million asses or 1,200,000 denarii) but less than the 220 the Carthaginians had had to pay yearly under Lutatius’ treaty—and that after an initial lump sum of another 1,000. Livy tells another Hannibal-story: amid his fellow-senators’ loud laments over having to pay the first instalment he was seen to be laughing, and, reproved by his enemy Hasdrubal the Kid for laughing at misery which he himself had caused, he in turn reproved the 180

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Carthaginians. ‘Then was the proper time to weep, when our arms were taken from us, our ships burnt and foreign wars forbidden. Now because you have to collect payment from private resources, you mourn as though at a public funeral.’ But unlike the earlier story of the silencing of Gisco, this one looks like a fiction. Likely enough, to be sure, the ravaging of the countryside carried out by Scipio had reduced both public and personal revenues. This anecdote, though, has a similar shape to the earlier one—Hannibal again upsetting his peers with unorthodox but realistic frankness and uttering truths they would prefer not to hear—while its moralizing and pro-Hannibalic message is much more gratuitous. Besides, though he tells it under the date 201 Livy later claims the first indemnity-payment was made in 199. More likely then the tale goes back to an imaginative Sosylus or Silenus.4

II Hannibal’s position after peace returned is not entirely clear. With the war over and any Punic war-making improbable for the foreseeable future, there was no lasting place for the generalship or for him as its holder. Nepos all the same reports that after Zama he levied fresh forces and, even with peace made, continued to campaign—along with Mago—until in 200 the Romans complained about it to a fresh Carthaginian embassy and got him recalled to Carthage. This story is hardly believable as Nepos tells it. Not only was warfare even in Africa a breach of the new treaty unless the Romans gave prior consent, but there was effectively no one to war against: definitely not Masinissa, and to the south lay desert, to the east the Ptolemies. The late Roman writer Aurelius Victor’s story of Hannibal having his soldiers plant olive-trees all over Africa is no support for Nepos either, for Victor expressly states that it was done to keep the men busy in peacetime. In reality the Romans themselves sent an embassy over to Carthage in 200, to complain about a renegade officer in Cisalpine Gaul named Hamilcar— apparently a leftover from Hasdrubal’s expedition or Mago’s who was stirring up unrest in those parts—and the Carthaginians promptly declared him an outlaw and confiscated his property. This is very likely the origin of Nepos’ story: a confusion between a little-known officer and well-known general, with resulting adjustments to details. The confusion in fact goes deeper, for Nepos’ Punic envoys also ask the Romans to release their Carthaginian captives—a request actually made, at any rate for high-ranking prisoners and with success, by the Punic peace-envoys in 201.5 Yet there could be a small nugget of fact behind Nepos’ tale, and one compatible with Victor’s (who was North African himself and may draw on local tradition). Some troops escaped death or captivity at Zama, and there were other units still existing too—the stubborn garrison in Utica, for instance, 181

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and no doubt others in Carthage and other cities—not to mention crews from the extinguished navy. The Carthaginians, Hannibal included, would have all too lively memories of the disastrous sequel to the previous war when the republic’s unpaid mercenaries revolted and incited the oppressed Libyans to do the same: now, with the Libyans already oppressed and restive even before Scipio in 202 spread fire and terror across their countryside, the danger of a new outbreak cannot have seemed negligible even if Punic forces were much smaller than the mercenary army in 241.6 What was needed was to keep the surviving soldiers and crewmen busy (and with pay) at least until they could be safely discharged. No doubt too the disruption inflicted by the Roman invaders in the hinterland called for some sort of security force to restore order, and the authorities at Carthage may well have felt it necessary too to try ways of re-establishing productivity so as to placate the locals. It may have been Hannibal’s own idea (as Victor implies) to plant olive-groves; it might seem appropriate too for him to stay as general until his project was completed or at least well under way, so as to maintain discipline among the men. This would account for Nepos’ idea about him continuing in command, and suit Victor’s report that he carried out the plantings in peacetime. At least Nepos may get right the date for Hannibal laying down the generalship—the year 199. The biographer supposes that after 22 years of holding military command Hannibal moved straight from it to the sufeteship. In reality he became sufete 25 years after becoming general, but Nepos’ numeral need not be just a mistake or a later miscopying. After the visit of the Roman embassy in 200, silent though it was about the general, the Carthaginian authorities might understandably think it preferable that he lay down his official command, especially if his troops could now be safely discharged. In any case there was no war to fight and nothing in the republic’s political system required a general or generals in place at all times. Hannibal himself could hardly quarrel with that.7 All the same, if he did continue as general for some time after peace was made he cannot have been shorn of political influence, despite the débâcle of the war. Nor was he prosecuted for his conduct of the war or his defeat at Zama—hallowed though such vengefulness was by Punic tradition, and though Hasdrubal son of Gisco had only recently been driven to suicide even without indictment. Dio to be sure claims there was a prosecution and acquittal (on charges of not taking Rome and of keeping booty for himself) but not even Nepos knows anything of that. In fact it is worth noting that, to judge from our sources, no one at Carthage this time cast the blame for the war on their old leader. The 30 envoys who supplicated Scipio after Zama did not; neither did the envoys sent to Rome with the terms he imposed, even though they were ‘by far the first men in the state’ and included—no doubt a politic gesture—Hasdrubal the Kid. The nearest even he gets in Livy to accusing the general is not in the 182

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speech to the Senate which Livy then gives him, but in a separate earlier comment blaming the war on ‘the greed of a few men’. No doubt this means the Barcids and their friends: but it is a strangely muted and undeveloped dictum, and thus all the more interesting if genuine. Appian, who makes The Kid one of the envoys to Scipio at Tunes earlier, there gives him an even more rhetorical oration (very reminiscent of Livy’s) which is equally silent about the last of the Barcids.8 It would be unwarranted to assume that the advent of peace meant the advent to power of Hasdrubal the Kid and Hanno the Great (who may still have been alive, though surely not for much longer). As we have seen, even late in 203 majority opinion at Carthage had been not defeatist but bellicose, and even after Zama not all the Mighty Ones were ready to hear of peace. Whatever interests now predominated, they pretty clearly were not concerned to mount a persecution of Hannibal or associates of his.9 One obvious deterrent would be if he did continue as general and commanded troops. But this cannot have been the sole factor. Had powerful elements at Carthage really wanted to attack him they could have enlisted Roman help, as his enemies were eventually to do. For instance, in 200 there arrived the Roman embassy to complain about Hamilcar the renegade in Cisalpina and also that not all Roman deserters had been surrendered as the peace treaty required; it visited Masinissa too, to wheedle a contingent of cavalry from him to serve in the Romans’ new war with Philip V. The Carthaginians did their best to mollify the envoys and furthermore sent huge gifts of grain to Rome and to the legions operating in Macedonia. But nothing was said on either side about Hannibal.

III The state of politics at Carthage from 201 on can only be surmised, but not randomly. As suggested earlier, until Zama Hannibal and his supporters had maintained a tenuous ascendancy. But by 195, as Livy tells it, the ordo iudicum—probably the tribunal of One Hundred and Four resurgent—was dominant, though there was plenty of resentment against it. The all too likely shipwreck of the Barcid ascendancy after 202 would allow the ‘judges’ to complete a process which (again as suggested earlier) had begun in the middle years of the war as Barcid fortunes waned. Livy portrays the ‘judges’ lording it over the rest in serried solidarity, all for one and one for all. ‘Everyone’s possessions, reputation and lives lay under their authority; antagonizing a single one made enemies of them all and a prosecutor was sure to lay a charge before hostile judges.’ Making allowance for some exaggeration (his account is very much on Hannibal’s side) we infer that they were once again enjoying the primacy that Aristotle had attested a century and a half earlier. They were, after all, members too of the Mighty Ones, and if Hasdrubal in the 220s had broadened their judicial rôle that 183

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would add still further to their status and influence—especially once the dominant hand of a Barcid generalissimo was withdrawn. Many if not most of the Hundred and Four in 196 must have joined the tribunal during the years of Barcid ascendancy. Some indeed would be Barcid kinsmen. So Livy’s insistence on their total solidarity is probably not literally true, but on the other hand the ties that had bound most of them to the Barcids in the days of military glamour and success would have lost their strength by 201. Instead we could expect to find leading individuals and their supporters vying for office and influence, as in pre-Barcid times: including men who had previously been in the Barcid bloc or allied with it (like the late Hasdrubal son of Gisco). Two factors perhaps limited the intensity of postwar competition among them and encouraged a measure of solidarity. First, it was important to keep Hannibal and his remaining supporters from recovering political dominance. The Barcids might be down but were hardly out: not only was Hannibal elected a popular sufete for 196 but, even after he was forced into exile, a ‘Barcid faction’ (in Livy’s phrase) continued to exist for some years at least, and in 193 its absent leader still believed it able to regain control. Enemies— and former friends—could not afford too luxuriant a level of competitiveness among themselves after 201 if that gave Hannibal the chance to build a new coalition. He could be tolerated as an eminent figure, but nothing more. Second, the proliferation of abuses in public finance that Livy sketches, some no doubt dating back to the war-years, would prompt mutual support because the abuses benefited the ‘judges’ as a class (or order) while the rest of the citizenry in effect footed the bill. The last thing desirable was someone promoting any programme of reform, however modest.10 Not that the tribunal itself gained new legal powers. All the other institutions of government continued: the Mighty Ones, the various magistracies, and presumably the pentarchies or Boards of Five. The supremacy of the One Hundred and Four was political and social, as Livy’s terminology implies: it was the ordo of judges that dominated, and exerted dominance through control of the courts and, likely enough, the senate. Critics were harassed, or worse, through vexatious and biased prosecutions; but not it seems struck down by arbitrary executive fiat, far less by extralegal violence. In turn, the siphoning-off of state revenues and other forms of corruption would most readily be carried on by holding magistracies, belonging to pentarchies if these still existed, and the like. Aristotle had noted that a Carthaginian could hold more than one office at the same time, and this feature the ‘judges’ (like Carthaginian aristocrats of earlier eras) surely made the most of. Nor of course need the abuses have started only from 201. During the war-years opportunities for graft of every kind would have been extensive—not only direct theft of state funds but also bribery, corrupt public contracts and other profiteering. And it would be overoptimistic to suppose that the Barcids and their supporters had kept their own hands clean; or that 184

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Barcid leaders at Carthage, concerned to maintain an increasingly fragile political ascendancy, had always been zealous about cracking down on abuses and abusers.11 In 199 the 200-talent payment of the war-indemnity caused a scandal at Rome because the sum, supplied in silver coin, turned out on testing to be 25 per cent short thanks to the presence of base metal. To make up the shortfall the Carthaginian envoys had to borrow money on the Roman market: to some, a vivid example of how impoverished the Punic state had become thanks to the ravages of war. But while it is true that silver coins had been badly debased during the war, falling sometimes to under 20 per cent pure, peculation of public monies is a likelier cause of the shoddy coins of 199. Not only were the new indemnity instalments smaller than those set in 241 but the Romans had found no reason to complain of the payment or payments in 201 (the compensation for the plundered supply-ships and, if this was paid then, the initial indemnity instalment). By 196, on the other hand, embezzlement of public funds was an open scandal.12 Besides, some economic recovery was already under way in Punic Africa, and that should have made payment in relatively sound coin more practicable. The Carthaginians, in a rather pathetic effort to show their goodwill the year after peace was made, had made large gifts of wheat (400,000 modii in all) to the city of Rome and the Roman armies operating in the Balkans. Possibly enough, given postwar conditions, they put themselves out to make the gift sizeable—though on later occasions far larger quantities would be given— but it was a noteworthy gesture of reviving productivity. Trade recovered, for Spain was still a market even if lost as a province, while dealings with Sicily and Italy soon revived too, as finds of Punic pottery there show, plus sizeable quantities of early second-century Campanian ware in Punic Africa. Plautus’ comedy Poenulus, probably of the 190s, treats the ordinary Carthaginian merchant as a standard visitor to trading cities, an agreeably amusing figure with his distinctive habits of dress and speech. All this adds to the likelihood that the debased coins of 199 were chiefly not due to a struggling economy but rather to corrupt administrators.13 If the return of some prosperity benefited mainly the highest level of the Carthaginian community, and inevitably the ordo of judges in particular, discontent was likely to simmer among other citizens. Not just among the Punic poor but among others—landowners and merchants—in between as well, including at least some of the less exalted aristocracy. By 196, Livy reports, both carelessness with state revenues, and some leading men’s direct peculation, had reduced these to a level that made it impossible to pay the Romans their indemnity. This would help to explain the sort of reforms Hannibal was to enact: he opened the ranks of the One Hundred and Four to yearly election, and struck at financial corruption to avert a foreshadowed new tax on all citizens, ensure that the state received all its due revenues, and pay the indemnity. 185

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It is rather surprising that so soon after the most disastrous war in Punic history the ruling élite, or some of them, should misbehave so crassly. Livy no doubt exaggerates for dramatic effect how thoroughgoing the oligarchy’s arrogance and solidarity were (his depiction may go back to a pro-Hannibalic witness like Silenus or Sosylus) but Hannibal’s attested reforms confirm that serious flaws did exist and did arouse serious discontent. One cause of leading men’s unprincipled attitude to public funds may well have been the damage to countryside and infrastructure inflicted, first, by the many Roman war-raids on North Africa, then—and probably much worse—by Scipio’s ruthless and wide-ranging harryings from 204 to 202. It is worth noting that one of the concessions he offered for the armistice after Zama was an instant stop to devastation. Of course everyone in the Romans’ way had suffered, but only the economically and politically weighty were in a position to take early steps to recover. A further factor was doubtless the passing of Barcid dominance itself. The ‘judges’ may have fostered solidarity in exploiting their financial opportunities and repressing their critics, but that would hardly inhibit competitiveness among leading men for office and eminence—and competitiveness would, almost predictably, reach new heights once the overall control of a dominant group and leader had crumbled. At Carthage, as Aristotle had stressed and Polybius would reiterate, money played a crucial political rôle and bribery was a norm. The Barcids had exploited this ancient tradition, with decades of Spanish treasure to draw on. Political competitors after 201 had to fall back on other, more domestic sources. If Hannibal and his remaining supporters were seen as less tainted than rival groups, his own aversion to such methods may well have been only one reason: another might simply be that before 196, thanks to widespread aristocratic opposition, his circle was less successful in winning office with its accompanying opportunities.14

IV Hannibal kept out of public life after giving up the generalship. He may have felt out of place and unpractised in civilian life after a virtual lifetime in military and administrative command (as his words to the senate had implied after silencing Gisco). Nor had he as wide a network of kinsmen and friends as 20, or even ten, years before. Some had died—his own brothers would not be the sole relatives lost—and some would turn their backs on a defeated semi-stranger, however worldwide his fame. It would be instructive to know what became of notable wartime henchmen and subordinates like his nephew Hanno (last heard of as following the son of Gisco in the African command, if this was indeed his nephew), Hannibal’s own friend Mago the Samnite who had operated in south Italy as late as 208, Maharbal the cavalry commander (last heard of in 216), Bomilcar the admiral, the cruel Hannibal Monomachus, and the energetic half-Greek 186

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Epicydes who after the wreck of his and his brother’s Syracusan venture had got away to Carthage. Several no doubt survived the war and it is unlikely they were attacked when their old general was not, but if they associated with him they quite probably were sidelined politically. Politics, though, may not have appealed to them all; while some conceivably enough found it more comfortable to fall in with one faction or other among the ‘judges’ and enjoy the benefits resulting. Certainly when Hannibal re-emerged into public life— and afterwards when he left for exile—no friend or relative, or wartime lieutenant, is mentioned along with him. The scandal of the flawed indemnity in 199 did not draw him back into public life. Taking efficient charge of Barcid property in Africa, all that was left to the family now that Spain was lost, would demand much time especially in the first years of peace. So would his duties as head of what remained of the family. Nor can we simply take it for granted that the extent of public corruption and maladministration drew his ire from the start. For one thing, as suggested above, this situation may have worsened significantly only after the return of peace; for another, Hannibal himself (on the evidence of people who knew him) appreciated the value of money and the importance of acquiring it, therefore need not automatically have looked askance at other aristocrats doing so until they caused a serious problem; and for a third, with his faction in its weakened postwar state he may well have had more interest, at first anyway, in trying to build alliances with past supporters and with newcomers to politics, rather than confronting practically all vested interests straightaway.15

V Over four or five years, however, things plainly changed. His first move on taking office as sufete was to initiate a clash with the ordo iudicum, and on winning this he turned to reform of the state finances. These were in such a mess that by 197 it was hard to raise even the funds to pay the all-important warindemnity—and the only solution the authorities could think of was to impose a levy on all citizens. The Carthaginians as a whole, in other words, were going to be made to subsidize the misbehaviour of the currently ruling factions. This no doubt brought discontent to a head and gave Hannibal his opening. Likely enough he himself felt the abuses had gone too far by now, especially if they threatened to jeopardize relations with the Romans. The renegade officer Hamilcar had continued stirring up trouble for them in Cisalpina (he was at length suppressed only in 197), which was bad enough. Worse, a dispute had arisen with Masinissa. We are not told what it was, only that when Roman envoys came to Carthage in 195 on their anti-Hannibal mission their pretended brief was ‘to settle the disputes that the Carthaginians were having’ with the king. Since all later disputes with him were over his 187

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encroachments on Punic lands, starting with an attempted grab of the Emporia region in 193, this earliest one was very probably territorial too— the king’s first tentative prodding to find vulnerable soil. Though it seems to have fizzled out eventually (when Masinissa found Hannibal was the leader he would have to deal with), any trouble with the Romans’ Numidian ally and protégé could prove disastrous for the Carthaginians in their financially harassed and militarily puny condition. These worries may have helped Hannibal on the hustings. Moreover, during 197 the power of Philip V of Macedon in turn was shattered at the battle of Cynoscephalae, and the ensuing peace, dictated by the Romans, gave them the same implicit supremacy over Macedon and Greece that they already held over North Africa. The Carthaginians could neither afford to irritate their increasingly imperial ex-enemies nor risk their own state limping along in increasing financial disarray: sober self-interest demanded reform.16 Not only were these issues now prime concerns of Hannibal’s but he probably made that clear when he sought office (for the clash was sparked by the mulish attitude towards the new sufete of an official supported by the ‘judges’). In other words he was elected to the highest civil office by popular vote, against the feelings of at least a sizeable section of the dominant élite. His reforms then, according to Livy, made him wildly popular with the common people though they put him at odds with many or most of his fellow-grandees. In his early fifties, Hannibal had discovered democracy. Or, at any rate, how to behave like a democrat. Barcid supremacy in its golden days had been based, to be sure, on popular election—but not on civil office or regular re-election. Instead it had relied on charismatic military command, while day-to-day government at Carthage had been carried on under Barcid dominance by the established authorities. Now Hannibal relied directly on the voters. The sufeteship was not normally noted for independent policy-making, nor ever before for open challenges to the senate or Hundred and Four. Using it in these ways was a move that needed sustained and strong backing from his fellow-citizens, and plainly Hannibal had it. Certainly he must have had some supporters among the aristocracy: those who remained in the ‘Barcid faction’ as Livy calls it. The historian is careful to note that ‘a great part’ of the élite opposed the sufete, in other words he does not claim they all did (any more than he claims all were peculators). Some grandees’ willingness to stick with him probably rested as much or more on personal and family loyalty as on reformist conviction, for there had been a Barcid group large or small at Carthage for nearly 50 years and—even after Hannibal’s own exile—it endured under the same epithet (rather than being called the ‘democratic’ or ‘popular’ faction) for some years more. Perhaps one such supporter became the other sufete, for Hannibal met no obstruction from him. But the only Carthaginian named in supposed association with Hannibal at 188

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this date is Mago his late brother—a fancy we owe to Nepos, who has him alive and seeking to join Hannibal in exile in 193. If Nepos confused his brother with some real Mago linked to Hannibal in the 190s, it may have been the general’s old friend Mago the Samnite last heard of at Thurii in 208, or just possibly the relative whom the Romans had captured in 215 and who by now may have returned. Whoever it was, his rôle is unknown: he probably was not the other sufete, for if Nepos imagined him to be Hannibal’s brother he would surely have mentioned such a combination.17 The sufete’s enemies afterwards claimed that he had made early contact with the Seleucid Great King, Antiochus III—self-styled ‘the Great’—and the two of them had been plotting a new war against the Romans. Quite likely various accusations were made against him before 196 too, but it seems clear that his sufeteship produced a crescendo. The claims were surely lies. At the most basic level, had Hannibal been in regular touch with the king he ought to have known Antiochus’ whereabouts at particular seasons: but when he fled from Carthage in summer 195 he journeyed to Syria unaware that Antiochus had left there for the Aegean. Nor of course is there sound evidence that as early as 198, 197 or 196 the king was looking for a Roman war—quite the opposite, in fact. Even when the exiled Hannibal did join him, it was only as Antiochus’ relations with the Romans worsened, by 193, that the king treated him as a serious adviser.18 As one of the great men of Carthage, maybe still its foremost citizen (so Livy describes him), Hannibal had connexions abroad as well as at home. With Numidian lords his family had ties of marriage and kinship; links with Carthage’s mother-city Tyre are known and no doubt they existed with other centres. Connexions like these were important for prestige, trade matters, travel plans and up-to-date information. In the city Hannibal held regular morning levees for large numbers of people, who must have included visitors from elsewhere; like other Punic aristocrats he no doubt put on dinnerparties and other social events. Dealings with visitors, even conversations with them, could easily be misrepresented—and Phoenicia, including Tyre, belonged to Antiochus’ empire. So once it became clear at Carthage that the king and the Romans were bickering, Hannibal’s foes could set rumours flying.19

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I Our only account of Hannibal’s sufeteship is Livy’s, and like most other episodes of Carthaginian history told by Greeks or Romans it is compressed and some details are unclear. Even so, it is firmly pro-Hannibal in tone, which suggests that though Livy probably drew on Polybius for it, Polybius himself may well have used the account of someone like Sosylus or Silenus. Just where Hannibal’s friends’ histories ended we do not know, but according to Nepos the pair were by his side ‘as long as fortune permitted it’—and that would likely have lasted until his sudden flight in 195. Nor of course did separation, whenever it happened, have to mean a loss of interest in his doings. But if instead Polybius’ ultimate informant was Roman (admittedly it seems a smaller possibility) we might think of Q. Terentius Culleo, one of the three senatorial envoys sent over to Carthage that year. Culleo was acquainted with the Carthaginians because, like the annalist Cincius Alimentus, he had been their prisoner of war. Freed by Scipio in Africa in 201, his devotion to him from then on was unbounded—and Scipio strongly opposed intervening in the Carthaginians’ domestic affairs six years later, and was remembered as an admirer of Hannibal. Culleo’s nomination as an envoy may have been an effort by Scipio, then honorary first senator, to soften the impact of the mission, or a move by the interventionists to mollify him. Culleo himself was still active enough a quarter of a century later to go on another African embassy, so reminiscences of his could have reached Polybius, conceivably even at first hand after the latter came to Italy in 167.1 The year of Hannibal’s sufeteship was probably 196, when at Rome L. Furius Purpureo and M. Claudius Marcellus were consuls. The Roman embassy that arrived soon after Hannibal laid down office, and prompted him into self-exile, had Marcellus as one of its three members, a task he could not have undertaken while holding office. Moreover, as mentioned earlier Hannibal then travelled to Syria expecting to meet King Antiochus, who had journeyed there from Ephesus in late 196. But early in 195 Antiochus returned to Ephesus to pursue his difficulties with the Romans, and Hannibal on reaching Syria had to follow him westwards. 190

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All this makes 196 the likeliest date for the sufeteship—admittedly we do not know when the Punic official year began and ended—and 195 the year of his flight. True, Nepos dates the flight to Marcellus’ and Purpureo’s consulate and to ‘the year after his praetorship’, thus putting the latter in 197, but this is less plausible. His account of the postwar years has other oddities as we have seen, and after a few paragraphs he terms the year 193 ‘the third year’ after the flight: more evidence of indecisive dating. Quite likely he has confused Marcellus as envoy with Marcellus as consul. And though Appian too has 196 as the year the exiled general joined Antiochus, his own unreliabilities in matters and events Punic make this the reverse of encouraging. Still, Nepos may be right in relative terms about Hannibal going into exile ‘the year after his praetorship’. This detail again supports 196 and 195 as the years in question.2

II The new magistrate’s first recorded move was to summon a ‘quaestor’, who refused to come. This official may have been the republic’s chief of finances (the usual assumption) or, rather likelier, one of its financial officials, the mhsbm or ‘accountables’, attested on inscriptions. What Hannibal wanted to discuss we do not know: maybe the financial situation overall, but Livy afterwards records him tackling the much-abused finances of the republic apparently as a separate matter. The dispute with the ‘quaestor’ may have had a different cause, even if connected with finance. The latter was defiant because he would become one of the iudices when his magistracy ended; and Hannibal’s reaction (after having him arrested) was to legislate to remove the iudices’ lifetime tenure. So the summons may have been over some accusation of malfeasance—corruption, injustice or incompetence—which the ‘quaestor’ expected to be able to shrug off once he exchanged office for entry into the One Hundred and Four.3 Livy is careful to specify too that this official belonged to the ‘opposite faction’. It is plausible enough that there was more to the clash than just a guilty magistrate dodging investigation, for plainly the sufete found it politically worthwhile to attack him. The rights and wrongs of the dispute were one thing, but Hannibal wanted a justification for an assault on the iudices. No doubt he chose his issue carefully, all the same: the offender had to be fairly obviously (or plausibly) guilty, and unpopular as well. The sufete haled him before a citizen-gathering—what became of him we are not told—and then carried a law reforming recruitment to the One Hundred and Four. The connexion between a recalcitrant magistrate and reform of the tribunal is not obvious. On one interpretation the sufete overstepped (or was accused of overstepping) his powers in summoning and then arresting the recalcitrant ‘quaestor’, the latter appealed to the One Hundred and Four who made their attitude clear in his favour, and Hannibal then took the issue to the assembly. But Livy’s account does not suggest this line of events. 191

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Hannibal, when defied by the ‘quaestor’, brought the arrested man before the citizens and criticized both him and the ordo iudicum; and when this met with a favourable reception, ‘immediately’ brought forward and carried his reform law. This must have been either at the same meeting—but Livy calls it a contio, which at Rome anyway was a non-legislative though officially convoked gathering of citizens—or at a legislative assembly convoked very soon after.4 More likely then Hannibal accused the ‘quaestor’ of specific offences, but made it clear that there was no point in prosecuting him as things stood. True, in this era sufetes themselves could hear at least some cases, but this may not have been one of them—or else a sufete’s verdict could be appealed—very probably meaning that any charge against the ‘quaestor’ would sooner or later go before the far from unbiased One Hundred and Four. Although this is not certain, it seems the most plausible link between Hannibal’s joint attack on the ‘quaestor’ and the ‘judges’; and as shown earlier, there are some grounds for thinking that Hasdrubal had amended the tribunal’s functions back in the 220s.5 The sufete’s tactics worked splendidly. The prospect of an arrogant offender escaping justice thanks to his connexions aroused citizens’ enthusiasm for the proposal to replace lifetime membership of the One Hundred and Four with a one-year appointment, and to ban membership of two years in a row. It seems likely that the one-year judges were to be elected by the citizen assembly, like the magistrates: the voters’ keenness would surely have been dampened if the existing selection-process—the Boards of Five choosing members of the senate for the tribunal—were merely to be modified into an annual event, nor would that have brought much flexibility or freshness. The senate, with its few hundred members, would have to start recycling them for the tribunal after just a few years: not much of a blow against the widely resented coterie-character of the Hundred and Four. Annual selection points to popular election. This was a momentous move. One obvious aim was to open judges to legal scrutiny, for a judge or ex-judge accused of impropriety could no longer count on being tried before entrenched and understanding colleagues. Again, implicit in the change was a near-reversal of the relationship of tribunal to senate. Instead of being recruited from the senate, the Hundred and Four would more often than not be recruited from non-senators (though no doubt senators could seek election too). Many of these, after a term or two as judge, would surely use their improved repute to seek other offices, including magistracies and a place in the senate. Hannibal may have calculated on other improvements too. Judges’ hopes of success in this new judicio-political scheme would force them to be more open in their work, and prevent them from favouring aristocratic special interests too blatantly at ordinary citizens’ expense. The senate in its turn, the Mighty Ones, would lose their too-easily-exploitable symbiosis with the highest court of the republic and, moreover, would have to be more accountable 192

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to the rest of the citizen-body: for if prosecuted on serious charges a senator would find himself facing citizen-elected judges not at all guaranteed to be friendly.6 Of course critics could point out more than one potential flaw in the new system. Citizens freshly elected to the tribunal might have no, or very little, judicial experience, for instance. But this objection would be of small weight in a world where, for instance, major trials at Rome were held before the citizen assembly and at Athens ordinary citizens regularly sat as juror-judges. Arguably again, candidates might now win election on the basis of political or personal attractiveness rather than any particular fitness for the rôle. Indeed annual elections were almost guaranteed to take on factional overtones, at any rate in times when political stresses were high, and in turn this could promote bribery and misbehaviour all over again. Still, Hannibal might reply that a regular turnover of tribunal membership would at least make it easier to bring blatant offenders to book; by contrast the old system had made it almost impossible (as the clash with the ‘quaestor’ illustrated). Nor— he could add—was it morally impressive for defenders of a system that helped perpetuate aristocratic exploitation of public life to complain about politics still playing a part in judicial affairs after the reform. In any case money and bribes were a standard element in Punic politics, one that none of the Barcids objected to and all had made use of. What mattered was to deter or punish those who went too far and still expected to enjoy impunity. At least it looked good in theory. And it was better than what had gone before. Nothing suggests that Hannibal included a qualification to ensure that existing judges would be replaced under the new scheme only as each in turn passed from life. On that basis it would have taken a generation (or an epidemic) before the last of the Hundred and Four was popularly elected, and by then the new law’s and the sufete’s enemies would long have rallied their forces to repeal it. The law surely came into force directly—meaning that elections for the entire membership of the tribunal had to be held during the current official year, so that the new Hundred and Four could take their seats when the next year started. With public support strongly on his side Hannibal could count on many Barcid supporters winning membership, perhaps indeed a majority, in the new Hundred and Four—at least for 195. This would give both a positive start to the reformed court and also protection to himself after he laid down his office—an important extra benefit he might reckon on needing by then. We shall see that his calculations were probably accurate. As for the hapless ‘quaestor’, once his term expired his fate was probably sealed, for the same reasons.7

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III The reforming sufete now turned his attention to the republic’s woebegone finances. As we saw, these were most likely in trouble not because of any economic downturn, still less pressure from the Romans’ yearly indemnity (this was a victim of the trouble, not a cause), but because too many fingers dipped into them between collection and deposit at the treasury. The obvious solution was to ensure that transmission from the one to the other became faultless—as faultless as possible in ancient conditions, at any rate. This Hannibal achieved, though no one tells how. Livy does insist on the waste and theft by which the republic was defrauded, and the survey Hannibal made of revenue-sources and commitments. Nepos merely reports him imposing ‘new taxes’ that enriched the state, either misunderstanding his cleanup measures (which were themselves new) or meaning new taxes not on his fellow-Carthaginians but on their allies and subjects. A principal reason for the Carthaginians’ outrage and probably the main stimulus to Hannibal’s election had been the threat of a new general tax, so he had no motive to bring in one himself. Nor any need, if Livy is right to imply that simply stopping the existing leaks was enough to make the Roman indemnity easily payable. But Nepos stresses that the new taxes enabled the treasury to build up a surplus, and we shall see that this very likely did happen.8 As seen earlier, rough-and-ready calculation gives Hannibal’s city a postwar annual revenue of 1,400–1,500 talents. The new indemnity of 200 talents a year was then well over 10 per cent of this—but a much larger percentage of what actually reached the treasury. It is not surprising then that the Carthaginians were having trouble amassing the sum in 196. Hannibal carried out a thorough investigation into state revenues and expenditures, established what they ought to be (no doubt allowing for trade fluctuations and varying agricultural output, at least to some extent) and worked out—most tellingly of all—how and where the funding-diversions occurred. It seems he announced the results, or a résumé of them, at another public assembly: at any rate he told his listeners that removing the abuses would provide plenty of funds to pay the indemnity, and he promised to remove them. How a sufete, or even both sufetes, could take charge of finance is not known. Sufetes are nowhere recorded with finance among their responsibilities, though this may only be due to the state of our sources. Maybe Hannibal’s brisk way with the ‘quaestor’ had prompted the other finance officials to co-operate in practice, even if they did not have to do so in law; or maybe he put his measures to the citizen assembly for ratification. Maybe both, for no amount of ratification could guarantee the success of financial reforms if the officials who had to implement them remained opposed. It is not certain, even if sometimes claimed, that he also made the peculators disgorge all that they had taken. Livy writes that having completed his survey of income and embezzlements ‘he collected all the outstanding funds 194

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and cancelled the tax on private citizens’. If ‘the outstanding funds’ covered embezzlements going back over years or decades, then Hannibal would indeed have wrought a social revolution as occasionally claimed. After all, most such sums would not have been kept idle in strong-boxes, so a strict inquisition would have been needed to identify goods and properties bought with the stolen money, plus other investments such as loans and trade ventures; then all these would have to be either confiscated by the state or sold off by owners, inevitably at a loss, to meet the state’s claims. The whole process would have been open-ended and dangerously destabilizing not just economically but politically, even if the inquisition went back only (for instance) to the end of the recent war. It would be likely to drag in Barcid kinsmen and supporters as well as enemies, especially if it probed beyond 201. On all these grounds any such measure was surely inconceivable.9 Much likelier, Livy means—or is compressing a source who meant—that Hannibal succeeded in plugging the revenue-leaks so that the sums due in the current year were all received. Perhaps too he forced those who had made off with funds earlier in the year, before his reform had gone through, to repay them: that would be logical and relatively feasible. The methods of the reform can only be surmised. Carelessness (neglegentia) and direct theft were behind the losses, Livy writes briefly, no doubt compressing his source again. In this context carelessness would surely mean, as a rule anyway, not physically mislaying bags of money or losing them off wagons en route to the treasury, but overseers’ and officials’ insouciance— probably often collusive insouciance—over pilfering by lesser functionaries and other persons while funds were collected; insouciance too over supervising state contracts and supplies, and (pretty inevitably) over rendering proper accounts when these fell due. The remedy was obviously to impose reliable supervision and stricter auditing, which in turn required officials whom the sufete (and future sufetes) could trust. How Hannibal achieved it is not reported, but the election of the new and more compliant One Hundred and Four may have helped, if only by reminding existing functionaries that they now risked real penalties if caught out.10 Preventing outright peculation may have been an easier task, again basically calling for proper supervision (which the sufete could exert himself); maybe too Hannibal was able to get reliable men elected or selected for office at least for the coming year. The reforms would be better protected if he could enact more structured supervision-methods (a board or committee chosen from among each year’s One Hundred and Four, for instance): but Livy merely generalizes that ‘he kept his promise’ to improve the revenues. All the same, the financial improvement survived Hannibal’s sufeteship. Five years later the Romans were once more at war, this time with King Antiochus, and the Carthaginians offered to help by paying over in one lump sum their entire remaining indemnity: forty years’ worth, in other words no less than 8,000 talents or 48 million denarii. This was equivalent to around three 195

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and a half years of the Roman republic’s own average revenues—and more tellingly, more than six years of Punic revenues as estimated earlier. So from being unable in 197–196 to pay 200 talents unless a special tax were levied, the Carthaginians by 191 had accumulated funds at an average rate of 1,600 a year. At the same time they offered to donate massive quantities of wheat and barley, up to double what they had supplied in 200. The Romans for political reasons refused these Punic largesses, but plainly the offers were genuine. This was an amazing turnaround. Indeed it seems too much even for the reformed revenues on their own. This makes Nepos’ already-mentioned report of ‘new taxes’ noteworthy. Conceivably enough the sufete raised the Libyans’ taxes (an old Punic device to improve revenues) and those of subordinate cities like Lepcis. This would win him no friends among such folk, but none had the vote at Carthage, and Hannibal was hardly a sentimentalist when it came to his own city’s interests. Carthage’s economic revival, too, should have increased the intake from customs and harbour-dues and promoted other pursuits in which Carthaginians were skilled—shipbuilding, for instance, and not just for Punic customers—which might in turn be taxed one way or another. The city after all now had two safe and usable artificial ports, for, with the navy abolished, the circular inner port was as free for peacetime craft as was the outer haven. Archaeological evidence shows the inner port remained much in use, in fact was thoroughly refurbished, during the second century and this despite the absence of a war-fleet. With no navy save ten ships, no army to speak of (and few if any mercenaries), commercial and agricultural life reburgeoning, and extra tax revenues flowing in, it need not surprise that the state soon began to accumulate money.11

IV Even these measures may not have been Hannibal’s sole activities as sufete. Of course he had to devote much energy and time to them, for along with a probable involvement in the first election of the new-look tribunal of One Hundred and Four he had his inquest into the public finances to carry out followed by his remedies for the ailing treasury. Nor in turn could he afford to ignore the elections for the following year’s magistracies and the next Hundred and Four. Continuity of policy was vital for his reforms to be effective: since he and any allies of his in office could not seek re-election, or chose not to—and an entire new tribunal of judges had to be created—it would be common sense to try to get as many fresh supporters as possible elected instead. He must have had some success, for the Barcid faction was to remain politically powerful for some years to come. But he may have found time for other important work too, if the suggestion is correct that he initiated a major urban redevelopment which archaeologists 196

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have uncovered on the southern slopes of the Byrsa hill, datable through pottery to the early second century and so sometimes nicknamed ‘Hannibal’s quarter’ of the city. This was a well-designed residential and commercial project that replaced an area of iron foundries: broad stepped streets and handsome apartment blocks were laid out on the hillside, notable for Hellenistic features like peristyles and bathroom facilities. The development’s date and its novel and seemingly uniform plan have prompted the suggestion that it was another project of Hannibal the sufete. This may be right, for the Barcids had a tradition of city-building—even brother Mago supposedly had established a settlement in the Balearic islands in 205, today’s Mahón—and Hannibal himself was later to found one or even two cities in the east for royal patrons. With the Byrsa project, though, he can have done little more than draw up the plans and view the initial stage of work, for even by mid-195 not all the funds needed can already have been available. Whoever was responsible, the development was probably a response to the revival of prosperity and pressures for new living space. Priests and officials have been suggested as its likely beneficiaries. To them could be added the small shopkeepers and craftsmen who rented or bought premises in the new district. Some of the grand Hellenistic-style mansions discovered down by the shore may have been established at this time too: they would be city residences for members of the aristocracy, perhaps including Hannibal himself.12

V When his sufeteship expired he was plainly once more the first man in the state. As noted earlier, it looks as though he and his supporters were again in the ascendancy, whoever the supporters were, even if some proved to be fairweather friends only, and even though the senate—whose membership had not been touched—probably remained evenly balanced. The sources’ picture is consistent even if sketchy. During his sufeteship Hannibal had carried all before him and his enemies were reduced to intriguing with their friends at Rome against him. Afterwards, Livy makes clear, political feelings were high but his supporters remained many and strong. When the Roman embassy in 195 delivered a tirade against the fugitive leader in the Punic senate, no doubt via the most senior envoy Cn. Servilius Caepio, the senators simply replied that they would do whatever the Romans thought proper: there is no sign of them enthusiastically seconding the accusations, as might have been expected had Hannibal’s enemies regained control by now (these after all had intrigued to have the embassy sent), nor does the ensuing proscription of him prove anything but that the senate was obeying or anticipating Roman wishes, as promised.13 The glimpse Livy later allows of Carthage in 193 is just as suggestive. When Hannibal’s undeclared emissary Aristo of Tyre attracted notice, a debate in the senate showed opinion to be polarized: senators demanding 197

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action on Aristo were matched by those opposing it and deadlock ensued. Rather contradictorily, Livy then depicts the senate as a whole as hostile to Aristo whereas ‘the leading men’ are willing to meet with him, and mutual suspicions are only worsened by ordinary citizens’ equally dim view of the senate. It all produces internal wrangles serious enough to encourage Masinissa to encroach meantime on Punic lands. The contrasts are overdrawn—as another example, Livy himself records Aristo as having talks with Barcid supporters only, not all the ‘leading men’—but it is reasonable to conclude from this evidence that many aristocrats were still pro-Barcid in 193 and a sizeable segment of ordinary citizens likewise, while the senate was more or less evenly divided in sympathies. Even if by then anti-Barcid senators were more numerous, they were not strong enough to overbear their opponents on a controversial matter, and the resulting standoff so paralysed Punic politics that it gave Masinissa ideas. On the other hand Aristo’s circumspect behaviour at Carthage, and ultimate flight to avoid an inquisition, suggest that no kinsmen or friends of Hannibal were then in high office, though many no doubt were senators and in the One Hundred and Four and could hope for sufeteships and other positions in future. In other words the Barcid resurgence Hannibal had achieved can still be traced, though in weaker condition, three years later.14 When he stepped down from office Hannibal must have been aware of his opponents’ moves to have the Romans act against him. Carthaginian grandees had been writing to their guest-friends, ‘the leading men of Rome’ according to Livy, to press the allegations about him being in touch with the Seleucid king and to warn in vague and general terms that Hannibal in charge of Carthage was no good thing for Rome. This had been going on since the finance-reforms, so pretty certainly Hannibal too learned of it in time. But he could do little except keep himself informed and make a few prudent preparations in case of emergency. Roman reaction was held up ‘for a long time’ by, of all people, Hannibal’s military nemesis Scipio Africanus, who plainly viewed the accusations as slander. That an embassy was finally decreed in 195 may have been due to prodding by one consul, the combative M. Cato (not yet away in Spain) who was no friend to Scipio and, in later years anyway, showed notorious animosity towards the Carthaginians. How deep in collusion the Roman authorities were with Hannibal’s enemies is shown by the deceptive way the envoys introduced themselves—stating on their Punic cronies’ advice only that they had come to mediate in the dispute with Masinissa. Hannibal, not to be taken in by a palpable ruse, disappeared during the night and rode to his coastal estate near Thapsus, where he had a fully equipped ship waiting to take him via the offshore isle of Cercina to Tyre and then Syria.15 Had he stayed at Carthage, the envoys were probably under instructions to demand he be handed over to them. Their denunciation prompted the Punic senate to send two ships after him, which hardly squared with simultaneously 198

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declaring him an exile but obeyed the envoys’ implication that he ought to be punished for his actions. The demand for his handover not only had been put to his fellow-citizens by the Roman war-embassy of 218 but became a staple in Roman dealings with those who became his hosts in exile. Surrendered leaders were not treated handsomely at Rome. Kings like Syphax and in 168 the fallen Perseus of Macedon might be put into guarded villas but even then did not survive long; other leaders (most famously Masinissa’s grandson Jugurtha and the Gallic hero Vercingetorix) perished at Roman executioners’ hands in the squalid Tullianum prison at the foot of the Capitol. Hannibal was wise not to risk it.16 The denunciations which the envoys supposedly then unleashed against him in the Punic senate bear the coarse stamp of annalistic hindsight. As Livy tells it, they accused him of stirring up both Antiochus III and the Aetolian League in Greece to make war on the Romans, and scheming to bring Carthage into the same plot, not to mention planning to involve the entire world in war. But although Roman relations with the king had soured by 195, at that period the Aetolians were still Roman allies—discontented ones to be sure, but they were not to break with the Romans and turn to Antiochus until 193, nor is it likely that the Roman Senate was blessed so early with the foresight to know they would. What the envoys (in practice Caepio) did claim was probably closer to the allegations earlier raised by Hannibal’s enemies: he had been in touch with the Seleucid king and was urging him to make war on the Romans, no doubt promising to bring in the Carthaginians on his side; the republic would never enjoy peace while its hate-filled former leader lived in its midst, free to take part in affairs and seek power afresh. It would have been a small step from this to demanding his handover, but in his absence the best they could add was what Livy reports, that ‘such conduct should not go unpunished if the Carthaginians wished to convince the Roman people that none of [his misbehavings] had been done with their approval or with public sanction’.17 Faced with this unsubtle deposition the Punic senate—even had it been composed entirely of Barcid backers, even if both current sufetes were— could not counterargue. The Romans were militarily busy only with provincial wars in Cisalpina and Spain, and had a powerful navy plus plenty of veterans from the recent war with Macedon. Caepio and company had turned up officially out of the blue (they certainly had not been invited, nor had sent word ahead that they were coming), and everybody knew of at least one previous abrupt Roman démarche, the rape of Sardinia: some elderly senators had probably lived through it. Even so—and even though the demand that Hannibal ‘should not go unpunished’ clearly implied that punishment should be at least decreed—the senate’s reply took the limited form noted earlier: the Carthaginians would do whatever the Romans wished. This move quite possibly forced the envoys to declare what they did wish. Only after that were the penalties voted that 199

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Nepos credibly reports (Livy mentions no penalties under any date but, as just noted, he plainly implies them here). The senate not only ordered ships to chase after the runaway ex-general but declared him an exile, seized his property and even demolished his house.18 But no one else was attainted and the Barcid faction remained to fight another day. As the crowds’ reaction to his disappearance and then the Aristo episode in 193 both show, Hannibal left behind a strong network of friendships and popular support. His opponents do not seem to have succeeded in reimposing the old oligarchic control of affairs through the One Hundred and Four, for when some light is next thrown on Punic domestic affairs we read of three factions or groups competing politically: pro-Roman, proMasinissa (the old king was still very much alive) and ‘those who favoured popular rule’. Typically Appian, the reporter, fails to clarify when this was, and seems in fact to be generalizing about the whole postwar era—he names Hanno the Great, surely in his eighties by 195 if not dead, as the pro-Roman leader and Hamilcar the Samnite, who was active in the later 150s, as one of the two democrat chiefs. But it is clearly implied that politics remained a matter of competing leaders and groups, even if the leaders were the rich and wellborn as usual. The citizen assembly continued to play an important part: to drive the pro-Masinissa faction-chiefs into exile in 152 Hamilcar the Samnite and his confrère Carthalo had to carry a popular vote, which they sought to shore up by persuading the citizens into an oath never to contemplate repeal. In turn the ‘democratic’ faction’s ascendancy in the following years, leading to confrontation first with Masinissa and then with the Romans, was seconded by the Mighty Ones, who continued to direct foreign affairs. Such consensus probably had not reigned at all times during the preceding 40 years, of course, but overall it points to a more open and flexible political life after 196 compared with before. Moreover it was the ‘democrats’ who in the 150s and after spearheaded resistance first to Masinissa and then, disastrously, the Romans. So, whether or not directly descended in political terms from Hannibal’s supporters, they look like continuators and adapters of his methods and attitudes—and, in dramatic irony, the devisers of a national disaster that outdid his.19

VI Hannibal’s services to his city as sufete were certainly notable. True, he was not the architect of the renewed prosperity: that was due to the energy and resourcefulness of all his fellow-citizens, even if he had helped to set an example with his olive-plantations. But as suggested earlier, his financial reforms seem to have survived and made an impact, he eased the political strains that had been building up and he let greater flexibility, openness and indeed responsibility into public life. Arguably his achievements in one year 200

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of civil office far outdid those of his twenty years of military command—in constructive practical effects if not world renown. The Romans’ reaction to his reappearance in public affairs in 196 sharply contrasts with their indifference five years earlier, even though then he had still headed an army whereas now his leadership was civilian. Scipio, uninterested in hounding Hannibal in 201, was firmly opposed to it in 196 too, but his influence—despite his renown and his position as honorary first senator—had plainly declined. The Romans’ intervention vividly illustrates, and unflatteringly, their worries at the prospect of conflict with the Great King of the East. But it revealed too the growth of a deeply ingrained ill-feeling towards the Carthaginians. This could not yet be called hostility (except towards Hannibal) but, over the decades and in spite of all their guestfriendships and contacts, it would strengthen into implacability. This did not have to happen. The Romans’ officious response in 195 to the allegations by Hannibal’s enemies—whose self-interest was surely obvious to others besides Scipio—recalls their ruthless reaction to Hamilcar’s military and political success in 237 which involved no menace to Italy: better to act high-handedly at once to snuff out a possible danger than sit quiet and see what might come. There is no sign that the Carthaginians harboured antiRoman feelings, let alone schemes, nor that Hannibal had any such designs. True, after years of Masinissa’s bullying and Roman lukewarmness, they broke the treaty of 201 by waging war against the Numidian without the Romans’ (unobtainable) consent. But the king’s provocation was obvious, nor had they any wish for a Roman war even then. So it could be argued that if the Romans had followed Scipio’s advice and left the Carthaginians to solve their own problems, relations between the two republics would have found a better footing. The reformed and peaceable Punic state would have posed no threat, would have promoted prosperity around the Mediterranean, might even have become a loyal ally—and there would have been no tragedy of 146. If so the Romans’ vindictiveness in 195 was unusually shortsighted.20 This is probably too optimistic, all the same. The Carthaginians and Hannibal too were submissive because they were militarily powerless. It is a different question what might have happened over time, if Hannibal and his friends had remained dominant in political life while prosperity developed and the Romans entangled themselves in one foreign war after another. Masinissa and his ambitions would have been a permanent thorn in Punic Africa’s side, and action against him—as actual events were to show—could not be ventured without involving, in fact defying, the Romans. Hannibal would have made sure that, if it came to defiance, the republic was well equipped (its accumulating wealth has already been mentioned). It is not unthinkable, either, that a vigorously restored and Barcid-dominated state might eventually have looked for ways to reassert itself in foreign affairs overall, including allying with other states oppressed by growing Roman 201

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supremacy and high-handedness. Indeed in 174 Masinissa was to claim that the Carthaginians and Perseus of Macedon had exchanged envoys, though what their motives were is unknown (and the Romans for once seem not to have taken offence). The decision to interfere at Carthage in 195 probably owed something to fear of a Barcid-led return to independence; and however ill-grounded the fear was at the time, over the long term it was probably the right decision from the viewpoint of the Romans’ own interests.21

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I Hannibal never came home. Received by Antiochus III as a friend and counsellor, he none the less failed to play a notable rôle in the events up to and during the Great King’s war with the Romans. Originally he was neglected because the king still sought to settle his differences with the Romans by diplomacy; then he continued to be overlooked (we are told) owing to his illtimed hobnobbing with Roman envoys at Ephesus in 193. They sought him out supposedly with specious hints that he might be able to return to Carthage, but in reality to stir suspicions in Antiochus’ mind: a fairly predictable ploy that any experienced ex-general should recognize. He may have responded so as to sound out what the chances of return were—or to remind his host indirectly that he was not to be taken for granted. In either case it lacked tact. Even if he regained Antiochus’ confidence by telling him of his boyhood oath ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’, the Seleucid monarch still failed to use him seriously when war did break out.1 There were other reasons for this. The exile’s frankness would have done him no good if the stories told of it are true—like the cutting comment when Antiochus, showing off his sumptuously caparisoned military multitudes, asked complacently if they would be enough for the Romans: ‘enough and quite enough for the Romans, however greedy they are’. This is probably ben trovato rather than true (a writer’s idea later on of showing how the hero forecast débâcle and refused to flatter), unless it was a comment that Hannibal in fact growled to someone else after the display. More likely to be true is his barb at the expense of Phormio, a Peripatetic philosopher at Ephesus, whose lifetime lack of military experience did not deter him from lecturing for hours on generalship to Hannibal and an otherwise enraptured audience—‘I have often seen many old drivellers, but one who drivelled more than Phormio I have not seen.’ But Phormio’s admirers probably included, even if not Antiochus, some of the royal court since it was Hannibal’s new hosts who had invited him along.2 203

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He was outspoken, and not entirely to others’ taste again, when occasionally admitted to the royal council’s strategic planning discussions. In 194 and 193, when everyone including the king was still wondering whether it might come to war with the Romans, he urged pre-emptive action: a small combined expedition—100 warships, 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, under his own command naturally—to be sent to Italy via Africa to try to bring the Carthaginians into alliance and, with their aid or without, raise war against the Romans in their homeland (Livy later shows he was thinking of Etruria, Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul). Meanwhile the main royal forces should move into Greece as a first step towards invading Italy in his support. This riskily optimistic grand scenario supposedly impressed Antiochus, but that was partly because war was far from certain and therefore bold schemes could be comfortably touted. In any case, the upshot was that Hannibal sent ahead his Tyrian friend Aristo to sound out the Carthaginians: and when that mission collapsed so did royal interest, if it had not already faded thanks to Hannibal’s meetings with the envoys from Rome.3 Despite the reported reconciliation between exile and king that followed, Hannibal was still not invited to council meetings for several months, so the reconciliation was at best on a personal level. Militarily the royal ear preferred to listen to Greek advisers, Alexander the Acarnanian and Thoas of Aetolia, who suggested only sideshow-jobs for the Carthaginian because plainly they resented him in any serious rôle. Nor was Antiochus himself too enthusiastic about entrusting a serious rôle to a lieutenant who might eclipse him in military prowess. If Nepos is right that in 193 Hannibal sailed with five ships to encourage his fellow-countrymen to join Antiochus’ war—only to give up when he reached the coast of Cyrene, more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometres) from Carthage—then this was his first employment by the Seleucid king since he had joined the court, but the story is unconvincing. Nepos has Mago the Barcid join his brother only to die, and Hannibal gives up because the Carthaginians have decreed banishment for Mago in turn; on Aristo’s mission in this same year Nepos is silent. Livy more believably reports that the idea of sending Hannibal had been discussed but, thanks to Thoas, nothing came of it. If the ex-general did ever visit Cyrene, with five ships or just one, it would have been en route from Carthage to Tyre in 195, for the coastal trip could hardly have avoided Cyrenaica. If he learned of a Punic decree of exile then, it was not about his long-dead brother Mago but himself.4 He was not given another council hearing until midwinter 192–191 when the king and his court were at Demetrias in Greece, with hostilities already under way. Now he urged a rather different strategy but still with the focus on Italy: Philip V of Macedon to be won over or neutralized, half the royal fleet to raid the Tyrrhenian coasts and half to bar the Ionian Sea to an enemy crossing and make it possible for Antiochus to invade Italy himself at an opportune moment. This time he did not (it seems) envisage landing in Italy 204

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to stir up preliminary revolts: instead Antiochus was to station all his troops in Epirus for an invasion in force. The council applauded his proposals, then acted on none of them.5

II Antiochus may have been jealous of his guest’s fame and suspicious of his devotion, but there was more to it. Hannibal’s stress that war against the Romans needed to be fought primarily in Italy was strategically sound (like his stress on how needful support from Macedon was), but for him to urge this after his own failure there, and in so limited a form—even though it was just to be the opening stage—was counterproductive. The notion that he could land in Italy or Cisalpina with 11,000 troops and tie the Romans in knots was frankly nonsense. When he had arrived there in 218 with more than twice as many, recruiting locally thousands more, he still had not managed either to crush them in their homeland or prevent them occupying all of Punic Spain and Africa save Carthage itself. Besides, by the mid-190s no part of Italy was in any condition or mood to rise up one more time against the Romans: yet for an expedition to make any real impact he would have needed much more than Cisalpine allies. As for the 100 ships that he had also demanded, Antiochus’ whole navy was not much bigger—when war started in 192 he could take only that many with him to Greece.6 With Hannibal also proposing to stop en route at Carthage, the king might be forgiven for wondering just where the exile’s priorities lay. Obviously, to have the Punic republic on side would be a great advantage: but was it guaranteed that if Hannibal and his friends recovered power, even thanks to Seleucid forces, they would back the king after all, rather than keep Carthage neutral and prosperous? If a Hannibalic coup sparked dissension in the state—as was quite likely—would the general still go on to Italy as promised rather than stay in Africa to support his faction? If he stayed home, Antiochus would have wasted troops, ships and money. When Hannibal in turn began having conversations with the Roman envoys during 193, any such doubts might well seem justified. He was able to pacify the royal mistrust: but his later proposals in winter 192 left out any mention of Carthage. In the war, the best the Great King could find for the greatest general of the age to do was bizarre: a rôle as naval commodore in the eastern Mediterranean which in summer 190 earned him and a small Seleucid fleet a trouncing by the Rhodians off Side in Pamphylia. With the peace-terms in 189 calling for him to be surrendered to the Romans, he had to find a new refuge. Six more years of rootlessness followed. First a stay at Gortyn in Crete where (the story goes) he deflected local greed for his portable wealth by lodging jars brimming with gold and silver in the temple of Artemis, only for the locals to find after his departure that the jars were lead-filled with just a 205

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topping of valuables—a properly Hannibalic ruse if true. Next to the court of Artaxias king of Armenia, for whom reportedly he founded the city of Artaxata; then in service with Prusias king of Bithynia, who like the now-dead Antiochus III made use of him in war merely as a naval commander. At least Hannibal won his sea-battle this time, in Prusias’ brief war with Eumenes of Pergamum, again using a characteristic surprise touch—poisonous snakes in clay pots hurled onto the enemy’s decks to sow panic. And according to the Elder Pliny at least, he founded a city, Prusa, for his host. But Prusias was an unreliable protector. When Roman envoys arrived in Bithynia late in 183 or at the start of 182 to insist on peace between the two kings, they added Hannibal’s handover to the agenda once more, though it may not have been part of their original instructions, and with Prusias’ acquiescence took steps to prevent another flight as they closed in on his country house. To escape the indignity of capture—he no doubt recalled Syphax the Numidian’s confinement and early death—the elderly exile, now 64, took poison. His remains were entombed nearby, the memorial one day to be splendidly redone in white marble by another and more successful African leader, the emperor Septimius Severus from Lepcis Magna.7

III The rise and fall of the Barcids’ ascendancy at Carthage played itself out almost exactly across Hannibal’s own lifetime. More narrowly, he and his kinsmen had dominated the affairs of the Carthaginian republic from the later stages of the Mercenaries’ War to the last years of the Second Punic and then again, as argued earlier, during the middle 190s. It was a dominance shorter than that of the Magonids in the sixth and fifth centuries, but much more spectacular. Punic politics, as argued earlier too, remained relatively competitive after 195 if still largely aristocratic, and the one-time Barcid group—or a similar one—continued to play a part. But no Barcids were associated with it, and no appeal was made to Barcid or Hannibalic memories even in Carthage’s deathstruggle with the old enemy 40 years later. If Hannibal and Imilce did have a son he did not live, or else he lived a thoroughly obscure life. Ironically, lasting fame and even respect sprang from those same enemies and their Greek friends: starting with Scipio’s admiration for Hannibal, Cato’s commendation of Hamilcar and Polybius’ broad treatment of all three Barcid leaders. The Barcid ascendancy had rescued the city and the republic in their blackest hour, created a land empire to rival or outdo the Romans’, and raised Carthaginian fortunes to their zenith by bringing much of Italy under Barcid dominance and recovering most of Barcid Spain from its invaders. Then Roman resilience and Barcid mistakes brought the overstretched structure down. The day after peace was sworn in 201 found the republic in much the same condition as the day after Hippou Acra and Utica had surrendered in 206

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237: all overseas territories lost, the homeland a smoking ruin, trade shattered and the treasury drained. That brought one more Barcid service, Hannibal’s sufeteship, which revitalized public life and restored public resources—and with them public confidence—enough for the effects to endure practically to the end of the city’s existence. These feats were not due simply to three men’s genius. On all the evidence, Carthaginian society had a vigour and resourcefulness matched by no contemporary republic save Rome, and by few if any of the monarchies. The Carthaginians’ dogged resistance in the Mercenaries’ War, their ability to supply settlers and other personnel for the conquests in Spain, the forces— glorious and inglorious—they put into the field and sent to sea during the Second Punic War, and their economic recovery after 201 and especially 196, all testify to the mettle of the people the Barcids led. A great deal was surely owed to the unrecorded and unsung kinsmen and friends of Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal who in practice operated the Barcid ascendancy at Carthage. The Barcid generalissimos were largely absentee leaders—present in Africa only between 241 and 237, around 228 and after 203 respectively. It was their men at Carthage who kept senate and people supportive, effectively handled the not always predictable tribunal of One Hundred and Four, no doubt filled public offices from year to year, and won over or neutralized potentially powerful rival interests like the group around Hasdrubal son of Gisco and the seemingly indestructible (if at times minute) faction of Hanno the Great. Without them the generals could not have maintained the dominance of affairs and policies that even Hannibal enjoyed until the last two or three years of his war, and it must have been with them—those who survived and had stayed loyal—that he staged his comeback in 196. The Barcid ascendancy was an unusual phenomenon for a Hellenistic-era republic. The Romans did have a largely aristocratic system of politics but one more open and chequered, with no Roman family or coterie of friends able to dominate it for decades and largely exclude opponents from policymaking. Similar politics prevailed (so far as we know) in republics like Rhodes, Tarentum and Athens. In some others an open and fractious public life suffered transformation into monarchy virtual or real—notably Syracuse in the fourth and third centuries, where long periods of autocracy were merely punctuated by spasms of democracy. At Carthage, a virtual power-monopoly was maintained through popular support and popular politics. It was not a virtual autocracy for, with every Barcid leader overseas, his supremacy at home rested on collaborators, whose support he could not automatically compel and whose own initiatives he (sometimes at least) had to follow. Moreover opposition to the ascendancy endured and found voices; nor is there any trace of prosecutions, show trials or violence against anti-Barcid Carthaginians. When popular support and popular political methods faded, the Barcid ascendancy was replaced by a 207

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power-oligopoly, but returned briefly in 196–195 and then left behind as a legacy (even if one not wholly intended by Hannibal) an energetic political life something like the Roman, which lasted till the city’s final crisis. It was an extra irony that in time Roman politics would evolve in the opposite direction—from more and more fractious competitiveness into dictatorship and then an all-encompassing monarchy. Julius Caesar’s career path would reverse Hannibal’s.

IV At times the Barcids, and Hannibal in particular, have been seen as standardbearers of Hellenistic civilization (or a form of it) pitted against the alien advance of Rome; or, a little less epically, as protagonists of a multicultural Mediterranean confronting the levelling impetus of Roman imperialism. That any of them took such a view of themselves or found it taken by contemporaries is unlikely. Third-century Carthage had certainly adopted elements of Hellenistic civilization—notably urbanistic, architectural and military—but these no more transformed the Carthaginians into a Hellenized community than much bigger borrowings transformed the Romans 100 years later. Again, the Barcids were all notable city-founders, from Acra Leuce to Prusa, but no citizen of an ancient Phoenician colony would view city-founding as a Greek-inspired activity. And while Hannibal knew Greek thanks to Sosylus and wrote some books in the language, he hardly needed lectures from his friend on Cleomenes III of Sparta’s recent and divisive reforms to prompt his own (far more limited) measures in 196.8 The overwhelming likelihood is that the Barcids saw themselves as the defenders and promoters of their own state’s safety and power, and subordinated everything else to this. Certainly too they saw themselves as the Carthaginians best-qualified for defending the city’s safety and promoting its power and prosperity—they would hardly have been useful leaders otherwise. This is not to claim that their policies were all well judged, still less always the best. Was expansion into Spain a better long-term move than expanding within North Africa? Numidia had potential, as Masinissa afterwards was to show. Was focussing on a military establishment by land the most rational use of resources? Carthage’s history, economy and location—including the strategic vulnerability of Punic Africa—arguably made strong naval forces just as vital (and the Barcids had the lessons of the previous Punic war to remind them). Was confronting the Romans over Saguntum a sound reaction to their embassy of 220, when restraint might have avoided war or, at least, might have forced the other side into more overtly aggressive moves that could have given the Carthaginians the moral high ground—and conceivably some military and diplomatic advantage as well? Not all of Hannibal’s military decisions look the best either. Could he have 208

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executed the march to Italy more efficiently so as to reach Cisalpine Gaul less late in the year and with something like the 50,000-plus troops who had followed him across the Pyrenees, or at any rate the 46,000 he had led over the Rhône? It would have made an incalculable impact on the war. Was it an effective long-term strategy not to follow Cannae with a march on Rome? And indeed was it defensible to invade Italy at all with no alternative offensive strategy to fall back on if the Romans failed to be cowed by two or three defeats—any more than they had been cowed by both defeats and natural disasters in the earlier war? The lack of some alternative offensive strategy condemned his expedition to operating stagnantly in southern Italy while hoping for some new event or arrival to revitalise its efforts. Co-operation with Macedon and then Syracuse flopped: instead of achieving a concentration of fresh forces against the enemy, Hannibal managed to disperse not only Roman military efforts (a strategic plus) but likewise Carthaginian. When a new opportunity did occur—after the destruction of the brothers Scipio in Spain in 211, then in 207 on Hasdrubal’s advance across the Alps with a fresh army—the Punic strategic response was pathetic. Conceivably too Hannibal could have done more to shore up Barcid fortunes at Carthage, at any rate in the second half of the war when they began to fail. While the war went well the Barcid ascendancy was self-sustaining, but it was unwise to expect that to continue once a practical stalemate descended on operations, and plain folly to expect it after Punic and Barcid fortunes started to slide. From 218 if not earlier (we do not know when Hannibal’s brothers went to Spain) until 201 the only Barcid brother to set foot in Carthage was Mago in autumn and winter 216–215, and his purpose was military. No doubt relatives as well as close family friends worked hard politically, as mentioned earlier, but with the tide turning it would have been politic for brother Hasdrubal, for instance, to pay a visit home to shore up allegiances, inspect the workings of administration and organize fresh forces. In the slow years after 211, in an off-campaign season, Hannibal himself might have risked it. In either case it might have revitalized both the Barcid group at home and the war-effort.9 Hannibal’s taking the home front for granted was to be expected, for in contrast to his father and brother-in-law he had virtually no experience of Carthaginian political life before 201. Maintaining the Barcid ascendancy at home was, in effect, done for him. His political business managers at Carthage, unsung and unremembered, must have been both skilled and devoted—and probably he took all that for granted. What they might have achieved for Barcid interests, had the Barcid warriors during the war kept closer personal contact with their home city, can only be guessed. This enduring detachment from home politics was one more mistake— and a serious one—of Hannibal’s leadership. Of course he might argue that every general, even the greatest, makes mistakes. But few great generals have 209

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been at the same time the political leaders of their states: and of those few, none detached himself so completely from the ongoing business of politics and government at home. Since war and victories were his trademark, military defeat meant the end of his and his family’s political mastery. Yet the continuing vigour of Barcid political interests after 201 surely testifies not just to the self-centred ineptitude of those who supplanted him, but also to the strength of the relationships built up over 30 years of success and—not least—to the charismatic appeal of Hannibal’s own personality.

V The Romans found it hard to decide about him. He was both a fearsome enemy, more fearsome than Pyrrhus or later on Mithridates of Pontus, and at the same time a figure with qualities worth admiring—in his energy, resourcefulness, leadership and devotion to his country practically a Roman manqué. Scipio Africanus opposed intervening against him in 195 and their supposed friendly meeting at Ephesus a couple of years later, even if invented, shows that the Roman hero was not remembered as a Hannibal-hater. Cato, who respected Hannibal’s father and disliked Scipio, possibly saw some good points in Scipio’s opponent too even if he judged the attack on Saguntum a breach of treaty.10 The non-Roman Polybius not only sought to be objective about the Barcids (and saw virtues in all of them) but even registers the opinion that Hannibal was justified to fight in 218. Of course he states this obliquely—his work was aimed at Roman as well as Greek readers—and he later qualifies it with the verdict that the general all the same acted too soon. Livy by contrast exemplifies Roman ambivalence: he offers the famous character-portrait at the start, with virtues vividly specified and then a list of generalized vices, follows it with a narrative noticeably respectful towards the foe, and accords him a stoically pathetic speech before his suicide. Cassius Dio’s characterportrait, a lengthy collection of generalizations for an energetic and awe-inspiring commander, is almost entirely friendly. Poets too, like Horace and Silius, reflect the Romans’ hate-and-love complex.11 What fascinated them, like Romans and Greeks generally and moderns too, was Hannibal the general, the breaker of armies and, most vividly of all, crosser of mountains—not the Hannibal who, it can be held, restored his country’s prosperity later on and with it at least a modicum of democracy. Those achievements endured for nearly half a century but they lacked the éclat of war. Historical irony all the same ensured that the unforgettable military exploits, after a decade and a half of excitement and success, left his state toppled as a great power and its enemies poised to rule the Mediterranean. Once the Barcid era had ended, many Carthaginians might ruefully feel that their city could have fared better without it and its short-lived grandeur, had Carthage been left quietly to cultivate its garden in Africa instead. 210

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Yet this would probably have been impossible, no matter who directed Punic policy after 241. To have Hanno the Great and his circle in charge, for instance, and favouring expansion within North Africa—not that we know of them favouring this—would not have guaranteed an untroubled existence. There was plenty of trade between North Africa and Italy and the Romans at times showed themselves aggressive in protecting their traders’ interests (or using protection as a pretext), as in 240 towards the Carthaginians themselves and ten years later towards the Illyrians. A much-expanded Punic empire in North Africa and accompanying prosperity could have fuelled revanchist Punic designs on Sicily; even if not, the Romans’ behaviour in 237 and 225, over Sardinia and when facing the Gallic invasion, suggests they would soon have begun suspecting just such designs. Again, it is scarcely believable that Hanno in charge of affairs could have averted the mercenary and Libyan revolt; and it was this catastrophe that prompted Punic expansion into Spain, where richer resources beckoned than in Africa at the time. In turn the expanding Spanish empire would still have regularly risked Roman inquisitiveness, with unforeseeable results.12 The Carthaginians had thus been locked into a very narrow range of choices from 241 on: and that being so, the Barcid ascendancy, which brought them new wealth and power and, for a while, the chance of western Mediterranean supremacy, was probably their best course. An ultimate Barcid defeat was not inevitable either for, as we have seen, some crucial decisions (especially some of Hannibal’s) could have been made differently to bring the opposite result. As it turned out, though, the most permanent achievement of the Barcid era was fame and a glorious memory. Carthage went down to fiery destruction in 146—just over a century after Hamilcar first stepped into the light of history—but even if there were no Carthaginians left to remember it, the time of the Barcids was stamped on the memories and traditions of their enemies, partly in hostility (but this cooled over the centuries) and partly in admiration. As a result, imperfectly in places and extensively in others, we can in our own time appreciate the impressiveness of their achievement and the drama of their fall.

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I What we know of the Barcid era is uneven. Much, though not enough, about Hamilcar’s campaigns in Sicily and then North Africa, but barely anything of his years in Spain; again only an outline of Hasdrubal’s time as general there; while by contrast the wars of Hannibal and his lieutenants are copiously— which does not always mean reliably—recorded. The most glaring deficiency of all is in the record of domestic Carthaginian affairs, for all we have are occasional glimpses (during the negotiations with Scipio in 203, for instance) and passing comments. The surviving sources are all literary, in other words are works composed by educated writers for similar readers. These all lived later than the events they record, some much later; were all Greeks or Romans; and all had interests of their own to illustrate, centred on the Hellenistic Greek world and the Romans’ achievement of Mediterranean dominance. Works on the Carthaginian aspect of the same events once existed too, but disappeared probably before the Roman empire did. The first important source, all the same, predates them and survives. In his analysis of city-state political systems Aristotle includes the Carthaginian, his sole non-Greek example. He judges it a well-balanced structure though not free from stresses, largely oligarchic but with an important though limited rôle for the ordinary citizen; mentions the tribunal of One Hundred and Four and notes both its power and that of the (undefined) pentarchies; and emphasizes as well as criticizes the weightiness of wealth in public life. His comments may amount to little more than a sketch and raise plenty of further questions, and he is describing the Punic polity of a century or more before the Barcids: but it is all we have apart from passing and sometimes ignorant remarks in other writers.1 The very first writers to treat of the Barcids were the Sicilian Philinus of Agrigentum, and the Roman Q. Fabius Pictor. Philinus wrote a history of the First Punic War, a fairly substantial one since he began the war itself only in his second book. There is no convincing sign that he went past 241 and he seems to have composed his work in the years following. By then Sicily was 212

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under Roman rule, which did not improve his attitude towards the people who had sacked and ravaged his home city. By contrast Fabius, the first Roman historian—who also wrote in Greek—dealt with the whole of Roman history, paying special attention to its legendary opening centuries and to his own time. He had held a praetorship and, after the disaster of Cannae, led an embassy to consult the oracle at Delphi. His narrative reached 217 at least (Livy cites his Roman casualty figures for the battle of Lake Trasimene), and probably the end of the war. The papyrus fragment of Polybius’ time, on some events in North Africa in 203, is possibly from an epitome of it. Both writers took partisan stands on Roman–Punic relations. Philinus gave a questionable account of the start of the first war and very probably bathed Hamilcar’s Sicilian campaigns in the eulogistic light that Polybius’ own verdict reflects—Fabius can hardly have done so, and these two are the only primary sources known. Fabius in turn accused Hasdrubal, Hamilcar’s successor, of greed and power-lust, claimed that Hannibal copied the same vices, and denied the latter the support of any leading person in his attack on Saguntum and the ensuing war against the Romans. All the same they both recorded events in detail and, a useful feature, from opposing points of view; both also convinced Polybius of their honest intent even if this had flaws in practice.2 Hannibal himself was a source. In 205 he had an account of his campaigns inscribed in Punic and Greek in the temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium; so at any rate Livy describes the contents, though Polybius cites them for nothing more than the Punic army statistics of 218. The Greek text of his treaty with Philip V of Macedon does survive in Polybius’ verbatim quotation—the nearest we can come to anything composed by Hannibal himself.3 Just a little is known of other contemporaries. Hannibal’s Greek friends and admirers, Silenus from Cale Acte in Sicily and Sosylus of Sparta, both wrote accounts of his doings as war-leader and may (either or both) have continued down to 195. But a papyrus fragment on a naval battle in Spanish waters, maybe the battle at the Ebro’s mouth in 217, is all that remains of Sosylus’ Hannibalica, and the famous story of the general’s dream en route to Italy is Silenus’ only substantial item still surviving. Polybius is not enthusiastic about them. He sees Sosylus as capable of relaying gossip worthy of a barbershop (a sharp verdict, but not disproved by the plausible battle-narrative); and is contemptuous of writers who supplied Hannibal with gods and heroes to guide his way across the Alps, which hits very near to Silenus. On the other hand they recorded events from Hannibal’s side in detail, and not his operations alone: Sosylus’ Spanish sea-battle, and Silenus’ figures (cited by Livy) for military booty captured at New Carthage in 209, show that both narrated the war as a whole and—on military matters anyway—soberly enough. No doubt they portrayed their friend and patron in the best light at all times. How much they reported, or even understood, of his enemies’ military and political systems, or the constantly changing details of Roman commanders and magistrates, can only be guessed.4 213

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Various other early writers are mentioned in our surviving sources, most of them just names: like the Chaereas whom Polybius brackets with Sosylus as a purveyor of barbershop tales, one Eumachus of Naples, and a Xenophon. Less misty is the Roman L. Cincius Alimentus, praetor in 210 and later on a prisoner of Hannibal’s: he too eventually wrote a history of Rome which included his own times, in Greek like Fabius Pictor. As a high-ranking captive he was treated to conversations with the general at least on military matters, though his one recorded slice of information—figures for Hannibal’s losses en route to Italy and army strength on arriving—is at best the product of misunderstanding or a confused memory. The innovative and pugnacious Cato the Elder, a veteran of the war, consul in 195 and the first to write history in Latin, likewise dealt with the era in later sections of his seven-book Origines, but only a few extracts survive thanks to quotation by later writers. One of them is the earliest known version of Maharbal’s famous remark to Hannibal, uttered supposedly after Cannae but arguably in fact the day after Trasimene.5 With history-writing an established genre at Rome, a long succession of Latin as well as Greek authors covered the Punic Wars as part of their general narratives, but what they contributed to the surviving accounts cannot be identified. In the late second century, on the other hand, L. Coelius Antipater invented the Latin historical monograph with seven books on Hannibal’s war. Although it too failed to survive it was much consulted by Livy and others, and Cicero rather grudgingly praises Coelius’ efforts at literary stylishness. Coelius made use of Silenus, and maybe other pro-Barcid writers, as well as Roman sources; consulted not only historical works but items like preserved funeral orations; and drew his conclusions on debatable issues from careful consultation of the evidence available, for instance on how the consul Marcellus met his end in 208. An interest in literary style and dramatic scenes led him to cite Silenus’ account of Hannibal’s famous dream, and sometimes prompted more dubious touches—like running Scipio and his army through a near-disastrous storm on their voyage to Africa, whereas all Livy’s other sources recorded a calm sea and prosperous voyage.6 Two first-century historians of Rome also loom large among Livy’s fitful references to predecessors whom he consulted on the Punic-wars period and after. Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias, conventionally dated to the time of Sulla the dictator, gave much space in their lengthy works to the Punic wars. For such general histories, standard practice was to recount events year by year (as Livy and others do): hence the term annalists applied to the writers. Livy found these two particularly appealing, and not only on the Punic wars, for the quantity of detail they offered and their claim to have digested a broad range of earlier sources. Not so appealing as to blind him to some of their shortcomings, notably Valerius’ feckless exaggeration of enemies slain and booty taken; yet he cites them a good deal more often than any other predecessors.7 214

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II Polybius is the oldest extant source. His lengthy history of recent times is incomplete: only Books 1–5 in full, plus excerpts—fortunately, many are lengthy—of most of the other 35. For Polybius recent times began in 220, when in his view all the affairs of the Mediterranean world began an interaction (symploke) that was to culminate in Roman domination from east to west. But to clarify how the interaction originated he provides a sketch, in Books 1 and 2, of the main events preceding it: the First Punic War and the Mercenaries’ War, followed by events in Greece, Roman expansion into northern Italy in the 230s and 220s and interwar Roman–Punic relations. His work as a result spans the era 264 to 146.8 Polybius is not only the earliest source but an acute, analytical and argumentative one. Thanks to 17 years at Rome from 167 (as a comfortably housed state hostage), he became an admirer of the Romans—their civic qualities, political system, military structure, imperial success—and a friend of the much younger P. Scipio Aemilianus, grandson of Hannibal’s opponent. When Aemilianus outdid his grandfather by sacking, burning and depopulating Carthage in 146, Polybius was at his side. Long before this he had decided to write an account of ‘how, and through what type of political system, almost the entire world was subdued in not quite fifty-three years and fell under the sole rule of the Romans’. The 53 years were from 220 to the overthrow and partition of Macedon, a state which itself had once conquered much of the world, in 167. It was a later decision to extend the narrative down to 146 to show, in not always favourable detail, how the Romans used their hegemony. The history is not a plain narrative but also supplies regular comments, discussions, digressions and even extensive thematic essays: the most famous being his treatment of the Roman political and military systems in Book 6. To explain events required impartiality, perceptiveness and clarity, all of which he was confident he possessed. Likewise experience of warfare and politics, which again were no problem. And he had available a wide range of sources, all of them contemporary or near-contemporary with their times, from written accounts of the First and Second Punic Wars to participants and eyewitnesses of recent events.9 Book 3 ends with the Roman catastrophe at Cannae, and when the Punic war narrative resumes after Book 6 we have only the excerpts, most of them from the tenth-century Byzantine compilation authorized by the emperor Constantine VII. While some later sources, Livy above all, do follow Polybius as their own source when reporting the decades after 216, it is hard to be sure what is Polybian in their versions and what they take from other writers. The blending that took place can be seen plainly enough in Livy’s telling of the first three years of Hannibal’s war, where his Books 21 and 22 run parallel to Polybius’ Book 3; not to mention in passages later in his work where he can 215

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be matched with a Polybian excerpt, for instance the accounts of Zama and its aftermath.10 Polybius’ Roman and Greek focus widens to include Carthaginian matters only where these are relevant—or to him seem relevant—to his grand theme. The Punic Wars obviously do; so too the Mercenaries’ War in Punic Africa, in his view an awful demonstration of the dangers such employees could pose to a state when they broke from control, and also a vital factor in the causes of Hannibal’s war. He much admires Hamilcar and Hannibal: the father to the extreme of judging him the finest general of the First Punic War, and the son for his leadership and military genius, despite conceding he was not free of faults—and despite laying responsibility for the Second Punic War on both of them. But he is not interested enough in the Punic state or community to offer even an outline of Carthage’s political system (a contrast to Book 6 on Rome’s) or name any notable Carthaginian except military commanders: that Gisco was the name of the senator whom Hannibal summarily shut up in 203 we learn from Livy, while the sufete who spoke for Carthage in 218, in the fateful confrontation with the Romans’ war-embassy, remains anonymous. Again, his comment that by 218 the Punic political system was tilted towards democracy is better than no comment at all, but still leaves us to make what we can out of Aristotle’s sketch in the Politics plus occasional items like Hasdrubal’s and Hannibal’s election as generals, and Livy’s brief mention of the postwar ‘order of judges’.11 All that being said, Polybius has unique strengths. He consulted pro-Punic accounts like Hannibal’s and Sosylus’ as well as Roman ones, and was not over-trusting of either side (though at times hypercritical). In spite of his Roman connexions he is not prepared to give the Romans the benefit of the doubt every time: certainly not, for instance, over the rape of Sardinia in 237, while—cautiously but unmistakably—he sets out his opinion that the Carthaginians were justified in going to war in 218. In a different vein, his description of the special horrors of a Roman city-sacking is the more chilling for being matter of fact. The Hellenistic equivalent of a Renaissance man, Polybius not only was a leader, diplomat and organizer in his own career but also contributed to military science (improved fire-signalling methods, for example), travelled widely, inspected sites and terrain, looked up documentary sources like Hannibal’s inscribed memoir and the treaties between Rome and Carthage, and interviewed eyewitnesses (King Masinissa for instance). All these aspects show up in his history. On military, geographic and chronological matters he is a great deal more knowledgeable than our other sources, and he takes time out to describe and discuss them. Not that this does guarantees clarity every time— most famously over Hannibal’s route from the Rhône to Cisalpine Gaul, but also for instance over the chronology and topography of the Mercenaries’ War—but it is important that he realizes the need. In the same way his interest in explaining psychology and motivation is valuable even though not 216

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every explanation may convince: thus, famously, his theory of Barcid hostility and war-planning against Rome.12

III Well after Polybius came the next two surviving writers, Diodorus and Livy, both of the later first century BC. Diodorus’ Historical Library, a 40-book world history, offers only excerpts from its second half, mostly selected by medieval Byzantine copyists. A Sicilian himself, he devoted substantial space to the island’s history and for the First Punic War drew on his fellow-Sicilian Philinus as well as on Roman sources. In turn, his few excerpts on the Mercenaries’ War match Polybius’ account so closely that efforts from time to time to thrust some intermediary fount between them remain unconvincing. By contrast, his invaluable few paragraphs on Hamilcar’s and Hasdrubal’s doings in Spain draw on some other writer, well informed, detailed and Barcidfriendly: it is tempting to think of either Silenus or Sosylus. Diodorus’ modus operandi, much of the time anyway, was to rewrite or abbreviate his source of the moment with few substantial changes; in other places (like his account of the fateful year 264) he uses more than one source but seems to be faithful to each in turn. This not very original way of writing history makes the lack of his full text the more deplorable, for that might have given a better view of what some of the pro-Punic sources were like.13 T. Livius, his younger contemporary, started his history of Rome around 30 BC and outdid all his predecessors in length (142 books—90 per cent of them on the centuries from 272 on) and in artistry. Of the 35 books surviving, Books 21 to 30 record the Second Punic War; then Books 31 to 39 provide most of the details we have of Hannibal’s postwar fortunes, including his year as sufete. Like Diodorus, Livy is heavily dependent on his sources, but with much more reshaping and recasting of his finished narrative. As mentioned earlier he often draws on at least two accounts to create his own blend, something readily seen when one account is Polybius’. For the later third century and the first half of the second, besides Polybius he draws chiefly on Roman predecessors, with the already-noted partiality for Claudius and Valerius; but—at least by his own claim—makes use from time to time of a wider selection, including Fabius and Cincius. Whether he directly consulted all such works or merely reproduced citations made by a narrower group (Coelius and the late annalists have been urged) we do not know. Livy follows Polybius in his praises of Hannibal’s leadership and continues to be interested in—and sympathetic to—the general after 201. Nevertheless he makes it clear that the Romans were provoked into the war and had the moral fibre to win it. Literary grandeur apart, his value lies not just in basing his narrative partly on Polybius but in supplying detailed accounts of Roman affairs of every kind, materials that his industrious predecessors amassed from older records like the annals of the pontifices. Industrious himself (the 217

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history took him about four and a half decades), he lacked direct experience of politics or warfare or the world outside Italy—rather like Polybius’ favourite bête noire Timaeus—and could apply no great independence of judgement to issues. Therefore he reworks what his sources tell him: and so preserves a wealth of unique information, along with rather numerous mistakes and confusions. Now and then, he pauses to summarize the differing opinions among his sources that are causing him trouble (Hannibal’s Alpine route and army losses, Fabius the Delayer’s exact legal position vis-à-vis his deputy Minucius late in 217, Hannibal’s route to Rome in 211, Scipio’s booty from New Carthage). Patriotism plays its part too, for instance to distort the Ebro accord with Hasdrubal and import romantic tales about Scipio Africanus in Spain and Africa. One result of Livy’s methods and limitations is extensive scholarly scepticism about many items that lack Polybian corroboration and smell instead of annalistic inventiveness, or seem to. Minucius’ self-abasement after being rescued by Fabius the Delayer from annihilation is one uncontroversial example, and so too is (or should be) the Senate’s rejection of the peace negotiated in 203 by Scipio in Africa. The non-Polybian details reported for the elder Scipios’ operations in Spain down to 211 are, some or all, dismissed as annalistic fictions too, which (on the other hand) may be oversceptical; likewise, on a smaller scale, the episode of Centenius Paenula in 212. Such controversies make it necessary to read Livy, even more than Polybius, with care.14

IV Sizeable narratives of operations in both Punic Wars are provided by the late second-century AD Appian of Alexandria, in his history of Roman wars laid out by geographical regions: in particular the books Hannibalica, Iberica and Libyca. They are very uneven work. On second- and first-century wars Appian is generally sound: his telling of the Third Punic War in Libyca, for instance, is at least partly based on Polybius and puts no strain on a reader’s credulity, nor does the lengthy account of the wars against Mithridates of Pontus. In glaring contrast, his accounts of the various theatres in the Second Punic War (those for Italy, Spain and Africa survive) call for constant caution. It is not only that Appian fails to tell apart the Ebro and Tagus rivers, sites Saguntum north of the former, and still manages to identify it with New Carthage. His narratives teem with items missing from any other source and often incompatible with those in Polybius or Livy. Events in Africa between 204 and 202 are thus enlivened, not to mention a good many of Hannibal’s in Italy. The Appianic battle of Cannae, for instance, is nothing like the standard version (among other things, he transfers to it Hannibal’s stratagem at the Trebia—troops hidden in a ravine to ambush the enemy’s rear). Hasdrubal’s Ebro accord in Appian has provisos more plentiful and less believable than in 218

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any other source. Again, the elder Scipios’ disastrous last campaign as Appian tells it is at odds with Livy’s more thorough account. Sometimes Appian does it the other way round, for example telling us nothing of the important operations (including at least one big victory over Hasdrubal brother of Hannibal) that Cn. Scipio carried out in 218 and 217 before his brother joined him. The younger Scipio’s operations in southern Spain from 208 to 206 are run together and one battle fills in for both Baecula and Ilipa. Highly rhetorical speeches and occasional grotesque dramatizations (notably the hand-to-hand combat between Hannibal and Scipio at Zama) add extra colour and disbelief.15 All the same Appian cannot be ignored, even if he has to be used with care and some scepticism. Not all the details that he alone offers are incredible. Once the Tagus is substituted for the Ebro, for instance, his description of Hasdrubal’s sway in Spain becomes plausible. Like other later writers he makes a Roman propaganda mess of the Italian traders episode during the Mercenaries’ War and then the seizure of Sardinia; but he may well be right that the Romans allowed the Carthaginians to recruit soldiers in Italy during that war. A good deal of his narrative does, moreover, coincide with other sources’ versions. Hannibal’s oath is in the standard Roman version, as against Polybius’ (and Nepos’); his army-strength on leaving New Carthage matches Polybius’ figures; and the Appianic battle of Trasimene is largely the same as in Livy. Later on, like Livy and Diodorus, Appian too makes Hannibal massacre his reluctant Italian soldiery before embarking for Africa, not that this adds any probability to the tale.16 His treatment of the general, the only Barcid dealt with at length, is censorious in places. Political calculation and glory-hunting prompt Hannibal to start the war, he slaughters prisoners at times (plus the recalcitrant Italians), victimizes the family of a treacherous Italian ally, and as his fortunes start their decline he takes a winter holiday in Lucania with a mistress. Yet Appian gives him his due as well—mild treatment of Italian captives after Trasimene, Cannae lauded as a splendid victory, honours for the fallen commanders Gracchus and Marcellus, later on in Africa a (quite improbable) effort to make a treaty with Scipio which his fellow-citizens abort, and after Zama more wise counsel to the ungrateful Carthaginians about accepting Scipio’s terms. This varied depiction again mirrors the ambiguities of the standard Roman tradition towards their most admired enemy.17 That Coelius was his basic source, at least for the Second Punic War, has been suggested. But Appian’s way of so often combining factual material with fanciful, and reporting items that Livy—who did use Coelius—contradicts or ignores, points to a far more eclectic and uncritical blending of borrowings, not to mention a strong dash of carelessness. This means that Appianic items on their own cannot be automatically treated as sound evidence merely omitted by other writers: scrutinized carefully, some may pass muster while others have to be left in doubt or be rejected. Overall his 219

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treatment of the period suggests that he preferred annalistic sources (a great contrast to his account of the final Punic war) and put them together fairly uncritically—not to mention ignorantly at times.18

V Other sources are less extensive. In the later first century BC Cornelius Nepos included a three-paragraph biographical sketch of Hamilcar and a lengthier one (13 chapters) on Hannibal among his collection of lives of distinguished foreign generals. As far as they go these are useful at least for various details—we owe him our knowledge of Silenus and Sosylus being in Hannibal’s entourage—and, interestingly, he gives as much space to Hannibal’s life after the war as to all his earlier career. Except for the general’s suicide, these later details are not matched in Livy or other major sources, but one or more turn up in other lesser writers like Justin. At the same time, compression (like covering the years from 216 to 203 in one paragraph) and various errors or confusions (he places the events of late 217 after Cannae, and misunderstands Hannibal’s postwar position) limit what he has to offer.19 The philosopher and biographer Plutarch, of the late first and early second centuries AD, wrote no biography of a Carthaginian and his life of Scipio does not survive. Those of Fabius the Delayer and the pugnacious Marcellus treat largely of their subjects’ doings in the Second Punic War. They contribute to the record of events, usually from Roman sources (Livy included), but the occasional sayings and anecdotes of Hannibal that Plutarch includes—like the jest to Gisco before Cannae—must derive directly or indirectly from a Punic source, perhaps Silenus or Sosylus again. The third-century AD consular historian L. Cassius Dio treated the Punic Wars period at some length in his 80-book general history of Rome. But all that remains of Dio before his Book 36 (the late Republic) is a collection of excerpts, mostly short, and the sizeable epitome of his work that the retired Byzantine administrator John Zonaras made in the eleventh century. Dio’s history rests almost entirely on Roman and pro-Roman sources (though he claims he read every work relevant to his theme, which for this period ought to include Sosylus and Silenus at least). He relays, for example, the story that Roman envoys went to Hannibal during the siege of Saguntum; has Hannibal after Trasimene advance down the Tiber valley towards Rome; reports Maharbal’s advice to him after Cannae as Livy does and narrates the Metaurus campaign much again as in Livy. Likewise he makes the Romans refuse to ratify Scipio’s peace-terms in 203 until Hannibal has departed Italy.20 There is also Silius Italicus. An eminent ex-consul in the later first century AD, he composed a lengthy epic poem, Punica, on Hannibal’s war—the longest epic poem in Latin and the least inspired. A collection of episodes told in standard epic form and heavily imitative of Vergil, it offers plenty of sonorous names and similes, Homeric-style combats (including between 220

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gods, not to mention Scipio versus Hannibal again), and Scipio—who we learn is really the son of Jove—at one stage summoning up the ghosts of past Roman heroes and heroines for consultations. The poem uses Roman historical sources, notably Livy, and adds no special information of its own apart from naming Hannibal’s wife and giving them a son, both of which items may or may not be accurate. An effort has certainly been made to see a pre-Livian source behind Silius’ telling of the war’s preliminaries, so as to use him as a foil to the supposed bias and distortions in Polybius and Livy, but it is hard to find this plausible.21 Late Roman historical writers add only incidentally to the register. Eutropius, a retired senior administrator in the later fourth century who composed the most concise of Roman histories for the presumably easily distracted emperor Valens, summarizes the entire period from 264 to 201 in ten pages. His most useful contribution (not always believed) is the date of the battle of the Aegates islands in 241. The much more useful Justin, probably again fourth century in date, epitomized a lengthy history of the non-Roman world by the Augustan-age writer Pompeius Trogus, with valuable if concise information about Carthage’s earlier times and equally abbreviated references to Barcid doings—mostly on their Spanish conquests, Hannibal’s exile and his dealings with Antiochus III. That we lack Trogus’ full work is a pity since, on Justin’s showing, he was sensible and well informed.22 Orosius, a Spanish church presbyter oppressed by the disasters befalling the now Christianized empire early in the fifth century, put together a sevenbook world history to show carping pagans that these were nothing compared to the calamities of past times. He deals with the period of the first two Punic wars in 20 pages, much of them devoted to pious lessondrawing. His account follows standard Roman tradition, for instance on Hannibal’s oath, and goes back, probably indirectly, to Livy. Briefer sources need mention too. Anecdotal compilations include Valerius Maximus’ nine books (from the reign of Tiberius) of famous deeds and sayings by Roman and foreign leaders, in which Hamilcar, his sons and even Hasdrubal son of Gisco contribute mostly well-known items. Julius Frontinus, ex-governor of Britain and City water-services commissioner, late in the first century AD put together four books of anecdotes on military stratagems, which for Roman history seem to draw much from Livy and naturally offer some items from the Barcid era. A generation or so later a skilful rhetorical writer, one Florus, boiled down Livy’s and others’ accounts of Roman wars to Augustan times into a fluent two-book compendium, occasionally useful if also prone to error and exclamations. In the 160s AD a Greek rhetorician, Polyaenus, tried his hand too at stratagems-collection, of minimal use to Barcid history. At some period, probably the late empire, an anonymous person compiled a series of one-paragraph biographies of notable men in Roman history (and three women including Cleopatra) down to the end of the Roman Republic. 221

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Hannibal and some of his Roman contemporaries figure among them, but the entries are merely skeleton résumés—which does not save them from various careless mistakes. Unlike Aurelius Victor’s similarly compacted lives of the Roman emperors, very little of independent value can be found in De Viris Illustribus. It stands as a sobering illustration of how not to compress.23 A few other writers supply miscellaneous information. The Augustan-age writer Strabo in his world geography describes not only the topography but also the ethnography of Spain, Italy and Africa as well as other lands; Pliny the Elder’s encyclopaedia contributes a great variety of individual items (it mentions the rich silver mine at Baebelo, for instance); a hundred years later the Greek Pausanias wrote a travel account of Greece with one or two bits of relevant information, and useful too is Ptolemy’s Geography, a catalogue of countries, peoples and cities. And late Roman itineraries— catalogues of major routes with their towns and distances—have their uses, as does the epitome of Stephanus of Byzantium’s sixth-century geographical encyclopaedia.

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APPENDIX Special notes

1 Hamilcar’s daughters, and other family questions (chapter II, note 2) Appian, Hann. 20.90, mentions a military commander Hanno as Hannibal’s nephew (kinship doubted by Lenschau, RE 7.2357); he was son of Bomilcar ‘the king’ (Pol. 3.42.6), so if Appian is right about the kinship it would mean that his mother was a sister of the general. A daughter promised by Hamilcar to Naravas in about 240 (the original of Flaubert’s Salammbô): Pol. 1.78.8. Livy 29.29.12 mentions ‘a Carthaginian noblewoman, daughter of Hannibal’s sister’, who by 206 was widow of another Numidian prince, Oezalces: she may have been a sister to Hanno son of Bomilcar (cf. chapter XIII). Seibert suggests that Hannibal may not only have been reared, but even have been born, in his father’s Sicilian camp (Hann. 9 note 12). But this was hardly the place for a baby and its mother—still less so after the move to Eryx in 244, when a second son probably arrived too. Hasdrubal’s birth-date: Diod. 25.19, lines 9–10 (actually from the Byzantine versifier John Tzetzes (chapter V note 15)) describes him as 12 and Hannibal as 15 in late 229, which is wrong arithmetically but may be right on the difference between their ages. Seibert, Hann. 20, notes too that, according to Val. Max. 9.3 ext. 2 and Cassiodorus, Chronica, Anno Urbis Conditae 524, Hamilcar had four sons and—as a fourth never appears in history—infers that the newborn fourth formed part of a major infant-sacrifice which, he further infers, took place during the Mercenaries’ War. But Valerius describes all four as Hamilcar’s lion-cubs being raised to destroy Rome. It is likelier that the numeral is due to a fuzzy awareness that Barca had more children than just three sons. Or the numeral in these texts may be mistaken: in Valerius’ text the preceding word is ‘odium’, which could have corrupted a ‘iii’ to a ‘iiii’ or ‘iv’—and Cassiodorus’ item seems to come from Valerius.

2 The artificial ports at Carthage (chapter II, note 5) Nearly all the datable remains are from the second century BC, hence the excavators’ view that the ports were built in Carthage’s final years. But those 223

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years may mark refurbishments and repairs (H. Hurst, Antiquaries’ Journal (1979) 27; and in Atti del I Congresso Internazionale di Studi Fenici e Punici . . . 1979 (Rome 1983) 2.609). To start so colossal a project in an era when the Carthaginians were forbidden by treaty to have a navy, and were terrified at any prospect of clashing with the Romans (then the only major power with one), was pointless expense. True, Livy reported Roman complaints about Punic warship-building then (Epit. 47, 48, 49), but ships alone do not a port make, and even the ships may have been anti-Punic propaganda. True again, there is an almost complete lack of late fourth- and thirdcentury material—only a third-century coin of Tarentum and one struck at Carthage in the period 241–221 or just after (Hurst, Antiq. J. (1979) 27)—but a late third-century date is possible enough, most probably the first decade of the Second Punic War (cf. chapter VIII §IV). It does make more sense for the ports to date to an era of Punic naval power (so too Seibert, FzH 111–13). Seibert suggests the interwar years of 241 to 218; but when the Second Punic War began Punic naval strength was woefully low (chapter VIII §II). By contrast, Romans raiding the Punic coast in 210 learned from prisoners that the Carthaginians were readying a massive fleet (Livy 27.5.13). True, Punic naval forces after 210 never exceeded 70 to 100 ships (cf. Lazenby (1978) 197), but if the naval port was being or had recently been constructed the Carthaginians may yet have had hopes. Refurbishments one or two generations later could point to both ports then being used for Carthage’s prosperous marine commerce.

3 Carthaginian revenues (chapter II, notes 10–11) (i) Tribute of ‘Lepcis’ in 193 (Livy 34.62.3): Lepcis, later Lepcis Magna, was a big and flourishing Phoenician colony, but 360-plus talents a year would be a colossal sum to pay in tribute. Yet Lepcis certainly lay in an area called Emporia as Livy states (rightly, despite W. V. Harris, CAH2 8.145, and map, ibid. 144; see chapter II note 10) and had prosperous neighbours, Oea and Sabratha. Leptis Minor in its turn was not by the Lesser Syrtes but at the southern end of the gulf of Hammamet further north; nor was it as important as Lepcis, so a daily talent of tribute is unthinkable from it alone. But though Livy clearly singles out ‘Lepcis’ (or ‘Leptis’) itself as paying the talent—‘una civitas eius [sc. regionis] Lepcis; ea singula in dies talenta vectigal Carthaginiensibus dedit’ (34.62.3, where ea can hardly refer back to the understood regionis)—this may be a misreading of his source: cf. Briscoe (1981) 143–4; Mattingly (1994) 50. Leptis Minor did stand close to the fertile Emporia region south-east of Carthage, the later Byzacium (Pliny, NH 5.24). Moreover Masinissa in 193 coveted Emporia—this is in fact why Livy mentions the region and ‘Lepcis’—a lust that fits the area adjoining his kingdom better than territory far away to the east, even if that region counted as part of Emporia. 224

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Briscoe (1981) 143–4 is probably right then to suggest that Leptis Minor served as the administrative centre for Emporia (Hadrumetum and Thapsus were more important cities, but were independent allies of Carthage). Cautiously then the daily talent can be taken as paid by Emporia as a whole—even perhaps including Lepcis Magna and its neighbours far to the east. (ii) Carthage’s Spanish revenues: We have only one indicator, the output of a silver mine at Baebelo—site unknown—which yielded Hannibal 300 pounds daily according to the Elder Pliny (33.97). In Roman denarii this would be about 25,000 a day, or just over 4 talents (cf. Frank (1933) 47). But that would make Baebelo by itself produce nearly 1500 talents a year; more likely Pliny’s figure is exaggerated, optimistic or flawed. Perhaps the whole of the Spanish empire by 218 paid 1,500 a year—much of it no doubt spent in the province. Incidentally the silver mines near New Carthage in the second century BC likewise yielded 25,000 drachmas/denarii a day ‘to the Roman people’, according to Polybius (cited by Strabo 3.2.11, 148C). Whatever the wealth of Spain, Kahrstedt’s estimate ((1913) 135–7) of Carthaginian income in 218 of up to 6,000 talents seems wildly optimistic, and not much less so the 2,800 a year he supposes for 200–191.

4 Carthaginian population in the third century (chapter II, note 12) Strabo 17.3.15, 833C, reports ‘seventy myriads of men [i.e. persons] in the city’ in 149. K. J. Beloch estimated 200,000–300,000 in the city (Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-roemischen Welt (Leipzig (1889) 467); Kahrstedt 125,000–130,000 in 218, including 20,000 non-Carthaginians ((1913) 23–4, 133). Warmington (1964) 150 reckons some 400,000, including slaves and foreign residents; Picard (1961) 61 about 100,000 for the city proper and 100,000 for Megara. Tlatli reckons 243,000 all told in the city and Megara, plus some 400,000 in a territory of 18,000 square kilometres ((1978) 107–9, 117–18, 124), perhaps rightly, but that area is too large—it includes cities like Utica, Hippo and Mactar which did not belong to Carthage’s own city-territory. Huss (1985) 51 accepts Strabo’s figure, whereas Ameling (1993) 205–6 holds to a broad range of 90,000–225,000. Two hundred thousand citizens, with their families, for city and territory together can only be a rough estimate, but the total of men, women and children would then range between 571,000 and 714,000, depending on what percentage was male in the total population (probably between 28 and 35 per cent: cf. Brunt (1971) 59, 116–17). Additional to these would be any Libyans dwelling in Carthage’s own territory, plus resident aliens, and slaves—surely another 100,000 at least. The Libyans outside the city’s territory, the North African allies like Utica and Hippou Acra, and their slaves, are a separate matter. For the city and empire in 218 Kahrstedt’s detailed estimates come to about 2.1 million apart 225

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from the recently won Spanish territories ((1913) 133), but include implausibly low estimates or guesstimates for the city of Carthage (above) and for the Libyan subjects (650,000); Ameling (1993) 225 likewise estimates the Libyans at under a million. If instead there were 700,000–800,000 people in Carthage and its own territory, plus 1.5–2 million Punic allies, subject Libyans and their slaves, and 1.5 million in Hasdrubal’s Spain—quite possibly too low a guess, Kahrstedt thinks 2 million—then the total population under Barcid leadership around 221 would be 3.7 to 4.3 million. For comparison, Rome and Italy together Brunt estimates at 3.5 million in 225 ((1971) 59–60).

5 Naravas’ family (chapter III, note 7) Naravas seems to be the Nrwt mentioned on a Libyan inscription set up in 129 or 128 BC near Mactar by Nrwt’s grandson Wlbh (Picard (1966) 1257–65; Huss (1985) 60 note 65). It names Nrwt’s father as Zililsan, known from an inscription of 140 or 139 at Thugga as father of Gaia (G. Camps, Masinissa ou les débuts de l’histoire [= Libyca 8 (1960)] 283). This is the royal family of the Massyli in eastern Numidia. If the identification is correct, Naravas was brother of Gaia, whose famous and long-lived son Masinissa was born around 240. Another brother, Oezalces, late in the Second Punic War married a daughter of one of Hannibal’s sisters (Livy 29.29.12): see chapter XIII.

6 Massiliot colonies in south-eastern Spain (chapter V, note 12) Strabo (3.4.6, 159C) mentions the three Massiliot ‘little towns’ (πολ´ιχνια) in the present tense (ε’ στ´ιν), which itself rules out Acra Leuce, a ‘very large city’ and a Punic one from Hamilcar’s day, being one of them. He sites them ‘not far from’ the Sucro river (modern Júcar) and names one: Hemeroscopeion, the Roman Dianium, which apparently was at modern Denia by Cape de la Nao, 36 miles/60 kilometres south of the Sucro (Rouillard (1982) 427). Stephanus lists an Alonis (s.v.) as a ‘Massiliot city’, and other evidence places this near Alicante (Mela 2.93; Itin. Rav. 304), but it does not count very obviously as one of Strabo’s three. If all three were near to or south of Cape de la Nao, Strabo’s phrase loses all meaning; why not describe them instead as ‘not far from’ the cape?

7 The Saguntines’ fractious neighbours (chapter VII, note 9) Livy calls them Turdetani and Turduli, Appian Torboletae or Torboletes, but none of these suits the region. By contrast the town of Tyris or Turis, at the mouth of the nearby river still called the Turia, existed until the first century BC and is altogether apt (Hoyos [1998] 188–9). In Latin its people would be 226

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called Turitani; in Greek ‘Tyrieis’,‘Turietae/-tes’, ‘Tyristae’ or the like. The ‘Thersitae’ who, along with the Olcades and others, supplied troops to North Africa early in 218 (Pol. 3.33.9) may again be these people in yet another Grecized form; the Thersitae are otherwise unknown and efforts (Walbank 1.362; Huss (1985) 297) to identify them as Tartessii or Turdetani are less plausible.

8 The grand army at the start of 218 (chapter VIII, note 15) On the expeditionary army, recent discussions include Walbank 1.366; Lazenby (1978) 33–4; Scullard, CAH2 8.40; and Lancel, Hann. 103–4, who all doubt Polybius’ starting total; so does Seibert, FzH 179–83, suggesting 70,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. By contrast Barreca (1983–4) 44–5 defends Polybius’ total, and Goldsworthy (2000) 154, 158–9 accepts it without discussion. No one suggests that Polybius’ figure may include the 15,000 men Hannibal assigned to his brother Hasdrubal. Livy’s details about the disillusioned Spanish troops (21.23.4–6) are fuller than Polybius’ and look well based, perhaps from a Hannibalic source like Silenus—directly or via Coelius. If we suppose a fighting loss of 7,000 in north-eastern Spain, which seems plausible if losses were serious (8 per cent of an expeditionary total of 87,000), this plus the dismissed troops and Hanno’s corps would add up to 28,000. Hannibal would then indeed have had 59,000 to lead over the Pyrenees. Interestingly the Roman prisoner of Hannibal’s, L. Cincius Alimentus (cf. Hoyos (2001a) 78), who conversed with the general around 206, later wrote a history of Rome and estimated the Punic army at 80,000 foot and 10,000 horse on its arrival in Italy (Livy 21.38.3–4). Perhaps he misremembered a rounded-up estimate of Hannibal’s of the original numbers departing for Italy. The figure certainly does not refer to Hannibal’s strength after the Boii and others joined his army in north Italy, for he still had only some 40,000 men at the Trebia: see §9 below.

9 Hannibal’s route to Italy and numbers on arrival: some views (chapter VIII, notes 23–4) (i) On the general’s constantly discussed route recent studies include Proctor (1971); Lazenby (1978) chapter II; Connolly (1981) 153–66; Huss (1985) 298–306 with 298 note 35; Seibert (1989), also FzH 191–200 (with a thorough bibliography of Hannibal’s pass from 1820 to 1993) and Hann. 96–113. Seibert holds that identification of the pass is impossible and he is probably right. Less plausible is his theory that the Punic army went in two corps via two passes, thus explaining—he thinks—why some of Polybius’ and Livy’s details diverge ((1989) 72–3; FzH 198; Hann. 106). Now neither writer, nor 227

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any later one, shows any awareness of this division, and in fact Livy’s account of the whole march largely draws on Polybius. Discrepancies could have arisen if one or more previous writers had tried to clarify the route from their own, sometimes faulty, geographical knowledge or guesswork, and if Livy reflected the guesses (he was interested in the topic himself). (ii) While Hannibal claimed that he had only 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse on reaching Italy, some scholars hold that he left another 8,000 out—lightarmed pikemen and Balearic slingers, both mentioned at the Trebia by Polybius (3.72.7)—to make his victories against huge odds seem still more glorious: thus Delbrück (1920/1975) 1.361–2; Ridley (1987) 162; Seibert, FzH 181, 212; Hann. 112. Delbrück, 361, holds that the heavy infantry alone must have totalled 20,000 on arrival, because otherwise they would have been too few, after Trebia and Trasimene, to carry out the tasks they did at Cannae. If so Hannibal really brought 34,000 troops into Italy. But at the Trebia in December 218 he had about 40,000 men in all, including by then 10,000 horse (Pol. 3.72.8–9; Walbank 1.404–5; Lazenby (1978) 56)—and this after ‘all the neighbouring Gauls’ had rallied to him and supplied troops (3.66.7). If he had reached Italy with 34,000 men, then these new allies can have numbered only about 6,000 and have been mostly cavalry since his cavalry total had risen by 4,000 (so Delbrück, 361). This is implausible, and it also contradicts Polybius’ evidence for substantial Gallic infantry at the Trebia (3.72.8, 74.4 and 11): for one thing Hannibal’s 20,000 infantry in that battle consisted of Spaniards, Africans and Gauls (72.8). Much more likely then the general had gained 4,000 horse and 10,000 or so foot, including some light-armed, from his new allies. Even if he left the several hundred-odd Baleares out of his Lacinian record, he must have counted his own pikemen—themselves Africans and Spaniards—among the African and Spanish foot (so too Walbank 1.366; cf. Connolly (1981) 187). Nor did these pikemen likely total 8,000, for of that total at the Trebia some would be Gauls (cf. Lazenby, 81). In other words his African and Spanish regular infantry probably numbered more than 12,000. Moreover, as most of the casualties at Trebia and Trasimene were to fall on his Gauls, the Africans and Spaniards would not have been too many fewer at Cannae in 216 (cf. Goldsworthy (2000) 180, 189, 207) though admittedly some men had died of cold in winter 218–217. He of course had pikemen at Cannae too (Pol. 3.113.6) but likely enough many were Gallic again (contra Goldsworthy, 207; see Lazenby, 81; Connolly, 115, 117–18; Wise (1982) 17 suggests 6,000 were). In rearming his African troops after Trasimene with his plentiful haul of captured Roman weapons (3.87.3) he may well have armed the highly trained African pikemen at least, thus adding them to the regular infantry (on these pikemen’s military quality, cf. Lazenby, 14–15). Even if not, it is unconvincing to suppose his regular infantry was only 9,000–10,000 strong at Cannae.

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10 ‘De dignitate atque imperio certare’ (chapter X, note 9) The original source or sources for Hannibal’s statement to his Roman captives—Silenus, Sosylus, Fabius or the like—no doubt used Greek terms like ’ η ’ η τιµη ´ and αρχ ´ ; for a Latin version of αρχ ´ Hannibal or his interpreter could have said potestas or maybe dicio. Imperium looks like Livy’s rewording or maybe a recent annalist’s, for by their time it could mean ‘empire’ as well as ‘power’ or ‘command’—not in Hannibal’s day, though (cf. Hoyos [1998] 130). Livy himself probably had all these senses in mind.

11 Independent Roman corps operating in Italy (chapter XI, note 3) Hanno’s and Hannibal’s victories over such forces in 213 and 212 are one or both rejected by Kahrstedt (1913) 265–6, and Briscoe (1989) 54 note 52. Seibert, Hann. 288, accepts the earlier but (294 note 33) rejects the later; both are accepted by de Sanctis, 3.2. 264, 383, by Huss (1985) 359 note 184, 365, by Lazenby (1978) 102, 113, and by Kukofka (1990) 76–7 with modifications. Appian, Hann. 9.37, 11.45–7, confuses the defeat of C. Centenius’ ‘army’ after Trasimene in 217—in reality Centenius led the consul Servilius’ cavalry—with the disaster of M. Centenius Paenula the ex-centurion (perhaps appointed a praefectus) in Lucania in 212; but this is hardly a warrant for disbelieving the Paenula incident which Livy reports. Irregulars in 209 forced to surrender: Livy 27.16.9. Some had been brought over from Sicily by Valerius Laevinus and combined with Bruttian deserters for operations in Bruttium. Livy 27.12.4–6 avoids naming any commander; cf. chapter X note 13. Note too another independently operating force in 208, a column of Roman troops marching on their own from Tarentum towards Locri when ambushed at Petelia by Hannibal (27.26.4–6).

12 Debated aspects of the Italian campaign of 207 (chapter XII, notes 12–13) Though Livy seemingly makes Hannibal move from the territory of Larinum in east-central Italy to the Sallentine peninsula, ‘agri Larinatis’ in his text may be a copyist’s mistake for ‘agri Tarentini’ (27.40.10, where most MSS actually offer ‘laritanis’, ‘laritani’ or ‘lartiani’): thus Huss (1985) 392. Certainly the general is soon after reported departing ‘ex agro Tarentino’ (40.12). But Livy fails to explain why Hannibal should be marching into the heel of Italy at all—for forage? Or is ‘in Sallentinos’ an error for some other and more northerly destination (e.g. ‘Salapitanos’)? Whether the rest of the reported marching and fighting could have fitted between mid-March, when the consuls entered office and joined their armies, 229

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and mid-June when Nero left Apulia for the north, is hard to decide but looks a little dubious (the battle of the Metaurus was fought on 22 June by the Roman calendar, according to Ovid, Fasti 6.769–70. Cf. Walbank 2.270–1, answering de Sanctis’ scepticism (3.2.560–1); cf. Derow (1976) 280–1; Seibert, FzH 244–5). Seibert (Hann. 382–4) sees Canusium as Hannibal’s intended junction-point and the brothers as having conflicting views (‘Meinungsverschiedenheiten’), while also supposing (385) that Hasdrubal had got in touch with Hannibal as soon as he reached Italy. He rightly notes (383–4) that a junction in Umbria implied moving against Rome. But it need not follow that this meant giving up the Punic-held south, for Hannibal had garrisons in key cities. At the battle of the Metaurus, Seibert (Hann. 389, 391) judges Nero’s decisive tactical manoeuvre as fiction from a Nero-friendly tradition—a very early one if so, since Polybius reports it—which copied Hannibal’s decisive cavalry manoeuvre at Cannae. Instead he credits the other consul Livius with working around Hasdrubal’s flank to strike the decisive blow. But not only is this an arbitrary treatment of Polybius’ evidence as well as Livy’s; it virtually implies that Nero’s presence was unnecessary, for until he made his manoeuvre his troops played no part in the battle. (Nor, it may be added, is Nero’s infantry manoeuvre very similar to Hannibal’s cavalry coup at Cannae.) Why not infer then that his famous march and reinforcement of Livius were invented too? Seibert also denies Nero’s decisive rôle in urging a battle and assigns the decision to Livius (386–7, 391)—even though before Nero’s arrival the latter was avoiding combat and gave his unexpectedly arriving colleague a decidedly ‘frostige Begrüßung’ (386). Livy claims that Nero’s return to Apulia was swifter (‘citatiore agmine’) than the outward one—it began the night after the battle and took six days (27.50.1), while the battle itself was fought the day after he joined Livius (27.46.5 and 11). If the Metaurus was fought on 22 June, this would date Nero’s expedition—500 miles (800 kilometres) of marching plus a major battle—from about 12/13 June to 28/29 June, a clear impossibility. De Sanctis (3.2.556) suggests Nero and his cavalry took six days to return while the infantry took longer, for he holds (553) that Hannibal moved towards Larinum now, not at the start of the year—giving Nero only some 190 miles (300 kilometres) thither from Livius’ army—but on this see Lazenby (1978) 185. Three to four weeks’ absence is a safer estimate. Seibert’s efforts (Hann. 385 note 36) to shield Hannibal from blame for not noticing Nero’s absence (‘angesichts der kriegerischen Praxis völlig normal’) or, if he did notice it, for not taking advantage of it, are hardly persuasive. And if Nero knew that his absence would be ‘völlig ungefährlich’ for the Romans because Hannibal would not stir, this puts the latter’s military sagacity by 207 in just as poor a light.

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13 The peace talks in 203 and P. Ryl. 3. 491 (chapter XIV, note 12) P. Ryl. 491, published in 1938 (Roberts (1938)) and generally seen as proCarthaginian in tone, does not mention an attack on Scipio’s envoys, but it is too fragmentary for disproof and its supposed bias is quite unprovable (Hoyos (2001a)). Just as likely if not more so, it could be a précis of a proRoman account, maybe even Fabius Pictor’s. Whatever its background, it does not impugn Polybius’ account. Plutarch meanwhile has a story of Scipio telling the Carthaginians that, because they had recalled Hannibal, he would not continue the armistice ‘even if they wished it’ unless they paid a further 5,000 talents (Moralia 196C–D); but this tale is not plausible. Having brought Hannibal home the Carthaginians would scarcely be interested in paying to continue the armistice; and Eutropius (3.22) has Scipio prescribe a similar penalty when Hannibal himself supposedly asks for peace before Zama. So at best Plutarch’s story is a glimmer of a more pro-Punic and anti-Scipio tradition: thus de Sanctis, 3.2.533 note 161, and Huss (1985) 414 note 90; while Mantel (1991) 121–2 sees it as a distorted annalistic item.

14 The ‘quaestor’ at Carthage in 195 (chapter XVI, note 3) That ‘quaestor’ means rb (rab) and head of finance is argued most fully by Huss (1979), but the case is not completely certain. Finance officials are attested—mhsbm, ‘the accountables’—but, it seems, no rab of the mhsbm (Sznycer (1978) 585; cf. Huss (1985) 465) even though rab means simply ‘chief ’ and is also used with other offices, e.g. rab kohanim, ‘chief of priests’ (Huss, 543). Livy’s Latin, of course, may mean not ‘the quaestor’ (the usual supposition) but, just as likely, ‘a quaestor’ and so may refer to one uncooperative member of ‘the accountables’. True, Gades in 205 had two sufetes and one ‘quaestor’, all of whom Mago murdered for disloyalty (Livy 28.37.2); but Gades, a town much smaller than Carthage, may well have had only one mhsb. In any case Latin writers are not consistent in naming Punic magistracies, so a ‘quaestor’ recorded at one city does not inevitably prove one at another; for inconsistencies compare Livy calling Hannibal in 196 ‘praetor’ (33.46.2) but writing of ‘sufetes’ in 193 (34.61.15), while Justin terms him ‘consul’ at the time of his flight (31.2.6); and on Nepos’ confusions see chapter XV note 7.

15 Hannibal, Cyrene and Siwa (chapter XVII, note 4) Along with holding that Hannibal visited Cyrene in 193, Seibert (Hann. 514 and on his Map 10) supposes that he travelled inland to the oracle of Zeus 231

APPENDIX

Amon at the oasis of Siwa, for later he believed in a prophecy of Amon about his place of burial (Pausanias 8.11.1; Appian, Syr. 11.44; Tzetzes, Chiliades 1.801–22). Of course he would not have had leisure to go to Siwa during his flight in 195. But Appian and Tzetzes pretty clearly imply that Hannibal had been sent the prophecy, perhaps after submitting a written query. No actual visit to the oasis should be supposed.

232

TIME-LINE

814/813 753 from 550s? 509 348 310 308 307 279 about 275 264 256–255 249 247 247–244 244–242 241 238/237 (winter) 237 (March?) (April?) 237–228 231 229 (end) or 228 (start)

Timaeus’ date for the foundation of Carthage Traditional date of Rome’s foundation Malchus, Mago and descendants dominant at Carthage Traditional date of Roman kings’ expulsion, and of first Roman–Punic treaty Likely date of second Roman–Punic treaty Agathocles of Syracuse invades Punic Africa Military coup by Bomilcar foiled Agathocles abandons his forces in Africa and returns to Sicily Roman–Punic pact against Pyrrhus Hiero (later king) becomes leader of Syracuse (dies 215) Clash over Messana and outbreak of First Punic War Romans invade Africa; victories and defeat of Regulus Punic naval victories off Drepana and Cape Pachynus Hamilcar Barca appointed general in Sicily; birth of Hannibal Hamilcar on Mt Heircte Hamilcar at Mt Eryx Battle of the Aegates islands; peace with Romans Outbreak of the Mercenaries’ War End of Mercenaries’ War; Hamilcar again elected general and dominant in Punic affairs Romans seize Sardinia, declare war on Carthage; Carthaginians cede Sardinia and pay money Hamilcar’s expedition to Spain Hamilcar’s expansion in Spain Alleged Roman embassy to Hamilcar Death of Hamilcar at ‘Castrum Altum’; Hasdrubal elected general 233

TIM E-LINE

228 or 227 227/226

Hasdrubal visits Carthage Foundation of New Carthage; Roman interest aroused 225 (spring) Ebro-accord between Hasdrubal and the Romans; probable date of first Saguntine–Roman diplomatic links 225–222 Romans defeat Gallic invasion of Italy, and subdue Cisalpine Gaul 221 Hasdrubal assassinated; Hannibal elected general; subdues Olcades 220 Campaign in central and northern Spain; Vaccaei and Carpetani defeated (autumn) Roman envoys see Hannibal at New Carthage 219 (prob. Apr./May– Hannibal besieges Saguntum Dec.) 218 Romans declare war at Carthage (June–Nov.?) Hannibal’s expedition to Italy Cn. Scipio operates in north-eastern Spain (Nov.–Dec.) Battles of the Ticinus and the Trebia 217 Hannibal enters Etruria; crossing of the Arno marshes (June) Battle of Lake Trasimene; Hannibal marches to Apulia; Fabius Maximus dictator at Rome; operations in Campania Victories of the Scipio brothers in Spain 216 (Aug.) Battle of Cannae 215 Defections to Hannibal begin in Campania and southern Italy; further operations in Campania; treaty with Philip V of Macedon Hasdrubal in Spain defeated at Hibera Hiero of Syracuse succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus 214 Hannibal’s operations in Campania and Apulia; Hanno defeated at river Calor Hieronymus assassinated; Hippocrates and Epicydes ally Syracuse with Carthaginians 213 Arpi in Apulia defects to the Romans; Marcellus besieges Syracuse 212 Tarentum defects to Hannibal; likewise Metapontum, Thurii and Locri; first battle of Herdonea Romans besiege Capua; Marcellus takes Syracuse Successes of Scipio brothers in southern Spain; Saguntum restored to its citizens 211 Hannibal’s march on Rome; Capua surrenders to the Romans 234

TIME-LINE

211 210 209 208 207 206

205 204 204/203 (winter) 203

202 201 200 200–197 199(?) 196 195 193 191 190 189 189–186(?) 186(?)–183 183 149–146

Destruction of the Scipios in Spain Second battle of Herdonea; battle of Numistro Fabius captures Tarentum; P. Scipio the younger captures New Carthage Consul Marcellus killed; Scipio defeats Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, at Baecula; Hasdrubal sets out for Italy Hasdrubal’s arrival in Italy and destruction at the river Metaurus Hannibal stagnant in Bruttium; Scipio defeats Hasdrubal son of Gisco at Ilipa Hasdrubal son of Gisco wins over Syphax of Numidia as Punic ally Scipio as consul operates in south Italy; Mago brother of Hannibal, in Liguria Philip V makes peace with Romans Scipio as proconsul invades Punic Africa Scipio destroys Punic and Numidian armies near Utica in night attack Hasdrubal son of Gisco and Syphax again defeated at the Great Plains; Masinissa made king of all Numidia Carthaginians make peace with Scipio; Hannibal recalled from Italy War resumes; battle of Zama (October) Peace treaty ends Second Punic War Indemnity-money scandal Second Macedonian War and defeat of Philip V End of Hannibal’s generalship Hannibal becomes sufete and enacts reforms Roman embassy prompts Hannibal into self-exile; joins Antiochus III at Ephesus Aristo of Tyre visits Carthage Hannibal as naval commodore for Antiochus in eastern Aegean Battle of Magnesia Antiochus makes peace with Romans; Hannibal forced to leave his kingdom Hannibal’s wanderings Hannibal in Bithynia including service as King Prusias’ admiral Roman embassy to Prusias; suicide of Hannibal Third Punic War and destruction of Carthage by P. Scipio Aemilianus 235

NOTES TO THE TE XT

1

2

3

4 5

6

7

8 9

I T H E H E I G H T S O F H E I R C T E A N D E RY X Hamilcar at Heircte (or ‘Hercte’): Pol. 1.56–7. Properly speaking it was the fort in the pass that had this name (Thiel (1954) 254 note 618) but the mountain’s ancient name is not known. Earlier Roman attack on fort ‘Hercte’, supposedly with 40,000 foot and 1,000 horse: Diod. 23.20 (in 252/251?). The First Punic War’s eighteenth year began in midsummer 247: Walbank, 1.119–20. For the theory that the Romans originally meant to fight not Carthage but Syracuse see A. Heuss, Der erste punische Krieg und das Problem des römischen Imperialismus, 3rd edn (Darmstadt 1970); J. Molthagen, ‘Der Weg in den ersten punischen Krieg’, Chiron 5 (1975) 89–127; more fully Hoyos (1998) 47–99. Naval losses from 255 to 249: Pol. 1.37.1–2, 39.6, 51.11–12, 54.8; Diod. 24.1.7–9; Thiel (1954) 236, 251, 279–89. Readable short accounts of the war are Caven (1980) 18–66; Scullard (1989a) 537–69; a full history in Lazenby (1996); while the naval side is thoroughly and interestingly studied by Thiel, 61–338. Census figures: Livy, Epit. 16 and 19 (292,200 and 241,700); Brunt (1971) chapter III. Negotiations with Regulus: Lazenby (1996) 101–2; Hoyos (1998) 116–18. Carthalo’s raid: Zon. 8.16 (Carthalo scared off by the praetor urbanus, who was based in the City; note too the new citizen-colonies of Alsium and Fregenae founded on the south Etruscan coast in 247). Economic strains: cf. Picard (1967) 57–9; Hoyos (1994) 265–6. Ptolemy declined to lend: Appian, Sic. 1.1–2. Fleet neglected after 249, and overloaded, undermanned and poorly trained in 241: Pol. 1.61.4–5; Zon. 8.17; Thiel (1954) 306–11; Lazenby (1996) 144–5, 150–5. Privateering Roman raids: Zon. 8.16; cf. Thiel, 299 note 768; Lazenby, 146–7. Hecatompylus–Theveste–Tebessa: Pol. 1.73.1; Diod. 24.10.1–2, cf. 4.18.1; de Sanctis, 3.1.176 note 79. On motives for expansion in the 240s cf. Hoffmann (1962) 14–15. On the fertile Tebessa uplands see Fentress (1979) 32–3, unnecessarily doubting that Hecatompylus was Theveste. ‘Thinking that they had rational grounds’, Pol. 1.72.1; Hanno involved, ibid. 3. Zon. 8.16 (mutiny repressed, episode at Drepana); Pol. 1.56.2–3 (raid and move to heights). Frontinus’ tale of a supposed ruse by ‘Barca’ to enter Lilybaeum despite Roman warships (Strat. 3.10.9) is not about him at all (despite de Sanctis, 3.1.238; L. Pareti, Storia di Roma 2 (Turin 1952) 166–7) but was performed by another general, Hannibal son of Hamilcar, in 250 (Pol. 1.44; Thiel (1954) 266–9) and Frontinus or his source got confused. See Hoyos (2001c). Kromayer estimated Hamilcar’s army at 15,000–20,000 (in Kromayer and Veith, AS 3.1.10), as do Walbank (1.121) and Scullard ((1989a) 564), but Thiel (1954) 299 note 766 rightly disbelieves this. Perhaps 30,000 at battle of Panormus in 250: Lazenby (1996) 121. Twenty thousand mercenaries from Sicily in 241: Pol.

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10

11

12

13

14

1.67.13. Lilybaeum was garrisoned by 7,700 in 250, soon reinforced to over 20,000 (Diod. 24.1.1–2; Pol. 1.44.2, 45.8; Thiel, 263–4). Hamilcar’s cavalry: 200 are mentioned at Eryx in 243 (below) but the Heircte heights had much more room and resources. Roman force was ‘evenly matched’ with his: Pol. 1.57.6; de Sanctis improbably supposes an entire consular army (3.1.179), meaning some 20,000 men. Kromayer, 23, places the Roman camp south of M. Castellaccio on Cuzzo Gibelliforni, as good a guess as any (Hoyos (2001c) 494). Operations from the Heircte heights: Pol. 1.56.9–57.8, cf. 1.74.9. Lancel (1992) 388 thinks raids on Italy continued from 247 through to 241. Italium: Diod. 24.6. Like de Sanctis (3.1.178 note 83), Manni takes Longon to be an unknown river near Catana ((1981) 114, 193). Lazenby (1996) 148 sees it as a raid into Catana’s territory perhaps to put pressure on Hiero of Syracuse nearby. But Longane near Mylae, attested on coins and an inscription (Manni, 197), is called ‘Longone’ by Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v., citing the fourth-century Syracusan historian Philistus), so ‘Longon’ is not an impossible variant; Κατα´ νης φρου´ριον could be a copyist’s error for Μεσ η´νης φ. (compare the probable error of Α’ι´γεστα replacing ’ ε´τλαν at Diod. 23.3, and the definite one Λιγα Εχ ´ τινος, meaning Λυτα´ τιος, at 24.11.1). Panormus–Agrigentum road: attested by a milestone probably of 252 or 248 set up by the consul C. Aurelius Cotta (ILLRP 1,227; Verbrugghe (1976) 19–22). Hamilcar’s family: chapter II. Seibert supposes winter visits to Carthage (Hann. 9 note 14) but winter sailing was very dangerous. On brq/baraq see Gsell, HAAN 2.252 note 7 (noting that it might instead mean ‘[Ba’al] has blessed’, from the verb brk—though he might have added that this seems less suitable for the military Hamilcar); Picard (1967) 19; Sznycer (1978) 552–3. The claim that Hamilcar’s family had come from Barce, a Greek city near Cyrene (R. G. Austin, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber IV (Oxford 1955) 43), is an unfounded guess. Numidian prince’s admiration: Pol. 1.78.1–8 (Naravas). Move to Eryx: Pol. 1.58.2; Diod. 24.8. Kromayer, in Kromayer and Veith, AS 3.1.32–5, with his Map 2; Thiel (1954) 301. Temple of Venus Erycina: de Sanctis, 3.1.173 note 73; Walbank, 1.118–19. Eryx townsfolk transferred to Drepana in 259: Diod. 23.9.4; Zon. 8.11. A surviving line from Naevius’ late third-century epic poem on the war, ‘superbiter contemtim conterit legiones’ (‘haughtily, scornfully he wears down the legions’) may refer to Hamilcar, on Eryx or earlier at Heircte: cf. Warmington (1936) 64, frg. 38. Hamilcar, ‘Vodostor’ and Fundanius: Diod. 24.9. Circa 1 May for consuls entering office: Morgan (1977) 90–1. The Gallic deserters: Pol. 1.77.4, 2.7.7–10. New Roman fleet and battle of the Aegates islands: Pol. 1.59–61; Diod. 24.11; Zon. 8.17 (with Hanno’s fate); Florus 1.18 [2.2] 33–6; Eutrop. 2.27.3, with the date convincingly defended by Morgan (1977) 109–12; other sources at Broughton, MRR 1.218; Thiel (1954) 302–16; Walbank, 1.124–6; Lazenby (1996) 150–7. Attack on Eryx, 2,000 Punic troops slain: Oros. 4.10.8. Peace-talks and terms: Pol. 1.62.1–63.3; 3.27.1–6; Diod. 24.13 (mentions Gisco); Nepos, Hamil. 1.5; Appian, Sic. 2.1–4 (a confused blend of first and final drafts); Zon. 8.17; de Sanctis, 3.1.184–9; Walbank, 1.126–7, 355; Schmitt, SVA 3.173–81; Huss (1985) 249–51; Scardigli (1991) 205–43; Hoyos (1998) 118–23, 130–1. The 1,000 talent down-payment possibly represented about one year’s Punic state revenues: chapter II §III. Hamilcar’s promises to the troops: Pol. 1.67.12; Appian, Iber. 4.15. Hamilcar’s final actions in Sicily: Pol. 1.66.1, 68.12; Zon. 8.17. Punic generalship indefinite in duration: Gsell, HAAN 2.420–1; Huss (1985) 478. Official scrutiny: Gsell, 2.188, 205–7; Picard and Picard, LDC 128, 142–6; Huss, 464, 478.

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15 Politics at Carthage in mid-century: chapter II. Hanno undermined war-effort in Sicily: Thiel (1954) 294–7, 306; Picard (1967) 60–1; Picard and Picard, LDC 198; Huss (1985) 246 note 232; Scullard (1989a) 563. Seibert severely criticizes Hamilcar’s leadership at both Heircte and Eryx for stubbornness and failure to exploit advantages like Punic naval superiority before 242 (FzH 89–94; Hann. 8–11). I I C A R T H AG E 1 Descent from Belus and Barca, Silius 1.71–6, 15.745–8. Ba’lu king of Tyre in early seventh century: Nina Jidejian, Tyre through the Ages (Beirut (1969)) 46–9, 246; W. Röllig, Kl P 4.1028 s.v. ‘Tyros’. Tyre did have other kings with similar names, for instance Ithobaal in the first half of the ninth century (Jidejian, 39–41, 246), Baal in the sixth (ibid. 56, 246–7). Punic names: Sznycer (1978) 550–1—over 500 known from inscriptions. The two Hamilcars: see next note. 2 Hamilcar ‘admodum adulescentulus’, Nepos, Hamil. 1.1. Adulescentulus and adulescens can be very elastic—for instance Cicero retrospectively terms himself ‘adulescens’ as consul aged 43 (Philippics 2.46.118) and to Sallust a 37-year-old Caesar is ‘adulescentulus’ (Catilina 49.2; cf. Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, s.v. ‘adulescens’). Hamilcar about 30 in 247: similarly Picard (1967) 64, puts his birth around 280–75. T. Lenschau, RE 7.2302–3, wants him born by 285 so as to identify him as the Hamilcar prominent in the war from 260, but Nepos is emphatic: Barca’s first command was in the ‘temporibus extremis’ of the war. See also Walbank, 1.80; Huss (1985) 228 note 74. Hanno son of Bomilcar, Pol. 3.42.6; Bomilcar called ‘the king’ (i.e. sufete?), Appian, Hann. 20.90; Huss (1983) 25–32, (1991) 118–23. Hannibal’s birth-year: in early 237 he was nine (Pol. 2.1.6 and 3.11.5; Livy 21.1.4), at the end of 202 ‘more than 45’ (Pol. 15.19.3; cf. Livy 30.37.9); see Lenschau, RE 7.2323 s.v. ‘Hamilkar (7)’; Seibert, Hann. 7 note 2, 9 note 12. Mago in 218, Pol. 3.71.8 (‘young’), etc.; born in 242, surmises Picard (1967) 65. On Hamilcar’s daughters and other family questions, see Appendix §1. 3 Byzacium estates: Livy 33.48.1; the inference of wealth is Picard’s (1967) 20–1. Birth and wealth required: Aristotle, Pol. 2.11.8–9, 1,273a, ‘they believe that magistrates should be chosen on the basis not only of birth but also of wealth; for it is impossible for a poor man to govern well and to have the time’. Bribery, 2.11.10–12; still prevalent and public in later times, Pol. 6.56.1–4. Ameling (1993) 171–5 seeks to temper these verdicts. 4 Hanno’s sobriquet: Appian, Iber. 4.16, Lib. 34.145, 49.213; Zon. 8.22; Huss (1979) 230 note 40, and (1985) 464, sees it as rendering Punic rb (rab), ‘great one’ or ‘chief ’, and meaning not age or eminence but the head of the state finances (cf. chapter XV §III). But that this office could be held by Hanno for decades during the Barcid supremacy—and that only he, and a couple of other Hannos in other eras, were remembered for it by having it as their sobriquet—is not convincing. His alleged enmity towards Hamilcar during the 240s: cf. chapter I with note 15. Not hereditary (contra for instance Gsell, HAAN 2.253; Hoyos (1994) 270 tentatively)—Livy limits it to Hamilcar and his sons (21.3.2, 10.11 ‘paternas inimicitias’, 23.13.6 ‘simultas cum familia Barcina’) and Silius, writing about Hanno’s ‘odiis gentilibus’ towards Hamilcar’s son (Pun. 2.277), may have no more than that in mind; in any case this is a poet who affirms that Regulus had been crucified in public (2.343–4). Loreto similarly sees the decisive break between Hanno and Hamilcar coming as late as 237 ((1995) 205, 207–8, cf. 138, 161). 5 The ports, especially the circular one, have been extensively studied as part of the ‘Save Carthage’ project: see for instance Picard (1983) 34–7; Huss (1985) 47–8;

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6

7

8

9

10

11

L. E. Stager and H. Hurst in Ennabli (1992) 75–8 and 79–94; Lancel (1992) 192–211 = English tr. 172–92). See Appendix §2. On Carthaginian history and culture see, e.g., Lancel (1992); Huss (1985); Picard (1968); Picard and Picard (1983); Warmington (1964). On the archaeological remains, Ennabli (1992); Niemeyer et al. (1996). Timaeus on the foundation-date: FrGH 566 F60. Extent of city: Strabo 17.3.15, C833; Appian, Lib. 95.448–96.455, 117.555, 128.610–13; Gsell, HAAN 2, chapter I; Tlatli (1978) chapters III–IV; Huss (1985) chapter IV; Scullard (1989a) 499–503; Lancel (1992) chapter V. The Numidians: Gsell, 2.99–100, 306–8. On the Carthaginian empire, Whittaker (1978). The Pyrgi tablets: e.g. J. Ferron, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, 1.1, ed. H. Temporini (Berlin and New York 1972) 189–216; Tusa (1974) 88–9; Lancel (1992) 101–2. Treaties with Rome: Pol. 3.22–4; cf. Walbank, 1.339–49; Scardigli (1991) 47–127; Cornell (1996) 210–14, 388. King Hamilcar’s mother: Herodotus 7.165. Hamilcar Barca and Naravas: Pol. 1.78. Later granddaughter’s royal marriages, and Sophoniba’s: chapter XIII note 2. Background of Punic agents Hippocrates and Epicydes: Livy 24.6.2. On intermarriage cf. Picard (1961) 82–3. Carthaginians jealously guarding their western trade monopoly: Strabo 3.5.11, 175C, 17.1.19, 802C; but see Whittaker (1978) 61, 80–1. On Carthaginian Sicily see especially Hans (1983). For the one, dubious clash between Carthaginians and Massiliots, a supposed ‘battle of Artemisium’, see Sosylus, FrGH 176, F1, with Jacoby’s commentary (Kommentar vol. BD, 605); Huss (1985) 67. Punic adoption of Greek usages: e.g. Picard (1964) 96–118, 194–5; Picard and Picard (1983) 55–9; Hahn (1974); Lancel (1992) 360–7. Coinage: Jenkins and Lewis (1963); Huss (1983) 489–93. Punic religion is well discussed by Huss (1985) chapter XXXVI; Lancel (1992) chapter VI. On child sacrifice: L. E. Stager in Pedley (1980) 1–11; Lancel, 268–76; Fantar (1995) 74–7 is sceptical. The molk of 310: Diod. 20.14.4–7 (emphasizing that it was exceptional). Silius Italicus has a story about Hannibal being ordered by the priests to hand over his son for sacrifice, and refusing (4.763–829), but this is obviously a fancy (though Seibert, Hann. 20 note 60, thinks there may be something to it and also (19–20) that a molk may have taken place during the African revolt of 241–237, despite the lack of evidence. Neither idea persuades, cf. Appendix §1). ‘Lepcis’ on the ‘ora minoris Syrtis’: Livy 34.62.3 (Leptis in some MSS). The Emporia region stretched from the Lesser to the Greater Syrtes (gulf of Gabès to gulf of Sirte): Gsell, HAAN 2.127–8; Lancel (1992) 111, 278, 430; cf. Mattingly (1994) xiii, 1, 50–2, 218. The daily talent is disbelieved by Kahrstedt (1913) 134–5, and Walbank, 3.491; but Gsell, 2.319, and de Sanctis, 3.1.32 note 88, judge it as revenue from Lepcis plus its surroundings. See Appendix §3. Roman republic’s estimated income from 200 to 157: T. Frank, An Economic History of Rome, vol. 1: The Republic (Baltimore 1933) 126–41; Nicolet (1978) 1.255–7. Rhodian customs-duties: Pol. 30.31.7–12; Walbank, 3.458–60. Rhodian customsduties before 167: Pol. 30.31.7–12; Walbank, 3.458–60. Punic war-indemnities in 241, 237 and 201: chapter I §V, chapter IV §I, chapter XV §I (that of 241 was perhaps suspended during the Mercenaries’ War, Hoyos (1998) 125). Revenues of Athens at the start of the Peloponnesian War, reportedly 1,000 talents: Xenophon, Anabasis 7.1.27, cf. Thucydides 1.99.3; R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972, repr. 1987) 258–9. Syracusan indemnity: Pol. 1.16.9–10, 17.3; Diod. 23.4.1; Zon. 8.9.11 (Eutropius, 2.19.1, improbably claims 200 talents); Hoyos (1998) 106–7.

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12 Population of Carthage: Appendix §4. Resident non-citizens: cf. Huss (1985) 501–2. Adult men: this follows P. A. Brunt’s calculation of them as 28–31 per cent of total population, at any rate in third-century BC Italy ((1971) 59, 116). Punic citizens sent out as colonists: Aristotle, Pol. 2.11.15, 1273b; 6.5.9, 1320b. Roman citizens in 247: Livy, Epit. 19. In 225, with Roman and Italian allied manpower together reported as 770,000 (probably too high): Pol. 2.24–5; cf. Brunt, chapter IV. Population of the empire: Appendix §4. Slaves: Huss, 499–500. 13 Aristotle on the political system: Pol. 2.11.1–9, 1272b–1273b; 4.7.11, 1293b (‘threefold aim’ (Penguin tr.)); Picard and Picard, LDC 141–6; Huss (1985) chapter XXX. Cf. Pol. 6.43.1, Walbank, 1.724, and Huss, 458 note 1, for other admirers. The kingship: Ameling (1993) chapter II. The sufetes: Gsell, HAAN 2.193–200; Picard (1963); Sznycer (1978) 567–76; Bacigalupo Pareo (1977); Huss (1983) and (1991) 118–23; Scullard (1989a) 490–1. Occasionally there might be four rather than two sufetes in a year (W. Huss, Muséon 90 (1977) 427–33). Generals: Bengtson (1952); Picard (1968) 115–23; Ameling (1993) 83–117; Hoyos (1994) 249–56. Plurality of offices: Aristotle 2.11.13, 1,273b. 14 H’drm, Huss (1985) 462, (1991) 124–7. Senate’s powers: Gsell, HAAN 2.202–4, 215–26. Decided peace and war: cf. Hoyos (1994) 262–4; below, chapter XVI note 21. On the term rab, see Huss (1979), (1985) 465 and (1991) 129, who suggests that on its own this was the title of Carthage’s presumed magistrate for finances; but see Appendix §14. Public scribes (sprm): cf. Pol. 3.22.8 (first treaty with the Romans); Sznycer (1978) 585 (also for market inspectors). Boards of Five (pentarchies): Aristotle, Pol. 2.11.4, 1273a13–20; cf. 3.1.7, 1275b12–13. Ban on Greek: Justin 20.5.12–13 (a date around 370). Inner council of senate: Pol. 10.18.1, 36.4.6; Livy 30.16.3 ‘sanctius consilium’; Walbank, 1.76, 2.218; Huss (1985) 462–3 and (1991) 125. 15 Tribunal of One Hundred and Four: Aristotle, Pol. 2.11.2, 1272b (‘104’); 2.11.4, 1273a (‘100’); Justin 19.2.5 (100 judges created from among the senators). Ordo iudicum: Livy 33.46.1–7. See, e.g., Susemihl and Hicks (1894) 341–3, 348–9; Gsell, HAAN 2.205–8; Sznycer (1978) 579–81; Huss (1985) 464; Ameling (1993) 83–5; and cf. below, chapter VI §III; XV §II. 16 Citizen assembly: Aristotle, Pol. 2.11.5–6, 1273a; Pol. 3.13.3–4 (election of Hannibal as general), 6.51.2–7; Livy 33.46.6–7; Gsell, HAAN 2.225–31; Sznycer (1978) 581–4; Huss (1985) 463–4; Hoyos (1994) 262–4. Poorer Carthaginians excluded: so for instance Gsell, 2.228, and Sznycer, 583, because Polybius distinguishes between ‘citizens’ and ‘artisans’ at New Carthage in 210 (10.16.1, 10.17.6–9); but see Walbank, 2.216; Scullard (1989a) 491–2. Evidence for formal clientships, perhaps including freed slaves: Huss (1985) 497–9. 17 Magonids: Justin 18.7.2–19.3.12; Herodotus 7.165; Diod. 13.43.5, 14.54.5. Fourth-century Hanno the Great: Aristotle, Pol. 5.6.2, 1307a; Justin 21.4. Bomilcar’s attempted coup: Diod. 20.43.1–44.6. See, e.g., Gsell, HAAN 2.186–91, 245–52; Picard and Picard, LDC chapters II–III; L. J. Sanders, Historia 37 (1988) 72–89; Lancel (1992) 127–32 (= English tr. 110–15); Ameling (1993) chapter II. I I I T H E R E V O LT O F A F R I C A 1 Outbreak of the Truceless or Mercenaries’ War: Pol. 1.66–70; Diod. 25.2; Gsell, HAAN 2.101–5; Huss (1985) 252–5; Loreto (1995) 45–113; Hoyos (1999). Rebel coinage (cf. Pol. 1.72.6): for instance Jenkins and Lewis (1963) 43, 51; W. Huss, Schweizer Münzblätter 150 (1988) 30–3; E. Acquaro, in Devijver and Lipinski (1989) 137–44; Howgego (1995) 113–14.

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2 Troops’ irritation with ‘the generals who had made the promises’: Pol. 1.67.12; cf. Appian, Sic. 2.7. Gisco’s fate: 1.80.10–13. Prosecution of Hamilcar: Appian, Iber. 4.16, Hann. 2.3; dating accepted for instance by Lenschau, RE 7.2356; Gsell, HAAN 2.255; Picard (1967) 74 and (1968) 120; Loreto (1995) 205–6, who implausibly argues for different charges arising out of the war in Africa. Contra: de Sanctis, 3.1.377 note 16; Walbank, 1.140, 151; Hoyos (1994) 261–2. 3 ‘The leading men’ or ‘the men in power’, το`υς πολιτευοµ´ενους (Appian, Iber. 4.16; the Loeb translation is less satisfactory, ‘the chief men in the state’). The verb basically means ‘to be in public life’, but can also mean ‘to be in government’ or ‘to administer affairs’. Since Hamilcar’s enemies must have been in public life too, the stronger sense seems to be what Appian intends (similarly Loreto (1995) 208–9). Hasdrubal ‘the most popular’, Appian, ibid.; his youth and the alleged sexual relationship, Nepos, Hamil. 3.2; Livy 21.2.3 (‘uti ferunt’). Diodorus on Hamilcar in 237: 25.8. The widespread idea that Hamilcar at this time was at odds with the dominant faction, or with the oligarchy as a whole (de Sanctis, 3.1.376–7; Gsell, HAAN 2.253–4; Picard (1967) 60, 68; Scullard (1980) 184), hardly squares with such evidence as we have (Hoyos (1994) 258–61, 267; Loreto, 208–9). Appian shifts the prosecution to 237, perhaps through linking it with a supposed joint appointment of Hamilcar and Hanno to subdue the Numidians, following the Mercenaries’ War; Hamilcar uses the appointment as a clever way to escape trial (cf. also Hann. 2.3). In reality, if any operations against the Numidians occurred, they were part of the mopping-up near the end of that war when the two generals were again co-operating. Hamilcar’s appointment immediately following the war was to Spain. 4 Seibert defends Hanno against Polybius’ biased presentation (FzH 96 note 52; cf. Walbank, 1.140, and Huss (1985) 258). But it remains true that he did not shine in his operations. Loreto (1995) 135–7 maintains that Hanno then led his surviving troops back to Carthage, where some formed Hamilcar’s army in turn. But it is hard to believe that Polybius—especially in his anti-Hanno mood—would have left that out, and in fact he indicates that the army was formed partly of laterenrolled mercenaries (75.2). Hamilcar’s army may have included some of the 2,743 Punic prisoners of war sent home, ransom-free, by the Romans (Pol. 1.83.8; Val. Max. 5.1.1 and Eutrop. 2.27 give the number) if the restoration occurred about this time: cf. Hoyos (1998) 124. Multiple generalships: Gsell, HAAN 2.422–3. Adherbal in overall command in 250–249: Pol. 1.44.1, 53.2–3; Gsell, 422 note 6; Thiel (1954) 281; Walbank, 1.109, 116; Lazenby (1996) 126. Hamilcar appointed, Pol. 1.75.1; but as commander-in-chief, Picard and Picard, LDC, 206; Huss, 258; Scullard (1989a) 567; Lancel (1992) 392; Hoyos (1994) 250–1. Carthaginians urged both generals to avenge Gisco: Pol. 1.81.1. Hamilcar ‘called Hanno to him’: 1.82.1. Carthaginians surprised by their quarrel: Seibert, FzH 101 note 71. 5 Punic naval strength in 241–240: Pol. 1.73.2 (triremes and the smaller 50-oar ships). Rebel numbers: Pol. 1.67.13, 73.3; Nepos, Hamil. 2.2. De Sanctis, 3.1.375 note 11, and Walbank, 1.139, are probably right to judge the Libyan figure (70,000) exaggerated, despite Loreto (1995) 87–9, 119–21. Battle of the Bagradas: W. E. Thompson, Hermes 114 (1986) 111–17; Loreto, 137–48. Siege of Utica raised: Pol. 1.75.3, explicitly; cf. Huss (1985) 259 note 59; sceptics include Walbank, 1.143; Seibert, FzH 99 note 63; Loreto, 139, 151. Though Polybius later writes of the defeated rebels fleeing back to their camp outside Utica (1.76.9), he reports Hamilcar pursuing them part of the way at least (76.10) and their leader Spendius is next found following him into the Libyan countryside

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6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

(77.1 and 4). Hamilcar possibly had Hanno’s help in raising the siege of Utica— Hanno and his forces were somewhere in the background (cf. previous note). Relations with Hiero and the Romans: Pol. 1.83.2–11; Nepos, Hamil. 2.3; Appian, Sic. 2.10; Zon. 8.17; Hoyos (1998) 123–6, suggesting (125) that the indemnity was waived until war’s end. But the story that Roman envoys tried to mediate in the struggle (Appian, Sic. 2.11, Lib. 5.19; Zon. ibid.; accepted by Huss (1985) 257, and Loreto (1995) 198) is not to be believed; at best it misunderstands or embroiders the rôle of their protest embassy. Spendius’ ‘Fabian’ tactics, Pol. 1.77.2. Naravas’ family: Appendix §5. Naravas and Hamilcar’s victory, Pol. 1.78.1–12; policy of mercy to prisoners, 78.13–15, 79.8. Veith identifies the victory-site, a plain circled by mountains, as near the hill-town of Nepheris 18 miles/30 kilometres south-east of Tunis (in Kromayer and Veith, AS 3.2.539–41); de Sanctis prefers a site north of the Bagradas (3.1.378 note 19; cf. Seibert, FzH 99 note 64); Loreto ((1995) 153) suggests the mountains 6–10 miles (10–15 kilometres) west of Tunis but remarks that the lack of help from Tunes for the rebels would indicate a relatively distant site, which seems contradictory. If Veith is right, Hamilcar could have been trying to command a supply-route from the Cape Bon region. But possibly enough the encounter was much further inland. Hanno’s activities: in Kromayer and Veith, AS 532 inferred confrontation with Mathos besieging Hippou. Loreto, supposing instead that Hanno had marched back to Carthage even before Hamilcar left there (note 4 above), then has him remain at or near the city until he went to join Hamilcar ((1995) 137, 160). Revolt in Sardinia, Pol. 1.79.1–7; massacre of Gisco and other prisoners, 79.8–80.13; Hamilcar’s no-quarter policy, 82.2 (with Polybius’ implied approval; cf. 81.7–11). Trampling by elephants: inflicted by the regent Perdiccas on selected opponents in 323 after Alexander’s death (Curtius, Historia Alexandri 10.9.18; Scullard (1974) 78). Much or most of Libya submitting only after Spendius’ and Autaritus’ débâcle, 86.2. Union of armies and quarrel with Hanno, Pol. 1.82.1–5; Hamilcar became supreme general, 82.5 and 12. Seibert and Loreto similarly infer differences over how to wage the war, rather than an unattested ancient feud (Seibert, FzH 101 note 71; Loreto (1995) 161). Soldiers’ decision: cf. Eucken (1968) 73; Huss (1985) 477; Hoyos (1994) 250; Loreto, 165–6. The reconstruction in Picard (1968) 117–19, and Picard and Picard, LDC 207–8, of the politics behind Hamilcar’s election to supreme command is imaginative, circumstantial—for instance giving a substantial rôle to Hamilcar’s putative sonin-law Bomilcar—and largely based on assumptions. They also see Hamilcar’s election as chief general as establishing his mastery of the Punic state. Fleet lost, Pol. 1.82.6. Mathos’ siege of Hippou Acra, 70.9, 73.2, 77.1, cf. 79.14; ’ ο´γου); cf. Loreto on Utica, note 5 above. Their ‘senseless’ defection, 82.8–9 (αλ (1995) 160, 163–4. Pro-Carthage factions deposed: since both cities were (it seems) treated fairly mildly after the war, this is best accounted for if loyalists recovered control then. Hippou and Utica, to show their keenness for their new cause, treated the Carthaginians within their walls with the usual pitilessness: 82.9–10. Carthage besieged: 82.11. Hardships of the besiegers: Pol. 1.82.13, 84.1–2; Diod. 25.4.1. Recruits after breakout, Pol. 84.3. Walbank, 1.146, suggests the rebel army totalled no more than 20,000; Loreto ((1995) 169, 172) accepts Polybius’ figure. ‘The Saw’, Pol. 85.7 (in Salammbô, chapter 14, Flaubert more evocatively if misleadingly calls it ‘the defile of the Axe’); Veith locates it close to modern Hammamet and the sea about 30 miles/50 kilometres south of Carthage (in Kromayer and Veith 3.2.546–54), but Polybius’ description is too brief and general for any precision.

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14

15

16 17

Hamilcar’s conduct: cf. de Sanctis’ remarks, 3.1.382 (‘certo non senza perfidia’); Walbank, 1.147; Loreto, 176, defends it. Fates of Spendius and Hannibal, Pol. 1.86. Hamilcar’s move north prevented Mathos joining up with Hippou and Utica rebels: thus Meltzer (1896) 385; Loreto (1995) 185. Seibert, FzH 105 note 92, scathingly but unpersuasively judges the move ‘kopflos’. Walbank, 1.148, and Huss (1985) 265 note 100, see it only as a move to maintain his communications; Veith, in Kromayer and Veith, AS 3.2.556, supposes that Hannibal’s force was virtually annihilated, but that is not Polybius’ implication (86.5, many killed, all driven from camp). Reconciliation between Hamilcar and Hanno, 1.87.1–6 (Polybius, 86.5, writes as though both generals needed persuasion, which looks like an effort to play down Hamilcar’s reluctance); Seibert, Hann. 21–2, also sees it as a compromise; cf. Loreto (1995) 186. Hanno already general, 86.3. A political comeback by him: Walbank, 1.148; Picard and Picard, LDC 208–9; Scullard (1989a) 568. Troops from Carthage reinforcing Hamilcar, 87.3 (‘arming the remaining men of military age, as though now running the last lap [i.e. in a supreme effort], they sent them off to Barca’). Tunes: Veith, in Kromayer and Veith, AS 3.2.557, thinks some troops remained there until Mathos summoned them to his last stand, but this seems very unlikely. Operations around ‘Leptis’ and final battle, Pol. 87.7–10; no doubt Leptis Minor on the Byzacium coast, near Hadrumetum which would be one of the ‘other cities’ mentioned (Gsell, HAAN 2.122 note 4; Walbank, 1.148); not the bigger and more famous Lepcis (sic) Magna hundreds of miles to the east, despite Loreto being tempted by this ((1995) 187). Death of Mathos at Carthage, 88.6. Utica and Hippou fearful: 88.3–4, echoed by Diod. 25.5.3. Terms given them: 88.4; Gsell, 123; Walbank, 1.149. Punic rule extended around this time: Diod. 25.10.1, 26.23 (‘Micatani’—maybe the Muxsitani of a district (pagus Muxsi) west of Utica and Hippou Acra; cf. Lancel (1992) 280); Nepos, Hamil. 2.5; see also chapter IV. Chronology: Pol. 88.7; Diodorus’ 4 years 4 months (25.6) is impossible to match with other chronological indicators; cf. Walbank, 1.149–50; Loreto, 211; Hoyos (2000a). Mercenaries driven from Sardinia to Italy: Pol. 79.5, 88.8. Debased coinages: Robinson (1956/1978) 9; Jenkins and Lewis (1963) 43; Howgego (1995) 113–14, noting Punic silver 15–33 per cent pure, rebel 25–43 per cent. The rebels overstruck many older Punic coins with their own dies. ‘Mastia Tarseiou [or Tarseion?]’: Pol. 3.24.2 and 4; Walbank, 1.347; Huss (1985) 150–1; Barceló (1988) 134–5, doubting that its site was Cartagena; Scardigli (1991) 107. Punic help to Gades: Justin 44.5.1–4, claiming a Punic conquest of Iberia. Barceló, chapter IV, shows that such claims have no basis; so too González Wagner (1989), but he assumes (156) without warrant that after 241 Carthaginians were barred from direct access to Spanish trade. I V BA R C A S U P R E M E

1 Chronology: chapters III note 15, V note 16. Punic field forces: Veith, in Kromayer and Veith, AS 567–71, estimated 40,000 (versus 30,000 rebels) in Mathos’ last battle. ‘Formed a political group’, etc.: Diod. 25.8, tr. Walton; on the textual questions, Walton (Loeb edn, 11.152); Loreto (1995) 206 note 31; Hoyos (1998) 151 note 2. 2 Hamilcar’s appointment to Spain: Hoyos (1994) 258–9. Loreto (1995) 205–10 tries to show that it gave Hamilcar domestic political dominance, but it is much likelier that his already-won dominance brought him the appointment. On Picard’s view that Hamilcar now carried through a ‘révolution démocratique’

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(Picard (1967) 75–7, 216–17, (1968) passim) cf. Hoyos, 262–70. The idea that Hanno was initially re-elected general, only to be dismissed later at Hamilcar’s instigation (Loreto, 201, 205–8), reads too much into Appian, Iber. 5.17, and also depends on dating the operations in Numidia after the Sardinia crisis (against which, chapter III note 15). The command effectively open-ended: Diodorus terms it explicitly so (ει’ς χρο´νον α’ ο´ριστον) but this may be a rationalization, since in practice a war in so distant a theatre, against an indefinite range of enemies, would be over only when the commander declared it over. On the Sardinia crisis, Loreto, 198–9; Hoyos (1998) chapter IX, both with detailed citations of earlier scholarship; also Carey (1996), who holds to the view that the Romans treated the island as terra nullius. 3 Carthaginians ‘at first sought to come to an agreement’: Pol. 3.10.1. Embassy of ten: Oros. 4.12.3; Hoyos (1998) 137. Allegations about traders: 3.28.3–4; Appian, Iber. 4.15, Lib. 5.19; Zon. 8.18 (Appian and Zonaras take them seriously). Ancient and modern explanations for the crisis: Hoyos, 140–3; Goldsworthy (2000) 136 is undecided but, implausibly, thinks the change of consuls influenced the policy switch. The 1,200 talents payable as a lump sum: Pol. 3.27.8 (the terms do not mention instalments); Hoyos, 141. Finances confiscated: Picard (1967) 76, seeing the aim as to undermine Carthage’s economy; Loreto (1995) 199 (to prevent a war of revanche); Hoyos, 141–2. The 1,200 talents, incidentally, may represent what the Romans judged to be a year’s total revenue of the Punic state: chapter II §III. 4 A third embassy, accepting the terms, may have been sent: Orosius seems to have five—two pairs (doublets?) and a final one; Hoyos (1998) 137–8. The Romans may not have sent their own forces to Sardinia until 235: Hoyos, 139–40. 5 Hasdrubal as trierarch, Pol. 2.1.9; on the position cf. Walbank 1.109, 153; below, chapter X note 6. Hannibal’s relative Mago in 215, Livy 23.41.1–2: perhaps a son of brother-in-law Hasdrubal, suggests L.-M. Günther (in Die Neue Pauly 5 (1998) 171 and 7 (1999) 701, citing K. Geus, Prosopographie der literarisch bezeugten Karthager (Leiden 1994: Studia Phoenicia 13)). But Livy’s ‘ex gente Barcina’ hardly points to so close a link—contrast 29.29.12 for a niece—and a militarily active nephew was more likely to serve with his uncle, as Hanno son of Bomilcar did. This Mago could be a cousin, for Hamilcar need not have been an only child. Mago the Samnite, Pol. 9.25.1–6. Bomilcar the ‘king’: chapter II note 2 and, on the ancient kingship, ibid. note 12; Loreto (1995) 208 sees him as a Punicised Numidian king, but though Punic–Numidian marriages were common enough (note 2 above), no other known Numidian lord of this era had a Punic name. Picard sees Bomilcar as crucial to Barcid political fortunes in and after the Mercenaries’ War: (1967) 68–75, 149, (1968) 118; Picard and Picard, LDC 207–8; cf. Lancel, Hann. 25, who thinks he was also the admiral in the Hannibalic War (24). On Hasdrubal going to Spain cf. Hoyos (1994) 260–1. Himilco in 216, Livy 23.12.6; cf. Maharbal’s father’s name, 21.12.1. Incidentally Plutarch, Fabius 17, names as ‘Barca’ the officer—Maharbal in Livy (22.51.1–4)—who advised Hannibal after Cannae to march on Rome, which just possibly might go back to some source misunderstanding a Barcid kinship of Maharbal’s. Gestar (an invented name?) in 218, Silius 2.390. Hanno versus Hasdrubal in 218, Zon. 8.22; Huss (1985) 294 note 4 guesses Hasdrubal son of Gisco, cf. Seibert, Hann. 59 note 48. Loreto, 208–10, speculates about Hamilcar’s various sources of political support around 237. Muttines of Hippou Acra: Livy 25.40.5. Punic senators as Barcid councillors: Pol. 3.20.8 (Romans in 218 demanded handover of Hannibal ‘and the senators [?—συν´εδρους] with him’), 7.9.1 (γερουσιαστα´ι, mentioned in treaty with Philip V of Macedon in 215), 10.18.1 (members of the senate and its inner council

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captured at New Carthage in 209); Chroust (1954) 67 note 34, 77–8; Walbank, 1.334–5, 2.44–5; Seibert, Hann. 242 note 86. 6 Hamilcar’s Spanish expedition unauthorized by élite: Appian, Hann. 2.4; Zon. 8.17; cf. Oros. 4.13.1. Against this claim, Hoyos (1994) 258–9 with earlier references; Lancel, Hann. 47 thinks it originated with Fabius Pictor. Pictor’s criticisms of Hasdrubal and Hannibal: Pol. 3.8.1–8. Barcid Spain virtually independent: notably Schwarte (1983); Blázquez and García (1991) 38–40; more hesitantly Goldsworthy (2000) 137–8, 152; against, Hoyos (1994) citing earlier discussions. ‘Enriched Africa’: Nepos, Hamil. 4.2. Largesse: Appian, Iber. 5.18, 6.22, and Hann. 2.4. On Barcid political dominance after 237 cf. Hoyos, 270–4. On the later Barcid connexions with Numidian royalty: chapter XII §I. ’ η 7 Hannibal’s oath: Pol. 3.11.5–9 (µηδε´ποτε ‘Ρωµα´ιοις ευνο ´σειν, often rendered ‘never to be a friend to the Romans’, as Nepos and Livy do); Livy 21.1.4 (later Roman version), 35.19.3–6 (Polybius’ version); Nepos, Hann. 2.4 (like Polybius’); Silius 1.70–119; Appian, Hann. 3.10; still other versions, following the Roman tradition as do Silius and Appian, are listed by Walbank, 1.314. Ba’al Hammon or B. Shamim: Polybius writes ‘Zeus’, Nepos ‘Jupiter best and greatest’; of course no source supplies the Punic name. B. Hammon was the chief deity in the Punic pantheon in this era (chapter II with note 9); B. Shamim it seems was the god whom Greeks usually identified as Zeus. Picard (1967) 27–9 prefers Shamim; Barré (1983) 12–13, 40–57, stresses that fixed identifications are unlikely and sees ‘Zeus’ in Hannibal’s treaty of 215 with Philip V of Macedon as Hammon. 8 Oath-story reminiscent of ‘einer hellenistichen Geschichtsnovelle’, Groag (1929) 20 note 1. Invented by Hannibal or others: Hoffmann (1962) 37–8; Errington (1970) 29. Hamilcar not leaving Hannibal behind: Seibert, Hann. 27–8. Very probably the story was not publicly known before 193 (cf. Sumner (1972) 472), so it is no surprise if Fabius Pictor—writing around 200—did not have it (Badian (1966) 3–4; Errington, 25–30; Seibert, 28 note 13). Hannibal’s loyalty to Hamilcar’s guidance: e.g. Pol. 3.12.3–4, 14.10; Livy 21.4.2, 43.15; Zon. 8.21. V H A M I L C A R I N S PA I N 1 Justin (44.5.4) calls Hamilcar’s army a ‘large force’ (‘cum magna manu’), which is not of much use. Hannibal’s forces in North Africa in 218, Pol. 3.33.9–12; Punic field army by late 238, chapter IV note 1; forces in Spain in 228, Diod. 25.12 (elephants, 25.10.3). Görlitz (1970) 31 arbitrarily guesses a 30,000-strong army in 237. Hamilcar sailed to Spain: Diod. 25.10.1; Nepos, Hamil. 4.1; accepted by de Sanctis, 3.1.394, and Scullard (1989b) 23. Other sources merely mention him crossing the straits of Gibraltar (Pol. 2.1.6; Silius 1.141; Appian, Iber. 5.17, Hann. 2.4) which does not amount to having him march there—although Gsell, HAAN 3.124–5 (admitting it would be ‘une marche longue et pénible’) thinks it does; so too Huss (1985) 270 note 9; Seibert, Hann. 28; Lancel, Hann. 55; and Barceló (1998) 20. Walbank, 1.151–2, is undecided. 2 Spain before 237: Harrison (1988); S. J. Keay, Roman Spain (London 1988) 8–24; Fernández Castro (1995); Richardson (1996) 9–16. Tartessus: K. Abel in Kl P 5. 531; Harrison, 51–9, 69–73; T. Júdice Gamito, Social Complexity in Southwest Iberia 800–300 BC: The Case of Tartessos (Oxford 1988: BAR International Series 439); Fernández Castro, chapters 12 and 14. The early Magonid expedition to rescue Gades (chapter II note 16) may have helped in Tartessus’ collapse (cf. Picard and Picard, LDC 66; Huss (1985) 68). On third-century Spanish soldiery and

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3

4

5

6

7

soldiering, Connolly (1981) 150–2. Aspects of the Barcids’ rule in Spain are discussed by Barceló (1989), Hoyos (1994), Lancel, Hann. chapter II. Hamilcar’s first campaign: Diod. 25.9 (boastful Celts), 25.10.1 (where the Loeb version, ‘the Iberians and Tartessians, together with the Celts, led by Istolatius and his brother’, does not translate what Diodorus writes). Diodorus’ accuracy about ‘Tartessians’ is urged too by Eucken (1968) 81–3. On Turdetani and Turduli see A. Schulten in RE 7A.1378–80; Knapp (1980); Fernández Castro (1995) chapter 17. Ancient geographers, not to mention non-geographical writers, are loose and contradictory about the extent and content of Turdetania; Strabo even includes the Phoenician settlements (3.2.13). Celtici in south-west Spain: Pol. 34.9.3 (= Strabo 3.2.15, C151); Strabo 3.1.6, 3.3.5 (C139, C153); Pliny, NH 3.1.13, 4.22.116. Hamilcar campaigned eastwards: Gsell, HAAN 3.130; Walbank, 1.152 (inferring Turdetanians and ‘east coast Iberians’); Vollmer (1990) 119–20; Lancel, Hann. 64. Picard and Picard reinterpret Diodorus—the ‘Turdetani’ subjugated first, then a Celtiberian incursion under Istolatius and Indortes in 235: LDC 216–17. Iberian and Celtiberian mercenaries in Punic armies (outside Spain at that): e.g. Pol. 1.17.4, 1.67.7, 3.56.4, 14.7.5; Livy 30.7.10. Celtiberians in Turdetanian service in 195: Livy 34.19.1. Gades’ new coinage: Robinson (1956/1978) 10–11; Lancel, Hann. 65. On the Baetis valley and surrounding lands: Fernández Castro (1995) chapter 17; Ruiz Rodríguez (1997). The land, topography and cultural heritage of Andalusia are evocatively treated by Jacobs (1990); geographical analysis in Lautensach (1964) 443–51, 572–609. Indortes ‘routed’ (τραπε´ις), Diod. 25.10.2. Treatment of Gisco and other captives: Pol. 1.80.13. To Huss ((1985) 272) the savage treatment of Indortes suggests he had made an agreement after his initial defeat and then broken it, so was seen as a renegade—but there had been no defeat and the inference from Diodorus’ wording is implausible. Chronology from coins difficult: Robinson (1956/1978) 10 estimates that Gades’ first Barcid series lasted a few years before the finer new issues began around 235, but no certainty is possible. ‘Many cities throughout Iberia’: Diod. 25.10.3. Wealth accrued: Nepos, Hamil. 4.1; Strabo 3.2.14, C151. On the Sierra Nevada and Las Alpujarras: Jacobs (1990) 37–40. On the south-eastern ranges (Sierras de Cazorla, Segura, etc.) and the wilderness lands they embrace: Lautensach (1964) 593–4, 609–15, 625; Jacobs, 25–6, 40–2. Naravas’ family: Appendix §5. ‘Mostly loyal’: Livy 40.17.2 mentions that Masinissa’s father Gaia, who died around 210, had once taken territory from the Carthaginians who later received it back from Syphax. This would suggest a Punic–Massylian clash (cf. Walsh (1965) 150) but no details are given and it may not be correctly reported. Surviving Numidians ‘were made slaves and liable to tribute’, Diod. 25.10.3: with ε’δουλωθησαν φο ´ ´ρους τελε´σοντες (Dindorf ’s Teubner edn) an emendation preferable to ε’. φ. τελ´εσαντες (Walton’s Loeb), ‘were made slaves having paid tribute’, for no earlier tribute is known; the manuscript’s τελε´σαντες has to be emended one way or the other. Massyli and Masaesyli: Gsell, HAAN 3.174–8 (who sees no Punic rôle in the formation of the two kingdoms); J. Desanges, in Nicolet (1978) 2.645–9; Fentress (1979) 43–4. Their auxiliaries in 218: Pol. 3.33.15. Syphax attacked by Massyli and Carthaginians, around 212: Livy 24.48–9. By locating Acra Leuce in the upper Baetis valley Sumner (1967) 211 rejects that Hamilcar reached the east coast; but see below. Foundation date: Lancel, Hann. 66 surmises around 235, which is surely too early. On the imaginary Punic–Roman confrontations in the 230s: Hoyos, AHB (1990) 31–6, and (1998) chapter X. Alleged embassy to Hamilcar: Dio, frg. 48; Hoyos (1998) 147–9 (listing earlier

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8

9

10

11 12

13

discussions; sceptical); Lancel, Hann. 65 (‘probablement apocryphe’), 73 (accepting it, as does Barceló (1998) 23); Richardson (1996) 19 is dubious. Cato placed Hamilcar on a par with Pericles, Curius Dentatus and other classic heroes, above any king: Plutarch, Cato Maior 8.14; cf. Hans (1991). Alleged anger and war-plan: Pol. 2.36.4; 3.9.6–8, 10.4–5, 12.7–13.2, 14.10, 15.9–11 (etc.); Nepos, Hamil. 1.4, 3.1, 4.3; Livy 21.1.5–2.2; Val. Max. 9.3 ext. 2–3; Silius 1.60–3, 77–80, 106–19, 140–3; 2.296–8; 13.732–51; Florus 1.22 [2.6] 2; [Victor], De Vir. Ill. 42.1; Oros. 4.13.1, 14.3; Zon. 8.17, 21; cf. Appian, Iber. 9.34, Hann. 3.10 (oathstory, but he offers a different tradition as well—see below). No such report in Diodorus, despite many character descriptions of Hamilcar, Hannibal and his brother Hasdrubal (23.22, 24.5, 25.8, 26.2, 26.24, 29.19). For modern views pro and con see Hoyos (1998) 152 notes 6–7; add Loreto (1995) 83–4, 200–2 (belief that war-plan existed from 241); Lancel, Hann. 55–7, 64–6 (disbelief in warplan); Cornell (1996) 14–18, and Goldsworthy (2000) 146–50 (conditional acceptance). Fabius Pictor: Pol. 3.8.1–8. Appian blames the Second Punic War on Hannibal alone: Iber. 9.35, Hann. 3.9–10. This view hardly sits comfortably beside the one that Hamilcar made him swear eternal enmity against the Romans, but Appian carefully separates the two. This might suggest that the Hannibal-alone view was the older, and therefore existed before the 190s. Just as likely, though, a later independent-minded historian (which incidentally rules out Appian in the Hannibalica and Iberica) might have come up with it. Cato the Censor, in the history written in his old age, blamed the Carthaginians for six treaty-breaches down to 219, and these probably included several alleged ones in Barcid times (Origines, frg. 84P). This might reflect criticisms uttered then (cf. B. D. Hoyos, AHB 1 (1987) 112–21, and 4 (1990) 31–6; (1998) 146–7), but equally could be Cato’s hindsight three-quarters of a century later. Punic quinqueremes in 218: Pol. 3.33.14 (50 in Spain, but 18 of them unequipped); Livy 21.49.2–4 (55 sent against Sicily and Italy); Thiel (1946) 35–8. Roman fleet in 229: Pol. 2.11.1. Fleet and army in 219 (no figures): 3.16.7, 18.3–19.13; cf. Walbank, 1.327. Once the Second Punic War began, the Carthaginians did again build substantial naval forces: 70 quinqueremes could be sent against Italy and Sardinia as early as 217 (Pol. 3.96.8), for instance. Son-inlaw Hasdrubal was Hamilcar’s trierarchos: chapter IV note 5. Improvements to upper Baetis towns: Fernández Castro (1995) 272–3. Acra Leuce (Diod. 25.10.3) = Lucentum/Alicante: de Sanctis, 3.1.396; Gsell, HAAN 3.131; Schulten (1935) 11, 84; Bosch Gimpera (1955) 30; Richardson (1996) 17. Massiliot colonies: Strabo 3.4.6, C159; cf. Appendix §6. Already a Greek colony: Rhys Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain (Bryn Mawr 1925, repr. 1971) 56; A. García y Bellido, Hispania Graeca (1948) 2.59–60, cited by Barceló (1989) 170 note 9; Schulten (1952) 231; Richardson, 17; Fernández Castro (1995) 234. Site of Alicante: Lautensach (1964) 617. On Hippo ‘Zarytos’: Huss (1985) 36 note 145. Problems with Acra Leuce being at Alicante: Beltrán (1964) 89–90; Sumner (1967) 208–10, 211 note 22, who places it near Castulo, noting (210 note 20) Urgao which in Roman times bore the epithet ‘Alba’; Blázquez and García (1991) 45–56, and Barceló (1996) 47, (1998) 23 echo this. Picard and Picard, LDC 218 places it on the coast at La Albufereta, and Rouillard (1982) 427 there or at Tossal de Manises (both lie just north of Alicante). Barceló once preferred Villaricos or Baria well to the south-west ((1988) 119–21, cf. (1989) 170–1); Vollmer (1990) 119–22 has it in the mountain lands south of the river Segura. Undecided: Scullard (1989a) 23–4, and Lancel, Hann. 66. For the argument that, if Acra Leuce

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14

15

16

17

18

was at Alicante, Hasdrubal’s New Carthage would have required abandoning it: Barceló (1988) 120–1, (1989) 171. Mastia and Mastiani: Pol. 3.24.4, 33.9; Avienus, Ora Maritima 449–52 (‘urbs Massiena’ in a sheltered gulf); St. Byz. s.v. Μαστιανο´ι; Walbank, 1.347; Huss (1985) 152; Barceló (1988) 134–5 (but sceptical of Mastia being Cartagena); Richardson (1996) 18–19. Climate of Elche: Beltrán (1964) 90. Hamilcar’s death: Diod. 25.10.3–4. Castrum Altum: Livy 24.41.3 (‘locus est insignis caede magni Hamilcaris’). The great Livian editor Arnold Drakenborch (1746) proposed ‘Album’ with explicit reference to Diod. 25.10.3, but without printing it in his text; two later editors, Kreyssig and Bekker, did print ‘Album’ and the change has been accepted virtually without discussion since, often and paradoxically with a reference to Drakenborch (cf. Hoyos (2001b) 80–1). Young Hasdrubal three years Hannibal’s junior: John Tzetzes, Chiliades (Byzantine versification of Diodorus, Dio and Dionysius of Halicarnassus) in Diod. 25.19, lines 9–10 (but he terms them 12 and 15 years old in 229/228, so his accuracy is not certain). Mago a young man in 218, ‘trained from boyhood [etc.]’: Pol. 3.71.6. Hamilcar ‘rearing lion-cubs’: Val. Max. 9.3 ext. 2; Zon. 8.21; Cassiod., Chronica, Anno Urbis 524. Sosylus and Silenus: Nepos, Hann. 13.3 singles them out as the prime historians of the war. Sosylus’ fragment, on a sea-battle in Spanish waters, is at FrGH 176 F1. Polybius on Sosylus’ ‘barbershop gossip’, 3.20.5. The romantic notion that Sosylus was not just Hannibal’s Greek tutor (and only from 221) but his adviser on warfare (Zecchini (1997)) is quite implausible. Greek mercenary officers in this era: the famous Philopoemen of Achaea served twice thus in Crete (Pausanias 8.49.7; Plutarch, Philop. 13). Greek mercenary troops in Hannibal’s service, Pol. 11.19.4. Hamilcar spent ‘nearly nine years’ in Spain and died ten years before the Second Punic War began: Pol. 2.1.7, 3.10.7; cf. Nepos, Hamil. 4.3 ‘nono anno’; Livy 21.2.1 ‘novem annis’. Cf. Lenschau, RE 7.2307–8; de Sanctis, 3.1.393 note 40, 397 note 52; Sumner (1967) 213 note 27; Hoyos (1998) 139; Loreto’s argument ((1995) 213 note 17) that he reached Spain only at the end of 237 is unclear and implausible. Hasdrubal’s eight years: Pol. 2.36.1; Livy 21.2.1 (‘octo ferme annis’); Diod. 25.12 gives nine, as also for Antigonus Doson of Macedon (25.18), who likewise ruled from 229 to 221. Hamilcar’s end: Pol. 2.1.7–8; Diod. 25.10.3–4, 25.12; 25.19, lines 4–21, for Tzetzes’ versified and not entirely faithful retelling. Other versions: Nepos, Hamil. 4.2; Frontinus, Strat. 2.4.17; Appian, Iber. 5.19–21; ~ ; Strabo 3.1.6, Justin 44.5.4; Zon. 8.19. The Orissi/Oretani: Pol 3.33.10 ’Ορητες C139; 3.3.2, C152; 3.4.1, C156; St. Byz. ’Ωριτανο´ι, citing the second-century BC geographer Artemidorus; ILS 5901 (attesting an Oretanian bridge over the river Jabalón about 15 miles/25 kilometres south-east of Ciudad Real); A. Schulten, RE 18.1018–19 s.v. ‘Oretani’, ‘Oretum’, and (1952) 200–1; Walbank, 1.362; Alföldy (1987) 37–9, 46–52; Ruiz Rodríguez (1997) 186–8. Castulo and ‘Orisia’ are named as their chief centres by Artemidorus and Strabo; as Castulo—south of the Sierra Morena and in prime silver-mining country—was surely under Punic hegemony by 229, the Orissi/Oretani who attacked Hamilcar very probably came from the Anas river-lands north of the mountains. Ilucia (Livy 35.7.7) is Sumner’s candidate ((1967) 210 note 20), partly because he locates Acra Leuce in the upper Baetis valley; Ilucia was probably the same as Ilugo, in the Sierra Morena (Schulten, RE 9.1091, and (1935) 196; Hoyos (2001b) 79). ‘Helice’ as Belchite, south of Saragossa: Beltrán (1964) 91–3. Near Albacete on the La Mancha plains: Picard (1967) 84. Alce: Livy 40.48.1; Itin. Ant. 445.5 (‘Alces’ between Laminium and Titulcia); E. Hübner, RE 1.1338; it stood some

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19

20

21

22 23

24

30 miles (50 kilometres) south-west of Toletum, at or near modern Villacañas. Jacob (1985) 260 assumes Helice to be Ilici near Lucentum, with no discussion. Elche de la Sierra: A. García de Bellido in R. Menéndez Pidal (ed.), Historia de España 1.2 (Madrid 1960) 369; Barceló (1989) 172–3, (1998) 27; criticized by Beltrán (1964) 91, because of the terrain’s difficulties. Ilunum, Turbula and Segisa: Ptolemy, Geogr. 2.6.60, with detailed notes by C. Müller (Paris 1883); Miller (1916/1964) 181 less plausibly identifies Ilunum with Ilugo, near Castulo. Arcilacis: Ptolemy 2.4.9 and 2.6.60; E. Hübner, RE 2.602; A. Tovar, Iberische Landeskunde 1: Baetica (Baden-Baden 1974) 181. The final -s is for Greek convenience, like ‘Saltigis’ and ‘Iliturgis’. Ptolemy also repeats, for instance, the later town Salaria (2.6.58 and 60). Aurinx (Livy 24.42.5)/Orongis (28.3.2, 4.2)/Aurgi: Schulten, RE 18.1160; Scullard (1970) 262 note 60 sees Livy’s two towns as one but places it nearer the Baetis. Castrum Altum etc.: Livy 24.41.3–11; Hoyos (2001b) 76–83. The two Bigerras: Müller (1883) 183 on Ptolemy 2.6.60; Schulten (1935) 84. Bogorra on the river Madera (Müller calls it ‘Bigorra’) lies in the Sierra de Alcaraz, not far north-west of Elche de la Sierra but across very rugged mountains (Nuevo Atlas de España (Madrid 1961) 307). Müller (183, cf. 180) places the other Bigorra at ‘Becerra’ near the upper Baetis/Guadalquivir, in fact Peal de Becerro 15 miles (24 kilometres) east of Úbeda (Hoyos (2001b) 82). Campaign debatable: Lazenby (1978) 129; Seibert, Hann. 251–2 (under date 215); cf. below, chapter XI §III. That the king of the Orissi offered to mediate between Hamilcar and the defenders of ‘Helice’ and that Hamilcar then agreed to retreat, only to be attacked en route (Picard (1967) 84; Lancel, Hann. 67), is a very odd misreading of Diodorus. The oxen and burning wagons (in Frontinus, Appian and Zonaras) are accepted by Tarn (1930) 92; Sumner (1967) 209 note 11. ‘Vettones’: Nepos, Hamil. 4.2. Hamilcar’s age: cf. chapter II note 2. ‘Totam locupletavit Africam’, Nepos, Hamil. 4.1. Polybius on Hamilcar: e.g. 1.62.3, 64.6; 2.1.7; 3.9.6–12.4. Diod. 24.5, 9.3, 13; 25.3.1, 8, 10. Cato on Hamilcar, note 11 above; Livy 21.1.3–2.2; Silius 1.70–119, 13.732–51. Fabius Pictor’s strictures on Hasdrubal: Pol. 3.8.1–5. Rule by first citizen, cf. Thucydides 2.65.9. Barcid coins: e.g. Robinson (1956/1978); J. Navascués in Homenaje al Profesor C. de Mergelina (Murcia 1961–2) 665–86; Villaronga (1973) 45–63; Acquaro (1974), (1983–4); Sznycer (1978) 566–7; Picard (1983–4) 76–9; Scullard (1989b) 25, 39–40; Blázquez and García (1991) 47–50; Seibert, FzH 42 note 179; Lancel, Hann. (1995) 71. Pol. 3.14.10.

V I H A S D R U BA L ’ S C O N S O L I DAT I O N ’ 1 Diod. 25.12 (‘broke camp’, αναζε υ ´σας, military term); Pol. 2.1.9; Appian, Iber. 6.22. Hasdrubal, younger than Hamilcar on all the evidence, yet enjoying major political influence as early as 241, was surely born no later than 270. Huss infers from the 100 elephants, plus Appian’s report of the Carthaginians then sending ‘another army’ to Spain, that when Hamilcar perished he was in Africa ((1985) 274); but Appian writes that he was in Spain. In any case it was wintertime—were Hasdrubal in Africa he would have had to stay there for months. For Lascuta, Scullard (1974) 156. ‘ ο´ τε του~ λαου~ κα`ι Καρχηδον´ιων: λαο´ς 2 ‘By both the army and the Carthaginians’, υπ can also mean the ‘people’ (as at Diod. 22.2.2) but both context here and comparison with Hannibal’s later election point to the other meaning (as at 22.8.2); cf. Huss, 274. When an earlier general Mago was killed in Sicily in 383, ‘the

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4

5

6

7

8

9

Carthaginians’—his citizen troops?—gave him a splendid funeral there and installed his son as general (Diod. 15.15–16). Hasdrubal chosen by the citizen soldiery: cf. Warmington (1964) 207. Citizen troops and officers in Barcid times: Pol. 1.73.1, 75.2, 79.2, 87.3; 7.9.1 and 4 (Hannibal’s treaty with Macedon); 15.11.2–3; Livy 21.5.5, 30.33.5; Appian, Lib. 9.35, 40.170. Except in North African wars, most military Carthaginians in this era were probably officers, for no citizen fighting-units are attested. On Punic citizen soldiers generally: Ameling (1993) chapter VII. Hasdrubal and Orissi: Diod. 25.12. Fourteen towns: Ptolemy 2.6.58. Eucken (1968) 84 disbelieves the total for elephants and thinks Diodorus’ troop numbers represent Punic Spain’s total potential manpower, but it would be better to suppose that these were Hasdrubal’s total forces in arms and that he used only part of them against the Orissi. Other units would keep watch over other regions of the province. Diod., 25.12. Congress: Picard (1967) 86, 141; cf. Huss (1985) 275, ‘die stimmberechtigten Angehörigen der iberischen Stämme’. Dionysius of Syracuse et al. elected strat. aut.: N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 BC (Oxford 1959) 472 (Dionysius), 518 (Dion and his brother); Eucken (1968) 85; K. Meister, OCD3 37, s.v. Agathocles; B. M. Caven, ibid. 476, s.v. Dion; B. D. Hoyos, Antichthon 19 (1985) 39–40. Silenus, etc.: Hoyos (1998) 280–1. Alexander as hegemon: A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1988) 189–91. Pyrrhus: P. R. Franke, CAH2 7.2 (1989) 479. Antigonus and Aratus: Pol. 2.54.4; Plutarch, Aratus 41.1; Walbank, 1.252–6. Senators from Carthage: cf. Pol. 7.9.1 and 4 (συ´νεδροι, γερουσιαστα´ι ); Walbank, 1.334–5, 2.44–5; Hoyos (1994) 257. Officers in the advisory council: Pol. 3.71.5, 9.24.5; Livy 22.51.4; Walbank, 2.153. Fabius Pictor in Pol. 3.8.2–4 (my translation). Diodorus’ excerpts do not mention ‘ ο´µενον the episode though Diodorus’ original may have. ‘Feeling suspicious’, υπιδ (8.4; unnecessarily amplified by Paton’s Loeb translation into ‘suspicious of their intentions’; similarly Scott-Kilvert’s Penguin). Episode disbelieved by, e.g., de Sanctis, 3.1.398; Huss (1985) 275 note 56; Seibert, Hann. 41–2. Flaminius’ bill in 232: Broughton, MRR 1.225; Barcid generals’ position vis-à-vis Carthage: Ameling (1993) 101–7; Hoyos (1994) 246–59, cf. (1998) 150–1. ‘Among the Carthaginians [etc.]’: Pol. 6.51.6. On the supposed democratic revolution of 237: Hoyos (1994) 262–70, as against for example Picard (1968). Citizenship to foreigners: Ennius, Annales 234–5, ed. Skutsch, as emended by Skutsch, 414–16 (= 276–7 Warmington, with slight textual differences); Livy 21.45.6. Tribunal of One Hundred and Four: chapter II §III. Fate of son of Gisco: chapter XIII note 16. In Aristotle’s time lawsuits were judged by one or more of the Boards of Five (Pol. 2.11.7, 1273a); possibly these boards were given other jobs to do by Hasdrubal—or were abolished. By 193 the sufetes themselves heard cases (Livy 34.61.15; cf. chapter XV §V) and it is not known when this started. Groag thinks Hasdrubal sought to reform the tribunal of One Hundred and Four but failed ((1929) 27 note 3, 119), while Picard ((1968), cf. (1967) 75–7, 216–17) credits Hamilcar with it: above, chapter IV note 2. Power and arrogance of the ‘ordo iudicum’ by 196: Livy 33.46.1. Fabius Pictor blamed Hannibal alone, as Hasdrubal’s heir in wilfulness, for the Second Punic War: Pol. 3.8.5–8. Punic envoys to Scipio Africanus in 203 were already blaming him: Livy 30.16.5; cf. Hoyos (1998) 151. For contacts between third-century Fabii and at least one aristocratic Carthaginian house: Livy 27.16.5; Hoyos, 151. Hanno still survived in 203 according to Appian, actively anti-Barcid as ever (Lib. 34.145).

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10 Diod. 25.12; Pol. 2.13.1 (cf. Walbank, 1.167). Καιν`η πο´λις at e.g. 3.13.7, 15.3, 33.5, 56.3, 76.11; 10.7.5. Καρχηδων ´ , sometimes defined as η‘ ε’ν ’Ιβηρ´ιαι or the like, at e.g. 10.6.8, 8.6, 16.1; 11.31.1. 11 Thus Groag (1929) 29; much more colourfully Picard (1967) 86–7, ‘l’audace [i.e. du nom] était presque sacrilège’, ‘Asdrubal . . . créait une troisième Tyr’; cf. Picard and Picard, LDC 219. More cautiously Schwarte (1983) 59; Lancel (1992) 398. Fabius’ claim, note 6 above. Mastia: chapter IV note 13. 12 Hasdrubal’s palace and alleged royal aspiration (φα´ σιν, ‘they say’): Pol. 10.10.9. Neapolis (Nabeul): Gsell, HAAN 2.141; Huss (1985) 72, noting that the Punic name could have been Qart-hadasht. Neapolis-Macomades: Gsell, 2.126; Schwabe, RE 14 (1928) 161; Huss, 72 (‘Mqmhds [i.e. Maqom-hadasht] = neuer Ort’). Another Macomades lay some 190 miles (300 kilometres) east of Lepcis Magna, with the alternative name of Pyrgos Euphranta (Gsell, 2.118–20; Schwabe, ibid.). Numidia had one between Cirta and Theveste, about 190 miles south-west of Carthage: Dessau, RE 16 (1935) 161, also registering a Macomadia Rusticiana of Roman date. Lepcis Magna another ‘Neapolis’: Pseudo-Scylax, Periplus (ca. 325 BC) 110 (cf. Müller (1855/1965) 1.87); Strabo 17.3.18, C835; Ptolemy, Geogr. 4.3.13; Gsell, 2.121; Windberg, RE 16 (1935) 2131. Ptolemy’s ‘Old Carthage’ in north-east Spain (2.6.63) as probably Strabo’s little-known Cartalia (3.4.6, C159): Müller (1883) 187; Schulten, FHA 6.233; Jacob (1985) 265 tentatively identifies Ptolemy’s entry with Onusa/Oinoussa and as today’s Peñíscola just south of the Ebro estuary. Citium in Cyprus originally a Qart-hadasht: Kl P 3.223–4. Aristotle on Carthaginian colonies: chapter II note 10. Carthage’s ‘Neapolis’ district: Diod. 20.44.1 and 5; Lancel (1992) 160–1. Cf. too a suggested Phoenician origin for Neapolis in Sardinia: S. Moscati, Fenici e Cartaginesi in Sardegna (Milan 1968) 61–2 (against this, E. Lipinski in Devijver and Lipinski (1985) 69). 13 Link: Huss (1985) 276. Romans impressed: Pol. 2.13.3–4. 14 Polybius describes New Carthage at 10.9.8–11.4; cf. Walbank, 2.205–12; Scullard (1970) 48–55. Silver mines: Pol. 34.9.8. Appian somehow acquired the notion that Hannibal was the founder, and did so on the site of Saguntum (Iber. 12.47). 15 Diod. 25.12; St. Byz., s.v. ’Ακκαβικ`ον τε~ιχος (p. 60 Meineke); Jacob (1985) 253, 356, pointing to another city that Stephanus reports near the straits, with the interesting name of Τρ´ιτη (‘Third’: St. Byz., 638), which Jacob thinks may really be another name for Accabicon and would mark it as a Punic foundation after Acra Leuce and New Carthage. Interestingly if enigmatically, Stephanus registers ‘Caccabe’, Κακκα´ βη, as one of various alternative names for Carthage in North Africa (s.v. Καρχη´δων; Huss (1985) 38 note 5). Conceivably Accabicon Teichos, embodying Semitic akaba ‘landing place’ according to Jacob (253), might be a similarly alternative name, from some source, for New Carthage. Positioning it ‘by the Pillars of Hercules’ would then count as a very rough approximation. 16 Tiar: Itin. Ant. 401. The Teari or Tiari Iulienses of Pliny (NH 3.23) and Ptolemy’s Tiar Iulia (2.6.63) must have been a different community further north (Schulten, RE 4A (1934) 99–100 s.v. ‘Tear [2]’; 6A (1936) 761 s.v. ‘Tiar [2]’)—unless both writers have made a mistake about the site, which is possible: cf. B. D. Hoyos, Historia 28 (1979) 449–53, on Baetican mislocations by both. As for the name Tiar, besides the name-form Tharros in Punic Sardinia compare also the wellknown Mactar in Punic North Africa. Schulten also (761) views the name Tiar as non-Iberian, though he links it to places in the Aegean. 17 Pol. 2.13.3–4; Walbank, 1.168. Polybius on the Barcid revenge-war plan (first at 2.36.4): chapter V notes 8–9. Date of the accord with Hasdrubal: Hoyos (1998) 156–8.

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18 The Romans ‘smoothing down and conciliating’ Hasdrubal: Pol. 2.13.5–7. Roman dispositions in 225: 2.23.6, 24.1, 27.1; Walbank, 1.196–203; Seibert, Hann. 48–9; Bender (1997) 96–8; Hoyos (1998) 156–7. Romans saw their chances on a knife-edge: cf. Pol. 2.22.7–8 on how ‘they were falling into constant terrors and alarms’ and making furious preparations, well before the Gauls had even stirred from their own land; cf. 2.15.5, and Diod. 25.11.2 with Walton’s note. Against the notion that the accord with Hasdrubal was influenced or even prompted by Massilia (still in Lancel, Hann. 74–5; Rich (1996) 20–1; Bender, 95–6) see Barceló (1996) 47–9; Hoyos, 170–1. 19 No Roman approach to authorities at Carthage: this emerges from Pol. 3.21.1–2; cf. Walbank, 1.169–70; Hoyos (1998) 154–5. ‘Carthaginians not to cross’: Polybius’ wording (2.13.7 and elsewhere); Hoyos, 154. Bender (1997) 96–7, very oddly sees the accord, which was all about military movements by land, as intended to check a supposed (unattested) growth in Punic sea-power. Barceló (1996) 53–4, no less oddly, assumes it banned Roman trade south of the limit (which for him is the river Segura). 20 Hasdrubal’s northern frontier: Appian, Iber. 6.24; Sumner (1967) 215–17; Hoyos (1998) 172. Silius Italicus too, for what he is worth, seems to view the Tagus valley as under Hasdrubal’s sway (1.151–5). Hasdrubal the diplomat: Pol. 2.36.2; Diod. 25.11; Livy 21.2.5 and 7; Appian, Iber. 6.23. Silius unsurprisingly prefers him to rule ‘furiis iniquis’, be ‘asper amore sanguinis’ and enjoy being feared by all, a typical Hellenistic tyrant in fact (1.144–54). Armies wintering in Lusitania in 210–209: Pol. 10.7.5 with Walbank, 2.202; cf. Livy 22.20.12, 21.5 (army retiring to coastal Lusitania in 217). Gold in Lusitanian rivers: Strabo 3.3.4, C153; Mela, 3.8; Pliny, NH 4.115, 33.66; Silius 1.155; Schulten (1952) 203. 21 On the communities of the central plateau cf. Alföldy (1987). Mons Idubeda/Cordillera Ibérica (or Sistema Ibérico): Strabo 3.4.10, C161; Schulten (1952) 242–3. Carpetani: Pol. 3.14.2–3, 10.7.5; Livy 21.23.4–6. Spanish troops in 218: Pol. 3.33.9, cf. Walbank, 1.362–4; on the Ilergetes, Hoyos (1998) 183. Olcades: below, chapter VII note 4. Off-and-on Celtiberian support for the Romans, Lazenby (1978) 127, 130; hostility, 126, 130, 144, 152–4, 209–11. Celtiberian troops served professionally: Pol. 14.7.5; Livy 24.49.7, 30.7.10; Lazenby, 144. Emporitan coinage: Guadán (1969) 157–8. Indibilis and Mandonius: Lazenby, 126, 130, 139–54. 22 Saguntine messages: Pol. 3.15.1–2, implying messages over quite some time; Hoyos (1998) 182–5, 190–2. Before 220 Punic–Saguntine relations peaceful, Punic hegemony not at Ebro: 3.14.9–10. Saguntum’s neighbours: Hoyos, 187–91; see Appendix §7. Seibert, Hann. 50, supposes that Hasdrubal did conquer the coastlands up to the Ebro (Saguntum apart) because Hannibal in 221–220 campaigned inland. But the inference does not follow and Polybius records the obedience of the territories up to the Ebro only from late 220 (3.13.9). 23 Territory: Punic North Africa (both the Carthaginians’ own territory and that of their Libyan subjects) on Picard’s estimate covered some 20,000–40,000 square miles, about 52,000–104,000 square kilometres: (1961) 60–1; cf. also chapter II note 10. Hannibal’s mining works and Baebelo mine: Pliny, NH 33.96–7; below, Appendix §3. Where Baebelo lay is unknown: the Sierra Morena (Schulten, FHA 3. 45; Blázquez and García (1991) 34) and the New Carthage area (Scullard (1989b) 8.41) are guesses; so too Acci, modern Guadix east of Granada (based on a possible emendation—Accitani in place of Aquitani or aquatini—in Pliny’s text), but the Guadix area is not known for silver. 24 Diod. 25.12; Livy 21.3.2–4.1 (Hanno’s sexual and monarchic allegations), cf.

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Nepos, Hamil. 3.2; Nepos, Hann. 3.1 (cavalry command). Barceló (1998) 26 still believes that Hannibal may have returned to Carthage during the mid-220s, but this contradicts Polybius (15.19.3)—and Livy (30.38.9). Livy, in stating that Hannibal when summoned to Spain served three years before succeeding Hasdrubal (21.4.10), allows the surmise that he was appointed cavalry commander in 224. 25 Livy 21.4.3–8 (Hannibal’s prowess), adapted by Silius 1.239–67; Appian, Lib. 6.23 (Loeb tr.); Pol. 9.25.5 (Hannibal and friend Mago). Silius on Hasdrubal: note 20 above. Hasdrubal’s murder: Pol. 2.36.1; Diod. 25.12; Livy 21.2.6; Val. Max. 3.3 ext. 7; Silius 1.165–8 (placing it in the palace); Appian, Iber. 8.28, Hann. 2.8; Justin 44.5.5. Polybius gives the murderer’s motive simply as ‘personal wrongs’: compatible enough (despite Walbank, 1.214) with the more circumstantial details in Livy et al. General for eight years: Diodorus gives him nine but Polybius and Livy (21.2.3) eight, Livy with a qualification (‘octo ferme annos’, nearly eight) that suggests he follows here a source more precise than Polybius; cf. Sumner (1967) 213 note 27; Hoyos (1998) 139. Seibert, Hann. 51–2, sets the murder in summer, followed by Barceló (1998) 34. Hasdrubal’s age: note 1 above. V I I H A N N I BA L I N S PA I N 1 Hannibal’s election: Pol. 3.13.3–4; Nepos, Hann. 3.1; Livy 21.3.1; Silius 1.182–89; Appian, Iber. 8.29, Hann. 3.8; Hoyos (1994) 249–50. Barceló’s notion that Hasdrubal’s death left a power-vacuum at Carthage ((1996) 54, (1998) 30, 33) contradicts all evidence. Appian and Dio also have Hannibal elected supreme general in 203 (Lib. 31.129; Zon. 9.13.10), probably a misunderstanding or invention like much else in their narratives. Character portrait: Livy 21.4.1–8 (virtues) and 4.9 (vices); Pol. 9.25 (greed). Livy had probably not read that part of Polybius’ history when he composed his Book 21. Visit to Gades, Livy 21.21.9; made much of by Silius 3.4–61. 2 Imilce: Livy 24.41.7 (home town); Silius 1.62–7, 97–107 (claiming for her a noble ancestry, ‘clarum genus’), 4.775, 806. Hanno the nephew: chapter II note 2. Mago the kinsman, captured by the enemy in Sardinia in 215 (Livy 23.41.1–2; chapter IV note 5), was not commander of the defeated Punic army though he was probably a senior officer in it. Maharbal’s father: chapter IV note 5. Mago the Samnite: Pol. 9.25.1–6 and chapter IV note 5. Hannibal Monomachus: only known from 9.24.5–8 where Polybius stresses his cruelty to enemies (unless he is also the Hannibal at 7.2.3–6; cf. below, chapter X note 6 ). Gisco: Plutarch, Fabius 15 (ι’σοτ´ιµου). 3 On the ports of Carthage see chapter II note 5, and Appendix §2. Seibert’s dating to the interwar years (FzH 111–13) is unpersuasive given that Punic naval forces in 218 were so skimpy (chapter VIII §II). Orders to Hasdrubal in 215: Livy 23.27.9–10. Syracusan envoys: Pol. 7.2.1–4; Livy 24.6.7. 4 Olcades campaign: Pol. 3.13.5–7; Livy 21.5.3–4; Hoyos (2002). Sumner (1967) 216 suggests the area around Altea (Polybius names their stronghold Althia) and Alcoy: but Alcoy’s name is Arabic, it lies inland across mountains (which would have divided the tribe even more vulnerably), and it is a far stronger site than seaside Altea. Olcades fugitives: Pol. 3.14.3. Alce: Livy 40.48.1, 49.2; Itin. Ant. 445 ‘Alces’; probably Villacañas in Ciudad Real province (Miller (1916/1964) 173). The Carpetani stretched northwards from Toletum: Alföldy (1987) 60. 5 Hannibal dominant up to Ebro by 220: Pol. 3.14.10. Ironworking in the Cordillera Ibérica: Fernández Castro (1995) 362–3. 6 The Vaccaei and their resources: Domínguez-Monedero (1986) 244–55.

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7 Pol. 3.14.1; Livy 21.5.5–6 (booty, 5.8). Hannibal tricked: Plutarch, De Mulierum Virtutibus 10 (= Moralia 248e), and Polyaenus, Strat. 7.48, both plainly from the same source but with some variations; Walbank (1.317), Scullard ([1989a] 32), and Seibert (Hann. 53–4) treat the story more indulgently. 8 Pallantia (mod. Palencia) and Intercatia versus Romans: e.g. Appian, Iber. 53.222, 55.231–2, 82.354–7; Historia de España (1982) 91–2, 107–8, 302. Carpetani and ‘neighbouring peoples’ defeated, Pol. 3.14.3–8; Walbank, 1.318; H. M. Hine, Latomus 38 (1979) 891–901; Scullard (1989a) 32–3. Timoleon’s victory (341): Diod. 16.79–80; Plutarch, Timol. 25–8; N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 BC (Oxford 1959) 578. 9 ‘None of the peoples’, Pol. 3.14.9 (Loeb tr., modified). That Hannibal imposed effective rule over north-central Spain is sometimes supposed (e.g. Scullard (1989a) 33) but Polybius’ careful phrasing does not amount to this. Saguntine neighbours: Pol. 3.15.8; Livy 21.6.1, 12.5; Appian, Iber. 10.36; Hoyos (1998) 187–91; Appendix §7. Romans kept informed: Pol. 3.15.1; Livy 21.6.2–3. Envoys: Pol. 3.15.2–5; cf. Livy 21.6.3–8, 9.3–11.2 (distorted version). 10 This siege-embassy is already in Cicero, Philippics 5.10.27; on the later embellishments and their implausibility, Hoyos (1998) 202–4. 11 Party strife and Roman arbitration at Saguntum: Hoyos (1998) 184–95. ‘What most Saguntines wanted’: that is, to judge by the extraordinary tenacity of the town throughout its lonely eight-month siege in 219. There is no basis to the fancy that it was Greek and Italian merchants living there who instigated Saguntum’s links with Rome (Barceló (1996) 54). 12 Hannibal seemingly saw Saguntines as Roman allies: Pol. 3.15.8. Had avoided confronting them: 3.14.10. ‘Solemnly called on’ (3.15.5 διεµαρτ υ´ροντο): cf. on this meaning Walbank, 1.321; Sumner (1972) 477; Hoyos (1998) 204–5, who notes ‘emphatically warned’ as another translation. The Loeb translation, ‘protested against [his attacking Saguntum]’ is wrong, and still worse the Penguin rendition of ‘trust’ or ‘good faith’ (π´ιστις) as ‘sphere of influence’. 13 On the Romans’ attitude to defeated foes, cf. Hoyos (1998) 201–2. 14 Roman envoys’ manners: a youthful Roman ambassador to the queen of the Illyrians in 230 had been so outspoken that he was assassinated (Pol. 2.8.9–12). Supposed Barcid war-plan, chapter V note 8; Romans knew it at least from 221, Pol. 2.36.4; interview confirmed it, 3.15.12, 16.1. Polybius judges revenge-war as justified: 3.10.4, 15.9–11, 28.1–3, 30.3–4; Hoyos (1998) 165–6. Hannibal’s ’ ´ιας) and violent anger, Pol. 3.15.9 (‘overall he was full of unreason (πλη´ρης αλογ anger’), cf. Eckstein (1989); on his claim to Punic fides (15.7 ‘it was an ancestral principle of the Carthaginians (πα´ τριον γ`αρ ε~’ιναι Καρχηδον´ιοις)’ etc.) see Hoyos, 206. The idea that Polybius, or some earlier writer, invented the anger (e.g. Walbank, 1.322–3; Mantel (1991) 73) is unconvincing: if this was invented, why not invent a more ‘apposite’ set of complaints at the same time? Instead, Polybius has to upbraid Hannibal for not making apposite ones and then supply them himself. The interview was no doubt reported by Hannibal’s own authorcompanions Silenus and Sosylus, maybe too by Fabius Pictor who could have used the envoys’ later report or their reminiscences. 15 Envoys go to Carthage, ‘seeing clearly that there must be war’: Pol. 3.15.12. Noncommittal Punic answer: in Livy’s version, which falsely makes them go on their mission in 219 while Saguntum is under siege, they do at least get such an answer (21.9.3–10.1, 11.2). Hannibal asked for instructions: Pol. 3.15.8; cf. Appian, Iber. 10.37, claiming numerous secret messages and padding out the story with envoys from the ‘Torboletae’; although some accept Appian’s extras (e.g. Walbank, 1.323;

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Schwarte (1983) 64–5; Scardigli (1991) 277; Seibert, Hann. 58–60), these are implausible (Hoyos (1998) 210). 16 Hannibal given a free hand: Appian (Iber. 10.37) specifies this, but it was so obvious that Polybius could leave it out. If the Roman envoys were still at Carthage and thus could take home this news before year’s end, it makes the Romans’ inactivity over Saguntum in 219 still more marked. Against suggestions (e.g. by Groag (1929) 66; Caven (1980) 92–3) that the Punic authorities tried to limit him in one way or another, see Hoyos (1998) 220. Pretended arbitration, Appian 10.38. V I I I T H E I N VA S I O N O F I T A LY 1 Eight months’ siege: Pol. 3.17.9; Livy 21.15.3; Zon. 8.21.10. The envoys to Carthage in 218 almost certainly included the consuls of the previous year, who laid down office on 15 March by the Roman calendar (Hoyos (1998) 234–5, citing earlier discussions). But how closely the Roman calendar in this era matched the solar year is much debated. On the problems with chronology: Walbank, 1.327–8; Sumner (1966); A. Astin, Latomus 26 (1967) 581–2; Rich (1976) 28–40; Eckstein (1983); Huss (1985) 282; F. Walbank, Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography (Cambridge 1985) 299–304; Seibert, FzH 137–41; Rich (1996) 29; Hoyos, 221, 234–6. 2 Alexander’s seven-month siege of Tyre in 332: A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1988) 65–7. Site of Saguntum: Schulten (1935) 31, 35–6; Walbank, 1.329–30; K. Abel, Kl P 4.1500–1. ‘Hardships and anxiety’: Pol. 3.17.9. Hannibal wounded: Livy 21.7.10; Zon. 8.21.10. Oretani, Carpetani, Maharbal: Livy 21.11.13–12.2 (on this officer cf. chapter IV note 5). 3 Second Illyrian War distracted the Senate, Pol. 3.16.4–5. His account of the war (3.16, 18–19) virtually ignores the rôle of one of the consuls, Livius. Cf. Walbank, 1.324, 327; Rich (1976) 41–3; Hoyos (1998) 222, 225–6. Debate in 219 over Saguntum: Livy 21.6.4–8, 7.1; Silius 1.609–94, with poetic flexibility stretching his into 218; Appian, Iber. 11.43, as usual adding various embellishments. Most scholars read this evidence as supporting Dio’s claim (frgs 55.1–10, 57.12; Zon. 8.22.1–3) that there was debate only in 218 after Saguntum had fallen (and after Hannibal had begun his march). But see Groag (1929) 70–3; E. S. Staveley in CAH2 7.2.451, 453; Hoyos, 226–32. On the leaders in debate see Hoyos, 228–30. 4 Fabius Pictor in Pol. 3.8.1–8. Appian has the anti-interventionists resorting to absurdity—the Saguntines, though under siege, were still free as (supposedly) guaranteed in Hasdrubal’s accord, therefore did not need help (Iber. 11.43). This looks like Appian’s own notion of rhetorical effectiveness. 5 Booty from Saguntum: Pol. 3.17.10, cf. 17.7; Livy 21.15.1–2 (who contributes that the money was raised from selling plunder; this must be from another source). Its political use, Hoyos (1994) 271. Diodorus’ denial of booty (25.15) is not to be trusted. 6 Appointment of Hasdrubal, troop transfers, ships: Pol. 3.33.5–18 (on the corps of ‘Thersitae’ see Appendix §7), followed by Livy 21.21.9–22.4. Polybius transmits the details given by Hannibal in an inscription at Cape Lacinium in southern Italy. Thirty-seven elephants: Pol. 3.42.11 and Appian, Hann. 4.13. Roman warships in 218: Pol. 3.41.2; Livy 21.17.3. If Hannibal appointed his brother trierarch, as Hamilcar had his son-in-law (chapter IV note 5), it is not mentioned, though Hasdrubal when commander in Spain did lead a fleet in 217, ingloriously. Huss (1985) 297–8 follows Groag (1929) 104 note 1, in simply guessing that the

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7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Carthaginians had already elected Hasdrubal general for Libya, i.e. North Africa, but nothing supports this. Hannibal’s agents, and his knowledge of north Italy: Pol. 3.34.1–6, 48.10–12; cf. Hoyos (1998) 248 note 25. Hannibal changed plans: W. Hoffmann, RhM 94 (1951) 79–82; (1962) 44–6; Bender (1997) 104–5; against this view cf. Walbank, 1.365. Troops in winter quarters and after: Pol. 3.33.5, 34.6 and 9; so too Livy 21.21.2–8. Informants about Italy: de Sanctis, 3.1.407, supposes—presumably by analogy with Greek political exiles—that ‘Italian refugees’ must have betaken themselves to Hannibal’s camp; but no refugees are attested. Guest-friends: Q. Fabius the Delayer enjoyed hospitium with the family of one aristocrat, Carthalo, later commandant at Tarentum (Livy 27.16.5); other aristocrats’ connexions are attested in 195 (33.45.6) and many must have been of long standing, for peace had returned only six years before; cf. Ameling (1993) 264. On Hannibal’s likely calculations, cf. de Sanctis, 3.1.406–8, 3.2.9–12; Groag (1929) 79–96; Picard (1967) 128, 134–7; Picard and Picard, LDC (1968) 238–41; Hoffmann (1961/1974) 56–7; Lazenby (1978) 29–32; Nicolet (1978) 2.614–20; Caven (1980) 93–5, 98–9; Hampl (1983–4) 28–9; Huss (1985) 294, who unnecessarily supposes that the invasion-plan could not have occurred to anyone less than a genius; Briscoe (1989) 46; Seibert, Hann. 63–9, 541–3, cf. FzH 152–62. Hannibal expected reinforcements: thus Hasdrubal in 215 was told to go (Livy 23.27.9), though he was prevented, and a force from Africa did make it then (23.13.7, 41.10). On Hannibal’s march-chronology cf. below, note 23. Hanno the commandant in north-east Spain: Pol. 3.35.4; Livy 21.23.3. Zonaras calls him Banno which Huss (1985) 299 note 42 thinks correct (cf. Seibert, Hann. 96 note 119), but this is probably a copyist’s slip: the name Hanno is repeated at Pol. 3.76.5 (Livy, 21.23.3 and 60.5, follows Polybius). Sound remarks on the strategic insignificance of Spain-beyond-Ebro by de Sanctis (3.2.9–10), though Lazenby argues for its supposed importance to Hannibal’s communications ((1978) 33), and Huss implausibly sees its conquest as necessary to a successful crossing of the Pyrenees (298–9). Emporiae as Roman bridgehead: Pol. 3.76.1; Livy 21.60.2. Spanish rivers, Hallward (1930) 36; Warmington (1964) 212; Lazenby (1978) 33; Scullard (1980) 204. Food availability, Lazenby, ibid. Regrouping the army before the Pyrenees: Proctor (1971) 45. Lulling the Romans: de Sanctis, 3.2.8–10; Scullard, ibid. Consular year began on 1 March (previously in May) probably from 222: de Sanctis, 3.1.107; Broughton, MRR 2.638–9; Rich (1976) 19. Sempronius set out before Scipio, probably in June/July: Hoyos (1998) 258–9, citing earlier studies. Eight hundred stadia in ten days: Pol. 3.50.1; treated as Hannibal’s more-or-less average marching rate by Lazenby (1978) 35, 275; as below average by Proctor (1971) 26–7, 29. Roman imperial armies averaged 23.7 kilometres (16 Roman miles) a day, Proctor, 31–2; though A. K. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War (Oxford 1996) 109–10, stresses such rates were under optimum conditions only. Caven (1980) 98–101, suggests this less likely scenario; believed by Santosuosso (1997) 170. Punic spy: Livy 22.33.1; Dio in Zon. 9.1.1. Hoffmann (1957/1974) 55–6, (1962) 48, stresses the danger to Carthage if the Romans invaded North Africa. Cavalry skirmish: Pol. 3.45.1–3; Livy 21.29.1–4. Hannibal’s decision: Livy 21.29.5–6; disbelieved by Lazenby (1978) 37; in fact most or all scholars suppose he was anxious to avoid battle with Scipio entirely. His expectation of Scipio returning, cf. Pol. 3.61.1–4 (claiming his later surprise at the consul’s swiftness). On arbitrary grounds Walbank, 1.395–6, disbelieves this report.

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14 On dating the artificial ports see chapter II note 5 and VII §I. 15 Cape Lacinium numbers: note 6 above. 102,000 troops: Pol. 3.35.1; Livy 21.23.1; Appian, Hann. 4.13. Hannibal suffered ‘great loss’, gave Hanno 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, and sent home ‘the same number’ (3.35.3–6; malcontent Carpetani and others, according to Livy 21.23.4–6). We should not assume these latter included many horsemen. For more details about the grand army see Appendix §8. 16 Syrian and Egyptian forces in 217 (68,000 versus perhaps 55,000 (Polybius claims 75,000)): Pol. 5.65.1–10, 79.2–13; Walbank, 1.589–92, 607; P. Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley and London 1990) 289–90. Roman land forces in 218 totalled 27,000 citizens and some 44,000 allies, according to Brunt’s careful calculations ((1971) 417–19, 678). 17 Consuls of 219 as envoys: Seibert, Hann. 83; Hoyos (1998) 234–5; cf. Goldsworthy (2000) 145 (sending them to Carthage in 219 as consuls!); disbelieved by Vollmer (1990) 137–8. It is not clear whether the Roman calendar was in accord with the true solar year (Seibert, FzH 346–52; Hoyos, 235), but any discrepancy looks likely to have placed it ahead—so Idus Mart. 218 might actually have been early March or late February. Envoys demand handover, Pol. 3.20.6–8 (see chapter V note 5); war let fall, 33.2–4. Visit to Melqart’s temple: Livy 21.21.9; Huss (1985) 235, speculates about what Hannibal did there. 18 Monomachus: Pol. 9.24.5–8 (cf. Livy 23.5.12–13, Roman propaganda); cf. Walbank, 2. 153; Seibert, Hann. 111 note 180. The dream: Cicero, De Divinatione 1.49, citing Silenus via Coelius Antipater; Livy 21.22.5–9 (does not mention Hannibal being summoned before the gods); Dio, in Zon. 8.22.9; Val. Max. 1.7. ext. 1 and Silius 3.163–216 rephrase Livy. Cicero dates the dream simply ‘after the sack of Saguntum’, but (contra Seibert, FzH 184) this hardly contradicts Livy’s dating it to the march. Dio both gives a version closer to Silenus’ than Livy’s—adding other fabulous details perhaps again from Silenus’ propaganda (cf. Polybius’ strictures, 3.47.8, 48.7–9)—and also implies the dream occurred during the march. Barceló (1998) 47 impossibly imagines that in Livy the dream foretells Hannibal’s ruin and Carthage’s defeat. 19 Aerenosii, etc.: Pol. 3.35.2; Livy 21.23.2. Indibilis ‘always’ pro-Punic: Pol. 3.76.6–7; Hoyos (1998) 183. His close links to the Lacetani and others: Livy 25.34.6; 28.24.4 and 26.7; Walbank, 1.410. Ilergetes of the interior: Strabo 3.4.10, C161; Walbank, 1.366. Note the Ilergetan cavalry squadron already in Hannibal’s army: Pol. 3.33.15; Livy 21.22.3. Ausetani and Lacetani as Punic allies, 21.61.8— though this episode probably followed Cn. Scipio’s victory at Cissis, 60.1–9. Coastal Ilergetes: Pliny, NH 3.21; Jacob (1985) 252, noting the ‘Ilaraugatae’ of Hecataeus, frg. 14; Hoyos (2001b) 69–70. Just possibly the Bargusii were around the later Barcino (Barcelona) for, with the pro-Punic Lacetani and Ausetani hemming them in, friendliness towards the Romans would be natural; though Schulten (FHA 3.47) prefers them well inland, on the northerly reaches of the Llobregat around the town of Berga. Troops sent home: note 15 above. 20 Hannibal won over the Gauls, Livy 21.24; earlier conciliation, 21.20.8; some forced to give passage, Pol. 3.41.7. According to Polybius he had been ‘very fearful’ of possible resistance to the army crossing the Pyrenees (40.1), which is odd as Polybius fails to mention any such fear when actually narrating the crossing (35.7). 21 Army size at Rhône, Pol. 3.60.5. Garrisons in southern Gaul: Picard (1967) 163–7; Seibert (1989), FzH 182–3, 193, 212, Hann. 98; contrast Goldsworthy (2000) 167. Seibert supposes that reinforcements later used this route from Spain to Hannibal until 207, though he concedes that the one force recorded (Bomilcar’s in 215) went from North Africa.

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22 Napoleon’s losses in the first months of his Russian invasion: Chandler (1965/1993) 754–5, 781–2; C. Duffy, Borodino (London 1972) 51, 62, 161. The destruction of the army in the retreat from Moscow actually involved the loss of fewer troops. 23 A lucid chronology of the entire march in Lazenby (1978), Appendix iii; earlier analysis in de Sanctis, 3.2.77–81 (who dates the march from April to September rather than May/June to October/November). The one clear indicator of time is that the army reached the summit of the pass close to the astronomical setting of the Pleiades (Pol. 3.54.1; Livy 21.35.6), meaning early November. Though often treated as a loose or approximate datum (e.g. by de Sanctis and by Walbank, 1.365–6, 390) it is convincingly defended by Proctor (1971) 13–15, 40–5, 75–82; Lazenby (1978) 29, 32–3; and Seibert, FzH 176–8. In turn its final stages, from the Rhône on, can be worked out almost day by day from Polybius’ account, as Lazenby shows. Losses inflicted by Allobroges et al.: Pol. 3.51.7, 53.1–3; cf. 51.3–5 (animals lost). Losses on the descent, 3.54.4, 56.2; army’s spirits damaged, 3.54.1–2 and 7.60.3–4. Plains of Italy: 3.54.2–3; Livy 21.35.7–9. On Hannibal’s impossible-to-identify route cf. Appendix §9. 24 Army strength after reaching Italy, Pol. 3.56.4 (‘fewer than twenty thousand’ (2.24.17) is a careless misstatement or maybe a copyist’s mistake (δισµυρ´ιων written for τρισµυρ´ιων)). The mention of the Insubres’ territory (56.3) is generally seen as just a loose Polybian reference (Walbank, 1.392; Huss (1985) 306 note 82), but this is not obvious. Nor, contra Seibert (Hann. 106 note 163; cf. previous note), need it reflect a source different from Livy’s, who has Hannibal arrive among the Taurini (21.38.5). Dio does report desertions during the Alpine crossing (Zon. 8.23.6), though he may draw this either from a source or from personal inference. Balearic slingers: those involved in his troop-movements between Spain and Africa constituted about 1,400 in a total of 31,000 (Pol. 3.33.12–16); even if he himself took another 1,000 with him, their numbers too must have thinned. On some other reckonings see Appendix §9. 25 Pol. 3.60.8–13. Bender (1997) 98–105, disbelieving in any advance soundings by Hannibal, thinks that the Gauls had rebelled because the Romans founded the colonies Placentia and Cremona in their midst, and came over to him only once he showed his military strength by smashing the Taurini. But thus to dismiss Polybius’ and Livy’s reports of the earlier soundings is unconvincing. It was common sense for the Gauls to put off giving the invader any help until he reached their territories—which he did after the Ticinus skirmish (3.66.7, cf. 67.6), before his big victory at the Trebia. 26 On the near-disaster of the march, Hoyos ((1983) 171–3; Shean (1996) 175–80; Bender (1997) 98–9), improving on Hoffmann (cf. note 7 above), judges the whole expedition as ‘the foolhardiest improvisation’. By contrast Barreca (1983–4) 45–6, thinks that Hannibal had allowed for heavy losses. Gallic migration into north Italy: Pol. 2.17; Livy 5.34–5; Salmon (1982) 34–7; T. J. Cornell, OCD3 625. Gaesati: Pol. 2.22.1–6, 23.1; Walbank, 1.194–5. Losses on the descent ‘nearly as heavy’ as in the Alpine fighting, Pol. 3.54.4; quality of army at Pyrenees, 39.8. 27 Seibert argues that P. Scipio sent on only about half his army with his brother (Hann. 104–5; earlier too Errington (1971) 65; contra Pol. 3.56.6 and Livy 21.32.3–5) because Cn. Scipio in 217 had only some 35 of the consul’s original 60 warships; but for a different explanation see Lazenby (1978) 127; on Cn. Scipio’s forces, Brunt (1971) 646–7. In any case warships, unless very numerous, did not convey whole armies themselves but escorted transports: cf. Walbank, 1.377, 431. Romans worried about Punic reinforcements from Spain, Pol. 3.97.3.

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Importance of Africa: Hoyos (1983) 178; cf. Seibert, Hann. 488. P. Scipio’s decision is almost universally judged as sound—even as pivotal to ultimate Roman victory: e.g. Kahrstedt (1913) 384, ‘darum hat es [Rom] den Krieg gewonnen’; de Sanctis, 3.2.436; Hallward (1930) 57; Errington (1971) 80; Scullard (1970) 29; Lazenby, 52; Hampl (1983–4) 26; Seibert, Hann. 490, ‘die Karthager verloren den Krieg nicht in Italien . . . sondern in Iberien’; Lancel, Hann. 119–20; Santosuosso (1997) 182. 28 Naval raids on North Africa: below, chapter XII §I. Hasdrubal’s planned march to Italy in 215 and defeat at Ibera, Livy 23.27.9–29.17; chapter XI §III. I X T H R E E G R E AT V I C T O R I E S 1 Battle of the Trebia: Pol. 3.71–4; Livy 21.54.1–56.8; Appian, Hann. 7.24–9; Zon. 8.24.4–5; Walbank, 1.404–8; Lazenby (1978) 56–8; Seibert, FzH 213–15, and Hann. 126–9. Freedom propaganda, Pol. 3.77.3–7; doubted by Erskine (1993) on the ground that it was a Greek concept and possibly a Polybian invention, but the content of Hannibal’s known treaties with Italian states (chapter X §I) shows what was meant. Brundisine garrison-commander: Pol. 3.69.1–4; Livy 21.48.9–10, naming him Dasius. Groag’s idea ((1929) 79) that Hannibal meant to base himself in the Po region, while rousing revolt among Rome’s Italian allies, does not convince. Gauls and Hannibal in winter 218–217: Pol. 3.78.1–6; Livy 22.1.2–4; Zon. 8.24.8 (with even more fanciful disguise-details); Polybius’ generalization (23.13.1) that Hannibal was never plotted against by his men cannot be treated on its own as literal fact. Walbank, 1.410, and Seibert, Hann. 139–40, think the disguise-tale worthless, unlike Rawlings (1996) 89. Hannibal’s forces: variously estimated by, e.g., Kahrstedt (1913) 406; de Sanctis, 3.2.114–15; Lazenby, 65. 2 Livy reports a failed winter attempt to cross the Apennines (21.58), widely disbelieved as a mere embroidered doublet of the successful spring crossing (e.g. de Sanctis, 3.2.97; Hallward (1930) 8.44 note 2; Lazenby (1978) 59–60; Briscoe (1989) 49; Lancel, Hann. 149), but accepted by Seibert, Hann. 139. Other supposed operations during the same winter (21.57.5–59.9) do look very dubious: de Sanctis, 3.2.96–9. The Arno marshes: Pol. 3.78.6–79.12; Livy 22.2.1–3.1; Zon. 8.25.3; Walbank, 1.413; Lazenby, 60–1. Hannibal blinded in one eye: Pol. 3.79.12; Livy 22.2.11; Silius 4.751–5; Juvenal, Satires 10.158; Oros. 4.15.3. Eye badly damaged: Nepos, Hann. 4.3. Seibert, Hann. 148–50, is altogether sceptical about the supposed rigours and suggests Punic propaganda magnified Hannibal’s handicap to link him with the one-eyed and glorious Philip II of Macedon; but the ailment is never mentioned otherwise and its origin in the marshes is circumstantially attested. 3 On the losses at Trasimene see Lazenby (1978) 65; Seibert, Hann. 153–4. 4 Punic fleet off Pisae: Pol. 3.96.8–10, cf. Livy 22.11.6–7; see Seibert, Hann. 156. Less plausibly, Hoffmann (1961/1974) 339–40 supposes the fleet really meant to harass Roman communications to Spain. Hannibal’s first message by sea to Carthage, Pol. 3.87.4–5; Africans rearmed, 87.3, 114.1; ‘having become very confident’, 86.8. Lancel, Hann. 158–9, and Shean (1996) 180–1, defend the decision not to advance on Rome in 217; Walbank, 1.421, and Lazenby (1996) 41, hold that he never meant to attack the city. Cf. note 8 below on Maharbal. 5 Punic army’s battered state and ensuing recovery: Pol. 3.87.2–3, 88.1–2; Shean, ibid. Plunder and slaughter, 3.86.8–11, 88.3–6. Huss (1985) 319 note 186 dismisses the killings (86.10–11) as merely anti-Punic propaganda; A. Toynbee,

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6

7

8

9

Hannibal’s Legacy, 2 vols. (Oxford 1965) 2.24 note 3 imagines that Hannibal perhaps suspended killing when he marched through allied territories (this would require accuracy about both boundaries and individuals’ identities). Fabius’ edict to farmers, Livy 22.11.4. On the operations in the second half of 217 see (e.g.) Lazenby (1978) 66–73; Seibert, Hann. 164–77, 182–3. The three Campanian aristocrats, Livy 22.13.2–3. The famous episode of the cattle with blazing horns (Pol. 3.93.3–94.6; Livy 22.16–18; Plutarch, Fabius 6–7; Appian, Hann. 13.57–15.65; minor sources in Walbank, 1.429) is rejected by Seibert as a legend or distortion aimed against Fabius, and he infers a more straightforward ruse (Hann. 170–1). But this would have served the same supposed purpose, leaving unexplained why anyone should invent the more complicated one. Hannibal’s supply problems: Livy 22.32.3, 40.8–9, 43.2–4 (with rumours about the Spaniards). Cannae-depot taken, Pol. 3.107.1; in mid-year, Walbank 1.441. Erdkamp (1998) 163–5 argues that the army had gathered enough supplies during 217, but it is hard to see how they could have lasted until mid-216 or how the Gerunium district instead—with the Roman army at close range—could feed men and horses for months. Battle at the Ebro: Pol. 3.95–6; Livy 22.19–20; fought some time before Trasimene (despite Pol. 3.95.2 mentioning summertime), cf. de Sanctis, 3.2.231–2, 664. Romans sought battle in 216: Pol. 3.107.7, 108.1–2 (‘the decision of the Senate’). Joke to Gisco: Plutarch, Fabius 15. Cannae: Seibert, FzH 228–32 (lengthy bibliography on particular issues, 227–8), and Hann. 189–98 (detailed list of all ancient sources, 191). See also Kahrstedt (1913) 427–34; de Sanctis, 3.2.126–59; Walbank, 1.435–48; Brunt (1971) 419, 648, 671–2, estimating the Roman army at no more than 45,000, with 30,000 slain or otherwise lost; Lazenby (1978) 75–85; Connolly (1981) 183–8; Samuels (1990); Lancel, Hann. 169–77; Santosuosso (1997) 176–80; McKnight (1998); and cf. Sabin (1996). Romans expected Hannibal to march on city: Pol. 3.118.6; Livy 22.55.1. Troops at Rome: Livy 22.57.7, 23.14.2; Fitton Brown (1959) 367 note 10; Brunt (1971) 648–9; Lazenby (1978) 90–1; Seibert, FzH 383–4, Hann. 207–8 with note 130; Lazenby (1996) 41. Maharbal’s proposal: Cato, Origines frgs 86–7P; Coelius, frg. 25P (both from Gellius, 10.24.6–7); Livy 22.51.1–4 (Maharbal’s epigram, not in Cato, was probably not in Coelius either); Val. Max. 9.5 ext. 3; minor sources in Hoyos (2000b). Livy makes Maharbal commander of the right wing, 46.7, whereas Hasdrubal and Hanno were the wing-commanders according to Polybius (3.114.7, 116.6–8): note, though, that Appian has Maharbal command a cavalry reserve (Hann. 20.91). The anecdote is disbelieved (e.g.) by Huss (1985) 332 note 281; Seibert, Hann. 198–9; Lazenby (1996) 39; but there are grounds for believing it in its basic form. Maharbal probably first gave his advice after Trasimene: Hoyos (2000b). Hannibal expected Romans to offer terms, Livy 22.58.2–9. Lord Montgomery of Alamein, A History of Warfare (London 1968) 97, comments on his lack of siege equipment; Seibert, Hann. 201, on his aversion (‘Abneigung’) to sieges—but both nevertheless hold that he should have marched (Montgomery, ibid.; Seibert, 198–203, 224, 484; so too Huss (1985) 332–3 and Barceló (1998) 59–60). Goldsworthy is undecided, (2000) 215–16. That Hannibal was right not to march is strongly argued by, for instance, Mommsen, HR 2.141; de Sanctis, 3.2.202–3 (Maharbal offering ‘consiglio, più che spavaldo, pazzo’); Hallward (1930) 55 (Hannibal’s ‘deep strategic insight’), cf. 61; Fitton Brown (1959); Hoffmann (1962) 73–4; Picard (1967) 180–1; Görlitz (1970) 99–100; Lazenby (1978) 85–8, (1996) passim; Caven (1980) 141; Lancel, Hann. 177–8, cf. 158–9; Shean (1996);

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10

11

12

13

McKnight (1998) 13—not to mention by the general himself in G. Brizzi, Annibale: Come un’Autobiografia (Milan 1994) 173–4. Masinissa’s capture of Cirta in 203, Livy 30.12.5–10; on its site, OCD3 333. Destruction of L. Postumius Albinus’ army in north Italy: Livy 23.24.6–13; Pol. 3.118.7; Frontinus, Strat. 1.6.4; Zon. 9.3.3; Broughton, MRR 1.253. On possible legiones urbanae in the city: Livy 23.14.2, accepted by Lazenby (1978) 85; not by Seibert, Hann. 186 note 16, 207 note 130. Fictitious though Maharbal’s comment about speed and surprise may be in Livy—‘they will learn of my arrival before my approach’ (22.51.2; not in Cato’s or Coelius’ quoted versions (note 8))—it makes the crucial point: cf. Hoyos (1983) 177. Fertility of Samnium in central Italy, Pol. 3.90.7; of Campania, 91.1–2; of the territory around Rome, 9.6.9–7.1. Marcellus and Pera: Lazenby (1978) 90–1, with references. Alarm at Rome in 211: Pol. 9.6.1–3 (‘universal alarm and fear’, though perhaps an exaggeration); similarly Livy 26.9.6; Appian, Hann. 39.165–6, 40.173. Possible speed of army to Rome: cf. chapter VIII note 11; also Lazenby, 85. Extent of Rome’s walls reckoned at 11 kilometres (6.6 miles): Starr (1980) 16. Twenty-three slaves crucified in late 217 for plotting ‘in the Campus Martius’ (just outside the then walls), Livy 22.33.2. Betrayal of Tarentum in 213: Pol. 8.24–31; Livy 25.7.10–9.17; Lazenby, 110–12. Mago at Carthage, Livy 22.11.7–12.5. Hannibal had to stay in the south or potential defectors would be discouraged: thus Caven (1980) 149; Lazenby (1996) 41–2. Booms etc. across the Tiber, Shean (1996) 167, who sees the real bar to a march on Rome as the massive amount of provisions the Punic army would need en route (elaborate calculations, Shean, 167–75). But if so, this limitation should have immobilized it more or less as soon as it left north Italy in spring 217. On the possibilities for besieging Rome: Seibert, Hann. 200. For swift movement even over unsuitable terrain, it is worth noting how in 1807 a retreating Spanish army covered over 300 miles/500 kilometres of trackless mountains during early winter (1 to 23 November) to reach the city of León, thus averaging 14 miles/22.4 kilometres a day—though it lost half its strength en route (Chandler (1965/1993) 636–7). Like an ancient army, this one had to move at foot’s pace, while it also had to transport guns and ammunition. Livy 22.51.4.

X H A N N I BA L ’ S I T A L I A N L E AG U E 1 Defections: Pol. 3.118.1–4; Livy 22.61.10–12 (both lists cover several years’ worth, cf. Walbank, 1.448); Lazenby (1978) 89–90; Huss (1985) 335–6; Seibert, Hann. 203–4, 212–15. Mago sent south, Livy 23.1.4, 11.7. On the Samnite defections, E. T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (Cambridge 1967) 298–9; on the Campanian, Frederiksen (1984) 238–41. On Hannibal’s hopes in 217 for Capua’s defection cf. chapter IX note 6. Links with Romans: Livy 23.2.6, 4.7 (Pacuvius Calavius’ with Ap. Claudius Pulcher and M. Livius Salinator), 25.18.4–5 (Badii family’s guest-friendship with Quinctii Crispini). Vibius Virrius, Livy 23.6.1–2; on the defection of Capua cf. Ungern-Sternberg (1975) chapter II. 2 Hannibal’s treaty with Capua, Livy 23.7.1–2 (‘more like pro-Carthaginian nonbelligerency than a genuine fighting alliance’, Salmon (see note 1), 298); arrest of Decius Magius, 23.10.3–13 (Magius escaped to Alexandria). Atella, Calatia (and the obscure Sabatini): 26.33.12, 34.6, 34.11; Salmon, 298 note 4; Frederiksen (1984) 36, 242–3. Capua seen as ‘an indispensable source of provisions and industrial wealth’ for Hannibal: Frederiksen, 241. For what it is worth, note that artisans (‘fabri’) serving the Punic garrison at Locri were paid: Livy 29.6.4.

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3 Defection of Locri, Livy 23.30.8, 24.1.2–13 (with pact, 24.1.13; cf. Schmitt, SVA 3.245; Kukofka (1990) 16 note 29). Treaty with Tarentum: Pol. 8.25.1–2; Livy 25.8.8; Schmitt, SVA no. 531. Samnites’ complaints, Livy 23.42 (especially 42.11). Bruttians and Lucanians defeated, 24.14–16. Bruttians at Tarentum in 209, 27.15.9; Appian, Hann. 49.212. 4 Livy 24.2.8 (‘[ut] senatus Romanis faveret, plebs ad Poenos rem traheret’); cf. 23.14.7, and Plutarch, Marcellus 10.1 (pro-Hannibal commons at Nola). Locri: Livy 23.30.8 (quoted), 24.1.5–8 (fuller details), 29.6.5. Arpi, 24.47.6–10; Etruria, e.g. 27.24.2–5 (Arretium), 29.36.10–12, 30.26.12 (investigation ‘de coniurationibus principum’). See Harris (1971) 142–3; Ungern-Sternberg (1975) 63–76 (defecting to Hannibal ‘fast durchweg von Angehörigen der führenden Schicht ins Werk gesetzt wurde’, 69); Lazenby (1978) 88; Kukofka (1990) 154–7. Hannibal as democrat: Groag (1929) 112 note 1; Picard (1967) 135–6 (cf. (1968)); Brisson (1973) 154–5, 206 (‘il favorisait de toutes ses forces tout ce qu’il y avait de démocratique dans l’Italie romaine’), 212–13, 233, 235; Huss (1985) 347; contrast Nicolet (1978) 2.612, 617–18 (Barcid democratic inclinations at home, but in Italy Hannibal did not push democracy). 5 Hannibal and Tarentum in 214, Livy 24.13.1–5; its defection, Pol. 8.24–31; Livy 25.7.10–10.10. Date: Walbank 2.5; Lazenby (1978) 110. Metapontum and Thurii, 25.15.5–17; Heraclea, Appian, Hann. 35.149. 6 The ‘clouds gathering in the west’, Pol. 5.104.10 (Agelaus of Naupactus), cf. Gruen (1984) 1.322–5; Seibert, FzH 15 note 57. Treaty between Philip V and Hannibal: Pol. 7.9; Livy 23.33.9–34.2 (a libellous version); Schmitt, SVA 3.247–50 no. 528. Gelo of Syracuse’s attitude: Livy 23.30.10–12; Marino (1988) 31–4. Syracusan demands about Sicily: Pol. 7.4.1–7, 5.4–7; Livy 24.6.7–8. Hieronymus’ dealings with Hannibal and Carthage: Pol. 7.2, 7.4; Livy 24.6.1–9; Schmitt, 3.251–2 no. 529. Hannibal’s agent Hannibal: Pol. 7.2.3, terming him ‘trierarch’; Livy 24.6.2 (‘a young nobleman’, perhaps misreading Polybius). Lenschau, RE 7.2,351, suggests he may have been the Hannibal nicknamed Monomachus of Pol. 9.24.5 (on whom see above, chapters VII note 2, VIII note 18) which is possible enough (despite Walbank, 2.32; Brizzi (1984) 15 note 20). Monomachus was a friend of the general, and a trusted lieutenant if he could perpetrate atrocities yet stay unpunished: and the position of trierarch was held by trusted friends or kinsmen (like Hasdrubal under Hamilcar in Spain; cf. Walbank, 1.109, 153). 7 Hannibal to his Roman PoWs, Livy 22.58.2–3 (‘non internecivum sibi esse cum Romanis bellum; de dignitate atque imperio certare’), cf. Hoyos (1983) 176, 180 note 9. Carthalo ‘nobilis Carthaginiensis’, 22.58.7–9, probably the same as the skilful cavalry general in 217 (22.15.8). De Sanctis supposes Carthalo’s mission a fiction (3.2.216 note 33—describing it wrongly as ‘d’offrir pace’); so too Seibert, Hann. 203, on the grounds that Hannibal was waiting on the Romans to make the overtures (but that was precisely Carthalo’s brief) and that sending Carthalo was incompatible with his personal sense of honour (a subjective verdict). Incidentally, the Carthaginians and other Hellenistic states continued to obey the dictum that crushing defeats required peace. After three in North Africa in 203–202 the Carthaginians capitulated; after one major battle, Cynoscephalae in 197, so did Philip V of Macedon; likewise his son Perseus in 168 after losing his army at Pydna. Antiochus III of Syria came to terms after a defeat in Greece in 191 and a major battle in Asia in 189. 8 Hannibal’s promises, Pol. 7.9.12 and 15. Discussions of the treaty are many: e.g. G. Egelhaaf, ‘Analekten zur Geschichte des zweiten punischen Krieges’, HZ 53/NF 17 (1885) 456–61; and (1922) 13–16; Groag (1929) 80–90, 132–5;

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9

10

11

12

13

E. Bickerman, AJP 73 (1952) 1–23; A. J. Chroust, Classica et Medievalia 15 (1954) 60–107; Picard (1967) 26–35; Walbank, 2.42–56; Eucken (1968) 62–71; M. Barré, The God-List in the Treaty between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedonia (Baltimore and London 1983); Huss (1985) 341–3; R. M. Errington, CAH2 8.96–8; Seibert, Hann. 240–6; Lancel, Hann. 192–4. Seibert, FzH 271–2 gives a lengthy bibliography going back to 1885. Treaty bound Carthaginian state: Hoyos (1994) 254–5 and note 13. For Illyrian events in 216, e.g. Lazenby (1978) 158–9. ‘For honour and power’ (‘de dignitate atque imperio’, note 7 above): cf. Appendix §10. That Hannibal did not envisage the destruction of the Roman state or city, but instead the reduction of Roman power, was early stressed by G. Egelhaaf (HZ (1885) 456–65, and (1922) 13–16, 39–40), Kromayer ((1909/1974) 247–50) and de Sanctis (3.2.11–12); doubted by Groag ((1929) 80–95); reaffirmed with modifications by Hoffmann ((1957/1974) 40–3, 56–9), Nicolet ((1978) 619–20), Huss ((1985) 343), Seibert (Hann. 63–5), Lazenby ((1996) 42–6), and Barceló ((1998) 65–6). Virrius’ assurances, Livy 23.6.1–3; Hannibal’s, 23.10.2. Bruttians attack Petelia and Croton, 23.20.4–10, 30.1–7; 24.2.2–3.15; Locri, 24.2.1. On other resurfacing antagonisms cf. J.-M. David, The Roman Conquest of Italy (tr. A. Nevill, Oxford 1996 (from French edn 1994)) 58–9; cf. Seibert, Hann. 224, 253, 484, 543. Annexation: Seibert makes a similar deduction (FzH 159–61; Hann. 64–5). Citizenship promised to soldiers: Ennius, Annales 234–5, ed. Skutsch; Livy 21.45.6; cf. chapter VI note 7. Italy claimed as gain of war: Pol. 3.111.9; Livy 23.33.11 (treaty), 23.5.13 (Varro), cf. 24.6.8; Zon. 9.4.2. Promises before Ticinus: Livy 21.45.5–8, a programme too carefully itemized to look like mere Roman invention; it could go back to Silenus or Sosylus even if Livy, or a predecessor like Coelius, chose to put it in at a dramatic rather than historically suitable moment (but the rite Livy imagines accompanying Hannibal’s promises is a borrowed Roman one: cf. 1.24.7–9 and R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (Oxford 1965) 70–1, 112). Barceló’s view that Hannibal meant to enforce simply ‘das Prinzip des Gleichgewichts der Mächte’ ((1998) 65–6) is over-simple. Reinforcements via southern Gaul: thus Seibert (1989); FzH 183, 193–4; Hann. 110, 222. Picard sees southern Gaul as virtually annexed by Hannibal in 218 ((1967) 163–7), but rather than reinforcements by that route he infers later Bruttian and Lucanian recruits (198). So had others, e.g. de Sanctis, 3.2.213–14; Gsell, HAAN 2.339; Groag (1929) 100 note 3 (on p. 102). Bomilcar’s corps: Livy 23.13.7, 41.10, 43.6; the figure for the funds sent over is missing (13.7) but was probably ‘500’ (cf. Conway and Walters’ comment (Oxford text) on the passage). Another 1,000 talents were voted later (23.32.5) though not sent. Reinforcements diverted to Spain, 32.5–6; forces to Sardinia, 32.12; Mago sent to Spain for fresh troops, 13.8. The elephants mentioned once with Hannibal in Campania in 215 (Livy 23.18.6) are probably later annalists’ anticipation of the corps that later arrived with Bomilcar (de Sanctis, 3.2.227 note 52; Peddie (1997) 110, 215, 222, supposes the Carthaginians might have sent some in 216). Despite writing on ‘gli eserciti annibalici’, Barreca (1983–4) has nothing on the army after Cannae, nor has Peddie’s discussion, 101–4; contrast Wise (1982) 12, 22–3. Northern and southern Punic armies: Seibert, Hann. 211–15. Not heard of after 211: Kukofka (1990) 83. Garrisons: at Capua, Livy 23.7.5, 25.15.3, and 26.5.6, 6.3, 12.10–11, 14.7; Appian, Hann. 36.153–4; Livy 24.47.2 (Arpi), 26.38.11 and Val. Max. 3.8 ext. 1 (Salapia); 27.1.1–2 (Marmoreae and Meles in Samnium), 25.11.8; 27.15.9–12, 15.18, 16.5 (Tarentum), 29.6.5–7.10 (Locri). Still other Punic garrisons are mentioned at Tisia in Bruttium (Appian, Hann. 44.188–90), among the Hirpini and Lucanians (Livy 27.15.2) and at Metapontum (27.16.12, 42.16).

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14

15

16 17

18

19 20

21

Passing comment in Livy: 27.43.11. Lazenby (1996) 45, like Livy 26.38.1–2, is over-pessimistic about Hannibal’s capacity to garrison places, though it is obviously true the general could never hope—or need—to garrison everything. Punic army at the Calor, 24.14.1, 15.2 (most of the cavalry were Numidians and Mauretanians). Bruttian levies in 207, 27.42.16; cf. 27.12.5 for Bruttian deserters in 209. Polybius (11.19.4) includes Italians in his generalized list of the nationalities represented in Hannibal’s army from 218 to 203. Italian troops in Hannibal’s army: cf. Appian, Hann. 59.247 (stressing their high quality). Recalcitrant Italian troops massacred in 203: Livy 30.30.6; Diod. 27.9; Appian 59.247–9; below, chapter XIV §III. Veterans at Zama: Pol. 15.11.2 (Hannibal’s speech, 11.6–12), 12.7; Livy 30.33.5, 35.9; cf. Appian, Lib. 40.170 (terming them entirely Italian). For Kahrstedt (1913) 561, they were some 15,000 survivors from 218 and Bomilcar’s reinforcement, plus ‘ein paar Tausend’ Italians; for de Sanctis, 3.2.531, a mixture of invasion-veterans and Italian recruits; Picard (1967) 198, 204; Wise (1982) 22–3. Hallward (1930) 104, estimates 8,000 survivors of the original army and 7,000 Italians; Connolly (1981) 203–4, 4,000-odd of the original African troops; similarly G. T. Griffiths, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World (London 1935) 229–33. For Brisson (1973) 293, Hannibal took to Africa only ‘les vétérans des premières années de campagne’. Bomilcar’s reinforcements: note 12. Punic army sent to Sicily, Livy 24.35.1–3; cf. Thiel (1946) 79–80. On the war in Spain see for instance Lazenby (1978) chapter V. Hannibal’s control of Punic war-effort, Pol. 9.22.1–6. Mottones: Walbank, 2.150 with references; Lazenby (1978) 119, 172, 292 note 44; Seibert, Hann. 317 note 95. Hasdrubal the Bald: Livy 23.32.11, 34.16–17, 40.6–41.1. Himilco in Sicily: 24.35.3–36.10, 39.10; 25.26.3–14. Hanno: 26.40.3–11. Hasdrubal son of Gisco: chapter XI §III. Mago’s report to the senate at Carthage: Livy 23.11.7–13.8 (‘a small extra effort’, 13.6), cf. Seibert, Hann. 215–16. Hannibal and supporters at Carthage: chapter VII §I. On dealings with Syracuse see note 6 above; Hoffmann (1961/1974) 351 also stresses Hannibal’s initiative. Letter of Hannibal to Carthage: Livy 24.35.4–5. Epicydes and Hanno: 25.40.5–13 and 41.3–7; 26.40.11. Mottones: Pol. 9.22.4; Livy 25.40; 26.40.3–8; 27.5.6–7; SEG 585 no. 32; de Sanctis, 3.2.299 note 170; Walbank, 2.150. Hanno as anti-Barcid: Hoffmann, 356; Huss (1985) 369 note 266. Hasdrubal ordered to march to Italy: Livy 23.27.9–10, 28.1–8, 29.16–17; Oros. 4.16.13. Romans worried: Pol. 3.97.4. Date of battle of the Ebro: de Sanctis, 3.2.235 note 71. Seibert, Hann. 220–2, views the marching orders as a Roman fiction to glorify the Scipios’ victory. Fresh army from Spain envisaged: previous note. On the encirclement strategy cf. Hallward (1930) 60–1. Sardinian rebellion, Livy 23.32.10–17, 40.1–41.7; Dyson (1985) 251–4. Pro-Carthaginian versus pro-Roman factions: Ungern-Sternberg (1975) 65–70; Kukofka (1990) 154–6. Arpi: Livy 24.45.1, 47.4–8. Salapia: Livy 26.38.1–11; Val. Max. 3.8 ext. 1; Appian, Hann. 45.191–47.205. Importance of Castra Claudiana (Monte Cancello above Maddaloni): de Sanctis, 3.2.243, cf. his Map IV; Connolly (1981) 190. For operations in Italy in the first five years after Cannae see (e.g.) de Sanctis, 3.2 chapter VII; Hallward (1930) 72–82; Lazenby (1978) chapter IV; Connolly (1981) 188–95; Briscoe (1989) 52–6; Seibert, Hann. 198–220, 230–46, 254–62, 287–96, 301–14.

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X I I N D E C I S I V E WA R 1 On the brothers Scipio in Spain see Hoyos (2001b); cf. note 7 below. Philip V’s defeat, Livy 24.40; de Sanctis, 3.2.398; Lazenby (1978) 160; Seibert, Hann. 267–8. The war in Sicily: Hallward (1930) 63–9; Lazenby, 102–8, 115–19; Eckstein (1987) chapters V–VI; Seibert, Hann. 262–5, 278–83, 296–9, 314–18, 335–7. 2 Desertions from Hannibal’s army: Livy 23.46.6–7, 24.47.8, 27.12.5–6. 3 Significance of Tarentum et al. defecting: Kukofka (1990) 68–9. On supply-areas note Bruttium as a (diminishing) source of food for Hannibal, Livy 28.12.7. First battle of Herdonea: sceptics include de Sanctis, 3.2.445 and note 28; Hallward (1930) 81; Huss (1985) 366 note 246; Briscoe (1989) 54; Kukofka, 87–91. By contrast it is accepted by F. G. Moore, Livy Books XXVI–XXVII (Loeb edn (1943)) 206 note 1; Broughton, MRR 1.271 note 2; Lazenby (1978) 114; Caven (1980) 169, 189; Seibert, FzH 237, Hann. 295. Roman irregulars beaten in 213: Livy 24.20.1–2, 25.1.3–4 (more detailed report), 25.3.9. A force under M. Centenius Paenula crushed in 212, 25.19.9–17; see also Appendix §11. Tarentines defeat Roman naval squadron, 26.39.1–19. 4 Roman armies and commanders: see the tables in de Sanctis, 3.2.614–17, 619, cf. 306–16; Hallward (1930) 104–5 insert. Twenty-five legions in 212: Brunt (1971) 418; naval strength, 421–2. 5 On campaigning in Italy and Sicily from 212 to 208 see for instance Lazenby (1978) 110–24, 158–81; Marino (1988) 70–83; Seibert, Hann. 290–9, 302–18, 330–7, 344–50, 363–7. Hannibal’s famous march on Rome in 211 is widely discussed, notably by Lazenby, 121–3; Scullard (1974) 163–4; Walbank, 2.118–33; G. Leidl, ‘Appians “Annibaike”’, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, 34.1, ed. H. Temporini et al. (Berlin and New York 1993) 456–7; Seibert, FzH 238–41, Hann. 304–11. 6 ‘Hannibal ad portas’ (proverbial): Cicero, De Finibus 4.22, Philippics 1.11. Roman recapture of Tarentum: Broughton, MRR 1.285; Lazenby (1978) 175–6. Death of Fulvius Centumalus: Broughton, 1.280; Lazenby, 170–1. 7 The sources for the Spanish campaigns are printed and discussed by Schulten (1935) 23–166. See also Lazenby (1978) chapter V; Historia de España, chapter I; Richardson (1986) chapter III; and Seibert, Hann., has a Spanish section for each year in his annalistic account of the war. Hasdrubal appointed by Hannibal, chapter VIII §II; and see Pol. 11.2.1–4, 9–11 (praise, cf. Diod. 26.24); 9.11.1–4; 10.7.3, 37.2 (quarrels with Mago and Hasdrubal son of Gisco), cf. Livy 26.41.20; Walbank, 2.136. Gauls at battle of the Metaurus: Pol. 11.3.1; Livy 27.48.17–18. Hanno commandant beyond the Ebro, chapter VIII note 15; Scipio’s strength in 218 (about 25,000): Lazenby, 125; Richardson, 35–6. 8 Battle of the Ebro: Pol. 3.95–6; Livy 22.19.1–20.3. Seibert, Hann. 178–9, plays down the extent of the Roman success; but that makes Hasdrubal’s further inactivity still more peculiar. Reinforcements to Hasdrubal: note 9. Land battle near the Ebro, 23.29 (usually called the ‘battle of Hibera’ but in fact near a different, unnamed town, cf. 23.28.11–12); cf. de Sanctis, 3.2.235 note 71; Hoyos (2001b) 74. Seibert, Hann. 220–3, thinks the defeat less serious than Roman tradition and many moderns suppose, and does not believe Livy (23.27.9–12) that Hasdrubal had been ordered to Italy. 9 Hostile Celtiberi (217), Livy 22.21.7–8; Tartessian revolt (216), 23.26.4–27.8, 24.41.1; rebels in 214 (or 212, cf. notes 12 and 13 below), 24.41.1–2. Reinforcements to Hasdrubal in 216–215: Livy 23.26.2, 28.2, 32.5–6, 32.11. Celtiberians hired by Scipios: Pol. 10.6.2, 7.1; Livy 24.49.7–8, 25.32.11. Hasdrubal versus Carpetani (209), Pol. 10.7.5; Carpetani and others released from Hannibal’s army

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10

11 12

13

(218), chapter VIII note 15. Spaniards disliked serving abroad, Livy 23.29.8. Indibilis’ and Mandonius’ defection: Pol. 9.11.3–4, 10.35.6–8; Livy 27.17.3. Barcid Hasdrubal recalled against Syphax, Appian, Iber. 15.59–60; believed by Lenschau, RE 2471; de Sanctis, 3.2.237, 431 note 2; Hallward (1930) 70; Historia de España, 21; Lazenby (1978) 129; Huss (1985) 357; Briscoe (1989) 57; Seibert, Hann. 283 note 77, 284 note 84. But Appian also claims Scipionic victories in Hasdrubal’s absence and has him, Mago and Hasdrubal son of Gisco all sent from Africa to Spain together afterwards, around 212: in reality Mago was in Spain from 215, Livy has no such Roman victories, and his account of the war with Syphax (24.48.13–49.6) does not mention Hasdrubal the Barcid. Roman coastal raiding, Livy 22.20.3–10, cf. Thiel (1946) 51–2. Supposed advance to the saltus Castulonensis (the Sierra Morena), 22.20.11–12; but cf. Pol. 3.97.5; Hoyos (2001b) 71–2. Battle of Hibera: note 8. Recovery of hostages from Saguntum: Pol. 3.97.2–99.9; Livy 22.22.3–21; Zon. 9.1.2–3; believed by Walbank, 1.432, Lazenby (1978) 128, and Eckstein (1987) 200; rejected by de Sanctis, 3.2.233 note 65; Seibert, Hann. 180–1. Campaign of ‘214’—really 212—with Castrum Altum, Mons Victoriae and Castulo: Livy 24.41–2, cf. chapter IV note 20. Sceptics include de Sanctis, 3.2.237 note 76; Lazenby, 129; Seibert, Hann. 266–7; and Richardson (1986) 40 thinks some details misplaced from 211. But a misdating of the campaign from 212 (note restoration of Saguntines, 24.42.9–11) is likelier: cf. Appian, Iber. 16.60–1, with the Scipios wintering at Castulo and ‘Orson’—probably his ultimate source meant not Urso near modern Seville but, like Castulo, a town of the Orissi/Oretani (chapter V note 17; see Hoyos (2001b) 79). Scipios’ catastrophe was in 211: de Sanctis, 3.2.431–2; Seibert, FzH 255–6. Saguntines restored, Livy 24.42.9–10 (but the punishment of their noxious neighbours (ibid. 11) may be a mistaken anticipation, cf. 28.39.11–12); correct date 212 and not Livy’s 214, cf. Schulten (1935) 85; Lazenby (1978) 129; Hoyos (2001b) 77–9. Seibert, FzH 256–8, disbelieves the episode. Destruction of the Scipio brothers (211), retreat of surviving troops to safety: Pol. 10.6.2, 7.1; Livy 25.32–9; Appian, Iber. 16.61–3; other sources listed by Broughton, MRR 1.274–5. See Hoyos (2001b) 83–90. X I I T H E D E F E AT O F H A S D R U BA L

1 Punic raid on Sardinia in 210, Livy 27.6.13–14. Roman military effort in 211: cf. Brunt (1971) 418–22. Bomilcar’s fleets in 212: Livy 25.25.11–13, 27.2–12. Roman raids on North Africa: Livy 22.31.1–5 (in 217), 23.21.2 (216), 23.41.8–9 (215), 25.31.12–15 (211), 27.5.1 and 5.8–13 (210). There were to be more raids, in 208, 207 and 205: Lazenby (1978) 196–7; cf. Rankov (1996) 55–6. 2 Eminence of Hasdrubal son of Gisco: Livy 28.12.13, 29.28.7; Silius 17.175 (‘qui rerum agitarit habenas’); cf. Appian, Lib. 10.37; Lenschau, RE 7.2,474–5; de Sanctis, 3.2.519–20 (‘dei Barcidi era stato socio, se pur rivale’, and equally bellicose). Groag (1929) 104 note 1, sums him up as a ‘professional battle-loser’ (‘berufsmässige Schlachtenverlierer’)—harsh but not all that unfair. Perhaps brother of the Hamilcar son of Gisco who surrendered Malta to the Romans in 218 (Livy 21.51.2). Supposedly anti-Barcid: Kahrstedt (1913) 559; Groag (1929) 105 note 1; Hoffmann (1962) 92–3, 101–3, 141–2; Picard (1967) 202; Picard and Picard, LDC 260, 264 (contrast 273); Caven (1980) 183. Livy does once report him disagreeing, about Spanish loyalties, with Hasdrubal and Mago (27.20.4–5), but the brothers in 211–208 were themselves at odds (chapter XI note 7). Hanno son of Hamilcar, in 204: Livy 29.34.1–15 (cf. 35.2); Appian, Lib.

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3

4

5

6 7

8

9 10 11 12

13

14.57–60, and Zon. 9.12.3–5, give a rather different account (and Zonaras terms his father Hasdrubal son of Gisco!); cf. Lenschau, RE 7.2,359. T. A. Dorey and C. W. F. Lydall, Livy XXIX (Havant 1968) 109, think his father was Hamilcar son of Gisco (Livy 21.51.2) but that is a guess. Sophoniba: Livy 30.12.11–22, 15.6–8; Diod. 27.7; Appian, Lib. 10.37–8, 27.111–28.120 (romanticized account). Barcids’ political position: Picard too thinks that Hannibal lost popularity in the later war-years ((1967) 202); cf. Hoffmann (1962) 91–2, 141–2. Hasdrubal and the Barcid faction rallied the Carthaginians in 203: Livy 30.7.7. His operations in later 203: Appian, Lib. 24.97–8, 29.122–30.127, 36.151; sound scepticism in Gsell, HAAN 2.269. Hannibal still the ultimate supreme commander: chapter XIV §I. Ordo iudicum, Livy 33.46.1; above, chapter VI §III. Huss (1985) 369 note 266, wonders if the year 212 saw ‘die beginnende Formierung einer antibarqidischen Opposition’ (cf. Hoffmann (1962) 91–2); but Hanno the Great and his friends had been there all along (Livy 30.42.12–21, 44.5). Fall of Tarentum: Livy 27.15.9–16.11; cf. chapter XI §II. Scipio’s first actions in Spain: sources in Broughton, MRR 1.280, 287; Liddell Hart (1926) chapters II–III; Scullard (1970) chapter II; Lazenby (1978) 132–40; Seibert, Hann. 350–7. Livy’s notion (26.20.5) that the Punic generals from the start were strangely afraid of him is patriotic imagination. Punic generals mutually antagonistic: chapter XI note 7. Campaign of Baecula: Pol. 10.34–40; Livy 27.17–20; Liddell Hart (1926) chapter IV; Walbank, 2.245–55; Scullard (1970) chapter III; Seibert, Hann. 371–3. Why Scipio did not pursue Hasdrubal: Pol. 10.39.9; Livy 27.20.2. Hasdrubal’s Italian design (208): Pol. 10.37.3–5. First mooted in 215: chapter XI note 8. Roman force mauled, Livy 27.26.4–6; cf. chapter XI note 3. Marcellus and his colleague Crispinus: Broughton, MRR 1.289–90; Lazenby (1978) 178–80; cf. Baker’s remarks (1929) 229–30. Failure to take Salapia, Livy 27.28.4–12; relief of Locri, ibid. 13–17. Commandant at Locri was ‘The Samnite’: de Sanctis, 3.2.462 note 55; Huss (1985) 387 note 102. Comment after loss of Tarentum: Plutarch, Fabius 23. Elections and military dispositions for 207: Livy 27.33.9–35.14, 36.10–14; cf. Lippold (1963) 193–6; Lazenby (1978) 180–2; Briscoe (1989) 72; Seibert, Hann. 379–81. Though Livius at first refused Fabius’ urging, he and Nero did finally agree to be reconciled (27.35.6–9), which scarcely justifies the widespread view of them being anti-Fabius. On Hasdrubal’s route: Lehmann (1905) 193–203; de Sanctis, 3.2.547–8; Lazenby (1978) 182. Siege of Placentia, Livy 27.39.10–14. Seibert, Hann. 385, infers that as soon as he reached Italy Hasdrubal had got a message through to Hannibal, but this does not really follow from Livy 27.39.10–14. Livy 27.40.1–42.17; Hasdrubal’s unlucky messengers, 43.1–5. Deserters: Hasdrubal had gathered over 3,000 Roman captives before his defeat (49.7; cf. Zon. 9.9.11; Oros. 4.18.14) and it is unlikely that no deserters at all had joined him. Hannibal’s movements as reported by Livy (27.40.10–42.17) are discussed by de Sanctis, 3.2.553–4; Lazenby (1978) 184–6; Hoyos (1983) 178–9; Huss (1985) 392–3; Kukofka (1989) 121–4; Seibert, Hann. 382–3. On some debated aspects of the campaigning in 207 see Appendix §12. The alleged Punic losses in the Apulian battles total a most improbable 17,000 (Livy 27.40.11, 42.7, 42.15). Canusium as Hannibal’s intended junction-point: Seibert, Hann. 382–4; see Appendix §12. Hasdrubal’s despatch perhaps meant to mislead the Romans: Lazenby (1978) 183–4. Garrisons in the south: Locri was not captured until 205

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17 18

(Livy 29.6–9), Clampetia and other strongpoints in Bruttium not till 204 (29.38.1). Latin colonies refuse troops (209), 27.9.1–6; not dealt with until 204, 29.15.2–15; those in the Umbria–Etruria region were Nepet, Sutrium and Narnia. Etruscans restive (209–207): Livy 27.21.6–7, 24.1–9, 38.7; 28.10.4–5. Discontent still in 204, 29.36.10–12; Harris (1971) 136–43. Etruscan epitaph for a 106-yearold, Larth Felsnas, who in youth served ‘with Hannibal’s people (hanipaluscle)’: A. J. Pfiffig, Studi Etruschi 35 (1967) 659–63. Metaurus campaign and battle: Pol. 11.1–3 (battle only); Livy 27.43.1–49.9; later sources, adding little, listed in Broughton, MRR 1.294. Date: note 12 above. Surviving Punic forces, Livy 27.48.16, 49.8–9 (‘uno agmine’); cf. Appian, Hann. 53.224. On Hasdrubal’s original strength and losses: de Sanctis, 3.2.556–8, and Walbank, 2.273–4 (30,000–35,000); Lazenby (1978) 190 (20,000–30,000); Seibert, Hann. 388 note 58 (20,000–25,000). Pol. 11.3.2–3 records 10,000 killed, Livy 27.49.6 has 5,400 prisoners—not necessarily an underestimate. Hasdrubal’s head: Livy 27.51.11–13; Silius 15.813–21; Frontinus 2.9.2; Zon. 9.9.12. See also Appendix §12. Hasdrubal’s death admired: Pol. 11.2.1–10; Livy 27.49.3–4; Silius 15.740–805. That Hasdrubal’s virtual suicide was ill-timed was also held by Thomas Arnold, The Second Punic War (1842; ed. W. T. Arnold (London 1886) 289–90). Resistance in Cisalpine Gaul after 201: W. V. Harris in CAH2 8.107–13. The Punic officer Hamilcar: Livy 31.10.2, etc.; Lenschau, RE 7.2,308–9; Briscoe (1973) 82–4, 115, 293. Honour to fallen consuls: Livy 22.7.5 and 52.6, 27.28.1; Cicero, De Senectute 75 (Marcellus); other sources in Broughton, MRR 1.247, 290. Three proconsuls: the brothers Scipio and, at Herdonea in 210, Cn. Fulvius Centumalus. ‘The fortune of Carthage’: Livy 27.51.12; cf. Horace, Odes 4.5.69–72. On Nero’s speed of march, and efforts to defend Hannibal’s inactivity, see Appendix §12. X I I I A F R I C A I N VA D E D

1 Roman raids on Africa: chapter XII note 1. New army and general to Spain, and Silanus’ victory: Livy 28.1.1–2.12. Punic strength at Ilipa: Pol. 11.20.2, plausibly defended by Lazenby (1978) 145; Livy 28.12.13–14 gives 50,000 foot and 4,500 horse while mentioning the larger figure. Mago’s resistance after Ilipa: Livy 28.36.1–37.2. His reputed town-foundation (modern Mahón) on the isle of Menorca: chapter XVI note 15. 2 Scipio and Hasdrubal visit Syphax: Livy 28.17.4–18.12 (wrongly claiming Scipio made a treaty with the king); Appian, Iber. 29.115–30.119, with the usual improbable embroideries; Seibert, Hann. 404–5. Huss (1985) 398 doubts the story, unnecessarily (cf. Seibert, 405 note 24). Barcid niece’s royal Numidian marriages, Livy 29.29.12–13; dissensions in royal family and Syphax’s takeover, 29.29.4–33.10; cf. Thompson (1981); Eckstein (1987) 234–40. Masinissa’s contacts with the Romans: 28.16.11–12 (in Spain), 29.3.14 (‘aperta defectione’ known at Rome by 205), cf. 29.4.7–9 (interview with Laelius during African raid); Walsh (1965) 150. 3 Mago’s expeditionary force, Livy 28.46.7; reinforced, 29.4.6 (note ‘magna pecunia ad conducenda auxilia’), 5.2. On his uselessness in Liguria cf. Hoyos (1983) 175. Roman fleet in Sicily reduced: Livy 28.10.16 (cf. 27.22.9); Thiel (1946) 139–40. 4 Punic fleets: e.g. 83 ships fought Laevinus’ 100 in 208 (27.29.7–8; he captured 18); 30 and then 25 joined Mago in 205 (28.46.7, 29.4.6). Laevinus’ alleged victory in 207 over a 70-strong fleet, capturing 17 (28.4.5–7), is probably a doublet

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6 7

8

9 10 11

12

of the previous year’s (de Sanctis, 3.2.461 note 52), though both are accepted by Thiel (1946) 130–2; Lazenby (1978) 197; and Siebert, Hann. 377 note 82, 398. Punic fleet burned in 202, Livy 30.43.11–12 (some of his sources reported 500 craft of all sizes); Thiel, 182. Pol. 9.22.1–6; cf. Hoyos (1994) 254–5. Hanno son of Bomilcar: Appian, Lib. 24.98, 29.122–30.126 (an involved and implausible story of treachery to Hasdrubal son of Gisco), 31.133. Hannibal’s nephew: de Sanctis, 3.2.678, in Index; Picard and Picard, LDC 264; Caven (1980) 243. Hannibal saves Hasdrubal: note 8 below. Bomilcar last heard of in 211: Pol. 9.9.11, cf. Livy 26.20.7. Walbank, 2.230, supposes he commanded the fleet sent to Greece in 209, but this is an assumption. Punic effort in 205 to supply Hannibal: note 11 below. The campaign of 206: Pol. 11.20–33; Livy 28.12.10–16.5; Appian, Iber. 25.96–38.155; Walbank, 2.296–312; Lazenby (1978) 145–56; Corzo Sánchez (1975) 234–40; Millán León (1986); Seibert, Hann. 404–9. Carthaginians less interested in Hannibal, more so in Spain: Livy 28.12.9. Moderns who see Hannibal as let down by his home government include Mommsen, HR 2.144, 146, 201; Egelhaaf (1922) 16–17, 40; Groag (1929) 104–7; Thiel (1946) 161; Hoffmann (1962) 92–3, 98, 113, 141–2; Caven (1980) 156, 183, 257–8; Lancel (1992) 418; Seibert, Hann. 340 note 81, 369–70, 412; Santosuosso (1997) 181–2. ‘Hannibal’s complaint’ in 203: Livy 30.20.1–4; Silius 17.187–235; Appian, Lib. 33.138. Laelius’ raid in 205 and Punic reactions: Livy 29.3.9–5.1. Mood at Carthage in 203–202: Pol. 14.9.6–10.1, 15.1.1–3.2. Carthaginians’ reaction after destruction of the camps: 14.6.6–13; Livy 30.7.6–8. But Appian’s picture of a bellicose, fickle and foolish citizenry, hostile even to Hannibal for not being warlike enough (Lib. 31.131, 34.143–35.150, 38.157–9, etc.), is an obvious distortion, whether going back to an author like Silenus or more likely a Roman annalist. Hannibal saves Hasdrubal, Appian, Lib. 36.151. He later silences an opponent of peace: Pol. 15.19.1–3; Livy 30.37.7–9 names the man Gisco. Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’, Livy 30.42.12–21, 44.5; Appian, Lib. 34.145, also 49.213–53.228 (an improbable oration to Scipio). Appian, Hann. 40.173. On the tribunal of One Hundred and Four earlier: chapter VI §III. Supremacy of Carthage’s ‘ordo iudicum’ by 196: Livy 33.46.1. The debate on invading Africa: Livy 28.40.1–45.9 (‘let there be peace in Italy’, 41.9). Legions in 205: Lazenby (1978) 195. Hannibal’s Cape Lacinium inscription: Pol. 3.33.18, 56.4; Livy 28.46.16; cf. Seibert’s comment (Hann. 416), ‘er sah wohl den Krieg als beendet an’. Groag (1929) 107–8 implausibly imagines it was accompanied by unrecorded peace-overtures to the Romans. Loss of Locri: 29.6–7; de Sanctis, 3.2.499–500. Hannibal’s camp: Pliny, NH 3.95, mentions a Castra Hannibalis on the coast near Scylletium at the narrowest part of Italy (cf. Seibert, 417 note 24). But he spent only part of his time there, if Pol. 15.1.11 is correct in giving him two years at Cape Lacinium; and this was at least 85 miles (140 kilometres) from Locri. Epidemic and food shortage: Livy 28.46.15, 29.10.1. Bruttium too small to supply Punic army: 28.11.7–8 (from 206). Punic supply fleet in 205: Livy 28.46.14 citing Coelius; Appian, Hann. 54.226 has 100 ships. The later annalist Valerius Antias (Livy, ibid.) had the Punic fleet transporting Etruscan and other booty and captives from Mago’s expedition—but Mago was still stagnant in 205 and never in fact invaded Etruria. Scipio’s invasion and early operations: de Sanctis, 3.2.502–11, 562–7; Scullard (1970) chapter VI. Hannibal’s doings in Italy in 204–203: Livy 29.36.4–9, 30.19.10–12; Seibert, Hann. 428–9, 435, 449. Seibert rhetorically questions the

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14

15

16

Romans’ alleged successes in 204 over Hannibal (e.g. ‘warum griffen sie das Lager Hannibals nicht an und trieben ihn endlich außer Landes, wenn sie so deutlich gesiegt hatten?’, 428) but does not ask why Hannibal was still hanging on in Italy. Cf. Groag (1929) 107, wondering why Hannibal did not even earlier leave a lieutenant in charge and return to Carthage (to confront his supposedly hostile government); while Huss (1985) 400 note 244 sees the leaders at Carthage still nursing illusory hopes. Livy depicts the general as bitter about departing in 203 (30.19.12–20.9; cf. Silius 17.184–200), but this is imagination. Roman naval forces increased in 203: Thiel (1946) 162–3. Hasdrubal’s pre-eminence at Carthage by 204: chapter XII §I. Negotiations in winter 204–203: Pol. 14.1.9; Livy 30.3.5–7; Appian, Lib. 17.69–70; Dio frg. 57.72 = Zon. 9.12.7. Appian and Dio have Spain among the lands explicitly mentioned: probably an inference that goes back to their ultimate sources, for Spain could not be ignored (even if Syphax and Hasdrubal might have preferred this). Hannibal and Scipio before Zama: below, chapter XIV note 19. Huss (1989) struggles to find a theme of ‘Pan-African’ solidarity in the alliance of the Carthaginians and Syphax. Scipio and countrymen aimed to limit the Carthaginians in Africa and had geopolitical goals too (‘il dominio del mondo’, no less): de Sanctis, 3.2.510–11. Secure peace required Hannibal’s own defeat: Scullard (1970) 125; cf. Scullard (1980) 234 (Rome needed compensation for sufferings). Scipio himself later claimed—or so it was said—that he would have destroyed Carthage had he had the time; but this smacks of postwar pride and pique (Livy 30.44.3—contrast 30.36.11; cf. Scullard (1970) 155–6). Eckstein (1987) 248–9, cf. 262–3, sees it as his original aim, in part thanks to Livy and in part because reportedly the Carthaginians in 203 were fearing it. Casualties at Zama: Seibert, Hann. 470 note 42. Consuls’ attempts to take command in Africa: Livy 30.24.1–3 (in 203), 27.1–5 (202), 40.7–16 (201); cf. Harris (1979) 139. Attack on the camps: Lazenby (1978) 207–8 with references. Thirty days for Hasdrubal and Syphax to rendezvous with new armies at Great Plains: Pol. 14.7.9. This looks almost too short an interval: possibly Polybius ` ` wrote the Greek numeral Ν (‘50’) and it was later miscopied as Λ (‘30’) thanks to the initial letter of the next word, ΠΕΡΙ. The disaster at the camps was at the start of spring (14.2.1; late February in North Africa?) and Syphax was later defeated and captured by Masinissa on ‘22 June’ by the Roman calendar (Ovid, Fasti 6.769–70; Walbank, 2.440). Though scholars disagree over how accurate the calendar then was (Derow (1976); Seibert, FzH 306), all this fits suitably. Fifty days would put the rendezvous at the Great Plains in late April, the battle two to three weeks later (cf. Pol. 14.8.1–4) in May, and Syphax’s capture some while after that (for Derow, 266–8, cf. 272–3, it was 23 May). Though Syphax’s son Vermina and some lesser chieftains held out against Masinissa and for the Carthaginians (Pol. 15.3.5–7; Livy 30.36.8; Appian, Lib. 33.139, 141) they proved of little moment. Attack on Roman fleet: Pol. 14.10.6–12; Livy 30.10; Appian, Lib. 24.100–25.103, 30.127–8, calling the admiral Hamilcar but telling of two attacks. It would be a rather typical coda if the Hasdrubal afterwards appointed admiral was still the son of Gisco (Livy 30.24.11, 25.5; cf. Kahrstedt (1913) 558; Lazenby (1978) 330, in Index), though Appian has the latter become a guerrilla leader and finally commit suicide (Lib. 24.97–8, 29.122–30.127, 36.151, 38.169; similarly Zon. 9.12.10–11, 14.10)—none of this mentioned by Polybius or Livy, and very proHasdrubal in flavour. The suicide may be factual since Hasdrubal now vanishes from the record. Hanno son of Bomilcar: note 5 above. Hannibal’s nephew: de Sanctis, 3.2.678, in Index; Picard and Picard, LDC 264; Caven (1980) 243.

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2

3

4

5

6

X I V D E F E AT Carthage’s countryside rebellious: Pol. 14.9.5. Carthaginians decide to seek terms, recall Barcids and prepare for siege: Pol. 14.9.7–10.1; Livy 30.9.7; Silius 17.149–83; Appian, Hann. 58.243, Lib. 31.129; other sources cited by Seibert, Hann. 449 note 66. Carthage divided between Barcid supporters and pro-peace anti-Barcids: de Sanctis, 3.2.519–20, 522, 532; Hoffmann (1962) 103; Warmington (1964) 230–2; Picard (1967) 203; Picard and Picard, LDC 264; Scullard (1970) 134; Caven (1980) 246. Hanno the Great’s group excluded: chapter XIII note 8. Inner ‘sacred council’ of senate: chapter II §IV. Laelius: note 6 below. Livy’s claim (30.16.14–15) that the Carthaginians negotiated only to buy time may draw on Polybius, whose account of the talks does not survive. For Seibert, ‘hatten beiden Seiten . . . kein ehrliches Spiel gespielt . . . Beide Verhandlungspartner wollten Zeit gewinnen’, and Scipio wished ‘den Krieg mit einem Sieg über Hannibal zu beenden’ (Hann. 459–60, cf. 446; cf. too Groag (1929) 108). But it suited Scipio far better to finish the war quickly, provided he could impose the terms he wanted. Senate ordered consuls of 203 to keep Hannibal and Mago in Italy: Livy 30.21.1; cf. Hoyos (1983) 179. The consul Caepio in 203 eager to supplant Scipio: chapter XIII note 14 above. One of those in 202 was similarly keen: Broughton, MRR 1.319 for references. Prostrate envoys: Pol. 15.1.6–7; Livy 30.16.4 supposes it a normal Punic custom; so too Picard (1967) 203 ‘cérémonial égyptien’; Seibert, Hann. 445 note 48. The envoys tried it again after Zama, if we can believe Appian (Lib. 49.214) supported by hints in Polybius (15.17.1–2) and Livy (30.36.10). Envoys blamed Hannibal: cf. chapter VI §III. Scipio’s terms: Schmitt, SVA 291–3; Mantel (1991) 105–6; Scardigli (1991) 297–313; Seibert, Hann. 445–8. Appian claims that Scipio set the future boundary of Punic Africa at the ‘Phoenician Trenches’ (Lib. 32.135), but on these see chapter XV §I. Pol. 15.1.2, 8.8, and P. Rylands no. 491 (Roberts (1938) 114–17 with Plate 5), lines 2–4, on the armistice-oaths (cf. Scardigli (1991) 315); Livy 30.17 (Laelius’ arrival at Rome), 21.1–2 (news of Barcids’ departure), 22–3 (Punic envoys face Roman senators); Appian, Lib. 31.131–2.136; Dio, frg. 57.74 = Zon. 9.13.8. On P. Rylands 491 see M. Treu, Aegyptus 33 (1953) 30–56, with earlier bibliography; Lippold (1963) 64–6; Walbank, 2.441–2; Lehmann (1974) 182–6; Eckstein (1987) 251–4; Mantel (1991) 111–17, 124–8; Seibert, FzH 307–8; Hoyos (2001a). Senate wished to keep Hannibal and Mago in Italy: note 2 above. Seibert, Hann. 448, accepts Dio’s report of the Senate’s refusal to negotiate while Punic armies were still in Italy, seeing it conform to ‘allgemeinem römischen Usus’ (ibid. note 60); next (453–8) he accepts most of Livy’s account, adds to it Appian’s senatorial commission sent to Africa, and then infers from Pol. 15.1.3 and 4.8 that the Roman citizen-Assembly prodded the Senate to agree to terms after all—but harsher ones, thereby provoking the Carthaginians to fight on (‘Was sie erregte, war die Tatsache, daß die Römer die Begingungen wesentlich verschärft hatten’, 457). This reconstruction is unconvincing, and in any case the Senate’s supposedly harsher additions (Hann. 455) to Scipio’s terms (446–7) include a limit on the size of the Punic navy which Livy in fact ascribes to Scipio (30.16.11) while the other additions are minor—a ban on hiring Ligurian and Gallic mercenaries, and a precise figure for the indemnity the Carthaginians already knew they would have to pay. ‘Scipionem in eo positam habuisse spem pacis si Hannibal et Mago ex Italia non revocarentur’ (said Laelius and his colleague Fulvius, Livy 30.23.6). Tränkle (1977) 237–8 sees Livy as using not Polybius, but a later author ‘der die ganze

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8

9

10

11

12

Geschichte stärker in einem römisch nationalen und antikarthagischen Sinne ausgeformt hatte’, but it is likelier, as usual, that Livy draws on both Polybius and other sources together to produce a composite—and not always well-judged— narrative. Seibert judges the Senate’s initial rejection of the terms as genuine, holding that Roman annalists would not invent it as this would make it impossible for them to describe the ensuing Carthaginian attack on the food convoy as a breach of the terms (Hann. 454 note 94). But annalists got round this difficulty—in Livy, Scipio accuses the enemy of violating the armistice and the law of nations (30.25.2, 25.9–10, 37.6), not the ‘rejected’ terms; contrast Pol. 15.1.2 and 9. Mantel (1991) 126–7, 133, infers Valerius Antias as Livy’s source. Coelius’ use of Silenus: Cicero, De Divinatione 1.49, cf. chapter VIII note 18; C. B. R. Pelling, OCD3 355. Dramatic invention by Coelius: notably a fearsome storm that nearly wrecks Scipio’s crossing to Africa in 204, whereas all other sources give him a calm sea (Livy 29.27.14–15 = Coelius, frg. 40P; cf. P. G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge 1963) 132; Badian (1966) 16). Silius borrows the storm for Hannibal’s crossing in 203 (17.236–91). On Valerius Antias and other annalists see, e.g., Badian (1966). Hannibal now in Africa: Pol. 15.1.10–11, cf. 15.3.5. Leaves Italy: Livy 30.20.5; Appian, Hann. 58.243; Lib. 31.129; Thiel (1946) 170–1; Seibert, Hann. 450–1. Thiel thinks that the interval between summons and departure points to Hannibal having to build the ships. Capture of Syphax: chapter XIII note 15. Summons to Hannibal: note 1 above. Chronology: de Sanctis, 3.2.571–2. Scipio’s forces and fleet in 204: Lazenby (1978) 203; Seibert, Hann. 432. Massacre: Diod. 27.9; Livy 30.20.6 (but contrast 42.3.6); Appian, Hann. 59.249; cf. chapter VIII §IV. Silius, interestingly, has no massacre (17.158–202). Kukofka (1990) 149 is disposed to believe one did occur; Connolly (1981) blames it on the Romans after Hannibal’s exit. Horses: Diodorus (3,000) and Appian (4,000), ibid.; cf. Seibert, Hann. 432 Both Diodorus (27.10) and Appian (Lib. 33.140) then tell an implausible tale of Hannibal in Africa massacring 4,000 Numidian cavalry deserters from Masinissa to acquire their horses. Polybius on mutiny-free expedition, 11.19.3–5, 23.13.1–2; echoed by Diod. 29.19, Livy 28.12.3–4. Mago’s death: Livy 30.19.5. Nepos reports him still alive in 195 (Hann. 7.3–4, 8.2; accepted by Seibert, Hann. 448 note 63, 513–14) but Polybius’ and Livy’s details of the Zama campaign—and Livy’s account of Hannibal’s sufetate in 196— know nothing of him, while Dio, frg. 56.77 (= Zon. 9.13.10), has the Carthaginians before Zama send him back to Italy! Cf. de Sanctis, 3.2.526 note 151, 604; below, chapter XV note 16. Carthaginian urgings to Hannibal: Pol. 15.5.1–2. Hannibal’s niece: chapter XIII §I. The ousted Mazaetullus fled to Punic territory with his puppet king, before returning to Numidia under assurances from Masinissa and against Punic wishes (Livy 29.30.10–13). Tychaeus: Pol. 15.3.5–7, cf. Appian, Lib. 33.139; Walbank, 2.444. ‘Mesotylus’: Appian, Lib. 33.141, accepted by Lazenby (1978) 217–18. Appian imagines Syphax’s son Vermina bringing aid too—but in reality he arrived only after Zama (Livy 30.36.7–8; Seibert, Hann. 472). Fresh supplies to Scipio: Scardigli (1991) 336 note 174 sees the Carthaginians as obliged to keep Scipio supplied, but this is not what Livy (30.16.12) reports. Provision-fleets sent in early spring 202: Thiel (1946) 174; Walbank, 2.441. In January, i.e. winter: Kahrstedt (1913) 557–8, 560 note 1, implausibly. Roman transports seized, Livy 30.24.5–12. It is not likely that the transports reaching Aegimurus could be seen from Carthage 30 miles (50 kilometres) away (despite Livy, Thiel (1946) 174, et alii), though this would be true of those driven ashore at

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15 16

17 18

19

Aquae Calidae on the Cape Bon coast near modern Korbous. Tribulations of Scipio’s envoys: Pol. 15.1.3–2.15; Livy 30.25.1–10; Appian, Lib. 34.144–5. These episodes a Roman fabrication to justify Scipio’s renewal of hostilities: Hoffmann (1941) 279–82; M. Treu, Aegyptus 33 (1953) 48–53; Lippold (1963) 64–5; Huss (1985) 414 note 90; Seibert, Hann. 458–9. Yet the Carthaginians had recalled Hannibal so as to renew hostilities (thus too Seibert, 457–8) and he was now in Africa, so Roman tradition had no need to invent a pretext for Scipio to do so (cf. note 6). Besides, Scipio’s preliminary peace-terms after Zama included compensation for Punic ‘misdeeds’ during the armistice (Pol. 15.18.3; Livy 30.37.6 more specifically writes of compensation for the seizures; cf. Eckstein (1987) 259). See also Appendix §13. Attitudes at Carthage: Pol. 15.2.2–3; Diod. 27.11.1; Appian, Iber. 34.143–5, 35.149–50; cf. Livy 30.24.10–11. Fabius Pictor’s anti-Barcid claims: chapter VI §III. That the return of the forces from Italy cast a supposed ‘peace party’ out of power at Carthage and restored the ‘war party’ (e.g. de Sanctis, 3.2.532–3) is not persuasive; nor that the Carthaginians were thereby reinvigorated to fight (Huss (1985) 414, ‘ein bedeutsamer Meinungsumschwung’). Oaths at armistice: note 5 above. ‘Sent out men bearing war instead of peace’: P. Rylands 491, lines 39–42, ~ ε’ιρη´νης τ`ον πο´λεµον; Hoyos (2001a) 75. ’ ε´στειλαν φε´ροντας αντ ’ `ι της απ Diehards prompted Hasdrubal to attack: Pol. 15.2.4–8. Unclear if they or he alone responsible: Livy 30.25.5. Mantel (1991) 111–16 argues that the Carthaginians’ seizure of the supplies and attack on the ambassadorial ship did not amount to a rupture of the peace-terms, but this is a very legalist argument. Seibert, Hann. 458–9, holds that the Carthaginians wanted to hear their envoys’ report and this did not justify Scipio’s ensuing actions in the countryside. Scipio’s anger: Pol. 15.4.2, and stressed by Eckstein (1987) 254 as ‘probably . . . the proconsul’s basic motivation’ even though ‘he had little to gain politically . . . while militarily he was risking much’—but this is not persuasive. Desire to bring Hannibal to battle: Lazenby (1978) 217. Date of Zama: de Sanctis, 3.2.582–5, 671; Walbank, 2.446; Seibert, FzH 316–17. Punic fleet’s station: Pol. 15.2.7; cf. Lazenby (1978) 217. Larger Roman war-fleets in Africa for 202: Livy 30.24.6–7, 27.5, 36.2, 41.6–7; Thiel (1946) 176–7 thinks Roman politics the main cause, but Lazenby stresses the military situation. Appian supplies an implausible detailed account of campaigning before Zama (33.141–40.167), which includes Hannibal operating in Numidia (so too Zon. 9.13.10), a siege of Carthage simultaneous with a cavalry battle at Zama, a truce between the generals, etc. Eutropius 3.22 encapsulates the same fictitious tradition (cf. note 10). Masinissa’s arrival: Pol. 15.5.11 is preferable to Livy 30.29.4; cf. Lazenby, 219. Cf. Huss (1985) 415 (Hannibal delayed battle to build and train his forces). Site of Zama: Seibert, FzH 311–14, discussing the possibilities, with bibliography. Spies and interview: Pol. 15.5.4–9.1; Livy 30.29.2–31.10. Doubted for instance by Groag (1929) 99 note 2; Hampl (1983–4) 17–22; Seibert, FzH 315, and Hann. 465–6 (‘Legenden’); de Sanctis, 3.2.578, rejects only the spies. Xerxes had done the same with Greek spies (Herodotus 7.147–8) but this is scarcely ground for disbelieving Polybius. Masinissa’s arrival (note 16) and Scipio’s stratagem: thus Lazenby (1978) 219. Hannibal intended cavalry-sacrifice at Zama: Scullard (1970) 150; Connolly (1981) 204; Seibert, Hann. 467, 469 note 35; Lancel, Hann. 280; Santosuosso (1997) 195; but Walbank, 2.468–9, and Lazenby (1978) 223, have doubts, and Goldsworthy (2000) 304–5 disbelieves. Meeting with Scipio: Hampl (1983–4) 21–2 note 17 sceptically points to other anciently noted confrontations, like

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Lycurgus’ with Thales and Polycrates’ with King Amasis of Egypt. But these are not meetings between two opposing leaders—and Alexander the Great, for instance, does not interview his foe Darius in any tradition, while his famous meeting with King Porus happened after Porus’ defeat (Plutarch, Alexander 60; N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 323 BC (Cambridge 1959) 631). 20 Scipio’s demand, Pol. 15.8.14 (Loeb tr.); cf. Walbank, 2.453. 21 Zama is much discussed: e.g. de Sanctis, 3.2.536–9, 572–98; Liddell Hart (1926) chapter XI; Walbank, 2.445–64; Scullard (1970) chapter VI; Lazenby (1978) 220–6; Seibert, FzH 308–17 (with extensive bibliography), Hann. 466–71; Lancel, Hann. 276–83; R. J. A. Wilson, OCD3 1,633, and J. Lazenby, OCD3 1,633–4; Santosuosso (1997) 194–7; Goldsworthy (2000) 300–7. Single combat between Hannibal and Scipio: Appian, Lib. 45.188–9. Hannibal gathered 6,500 foot and horse after Zama, just possibly a genuine detail (Appian, 55.241, shakily supported by Nepos, Hann. 6.4), but urged peace (Appian, ibid.). Silenced a diehard senator: Pol. 15.19.2; Livy 30.37.7–8 (more dramatically placing it in the citizen-assembly). Suicide of Hasdrubal son of Gisco: chapter XIII note 16. 22 Not so in Huss’ view: ‘Die barqidische “Partei” verlor keineswegs ihren Einfluss—im Gegenteil!’ ((1985) 426). But his only argument for this is that Hannibal later won the sufeteship; on this see chapter XV. X V P O S T WA R E C L I P S E 1 Punic envoys: note 8 below. Peace terms of 201: Schmitt, SVA 3.296–308; Scardigli (1991) chapter VIII; see also de Sanctis, 3.2.599–605; Walbank, 2.465–71; Lazenby (1978) 227–30; Eckstein (1987) 255–67; Seibert, Hann. 473–5; Lancel, Hann. 284–6. Polybius supplies most of the terms (15.18) but Appian (Lib. 54.234–8)—despite some improbable extra items, like a clause demanding Mago’s recall from Italy (plainly a carryover from his version of the terms in 203)—can be believed on the ban against mercenary-levying (also in Dio, frg. 57.82). Masinissa clause not intended to undermine Carthage: Eckstein, 259–60, plausibly. Scipio’s concern: in 201 one consul, Cn. Cornelius Lentulus— the third consul in as many years—strove to take over the command in Africa (Broughton, MRR 1.319; cf. chapter XIV note 2). 2 Appian on Zama-aftermath: Lib. 55.239–56.244; cf. Gsell, HAAN 2.271–3. Fleet burned: Livy 30.43.11. 3 Scipio’s demarcation of Punic boundaries, Livy 34.62.8–11. ‘Phoenician Trenches’: Appian, Lib. 54.236 (cf. 32.135); Eumachus, FGrH 178 F2, from a periegesis; Gsell, HAAN 2.101–3, 3.290; Scardigli (1991) 340 note 324; Lancel (1992) 283–4; cf. map in CAH1 8 (1930) facing p. 99, or Picard and Picard, LDC 179. Walsh (1965) 156 disbelieves them. Fossa regia: Pliny, NH 5.25; ILS 5,955 (of Vespasian’s time). Younger Scipio’s delimitation: Pliny, ibid.; Gsell, 3.326–7, 404; Lancel (1992) 283–4, Hann. 286. 4 Down-payment and indemnity after First Punic War: chapter I §V. Hannibal’s reproof to the Carthaginians (abbreviated tr.), Livy 30.44.4–11; ‘first’ indemnitypayment, 32.2.1. One might try attaching the anecdote instead to the payment of compensation for Scipio’s seized supply-ships—the Romans calculated this at 25,000 pounds of silver, more than 300 talents—which had to be paid at once (Livy 30.37.6, 38.1–2; de Sanctis, 3.2.600); but this would be a guess and would not cancel the other objections. 5 Nepos, Hann. 6.4–7.4; believed by Lenschau, RE 7.2,348; Groag (1929) 114 (Hannibal continues as strategos of Libya for some years—even though Nepos 7.1 explicitly dates his recall to 200); Hallward (1930) 468; Picard (1967) 213–14;

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6

7

8

9

10

11

Kotula (1983–4) 89; Seibert, Hann. 497–8; Goldsworthy (2000) 326. In contrast Lancel, Hann. 289, is sceptical. More boldly but unpersuasively, Cresci Marrone (1978) interprets Nepos 7.4 as meaning that Hannibal became sufete in 199 and held a lesser office in 197. Olive-trees planted over ‘Africae pleraque’: Aurelius Victor, Caesares 37.2–3. Roman embassy in 200 and Hamilcar the renegade: Livy 31.11.4–12, 19.1–6; on his later fate, Lenschau, RE 7.2,308–9; Briscoe (1973) 82–3, 115. Seibert (Hann. 497) prefers Nepos (7.2) for a Punic embassy to Rome instead. Punic hostages freed without ransom: Livy 30.43.5–8. Victor a North African: Caesares 20.6, cf. 40.19. Garrison in Utica: to be inferred from Scipio’s lengthy and unsuccessful siege (Lazenby (1978) 206–9). Note Appian giving Hannibal 6,500 troops in the aftermath of Zama (chapter XIV note 21); he also has a plausible garrison at Hadrumetum (47.206) and earlier (30.128) tells of Scipio making an attempt on Hippou Acra after his victories in 203, again unsuccessfully which would imply another strong garrison—as is likely, even though trusting Appian’s unsupported word on these African operations is unsafe (Gsell, HAAN 3.235–6; chapter XIV notes 11 and 16). Libyans inclined to rebellion by 203: chapter XIV note 1. Nepos, Hann. 7.4, ‘praetor factus est, postquam rex fuerat, anno secundo et vicesimo’. Properly ‘in the twenty-second year’ means after twenty-one years and this would point to the year 200 (cf. Picard (1963) 276), but Nepos has just (7.2) had Hannibal continue in army command until 199. Nepos’ notion that he moved straight from army command to ‘praetura’ (cf. note 5) is as fuzzy—and unreliable—as his contradictions in applying these Latin terms to Punic offices: having Hannibal become ‘praetor’ with the explanation that, like the consuls at Rome, so too at Carthage two ‘reges’ (tautologically, ‘quotannis annui bini reges’) were elected yearly; then terming Hannibal’s year of office ‘praeturam’ (7.6). Picard’s efforts to excuse these oddities do not convince (274–8)—for instance declaring the statement about ‘reges’ a gloss by Nepos’ late Roman editor Aemilius Probus. Dio, frg. 57.86 = Zon. 9.14.13; rejected by (e.g.) Gsell, HAAN 2.273; Groag (1929) 111. Envoys at Tunes, Livy 30.6.9; those to Rome, 30.42.11 (‘longe primi civitatis’); Hasdrubal’s speech to Senate, 42.14–19; he blames ‘paucorum cupiditatem’, 42.13; that this blaming occurs separately—not in the speech—perhaps supports its genuineness. Appian’s speech for The Kid at Tunes, Lib. 50.215–52.228; silence too on Hannibal in Livy’s and Appian’s versions of Scipio’s reply (30.37.1–6; Lib. 53.230–54.238). Hanno the Great: an envoy to Scipio at Tunes according to Appian (49.213), but if still alive in 202—doubted by Lenschau, RE 7.2,357; de Sanctis, 3.2.541 note 174—he would be near 80 and cannot have survived much longer (despite Appian, Lib. 68.304: cf. chapter XVI note 19). Competences of the One Hundred and Four: chapter I §III. ‘Everyone’s possessions’, etc., Livy 33.46.2; on his source for Hannibal’s sufeteship see chapter XVI note 1. Ordo iudicum = the One Hundred and Four: Groag (1929) 116–18, 127; Hallward (1930) 468–9; M. P. Charlesworth, CAH1 8.486; Hoffmann (1962) 112, 115; Warmington (1964) 148, 240; de Sanctis, 3.1.54; Picard (1967) 216–18; Görlitz (1970) 153, 155; Briscoe (1973) 336; Bacigalupo Pareo (1977) 71–7; Huss (1985) 427, 464; Scullard (1989a) 491; Lancel (1992) 422; Seibert, Hann. 501–2. Contrast Sznycer (1978) 580, 584 (implicitly rejects); Gsell, HAAN 2.207–8 (doubtful). Hasdrubal’s possible measures on the Hundred and Four: chapter VI §III. ‘Barcina factio’ still in 193: Livy 34.61.11 (Hannibal’s expectations, 60.5). Proliferation of abuses by 195: 33.46.8–47.2. Critics harassed: Livy 33.46.2, ‘nec accusator apud infensos iudices deerat’. Aristotle on plurality of offices: Pol. 2.11.8, 1273b; above, chapter II §IV.

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12 Flawed indemnity payment (Livy 32.2.1–2) due to Punic state’s impoverishment: Gsell, HAAN 2.323; Seibert, Hann. 497–8. Due to corrupt dealings: Hallward (1930) 467; Warmington (1964) 240. Silver coinage debased during war: Howgego (1995) 114. It is possible that the Carthaginians had to produce special pure issues for the indemnity (cf. Gellius 7.5.1) and that of 199 was found defective—which would point to chicanery all the more. 13 Gifts of grain: Livy 31.19.2; 36.4.5 (in 191); 43.6.11–14 (170). On cereal output cf. Tlatli (1978) 124–5 (estimating 1.5 million quintals in Punic times, i.e. about 20 million modii); R. M. Haywood, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, 4 (Baltimore 1938) 43–4 (estimating 160 million modii for Tunisia and Algeria by AD 14). Economic recovery: Lancel (1992) 423–5, Hann. 292–7. The notion that Spain was now lost as a market (Kotula (1983–4) 89) confuses economics with politics. 14 Loss of state revenues: Livy 33.46.8–9. Hannibal’s reforms: Livy 33.47.1–2. Raids on North Africa during war: chapter XII §I. Scipio’s armistice-promise to stop ravaging ‘eo die’, Livy 30.37.2. It is unfoundedly optimistic to claim that the Romans left the countryside ‘ungeschmälert’ (Lenschau, RE 10 (1919) 2233), or with Lancel (1992) 292 to limit the destruction, for reasons unclear, to the territory around Utica and the Bagradas valley. Aristotle and Polybius on money at Carthage: Pol. 2.11.8–12, 1273a (cf. 6.5.9, 1320b, on usefulness of bribery); Pol. 6.56.1–4; Gsell, HAAN 2.235–6; Walbank, 1.741. 15 Hannibal’s fondness for money: chapter VII note 1. Postwar supporters: Görlitz (1970) 151 assumes that most of his war-comrades had passed away. 16 General tax levy proposed for 196: Livy 33.46.9. Hamilcar the renegade: note 5 above. 17 Hannibal’s popularity in office: Livy 33.46.7, cf. 48.9–11. ‘Democratic’ or ‘popular’ terminology: available to Appian for a report of politics at Carthage in the 150s (Lib. 68.304–5) but not used by Livy for the 190s though he stresses Hannibal’s popularity (cf. chapter XVI). Mago frater joining Hannibal in exile: Nepos, Hann. 8.2; chapter XIV note 10. Mago the Samnite and Mago the relative: chapters IV note 5, VII note 2; on the former cf. H. Volkmann, Kl P 3.889. Interestingly among the leaders of the ‘democratic’ party 40-odd years later was one Hamilcar ‘the Samnite’ (Appian, 68.305)—a descendant with inherited political ties as well as nickname? (cf. Walbank, 1.110, 2.153–4). Kotula (1983–4) 92–7 denies any democratic tendency in Hannibal’s sufeteship; similarly Seibert, Hann. 501–2. 18 Accusations by enemies: Livy reports them only in 195 and as following his actions as sufete (33.45.6–8, cf. 47.3); cf. Justin 31.1.7–9. Mommsen, HR 2.202, Picard and Picard, LDC 274, 277, and Seibert, Hann. 499, think them plausible. Hannibal’s journeys to Syria and then Ephesus: Livy 33.49.5–7. Antiochus’ dealings with the Romans and uninterest in fighting them: Hoffmann (1957/1974) 64; R. M. Errington, CAH2 8.270–82; Ma (1999) 94–102. Hannibal advises him on war: Livy 34.60, 35.19. 19 Carthage’s foremost citizen: Livy 33.48.10 ‘principem civitatis’. Links with Tyre, 33.48.3, 34.61.2–3; levees, 33.48.9; dinner-parties and the like, cf. 34.61.5. X V I H A N N I BA L S U F E T E 1 Polybius as Livy’s likely source for events at Carthage: Briscoe (1973) 335–6. Silenus and Sosylus ‘cum eo in castris fuerunt simulque vixerunt, quamdiu fortuna passa est’ (Nepos, Hann. 13.3; Brizzi’s fancies of a Sosylus increasingly disillusioned by his hero’s unsentimental behaviour are unconvincing (1984) 7–29,

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2

3

4

5 6

7 8

117–18). Nepos mentions them only as sources for the Second Punic War, but one or both might have taken the story down to 195 or even to his death, even if separated from him, despite Zecchini’s suggestion that Sosylus published his work around 197 ((1997) 1,065–6). Failing them, other possibilities would be Chaereas, Eumachus and Xenophon (on these, Hoyos (1998) 233–4, 281; (2001a) 77). Terentius Culleo: Livy 33.47.7; devotion to Scipio, 30.43.11, 45.5 (cf. Plutarch, Moralia 196D); still active in 171, Livy 42.35.7; cf. Scullard, RP 114, 141, 284. Polybius in Italy: Walbank (1972) 6–13, 166–70. Date of sufeteship: M. Claudius Marcellus, one of the ensuing Roman envoys (Livy 33.47.7), was almost certainly the consul of 196 (Broughton, MRR 3.341, 342 n.3) and so could not become an envoy until 195 at earliest. Nepos dates the exile to ‘anno post praeturam, M. Claudio L. Furio consulibus’ (Hann. 7.6), i.e. 196, yet terms 193 the ‘anno tertio’ after it (8.1), not ‘quarto’ as in normal inclusive reckoning; on his chronology for these years cf. chapter XV note 7. Appian’s date of 196: Syr. 4.14–1, believed by de Sanctis 4.1.112 note 3. See also Gsell, HAAN 2. 275 note 1; Groag (1929) 114 note 4; Scullard, RP 284 (sound arguments for 196); Briscoe (1973) 335; Seibert, Hann. 499 note 17; Ma (1999) 93. That the clash was over the state finances is generally assumed: e.g. Groag (1929) 119; Hallward (1930) 468; Hoffmann (1962) 115; Picard (1967) 217; Seibert, Hann. 500–1; Lancel, Hann. 291. Finance reform a separate item: Livy introduces it with ‘adiecit et aliud’, 33.46.8. On the ‘quaestor’ in 196 see Appendix §14. Hannibal overstepped powers: Groag (1929) 119 note 1; Picard (1967) 216–18; Picard and Picard, LDC 275; Lancel (1992) 421–2; cf. Gsell, HAAN 2.276. Against this view: Seibert, Hann. 501 note 23. Speed of events: Livy 33.46.5–7 (note ‘legem extemplo promulgavit pertulitque’); thus Groag’s more complicated interpretation does not persuade. On the Roman contio, cf. A. H. J. Greenidge, Roman Public Life (London 1901) 158–60; A. W. Lintott, OCD3 385. Livy’s source if Greek would not have used the Roman term, but quite possibly reported the legislative meeting as coming afterwards. Tribunal’s functions had changed: chapter VI §III, with note 8. Sufetes by 193 were hearing cases: chapter VI note 8. The Hundred and Four to be popularly elected: Livy uses the verb ‘legerentur’ (‘were to be chosen’) which does not expressly confirm this, and Seibert accepts no changes save to the judges’ term of office (Hann. 501–2, ‘Hannibal hatte . . . keine Kompetenzen entzogen, ebensowenig den Personenkreis, der für die Einhundertvier gewählt werden konnte, erweitert’). But politically that would have been suicide. The ‘electing’ verb creare was used only for magistrates while legere was the proper Latin verb for appointing judges (e.g. Lex Acilia of 123 (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 12.583) lines 12, 14, etc.; Cicero, Pro Milone 21), though at Rome the appointing was done by the relevant magistrate. Hannibal’s reform of only limited impact: Kotula (1983–4) 91–7; Seibert, ibid. On the other hand Groag (1929) 121 has no warrant for supposing that the reform was applied also to the inner ‘sacred’ council of Carthage (on which see chapter II §IV). Groag (1929) 121, 126, too optimistically supposes that all of the 104, not to mention both new sufetes and most of the senate, were Barcid supporters in 195 thanks to the reform; similarly Hoffmann (1962) 115. Livy 33.46.8–47.1; Nepos, Hann. 7.5 ‘novis vectigalibus’, garnering enough money not only to pay the indemnity but also ‘ut . . . superesset quae in aerario reponeretur’. Groag (1929) 121–2 has the new taxes affect only ‘die besitzende Klasse’ at Carthage. Seibert, Hann. 502, 543, considers Hannibal’s finance measures just as limited as the judicial—yet also (541) judges him to have tackled abuses in both areas ‘gründlich und mit dauernhaftem Erfolg’.

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9 On Carthaginian state revenues see chapter II §III. ‘Outstanding funds’, etc.: Livy 33.47.1–2 ‘omnibus residuis pecuniis exactis, tributo privatis remisso’; E. Sage’s Loeb translation of residuis pecuniis as ‘the revenues not otherwise used’ scarcely suits the context. All embezzled funds to be repaid: thus Gsell, HAAN 2.275–6; Picard (1967) 218 ‘une véritable révolution sociale’, and (1968) 276; Lancel, Hann. 291–2. 10 ‘Vectigalia publica partim neglegentia dilabebantur, partim praedae ac divisui et principum quibusdam et magistratibus erant’, Livy 33.46.8. 11 ‘Kept his promise’ (‘praestitit promissum’), 33.47.2. Carthaginian offers in 191, Livy 36.4.7–9 (the manuscript numerals for the wheat and barley are corrupt). Nepos: note 8 above. Shipbuilding skills: Scullard (1989a) 496–7; Lancel (1992) 137–51. On the ports see chapter II §II and note 5. 12 Byrsa development: Lancel et al. (1980); Picard and Picard (1983) 56–8; Rakob (1992) 33–5; and especially Lancel (1992) 172–92, 423, and Hann. 296–7 (backing ‘l’hypothèse qu’Hannibal, au cours de son suffétat, en ait été le concepteur et qu’il ait posé la première pierre’). Mago’s town in Minorca: Mela 2.124, ‘castellum’; Pliny, NH 3.77, a civitas; ILS 6958, ‘r(es) p(ublica) Mag(onensium)’; Huss (1985) 400 note 242. Early second-century shoreline mansions: Picard and Picard (1983) 56; Lancel (1992) 171–2 and Fig. 76. 13 Groag (1929) 125–6 implausibly supposes a senate in 195 entirely pro-Barcid, cf. note 7 above; contrast Seibert, Hann. 505. Servilius: the consul of 203 (P. Willems, Le Sénat de la République romaine (Louvain 1878–85, repr. Darmstadt 1968) 1.311, 2.498; Broughton, MRR 1.341, 342 note 3), not politically friendly with Scipio (F. Càssola, I gruppi politici Romani nel III secolo a.C. (Trieste 1962, repr. Rome 1968) 415–16; Scullard, RP 78–83, 277–8). Justin 31.2.1 imagines he was the sole envoy. Punic senate’s reply, Livy 33.49.4; Hannibal proscribed, Nepos, Hann. 7.7. 14 Aristo episode, Livy 34.61.1–62.1; Appian, Syr. 8.30–3; Justin 31.4.1–3; debate, Livy 34.61.12–13; varying attitudes (‘principibus . . . senatui, senatu . . . populo suspecto’) and Masinissa’s moves, 62.1–4. 15 Allegations began after the finance-reforms, Livy 33.45.8 (‘recenti facto’); cf. Justin 31.1.7. Scipio ‘long’ impeded intervention, 33.47.4–5; cf. Val. Max. 4.1.6. Cato’s attitude: not recorded but neither are most of his doings as consul (A. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford 1978) 24). Hannibal fled Carthage in midsummer (Livy 33.48.5) while Cato left Rome for Spain only then or later—just when is debated (Briscoe (1981) 65–6 puts it later than does Astin, 308–10; cf. Richardson (1986) 80, and Harris, CAH2 8.123). Ill-will towards Scipio: Astin, 12–16, 60–2, 70–3; Scullard, RP 114 and (1970) 188–9; and Ridley (1987) 159 all go rather too far in seeing the despatch of the embassy as really an attack on Scipio directed by Cato. Hannibal’s flight: Livy 33.47.10–48.8; Nepos, Hann. 7.6–7; Justin 31.2.2–5 (where ‘rus urbanum’ probably imagines Hannibal’s property as being in the Megara district). 16 Envoys might have demanded handover: so too Mommsen, HR 2.202; cf. Groag (1929) 125, who sees Hannibal as patriotically choosing self-exile to save Carthage from domestic strife and Roman attack; echoed by Warmington (1964) 241; Görlitz (1970) 156. Demands for Hannibal’s handover: chapter VIII §IV (in 218); Pol. 21.17.7, 43.11 (in 188); Nepos, Hann. 12.2; Livy 39.51.1–3; Appian, Syr. 11.43; Plutarch, Flamininus 20; Pausanias 8.11.11; Justin 32.4.8 (in 183); Walbank, 3.158–9; Seibert, Hann. 521, 523 note 9, 527. Accusations by the envoys, Livy 33.49.1–2. Ships sent in pursuit, Nepos 7.7. 17 33.49.3 (E. Sage’s Loeb tr.). 18 Penalties: Nepos 7.7. Groag (1929) 126–7 argues that they were not voted until

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after the Aristo episode in 193, believing as he does that the senate in 195 was Barcid to a man and that in any case Carthage’s leading men would not so abase themselves at a nod from Rome; contrast Seibert, Hann. 505 note 44. 19 Factions: Appian, Lib. 68.304–5 (ο‘ι δ`ε ε’δηµοκρα´ τιζον). Perhaps the Hanno the Great Appian mentions was yet another one (Picard and Picard, LDC 286; Huss (1985) 432) but we would need a more reliable source than Appian for us to see that as plausible. People’s vote to banish pro-Masinissa leaders, Lib. 70.316; cf. statements put forward by citizens ε’ς τ`ο µε´σον, ‘in public’, pretty clearly indicating at an assembly (94.443, 111.527). Senate directing foreign affairs: Lib. 91.429–31 (Punic envoys in 149 report consuls’ ultimatum to senate first), 93.439 (senate decrees war; not the tribunal of Hundred and Four, as Goldsworthy (2000) 339 assumes). Hannibal’s measures soon repealed: Gsell, HAAN 2. 279, and Groag (1929) 127 (tribunal reform); Picard (1967) 221–2 (ditto); Kotula (1983–4) 94 (all). 20 Cf. Caven’s comment on the tragedy of 146: ‘the Romans could well have afforded to leave her [Carthage] in peace on her peninsula, stripped of her territorial possessions’ ((1980) 293, cf. 271–2)—though going on to offer generalized censorious claims about the Carthaginians’ moral and cultural unattractiveness (293–4). 21 Masinissa’s claim in 174: Livy 41.22.1–3. X V I I T H E E N D O F T H E BA R C I D S 1 Hobnobbing with Roman envoys: Pol. 3.11.2–3; Livy 35.14.1–4, based on Polybius. A legend makes Scipio Africanus one of the envoys (Briscoe (1981) 165–6; Seibert, Hann. 511–12), and his supposed conversation with his old foe (Livy 35.14.5–12; Appian, Syr. 9.34–10.42; other sources, Seibert, 511 note 28) may be another, unless Scipio made a separate, but poorly attested, visit to Ephesus that year (cf. Scullard (1970) 198, 285–6 note 163, citing earlier discussions based on Inscriptiones Graecae 11.4.712, an inscription at Delphi honouring Scipio, and Zon. 9.18.12–13). Oath story: chapter IV §II. 2 Comment to Antiochus on army, Gellius 5.5 (‘satis, plane satis credo esse Romanis, etiamsi avarissimi sunt’); the pun might come from Greek (e.g. ‘ικανο`ι ε’ισιν ‘Ρωµα´ιοις) and so need not automatically be due to a Latin writer, even if Gellius’ own source was probably in Latin (libri veterum memoriarum, 5.5.1). Phormio story (‘multos se deliros senes saepe vidisse, sed qui magis quam Phormio deliraret vidisse neminem’), Cicero, De Oratore 2.75–6. 3 Hannibal’s proposal in 194–193: Livy 34.60.2–6 (‘somewhere in Italy’ 60.6, but cf. 36.7.16); Nepos, Hann. 8.1; Appian, Syr. 7.26–9; Justin 31.3.5–10; cf. Seibert, Hann. 508–9. Aristo episode: chapter XVI §IV. 4 Nepos, Hann. 8.1–2, a tale believed by Lenschau, RE 7.2,348–9, and Seibert, Hann. 513–14; disbelief, Kahrstedt (1913) 590; but Hoffmann (1962) 121 is unsure while Picard (1967) 227–8 redates it to 190. More likely a confused blend of the abortive project reported by Livy (35.18.8, 42.2–43.1) and Hannibal’s putative Cyrene stopover in 195 en route to Tyre (note how the episode ends with a bald ‘Hannibal ad Antiochum pervenit’—rather than, say, rediit). Livy makes plain that the project envisaged only smaller, undecked ships (35.42.3; on naves apertae cf. 32.21.27, 37.22.4, and Cicero, II Verrines 5.104; Thiel (1946) 269; McDonald and Walbank (1969)), so Nepos’ ‘five’ may rightly report its intended strength even if he has garbled the rest. See also Appendix §15. 5 Livy 36.7.1–8.1, very probably from Polybius and, as Seibert emphasizes (Hann. 508 note 13), not a copy of Hannibal’s previous advice; Appian, Syr. 13.53–14.58

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6

7

8

9 10 11

and Justin 31.5.3–9 supply variously recast versions (cf. Briscoe (1981) 229). Seibert, 515, supposes that Hannibal at Demetrias proposed descending on Etruria, Liguria or Cisalpina, but see note 3. Lancel (1992) 319–20 sees the advice as fiction. Antiochus’ expeditionary fleet to Greece, Livy 35.43.3; Seleucid naval strength in 192–189, Thiel (1946) 273–76. Hannibal’s invasion schemes: Groag (1929) 135–41 judges them highly practicable; not so Hoffmann (1957/1974) 66–71; Hoyos (1983) 179; Seibert, Hann. 508, 516. Battle of Side: Livy 37.23–4; Thiel (1946) 338–45; Seibert, Hann. 519–21. Hannibal’s last years: Seibert, Hann. 522–9, with full references. His travels are not in Livy, Appian or Dio, which indicates that the details in Nepos, Hann., Justin et al. come from non-annalistic sources: a continuator of Silenus or Sosylus, or from Coelius? At Gortyn: Nepos, Hann. 9.1; Justin 32.4.3–5. Seibert, 522, perhaps rightly thinks the story of the treasure-deception a slander for a genuine offering to Artemis. Artaxata: Plutarch, Lucullus 31; Strabo 11.14.6, C528. Poison-snakes battle: Nepos, 10.3–11.7; Justin 32.4.6–7; Frontinus 4.7.10–11; but Seibert, 526, feels ‘erhebliche Zweifeln’. Prusa: Pliny, NH 5.148. On the various versions of Hannibal’s suicide, Seibert, Hann. 527–8. Date: Polybius gave it as Olympiad 149, 2, i.e. mid-183 to mid-182 (Nepos, 13.1; Livy 39.52.1; Walbank, 3.235–9; Walsh [1994] 172); Livy opts for 183, the consulate of M. Claudius Marcellus and Q. Fabius Labeo. Since the Roman envoys left Rome in the second half of 183 (Walbank, 3.221–2, 237; despite Seibert, 529), the suicide can be placed in winter 183/182. Hannibal’s tomb: Pliny, NH 5.148; [Victor], De Vir. Ill. 42.6, claiming the simple epitaph ‘Here lies Hannibal’ still existed in the author’s day; Tzetzes, Chiliades 1 (cf. chapter V note 15), lines 804–5 on Severus’ construction; A. R. Birley, The African Emperor: Septimius Severus (London 1988) 148; Seibert, 529. Barcids, and Hannibal especially, as Hellenized and pro-diversity: Kromayer (1909/1974) 269–74; Groag (1929) 141–3 (Hannibal the ‘Vorkämpfer der Völkerfreiheit’, in effect resisting ‘nicht allein den Untergang der hellenischen Freiheit, sondern auch die Vernichtung oder Zersetzung unermeßlicher Menschheitswerte und Kulturgüter’); Picard (1967) 10, 103–14, 231–8 (Barcids were ‘les créateurs et les propagateurs d’une forme originelle de la civilisation hellénistique’, 231), and (1983–4) 75–81; Brizzi (1983), (1984) 101–18, and cf. ‘Hannibal—Punier und Hellenist’, Das Altertum 37 (1991) 201–10; Barceló (1998) 46–7, envisaging the hero as spokesman (Sprachrohr) and defender, à la Picard, of ‘phönikisch-hellenische’ civilization against Rome (cf. ibid., 14–15). A more nuanced view of the Barcids, as a virtually independent Potenz like the Hellenistic despots, allying with other Mediterranean states to defeat the Roman menace, in Hoffmann (1962) 129–35. Cf. the surveys of Christ (1974) 9–13, and Seibert, FzH 64–82. Carthaginian borrowings from Greece, chapter II §II; Greeks in Punic service, chapter V §VI. Hannibal’s Greek compositions: Nepos, Hann. 13.2. Reforms drew on Sosylus’ reports of Cleomenes III’s policies during the 220s at Sparta: Groag 119 note 4, followed by Picard and Picard, LDC 277 and Kotula (1983–4) 100. Against Appian’s claim that Hasdrubal went over to Africa in about 214–213, see chapter XI note 10. Scipio’s supposed meeting with Hannibal at Ephesus: note 1 above. Cato on Hamilcar, Plutarch, Cato Maior 8.14; on the attack against Saguntum, Origines frg. 84 Peter; cf. Hoyos (1998) 175, 221. Polybius’ views of the Barcids: 1.64.6 (very pro-Hamilcar), 2.13.1 (on his successor Hasdrubal), 2.36.1–2 (Hasdrubal and Hannibal), 3.71.6 (Mago), 11.2 (Hamilcar’s son Hasdrubal); on Hannibal’s virtues and vices, 9.22, 9.24–6, 11.19,

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23.13. Hannibal in the right in 218: 3.30.3–4, cf. 3.15.10–11; Hoyos (1998) 164–5, 278. Acted too soon: 11.19.6–7. Polybius’ expected readership: Walbank (1972) 3–5, 27–8. Livy on Hannibal: 21.4.2–10 (portrait), 22.58.1–4, 28.12.1–9 (based on Polybius), 39.51.9–12 (last words). Dio’s character-portrayal, frg. 54; Brizzi (1984) 105 is more impressed by it (‘il migliore e più attendibile rittrato del Barcide trasmessoci dall’antichità’). 12 Against the frequent view of Hanno the Great’s group as North African expansionists, Hoyos (1994) 264–6, 278. That the Carthaginians should have limited themselves to North Africa and thus avoided further clashes with the Romans is argued by de Sanctis, 3.1.390–3.

1 2

3

4

5

6 7

XVIII SOURCES Aristotle, Politics 2.11.1–9, 1272b–1273b; 4.7.11, 1293b; cf. chapter II §IV. Philinus is studied, with all the rigours of firm Quellenkritik, by V. La Bua, Filino–Polibio Diodoro–Sileno (Palermo 1966) who sees him as a better historian than Polybius and, just as unconvincingly, thinks he narrated the Mercenaries’ War too; cf. E. Badian’s review, Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica 96 (1968) 203–11. On Fabius Pictor’s contemporary narrative: M. Gelzer, Kleine Schriften (Wiesbaden 1964) 3.51–92; B. W. Frier, Libri Annales Pontificum Maximorum: The Origins of the Annalistic Tradition (Rome 1979) 225–84, arguing for the early close; against this, Hoyos (2001a) 77–9. Philinus on the background and outbreak of the First Punic War: B. D. Hoyos, Classical Quarterly 35 (1985) 92–109, and (1998) 7–11, 82–104. Fabius on Hasdrubal and Hannibal: chapter VI §III. Both writers’ honest intent: Pol. 1.14.2. On P. Rylands 3.491: chapter XIV note 5. Hannibal’s inscription: chapter XIII note 11; ‘aram . . . cum ingenti rerum a se gestarum titulo’ (Livy 28.46.16). Polybius and its statistics: chapter VIII §IV. Treaty with Philip V: Pol. 7.9; chapter X §III. On a fictitious letter supposedly from Hannibal to the Athenians (P. Hamburg. 129): Seibert, FzH 5–6; Brizzi (1984) 85–102. Silenus and Sosylus: chapter V note 16, chapter XVI note 1. Sosylus’ fragment: FGrH 176 F1; cf. Walbank, 1.430–1; Seibert, FzH 12; Zecchini (1997), who is enthusiastic but unconvincing. Hannibal’s dream: chapter VIII §V. Polybius on Sosylus, 3.20.5; on Hannibal’s supposed divine guides, 3.47.6–9. Silenus on booty from New Carthage: Livy 26.49.3, contrasting his figures for captured siegeengines with the wildly inflated ones of Livy’s near-contemporary Valerius Antias. Chaereas, Eumachus, Xenophon: FGrH nos. 177–9; cf. K. Meister, Historische Kritik bei Polybios (Wiesbaden 1975) 167–72; Seibert, FzH 13; Hoyos (2001a) 77. Cincius Alimentus: Livy 21.38.3–5; Appendix §8. Cato: Badian (1966) 6–11; B. D. Hoyos, Ancient History Bulletin 1 (1987) 112–21, and 4 (1990) 31–6; Maharbal’s remark: chapter IX §IV, with note 3. Coelius: Badian (1966) 15–17; W. Hermann, Die Historien des Coelius Antipater: Fragmente und Kommentar (Meisenham/Glan 1979). Scipio’s storm, chapter XIV note 7. Claudius and Valerius: Badian (1966) 18–22 ; Luce (1977) 139–84 (mostly on Livy’s use of them and others in Books 31–45). A Clodius Licinus, cited once (Livy 29.22.10), may have been the consul of AD 4 who was a historian (Suetonius, De Grammaticis 20, and perhaps also Plutarch, Numa 1); thus Kukofka (1990) 142 note 61. But Livy wrote Books 21–30 probably around 20 BC (cf. Luce, 5 note 5), which would put this Clodius’ historical opus many decades before his consulate—not an unthinkable span, but difficult. More likely Livy’s Clodius was

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8 9 10

11

12

13

14

15

the historian whom Cicero names as one of Coelius’ inferior successors (De Legibus 1.2.6; so too Badian, 17, 20). On Polybius see F. W. Walbank’s study (1972) and of course his Commentary; also A. E. Astin, in CAH2 8.3–8. On symploke: Vollmer (1990). Polybius at Carthage, 38.19, 21–2. ‘How, and through what type of political system’, 1.1.5. Later decision to extend the History: 3.4–5. Zama: Pol. 15.9–19; Livy 30.33–7; Walbank, 2.453–71; H. E. Butler and H. H. Scullard, Livy, Book XXX (6th edn, London, 1954) 122–9. Lengthy listing of Second Punic War Livian variants from Polybius in Kukofka (1990) 165–7, who in impeccable quellenkritisch style ascribes all variants not to Livy but to a writer between Polybius and Livy, like Coelius Antipater. On Livy’s use of Polybius: P. G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge 1963), esp. 142–63; Luce (1977); Tränkle (1977). Mercenaries’ War an awful warning: Pol. 1.65.2–7, 67.4–6, 81.5–11. Relevant to Hannibal’s war: 67.8–9 (not that Polybius clearly explains how). Gisco in 203: Pol. 15.19.2; Livy 30.37.7–8. Sufete (βασιλευ´ς) in 218: Pol. 3.33.3; on Picard’s unconvincing notion that this was Bomilcar, brother-in-law of Hannibal, cf. chapter IV note 5. Democratic leanings at Carthage by 218: Pol. 6.51.6; cf. chapter VI §III. Sardinia: chapter IV §I; Hoyos (1998) 132–43. Carthaginians in the right in 218: Pol. 3.30.3–4; see chapter VII §IV. A Roman city-sack: 10.15.4–16.9 (New Carthage in 209); not totally representative of all sackings, cf. A. Ziolkowski, ‘Urbs direpta, or how the Romans sacked cities’, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Roman World (London 1993) 69–91. On Polybius’ life and activities, Walbank (1972) is an outstanding guide; for Polybius’ improvements to fire-signalling see Pol. 10.43–7; interview with Masinissa, 9.25.4–6; with eyewitnesses of Hannibal’s passage of the Alps, 3.48.12. On Diodorus generally: K. S. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton 1990). La Bua (1966) and Loreto (1995) analyse his sources for Books 22–5 with rigid Quellenkritik; cf. note 1 above and, on Loreto, Hoyos (1999). Diodorus on 264: Hoyos (1998) 82–6, cf. 85 note 6. On Livy generally see Walsh (note 10 above); Luce (1977); J. D. Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History (Oxford 2000). V. M. Warrior sees greater coherence and accuracy, at least in a later book, than usually credited to him: The Initiation of the Second Macedonian War: An Explication of Livy Book 31 (Stuttgart 1996), especially 23–35, 52–73, 91–3. On Hannibalica: Leidl (1993) 428–62, arguing (446–59) that Appian uses a preLivian source who, he thinks, is Coelius. Appian on the ‘Ebro’: Iber. 6.24; chapter VI §VI. Events in Africa from 204: e.g. the gory capture of ‘Locha’ (Lib. 15.62–3; Livy (29.35.4) has a town Salaeca taken without incident); Syphax’s machinations before Scipio’s attack on the enemy camps (Lib. 17.68–18.74) and his rôle, after capture, in the story of Sophoniba (27.113–16); and most notably Hannibal’s supposed activities, including a truce with Scipio, before Zama (36.151–39.161). Appian incidentally sites this battle near a town ‘Cilla’ and knows nothing of names like Naraggara or Zama (40.165): cf. Walbank, 2.449; Seibert, FzH 310–11. Cannae: Appian, Hann. 19.83–26.114. On the Iber-accord and Appian’s version of it, which incidentally dates it to Hamilcar’s time (Hann. 2.6): Hoyos (1998) 158, 160, 167–71, 292–3. Appian and the elder Scipios in Spain: Hoyos (2001b) 70–1, 78–89, 84–5, 88. Younger Scipio’s operations in 208–206: Iber. 24.93–36.146. Scipio versus Hannibal at Zama, Lib. 45.188–9. Unsatisfied with this touch of epic, Appian follows up with a Masinissa–Hannibal clash during the pursuit (46.195–7).

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16 Italian traders and other items in 241–237: chapters III §III, IV §I. Hannibal’s oath: chapter IV note 7; army-strength, chapter VIII note 15. Trasimene: Appian, Hann. 10.39–43. Italian troops massacred: chapter XIV §IV. 17 Iber. 9.33–5, Hann. 3.9–10 (Hannibal causes war); Hann. 5.17, 14.60 (kills prisoners), 31.132 (burns alive traitor’s family at Arpi), 43.183 (Lucanian mistress). On Hannibal’s plus side: Hann. 10.43 (mild to Italian prisoners), 26.111 (brilliance of Cannae), 35.152 (honours to Gracchus), 50.216–17 (to Marcellus); Lib. 37.155–38.158 (his foiled peace-effort), 55.241 (peace counsel after Zama). Leidl fails to persuade that this portrayal is largely hostile (1993) 441–2. 18 Coelius the basic source: Schwarte (1983) 26–7, 31–6; Leidl (1993) 456–9. 19 Nepos on Hannibal’s later life: Hann. 7–13; years of exile, 8–12. On 216 to 203: Hann. 5; much of it in fact concerns 217 (5.1–3). A verdict of ‘solid and reliable’ on Nepos’ Hannibalic chronology is too kind (J. Geiger, Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography (Stuttgart 1985) 110–11). Hannibal’s postwar position, Hann. 7.1–4; see chapter XV §II. 20 Dio’s Roman envoys in 219, Zon. 8.21; Hannibal after Trasimene, 8.25; treaty with Philip V, 9.4; Metaurus campaign, 9.9. Romans initially reject peace terms in 203: Dio, frg. 57.74 = Zon. 9.13; cf. chapter XIV §III. 21 Scipio’s true parentage: Silius 13.615–20. On Silius cf. C. Reitz in Der Neue Pauly 11 (2001) 557–9; D. W. T. C Vessey in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (Cambridge 1982) 2.590–6. Silius used against Polybius and Livy: Schwarte (1983), especially 1–36. Against this: B. D. Hoyos, ‘Polybius mendax?’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 10 (1985) 135–9, 153–6; cf. Hoyos (1998) 226–32. 22 Eutropius 2.18–3.23 (Punic Wars period); also 4.5 (Hannibal’s suicide). Justin on the Barcids: notably 44.5.4–7 (in Spain), 29.1.7 (Hannibal’s odium Romanorum), 31.1.7–2.8 (his exile), 31.3.5–6.3 (dealings with Antiochus; the lengthiest episode), 32.2–12 (last years and laudatory obituary). 23 On Valerius Maximus, Frontinus, Florus, Polyaenus and Orosius see, conveniently, OCD 3. Oros. 4.7–19 reports the Punic wars to 201. De Viris Illustribus: the manuscripts claim Pliny the Younger as author while in early modern times the fourth-century epitomizing historian Aurelius Victor was suggested; the real author remains unknown (F. Pichlmayr in his Teubner edition of Victor and De Vir. Ill. (1911; revised by R. Gruendel, 1970) x–xi).

284

BIBLIOGRAPH Y

Abbreviations AS AHB AJP Appian, Hann. Appian, Iber. Appian, Lib. Appian, Sic. Appian, Syr. Broughton, MRR CAH1, CAH2 Cassiod. CP Degrassi, ILLRP Diod. Eutrop. frg. FGrH Gsell, HAAN HZ ILS Itin. Ant. Itin. Rav. Kl P Livy, Epit. LSJ NF OCD3 Oros.

Kromayer and Veith, Antike Schlachtfelder Ancient History Bulletin American Journal of Philology Appian, Hannibalica Appian, Iberica Appian, Libyca Sic Appian, Syriaca Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic Cambridge Ancient History, 1st and 2nd edns Cassiodorus Classical Philology Degrassi, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae Diodorus Eutropius fragment Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischer Historiker Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord Historische Zeitschrift Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau (Berlin 1892–1916) Itinerarium Antonini Itinerarium Ravennatis Der Kleine Pauly Livy, Epitome Liddell, Scott and Jones, Greek Lexicon, 6th edn (Oxford 1968) Neue Folge [New Series] Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn Orosius

285

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Picard and Picard, LDC Pliny, NH Pol. RE & Supplbd. RÉL RhM RSA Schmitt, SVA Schulten, FHA SEG Seibert, FzH Seibert, Hann. St. Byz. Val. Max. Zon.

Picard and Picard, The Life and Death of Carthage Pliny, Naturalis Historia Polybius Paulys Realencyclopädie der Altertumswissenschaft, and supplements Revue des Études Latines Rheinisches Museum für Philologie Rivista di Storia Antica Schmitt, Die Staatsverträge des Altertums, vol. 3 Schulten, Fontes Hispaniae Antiquae Sylloge Epigraphica Graeca Seibert, Forschungen zu Hannibal Seibert, Hannibal Stephanus of Byzantium Valerius Maximus Zonaras

Works cited Ancient Appian, Hannibalica, Iberica, Libyca, Sic, Syriaca Aristotle, Politics Aurelius Victor, Caesares Cassiodorus, Chronica Cato, Origines: in H. Peter (ed.), Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae (2 vols: Leipzig 1906–14) Cicero (various works) Dio (L. Cassius Dio), Historia Romana Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica Ennius, Annales, ed. O. Skutsch (Oxford 1985) Eutropius, Compendium Historiae Romanae Florus, Epitome Frontinus, Strategemata Gellius, Noctes Atticae Itinerarium Antonini Itinerarium Ravennatis Justin, Trogi Pompei Historiarum Philippicarum Epitome Livy, Ab Urbe Condita [cited as Livy] Livy, Epitome [cited as Livy, Epit.] Mela, De Chorographia Nepos, Hamilcar Nepos, Hannibal Orosius, Historia adversus Paganos

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295

INDEX

Very frequent names (e.g. Carthage, Hannibal, Livy, Polybius, Rome, Sicily) are not included Abdera (Spain), 65, 73 Accabicon Teichos (Spain), 80 Acerrae, 124, 133 Achaean League, 75 Acra Leuce (Spain), 63–9, 73, 80, 90, 208, 226 Acragas, see Agrigentum Adherbal (Carthaginian name), 21 Adherbal (general in Sicily in 250–249), 9, 23, 36 admiration for Barcids, 4–5, 210, 216–17 Adriatic, 13, 63, 81, 94, 116, 126, 134, 148 Aecae, 135 Aegates Islands, 18–19, 30, 125, 221, 233 Aegimurus island (Zembra), 173 Aemilius Paullus, L., 107, 118–19, 150 Aerenosii and Andosini (north-east Spain), 110 Aetolian League, 199 Africa (Roman province after 146), 180 Agathocles, 27, 32, 75, 113, 233 Agrigentum, 8–9, 14, 26, 212 Alce (Spain), 68, 90 Alexander the Acarnanian, 204 Alexander the Great, 2, 38, 63, 67, 75, 98, 105, 125, 132, 176 Alexandria, 63, 218 Alicante, 59, 63–5, 79, 226 Allobroges, 110, 112 Almería, 59 Alonis (Spain), 226 Alps, 100, 103, 105, 107, 110–12, 126, 135, 146, 209, 213, 227–8 Alpujarras, Las (Spain), 59 Alsium, 13 Althia (Spain), 89, 96 Anas (Guadiana), 57, 68–9, 74, 83–4

Andalusia, 57 annalists, Roman, 157, 190, 195, 214, 217–18, 220, 229 annals of the pontifices, 217 Antigonus Doson, king of Macedon, 75 Antiochus III, 53, 107, 189–91, 195, 203–6, 221, 235 Appian, 2, 4, 10, 21, 24, 35–7, 47, 51–2, 62, 73, 77, 83, 85–6, 88–9, 97, 99, 128, 139–40, 143, 154, 157, 162–3, 168, 170–3, 178, 180, 183, 191, 200, 218–20, 223, 226, 229, 232 Apulia, 116–22, 132, 134–7, 146–8, 150, 230, 234 Aratus, 75 arbitration at Saguntum, Roman, 95–6 Arbucala (Spain), 90–1 Arcilacis (Elche de la Sierra?), 69 Aristo of Tyre, 197–8, 200, 204, 235 Aristotle on Carthage, 22, 29–31, 48, 77, 79, 183–4, 186, 212, 216 Armenia, 206 armistice after Zama, 186 armistice in 203, 167, 169–70, 173, 231 Arno (river), 115, 234 Arpi, 122–3, 128, 132–3, 135, 234 Artaxata, 206 Artaxias of Armenia, 206 assembly, citizen (at Carthage), see citizen assembly at Carthage Astarte (goddess), 15, 25 Atella, 122 Athens, 28, 72, 193, 207 Aufidus (river), 118 Augustus, 4 Aurelius Victor, 181, 222 Aurgi (Jaén), 69

296

INDEX

Aurinx (cf. Aurgi, Orongis), 69 Ausetani (north-east Spain), 108 Autaritus (rebel leader), 16, 37, 41–2, 71 Ba’al Hammon, 27, 53, 108 Ba’al Shamim, 27, 53 Ba’lu of Tyre (seventh century), 21 Baebelo (Spain), 85, 222, 225 Baebius Tamphilus, Q., 92, 94, 96–8 Baecula (Spain), 144, 219, 235 Baetis (Guadalquivir), 55–9, 63, 69–70, 80, 140 Baeturii (Spain), 57 Bagradas (Medjerda, river), 37, 42 Balearic islands, 153, 156, 167, 197 Balearic slingers, 110, 137, 228 Barca (Dido’s brother), 21 Barcid (family sobriquet), 1 Barcid family estates, 22, 187 Barcid support at Carthage, 2–4, 37, 40, 43, 48, 52, 60, 76, 78, 88–9, 97, 100, 107, 121, 130–2, 142–3, 155–8, 160–1, 163–4, 167, 173, 182–3, 189, 193, 198, 200, 210 Barcids and naval matters, 3, 105, 155, 175 Barcino (Spain), 108 Bargusii (north-east Spain), 108 Bastetani (Spain), 58, 69 Belus (Dido’s father), 21 Beneventum, 123, 128, 132, 135–6 Bigerra (Spain), 69 Bithynia, 206, 235 Boards of Five (Carthage), see pentarchies Boii, 61, 104, 111, 227 Bomilcar (Barcid in-law?), 21, 51, 88, 128–9, 141, 154–5, 163, 172, 186, 223 Bomilcar (Carthaginian name), 21 Bomilcar (fourth century), 32–3, 233 booty, 9–10, 13, 28, 86, 89–91, 100, 113, 115, 117, 141, 144, 146, 160, 182, 213–14, 218 borrowings from Greece by Carthaginians, 26, 67, 72, 208 Bostar, 16 Bostar (Carthaginian name), 21 bribery, see corruption at Carthage Brundisium, 13, 114, 132 Bruttians, Bruttium, 12, 14, 122–4, 127–9, 132, 135–7, 143, 145, 147–8, 150, 154, 159–60, 162–3, 165, 229, 235 Byrsa hill, 24, 27, 31, 197 Byzacium, see Emporia Caecilius Metellus, Q., 169 Caere, 25

Caesar, Julius, 4, 41, 208 Calatia, 122 Calor (river), 123, 128, 135, 234 Campania, 102, 117, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 135–7, 141, 185, 234 Cannae, 51, 88, 106, 118–21, 122, 124–30, 133, 134–6, 145, 148, 150, 152, 157, 159, 176–8, 209, 213–15, 218–20, 228, 230, 234 Cantabrians (Spain), 56 Canusium, 135, 137, 147–8, 150, 230 Cape de la Nao, 55, 64, 84, 226 Cape de los Palos, 80 Cape Lacinium (Capo Colonna), 106, 110, 159, 171, 213 Cape Pachynus, 8–9, 136, 233 Capo Colonna, 159 Capua, 102, 122–3, 126–8, 132, 136, 141, 145, 157, 234 Carpetani, 83–4, 90–1, 98, 110, 138, 234 Cartagena, see New Carthage Cartalia (‘old Carthage’ (?), Spain), 79 Carthalo (Carthaginian name), 21 Carthalo (general in Sicily in 249–247), 9–11, 13, 23, 36 Carthalo (Hannibal’s officer), 125 Carthalo (in 152), 200 Casilinum, 124, 133, 135 Cassiodorus, 223 Castra Claudiana, 132 Castrum Album, 65 Castrum Altum, 65, 69, 140, 233 Castulo (Spain), 58, 65–6, 69–70, 74, 88, 140, 144, 155 Catana, 13 Catius, Q., 150 Caudini, 122 Caulonia, 137, 150 Celtiberians, Celtiberia, 45, 56–7, 68, 70, 83–4, 90, 136, 139, 152, 162 Centenius Paenula, M. (prefect (?) in 212), 218, 229 Centenius, C. (cavalry officer in 217), 229 Cercina (Kerkennah, island), 198 Chaereas, 214 chronology, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 58–61, 67, 70, 76, 78, 85–6, 100, 102–3, 107, 112, 140, 150, 162, 168, 171, 173–5, 182, 190–1, 206, 216, 231–2, 233–5 Cicero, 214 Cieza (Spain), see Segisa Cincius Alimentus, L., 111, 130, 214, 217, 227 Cirta, 120, 162 Cisalpine Gaul, 82–3, 104, 109, 111, 124,

297

INDEX

132, 134, 144, 146, 148–9, 164, 181, 204–5, 209, 216, 234 Cissis (Spain), 138 Citium (Cyprus), 79 citizen assembly at Carthage, 2, 31, 39, 77, 87, 89, 166, 194, 200, 207 citizenship, Punic, 77, 122, 127 Clampetia, 160 Clastidium, 114 Claudius Marcellus, M., 4, 120–1, 134–5, 137, 141, 145–6, 150, 214, 219–20, 234–5 Claudius Marcellus, M. (consul in 196), 190–1 Claudius Nero, C., 140, 145–50, 155, 230 Claudius Quadrigarius, 214, 217 Cleomenes III of Sparta, 208 clubs, communal, at Carthage, 29 Coelius Antipater, L., 169–70, 214, 219, 227 coins, 26, 34, 45, 58, 72–3, 84, 185, 224 colonies, Barcid, 51, 63, 76, 79, 208 colonies, Latin, 63, 114, 132, 148 colonists, Punic, 6, 246 commerce, see trade, traders Compsa, 135 Conii (Algarve, Portugal), 83 Consentia, 124, 159–60 Constantine VII (Byzantine emperor), 215 constitution of Carthage, 29–30, 76, 182, 212 Contestani, 56 Cordillera Ibérica, 83, 90 Cornelius Lentulus, L. (senator in 218), 99 Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, P., 180, 215, 235 Cornelius Scipio, Cn., 103, 109, 112, 118, 131, 134, 137–41, 197, 209, 219, 234–5 Cornelius Scipio, P. (consul in 218), 103–5, 107–9, 112–14, 118, 121, 131, 138–41, 143, 209, 219, 234–5 Cornelius Scipio, P. (consul in 205; later Africanus), 4,113, 140, 142–4, 146, 152–62, 164–83, 186, 190, 198, 201, 206, 210, 212, 214–15, 218–21, 321, 235 corruption at Carthage, 22, 48, 185–7, 195 Corsica, 49 councillors from Carthage, Barcid, 51, 75, 107, 123 Crete, 205 Crispinus, see Quinctius Crispinus, T. Croton, 127, 132, 150, 159, 174 Cumae, 13, 124, 135 Cunctator, see Fabius Maximus

Cynoscephalae, 188 Cyrenaica, 204 Cyrene, 26, 204, 231 De Viris Illustribus (anonymous work), 263 Delphi, 222 Demetrias (Greece), 204 democracy at Carthage, alleged, 77, 188, 210, 216 democracy in Italy, Hannibal’s supposed favour for, 123–4 democrats at Carthage (in 150s), 200 deserters, 18, 36, 41, 44, 58, 108, 110–12, 128, 135, 138, 146–7, 167, 173, 176, 179, 183, 229 Despeñaperros, pass of (Spain), 69 Dido, 21, 24 Dio (L. Cassius Dio), 4, 11, 61, 99, 168, 182, 210, 220 Diodorus, 4–5, 13, 16, 32, 35, 44, 47–8, 55–9, 63–5, 79–82, 67–71, 73–4, 79–80, 85, 129, 171, 173, 217, 219 Dion (fourth-century Syracusan liberator), 75 Dionysius the Elder (tyrant of Syracuse), 32, 74–6 dream, Hannibal’s, 108, 213–14 Drepana, 8–19, 233 Durius (Duero, river), 56, 70–1, 84, 90–1 Ebro (river; ancient Iber, Iberus), 2, 68, 79, 82–4, 90–6, 101–2, 106, 108, 118, 134, 137–8, 140–1, 143–4, 213, 218–19, 234, see also Iber Ebro accord, 2, 62, 81–4, 94, 218, 234 Ebusus, 50, 63–5, 80, 167 Edetani (Spain), 56 Egypt, 10, 25–7, 63, 79, 107 Elche, see Ilici Elche de la Sierra (Arcilacis?), 69 elephants, 2, 38, 55, 65, 67–8, 73–4, 85, 100, 111, 114, 128, 130, 149, 154, 178, 179 Elymians, 9 embassy of 220, Roman, 92–7, 208 Emporia (later Byzacium), 22, 27, 40, 43–4, 180, 188, 224 Emporiae (Spain), 82, 84, 103, 138 Ennius, 77 Ephesus, 190, 203, 210, 235 Epicydes (Hannibal’s agent), 130–1, 134, 187, 234 Eryx, Mount, 13–18, 71, 223, 233 Eshmoun, 24, 27 Etruria, Etruscans, 8, 13, 25, 82, 115, 120, 123, 133, 148–9, 155, 204, 234

298

INDEX

Eumachus of Neapolis, 180, 214 Eumenes, king of Pergamum, 206 Eutropius, 4, 221, 231 Fabian strategy, 117–18, 133 Fabius (senator in 219), see Fabius Buteo, M. Fabius Buteo, M., 61, 99, 107 Fabius Maximus, Q. (consul in 213), 135 Fabius Maximus, Q., the Delayer (Cunctator), 4, 38, 60, 99, 117–18, 133, 135, 137, 143, 145–7, 154, 156, 158–9, 165, 218, 220, 234–5 Fabius Pictor, Q., 51–2, 62, 72, 75–6, 78–9, 87, 111, 166, 173, 212–14, 217, 229, 231 fides, Hannibal on, 95–6 finances, 2, 45, 50, 141, 187, 191, 194–6 First Punic War, 125, 212–13, 215–17, 233 Flaminius, C., 115–16, 122, 147, 150 fleet, Seleucid, 204–5 fleets, Carthaginian, 7, 10, 12, 17–18, 24, 40, 51, 62, 75, 115–16, 119, 121, 130, 136, 138, 141, 154–6, 159–60, 162, 171, 173,175, 177, 196, 224 fleets, Roman, 8, 11, 16–19, 62–3, 103, 107, 120–1, 141, 154, 159, 173, 175 Florus, 221 Fregenae, 13 Frontinus, 221 Fulvius Centumalus, Cn., 137 Fulvius Flaccus, Q., 145, 150 Fundanius, C., 16 Furius Purpureo, L. (consul in 196), 190, 199 Gabès, gulf of, 27 Gades, 25, 45, 55–8, 63, 65–6, 73, 80, 87, 107, 152, 156, 231 Gaesati, 111 Gaia (Numidian king), 153, 226 Gallaecians (Spain), 56 Gauls, 11–12, 16, 24, 61–2, 81–2, 100–1, 103–4, 109–12, 114–15, 118–20, 128, 137, 145–8, 211, 228, 234 Gelo (son of Hiero II), 124 generals, election of, 2, 30–1, 39, 43, 47, 73, 75, 77, 87, 118 Genua, 154 Gerunium, 118 ‘Gestar’, 51 Gisco (Carthaginian in 202/201), 178, 181, 186, 216 Gisco (Carthaginian name), 21 Gisco (officer at Cannae), 88, 118, 216, 220

Gisco (officer in and after 241), 18–19, 34–6, 38–9, 42, 58 Gortyn, 205 Great Plains, the, 162, 174, 178 Greater Syrtes, 25, 27 Greek borrowings, see borrowings from Greece by Carthaginians Grumentum, 147 Guadalquivir, see Baetis hadirim, h’drm (the Mighty Ones), see senate, Carthaginian Hadrumetum, 27, 172, 178, 225 Halicyae, 9 Hamae (Campania), 135 Hamilcar (Carthaginian name), 21 Hamilcar (general in 260s/250s), 21 Hamilcar (king in 480), 25, 32 Hamilcar (postwar renegade in Cisalpine Gaul), 181, 183, 187 Hamilcar Barca, 1–74, 76–7, 79, 83, 85–8, 103, 105, 123, 139–40, 143, 145, 156, 158, 172, 201, 206–7, 211–13, 216–17, 223, 233 Hamilcar the Samnite, 200 Hammamet, 22, 79, 224 Hannibal (Carthaginian name), 21 ‘Hannibal at the gates!’ (proverb), 136 Hannibal (general in 239), 42 Hannibal Monomachus, 88, 107, 124, 186 Hannibal son of Hamilcar Barca, passim Hannibal (trierarch in 214), 131 Hannibal’s inscription, 106, 159, 213, 216 Hannibal’s oath, see oath-story ‘Hannibal’s quarter’ (at Carthage), 197 Hannibal’s tomb (Bithynia), 206 Hanno (admiral in 241), 17–18, 30 Hanno (Carthaginian name), 21 Hanno (commandant in north-east Spain), 103, 106, 108, 137–8, 227 Hanno (general in Sicily in 212), 131 Hanno son of Bomilcar (Hannibal’s nephew), 21, 88, 109, 128–31, 135–6, 147–8, 150, 154, 163–4, 172, 186, 223, 229, 234 Hanno son of Hamilcar (officer in North Africa in 205–204), 142 Hanno the Great, 22, 35–46, 48–9, 51, 59, 73–4, 78, 85, 87–8, 103, 107, 118, 130, 142, 156–8, 163–4, 183, 200, 207, 211 Hanno the Great (fourth century), 32, 71 Hasdrubal (admiral in 203), 170–1, 173–4 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian name), 21 Hasdrubal (Hannibal’s brother), 32, 66, 88–9, 100, 102, 111, 116, 118, 130, 134,

299

INDEX

141, 144–50, 152, 178, 181, 186, 209, 219, 227, 235 Hasdrubal ‘the Bald’, 131 Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’, 157, 180, 182–3 Hasdrubal son of Gisco, 3, 51, 77, 131, 137, 139–40, 142–5, 152–6, 158, 160–2, 172, 175, 178, 182, 184, 186, 207, 221, 235 Hecatompylus (Theveste, Tebessa), 10, 45 Heircte, Mount, 7, 12–15, 20, 71, 233 Helice, 65, 68–71, 73 Hellín, see Ilunum Helmantice, see Hermandica Hemeroscopeion (Dianium, Spain), 226 Heraclea, 124, 135 Herdonea, 122, 128, 135–7, 141, 234 Hermandica (Salamanca), 90–1, 96 Hibera, battle of, 132, 134, 138, 140, 144, 234 Hiero II of Syracuse, 8–9, 12–13, 18–19, 37, 75, 94, 124, 233–4 Hieronymus, king of Syracuse, 124, 131, 134, 234 High Mightinesses, the (Dutch StatesGeneral), 30 Himilco (Barcid ally in 216; father of Maharbal?), 51, 88 Himilco (Carthaginian name), 21 Himilco (commander in Sicily in 213), 131 Himilco (general sent to Spain in 216), 169139 Hippo Zarytos (Hippou Acra), 64 Hippocrates (Hannibal’s agent), 130–1, 134, 234 Hippou Acra, 25, 27, 31, 34, 36, 38–40, 42–4, 47–8, 51, 64,130–1, 161, 206, 225 Hirpini, 122 Hispalis (Seville), 155 Horace, 210 Iber (river), 68, 102, 103, see also Ebro Iberians, 45–6, 56, 74–5 Ilercavones (Spain), 79 Ilerda (Lleida, Lérida), 108 Ilergetes, 84, 108, 144 Ilici, 65, 68–9, 80 Ilipa, 152, 155, 157, 178, 219, 235 Iliturgi (Spain), 79, 140 Illyria, Illyrians, 63, 98, 100, 124, 126, 134, 211 Ilucia (Spain), 68 Ilunum (Hellín?, Spain), 68–9 ‘Ilurgetes’, 108 Imilce (Hannibal’s wife), 2, 88, 206 indemnity, 9, 18–19, 23, 28, 38, 45, 55, 61,

161, 167, 176–7, 179–81, 185, 187, 194–5, 235 independence, alleged Barcid, 2, 52, 78–80 Indibilis, 84, 108, 138–40, 144 Indortes (Spanish leader), 58, 71 Insubres, 104, 110–11 Intercatia (Spain), 91 Iol, 25 Ionian Sea, 135, 156, 204 Istolatius (Spanish leader), 57–8 Italium, 13 Italy, southern, 117, 126, 130–3, 135–6, 145–7, 155, 159, 186, 209, 234–5 Jaén, see Aurgi Jason of Pherae, 32 Júcar, see Sucro Jugurtha, 199 Junius Pera, M., 120 Junius Silanus, M., 152 Justin, 4, 32, 220–1, 231 kings, Carthaginian, 29, 31–2, 51 La Mancha, plains of, 65, 68, 84, 90 Lacetani (north-east Spain), 108 ‘Lady of Elche’, 56 Laelius, C., 120, 156, 160, 162, 166–9, 173, 177–8 Larinum, 147, 229 Lascuta (Spain), 73 Latium, 25, 120 Lentulus, see Cornelius Lentulus, L. Lepcis Magna, 25, 27, 79, 196, 206, 224–5 Leptis Minor, 27,43, 172, 224–5 Lesser Syrtes, 27, 44, 224 Libya, Libyans, 1, 10–11, 25, 27–9, 31, 34–9, 41–6, 48, 71, 73, 85, 106, 112, 182, 196, 211, 225–6 Liguria, Ligurians, 61, 94, 146, 154, 157, 179, 204, 235 Lilybaeum, 8, 10, 12–14, 17–19, 38, 159 Lipara Islands, 19 Livius Salinator, M., 107, 146, 148–50, 169, 230 Lixus, 25 Lleida, Lérida, see Ilerda Locri, 12, 121–3, 127–8, 132, 145–6, 150, 152, 159, 228, 234 Longane, 13 Longon, 13 Lucania, Lucanians, 122–3, 128, 135–7, 145–7, 150, 159, 219, 229 Lucentum, 63–5 Luceria, 132

300

INDEX

Lusitania, Lusitanians, 56, 83 Lutatius Catulus, C., 16–19, 37–8, 50, 61, 167, 169–70, 180 Macedon, 28, 32, 71, 74–5, 105, 124–5, 132, 134, 141, 154, 183, 188, 199, 202, 204–5, 209, 213, 215, 234–5, see also Philip V of Macedon Macomades (New Place), 79 Mactar, 225 Magius, Decius (Capuan dissident), 122 Mago (sixth-century ruler), 32, 233 Mago (Barcid relative), 51 Mago (Carthaginian name), 21 Mago (Hannibal’s brother), 22, 66, 88, 114, 119, 121–2, 128, 130–1, 137, 139–40, 142, 149, 152–6, 164–7, 169, 171–3, 181, 189, 197, 204, 206, 209, 231, 235 Mago the Samnite, 51, 86, 145, 186, 189 Magonids, 32–3, 45, 57, 63, 71, 206, 233 Maharbal, 51, 88, 98, 115, 119–20, 131, 186 Maharbal’s proposal to Hannibal, 119–20, 214, 220 Mahón (Minorca), 197 Malaca, 25, 65, 73 Malchus, 32, 105, 233 Malta, 50 Mamertines, 8–9, 13, 95–6 Mandonius, 84, 138–9, 144 Maqom-hadasht, see Macomades march on Rome (Hannibal’s in 211), 136 march to Italy (Hannibal’s), 87, 98–113, 208–9, 216, 227–8, 234 march to Italy (Hasdrubal’s), 111, 144, 146–51, 235 march-speeds, 108 marriages, Barcid, 2, 25, 38, 52, 74, 88, 189, 223, 226 Masaesyli (Numidia), 60, 153 Masinissa, 120, 140, 153, 160–2, 172, 174–81, 183, 187–8, 198–202, 208, 216, 224, 226, 235 massacre by Hannibal in 203 (alleged), 171, 219 Massilia, 26, 61, 64, 226 Massyli (Numidia), 59–60, 153, 226 Mastia Tarseiou (New Carthage), 45, 64–5, 79–80 Mathos (Libyan rebel leader), 38, 40–2, 44 Mazaetullus, 153, 172 Mediolanum (Milan), 111, 114 meeting between Hannibal and Scipio, 176–7 Megara, Carthage suburb, 24, 28, 225

Melqart, 27, 72, 87, 107–8 mercenaries, 1, 12–13, 16, 19, 23, 25–6, 29, 34–9, 44–9, 57, 67, 70–1, 73, 84, 95–6, 118, 128, 172, 175, 177, 179, 182, 196, 206–7, 211, 216, 219, 223, 234 merchants, see trade, traders ‘Mesotylus’, see Mazaetullus Messana, 8, 13, 159, 233 Metapontum, 124, 135, 137, 146–7, 150, 234 Metaurus, battle of the, 149–50, 152, 156–7, 230, 235 Metellus, see Caecilius Metellus, Q. mhsbm ‘the accountables’ (Latin quaestores), 191, 231 Micatani (Numidia), 44 Mighty Ones, see senate, Carthaginian mines, Punic, 58, 64, 71, 225 Minucius Rufus, M., 117, 218 mistress, Hannibal’s (alleged), 219 Mithridates VI of Pontus, 210, 218 molk (child sacrifice), 27 monopoly of trade, alleged Punic, 26 Mons Idubeda, see Cordillera Ibérica Mons Marianus, see Sierra Morena Mons Victoriae (Spain), 69 Monte Castellaccio (Sicily), 8 Monte Gallo (Sicily), 8 Monte Pecoraro (Sicily), 8 Monte Pellegrino (Sicily), 8 Mottones, 131 Murcia, 59 Nabeul (Neapolis, Punic North Africa), 79 Naples, see Neapolis (Naples) Napoleon (in 1812), 110 Naravas, 25, 38, 44, 44, 52, 59, 71, 153, 172, 223, 226 Narnia, 148–9 naval ports at Carthage, 2–3, 24, 89, 105, 130, 165, 196, 223–4 navy, Carthaginian, see fleets, Carthaginian Neapolis (Lepcis Magna), 79 Neapolis (Punic North Africa), 79 Neapolis (Naples), 26, 128, 132, 135, 180 Neapolis (at Carthage), 79 Nepos, 2, 4, 21, 52, 59, 71, 181–2, 189, 190–1, 194, 196, 200, 204, 219–20, 231 New Carthage (Cartagena), 2, 45, 64, 79–81, 84–6, 90–3, 97, 99, 101–2, 104, 106–8, 112, 138, 143–4, 153, 213, 218–19, 225, 234–5 niece of Hannibal (in 206, name unknown), 52, 153, 172, 223, 226 Nola, 123–4, 128, 132, 135

301

INDEX

North Italy, see Cisalpine Gaul Nrwt (Naravas?), 226 Nuceria, 124, 128, 135 Numantia, 70 Numidia, 28, 45, 49, 52, 60, 66, 76, 142, 152, 157, 161–2, 175, 180, 208, 226, 235 Numidian kings and princes, 2, 14, 22, 25–6, 44, 86, 140, 153, 172, 189, 223 Numidians, 10, 25, 34, 36, 38, 44–5, 59, 66, 74, 86, 105–6, 118, 128–9, 135, 147, 153, 160, 162, 201, 235 Numistro (battle), 128, 135, 137, 141, 235 oath-story, Hannibal’s, 53–4, 61–2, 87, 203, 219, 221 Oea, 224 Oezalces, 52, 153, 172, 223, 226 Olcades, 84, 86, 89–91, 97, 227, 234 ‘old Carthage’ (Spain), 79 One Hundred and Four, tribunal of, 30, 32, 35, 77–8, 143, 158, 164, 183–5, 188, 191–3, 195–6, 198, 200, 207, 212 Onusa, 108 ‘order of judges’, 31, 77, 143, 158, 216, see also One Hundred and Four, tribunal of Oretani, Oretes, Orissi, 67–8, 70, 73–4, 84, 90, 97–8 Orongis (Aurgi, Aurinx, Jaén?), 69 Orosius, 4, 48, 221 Ostia, 50, 119–21 Pacuvius Calavius, 120, 123 Paestum, 132 Pallantia, 91 Panormus, 7, 12–14, 25 papyrus fragment (P. Rylands 491), 168, 173–4, 213, 231 Pausanias, 222 peace of 203 (abortive), 167–70, 172–3, 176, 180, 235 Peisistratus, 78 pentarchies (Carthage), 30, 182, 184, 212 Pentri, 122, 132 Perseus, king of Macedon, 199, 202 Petelia, 124, 127, 229 Philinus, 212–13, 217 Philip II of Macedon, 71–2, 74, 132 Philip V of Macedon, 121, 124–7, 134, 145, 155, 157, 183, 188, 204, 213, 234–5 Phoenicia, 15, 21, 24–5, 27, 71, 189 Phoenician Trenches, 180 Phormio, 203 Pisae, 115 Placentia, 114, 146 Pliny the Elder, 85, 180, 206, 333, 334

Plutarch, 4, 88, 145, 220, 231 Po (river), 81, 94, 114, 146 Poenulus, comedy by Plautus, 185 Polyaenus, 221 Pompeius Trogus, 221, see also Justin population, 9, 28, 41, 72, 129, 225–6 Porcius Cato, M. (the Censor), 61, 71–2, 119, 198, 206, 210, 214 privateers, 10–11 Prusa (Bithynia), 206, 210 Prusias, 206, 210 Ptolemy (geographer), 69, 74, 79, 222 Ptolemy II, 10 ‘Punic apples’, 28 Puteoli, 124, 132, 135 Pyrenees, 55, 82–3, 92, 94, 102–3, 106–12, 137, 209, 227 Pyrgi, 25 Pyrrhus, 75, 125, 168, 210, 233 Qart-hadasht (‘New City’), 24, 79–90 ‘quaestor’ (at Carthage), see mhsbm Quinctius Crispinus, T. (consul in 208), 145 rab (Punic title), 30, 231 rab kohanim (chief of priests), 231 raids, 10, 12–13, 15, 17, 44, 89, 113, 141, 155, 171, 186 razors, ritual, 28 recruitment in Italy, Hannibal’s, 128–9 Regulus, 9, 18–19, 26–7, 33, 67, 113, 157, 166, 233 reinforcements to Hannibal, 109, 121, 128–30 Reshep, 27 revenge-war theory, 61–2, 68, 72, 78, 81, 88, 95, 216 revenues, 10–11, 23, 27–8, 45, 71–2, 141, 181, 184–5, 194–6, 224–5 Rhegium, 123, 132, 136, 146 Rhodes, 28, 205, 207 Rhône, 103–6, 109–11, 209, 216 Río Tinto, 56 ‘royal trench’ (fossa regia), 180 Ruscino (Perpignan), 109 Rusicade, 25 Sabratha, 224 ‘sacred council’ (Carthage), 30, 164, 166 Saguntum, Saguntines, 2, 56, 62, 84, 92–7, 98–101, 107, 140, 208, 210, 213, 218, 220, 226, 234 Salamanca, 80 Salapia, 122, 128, 132, 137, 145

302

INDEX

Saltigi (Chincilla, Spain), 69 Samnium, Samnites, 8, 102, 117, 122–3, 127–8, 132–3, 135–6, 145 Sardinia, 2, 9, 18, 23, 25–6, 29, 38, 44–5, 47, 51, 53, 55, 60–2, 80–2, 93, 96, 99, 105, 115, 127, 129–30, 132, 134, 141, 159, 176, 199, 211, 216, 219, 233 Saw, The (mountain ridge?), 41–2, 58, 71 Scipio, see Cornelius Scipio Segesta, 9 Segisa (Spain), 69–70 Segura (river), see Tader Sempronius Gracchus, Ti., 128, 135, 219 Sempronius Longus, Ti., 104, 112–13 Sena Gallica, 149 senate, Carthaginian, 22, 29–31, 39, 51–2, 56, 76–7, 79, 107, 119, 130–1, 164–6, 173, 178, 184, 186, 188, 192, 197–200, 207 Senate, Roman, 48, 50, 61, 97, 99, 112, 125, 145–6, 148, 157, 165–72, 174–5, 183, 199, 218 Septimius Severus (Roman emperor), 4, 206 Servilius Caepio, Cn. (envoy in 195), 197–9 Servilius Geminus, Cn., 115 shouphetim, sptm, 30, see also sufete Sicels, 9 Side (Pamphylia), 205 sieges, Hannibal’s limitations in, 91, 98, 119–20, 138 Sierra Morena, 57–9, 65, 68–70, 85, 88 Sierra Nevada, 59 Siga, 153 Silenus, 67, 75, 101, 108, 111, 116, 132, 170, 181, 186, 190, 213–14, 217, 220, 227, 229 Silius Italicus, 21, 51, 71, 86, 88, 92, 99, 142, 210, 220–1 Sirte, gulf of, 25, 27, see also Greater Syrtes; Lesser Syrtes slaves, 27–9, 31, 42, 59, 74, 100, 112, 121, 125, 127, 162, 167, 175, 225–6 Solon and Croesus, meeting of, 176 Sophoniba, 25, 142, 153, 161–2 Sosylus, 26, 67, 75, 111, 116, 132, 181, 186, 190, 208, 213–14, 216–17, 220, 229 sources, source-problems, 4–6, 28–9, 35–6, 38, 47, 52–3, 56, 60–1, 64–5, 68, 70–1, 75–6, 78, 116, 119, 128–32, 137, 139–40, 143–4, 147, 149–50, 156, 159, 162–3, 166–71, 173–4, 176, 180–1, 183, 190, 195–6, 200, 210, 212–22 Sparta, 29, 67, 208, 213 Spendius (rebel leader), 37–8, 41–3, 71

spies, 104, 169, 176 States-General, Dutch, 30 Stephanus of Byzantium, 80, 222, 226 Strabo, 28–9, 59, 64, 79, 222, 225–6 straits of Gibraltar, 25, 55, 80 stratagems, Hannibalic, 114–15, 117–18, 137, 218 strategos autokrator (Hasdrubal in Spain), 74–5 Sucro (Júcar river, Spain), 64, 84, 226 sufete, sufetes, 30–1, 51, 97, 182, 184, 187–200, 207, 216–17, 231, 35, see also shouphetim, sptm Sulla (Roman dictator), 214 ‘supreme general’ (title), 74, see also strategos autokrator Syphax, 60, 120, 139, 142–3, 153, 157, 160–2, 164, 167–8, 171–2, 175, 199, 206, 235 Syria, 189–90, 198 Tader (river, Spain), 68, 71 Tagus (river), 56, 68–9, 71, 83–4, 90–2, 138, 218–19 Tanit pene Ba’al, 27 Tarentum, 28, 81, 121, 123–4, 128–9, 135–7, 141, 143, 145–7, 155, 207, 224, 234–5 Tarraco, 108, 138, 144 Tarshish, Tartessians, Tartessus, 56–8, 138–9, 227 Taurini, 111 tax, taxes (Punic), 10–11, 25, 27, 38–9, 127, 164, 185, 194–6, 206, 224–5 Teanum, 120 Tebessa, see Hecatompylus Terentius Culleo, Q., 190 Terentius Varro, C., 118, 120, 127 Thabraca, 44 Thapsus, 27, 198, 225 Tharros, 80 Thefarie Velianas, 25 Thersitae, 227, see also Turis, Turitani Theveste, 16, 52, 59, Thiar, see Tiar Third Macedonian War, 28 Third Punic War, 24, 28, 89, 180, 200, 211, 218, 235 Thoas of Aetolia, 204 Thugga, 44, 224 Thurii, 124, 135, 189, 234 Tiar, 80 Tiber, 13, 94, 125, 148, 220 Ticinus, 114, 127, 234 Timaeus, 24–5, 218, 233

303

INDEX

Timoleon, 91 Tin Isles, 11 Tipasa, 25 Tobarra (Spain), see Turbola Toletum (Toledo), 83–4, 91 tophet (burial-ground at Carthage), 24, 27 Torboletae (Torboletes), 226 Toro, 90 Tossal de Manises, 64 trade, traders, 8, 10–11, 24–6, 28–9, 37, 45, 49, 60–1, 70, 72, 84, 86, 101, 104, 123, 165, 171, 185, 194-5, 207, 210–11, 219 Trasimene, Lake, 106, 115–17, 119–21, 126, 135, 148, 150, 213–14, 219–20, 228–9, 234 treaties, Punic (with others), 30, 77, 122–3 treaties, Punic (with the Romans), 8, 19, 25, 37, 45–6, 49–50, 61, 64, 167–9, 180, 216, 233–5 treaty (Hannibal’s) with Philip V, 124–7, 234 treaty of 201 with Rome, 161, 183, 201, 235 Trebia, 66, 106, 114–5, 126, 129, 135, 218, 227–8, 234 trierarch (Punic naval office), 50, 52, 124, 131 triremes, 199 Tullianum prison (Rome), 199 Tunes, 34, 36–9, 41–3, 162, 166, 179, 183 Turbola, 69–70 Turdetani, Turdetanians, 56–7, 59, 226–7 Turduli, 56, 69, 226 Turis, Turitani, 92, 94, 96, 226–7

Tychaeus, 172, 175 Tyre, 21, 27, 30, 98, 189, 197–8, 204, 235 Tzetzes, 68, 223, 232 Umbria, 147–9, 230 Utica, 25, 27–8, 31, 34, 36–40, 42–4, 47–8, 51, 71, 159, 161–2, 172, 175, 179, 181, 206, 225, 235 Vaccaei, 56, 70, 90–1, 234 Valerius Antias, 169–70, 214, 217 Valerius Falto, P., 17 Valerius Flaccus, P., 92–4, 96–8, 234 Valerius Laevinus, M., 145, 154, 169, 229 Valerius Maximus, 221, 223 Venusia, 132, 147 Vercingetorix, 199 Vettones, 70–1, 91 Vibius Virrius (Capuan leader), 122, 126 ‘Vodostor’ (Bostar?), 16 Volcae, 109 Wlbh (grandson of Nrwt), 226 Xanthippus (general in 255), 67 Xenophon (Hannibalic writer), 214 Zama, 129, 157, 159, 161–2, 166, 171, 176–8, 181–3, 186, 216, 219, 231, 235 Zarzas (rebel Libyan leader), 41–2 Zembra, see Aegimurus island Zeus Amon, oracle (Siwa, Egypt), 231 Zililsan, 226 Zonaras, John, 11, 37, 51–2, 61, 127, 220

304

TH E C ARTH A GIN IAN S

The Carthaginians reveals the complex culture, society and achievements of a famous, yet misunderstood ancient people. Beginning as Phoenician settlers in North Africa, the Carthaginians then broadened their civilisation with influences from neighbouring North African peoples, Egypt, and the Greek world. Their own cultural influence in turn spread across the Western Mediterranean as they imposed dominance over Sardinia, western Sicily, and finally southern Spain. As a stable republic Carthage earned respectful praise from Greek observers, notably Aristotle, and from many Romans – even Cato, otherwise notorious for insisting that ‘Carthage must be destroyed’. Carthage matched the great city-state of Syracuse in power and ambition, then clashed with Rome for mastery of the Mediterranean West. For a time, led by her greatest general Hannibal, she did become the leading power between the Atlantic and the Adriatic. It was chiefly after her destruction in 146 bc that Carthage came to be depicted by Greeks and Romans as an alien civilisation, harsh, gloomy and bloodstained. Demonising the victim eased the embarrassment of Rome’s aggression; Virgil in his Aeneid was one of the few to offer a more sensitive vision. Exploring both written and archaeological evidence, The Carthaginians reveals a complex, multicultural and innovative people whose achievements left an indelible impact on their Roman conquerors and on history. Dexter Hoyos writes on Latin teaching and ancient history. His books include Unplanned Wars (1998), Hannibal’s Dynasty (Routledge, 2003), Truceless War (2007), and Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy (2008). He has retired after 36 years at Sydney University to continue research work on Romans and Carthaginians.

ACKNO W LED G EM EN T S

It is a special pleasure to acknowledge the encouragement, collaboration and help which many people and institutions have generously given as I prepared The Carthaginians. In first place I must thank Richard Stoneman for suggesting the topic and readily accepting my optimistic outline when he directed classical publications at Routledge. Routledge’s support for the work has continued steadily since then, in spite of my slow work and distractions, and I owe much in the latest stages of composition to the firm and friendly guidance of my series editor Lalle Pursglove. Sydney University, my professional centre for thirty-six years, has provided invaluable facilities for my research even after I left full-time academic life for what I thoughtlessly supposed would be serene retirement. Sydney University Library in turn is one of the most supportive institutions that I know for scholarly work, in both its facilities and its staff. The illustrations for the book I owe to a generous range of scholars and institutions. Professor M’hamed Hassine Fantar, Titulaire de la Chaire Ben Ali pour le Dialogue des Civilisations et des Religions at the University of Tunisia, gave me immediate permission to use images from his vividly illustrated book Carthage: La cité punique, and so did its publisher, CNRS Editions of Paris. The Institut National du Patrimoine in the Ministère de la Culture et de la Sauvegarde du Patrimoine, Republic of Tunisia, and its Directeur Général Professor Fathi Bejaoui have with equal generosity authorised me to reproduce images of Carthaginian materials held in the great museums of Tunisia. The Badisches Landesmuseum of Karlsruhe, Germany, in turn authorised me to use two evocative photographs in its possession. Most images themselves are taken, in turn, from the splendid volume edited by Sabine Peters, Hannibal ad Portas: Macht und Reichtum Karthagos, published by Theiss Verlag of Stuttgart, xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Germany, to accompany the wide-ranging exhibition of Carthaginian, Phoenician and related artefacts presented at the Badisches Landesmuseum in 2004. Theiss Verlag, through its executive in Programmleitung Mr Rüdiger Müller, has both encouraged my efforts and granted me the permission to make the necessary scans of images from that work. The selection of coins I owe to the renewed kindness of my university colleague and friend Dr Stephen Mulligan of Sydney, who combines a distinguished professional career in haematology with an expert knowledge of Carthaginian numismatics. The high-quality coin images were made by Colin Pitchfork and Bob Climpson of Noble Numismatics Pty. Ltd., Sydney, who found the time for this task in spite of their own busy commitments. Finally I must acknowledge the debt I owe to my wife Jann and daughter Camilla, whose support and love are the bedrock of my life, both in and outside scholarship.

xii

M A PS

The maps have been drawn by the author to show the principal places mentioned in this book. The largest and most detailed maps of the Mediterranean world will be found in R. J. A. Talbert (ed.), The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton Univ. Press, 2000).

xiii

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Hills 1 Byrsa 2 Junon 3 Sainte-Monique 4 Borj-el-Jedid 5 Dermech 6 Douimès —— 7 Agora (?) 8 Naval port 9 Commercial port 10 ‘Tophet’ 11 Falbe’s Quadrilateral 12 ‘Hannibal quarter’

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Map 1A Carthage: the City xiv

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Map 1B

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Map 2 Carthage and Libya

xvi 30

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Numerical

Alphabetical

Utica Hippacra Tunes Maxula El Houaria Aspis/Clupea Kerkouane Nepheris Uthina Ziqua Neapolis Hadrumetum Leptis Thapsus Thubursicu Thugga Uchi Musti Zama Mactar Theveste Sicca Naraggara Bulla Vaga Thabraca Hippo Regius

Aspis/Clupea Bulla El Houaria Hadrumetum Hippacra Hippo Regius Kerkouane Leptis Mactar Maxula Musti Naraggara Neapolis Nepheris Sicca Thabraca Thapsus Theveste Thubursicu Thugga Tunes Uchi Uthina Utica Vaga Zama Ziqua

xvii

6 24 5 12 2 27 7 13 20 4 18 23 11 8 22 26 14 21 15 16 3 17 9 1 25 19 10

45

Map 3A The Mediterranean World

xviii NU

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44

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5

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29 SARDINIA 28 27

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Key to Map 3A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Numerical

Alphabetical

Carthage Utica Hippacra Kerkouane Hadrumetum Theveste Cirta Sabratha Oea Lepcis Magna Arae Philaenorum Cyrene Alexandria Tyre Sidon Ugarit Citium Athens Sparta Tarentum Croton Messana Syracuse Acragas Motya Panormus Carales Sulcis Tharros Rome Caere Pyrgi Alalia Capua Massilia Carthage in Spain Akra Leuke Gades Rusicade Icosium Iol Trebia River L. Trasimene Cannae Abdera Malaca Tingi Siga Tipasa Chullu Lixus

Abdera Acragas Akra Leuke Alalia Alexandria Arae Philaenorum Athens Caere Cannae Capua Carales Carthage Carthage in Spain Chullu Cirta Citium Croton Cyrene Gades Hadrumetum Hippacra Icosium Iol Kerkouane L. Trasimene Lepcis Magna Lixus Malaca Massilia Messana Motya Oea Panormus Pyrgi Rome Rusicade Sabratha Sidon Siga Sparta Sulcis Syracuse Tarentum Tharros Theveste Tingi Tipasa Trebia River Tyre Ugarit Utica

xix

45 24 37 33 13 11 18 31 44 34 27 1 36 50 7 17 21 12 38 5 3 40 41 4 43 10 51 46 35 22 25 9 26 32 30 39 8 15 48 19 28 23 20 29 6 47 49 42 14 16 2

Key to Map 3B

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Carales Sulcis Nora Bitia Tharros Olbia Monte Sirai

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Map 3B Sardinia

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Alphabetical

Syracuse Leontini Catana Naxos Tauromenium Messana Mylae Himera Thermae Himeraeae Solous Panormus Mt Eryx Drepana Motya Lilybaeum Heraclea Minoa Acragas Gela Camarina Enna Segesta Selinus

Acragas Camarina Catana Drepana Enna Gela Heraclea Minoa Himera Leontini Lilybaeum Messana Motya Mt Eryx Mylae Naxos Panormus Segesta Selinus Solous Syracuse Tauromenium Thermae Himeraeae

xx

17 19 3 13 20 18 16 8 2 15 6 14 12 7 4 11 21 22 10 1 5 9

ILLUS T RA TIO N S

Cover Statuette of a Carthaginian goddess with lionesshead: Isis or, less likely, Tanit The lioness-head is an Egyptian motif, while the goddess’ robe is Greek in style; her legs are clasped by huge wings, an Isis-cult motif (compare Illustration 21). From Thinissut on the Cape Bon peninsula, after 146 bc: an example of surviving Carthaginian cultural influence. 1 Sea walls, c. 400 bc: artist’s reconstruction 2 Mausoleum at Thugga (2nd Century bc) 3 Stone cippus from Carthage: rectangular tower design and ‘bottle’ symbol on side 4 View of the ‘tophet’ at Carthage 5 Painting of city in Jebel Mlezza tomb VIII 6 View of the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s southern slope 7 Another view of the ‘Hannibal quarter’ 8 Carthage 1958 Circular naval port in foreground, ‘tophet’ to the right of the rectangular commercial port, heights of Borj-el-Jedid and village of Sidi Bou Said in background. 9 Carthage c. 200 bc: artist’s reconstruction The view is from the hill of Byrsa looking south, with the agora, the artificial ports and Falbe’s Quadrilateral beyond. 10 The artificial ports area c. 1922 The peninsula stretching beyond the rectangular port has developed far beyond its ancient extent. 11 Entrance to house at Kerkouane, with ‘sign of Tanit’ 12 The ‘Isis priestess’ from Ste Monique tomb: marble lid of sarcophagus 13 Ivory mirror-handle depicting a goddess(?), c. 7th Century xxi

74 79 80 81 82 84 84 86

89

90

96 97 109

ILLUSTRATIONS

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25. 26.

Terracotta statuette of a goddess, 7th–6th Century Mother and child at baking oven Terracotta tondo: cavalryman and his hound Fluteplayer from Carthage: terracotta statuette, 4th Century Bronze mirror (back), profile of a goddess Terracotta head of Medusa Cippus from Hadrumetum Stele of a youth, from Hadrumetum Ossuary of a priest from Ste Monique tomb, 4th–3rd Centuries Another Isis effigy: terracotta statuette A selection of Carthaginian coins from Sicily and North Africa Heavy-armed infantry on the march: jasper scarab from Kerkouane, 4th Century bc Front and back parade armour (4th–3rd Centuries bc) found at Ksour Essaf, near Sousse

xxii

109 110 111 114 115 115 116 117 118 119 122 159 160

SOURC ES O F IM A G ES

1. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 39, by permission of the author and publisher. 2. From S. Peters (ed.), Hannibal ad Portas, p. 63: by permission of the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karslruhe, and Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart. 3. From Hannibal ad Portas, 221 no. 3: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Ministère de la Culture de la Sauvegarde du Patrimoine, Republic of Tunisia [hereafter the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia], and of Theiss Verlag. 4. Freely licensed image (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5) from Wikipedia Commons at: http://images.google.com. au/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/5/51/Tunisise_Carthage_Tophet_Salambo_04. JPG&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Tunisise_Carthage_Tophet_Salambo_04.JPG&usg=_ _w1I_TucezbuF7-AgxLy8CWKZrds=&h=2000&w=3008&sz =3201&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=YnoFeRmUnbjiPM:&t bnh=100&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcarthage%2Bt ophet%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg. mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1, retrieved 19/10/2009. 5. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 31, by permission of the author and publisher. 6. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 217, by permission of the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, and Theiss Verlag. 7. Public domain image from Wikipedia Commons, at: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quartier_Punique.JPG, retrieved 14/10/2009.

xxiii

SOURCE OF IMAGES

8. Public domain image from Wikipedia Commons at http:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carthage-1958PortsPuniques.jpg, retrieved 3/10/2009. 9. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 43, by permission of the author and publisher. 10. Public domain image from Wikipedia Commons, at: http:// images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia. org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Carthage-1922-PortsPuniques. jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Carthage-1922-PortsPuniques.jpg&usg=__iVS0nYYJWV O60XpepUgF4dmt5sI=&h=1797&w=2400&sz=357&hl=en& start=1&um=1&tbnid=z_JOiB5MkF0OeM:&tbnh=112&tbn w=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DCarthage%2B1922%26hl% 3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:enUS:official%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1, retrieved 3/10/2009. 11. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 46, by permission of the author and publisher. 12. From Hannibal ad Portas, pp. 284–5 no. 61: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 13. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 337 no. 5: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 14. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 233 no. 4: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 15. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 62, by permission of the author and publisher. 16. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 271 no. 10: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 17. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 102, by permission of the author and publisher. 18. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 291 no. 86: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 19. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 237 no. 20: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 20. Reproduced by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia. 21. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 259 no. 7: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 22. From Hannibal ad Portas, p. 286 no. 64: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag. 23. From Hannibal ad Portas, pp. 285 no. 63: by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia, and Theiss Verlag.

xxiv

SOURCE OF IMAGES

24. Coin-images reproduced by permission of Dr Stephen Mulligan, Sydney, and prepared by Noble Numismatics Ltd., Sydney. 25. From M. H. Fantar, Carthage: La cité punique, p. 111, by permission of the author and publisher. 26. Reproduced by permission of the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia.

xxv

CHRON O LO G ICA L T A BLE

All dates are bc unless marked otherwise Foundations 1103 1101 813 753

traditional date for foundation of Gades traditional date for foundation of Utica Timaeus’ foundation-date for Carthage (and Rome) and story of Elissa-Dido foundation of Rome (most widely accepted date) Expansion of Carthage

c. 640 c. 600 c. 580 550–500 c. 540 c. 540–530 c. 535

Colaeus of Samos trades with Tartessus Phocaean Greeks found Massalia Pentathlus unsuccessfully tries to found a Greek city in western Sicily Carthage imposes dominance over much of Sardinia and over western Sicily Phocaean refugees settle at Alalia in Cyprus career of Mazeus or ‘Malchus’ Carthaginian and Etruscan fleet defeated by Phocaeans off Alalia; Phocaeans abandon Alalia The Magonid family in power

c. 530 c. 530–396 c. 525 c. 515

Mago achieves dominance in Carthage’s affairs ascendancy of Mago’s sons and descendants, the Magonids Carthaginians control island of Ebusus Dorieus of Sparta’s colony near Lepcis Magna expelled xxvi

CHR O N O L O G I C A L T A B L E

c. 510 c. 510–500 c. 509 c. 500–450 c. 500 c. 485 480 480–410 after 480 474 415–413

Dorieus killed in western Sicily Hasdrubal the Magonid killed in Sardinia Carthage’s first treaty with Rome Atlantic voyage of Hanno, recorded in his Periplus, and Himilco’s voyage to north-western Europe Thefarie Velianas’ shrine to Astarte-Uni at Pyrgi, Etruria Carthaginians at war with Acragas and Syracuse in Sicily Battle of Himera and death of Hamilcar the Magonid Carthage at peace with Sicilian Greeks progressive subjugation of Libyans Syracuse defeats Etruscans at sea off Cumae, Campania Athenian expedition against Syracuse War and peace with the Sicilian Greeks

409–405 406 405 398–396 398 396

393–392 390s/380s 383–(?)381 379/378 370s–360s 368 c. 368 367–357

Carthaginian campaigns against Sicilian Greeks Sack of Acragas by Hannibal son of Gisco and his colleague Himilco rise to power of Dionysius I at Syracuse; peace with Carthage Dionysius’ new war with Carthage Syracusans sack Motya plague epidemic at Carthage; suicide of Himilco; end of Magonid dominance Carthage institutes cult of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) to atone for impieties in Sicily Great Libyan Revolt, put down by Mago Sicilian campaigns of Mago, ended by new peace with Syracuse creation of the court of One Hundred and Four Mago’s second war with Syracuse Carthage re-establishes town of Hipponium in southern Italy plague again rages at Carthage; revolts by Libyans and Sardinians, eventually crushed Dionysius I launches new war with Carthage, but dies; war flickers out Carthaginian senate bans study of Greek (temporarily) rule of Dionysius II at Syracuse xxvii

C HR O N O L O G I C A L T A B L E

360s–350s c. 350 357–344 348

ascendancy of Hanno the Great at Carthage conspiracy and fall of Hanno the Great wars, coups and anarchy in Greek Sicily Carthage’s second treaty with Rome Carthage against Timoleon and Agathocles

345 343 341

341–320s 334 325 319 317 315–314 312 311 310

309

308

307

new Carthaginian intervention in Greek Sicily Timoleon arrives in Sicily. Suicide of Mago after setback outside Syracuse May/June: battle of the river Crimisus and end of Carthage’s war in Sicily Gisco son of Hanno the Great recalled from exile ascendancy of Gisco Alexander the Great captures Tyre, threatens Carthage with future attack Carthage mediates in Sicilian Greek quarrels Carthage mediates in Syracusan civil strife, first opposing but then supporting Agathocles Agathocles takes power at Syracuse Carthaginian general Hamilcar mediates in fresh inter-Greek conflicts Agathocles attacks Carthaginian territory in western Sicily new general, Hamilcar son of Gisco, occupies much of eastern Sicily; besieges Syracuse (14 August) Agathocles’ invasion fleet sails to Cape Bon; he wins victories in Libya; many or most Libyans revolt from Carthage Hamilcar’s second attack on Syracuse defeated; he is captured and killed; Carthage’s Sicilian Greek allies break away. Agathocles dominates Libya but cannot take Carthage Bomilcar’s failed coup in Carthage Agathocles, reinforced by Ophellas’ army from Cyrene, captures Hippacra and Utica; returns on his own to Sicily. Plundering campaigns by his son and lieutenants across Libya and into Numidia; Carthaginians defeat the invaders Agathocles returns to Africa, but is defeated; abandons his sons and soldiers to return to Syracuse; collapse of the Greek invasion. Libyans subdued xxviii

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306

peace between Carthage and Agathocles restores old status quo supposed date of supposed ‘Philinus-treaty’ with Rome War with Pyrrhus and the First Punic War

289 288 c. 280 280/279 278–276 276 275/274 273/272 272 264 264–241 260 256–255 249 247 241

death of Agathocles; fresh upheavals among Sicilian Greeks Mamertine mercenaries seize Messana Hicetas, tyrant of Syracuse, invades Carthaginian Sicily Carthaginian land and sea forces besiege Syracuse; Syracusans appeal for help to Pyrrhus in Italy Pyrrhus’ campaigns against the Carthaginians Pyrrhus returns to Italy Hiero becomes effective leader of Syracuse Hiero makes peace with Carthage Tarentum surrenders to Rome; Rome now effective ruler of Italian peninsula escalating crisis over Mamertines of Messana; outbreak of war between Carthage and Rome First Punic War Rome’s first grand fleet defeats Carthaginians off Mylae, Sicily failed Roman invasion of North Africa under Regulus Roman naval defeats off Drepana and Camarina (last Carthaginian victories in the war) Hamilcar Barca appointed general in Sicily Hanno the Great captures Theveste in Numidia (10 March) Roman naval victory off Aegates Islands; peace treaty ends First Punic War The dominance of the Barcids

late 241–early 237 Great revolt (Truceless War) of mercenaries and Libyans in North Africa 238/237 Hamilcar Barca becomes dominant at Carthage 237–228 Hamilcar’s campaigns in southern Spain create new Carthaginian province 228–221 his son-in-law and successor Hasdrubal dominates Carthaginian affairs from Spain xxix

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227/226 221 219

Hasdrubal founds Spanish Carthage (‘New Carthage’ to Romans) Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, becomes chief general and leader of Carthage Hannibal besieges and after 7 months sacks Saguntum in eastern Spain The Second Punic War

218 218–211 c. 218–210 217 217–216 216 216–212 215 214 213 212

211

209 208–206 207

207–203 204–203

Hannibal marches over the Alps into Italy; victory at river Trebia, northern Italy (December) elder Scipio brothers’ campaigns in Spain against Carthaginians construction of Carthage’s artificial ports south of the agora (suggested dating) (22 June) Hannibal’s victory at Lake Trasimene, Etruria Hannibal’s operations against Fabius the Delayer and his military successors (2 August) victory of Cannae, Apulia; Capua defects to Carthage much though not all of southern Italy defects from Rome Hannibal’s alliance with Philip V of Macedon Carthage’s alliance with Syracuse Marcellus opens siege of Syracuse Tarentum defects to Hannibal Romans open siege of Capua Syracuse captured and plundered by Marcellus destruction of the elder Scipios in southern Spain Hannibal’s march on Rome; surrender of Capua to Romans younger Scipio (later Africanus) captures Spanish Carthage; Fabius the Delayer recaptures Tarentum Scipio defeats Carthaginians in Spain and conquers Carthaginian province Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, marches into northern Italy; (21 June) defeated and killed at river Metaurus Hannibal confined to far south of Italy Scipio invades North Africa, defeats Carthaginians and their Numidian ally Syphax; Carthage makes xxx

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peace with Rome. Hannibal recalled from Italy with his army peace denounced or ignored by Carthage and Hannibal; (19 October?) battle of Zama; Carthage, urged by Hannibal, seeks fresh terms second peace treaty with Rome: end of Carthage as a great power. Masinissa king of all Numidia

202

201

Carthage’s last half-century 200–196 197(?)–193 196 195 192–188

182 174–172 mid-160s 150s 153 or 152 150

Rome’s second war with Philip V, crippling Macedon as a great power Carthage in dispute (over territory?) with Masinissa of Numidia Hannibal as sufete enacts financial and political reforms Hannibal forced into exile by his political enemies, with Roman connivance Antiochus III, the Great King of the east, defeated in war with Rome. Rome becomes dominant power from the Atlantic to the Euphrates supposed dispute between Carthage and Numidia over territory third(?) dispute with Numidia over territory Masinissa seizes Emporia; Rome adjudicates in his favour factional politics at Carthage embittered by Masinissa’s encroachments Masinissa seizes all Carthage’s western Libyan lands Masinissa attacks more Carthaginian territory; Carthaginian offensive against him ends in disaster Carthage threatened with Roman armed intervention; fails to appease Rome

The Third Punic War and the destruction of Carthage 150–149 149

(winter) Rome declares war on Carthage. Carthage offers total submission to Roman wishes (spring) consuls land at Utica and demand that Carthaginians abandon their city Carthage declares war on Rome; siege of the city begins xxxi

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149–148 147

147–146 146, spring

Masinissa dies, aged over 90; Scipio Aemilianus settles Numidia’s affairs Carthaginians in the city hold out, supported by field army at Nepheris and by much of Libya Scipio Aemilianus, now consul, reinvigorates the siege; improvised Carthaginian fleet defeated outside the ports (winter) Scipio destroys field army at Nepheris; Libya capitulates Scipio’s troops break into Carthage; Byrsa capitulates; Carthage burned. Remaining Carthaginian lands become Roman province of ‘Africa’ Carthage under the Romans

122

abortive effort to found a Roman colony on site of Carthage 112–105 Rome at war with Numidia under Masinissa’s grandson Jugurtha 46 Julius Caesar annexes Numidia as province of ‘Africa Nova’ Caesar refounds Carthage with Roman colonists ad 160–240 Tertullian: Carthaginian, Roman and Christian writer ad 193–211 Septimius Severus of Lepcis Magna reigns as first Roman emperor from Africa; honours memory of Hannibal

xxxii

SOURCES O F KN O W LED G E

Archaeological evidence and ancient written works carry the story of the Carthaginians. Both are incomplete in many ways. Archaeological finds are limited because of costs, because the site of Carthage is again inhabited, and because what is found is not always easy to interpret. Inscriptions written in Punic, the Carthaginians’ language, may be only partly legible, and the meaning of the words is often debated. Nonetheless, archaeology has not just added to our knowledge of Carthaginian civilisation but has revolutionised it. The surviving written works are by Greeks and Romans, most of them living after the fall of Carthage and all of them interested mainly in her dealings and her cultural contrasts with their societies. Most ancient works do not survive complete either, so that a good deal which the ancient readers had available is now lost to us.

IMPORTANT ANCIENT WRITERS Appian: an Alexandrian Greek and imperial bureaucrat of the later 2nd Century ad; wrote a history of Rome’s wars down to Julius Caesar’s time, treating each region in a separate book (that is, book-roll). His book Libyca narrates Rome’s campaigns in Africa against Carthage; Iberica, all their wars in Spain; Hannibalica, the campaigns of Hannibal in Italy. Some books are only partly preserved. Appian is very dependent on earlier histories; his chosen sources for the Punic Wars were often imaginative. His own composition methods, too, left him open to mistakes (sometimes silly ones). Even so, his histories of these conflicts offer useful information, above all on the Third Punic War where he mainly though not exclusively relies on Polybius. xxxiii

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

Cassius Dio: a Roman senator and consul who lived from about ad 163 to after 220, Bithynian by birth; of his Roman History in eighty books from Rome’s foundation to his own times only some books survive in full, as do Byzantine excerpts from his earlier books and a virtual précis by the Byzantine John Zonaras down to 146 bc, as well as for some later periods. Dio is an intelligent writer, focused on Rome but prepared to be fair to other sides, and important too because he seems to have consulted older Roman sources (of the 2nd–1st Centuries bc) along with Greek authors. Diodorus: a Sicilian of the later 1st Century bc; author of a Library of History in forty books, which he describes as a compressed world history taken from respected Greek predecessors. He seems to have compressed one at a time for lengthy stretches, though in places adding items from another source. This method can produce an uneven narrative, but Diodorus is still the main source for Greek Sicily’s history and its dealings with Carthage, as well as an important one for Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. His sources for Carthage’s wars in Sicily included Ephorus (4th Century) and Timaeus (early 3rd Century); on the Punic Wars he used Polybius. Of the original forty books, only 1–5 and 11–20 are now complete; excerpts, some long, others short, survive in Byzantine compilations. Justin: a Roman writer of late but unknown date (between the 2nd and 4th Centuries) who made a précis of the forty-four-book world history by Pompeius Trogus, a Roman from Gaul of Augustus’ time. The Philippic Histories avoid a detailed account of Rome and focus on the rest of the world from the Assyrians onwards, with short but notable treatments of Carthage’s foundation-story and history from the 6th to the early 3rd Centuries. Trogus’ sources are unnamed but no doubt included earlier extensive histories, especially Greek ones. Besides Justin’s précis, a set of contents lists (prologi) of Trogus’ books survives; at times these throw light on what Justin chose to include and exclude. Livy: Titus Livius of Patavium (59 bc–ad 17) devoted most of his life to a monumental history of Rome in 142 books, bringing it down to the middle of Augustus’ reign and consulting a broad range of older histories and other sources, Greek as well as Roman. Conscientious, relatively humane, and strongly patriotic, Livy found his history expanding almost unstoppably as he proceeded (he comments on this xxxiv

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at the start of Book 31), while his own critical abilities stayed limited and his bias for Rome’s side of events often over-coloured his narrative. Books 1–10 survive (down to 293 bc), then 21–45 (from 218 to 167): his history of the Second Punic War (Books 21–30) is the longest, and most famous, full-length account, while in later books he gives much information about Hannibal’s later life. For this half-century he draws greatly on both Polybius and Roman authors – sometimes more or less paraphrasing Polybius while constantly adding details from elsewhere, which can have strange results. Unfortunately he is not that interested in Carthaginian affairs, though what he does narrate is valuable. Useful epitomes (Periochae) of nearly all the 142 books, of 4th-Century ad date, survive; most are brief, while those of Books 48–50 (the period of the Third Punic War) are much lengthier and offer important details. Nepos: Cornelius Nepos, a contemporary of Cicero, included short biographies of Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal among a set of Lives of Eminent Foreign Generals. They provide useful items along with some foolish errors; his sources probably included Hannibal’s literary Greek friends Silenus and Sosylus. Plutarch: Greek philosopher and biographer of Greek and Roman leaders, including several who had dealings with Carthage (Dion, Timoleon, Pyrrhus, Fabius Maximus, Marcellus). Plutarch used a range of sources, mostly sound ones, and is important whenever he touches on Carthaginian matters. Polyaenus: Greek writer of the 160s ad, author of eight books on military and naval Stratagems, largely on Greek commanders but with some examples from Carthaginian history. Unfortunately his methods are often careless and some of his anecdotes implausible. Polybius: historian (about 200–118 bc) of the Mediterranean world for the period 264 to 146 bc, a leading Greek of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese. During years spent as an increasingly respected political hostage at Rome (167–150), and becoming a close friend of the eminent Scipio Aemilianus and a temperate admirer of Rome’s political system, he composed his Histories in forty sizeable books, analytical and argumentative as well as narrative, to explain how the Romans could make themselves masters of the Mediterranean world in less than fifty-three years (219–167). He opens with a shorter narrative of events from 264, and later extended the work to end in xxxv

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

146 with the destruction of Carthage; he was an eyewitness of this tragedy. His sources, whom he often analyses and criticises, all wrote in Greek but included pro-Carthaginian and early Roman historians. Like others, Polybius is interested in Carthage largely where she interacted with the outside world, especially Rome. His ponderous style and complex treatment of issues caused only Books 1–5 to survive in full, but Byzantine compilers in the 10th Century made lengthy extracts from the rest, while shorter excerpts are quoted by ancient and Byzantine authors. Strabo: Greek scholar of Augustan times, whose seventeen-book Geography of the known world deals with places, peoples, cultures and even economics. Book 17 covers Africa, including a rather short section on Carthage.

xxxvi

I THE PH O EN ICIA N S IN T H E W ES T

THE PHOENICIANS The Canaans (Kn’nm), as the ancient Phoenicians called themselves, had long been settled on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean before they made an impact on the west. The ancient Israelites called them Ponim, a name which in varying forms spread to the Greeks (as ‘Phoenices’) and the Romans (‘Poeni’), and so to modern times.1 Trade became their forte, under the leadership of wealthy cities like Byblos – the earliest to achieve commercial riches – Arwad, Sidon and Tyre. Phoenicia lay conveniently at the crossroads of Near Eastern trade routes, both east–west and north–south, with tin and copper among their staples: tin originally from central Asia, copper from local mines and also from Cyprus, the ‘copper’ island par excellence. The cedar forests of Lebanon were another much-exploited resource, valued especially by timber-poor Egypt and important too to the peoples to Phoenicia’s north and east, notably the Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians. Textiles and even glass manufactures formed other elements in the Phoenicians’ trading versatility. With prosperity came outside pressures. New Kingdom Egypt sought to impose and hold control over Phoenicia’s coasts and cities, with varying success; the 14th-Century bc collection of documents from Amarna in Egypt show how the kings of Byblos could communicate with the pharaohs on near-equal terms. But Egypt’s weakness after 1200 bc, in the confusion of attacks by the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’ and by Libyans overland from the west, along with her internal dissensions, allowed the Phoenicians a little time for complacency – as the long-suffering Egyptian envoy Wenamon, on another quest for timber around 1100, found in his dealings with Zakarbaal, king of Byblos.

1

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Disruption and change happened elsewhere too. Assyria suffered setbacks in Mesopotamia and beyond, the Hittite kingdom collapsed, and the great Syrian port and entrepôt Ugarit was destroyed. When Assyrian power revived in the 11th Century, the Phoenicians did not escape its attention: they became vassals of the eastern empire. Their dependence was limited and did not hamper their business fortunes, nor did migrations of (it seems) Sea Peoples from the central and western Mediterranean to the coast to Phoenicia’s south. This region, from then on called Philistia, with prosperous cities like Ascalon and Gaza, developed close ties with Phoenicia, while trade with Cyprus, Syria and other eastern lands recovered after a dip and increased in vigour during the 11th Century. Among Phoenician cities Byblos suffered eclipse, while Sidon and then Tyre became pre-eminent.

SIDON AND TYRE Both were very old places already. The Tyrians remembered being first founded around 2750 bc (so they told Herodotus in the mid-5th Century, and archaeological finds support it). Nor had they invariably been friends: around 1340 we find the Sidonians blockading Tyre and her king writing to seek help – not very successfully – from Egypt. Sidonian tradition, represented on coins of the Hellenistic era, gave that city a more benign role as ‘foundress’ of Tyre: a garbled memory at best, but perhaps Sidon helped to repopulate her sister city soon after 1200 after other troubles. Sidon’s power had been based both on prosperous trade from her two harbours, and on broad mainland acres. With a city area of 145 acres (58 hectares) and substantial territory along the coast and stretching inland, she was Phoenicia personified for the writers of Old Testament books like Joshua and 1 Kings; and, as just noted, made life miserable at times for her sister city twenty-two miles to the south. From about 1000 bc on, however, Tyre outdid Sidon in energy and success, thanks at least in part to vigorous and extended commerce. Tyre, whose Phoenician name was Sor, stood on an island just off the coast (until Alexander the Great’s siege-mole joined it to the mainland). In its times of prosperity, its 130 acres housed an estimated thirty thousand inhabitants: Strabo, the geographer of Augustus’ era, notes that its multi-storeyed buildings were higher than the skyscrapers in Rome. It too acquired fairly sizeable mainland territory, important for foodstuffs and the city’s water supply, while the coastal waters yielded the shellfish that produced Tyre’s famous 2

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‘purple’, in fact scarlet, dye. The first of its enterprising leaders known to history was the famous Hiram (king c. 971–939), recorded in the Bible as a comradely contemporary of Solomon of Jerusalem, whose great temple he supposedly contributed to building. In the same period, Tyre’s trading links with western lands blossomed. Phoenician trading ships had been visiting Greece and lands further west from very early, with the versatile, and sometimes devious, Phoenician merchant finding mention in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Of course they were not unique in these activities: Greek traders too ventured abroad, and are found for instance in Syria at the 9th-Century emporium now called Al Mina, and from the 8th Century on the island of Pithecusae (Ischia) near Naples. At these and other places, trading intercourse with both locals and Phoenicians was busy and mutually beneficial. The Phoenicians’ overseas commerce was celebrated and sometimes envied – as Old Testament diatribes against Tyrian wealth and pride vividly show. Merchants offered household goods and luxury items from their homeland and other eastern countries, and in return sought mainly raw materials: iron from the island of Elba, for instance; silver and lead from mainland Etruria and then from southern Spain. Ivory and tin were traded from beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar) – tin coming from the ‘Cassiterides islands’, often but insecurely thought to be Cornwall or the Scillies, and ivory from the west coast of Africa. Trade exchanges necessarily were by barter: even after the Lydian kingdom in western Asia Minor devised coins around 600 as a way to pay for goods, it took some centuries for western states (Carthage included) to make use of them even in limited ways. Traders’ ships would arrive at a harbour or anchorage, interested locals – including local grandees or their agents – would gather, and business would be done. Landing sites, at the mouths of rivers or on small, easily defended peninsulas, became regular trading places and, later on, the sites of colonial settlements from Phoenicia.2

SETTLEMENTS IN THE WEST It was only after some centuries that Phoenicians began to settle overseas. Various ancient traditions accorded very early dates – around 1100 – to Gades (today’s Cádiz), Lixus on the Atlantic coast of Mauretania (Morocco), and Utica on the Tunisian coast just north of Carthage, so that Carthage with her traditional date of 813 3

TH E P HO E N I C I A N S I N T HE W E S T

was seen as much the youngest of Tyre’s daughters. On the other hand, a century and a half of archaeological effort on the western Mediterranean’s many shores lends no support to tradition. The earliest levels of occupation, identified by finds of relatively datable Greek pottery imports, point to the 8th Century or, at most, late in the 9th. The driving force behind these foundations was Tyre. By the middle of the 8th Century Tyre, though under pressure from Assyria, had won hegemony over its old rival Sidon: thus King Ithobaal I (887–856, father of the notorious Jezebel) also styled himself ‘king of the Sidonians’. Tyrian commerce with lands overseas developed as well. The Cyprus copper trade was important enough for the city to establish a settlement-colony there during the 9th Century, apparently though not certainly at the already old town of Citium (Phoenician Kty; modern Larnaca) on the coast facing Phoenicia. An inscription of about 750 commemorates a governor or vice-regent (soken) of the ‘New City’: a name, or a term, used perhaps to denote the colony in contrast to an older community. It was a name with a future – in Phoenician, Qart-hadasht. Also worth noting is that the Phoenician name for Cyprus was Alashiya. With the evidence from archaeology indicating foundation-dates for all the western colonies no earlier than Citium’s, and many of them later, we have to infer that the Phoenicians led by Tyre chose to launch ambitious and consistent waves of colonisation during the later 9th and the 8th to 7th Centuries. They planted not tradingposts but urban settlements all across the southern, central and western Mediterranean coasts. Lixus, Gades and Utica were only three of many; in Spain the colonies also included Malaca, Sexi and Abdera on the Costa del Sol; the Sardinian creations included Bitia, Carales, Nora, Olbia, Sulcis and Tharros; in Sicily they founded the island town of Motya, and probably Panormus and Solous; and in North Africa, which they and the Greeks after them called Libya, the cities of Utica and Carthage at least, probably also Hippacra, Hadrumetum and, to the east, Lepcis Magna near today’s Tripoli (others too are possible). The migrations were so prolific that before very long some settlers in southern Spain moved on to establish themselves on the island of Ebusus, as archaeological finds indicate – although the Carthaginians claimed otherwise, as we shall see. The Tyrians had their own chronicles, which may have told a different story about the migrations. The later Jewish historian Josephus, citing Menander of Ephesus, a Greek researcher into Phoenician history, reports the chronicles dating Carthage to a hundred and fifty-five years after the accession of Hiram, thus around 4

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816. These ‘annals of Tyre’ may also be the ultimate source for the Roman author Velleius’ date of about 1103 for Gades and Pliny the Elder’s of 1101 for Utica; and according to Pliny again, Lixus’ temple of ‘Hercules’, in other words the Phoenician god Melqart, was older than the famous one at Gades. If such dates do have a basis, they may record when such shrines were first established at trading-sites; Pliny’s date for Utica is actually that of its hallowed temple of ‘Apollo’, usually identified on Cypriot evidence as the god Reshef. Phoenicians were as punctiliously pious as Romans, and merchants arriving to trade in a new region would commonly set up a sacred place for their protecting deity to watch over them. This may then have been recorded. The oldest Phoenician stele, or inscribed stone, in Sardinia apparently commemorates such an honour to the Cypriot god Pumay, at Nora in the south-west; it dates to around 800 or soon after, and Nora indeed had the reputation of being Sardinia’s first Phoenician foundation.3 The extent of this colonial expansion in about a century and a half indicates that, while the Tyrians led, other Phoenicians took part too. Over-population may have been a factor, as some ancient writers like Sallust and Justin thought. Another may have been a need for new, copious and less contested raw materials, in an era of conflict-driven great powers in Phoenicia’s neighbourhood – notably the resurgent Assyrians, whose kings exacted varied and always expensive tribute from the coastal cities. These stresses may in turn have created a third reason for some migrations overseas: domestic dissensions, blamed or credited by ancient writers as prompting the foundation both of Lepcis and, more famously, of Carthage.

5

II CARTHA G E: F O UN D A T IO N AN D G RO W TH

TALES OF THE FOUNDATION When the first colonists from Tyre established themselves on the great headland overlooking the Gulf of Tunis, they named their ‘new city’ appropriately, Qart-hadasht. To the Greeks this was ‘Carchedon’ and to the Romans ‘Carthago’. One Greek literary tradition about the foundation began as early as Euripides in the 5th Century bc and the historians Philistus and Eudoxus in the 4th; it is mentioned too by the 2nd-Century ad historian Appian as one of Carthage’s own foundation-legends. It dated the city’s beginnings thirty to fifty years before the sack of Troy – thus between 1234 and 1214 bc, far earlier even than the dates claimed for Gades and Utica – with two co-founders, Zorus and Carchedon. But as the Phoenician name of Tyre was Sor and Carthage’s Greek name was Carchedon, while a 13th-Century date is out of the question, this version has little to recommend it, save as a warning of how inventive (not to mention perilous) some Greek and Roman tales can be. A group of late 9th-Century datings is a different issue. Menander of Ephesus dated the event to 816 or thereabouts. Additionally he set it ‘in the seventh year’ of Pygmalion king of Tyre, whose fortyseven-year reign is variously dated from 831 or 820. A short work about natural wonders, from the time of the philosopher Aristotle or not long after, sets the foundation two hundred and eighty-seven years after Utica’s, which would match Pliny’s date of 1101 for the latter and 813 for Carthage herself, the year stated by Timaeus, a distinguished Sicilian historian who died around 260 aged over ninety. Timaeus placed it in ‘the thirty-eighth year before the first Olympiad’: thus thirty-seven before 776. The Augustan-era historian Pompeius Trogus, whose history of the Mediterranean world 6

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survives in Justin’s abridgement, reported its first year as seventytwo before Rome’s, in other words between 825 and 819 (the Romans oscillated over dates between 753 and 747 for their city). This literary near-euphony looks impressive. But how Timaeus got his date is unknown (he lived before Menander, but there were other, obscurer Greek writers on Phoenician affairs) and, rather unsettlingly, he dated the foundation of Rome to the same year. Trogus’ source is equally unknown, although it looks as though it was a different one from Timaeus’. Such dates, far distant from the authors’ own times and based on earlier sources of untestable reliability, can hardly be accepted merely on trust. But the archaeological evidence from Carthage goes back at least to the decades before 750. Remains of stone houses built in the second quarter of the 8th Century have been unearthed at the foot of the hill which the Greeks and Romans called Byrsa (now the Colline de St Louis), 360 metres from the water’s edge and the most southerly of a range of low coastal hills behind the ancient city-site. Again, very recently published carbon-14 analysis dates cattle and sheep bones found at the same site to the second half of the 9th Century, most likely between 835 and 800 – a result that is striking but also controversial, because associated with the bones are fragments of Greek Late Geometric pottery normally classified as 8th-Century. The debate on the likeliest date for Carthage’s founding goes on, but that the late 9th Century may be right after all is now a real possibility.4

LEGENDS AND TRUTHS Carthage’s standard foundation-legend in Greek and Latin literature is famous. Elissa, afterwards named Dido, flees from her evil brother Pygmalion king of Tyre and settles with her followers in North Africa at a site they call Carthage. The most detailed version is found in Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus. The young king, having first cheated his sister out of an equal share of rule, afterwards murdered her husband, their uncle Acherbas (Sicharbas in another writer) – in Phoenician, Zakarbaal, Latinised as Hasdrubal – who was high priest of Tyre’s chief god Melqart (‘Hercules’ in Justin). His hope of finding Acherbas’ hoarded wealth was frustrated, for Elissa and a number of her supporters then left the city for exile overseas, taking with them the hoard and also the ritual objects sacred to Melqart. Their flight took them via Cyprus, there to be joined by the high 7

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priest of ‘Jupiter’ – probably the Phoenician chief god Baal, who was also worshipped on Cyprus – and eighty virgins, originally meant to be sacred prostitutes until marriage but now chosen by Elissa to be the first wives in the new community. On arriving in Libya, the emigrants received a welcome from both the colonists already at Utica and, initially, from the local Libyans who (according to Justin) welcomed the prospect of ‘mutually beneficial dealings’. They offered the newcomers, however, only such ground as an ox’s hide could cover – but the resourceful Elissa cut this into thin strips to enclose the hill of Byrsa as her citadel (byrsa being Greek for oxhide), and the natives agreed to this on condition of a yearly rent. Later, with Carthage starting to prosper, the queen – loyal to Zakarbaal’s memory – avoided being forced to marry a neighbouring king by committing suicide on a funeral pyre. Whether any of this colourful story can be believed is debated. A constant problem with ancient accounts of Carthaginian history is that they are all supplied by authors writing in Greek or Latin; and only Josephus, or rather his source Menander of Ephesus, claims a Phoenician basis for his. The grounds for doubt and suspicion are potentially great, for (as noted above) Greek and Roman writers could bring imagination and inventiveness to their task; nor have we many ways of assessing their truthfulness. The Roman poet Virgil contributes memorably, but unhelpfully, by dating Dido to the time of the fall of Troy again, and telling of a passionate affair between her and the wandering Trojan hero Aeneas; her suicide was due to his sailing away to Italy. Many modern scholars grant nearly as little trust to the non-poetic ancient accounts. Pygmalion, though, looks like a historical figure (the Phoenician name is Pumayyaton, derived from Pumay the god) even if, in Josephus’ version, he became king aged nine and so was only a teenager when Elissa with her followers fled from Tyre, in his seventh year of misrule. There is more of a problem with his sister. She is famous under her alternative name Dido, which various Greek authors explained as Libyan for ‘wanderer’, though its real meaning and origin – and why she should bear two alternative names at all – are quite unclear. Nor, as far as we know, did the Carthaginians in historical times have (or do) anything to commemorate her as foundress, though Justin claims that they paid her divine honours. Certainly they had no other queens in their history or legends. The tale of the ‘oxhide’, byrsa, must in turn be a later Greek confection, for neither Phoenician migrants nor Libyan landlords in the 9th or 8th Centuries would have been using Greek. 8

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Elissa’s stratagem with the hide might well be an inventive Greek dig at her people’s proverbial habit of slippery bargaining. These items and some others (Elissa’s conscription of Cypriot girls, for instance – argued to be too akin to the first Romans’ rape of the Sabine women) lead most modern scholars to dismiss Trogus’ foundation story more or less entire. Several features of it deserve thought, all the same. As even a summary shows, a strong Cypriot connection colours it. The name Elissa, in Phoenician Elishat, means ‘woman of Cyprus’ (the island’s Phoenician name was Alashiya) while Pumayyaton is a name attested at Citium, including its last king in the later 4th Century. Citium was probably Cyprus’ Qart-hadasht, as mentioned above, though its older name eventually won out. The girls saved by Elissa from sacred prostitution could be seen as intended servitors of Astarte the widelyvenerated Near Eastern goddess (called elsewhere by other versions of the name, such as Astoreth, Attart, Atargitis). Her priestesses did indeed perform that function, and she was worshipped in Cyprus. So was Baal, whom Greeks and Romans generally identified with their Zeus and Jupiter, and it was his high priest who brought heavenly favour on the exiles by agreeing to accompany them along with his family – interestingly on the proviso that his priesthood be hereditary to his descendants, a practice common in Phoenicia. With Elissa reportedly also taking Melqart’s sacred objects with her from Tyre, Justin’s story shows itself therefore alive to key aspects of Carthaginian religion, in which all three deities were important. Worth noting again is that it presents the Libyans as not just rejoicing in the prospect of ‘mutually beneficial dealings’ with the newcomers but indeed as starting a prompt trade with the new city – a natural and plausible detail, for Phoenician trade was already well established and colonists already dwelled not far away at Utica and perhaps Hippacra. A further stage in Justin’s account is interesting too. Though the initial settlement, he implies, was on Byrsa itself, a warning omen then impelled the Carthaginians to move to another site, where they prospered. It has been suggested that the animal bones found near the shore below Byrsa and carbon-dated to the late 9th Century, yet with pottery fragments normally dated a century later, may have been dislocated from an initial settlement higher up the hill, perhaps in the course of urban development. This is hypothetical, for what stood on Byrsa before 146 bc is largely untraceable: its summit was cleared away in Roman times. Even so, it is intriguing that the report of a first and then a second site for the early city may not be pure imagination. 9

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The name Byrsa itself is open to various explanations relevant to Phoenician colonists: a possible Phoenician word for measuring out, parša or perša (thus ‘the measured space’ – if so, a further sign that the Elissa story had a real Phoenician basis, while it would contribute too to the more fanciful Greek etymology), or one akin to Aramaic birta, a fortress; or as a third possibility, the Phoenician for ‘sheepwell’, birša (assuming that such a well, on the hill or the nearby shore, was important for the first settlers). There are other points of interest. So far as we can tell, only the Carthaginians remembered a woman founder for their city. A woman leading men in any enterprise was rare in legend: apart from Elissa-Dido, perhaps only the legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis figures thus – and Elissa is favourably portrayed as a leader devoted, resolute and resourceful. If she was simply an invention, we might wonder what the point was, for the Carthaginians did not use it in propaganda form (for instance, to differentiate themselves from their Greek or Roman rivals), nor was Elissa given divine parentage or ancestry like Rome’s founder. Timaeus claimed that the name Elissa meant Theiosso in Greek: ‘divine woman’ or the like, as theos was Greek for ‘god’. The Phoenician word ’lt, vocalised approximately as elit, did mean ‘goddess’; some of Timaeus’ information, then, may have come indirectly from Phoenicia or Carthage (even if partly wrong or distorted). His remark also recalls Justin’s idea that Elissa became revered as divine.5 Another item merits mention: a gold pendant discovered in 1894 in an early burial at Douimès, one of the hilltops north-east of Byrsa. Inscribed in Phoenician letters of – it seems – the 9th Century, it offers a ritual greeting, ‘for Astarte and for Pygmalion [Pgmlyn]’ by a soldier named Yadomilk son of Paday or Pidiya (Yd‘mlk bn Pdy) ‘whom Pygmalion equipped’. If correctly dated – though some scholars are doubtful – it could attest a Tyrian military officer at Carthage’s site around the foundation-date claimed by Timaeus. Livy, the Roman historian who was Pompeius Trogus’ and Virgil’s contemporary, in a lost part of his work named the commander of Elissa’s fleet as one Bitias – so at least the ancient Virgil-commentator Servius attests – and it has been pointed out that Bitias could be a Greek form of Pdy. Livy’s remark probably came in his survey of Carthage’s history and culture prefacing his narrative of the First Punic War. The source that told him of Bitias and Elissa could, in turn, have been the one that Trogus was also to use. It has even been argued that here we have evidence for Pygmalion and the kingdom of Tyre, not his sister with a breakaway group, 10

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being the real founders of the New City. The suggestion is not compelling, for if many important Tyrians migrated with Elissa, as Justin says, we should expect some military officers too – and a gold pendant was a valuable possession (all the more so in an era before coinage), not to be discarded even if Yadomilk had renounced his allegiance to the king. It was found amid items of rather later date, 7th or 6th Century, suggesting that it was kept by Yadomilk’s descendants until placed in a grave on Douimès.6 The pendant itself does lend at least modest added support to the basic foundation story. That story, while clearly given dramatic colouring in Justin – notably the repeated theme of Elissa outwitting those who seek to exploit her, and her suicide-for-love – in essence tells how internal dynastic strife at Tyre caused the defeated party to emigrate and found a new city which quickly prospered. As a Phoenician colony instigated by civic dissension, Carthage was not unique, given the tradition that Lepcis Magna was another. Items in the story can relate to features known from elsewhere: thus Elissa’s Cyprus stopover recalls the existence of Phoenician communities in the island and their religious cults. The possible archaeological evidence for a first settlement on Byrsa followed by a later move to lower ground could fit Justin’s similar claim, though the broad hilltop continued to serve as Carthage’s citadel until the end. Such features of the story suggest that even its dramatic colouring may go back to his and therefore Trogus’ original sources. The dynastic stresses at Tyre sketched by Justin, if they did occur, must have occurred alongside the social, economic and international factors actuating Phoenician colonising migrations over a century and more. As noted earlier, over-population may have been one factor. Another would be the pressure put on the Phoenicians by the resurgent empire of Assyria, which as early as 870 was receiving lavish gifts from them (seen by the Assyrian kings as tribute). By the mid-8th Century the Assyrians were exacting still more massive regular payments, notably of gold, silver, bronze, copper, iron and tin – raw materials which the Tyrians and their kinsmen could best acquire from the western lands but were now required to provide in quantities and regularity greater than the long-existing, often seasonal trading outposts could supply. How to develop Mediterranean trade further and more profitably, how far to appease or to resist Assyria (both attitudes were tried during the 8th and 7th Centuries) and how to cope with population strains, were all interlinked issues for the ruling élites to handle and sometimes, no doubt, to disagree over. Again, with Greek traders 11

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travelling around the Mediterranean and doing good business at trading-posts like that on the island of Pithecusae (Ischia) near the bay of Naples, added need may have been felt for a more permanent Phoenician presence in or near resource-rich lands. When Greek colonies in their turn came to be founded in the western Mediterranean – the earliest at Cumae near Naples around 740, soon followed by Syracuse and others in Sicily and southern Italy – trade between them and the colonies from Phoenicia also developed, to mutual benefit. On current evidence, then, which dates Phoenician colonies in the Mediterranean mostly to the century after 800, Carthage was not a late foundation as Greeks, Romans and perhaps Carthaginians themselves believed, but one of the earliest. She dates to no later than the earlier half of the 8th Century and may yet prove to have been founded in the late 9th. The romantic and dramatic story of Elissa quite possibly rests on a basic historical reality, even if efforts to treat all its details as sober fact should be avoided (especially those in poets, Virgil included). After a time, the Carthaginians re-established proper relations with their mother city, sending a yearly delegation with gifts (reportedly a tenth of the revenues) to Melqart’s temple there. They also paid their annual rent to the Libyans, according to Justin; although in later times both sets of payments ceased.

CARTHAGE: SITE AND POTENTIAL The early site of Carthage was Byrsa, its eastern slope and the narrow plain between the shore and this hill and its companions to the north-east – the hills now called Douimès, Junon, Borj-el-Jedid, and above it Sainte-Monique, these latter two beside the sea (Maps 1A and 1B). The area was the south-eastern side of a great arrowheadshaped peninsula pointing into the gulf of Tunis, a deep arm of the Mediterranean. The site consists of the hills and the shore below them, while high ground to their north forms the capes now called Sidi bou Said and Gammarth. Rain was erratic, but fresh water could be had from a spring called ‘the fountain of a thousand amphorae’ (because of a huge find of these pottery vessels nearby) below the hill of Borj-el-Jedid, and from wells dug in the ground into the then high water-table. The northern edge of the arrowhead, ending in a tongue of land beyond Cape Gammarth, in ancient times edged a wide bay which is now cut off from the sea to form the salt 12

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lake called the Sebkhet Ariana. On the southern side of the peninsula, its shore is bounded by the oval-shaped lake of Tunis, an inlet of the outer gulf. Between bay and lake a broad isthmus linked the peninsula to the mainland, where other hills and higher ridges intersected by narrow valleys stretched into the Libyan, now Tunisian, countryside. This geographical position was unusually favourable, in a wellpopulated and productive region with river-valleys nearby – the Bagradas to the north of the site and the Catadas (Mellane) to the south – giving easy access inland, and local peoples willing to trade their mineral and agricultural products for goods both imported and Carthaginian-made. Carthage’s defensible headland was standard for a Phoenician colony but, unlike most others, her site was spacious. Two centuries after the foundation, if not sooner, the city covered some 136 to 148 acres (55 to 60 hectares). This was as large as Tyre on its island, and over four times the size around 600 bc of the important Phoenician colony, name unknown, on Spain’s Costa del Sol near modern Toscanos – and not much smaller than Pompeii’s 66 hectares in ad 79. Meanwhile the fertile upland on the northern half of Carthage’s arrowhead was later to become the garden suburb of Megara. Between Cape Bon and Sicily the Mediterranean is narrowest, only 140 kilometres wide: an important feature for ancient ships, which could not travel for more than a few days without putting in to land for provisions. Two hundred and fifty kilometres north of Hippacra lies Sardinia, also beginning to receive a steady flow of Phoenician settlers from around 800 who readily developed two-way trade with Carthage. Utica and Hippacra, though much the same distance from both islands, lacked their sister colony’s size and had more limited harbour facilities. If the Phoenician traditions about her founding have a factual core, Carthage also had close links to the ruling aristocracy of Tyre, with whom good relations were restored at least after Pygmalion’s time – another advantage. Carthage in her early centuries is hard to reconstruct in detail, because of developments in later times followed by her re-foundation under the Romans and by modern construction. The first settlement seems to have stretched eastward almost as far as the shore, as the sandy ground there has evidence of sites for the (pungent) preparation of dried murex shellfish to make the famous, expensive and coveted scarlet dye for clothing. On the southern side of the colony, south-east of Byrsa, are traces of archaic potteries, iron foundries and other metallurgical workshops. From the start, Carthage was 13

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more than merely a middleman-centre for acquiring goods from other sources and selling them on to buyers elsewhere. At some date, incidentally, her ironmasters developed the technique of adding a quantity of calcium to their furnaces to neutralise the sulphur in iron ore, a process which much improved the quality of their iron products (and was not recovered until the Bessemer process in the mid-19th Century).7 Some recent discoveries, and excavations at a number of Phoenician settlements in southern Spain, indicate that the earliest city had a typical range of structures: temples and warehouses, shops and private dwellings – with the wealthiest and largest of these, each with its central courtyard, on Byrsa’s slopes – all linked by streets of pounded earth, most of them only a couple of metres wide although the wealthier Byrsa quarter enjoyed at least one about three times wider. Such streets can be seen at the site of Kerkouane, a small city near Cape Bon destroyed in the mid-3rd Century. The layout of the streets varied: on the flat ground, they formed a grid pattern even in early Carthage; on Byrsa’s slopes they radiated outwards down from the top while those crossing them followed the hill’s contours. Stone or brick walls protected Byrsa at least, for traces of them have been found too; stone walls for the entire city-circuit would come later. A town square or space no doubt existed then, just as one did later on a site further south, where people gathered for markets, political functions, ceremonies and announcements. Not until the 5th and 4th Centuries did further expansion change the urban landscape. On parts of the slopes and crests of Byrsa and the other hills they buried their dead in increasingly extensive cemeteries or necropoleis. These and other resting-places supply much of the material evidence for Carthaginian culture and commerce, for it was customary to entomb the deceased with offerings and mementoes to help them in the next world – jars or bowls with food and drink, figurines, lamps, rings, amulets and jewellery, some home-made and others imported. South of the settlement, close to some salty shore-lagoons, the colonists by 700 had established a special cemetery for infants’ cremated remains deposited in pottery jars: a place for which excavators have borrowed the Biblical name ‘tophet’ (Map 1A). Past the seaside lagoons and a little to the south of the ‘tophet’, the ancient shoreline passed around a sandy tongue of land partly closing the entrance to the lake of Tunis, then made a gentle curve northwards to form a natural roadstead where ships could anchor. It may not have been a wholly convenient anchorage for delivering goods in early times, due to the distance overland to the city and with the 14

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lagoons in between, but it was sheltered from the open sea, while barges and other boats could ferry at least some cargoes along the shore to and from the city. There was thus plenty of space for loading and unloading cargoes. It is possible that the low-lying area by this shoreline developed in the 7th and 6th Centuries into a ‘lower city’ – outside Carthage’s own walls – for the artisans and labourers who worked at the harbour, built Carthage’s merchant vessels and warships, and manned the potteries and foundries which have been found below Byrsa on the south. This lakeshore was not the only landing point in the city’s early centuries. The indented eastern shoreline, up to the steep slopes of Douimès and Borj-el-Jedid, allowed ships to anchor close to land or even to be beached in places. In the waters just offshore from the northern sector of the city are the broken remnants of a breakwater or mole, called ‘Roquefeuil’s Quadrilateral’ after its French discoverer, which at some stage in Carthage’s history was built to protect such an anchorage. These exposed waters all the same would be less appealing or safe as ships grew in size and so too did Carthage’s mercantile traffic. The bay of Ariana, as it then was, on the northern side of the isthmus could also receive some ships. But it was no nearer to the city, and wagons or pack-animals would have to climb over Byrsa, Junon and the other hills to get down to Carthage. As a result it seems always to have been less important for shipping and cargo. At the head of the lake of Tunis, fifteen kilometres from the open sea, stood the town of Tunes (the small ancestor of the modern metropolis), and on the lake’s southern shore the Libyan town of Maxula, supposedly the home of the king whose marriage demand forced Elissa to die. From there the coast trends east and then northeastwards, past more coastal heights, to become the mountainous and fertile peninsula of Cape Bon, imposingly visible from Carthage. The coast beyond this lake stretched north-westwards to Utica, then a seaport like all Phoenician colonies, while Libya’s principal river, the Bagradas – in Greek Macaras, today the Mejerda – met the gulf of Tunis between the two cities. The coastline has receded some distance since then to leave Utica’s site inland, thanks to silting, and the river has also changed its lower course more than once over the centuries. Not far north of Utica, the narrow eastward-pointing promontory of Rususmon (the cape of Eshmun, Apollo’s Promontory or sometimes the Promonturium Pulchri, ‘Fair One’s Cape’, to Greeks and Romans; today Ras Sidi Ali El Mekhi, or Cape Farina) formed the northern limit of the gulf of Tunis, the home waters of Carthage. 15

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Probably the Carthaginians from the start controlled the rest of the land on their own peninsula, for they needed a security zone and some ground where produce could be grown; and as just mentioned, the land outside the colony later developed into the semi-rural suburb called Megara. As noted earlier too, Justin reports them paying their Libyan neighbours a yearly fee for the site (not always willingly) until after 480. Disappointingly he does not say which Libyans or how large a fee, or whether this paid for territory outside the colony too. The last is likely enough: it would be virtually unknown in the ancient world for any town to possess nothing but the land inside its own walls. The Libyans who were their neighbours were part of the ethnic group today called Berbers, who dwelt along the coasts and uplands of North Africa from the region of modern Libya to the Atlantic. The high plateaux and long mountain valleys of this vast area, a virtual subcontinent north of the Sahara desert, supported semi-nomadic communities and small permanent settlements, often and perhaps regularly focused around dominant family groups or clans. The peoples in the far west came to be called Mauri; to those east of the Mauri – that is, occupying roughly the broad uplands of modern Algeria – the Greeks gave the name Nomades, or nomads, while the Romans called them Numidians. The communities in Carthage’s and the other Phoenician colonies’ hinterland were the easternmost of the Numidians, though Greek and Roman writers prefer to call them Libyans. The rulers of the countless North African communities are usually termed kings by the same writers (like Iarbas king of Maxula in the Elissa story), though many or most were kinglets at best. Not until much later did some larger kingdoms arise. From the Carthaginian, not to mention Greek and Roman, point of view these peoples were unsophisticated barbarians, but this did not prevent the Phoenician colonists in North Africa from treating them with careful respect. Much of the country inland from Carthage was very productive, as were parts of Numidia; the inhabitants – while themselves wary of the eastern immigrants – were receptive to many aspects of the settlers’ culture and ready, as Justin insists, to do business. One Numidian product came to be particularly valued: their small but tough and agile horses, and the warriors who rode them with superlative skill. Numidians would provide the prized cavalry of Carthaginian armies and make history under the leadership of generals like Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal. Some relations between the Phoenicians in North Africa, Carthaginians included, and the local peoples grew still closer. Intermarriage 16

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was frequent enough for Justin to depict Elissa’s own followers as keen for her to marry her Libyan suitor. He implies, too, that the city soon grew powerful partly because locals came to live there. In turn Aristotle in the 4th Century noted (approvingly) the Carthaginians’ habit of easing population pressures in the city by sending out citizens to settle at inland centres: this no doubt furthered intermarriage. In later times too, the people of the other Phoenician colonies were sometimes called ‘Libyphoenicians’, a name which the Roman historian Livy, and the source he consulted, ascribed to their mixed descent. Diodorus in turn records that the Libyphoenicians had the right of intermarriage with Carthaginians.8 Naturally there was intermarriage too with people from more distant countries and cities with which Carthage had contacts. The dedicator of a votive stele, of uncertain date, in the ‘tophet’ (the infants’ cemetery) gave his name as Bodmilqart son of Istanis, son of Ekys, son of Paco – Greek ancestors, or possibly Egyptian.9 Hamilcar the general at Himera in Sicily in 480 had a Sicilian mother, although this had no effect on his implacability towards the Sicilian Greeks. A sister of Hannibal’s and then a niece both married Numidian princes; then Sophoniba, daughter of a leading aristocrat, was married some years later to two kings of united Numidia in succession, Syphax and Masinissa. Meanwhile both Hannibal and his brother-in-law in the 220s took Spanish wives. And Hasdrubal, one of the last generals defending the city against Roman attack in 149, was a grandson on his mother’s side of Masinissa (and so a cousin of the famous Jugurtha, the Numidian king who fought the Romans a generation later). The Carthaginians, then, from quite early times were almost if not just as much North African and, more generally, western as they were Phoenician. By 750, the New City was doing business with her Phoenician homeland, Egypt and Greece, as well as with her North African neighbours. The steady growth of Phoenician settlements, as further colonies were set up elsewhere in North Africa, in Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, the southern coasts of Spain, and the Atlantic coast of Morocco, further promoted trade. Greek settlements in the central Mediterranean were spreading too, chiefly in Sicily – notably Syracuse, Acragas and Messana – and southern Italy, for instance Cumae just west of Naples, Naples itself, Rhegium and Tarentum. In the 8th and 7th Centuries both migrant movements, Phoenician and Greek, coexisted peaceably. Though the historian Thucydides later wrote that Phoenician traders in eastern Sicily withdrew to its western parts when Greek colonists arrived, no 17

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clashes are mentioned in these early centuries. In fact, apart from Sicily the two migrations kept largely to separate lands: there were no Phoenician colonies in south Italy, for instance, and no Greek ones in North Africa west of Cyrene, or in southern Spain west of Cape de la Nao near Cartagena. Carthage’s North African territories also expanded, though the early stages can be seen only dimly. The Cape Bon peninsula was an obvious area to reach for, given its closeness to the city and its fertile valleys. Just south of the cape, in the sea-cliffs near today’s village of El-Haouaria, sandstone quarries (now called the ‘Grottes Romaines’) were exploited from the mid-7th Century for building works at Carthage. Then sometime before 500, perhaps as early as the 7th Century again, a small town was founded on the coast nearby, about fifteen kilometres north of Kelibia. As its Punic name is unknown, it is called by its modern one, Kerkouane – the one purely Punic town to be excavated in modern times, since it was abandoned in the Roman invasion of 256–255 and never reoccupied. Carthage may have contributed to establishing the little town, which prospered on farming and fishing, and others nearby: notably Neapolis on the northern edge of the gulf of Hammamet, a place known by its Greek name which in fact means New City – in Punic, therefore, another Qart-hadasht. Effective Carthaginian control over the peninsula probably grew in stages as Phoenician and Carthaginian settlers grew in numbers and productivity. By the end of the 6th Century it seems to have been complete: for the text of Carthage’s treaty with the newly-formed Roman Republic, dated by the Greek historian Polybius to 509, bars Roman merchants from sailing down its western coast though allowing them to do business, under strict supervision, ‘in Libya’ and (it follows) at Carthage herself. Dominance over the interior of Libya was much slower to develop, but the process is even more obscure. Justin’s potted history of events reports that sometime during the 6th Century, the Carthaginians for some years cancelled their yearly stipend to ‘the Libyans’, only to be coerced eventually, through military action by their landlords, to pay the arrears and, presumably, the regular stipend from then on – this, even though the city was at that time furthering its influence over Sicily and Sardinia. Not till after 480, in his account, did they manage to cease payments. Who these Libyans were can only be surmised: but most likely they were an alliance of several peoples in Carthage’s nearer hinterland, since they were able after many years of conflict (Justin states) to enforce their claim. All this 18

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may in turn be relevant to the story of Carthage’s first known, and historically controversial, leader ‘Malchus’, as we shall see. Again, land surveys of the city’s immediate hinterland in Libya have found no obvious signs of a Carthaginian presence there until late in that century. As with so much archaeological investigation, the picture is far from complete. Nonetheless, Carthage during her first three to four hundred years may be comparable to medieval Venice, which acquired a maritime empire and Mediterranean-wide power long before it took control in the 15th Century of a large sector of its adjoining mainland.10

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III STATE A N D G O V ERN M EN T

CITIZENS AND ARISTOCRATS Carthage in recorded times was a republic: that is, a state with regularly elected officials accountable to their fellow citizens. This was a political structure that developed well after her foundation. As the example of Tyre shows, her Phoenician forebears were ruled by kings, monarchy being the standard governmental format of the Near and Middle East. It would be natural for the colonies of the Phoenician diaspora to begin in the same style, even if changes came later. In turn, throughout her history Carthage was dominated by a wealthy élite who can conveniently be called aristocrats. This was not a fixed or narrow group, all the same – even more than at Rome, membership of the aristocracy was flexible, open to talent and money, and keenly competed for. What made a Carthaginian a Carthaginian, socially and legally, is obscure. Presumably anyone who could plausibly trace his (or her) ancestry back to the founders counted. The later Roman poet Silius Italicus, in his lengthy epic on the Second Punic War, claims this pedigree for Hannibal – though in choosing Elissa-Dido’s father and brother as the general’s forebears and naming them Belus and Barca he is probably drawing on nothing more than a fanciful imagination. We shall see, though, that some Carthaginians down the ages did name several ancestors on inscriptions: obviously they took pride in their genealogy. Of course a mere claim to ancestry would hardly be enough. Citizenship gave rights and benefits as well as imposing duties, so that a legal basis was surely essential. While at Rome the citizen lists were maintained by the five-yearly censors, no official with this stated function is known at Carthage; but the republic had quite a range of magistrates and other administrators, to be introduced shortly, some of whom may well have had census-taking duties. 20

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More debatable is whether there was one Carthaginian citizenship or two. A limited level of citizenship perhaps applied to former slaves of citizen masters, if a number of inscriptions in Punic do refer to such people – for instance one Safot, ’š ΢dn bd Milkyaton son of Yatonbaal son of Milkyaton, a phrase sometimes interpreted as ‘slave freed thanks to’ Milkyaton (but, on another interpretation, simply ‘slave of’ Milkyaton), and a Hannobaal or Hannibal who records himself as willingly re-entering the employ, or service, of a man named Esmunhalos. There seems a slight hint that both men owed a debt to their patrons – moral, legal, perhaps monetary too – rather as Roman freedmen did to their old masters even though they too were now Roman citizens. Another hint of a superior rank of citizen might be seen in the Greek text of a treaty between Hannibal (in Italy) and King Philip V of Macedon in 215, which in one clause uses a unique term, ‘the lord [or ruling] Carthaginians’ (kyrious Karchedonious). Since the Carthaginians are repeatedly mentioned elsewhere in the treaty without the epithet, however, it may simply be a diplomatically ceremonious usage; or perhaps, as has also been suggested, a copying mistake for Tyrious with the phrase meaning ‘the Carthaginians of (or from) Tyre’. Carthage’s bonds with her mother city were famously strong, and there were other cities called Qart-hadasht in the western Mediterranean: notably the one on the gulf of Hammamet usually known by the Greek version of its name, Neapolis, and the showpiece capital of Punic Spain (New Carthage to the Romans, and Cartagena today) which had recently been founded by Hannibal’s brother-in-law. A third item sometimes used to back the theory of full and lesser citizens comes from New Carthage. When it was captured by the Roman general Scipio in 209, Polybius reports, his ten thousand prisoners included its citizens and two thousand artisans. Scipio set the citizens and their families free, while promising the artisans that they would eventually be freed too, if they worked faithfully for the Roman war effort. They evidently were not citizens of New Carthage (or presumably of Carthage), but it does not follow that they were half-citizens. If not migrants from other Spanish communities who had come to work in the city, they were probably slaves owned by the citizens. Their case, therefore, does not support the idea that Carthage – any more than New Carthage – had a class of lesser or restricted citizens.11 While a Carthaginian citizen probably had the same rights as his fellows, inequalities of wealth, birth, education and opportunity 21

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were as present as in democratic Athens or at Rome. Greek writers stressed the importance of wealth as well as ancestry and merit. Effective and sometimes official supremacy remained for lengthy periods in the hands of one or other influential family: Mago’s in the later 6th and the 5th Centuries, Hamilcar Barca’s two hundred years later. Ordinary Carthaginians could at times play an important or even crucial part in decision-making, as will be shown, but it was invariably under the leadership or instigation of an aristocrat and his equally aristocratic friends. According to Aristotle, Carthaginians belonged to ‘associations’ (in Greek, hetairiai). These probably were the mzrͥm (mizrehim) attested on inscriptions both of Carthaginian times and at North African towns later. He mentions them in the context of communal meals (syssitia), a social custom that he compares to a similar one that he has been discussing at Sparta in Greece. Regular communal meals often feature in social relations ancient and modern, especially when practised by specific groups – Oxford and Cambridge colleges today come to mind, their Hellenistic equivalent being perhaps the syssition of scholars at the Museum of Alexandria. Spartan associations each had a fixed, small number, were governed by strict rules, and all citizens were required to be members partly because the practice was linked to military service. Whether every Carthaginian citizen had to belong to an ‘association’ is not known. The ‘Marseilles Tariff’, a Carthaginian inscription found in the French city, extensively details the payments in cash and in kind due to priests performing sacrifices on people’s behalf, then affirms in comprehensive fashion that ‘a mizreh, or a family’ [sometimes translated ‘a clan’], ‘or a mizreh of a god’, or indeed ‘all persons who shall offer a sacrifice’ must pay the amounts set down in the official register. Even on a cautious interpretation, the associations seem to have been quite numerous: some were devoted to the cult of a particular deity (its priests and attendants, most likely), while others were secular – guilds of craftsmen, groups of ex-magistrates, and maybe men who had served closely together in war. For them to share a common meal on particular occasions would be a natural instinct. It would also contribute to social interaction and mutual support if, as in Spartan hetairiai, members of a mizreh came from a range of economic and family circles. There are isolated mentions of group dinners which could be syssitia: for instance an ambitious and wealthy Hanno in the mid-4th Century was accused of plotting a coup d’état by scheming to poison the entire senate at a banquet in his house on his daughter’s wedding 22

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day, while distracting the common people with feasts ‘in the public colonnades’ (see Chapter VIII). In 193 a Tyrian agent of Hannibal’s, sent to contact the exiled general’s supporters in the city, aroused much comment ‘at social gatherings and dinners’, Livy reports; these probably included such meals, though obviously not them alone. Beyond this, the role of communal meals and mizrehim at Carthage is opaque. No Carthaginian commemorates himself or herself on an inscription as a member of one or as acting in connection with one, or is so described by an ancient writer. If the associations played any specific part in the assembly of the citizens, we are not told of it either.12

CARTHAGINIAN NAMES Family groups and political friendships at Carthage are inadequately known, partly because written sources only occasionally specify them (like the Magonids, and Hannibal’s family the ‘Barcids’), and partly because Carthaginians bore only single names, like Greeks, and leading historical figures made use of only a narrow range of these. A good five hundred different names, men’s and women’s, are known from stelae and other documentary materials, with nearly all of them derived from the name of one or other deity. So for instance Yadomilk bore a name connected with Melqart, Tyre’s city-god, and Pygmalion is based on the (obscure) Pumay, a god commemorated on the ancient Nora stone. Names compounded with Baal, Astarte, Melqart and other divinities were especially common, although the great Carthaginian goddess Tanit seems never to be called on in this way. In Greek and Roman narratives, many Punic names were modified into forms conventionally used today. Abdmilqart or Habdmilqart (servant of Melqart) became Hamilcar, Abdastart (servant of Astarte) was reduced to Bostar, Bodmilqart (in Melqart’s service) to Bomilcar, Gersakun (fear of Sakun, another obscure god) to Gisco and Gesco, Saponibaal (may Baal watch over me) to Sophoniba – the name of the most famous Carthaginian woman after Elissa-Dido – and, as noted earlier, Zakarbaal (Baal, remember me) to Sicherbas and Acherbas. On the other hand the names Hannibal (Baal be gracious to me), Hanno (grace be to him), Himilco (Milkot or Melqart is my brother), Maharbal (hasten, Baal), and Mago (a shortened form of Magonbaal, ‘may Baal grant’) stayed more or less the same. Despite the many other names, six hundred or so, that were available to Carthaginians – Baalshillek, Esmunhalos, Hannesmun, 23

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Milkyaton, Mittunbaal, Pumayyehawwiyo, Safot, Salombaal (the origin of the name ‘Salammbô’), Yadomilk and Yatonbaal are only some less-known examples – the written historical records offer an often baffling repetition of just a dozen or so borne by leaders, generals, politicians and priests: Adherbal, Bomilcar, Bostar, Carthalo, Gisco, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Hanno, Hasdrubal, Himilco, Mago and Maharbal. On Carthaginian inscriptions too, some of these names are found by the hundred, for instance nearly eight hundred Hamilcars and over six hundred Bomilcars, four hundredodd Magos, and a relatively spare three hundred or so Hannibals. Prominent Carthaginians took pride in their ancestry and so must have kept up some form of family records, but nothing remains save for some claims on stelae. This makes it hard, or impossible, to work out family connections more closely than across two or occasionally three generations, unless a source expressly gives details. The powerful descendants of the city’s 6th-Century leader Mago carried on his dominance of the republic down to the early 4th; but although one of these Magonids was named Hamilcar and his grandson was a Hannibal, no link is known with the family of Hamilcar nicknamed Barca and his sons Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago, who with their kinsmen were prominent – and mostly dominant – in Carthaginian affairs for the half-century from 247 on. Wider connections across aristocratic society, such as those which can be worked out for many periods in Roman history, are entirely elusive.

PRAISE FROM GREEKS In the ancient versions of the foundation of Carthage, as shown earlier, the city’s establishment began with a queen, a high priest of Baal (so we may interpret Justin’s ‘Jupiter’), an admiral (if Livy was correct), and a number of high-ranking other Tyrians. Virgil or, more likely, someone later interpolating a line into the Aeneid, depicts Elissa-Dido’s people as framing a constitution and choosing magistrates and a senate while Carthage is still being built – in other words, setting up a republican system. This is fanciful yet significant, since it shows the impact made on later memory by that system. The political structure of the republic is not very satisfactorily known. It is a noteworthy object lesson, in fact, of the difficulties posed by evidence varying in depth, time and language. It has to be pieced together from Aristotle’s limited 4th-Century description, and some few statements in other writers from Herodotus to 24

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Justin. It was praised by more than one Greek thinker. Around 368, the political theorist and orator Isocrates called it and the Spartan system the best of any state (he liked their authoritarian aspects). Aristotle in the 340s and 330s praises it in his turn, along with Sparta again and the cities of Crete, as a mainly sound blend of his three basic political schemas – monarchy, aristocracy (rule by the best men, the aristoi) and democracy, each one limited by the functions of the other two. Monarchy for him was embodied in the chief magistrates who were elected by citizens for fixed terms; aristocracy in the gerousia (body of elders, or senate) who needed the guidance of the magistrates and could be contradicted by the people; and democracy in the shape of the citizen assembly, which was guided by the other two arms of government but could still make up its own mind. This is an idealised, or at least theorised, portrait of Carthage’s political system. Aristotle leaves a great deal out that could help to clarify how it actually worked, and in places is generalised or opaque on what officials and institutional bodies did in practice. Nor does he mention the dominance of the Magonid family in the republic’s affairs – from the middle or later 6th Century until only a few decades before he wrote – unless he refers to it when remarking cryptically that Carthage had changed from ‘tyranny’ (in other words arbitrary autocracy) to aristocracy. On the other hand, this would make his much-admired Carthaginian constitution a coin of very recent minting, an aspect not hinted at in his overall treatment of it. Rather, then, he may be referring to the abolition or neutralisation of the kingship at some much earlier time.13

CHIEF MAGISTRATES: THE SUFETES The chief officials of the republic were an annually elected pair of ‘sufetes’, a title which Punic inscriptions and some Latin writers attest, although Greeks – and even Carthaginians writing in Greek, as we shall see – invariably use the term ‘king’ or ‘kings’ (basileus, basileis). Aristotle stresses that wealth and birth were both needed in seeking high office, plainly implying that both were legally required. On the other hand he mentions no details about a minimum requisite level of wealth, for instance, or how distinction of birth was defined. We can infer that Carthaginian ancestry on both parents’ sides was not essential, for Hamilcar the ‘king’ in 480 had a Greek mother; but notable ancestors on at least one side must have been. 25

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Cicero’s contemporary Cornelius Nepos mentions that there were two sufetes – he too writes ‘kings’ – elected each year, and several Carthaginian inscriptions date a year by a pair of sufetes’ names. Two yearly sufetes are also recorded, most of them in Roman times, at Libyan and Sardinian cities that retained Carthaginian cultural usages. A passing comment by Plato the philosopher shows him, too, taking for granted that Carthaginian magistrates served annually. A pair a year can thus be accepted as Carthage’s historical norm. Evidence for more than two is fragile – for instance Cato the Censor, in the 2nd Century, seeming to write of four sufetes collaborating in some action like levying or paying troops. Unfortunately we have only a very scrappily preserved sentence with no context; Cato may perhaps have been reporting an action taken over two successive years. If more than two a year ever were elected, most likely this happened seldom.14 Sufetes as supreme magistrates were a development of the 6th Century or, possibly, the late 7th. A damaged Punic votive stele of around 500–450 seems to be dated – though the reading is debated – to ‘the twentieth year of the rule of the sufetes in Carthage’. There is no independent evidence to confirm this information, and another reading of the stele gives ‘in the one hundred and twentieth year’ while a third interpretation sees no dating in it at all. If either of the numerals is correct, it implies that the monarchy had lasted at least two or maybe even three hundred years, until 620 or later. If not, the best we can infer is that by the later 4th Century, Aristotle’s time, the sufeteship was certainly the supreme office.15 In an earlier period of Carthage’s history, it is just possible that only one sufete existed: for instance, perhaps ‘Malchus’ in the 6th Century (if he existed) and perhaps the ‘basileus’ Hamilcar who fought the Sicilian Greeks in 480 were sole sufetes as well as generals. One person holding more than one office at a time was common enough at Carthage when Aristotle wrote, and more than likely was a long-established usage. It is just as conceivable, though, that in the first centuries of the republic there were already two sufetes: one could take the field as military commander when necessary, while the other remained at home in charge of civil affairs. Limiting their functions to civil and home affairs would then have occurred later. When they do appear in Greek and Roman accounts, they are running the affairs of the republic in consultation with the senate, and – in later times at least – judging civil lawsuits. Sufetes is Livy’s Latin version of Punic špέm (shophetim, shuphetim or softim), a title often mentioned in inscriptions at Carthage and 26

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other Phoenician colonies which had the same office. It is equivalent to the biblical shophetim, conventionally translated ‘judges’. The difficulty with tracing developments is Greek writers mentioning a Carthaginian ‘king’ or ‘kings’ but never a ‘sufete’. Herodotus describes Hamilcar, the general who fought the Sicilian Greeks in 480, as ‘king of the Carthaginians’ – ‘because of his valour’, he explains – while Diodorus reports how in 410 the city chose its leading man Hannibal, who was ‘at that time king by law’, as general for another Sicilian offensive. For another Sicilian war in 396 they ‘appointed Himilco king by law’; and did so again with Mago in 383, except that this time Diodorus leaves out the term ‘by law’. Himilco was already in Sicily as general, so Diodorus’ report of his appointment as ‘king by law’ is best explained as Himilco’s being elected sufete for the new year while continuing in the Sicilian command. The other men too, with the possible exception of Hamilcar, can hardly be anything but sufetes: how a sufete could also be a general will be explored later.16 Obvious family pride appears in inscriptions that list a dedicator’s ancestors going back three or more generations. One document naming the two sufetes together with two generals in an unknown year includes six generations of the forefathers of one general, Abdmilqart, and three for the other, Abd’rš (Abdarish). On another, a man named Baalay lists five generations, of whom the earliest had been a sufete and his son perhaps a rab (another office, soon to be looked at). Women also commemorated their forebears, as does Arishat daughter of Bodmilqart son of Hannibaal on a votive stele. Rather overdoing it, in turn, was one Pn ‘of the nation of Carthage’, dedicator of a stele at Olbia in Sardinia, who lists no fewer than sixteen forefathers – a family record going back a good four hundred years. None of these, nor Pn himself, held an office, but this vividly illuminates the ancestral claims that ambitious men might parade in their political careers. A candidate who could point to sufetes or at least ‘great ones’ (senators) among his forebears surely found it an advantage. When Aristotle describes the ‘kings’ (basileis) as the city’s chief magistrates, who act in consultation with the Carthaginian senate, he plainly means elected office-holders. Nor does he suggest anywhere that a titular king still existed too, even though he discusses other official bodies like the senate and the ‘pentarchies’. In a famous confrontation with Roman envoys in 218, the Carthaginian spokesman in the senate is termed the basileus by Polybius: this must mean a sufete. An inscription in Greek, set up by a 27

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Carthaginian named Himilco (‘Iomilkos’ in the text) on the Aegean island of Delos in 279, terms him a basileus too, so the term was not simply a literary usage. Again, it should mean that Himilco was or had been a sufete.17 The sufete is sometimes called a ‘praetor’ by Latin writers (including Livy once), borrowing the title of Roman magistrates with judicial authority, and once or twice a ‘king’ as in Greek writers – or even a ‘consul’, the name of the highest office at Rome. It may be that the sufete or sufetes began under the kings as judicial officers, hence their title; then acquired greater authority over time, until the king was sidelined and eventually not replaced (though some scholars think that the office survived at least in name). His replacement by elected sufetes may well have come about from pressure, if nothing worse, by Carthage’s council of elders or senate, whose predecessors at Phoenician cities had always been a powerful makeweight to the monarchs.

ADIRIM: THE SENATE OF CARTHAGE Phoenician kings always had to collaborate with their city’s leading men, who from early times formed a recognised council of advisors as the ‘mighty ones’ or ‘great ones’ (’drm, approximately pronounced adirim). At Carthage this became the senate, as the Romans called it; in Greek terminology the gerousia. As just noted, the ‘great ones’ quite possibly were responsible for the effective end of the monarchy, with the sufeteship as a limited substitute for it – like the consulship at Rome – which at least some leading men could look forward to holding turn by turn. Whether they were always elected by the whole citizen body, or at first by the ’drm with popular election developing later, is not known. Nor how senators themselves were recruited, or even how many there were at any time, although two or even three hundred is likely as we shall see. The building where they usually met seems to have been close to the great market square (agora to Greeks) which was the hub of business and administration, but we do read of two meetings held in the temple of ‘Aesculapius’, in other words of Eshmun on Byrsa hill. The senate had varied and broad authority, to judge from our sources. As usual the glimpses are given by writers from Herodotus in the 5th Century to much later ones like Appian and Justin, so that generalisations have to be fairly careful. Again Aristotle gives the fullest sketch. The ‘kings’ convened and consulted the body on 28

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affairs of state; if they unanimously agreed on what action to take, this could be taken without any need to put the issue before the assembled citizens. On the other hand, some decisions taken by sufetes and senate in agreement could still be put before the assembly, which had the power to reject them. Again, if both sufetes – or by implication even one – disagreed with the senate on a matter, the question would go to the assembly. How often this happened, and what questions might be put to the people, the philosopher avoids stating. What procedures and protocols governed the senate’s debates is not known, nor is it clear whether changes in its protocol and range of functions took place over the centuries. Polybius does claim that by the time of the Second Punic War the republic had become ‘more democratic’ – something he is not enthusiastic about, even hinting that it cost Carthage the war – which would suggest that in earlier ages senate and sufetes had seldom needed to involve the assembly in decision-making. His claim, however, seems overdone. During and after the war the senate can be found directing diplomatic, financial and even military measures, just it had done for centuries. And on the other hand, Aristotle sees fit to describe the Carthage of his own time, a century before Polybius, first as a blend of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (with aristocracy dominant), and later as ‘democratically ruled’: perhaps a clumsy generalisation, but a noteworthy one. The range of functions of the adirim was at least as broad as the Roman senate’s. They decided on war and peace, though the decision probably needed ratification by the assembly of citizens, as Diodorus mentions happening in 397. They handled foreign relations to the point of deciding on war and peace: for example rejecting the victorious invader Regulus’ harsh peace terms in 256, receiving Roman envoys in 218 and accepting their declaration of a Second Punic War, and conversely in 149 themselves declaring war in defiance of the Roman forces surrounding the city. In military affairs, we find the senate in 310 reprimanding (and putting in fear of their lives) the generals who had failed to prevent Agathocles’ Syracusan expedition from landing. After Hannibal’s victory at Cannae in 216, it authorised fresh forces to go to Sardinia and Spain, and reinforcements with sizeable funds for Hannibal. In 147 it issued (fruitless) criticisms of the savage treatment of Roman prisoners by Hasdrubal, the commanding general in the besieged city. Some domestic decisions are recorded too. In the mid-4th Century, in a fit of anti-Greek feeling, the adirim issued a decree (ultimately 29

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repealed) forbidding the study of that language. In 195 after Hannibal left Carthage to avoid victimisation, they were forced to promise to take whatever steps against him might be demanded by envoys just arrived from Rome. No doubt it was a senate decree (even if ratified by the assembly) that proceeded to confiscate his property, raze his house, and formally banish him.18 Measures like these would be decreed on the sufetes’ proposal, as Aristotle indicates. There must have been sharp debates at times: for example, leading up to the decision in 256 to fight on – for the Carthaginians themselves had earlier asked for terms. Certainly there was some opposition to peace in 202, even after Hannibal lost the battle of Zama, forcing Hannibal himself to exert pressure on his fellow senators and on the citizen assembly too to accept Scipio’s terms. Nonetheless, when a powerful faction dominated the state, the sufetes’ proposals and the senate’s decisions naturally obeyed factional wishes, whatever arguments opponents might put. Livy’s and Appian’s pictures of the senate’s small anti-Barcid group speaking against the Barcids’ policies to no avail may be imaginative in detail, but illustrate fairly well what the situation must have been like. Livy once mentions a smaller senatorial body too. The peace embassy sent to Scipio Africanus in 203 consisted, he says, of thirty senators called ‘the more sacred council’, termed the dominant element in the senate. No such body appears under this name elsewhere, but now and again other delegations of thirty leading senators do: conceivably this ‘more sacred council’ again. One delegation persuaded the feuding generals Hamilcar and Hanno to cooperate against the Libyan rebels in 238; one in 202 – surely the same body as the year before, though Livy does not comment – was sent out to ask peace from Scipio after his victory over Hannibal; a third, according to Diodorus, was delegated to learn the invading Romans’ demands in 149. All the same, these seem rather demeaning, even if necessary, missions for the supposedly most powerful body in the republic’s most powerful institution. Greek writers, including Polybius and Diodorus, do not help clarity by mentioning at various times a Carthaginian gerousia (‘body of elders’), synkletos (‘summoned body’) and synedrion (‘sitting body’), without explaining the distinctions. All three terms are applied by Greeks to the Roman senate, which had no inner council. Efforts to treat synkletos or else gerousia in Carthaginian contexts as indicating the ‘more sacred council’, and the other two terms as referring to the adirim, have no firm evidence to rest on. No Punic inscription describes anyone as member of such an inner body, either. 30

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If the ‘more sacred council’ did exist, at least in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries, we could see it (given the absence of any specific details) as a largely honorific body of eminent senators – probably ex-sufetes – whose experience and high repute could be called on in difficult situations. They could also have exerted real though unofficial influence in normal affairs. If Livy’s term ‘more sacred’ has any specific validity, it may be that the members also held high-ranking priesthoods, conferring added solemnity on the council.

THE MYSTERIOUS ‘PENTARCHIES’ Another arm of government is mentioned, all too succinctly again, by Aristotle and no one else: the ‘pentarchies’ or five-man commissions. New members were co-opted by existing ones, members served without pay, and the commissions controlled ‘many important matters’, including judging cases at law. None of these features is described in any fuller detail. Nor is the philosopher very clear in explaining how (or why) commissioners had lengthier tenures of position than other officials: ‘they are in power after they have gone out of office and before they have actually entered upon it’. As it stands, this seems to make it pointless for them to have a stated term of office at all, and to imply that there might often be more than five members of a commission in practice. Carthaginian inscriptions make no mention of anyone belonging to a five-man commission, but do attest a board or commission of ten for sacred places and one of thirty supervising taxes. Were the pentarchies, or some of them, subdivisions of these? Also attested are officials called ‘treasurers’ or ‘accountants’ (mͥšbm sounded as mehashbim), whose powers included penalising persons who failed to pay customs dues. If Aristotle is correct that the pentarchies handled many important matters and could try cases, either their tasks clashed with the work of these officials or – much likelier – the mͥšbm formed one or more of the pentarchies. Carthage’s institutions are so opaquely known that these interpretations are a reasonable possibility. Standard public tasks like taxes, sacred places and judicial affairs perhaps seemed to call for lengthier terms of administrative office (three to five years?) for greater continuity. Even so, Aristotle’s dictum about pentarchy members holding their positions both before and after they were pentarchy members remains a puzzle.19 One official at Carthage is known almost entirely from Punic inscriptions: the rb or rab, meaning ‘chief’ or ‘head’. A hundred or 31

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so men are termed rab in the documents without accompanying description, implying an office different from the rb khnm (rab kohanim, chief of priests) and rb mͥnt (rab mahanet, ‘head of the army’ or general). This rab seems to have been in charge of state finances, equivalent then to a treasurer. If so, this was the official whom Livy terms ‘quaestor’, using a Roman title again, who in 196 defied the newly-elected reforming sufete Hannibal until taught a sharp lesson. (At Gades in 206 we read of a quaestor, too, presumably that city’s rab.) He presumably had the mͥšbm as his subordinates, although the inscriptions mentioning these do not refer to him. An inscription mentioning one person, it seems, as rab ‘for the third time’ (rb šlš, approximately rab shelosi) suggests – along with the large number of rabim known – that it was a position with a time-limit. So does Livy’s report that the ‘quaestor’ defied Hannibal because he knew that, after holding office, he would automatically join the powerful and virtually impregnable ‘order of judges’ (on which more below). The offi ce was probably annual, like a sufete’s. It must have given plenty of opportunities for holders to enrich themselves. Both Aristotle and Polybius tell us that Carthaginians in their day viewed giving bribes as normal in public life, including bribes for election votes. The philosopher comments, in a different context, that it was perfectly normal for Carthaginian officials to practise money-making activities (adding tartly ‘and no revolution has yet occurred’). Profiting from public revenues, which he also notices, was a natural extension (rather optimistically, he thinks that wealthy men like Carthaginian officials would be less tempted). In one known period at least, it had become so severe that it was affecting the republic’s ability to pay its way: Hannibal was elected sufete partly to deal with it – and his first confrontation was with the chief of finances. One more feature noted by Aristotle, disapprovingly, is that the same man could hold more than one office at the same time. A votive stele interestingly commemorates one Hanno, sufete and chief of priests (rb khnm, or rab kohanim), son of Abdmilqart (Hamilcar) who again had been sufete and chief of priests. Of course the sufeteship was a one-year office, while the priesthood was permanent. Aristotle no doubt was thinking more of non-religious combinations, like being sufete and rab together, or even sufete and general. Though no clear evidence for sufete-rab combinations exists, it is possible that occasionally a sufete might indeed become a general too.20 32

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THE GENERALS At some moment in the city’s history a further position was created, that of general (rb mͥnt, approximately pronounced rab mahanet; in Greek, strategos). Officially this innovation separated military duties from civil, a contrast with Rome where the consuls regularly and praetors sometimes had to carry out both. The Carthaginians perhaps initiated their generalship in the middle or later 6th Century, when they began sending military forces over to Sicily and Sardinia. Even if they did, it looks as though the office down to the early 4th Century could still, as suggested above, be taken on by a sufete should the situation demand it. That would explain examples mentioned earlier, such as Hamilcar in 480, Himilco in 396, and Mago as late as 383 – ‘kings’ appointed to commands in Sicily. As mentioned above too, Isocrates in an effusive paean to authoritarian rule matches Carthage and Sparta as two states ‘ruled oligarchically at home and monarchically at war’. This is not a sign that Carthage still had real kings active in affairs, for he also praises his contemporary the ruthless tyrant (in modern terms, dictator) of Syracuse, Dionysius I. But it may be a sign that her ‘kings’ – that is, sufetes – still led armies at least on important campaigns in his time. All the same, over these centuries there were probably plenty of military tasks not important or enticing enough for a sufete. These could be handled by men who held the generalship alone, whether or not they had been sufetes or later became sufetes. By Aristotle’s day (it is clear) a general was not normally a sufete at the same time. But generals too were elected, and the office was enough of a political prize for men to pay perfectly good bribes to obtain it. A century later, effective control of affairs rested with the elected generals of the Barcid family (Hannibal’s father and brother-in-law, and Hannibal himself), none of whom is recorded as being sufete along with being general. Instead they were able, it seems, to get kinsmen and supporters elected to sufeteships year after year, not to mention to other generalships as needed. A general did not serve for a fixed term, for obvious reasons. The appointment seems to have been for the length of a war, or at any rate until another general was chosen to take over command. Then again, more than one rab mahanet could be chosen for military operations: most obviously if land operations (in Sicily for instance) needed one commander and naval operations another, or for commitments in different regions. In North Africa itself, during the great revolt by Carthage’s mercenary troops and 33

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Libyan subjects from 241 to 237, two generals – Hamilcar Barca and his one-time friend, then rival, Hanno ‘the Great’ – held equal-ranking generalships, which caused friction. In an effort to improve collaboration, Hanno was replaced for a time by a more cooperative commander who, in practice if not in law, acted as Hamilcar’s subordinate. This is not the only evidence that, at times, one general might be appointed as deputy to another. Two Punic inscriptions have the term rb šny (vocalised approximately rab sheni), or an abbreviated hšn’, each of which seems to mean ‘second general’. They imply subordinate commanders and, although details are entirely lacking (save that the hšn’ was a Hasdrubal), such an arrangement is often reported in narratives of Carthage’s later wars. Thus in 397 Himilco, the general in Sicily, had an ‘admiral’ (nauarchos in Diodorus) named Mago leading his fleet, while a century and a half later, in 250, Adherbal in command there had a naval deputy, one Hannibal, whom Polybius terms a ‘trierarch’. Hamilcar Barca later appointed his son-in-law Hasdrubal ‘trierarch’ when operating in Spain in the 230s, even though Hasdrubal’s naval tasks were minor by all accounts: the equivalent term in Punic had perhaps become the normal one for a general’s immediate deputy, whatever his duties.21 Certainly the practice of a supreme general with subordinates became the norm over the nearly four decades of Barcid dominance after 237. Polybius emphasises Hannibal’s direction of all military affairs during the Second Punic War, which at its height involved up to seven generals in different theatres. Hannibal commanded in Italy with another officer acting semi-independently under him; three generals – two of them his brothers Hasdrubal and Mago – operated in Spain against the invading Romans; a sixth commanded an expeditionary army in Sicily; and a seventh (apparently another Barcid kinsman, Bomilcar) led out the navy on several rather fruitless sorties. After peace with Rome in 201, with all warfare now effectively banned, what was done with the generals is unknown. Either they became civil (or ornamental) officials, or they lapsed altogether until the Carthaginians unwisely decided to fi ght Numidia half a century later. In their final war with Rome, they seem to have had two separate and equal generals again: one operating in the countryside, the other defending the besieged city (Chapter XII).

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NEMESIS OF GENERALS: THE COURT OF ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR The state was notoriously draconian in dealing with its defeated generals. In later times at least, the penalty for failure was crucifixion, as happened for instance to Hanno, the admiral beaten by the Romans in 241. We are told that fear of punishment was always in the mind of Carthaginian commanders, and we read of one or two who killed themselves to avoid it (the corpse of one such, Mago in 344 or 343, was itself crucified instead). The process of judging unsatisfactory military performance must originally have been carried out by the senate and sufetes (or possibly one of the pentarchies, but a five-man court for such serious indictments seems unlikely). A change, though, came in the 5th Century or early in the 4th, when a special tribunal was created for the purpose (Chapter VIII). This was the body which Aristotle calls the One Hundred and Four. He also calls it ‘the greatest authority’ at Carthage, with members chosen solely on merit: but does not say what it actually did apart from likening it to the five ephors at Sparta. The comparison looks excessive, for Sparta’s ephors not only supervised (and could prosecute) the Spartan kings but dealt, too, with large areas of administration both civil and military – areas which at Carthage were handled by the pentarchies, on Aristotle’s own evidence, or officials like the rab and the generals (on evidence from other sources, inscriptions included). But Justin reports a hundred-strong senatorial court being set up during Magonid times to scrutinise generals’ actions. This must be the same body. Thus the court of One Hundred and Four was the authority that convicted and executed delinquent generals. After a time its supervision may have widened to generals’ subordinates too. An officer was crucified in 264 for giving up the occupied city of Messana in Sicily without a fight, the same punishment that the court inflicted on unsatisfactory generals, and so perhaps a case of its now judging other military miscreants. What body had previously dealt with such officers we do not know – maybe one of the pentarchies. Aristotle’s comparison with the ephors would certainly be more understandable if, even in his day, the One Hundred and Four was beginning to encroach on other bodies’ functions. Why there were one hundred and four judges is not known; the figure has been doubted because Aristotle also writes simply of one hundred, as does Justin. One suggestion, if one hundred and four is 35

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correct (and ‘one hundred’ just a rounding-down), is that the two sufetes and two other officials (the rab and the rab kohanim?) could have been members ex officio. The ordinary judges were senators selected by the pentarchies, on unknown criteria save for the merit stated by Aristotle, and they served on the court for life.22 Supposedly then it was the One Hundred and Four who kept the republic’s generals on the straight and narrow in wars, and for the same reason caused them too often to be over-cautious. Yet how impartial its judgements were may be wondered, especially when feelings ran high after a defeat or – worse – a lost war. Generals, and often if not always their lieutenants, were senators themselves: this meant having friends and enemies among the adirim and participating in Carthage’s vigorous, at times embittered, politics. Such connections could be pivotal to the outcome of a prosecution whatever the merits of the case itself. Punishments or threats of punishment are rarely recorded. Crucifixion did await Hanno, the admiral whose defeat at the Aegates Islands in 241 forced Carthage to sue for peace, yet twenty years earlier a defeated general, another Hanno, not only survived (though heavily fined) but five years later was commanding a section of the navy. Hamilcar Barca, who had to negotiate the invidious peace terms with Rome in 241, was threatened with trial when he returned home, but nothing came of it. Nor was Hannibal prosecuted after the disaster of Zama.

THE ASSEMBLY OF CITIZENS The citizen assembly was called simply ‘m (ham), ‘the people’. It most probably met in the city’s great marketplace, called the agora by Greeks. In later centuries this lay south-east of Byrsa and near the sea; earlier, before the city expanded in that direction, the original agora may have been on the low ground between Byrsa and the shore to its east. The earliest possible mention of the ‘m as a political body is in Justin’s story of ‘Malchus’, thus after 550. Returning from abroad with his army to punish his ungrateful enemies, that general summoned ‘the people’ to explain his grievances, complain that his fellow-citizens had tolerated his enemies’ behaviour, but then grant them – the citizens – his magnanimous forgiveness. He then ‘restored the city to its laws’, meaning lawful government. If correct, this is a picture of a citizenry which at least was treated with a degree of respect. Whether restoring lawful government implied, among other 36

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things, restoring political functions to the ‘m is only a guess, but at some date the assembly gained the power to elect magistrates and – probably as a later development – to vote on policy decisions. Its normal share in affairs by Aristotle’s time involved voting on decisions passed by the senate, resolving a deadlock between the senate and one or both sufetes, and electing sufetes, generals, and other officials like the rab. As already noted, Aristotle shows that even some decisions agreed on by senate and sufetes were still put to the assembly. On such occasions the sufetes ‘do not merely let the people sit and listen to the decisions that have been taken by their rulers’ but allow free discussion (a concession unique to Carthage, he notes), and even then ‘the people have the sovereign decision’. This must mean that the assembly could reject the proposals, just as it decided the issue when there was a deadlock. Later on the philosopher remarks that Carthage was a ‘democratically ruled’ state; rather an exaggeration, but a passing acknowledgement that the assembly’s role was both important and, at times, decisive. These functions seem reasonably robust for a citizen assembly in the ancient world. It is therefore puzzling to read Polybius’ disapproving claim that in Hannibal’s day ‘the people’ (meaning the citizen body) had the greatest say. After all we still find the adirim making the major decisions then – even in his own account of events, such as going to war with Rome in 218 and discussing peace in 203. No doubt these would in turn be put before the ham for ratification, but that was not new. The best surmise must be that by 218 every decision of sufetes and senate, not just some as previously, was formally presented to the assembly, even if merely to be ratified. The dominance of the Barcid generals down to 201, based as much on popular support as on alliance with other leading men, probably gave greater visibility to the assembly, without thereby adding to its real power. This would hardly be a huge democratic advance, but Polybius is really seeking to stress how superior Rome’s ‘aristocratic’ political system was in those days, and he may well be pushing an over-artificial contrast. No definite information exists about how the assembly functioned. One hypothesis comes from a Latin inscription of ad 48 commemorating a local magnate at the Libyan country town of Thugga, who received an honorary sufeteship from the town’s senate and people ‘by the votes [or the assent] of all the gates (portae)’. These ‘gates’ at Thugga must have been a voting arrangement, perhaps denoting local clans or the residents of different sectors of the town. That the citizens at Carthage likewise voted in separate groups, each called a 37

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‘gate’ (š‘r), is speculation all the same. Gates of the usual kind are mentioned on stelae or other documents – the New Gate inscription, for example – but never in connection with political or social life.23 The citizen assembly perhaps gained its greater prominence under the trauma of the great revolt of 241–237 in Africa. Citizens had to enlist and fight in battle for Carthage’s survival, and they settled on Hamilcar Barca as their military and political leader during the revolt and after it. He was followed as general – in effect chief general, whether or not so titled – by his son-in-law Hasdrubal and then his eldest son Hannibal, each elected in turn by the citizen body. The Barcid faction’s dominance of affairs clearly included the adirim, the magistrates and even the One Hundred and Four, but it always faced some opposition, and the support of the assembly may well have been the Barcids’ ultimate strength. After the peace of 201, the Barcids lost their control and the republic came under the effective (though not official) sway of the court of One Hundred and Four. Their corrupt rule, as we shall see, then brought Hannibal back as sufete a few years later to end the scandals and help set the state back on its feet. For the remaining decades of Carthage’s life, politics and government were more vigorous than they had been in a century or more: a vitality which by a tragic irony contributed to the ultimately lethal hostility of her old enemy in Italy.

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IV THE CA RT H A G IN IA N ‘S EA EM PIRE’

CARTHAGE AND NORTH AFRICA Carthage’s trade and influence developed vigorously in her first two or three centuries, although only their outlines are visible. She did continue to pay a tribute to her Libyan neighbours, as mentioned earlier on Justin’s evidence, and on trying to end this in the late 6th Century she was forced to back down (Chapter VIII). Along the coasts and across the western seas, on the other hand, her trade and influence made remarkable progress, especially after 600 (Map 3A). To begin with, it was natural for the city to plant or support settlements along the neighbouring North African coasts, as ports of call for trade and centres for Carthaginian citizens needing fresh opportunities. Some of the many other Phoenician foundations in the region may have had Carthaginian support – colonies like Hadrumetum, Acholla and perhaps Neapolis on the coasts south of the city in the region called Byzacium, Kerkouane near the tip of Cape Bon (which may in fact have been a purely Carthaginian foundation) and Hippacra to the north of Utica. Carthage likewise came to dominate the coasts far to the east of Byzacium. Oea and Sabratha were other notable Phoenician, or perhaps joint Phoenician and Carthaginian, colonies on the Gulf of Sirte, and beyond them in turn stood Lepcis. Lepcis, whose oldest archaeological remains are 7th-Century, was a Phoenician colony founded by political refugees, according to Sallust, the Roman historian of Julius Caesar’s time, who claims to have consulted Punic records. As noted above, the Carthaginians – with wide-ranging commercial interests by then – may have helped the project or at any rate supplied protection, because the area, named Emporia by the Greeks, was very fertile although bordered closely by the African desert. With their Phoenician and perhaps partly Carthaginian 39

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origins, Emporia’s cities unsurprisingly felt a common interest with their powerful older sister. By the late 6th Century, if not earlier, Carthage was asserting her dominance over these coasts. Thus around 515 she reacted against Greek colonists trying to settle a day’s journey east of Lepcis at a river called the Cinyps, under the leadership of Dorieus, brother of the king of Sparta. With Lepcis still relatively young and undeveloped, the danger of a vigorous stream of Greek migrants taking over the region was real. Significantly, Dorieus had men from the island of Thera as guides, and Thera had been the founder of Cyrene farther east around 630. The new settlement lasted only two to three years before the Carthaginians formed an alliance with the local Libyans, a people called the Macae, to expel its occupants. The Macae were evidently prepared to put up with Lepcis, but not with a Greek colony as well. A show of force may have been all that was needed, for no actual fighting apparently occurred before the Greeks left. All the same, Carthage would meet the indefatigable Dorieus again. It was perhaps not long after this that Carthage fixed a boundary with Cyrene. Founded in another rich coastland near Pharaonic Egypt, Cyrene quickly prospered, extending its control over its neighbourhood to the west. Given the distance between the two and the desolate nature of the terrain along the southerly reaches of the vast Gulf of Sirte, there would seem little point in territorial clashes, but Sallust had read of a long and inconclusive war over who owned what. His claim of such a war is as implausible, though, as his dramatic tale of how the two cities eventually agreed on a frontier much closer to Cyrenaean territory than Carthaginian, at a site named for two Carthaginian brothers both supposedly called Philaenus (a Greek name, not a Punic one). Supposedly they gave their lives to ensure that this became the border as the ‘Altars of the Philaeni’, on the coast, almost 700 kilometres east of Lepcis near the modern oil centre of Ra’s Lanuf. Polybius, the first writer to mention the place, gives the name as the ‘Altars of Philaenus’ (singular not plural) – it looks as though the original Carthaginian story of the border-fixing was touched up further by the time Sallust found it. The ‘altars’ perhaps were on sand dunes, for they had disappeared by the time of Strabo, but the site was remembered.24 A similar expansion of influence took place in the western Mediterranean. A number of North African ports west of Hippacra came under Carthaginian control or were founded by her in the course of the 6th and 5th Centuries. Apparently none developed as towns until 40

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a later age, but places like Hippo Regius, Icosium, Chullu, Tipasa, Iol and Siga marked out the broadening scope of Carthage’s commerce and, inevitably, political influence. Further afield, according to the Greek historian Diodorus she planted a colony on the isle of Ebusus, near the eastern coast of Spain, in 654. Now Phoenician settlement certainly began there around then but, as noted earlier, pottery evidence shows that these settlers arrived from southern Spain. Diodorus’ claim probably goes back to Carthaginian tradition, recalling and distorting the fact (again shown by pottery remnants) that some generations later, around 525, the city did establish its authority over the small but prosperous island, perhaps with a fresh body of settlers. Ebusus became the first territory outside Africa to pass under Carthaginian dominance: a milestone in the city’s development into a Mediterranean great power. The Periplus of ‘Pseudo-Scylax’, a Greek sailing guide to the Mediterranean – 4th-Century bc in date but drawing on sources a hundred years older or more – remarks that the entire North African seaboard from the region of Lepcis to the straits of Gibraltar ‘all belongs to the Carthaginians’. It was not directly ruled by Carthage. The cities controlled their own territories, had their own laws and institutions (mostly similar to hers, at any rate as time passed), and supplied military and naval personnel, equipment and munitions when called on. They shared some legal rights with Carthaginians, for example of intermarriage. They also had to pay a regular tribute to Carthage, to judge from a report that one talent a day (equivalent to 6000 Greek drachmas or Roman denarii) came in from Lepcis early in the 2nd Century. This very large sum more likely represented the tribute from the whole of Emporia in that period – unless it is just a rash over-estimate.25 The tribute system was probably in force at least as early as the 4th Century and could well go back still earlier. Like the tribute from subjects of the Athenian empire in the 5th Century, it may originally have been justified as contributions to Carthage’s protective military and naval costs, though it was kept going even when she was in no position to protect the tributaries (as after 201, when there was no longer a navy). How the payments were calculated, how comparable Lepcis’ or Emporia’s was to other regions’ dues, and whether these were always paid in money or could be given partly in kind (grain and other produce, for instance), is not known. We may suppose that the ‘accountants’ (the mͥšbm) saw to all these matters, supervised by the rab. So too the tribute exacted from the Libyans of Carthage’s own hinterland, after they came under her rule. 41

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As mentioned earlier, it was not till after 480, according to Justin’s account, that the Carthaginians succeeded in cancelling rental payments to their native neighbours. But from the 5th Century on, they imposed control over much of their immediate hinterland – and in a no doubt satisfying reversal of fortunes, went on to exact tribute from the Libyans (Chapter VIII). How the process unfolded is not known, but Carthage’s restraint over expansion overseas, after the failure of Hamilcar’s ambitious expedition into Sicily in 480, offers a context. Unwilling or uninterested in further confrontation with the Sicilian Greeks, at any rate for the next seventy years, and maybe deciding that there were still opportunities to exploit in her own continent, she chose – not necessarily right after 480 – to confront the populous but politically disunited Libyans. The 4th-Century Greek author Xenophon, in his reminiscences of Socrates, has his friend describe the Carthaginians as the rulers and the Libyans as the ruled in North Africa, no doubt the view that prevailed in Greece by the year 400. By bringing them under Carthaginian hegemony and taxing them, she must have added significantly to her financial and economic strength. By the year 396, as we shall see, this exploitative hegemony had been in place long enough to exasperate the Libyans into rebellion, unsuccessfully. Over time, trading relations developed with the African interior too, although we have only glimpses. Trade with the peoples of the Sahara cannot have been as continuous as along the coasts, given the huge distances and sparse populations, but it was valuable: ivory, precious stones like tourmalines and garnets, animals like lions and ostriches (for public shows and sometimes even as pets), and later on elephants for war. Carthaginian merchants may have made journeys into these regions to trade, but the only story recorded is a one-sentence item in the later Greek author Athenaeus, supposedly from a lost essay of Aristotle’s – how a Carthaginian named Mago crossed the desert three times living on dried meat and no liquids. Whether he was a merchant we are not told. Equally or more often, the peoples of the south probably brought their goods up to Numidia, Libya or Emporia to do business with locals and Carthaginians. Strabo mentions a south Mauretanian horseriding tribe, the Pharusii, sometimes travelling as far as Cirta, the capital of Numidia: this can only have been to exchange items of trade. Sabratha on the Emporia coast was, it seems, a Mediterranean destination for other traders coming from and going to the vast expanses of the African interior.26

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CARTHAGE AND THE ETRUSCANS Carthaginian trade with the outside world grew busily. Greek pottery finds that are datable to the second quarter of the 8th Century, both Pithecusan and Euboean types, illuminate her dealings with Greek producers: the potteryware will have brought wine, oil and other imports to the city. After around 700 the Etruscans too entered trading relations. At some date a harbour on the Etruscan coast, close to the city of Caere, became the landfall for visiting Carthaginian merchants. In Roman times it still had the name Punicum, the Latin term for ‘Phoenician’. A fragment of a late 6th-Century ivory tablet, found in a Ste Monique grave at Carthage, bears a statement in Etruscan, ‘I am a Punic man (puinel) from Carthage’: its owner had probably been a merchant accustomed to travelling to Etruria on business, and proud of his achievements.27 Mutually beneficial commerce was not the only tie between Carthaginians and Etruscans. During the mid-6th Century they cooperated against some troublesome newcomers to north-western waters – Greek refugees from Phocaea in Asia Minor, fleeing from Persian conquest, who around 540 joined earlier settlers at Alalia on the east coast of Corsica. Phocaeans were well known in the west, for they had also founded Massilia in southern Gaul around 600 and had additionally developed a regular trade with southwest Spain beyond the straits of Gibraltar. The refugees, on the other hand, raided and plundered their neighbours by land and sea until Carthage joined forces with Caere and other Etruscan cities to confront them at sea, sometime around 535. Though the allies were defeated, the Phocaeans were so badly damaged that they – the refugee newcomers at any rate – thought it better to migrate to southern Italy. Otherwise Carthaginians and Etruscans got on well with Greeks. Quite apart from trading with the Greek world and responding favourably to Greek cultural forms from early on, Carthage and the Etruscans had no problem around 600 with the Phocaeans who founded Massilia in southern Gaul, a settlement which quickly prospered. Contacts initiated by the mariner Colaeus of Samos with the fabled kingdom of Tartessus in south-western Spain, around 640, were exploited by Phocaean merchants without interference, though equally without encouragement, from the Carthaginians. The Syracusan mother of ‘king’ Hamilcar, defeated at Himera in 480, has already been mentioned too. Greeks were happily settling in Etruscan cities and marrying locals: like the famous if (perhaps) 43

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legendary Demaratus the Corinthian at Tarquinii, whose halfEtruscan son Tarquinius later became king of Rome. The links between Carthage and Etruria are further and vividly illustrated by a trio of gold sheets found at Pyrgi, Caere’s chief port, from around the year 500. Inscribed in both Etruscan and Punic, they commemorate a shrine to Astarte – identified with the Etruscan goddess Uni, Rome’s Juno – which was piously dedicated by Thefarie Velianas or Veliiunas, king of Carthage’s old ally Caere. Two centuries later, Aristotle noted the trade and trading agreements between Carthaginians and Etruscans as a self-evident example of how such ties did not turn states into a single political entity even when ‘they have agreements about imports and covenants as to abstaining from dishonesty and treaties of alliance for mutual defence’. This well fits the treaty made with the newborn Roman Republic, also around 500.28

FIRST TREATY WITH ROME Naturally the Etruscans were not the Carthaginians’ only contacts in Italy. Ceramic jars for transport and storage (amphorae) of early central Italian types have also been found at Carthage. But her most famous Italian connection is represented not so much by finds as by texts quoted in Greek translation by the historian Polybius. These are two treaties with Rome, the first negotiated – according to him – in the first year of the new Roman Republic (509), and the second generally dated to the mid-4th Century. Whether he is right about the first date is much debated – some scholars, instead, think it very close to the second – but his reference to the treaty’s archaic Latin, the discovery of the Pyrgi gold sheets, and improved knowledge of the economic importance of 6th-Century Rome strengthen the case for an early date. It declares friendship between Rome, Carthage and their allies under specific conditions. Romans or their allies were forbidden to sail beyond the ‘Fair Cape’, probably Cape Farina (though Cape Bon is another suggestion), unless driven by weather or enemies, and if so could not do business or stay longer than five days. Their merchants coming to ‘Libya or Sardinia’ were to trade only under supervision by an official, but payment for sales was guaranteed by the state; while a Roman coming to Sicily ‘which the Carthaginians govern’ would have equal rights with other comers. The Carthaginians promised not to harm various named communities in Latium (the Romans’ home region) 44

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subject to Rome; to hand over to her any other Latin city which they might capture; and not to establish themselves militarily in Latium. So far as we know, none of these events ever happened.29 This treaty implies not only busy commerce between the Romans and Carthage’s now extensive areas of dominance (sometimes rather loosely termed her ‘empire’), but also a striking inequality between the signatories. The Carthaginians were not regulated by it in how they should do business in Roman territories or where they could sail, whereas Polybius inferred that the ban on passing the Fair Cape was to prevent Romans from gaining knowledge about the Emporia region (a not very persuasive suggestion). If Cape Farina was the ‘Fair Cape’, the rather more plausible aim would have been to keep Rome’s venturesome merchants from intruding into the far western Mediterranean. No ban was needed, meanwhile, against possible Roman descents on Carthaginian-ruled communities or coasts, for Rome was not a major sea-power even though she may have had, or might acquire, a few warships. Just as significant is that the agreement shows Carthage in control of coastal Libya (its interior was not relevant, nor as yet under her power), coastal Sardinia, and at least some of the Sicilian coasts too – though not of the entire island, despite its literal wording. As outlined above, the North African coastline from Lepcis (or from the Altars of the Philaeni) to the straits of Gibraltar had come under her dominance during the 6th Century. The very limited evidence that survives points to a similar inference for both south-western Sardinia and western Sicily.

PROJECTION OF POWER: SARDINIA The Phoenician colonies in Sardinia, lying mostly in its south-western third where the broadest and most productive plains lie – but with another at Olbia on a bay in the far north-east – had grown prosperous in the two centuries since their foundation (Map 3B). The settlers collaborated and intermarried with the locals, as native Sardinian burials and goods at or near towns such as Sulcis, Monte Sirai and Tharros showed. Like Carthage and other Phoenician foundations, they traded with the Etruscans and Greeks, as well as the Phoenician homeland and Africa. Around the middle of the 6th Century this began to change. The dominant pottery in excavations becomes black-figure ware from Attica, and the volume of such imports, it seems, is smaller. Some 45

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inhabited sites shrank dramatically, like Monte Sirai and Sulcis, or were abandoned; at others, Phoenician, Punic and also Greek styles in items of art and grave-architecture became common. New settlers, now from North Africa, arrived. Nora and Carales grew in importance during the 5th Century. Carales, the dominant city in Sardinia’s most productive region, was perhaps the key base for administration. This evidence would fit Carthage’s implied (if exaggerated) claim in her treaty with Rome that she controlled the island, and Justin’s and the late Roman writer Orosius’ accounts of interventions there by the Carthaginian general commonly called ‘Malchus’ – whose real name was more likely Mazeus (or perhaps Mazel) – and his successors. With both authors compressing heavily what they found in earlier works, inconsistencies are no surprise: Justin has ‘Malchus’ victorious in Sicily but then worsted in Sardinia; in Orosius he is beaten both in Sicily and then, still more severely, in Sardinia (even though Orosius implies that Justin is his source). Still, both point to the same period of time for his activities: in Justin’s account they occur about two generations before the Carthaginian defeat at Himera in Sicily in 480, while Orosius dates Mazeus, as he calls him, to the time of Cyrus the Great of Persia who ruled from around 557 to 530. Mazeus’ role in Carthage’s domestic history will be looked at later (Chapter VIII). But if there is anything to these claims of 6th-Century wars in Sardinia, they may include dealings with the Phocaean refugees mentioned above. Herodotus, himself a Greek, reports these Greeks behaving like brigands and pirates over several years – harassing Corsican communities by land, no doubt, and Carthaginian and Etruscan shipping at sea (whether they harassed fellow Greeks too, Herodotus does not say). When finally forced into a sea battle against Carthaginian and Etruscan forces, they were victorious despite being outnumbered 120 ships to their own sixty. Yet the allies’ tactical loss was offset by strategic gain, for the badly damaged Phocaeans left for southern Italy (although some Greeks, perhaps the original colonists of Alalia, did stay on, according to archaeological finds). The Etruscans recovered security in their own waters, and the Carthaginians were free to intervene or continue intervening in Sardinia. If Mazeus was a real general, whose political troubles at home resulted from a severe defeat in Sardinia, he probably was not involved in the Alalia naval operation but was active either earlier or, a little more plausibly, afterwards. Alalia rid the region of the 46

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Phocaeans, but Sardinia was a harder challenge. Justin tells of the city’s next leaders, Mago and his two sons Hasdrubal and Hamilcar, continuing military operations there one after the other. Carthaginian intervention, as noted just now, was far from uniformly beneficial to the Phoenician cities; so it is possible enough that some had to be subdued by force, along with the neighbouring native Sardinians. It would not be surprising, then, that first Mazeus and later the Magonid generals had long-lasting difficulties – Hasdrubal, in fact, was fatally wounded. But eventually, Justin implies, Hamilcar the Magonid was victorious after many exertions (though later he perished in Sicily).30 If the treaty with Rome is a guide, Carthage succeeded in imposing lasting control by about 510, although of course intermittent revolts may well have continued. Thus by the last decade of the 6th Century she was mistress of the most fertile regions of Sardinia. Even if she claimed control over all of it, in practice this did not extend over its vast mountainous interior, though of course trade with the peoples there continued and Sardinian warriors could be hired as mercenaries for other Carthaginian wars, such as Hamilcar’s in 480. As in North Africa, the Phoenician towns in the island remained selfgoverning but probably paid some form of tribute, as would the native Sardinian communities under Carthage’s dominance. Part of the island’s grain harvest may have been levied for tribute, for we find Hamilcar sending to Sardinia as well as Libya for grain supplies for his Sicilian expedition.

PROJECTION OF POWER: SICILY Carthaginian hegemony in western Sicily seems to date to the later 6th Century too (Map 3C). The first treaty with Rome, at the century’s end, explicitly states that the Carthaginians ‘rule’ Sicily: a selfserving exaggeration, but in practice the clause covered the parts under Carthaginian hegemony. Unfortunately if unsurprisingly, the evidence for how it happened is literary and fragmented. Sicily’s native peoples, called Elymi, Sicani and Sicels by Greeks, had been joined in recent centuries by Phoenician and Greek settlers who effectively took over most of the coastlands. Greek settlers were particularly enterprising, founding colonies as far west as Selinus on the south-west coast and Himera less than 50 kilometres east of Panormus. According to Diodorus and the later travel author Pausanias, around 580 a Greek adventurer, Pentathlus of Cnidus, tried to 47

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found a colony still further west, only to be slain by ‘the Phoenicians and Segestans’ – Segesta was a vigorous Elymian city in the region, already much influenced by Greek culture – or else by the Segestans alone when he supported Selinus against them. ‘Phoenicians’ in this context would include the cities of Panormus, Solous and Motya; but not necessarily Carthage. The next reports, Justin’s and Orosius’, bring in Mazeus and his successors, with Mazeus fighting in Sicily – successfully or otherwise – before heading for Sardinia and defeat. Mago and then his two sons seem to have operated in Sicily too, though Justin does not say against whom. Sardinia may offer a clue: as mentioned above, the Phoenician colonies there, or some of them, seem to have suffered – not benefited – from Carthage’s intervention and may not have welcomed it. Her Sicilian wars, too, may have begun against her Phoenician sister cities to bring them under her hegemony. The wars were probably intermittent, with changing opponents and, it seems, varying fortunes, but Justin does present Mago and his second son Hamilcar – though not Hasdrubal, the elder one – as enjoying notable successes. Another episode complicates the picture. Around 510, Carthage’s old nuisance Dorieus put in another appearance, this time seeking to found a colony in western Sicily. His luck proved still worse than before – he was defeated and slain, with most of his followers, by ‘the Phoenicians and Segestans’ or simply the Segestans (Herodotus states both versions), or by the Carthaginians (thus Diodorus), or the Segestans again (in Pausanias’ brief account). Justin does not mention the episode but, when he writes of Carthage’s wars against the Sicilian Greeks in the early 480s, a confused half-memory of Dorieus may help explain why he names Leonidas of Sparta as the Greeks’ commander. With Carthage a power in western Sicily by 509 and fresh from the contretemps with Dorieus, it would be surprising if – this time – Herodotus’ ‘Phoenicians’ did not include the Carthaginians. According to Pausanias, indeed, the Spartan did found a colony named after his ancestor Hercules before he, his expedition and then the fledgling town met their end; but the mere prospect of such a foundation would have prompted the Carthaginians to act. More than one explanation is possible for the variations among our sources. Herodotus may in fact mean the Carthaginians, just as he later describes the expeditionary army of 480 as consisting of ‘Phoenicians’ (surely not literally), Libyans, Sardinians and others. Rather more likely, the word on both these occasions embraces both 48

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Carthaginians and Sicilian Phoenicians. A third and subtler possibility could be that the Carthaginians commissioned their vassals the local Phoenicians and the Segestans to confront Dorieus; to this might be added the extra possibility that it was Segestan soldiers who actually slew him in battle or claimed to have done so.31 The next known period of war in Sicily, between 490 and 480, pitted Carthage against the two powerful Greek cities Acragas and Syracuse, under their rulers Theron and Gelon. It would lead on to the great expedition of 480, the republic’s first major military confrontation with Greek states. Even so these struggles seem to have followed on a more or less peaceful period, perhaps as long as two decades, after the defeat of Dorieus. It will have been a period when the Carthaginians confirmed and consolidated their hegemony over the west of Sicily, under Mago’s second son Hamilcar. His lengthy career as summed up by Justin – eleven ‘dictatorships’ (terms as sufete and general combined?), four ‘triumphs’ (the Roman term for a formal celebration of victory), his eventual death giving Carthage’s foes new heart – suggests a momentous leadership at home and abroad, and it need not have been exercised purely in warfare. Carthaginian Sicily was sometimes called the epikrateia, a Greek term for governed territory. It varied at times in extent and was to be challenged repeatedly by enemies in the 4th and 3rd Centuries; but it endured until the later years of the First Punic War with Rome, to end formally only in 241. Again there was no direct control from Carthage over Sicilian lands, except perhaps in dire emergencies like a Greek or Roman invasion. The Phoenician and native cities remained selfgoverning, but had to contribute forces and supplies for war if Carthage demanded them. These forces were probably not very large. Whenever Carthage launched major operations in the island, she sent over contingents from Africa and other territories – even as early as 480, as just noted. Whether the local communities paid tribute too, how much, and whether in money (which by 500 had been invented) or agricultural and other produce, is not known.

CARTHAGE, SPAIN AND THE ATLANTIC Pottery remains from Spain may be the earliest of all those at Carthage, for they date to the first half of the 8th Century, even earlier (it seems) than those from Pithecusae and Euboea. Phoenician trade with southern Spain had begun centuries before, notably with 49

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the south-western realm along and inland from the Río Tinto on the Atlantic coast, and known to the Greeks as Tartessus, famous for its silver ore. Gades, founded about the same time as Carthage, came to be the main entrepôt for commerce between southern Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean, though the smaller Phoenician trading posts like Malaca and Abdera also took part (Map 3A). The Spanish communities under their princes traded silver, copper, lead, salt, grain and hides for wine, oil, textiles, jewellery and utensils from abroad. These increasingly included items made at Carthage or shipped by Carthaginians from other places, such as oil from Attica. Excavated finds of transport jars (amphorae) show that the wine and oil business was very large, while grandees’ tombs in the Río Tinto and river Guadalquivir regions were provided with luxury import items like jewellery, lamps, carved ivory, and devotional amulets to accompany the deceased. Perhaps from the beginning, Carthaginian merchants voyaged into the Atlantic not only to Gades (and perhaps Tartessus) but down the African coast at least as far as the old Phoenician settlements of Lixus and, further south, on the isle of Mogador. They perhaps ventured northwards, too, in search of the fabled tin of the Cassiterides islands, though this may not have happened until later, in the late 6th or the 5th Centuries, as we shall see. In contrast to Sardinia, Sicily and even Ebusus, Carthage did not intervene militarily in Spain. The only claim that she did is a sentence of Justin’s, in a very short account of pre-Roman Spain (mostly legendary) at the very end of his history. He reports that the Gaditanes, soon after their city’s foundation, sought help from Carthage against attacks by the native Spaniards, only for the Carthaginians to annex that region to their empire. That one recently-founded Phoenician colony could help – and annex – another, two thousand kilometres away across the seas, is of course a mere fancy, and there is no evidence, archaeological or literary, for any such venture even in the period when Carthage was establishing a hegemony over Sardinia and Sicily. The first treaty with Rome, at the end of the 6th Century, says nothing of Spain (unlike the second, a century and a half later). If the republic did send some help to Gades, it must have been much later and it still did not result in a Spanish epikrateia. Trade was naturally a different matter: they followed in the wake of their Phoenician forebears, and contacts with Phoenician Spain were constant and close. Gades, we shall see, may have been the assembly point for the famous Atlantic expedition recorded in the Periplus of Hanno, sometime around the year 500.32 50

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Carthage traded too with centres like Tingi and Lixus on Africa’s Atlantic coast, which have left some remains from Carthaginian times and would prosper down to the Roman era. Trading visits to other parts of Atlantic Morocco were regular, if in places a little bizarre from a Greek viewpoint. With some peoples, according to Herodotus’ Carthaginian informers, traders carried out successful deals in a paradoxical silence. Following time-honoured custom they would set their goods out on a deserted beach, return to their ships, and raise a smoke-signal. The local people would come and inspect the wares, leave a quantity of gold on the beach, and depart. The merchants in turn inspected the gold and, if they thought it fair value, took it and sailed away – but if not, would leave everything on the beach and return to shipboard to wait for the locals to add more gold. Traders and natives never met, but ‘neither wronged the other’ in these dealings. We may surmise that if the locals did not like the goods offered, they would not begin the bartering at all; but experienced merchants would seldom make such a mistake.33

HANNO’S PERIPLUS Carthaginian seafaring on a large scale is vividly illustrated in what may be the most remarkable written document that we have by a Carthaginian. Surviving in a single medieval manuscript, a short but circumstantial Greek text called ‘The Periplus [coastal voyage] of Hanno basileus of the Carthaginians’ narrates a naval expedition down the Atlantic coast of North Africa. The work is generally (though not universally) agreed to be a translation, made sometime around 400 bc, of an authentic original. For all that we know, the translator too was a Carthaginian. The date of the expedition is not known, but is generally taken to be the later 6th or earlier 5th Century. The Greek title basileus, ‘king’, probably translates Punic ‘sufete’ as shown earlier. This Hanno cannot be more closely identified, but there is one possible clue to his date. Justin mentions a mid-5th-Century war between Carthage and the Mauri (of Mauretania, roughly today’s Morocco). He gives no details, but if it did happen it may have been connected in some way with the expedition – for instance, the settlements founded by Hanno perhaps provoked hostility from the locals and had to be sent further help (via Gades?). Or conversely, old Phoenician settlements in Atlantic Mauretania, notably Lixus but also trading-posts like the one at Tangier, first had to be helped against the Mauri and then a decision followed 51

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to strengthen Carthaginian interests in the region, by sending Hanno out with new settlers. This might also account for why all his colonies seem to have lain along Mauretania’s Atlantic coast. Whether Hanno himself was a member of the then-dominant family of the Magonids – whose leaders in the mid-5th Century included a Hanno, son of Hamilcar the defeated general at Himera in Sicily in 480 – is not known but is a reasonable guess. Hanno, says the Periplus, was sent with ‘sixty penteconters, and men and women to the number of thirty thousand’ to found colonies beyond the straits of Gibraltar. Sixty penteconters would not have had room for anything like so many people, so it is reasonable to infer that their number is a literary conceit, or the translator misread the Punic figure, or else the penteconters were armed craft escorting transport ships. All the same the number of settlers must have been much smaller, conceivably just a tenth of the supposed total. The narrative records a colony being placed at ‘Thymiaterion’ and others further down the coast as far as a place called Cerne. ‘Thymiaterion’ was apparently the town later called Tingi, today Tangier, on the straits, where early tombs dating from around 700 already show Phoenician cultural influences. There is much argument over where the other colonies were placed, but they all seem to have lain along the Moroccan coast. From Cerne the expedition sailed further south – we are not told why – though it founded no more settlements. The Carthaginians now had some intriguing, not to mention mysterious, encounters that have formed the Periplus’ main fascination for modern readers. Inland from one anchorage, they heard and were terrified by drumbeats, flutes and cries at night. Over much of the trip they saw fires that lit up the night skies and sometimes came down to the shores, including at one point a blaze ‘larger than the rest, which seemed to reach the stars’. On one island just before turning back, they were assailed with stones by the natives but managed to capture three very hairy women ‘whom the interpreters [from Lixus] called “Gorillas”’. These fought back so fiercely that their captors killed them, flaying the bodies to take the skins to Carthage. Hanno now turned back because supplies were running short. Apart from the ‘Lixitae’ interpreters (the people of Lixus or their Berber neighbours), most of the Periplus’ names are not easily identifiable, not even those of the colonies. How far south the fleet sailed is regularly debated, and the vivid descriptions of sites and events beyond Cerne have been matched with quite a variety of African places and features. As the Periplus, like a ship’s log, records the 52

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number of sailing-days from one place to the next, identifications depend very much on estimating the fleet’s sailing speed, with estimates ranging from a cautious 40 kilometres a day to an optimistic 100 and above. As a result, some interpretations have Hanno sailing around all of west Africa as far as the Cameroon coast; others, in sharp contrast, only as far as the gulf of Agadir in southern Morocco and over to the nearby Canary Islands. The story of the voyage was placed in the temple of ‘Cronus’, probably Baal Hammon’s. In the 1st Century ad both Mela the Roman geographer and Pliny the Elder knew it, no doubt in its Greek version. Pliny mentions details which he must have found in another source conversant with Hanno’s Periplus: that the expedition started from Gades, and two skins of the women ‘Gorillas’ could be seen at Carthage in the temple of ‘Juno’ – meaning Tanit or (some think) Astarte – until the destruction of the city. He could be right about both, for the Periplus’ itinerary starts at the straits of Gibraltar, while conceivably the third skin may have been lost or destroyed before the time of his other source. The Periplus’ term ‘Gorillas’ (in Greek, Gorivlla~) has had a strange later life. Some readers supposed that Hanno captured hairy apes, not hairy humans: so a 19th-Century clergyman-scientist, Thomas Savage, applied the word to African apes (and in time it was used of the film hero King Kong). Its real form and sense is another disputed Periplus question. Is it a copyist’s error for ‘Gorgades’, the word that Pliny gives to the captive women’s tribe (an easy mistake using Greek letters), or for some other term; or a transcription into Greek of a supposed Punic term of disdain, ‘oril or horil, ‘the uncircumcised ones’? If so, Hanno’s interpreters must have meant the whole tribe, as Pliny assumes. Whatever the solution to this ancient puzzle, ‘gorilla’ is the most lasting, if misapplied, legacy of Hanno’s expedition.34 In practice, what this famous voyage achieved seems limited. The colonies do not seem to have lasted into Roman times or to have left much trace on the ground. If the stated aim was to plant them, it is not obvious why the fleet sailed on for at least another twenty-seven days after the final one at Cerne. A marked feature in the later half of Periplus is the almost constant fright of the travellers at the strange sights and sounds they met, and this second half is sometimes suspected as being mere myth-inspired fiction – or cunning Carthaginian disinformation. If it is genuine, the aim of the further voyage may have been to seek out new places for trading, though plainly none was found. 53

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Even so, Hanno’s Periplus brings to life the seafaring skills and the (cautious) long-distance enterprise of Carthage in her heyday. His colonising expedition was at least equivalent in size to the Phocaeans’ migration to the west after 546. It dates probably to the century of Carthage’s widening control over North Africa’s coasts, her takeover of Ebusus, the known pacts with Etruria and Rome, and the interventions in Sardinia and Sicily. Nor is it the only travel episode that illustrates her maritime vigour.

HIMILCO’S VOYAGE Another notable Atlantic expedition, reported by ancient writers though its own record does not survive, was led by one Himilco, who sailed to the north. Avienus, a 4th-Century ad writer whose partly-preserved poem Ora Maritima (‘the Sea Coast’) describes the shores of western lands, claims to summarise items from Himilco’s report, which he uses along with other long-past travel accounts. With sources so distant from his own time, and with an unreliable grasp of geography in any case, Avienus is a debatable witness to Himilco’s voyage, but at least it is also mentioned by Pliny, who writes that both Himilco and Hanno were sent forth from Carthage at the same time. Himilco’s voyage will then date between 500 and 450. Sailing north from the straits of Gibraltar, he visited the ‘Oestrymnides islands’ on a voyage that lasted four months from start to end. These islands are another well-debated geographical issue, thanks to Avienus’ poetically coloured and often vague language: the Oestrymnians had traded with the Tartessians, he avers, then with ‘the colonists of Carthage’ and other folk around the straits, and were two days’ sail from ‘Ierne’, which seems to be Ireland. The names ‘Oestrymnides’ and ‘Oestrymnis’ (the main island) are not found outside Avienus, but they are generally identified with the famous, if again much-debated, Cassiterides islands whose important trade in tin with southern Spain – cassiteros being the Greek for tin – is often mentioned by ancient writers. Herodotus in the later 5th Century was the earliest to mention the Cassiterides and their reputation as Greece’s source of tin, but was dubious about their existence. Later ages acquired fuller though sometimes fanciful details: Strabo describes the islanders in their black cloaks, ankle-length robes and belts circling their chests as ‘looking like the vengeance-goddesses in tragedies’; they lived a 54

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pastoral life and exchanged tin and lead from their mines for salt and manufactured goods from visiting merchants. The Cassiterides have been variously identified: as the Scilly Islands off Cornwall (or Cornwall itself, supposing that Himilco mistook it for an island), as Brittany or some of the islands off the western Breton coast, or – much more conservatively – as the extensively indented coast of Galicia in north-western Spain. The tin trade, as noted earlier, was a prized and vital part of Mediterranean commerce. Pliny, while mentioning Himilco, in a brief remark elsewhere calls the first traveller to the tin islands Midacritus, a man otherwise unknown but with a Greek name. Himilco may have been the first Carthaginian official – a sufete like Hanno, perhaps – to explore the route and write an account of his journey, though this is only a surmise. Once they gained a dominant position in western waters, the Carthaginians worked hard at keeping competitors at bay. Strabo tells a story of one later shipcaptain who ran his vessel into shoals with the loss of all his crew, rather than let a Roman ship behind him find the route to the tin islands (the authorities at Carthage rewarded him handsomely).35 But ancient seas were hard to patrol, and nothing suggests that Carthaginian screening in western waters was foolproof. Colaeus’ and the Phocaeans’ dealings with Tartessus have been mentioned above. Herodotus, though doubtful whether the Cassiterides – or even an ocean beyond Europe – really existed, does accept that tin, like amber, came ‘from the furthest region’ of the world but makes no mention of Carthaginian intermediaries. In this as in many other of their dealings with the rest of the Mediterranean world, the Carthaginians had a constant problem over matching their preferences with the realities.

AN EXPANSIONIST POLICY? Carthage under Mazeus, Mago and their successors looks surprisingly active, indeed assertive. Her size, population and wealth were growing, thanks to busy trade and industry. The area of the city, by the end of the 6th Century or earlier, was over 50 hectares. The 6th-Century troubles of her mother city perhaps brought her some extra advantages: Tyre suffered a thirteen-year siege from 585 to 572 by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and then had to accept first Babylonian and, forty years later, Persian domination, events that did Tyrian prosperity little good. The silver trade from Tartessus seems to have 55

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contracted badly or even collapsed. The Carthaginians continued to honour Tyre as their mother city, sending yearly tithes to Melqart’s temple there, but at the same time they may have gained some of Tyre’s western customers. They may also have received Tyrian and Phoenician migrants seeking a less threatened life. Establishing her dominant influence over the North African coasts, and over Ebusus, overlapped in time with a similar development in the regions of Sardinia and Sicily that were commercially, agriculturally and culturally aligned with her interests. These activities stretched over many decades, from the middle or later 6th Century (the wars of Mazeus) to the early 5th. Justin’s account of them, selective though it is in places – highlighting the clash between Mazeus and his priestly son, ignoring local place-names, studiously vague about chronology – nonetheless transmits what seems a plausible outline, not just a triumphally fictitious one. In fact the wars as he tells them were far from uniform successes, for they included the failed attempt to jettison paying the Libyan tribute, the defeats in Sardinia suffered by Mazeus and Mago’s son Hasdrubal, and the practical stalemate against Acragas and Syracuse early in the 480s. This wide range of military and naval ventures should be seen in perspective, all the same. The armed forces employed were surely much smaller than those in Carthage’s later wars. Herodotus gives the Carthaginian and Etruscan fleets 60 penteconters each when fighting the Phocaeans: a penteconter had twenty-five oars on each side, each rowed by one oarsman, who it seems did any necessary hand-to-hand fighting as well. Carthage’s expeditionary force would therefore have totalled 3000 men or so, the majority of them oarsmen. It need not have been her entire naval capacity at the time, but clearly was a major effort. The days of hundreds of heavilymanned quinqueremes were far in the future. The armies campaigning in 6th-Century Sardinia or Sicily probably numbered a few thousand at most, even when supported by allied contingents and mercenaries. They may not always (or even often) have outnumbered their opponents – one reason why operations seem to have been episodic and sometimes adverse. It could also help explain the consternation aroused by the incursion of Dorieus and his followers, who cannot have been much more numerous. Allegedly Hamilcar’s great army in Sicily, only thirty years later, did comprise an enormous number of soldiers – three hundred thousand – not to mention 200 warships and 3000 transports, but these figures cannot be taken any more seriously than Herodotus’ colossal totals for the Persian forces invading Greece in the same year. 56

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It does not seem likely that these wide-ranging, overlapping and persistent ventures simply happened to coincide, or that their various stages each developed because of separate and ad hoc factors. Rather, a conscious plan looks likely: to capitalise on Carthage’s growing riches and resources by bringing important nearby territories under firmer influence and exploitation. The republic’s concern to clarify and regulate trade relationships is plain from the treaties with the Etruscans and Romans. Trade naturally figured in the dealings by Carthage and her Sicilian Phoenician allies, like Motya, with the island’s Greek cities, though whether economic tensions contributed to the wars of the 480s is not certain. According to Herodotus, Gelon of Syracuse in 480 did tell envoys from Greece how he had previously offered – in vain – to cooperate with Athens and other Greek states in ‘liberating the trading posts (emporia)’ which brought these states ‘great revenues and benefits’, only for them to refuse both his offer and also his appeal for military help against the Carthaginians. Were these trading posts in Sicily, or in a region of more direct interest to mainland Greece such as southern Italy? Gelon’s language suggests the latter, which would not make the emporia an issue between Carthage and Syracuse, but nothing else is known about them. The republic’s overseas drive for hegemony was partly due as well, perhaps, to political pressures among the Carthaginian élite. It was not just the Barcid generals of the 3rd Century who owed their status and effective dominance to military glory (and carefully distributed booty): so did Mago and then his descendants for a century and more, until their peers combined to dislodge them. Mazeus may have been the first grandee to exploit military success like this, perhaps indeed because it was the first time the resources – in men, ships, munitions and money – were available on the necessary scale. His overthrow cleared the way for the more judicious Mago, but military activities were still desirable, to support the continuing dominance of his family and faction. By 480 their supremacy was secure enough to survive the shock of the defeat at Himera. By 480, too, Carthage had become the centre of a geopolitical sphere of influence broader than anything previously seen in the western Mediterranean. The tales of Darius of Persia calling for her help in his expedition against Athens in 490, and of his son Xerxes coordinating with Carthage a grand strategy ten years later to attack the Greeks in both the east and the west simultaneously, may be legend but do recognise that now the republic had a status – and 57

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potential – which would not have been dreamt of at the end of the 7th Century. It put her on a level, economically, politically and militarily, with just a very few other contemporary powers in the Mediterranean.

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V TR A D ERS A N D LAN D O W N ERS : CARTHA G IN IA N S O CIETY TRADE AND TRADERS The Carthaginians are often visualised as a nation of seafaring traders, interested only in the bottom line. This supposed obsession is more a feature of modern stereotyping than ancient. True, ancient writers from Herodotus on often mention their trading behaviour, techniques and markets, as already shown. Greeks and Romans often and admiringly stressed Carthage’s wealth: the Syracusan leader Hermocrates in 415 described her (according to Thucydides) as richer than all other cities, and two hundred and sixty-five years later, in Polybius’ time, the universal view remained that she was the wealthiest city in the world. Cicero makes the entirely specious claim that it was Carthage’s passion for trade, and by implication moneymaking, that eventually brought her down. Nonetheless, ancient sources focus more often on other prime features of the city’s life – warfare and politics especially.36 A great deal of Carthage’s wealth did come from the sea. As noted earlier, the lengthy expeditions of Hanno and Himilco seem basically intent on fostering contacts along Europe’s and Africa’s Atlantic coasts. The takeover of Ebusus and interventions in Sardinia and Sicily had added to her trade advantages, so there is no surprise in her resolve, obvious in the first treaty with Rome (of 509 or thereabouts) and again in the second (generally dated to 348: Chapter X), to regulate Roman trading contacts with her territories in both islands as well as in North Africa. It would be hard to imagine that her agreements with other commercial states were very different, except perhaps ones made with sister Phoenician colonies that may possibly have given those places easier terms. From early times on, the usual Carthaginian merchant ships, like others in the Mediterranean, were of two types: a small craft known 59

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as a gaulos (thought to be a Phoenician word for ship), low in the water with a wide and rounded hull and pointed bow; and the hippos (Greek for horse, because of its horsehead prow), narrower and tapering at both bow and stern. In various forms and sizes, such ships and their descendants were the mainstay of the Carthaginian merchant marine down the centuries. It may have been in large merchantmen that Hanno’s expeditionary colonists sailed, with his 60 penteconters as escorts. The penteconter itself – the name means fifty-oared ship – was descended from fifty-oared war galleys of more ancient times, and remained the standard ship of Mediterranean warfare until around 500. It could also be used for transport, as for example the Phocaeans did on their migrations; though, as noted earlier, Hanno’s expedition would have needed many more than sixty if his colonists went in penteconters too. Archaeological finds reveal imports to Carthage from all over the Mediterranean, even in early times as was shown above, and also installations for making the famous scarlet dye from the murex shellfish. Commerce in tin, iron, lead, silver and other metals continued, although these goods have left fewer physical traces. The remains of amphorae, pottery jars used for carrying wine, oil and grain, show continuing imports from Greece, notably Athens and especially prominent during the 5th and 4th Centuries, as well as increasing quantities from southern Italy and Campania, the Iberian peninsula, and later too from Rhodes. Diodorus records a thriving export of olives from Acragas in Sicily to Carthage in the later 5th Century: though he implies that, once olive cultivation became widespread in Libya, the exports fell off. The Carthaginians in turn exported North African fish, grain, oil (this in later times at least), murex dye and other products. In the city’s final centuries, after 300, Libyan wine too became an important export, or so suggest the wide-mouthed Punic amphorae (suitable for easy pouring) found in many places around the western Mediterranean – Massilia, Corsica and Rome among them – and even further east at Athens. As well as handling such produce, the city’s merchants were also active middlemen, acquiring goods from other producers and selling them on. A sizeable part of the cargoes set out on African beaches for the locals to inspect will have been of this sort, and it is worth noting that (as Herodotus tells it) the Carthaginian traders were paid in gold, not barter items. A 5th-Century shipwreck, just off the islet of Tagomago alongside Ibiza, was carrying a cargo probably of garum fish-sauce, in amphorae of a type made in the region of Gades 60

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and Tingi; while the ship was a western Phoenician type, perhaps even from Carthage. A small Carthaginian ship which sank in the harbour of Lilybaeum (modern Marsala) around the year 250 also carried garum along with wine and olives.37 What a Carthaginian merchant arriving in a foreign town might have for sale is playfully suggested by the Roman playwright Plautus in Poenulus, ‘The Little Carthaginian’ (or more freely ‘Our Carthaginian Friend’), a comedy put on, it seems, not long after the Second Punic War. The ‘little Carthaginian’ is a rich, elderly merchant named Hanno, searching the Mediterranean for his long-lost daughters and just arrived in a small Greek seaport. For his own reasons he pretends at first to speak only Punic, which allows a self-appointed local interpreter named Milphio to mistranslate him as huckstering a variety of mostly cheap goods: ‘African mice’ for display at a festival (a joke for panthers?), soup ladles, water- or music-pipes, nuts, lard, spades and mattocks. This miscellany, which is spread over several lines, is plainly meant for humour since the audience knows that Hanno is on a very different mission: but Romans might well expect much this kind of cargo from Carthaginian ships. Hanno’s supposed Punic utterances not only mystified later copyists but modern scholars too until quite recently, the general verdict being that Plautus wrote invented gibberish. Now they are widely treated as genuine – the only specimens of Punic of any length in Greek or Roman literature. Translations of them vary because of the state of the text, but in any version they are unexciting: Hanno prays for help from the local gods, explains that he is seeking the hospitality of an old friend’s son who lives in the town, and identifies the young man’s house; he then answers Milphio’s questions in Punic until the false renditions provoke him into Latin. But his Punic remarks are lengthy enough to suggest that at least some members of his audience could understand him. With Carthaginian–Roman trade going back to the 6th Century or even earlier, this will be no surprise (not to mention that, by Plautus’ time, the first and second Punic wars had brought many Carthaginians to Italy as enslaved captives).38 It is worth noting that an old street or district on Rome’s Esquiline Hill had the name Vicus Africus, ‘the African quarter’: perhaps it was where merchants from North Africa lodged in numbers sizeable enough to give the place its name. A community, small or substantial, of Carthaginians and other North Africans could be found at Rome and other important foreign centres at any time (save during wars), just as resident Greeks are glimpsed at 61

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Carthage in 396 and Italian merchants in 149. Syracuse in 398 had a large body of resident Carthaginians, with plentiful property to plunder when a new war broke out; so did other Sicilian Greek cities, Diodorus tells us (the Carthaginians, by contrast, seem to have left their resident Greeks alone). Milphio in Poenulus describes Hanno as a gugga, a joke (it seems) about the merchant’s colourful foreign clothing; a modern suggestion is that gugga was the Punic name for a purple-hued African bird. The widespread view that it was a word, perhaps derisive, for Carthaginian traders in general is less convincing, for it is not found anywhere else with this sense. Interestingly even so, a Punic-language inscription at Cirta in Numidia – today’s Constantine in Algeria – probably from after the destruction of Carthage and thus after Plautus’ lifetime, seems to use hgg‘ (‘the gugga’) for the profession of a man coincidentally called Hanno. Given the importance of trade, within and beyond Africa, to the Carthaginians throughout their history, and the general view that their republic was run by a merchant oligarchy, it is paradoxical that the only rich Carthaginian merchant whom we know in any detail is fictitious. One real merchant may be attested on a mid-4th-Century Greek inscription (now lost) from Thebes: he was ‘Nobas son of Axioubos’ – probably one Nubo or Nabal (both are rare but attested Carthaginian names), son of a Hasdrubal or Esibaal – who received honours from the Boeotian League of which Thebes was the dominant city. Possibly the men called Aris and Mago whose names – in Greek letters – are stamped on some wide-mouthed amphorae found at Carthage were merchants too; but just as possibly or more so, they were the amphora-makers or the landowners whose estates produced the wine or oil transported in the jars (as was common practice on Roman-era lamps, amphorae and other pottery items). It is surely safe to suppose that most (if not all) of the city’s leading men down the ages had links with commerce – directly or through kinsmen or merchant protégés – but this does remain a supposition.39

LAND AND LANDOWNING As mentioned earlier, it was not till after 480, in Justin’s account, that the Carthaginians succeeded in cancelling rental payments to their Libyan neighbours. Instead, from then on they imposed control over much of their hinterland – and in a no doubt satisfying reversal 62

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of fortunes, went on to exact tribute from it. How the process unfolded is not known, but Carthage’s restraint over expansion overseas after the failure in 480 of Hamilcar’s ambitious expedition into Sicily offers a context. Unwilling or uninterested in further confrontation with the Sicilian Greeks, at any rate for the next seventy years, and maybe deciding that there were still opportunities to exploit in her own continent, she chose – not necessarily right after 480 – to confront the populous but politically disunited Libyans. By bringing them under Carthaginian hegemony and taxing them she must have added significantly to her financial and economic strength. It was probably during the same period that the North African coastlands, including the other old Phoenician colonies, came under a similar dominance, as noted earlier. While Carthage’s own city-territory (in Greek, her chora) remained a separate entity from the subject Libyan territories and the lands of her Libyphoenician allies, nothing banned Carthaginians from owning property in all three. The chora consisted of Carthage’s immediate environs, probably including Tunes, as well as the Cape Bon peninsula, but its precise limits are not known. Carthaginian citizens very likely owned most of it, apart from any areas directly owned by the state, but there were probably some other propertyowners as well – residents from the sister colonies, some Libyans (from the very beginning, according to Justin), even foreigners like Greeks, Tyrians and Etruscans. As mentioned above, there was a Greek community at Carthage early in the 4th Century and no doubt at other times, while property-owning Carthaginians could be found in many Sicilian cities and maybe at Rome. Polybius, writing of the later 3rd Century, states that the chora supplied the Carthaginians’ ‘individual lifestyle needs’ while the tribute from Libya paid the expenses of the state. This should mean that the chora provided citizens with their grain, other food and other private goods in a period when the citizen population – male and female, city and chora – was probably between six and seven hundred thousand. Its produce may have maintained their slaves and ex-slaves too, for Polybius is probably not being pedantically exact in his phrasing. Hannibal in 195 owned an estate on the east coast in Byzacium, between Acholla and Thapsus, thus pretty certainly outside the chora and in the territory of one of these two Libyphoenician communities. Again in non-Carthaginian territory would be the land grants that Aristotle reports being given to citizens sent out into the Libyan countryside to ease population pressure in the city. He 63

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implies that the grants were generous, for they made the grantees ‘men of means’. In time, then, Libya was dotted with Carthaginian settlers and their farms and orchards – a continuing factor for major cultural, religious and social impacts. By Aristotle’s day, and probably from early on, the Carthaginians were distinguished for their agricultural expertise. Diodorus, in his account of the Syracusan leader Agathocles’ invasion of North Africa in 310, writes a famous description of the marvellous countryside that the invaders found as they marched down the Cape Bon peninsula: The intervening country through which it was necessary for them to march was divided into gardens and plantations of every kind, since many streams of water were led in small channels and irrigated every part. There were also country houses one after another, constructed in luxurious fashion and covered in stucco, which gave evidence of the wealth of the people who possessed them. The farm buildings were filled with everything that was needful for enjoyment, seeing that the inhabitants in a long period of peace had stored up an abundant variety of products. Part of the land was planted with vines, and part yielded olives and was also planted thickly with other varieties of fruit-bearing trees. On each side herds of cattle and flocks of sheep pastured on the plain, and the neighbouring meadows were filled with grazing horses. In general there was a manifold prosperity in the region, since the leading Carthaginians had laid out there their private estates and with their wealth had beautified them for their enjoyment. (Diodorus 20.8.3–4) Diodorus’ narrative of this war in Africa reads as though based on a sound, maybe eyewitness source. It also chimes with Polybius’ statement about the productivity of the chora: for as we have seen, the Cape Bon peninsula had long been an important part of this. When the Romans invaded Punic North Africa in 256, they promptly found quantities of goods to loot in the rich countryside, including no fewer than twenty thousand persons to carry off as slaves. A century later in 153, envoys from Rome – among them the famous, irascible and suspicious Cato the Censor – noted the wealth of the countryside as well as the prosperity of the city. This is echoed by Polybius, who visited North Africa a few years after 64

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and stresses both the fertility of the land and how ‘the supply of horses, oxen, sheep, and goats in it is beyond anything to be found in any other part of the world’. Strabo rather exaggeratedly claims that even in 150 Carthage still controlled three hundred Libyan towns. Despite the damage done by invasions and local rebellions, Carthaginian and Libyan skills were always able to make the land flourish once more.40 As mentioned earlier, archaeological finds suggest that Carthaginians moved out to live in the hinterland not much before the year 400: even within 50 kilometres of the city, recognisably Carthaginian sites are very few down to about the year 300, contrasting with plenty from the next two centuries. Whether this should mean that not many Carthaginians occupied Libyan properties before the final century and a half of the city’s existence still needs to be clarified. If correct, Aristotle’s report of regular allocations of land in Libya to citizens, good land at that, must be wrong, and we must wonder what made him imagine it. It may well be that earlier citizen settlers lived much like their Libyan neighbours, even if these were in practice their subjects or vassals. Carthaginian domination and exploitation of Libyans and Libya’s resources were well under way before 396, to judge by the great rebellion launched – unsuccessfully – by the Libyans in that year. The development of the countryside beyond the chora would be especially notable in its most fruitful areas: the lower Bagradas valley, the so-called ‘little Mesopotamia’ between this and the Catadas (modern Mellane) river to its east, and also (by the 4th Century) the uplands around the middle Bagradas and its tributaries the Siliana and the Muthul – regions of populous towns like Thugga, Uchi, Thubursicu and Bulla; not to mention the richest region of all, Byzacium. On the island of Meninx, modern Jerba, off the western coast of Emporia, a prosperous countryside with large and small villas existed by the late 3rd Century, apparently untroubled by Roman seaborne raids during the Second Punic War. Thanks to this agricultural prowess, Carthaginian merchants down the ages – and surely too those of smaller but important centres like Hippacra, Utica and Hadrumetum – had their well-stocked cargoes of grain and oil to take to customers abroad. Agriculture again was the theme of two of the few Carthaginian writers known to us, Hamilcar and Mago – both of them retired generals, according to Pliny and the 1st-Century ad agronomist Columella. When they lived is not known, though Hamilcar seems to have preceded Mago and both almost certainly lived after 400, 65

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possibly even after 300. Their works have not survived but Roman authors mention them with respect, especially Mago and his twentyeight books on estate management, in effect a complete encyclopaedia of farming. Both writers seem to have drawn partly on Greek predecessors, but in turn they powerfully impressed their Greek and Roman readers and later agricultural authors: a striking feat indeed. When Carthage was destroyed in 146 and all the city’s libraries were passed on to pro-Roman North African rulers, the Roman senate ordered Mago’s work to be reserved for translation into Latin. Sixty years later, a condensed Greek version was brought out by a translator from Utica with the interestingly Roman-Greek name of Cassius Dionysius. Mago, and no doubt Hamilcar too, wrote for affluent landowners. Hamilcar remains only a name, but a number of passages from Mago and a few from Cassius are quoted or paraphrased by Roman authors (notably Pliny and Columella, as well as Cicero’s contemporary Varro). We therefore have welcome glimpses of how wealthy Carthaginians treated their estates. The beginning of Mago’s work was much quoted. An estate buyer, he stressed, should sell his house in the city lest he grow fonder of it than of his country property. In turn, someone especially fond of his town home had no need of a rural estate. Most Carthaginian landowners are not likely to have followed this advice literally (we know that Hannibal had a city house as well as the Byzacium estate), but Mago’s real aim was no doubt to emphasise the importance of intelligent and committed farm management. His variegated topics included how to select the best bullocks, site vineyards and prune vines, plant olives, and rear horses and mules. He also supported the less plausible but widespread ancient idea (later taken up poetically by Virgil) that bees could be produced from the carcase and blood of a slaughtered bullock. Worth noting, too, are some precepts quoted by Varro from Cassius Dionysius, who translated Mago. He recommended judicious treatment of estate slaves, particularly those chosen as supervisors. Slaves should be at least twenty-two years old and knowledgeable; supervisors and ordinary labourers must be given incentives to work well and feel loyalty to the estate and its owner; they should be chastised verbally rather than with blows; and the more alert and committed among them should be further rewarded, including encouraging them to marry fellow slaves and have sons. Such sound advice very probably came from Mago. Again we cannot say how far Carthaginians followed it in practice but, so far as they go, the 66

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precepts illustrate a sensibly enlightened attitude to slaves – one rather less forbidding than the strict and utilitarian slave regimen practised by Cato the Censor in 2nd-Century Rome.41

WORKERS AND LABOURERS The potteries, foundries, dockyards and harbours at Carthage needed a sizeable working population. Some would be slaves and some others immigrants from the Libyan hinterland and from abroad, but many Carthaginian men and at least some women will have been breadwinners for their families. Maintaining, and at times extending, the amenities of a prospering city and catering to the needs and interests of its residents called for the normal broad range of occupations, from unskilled labourers such as dockworkers to goldsmiths, architects, doctors and teachers. Of their daily lives and needs not much is known, but the remains of houses excavated at Carthage and at the little Cape Bon town Kerkouane include smallroomed dwellings, some in multi-storeyed blocks at Carthage (in her later centuries), and shops opening onto the streets. Ordinary city people lived close together, as they did in Phoenician, Greek and Italian towns too. Craftsmen in different trades may well have set up their shops, and therefore homes, along one or more streets, just as Rome had the vicus Africus and streets noted for particular trades such as scythemakers, cobblers and booksellers. As noted above, the area south of the walled city and beside the shore of the lake of Tunis seems to have been where the potters, ironworkers and dock labourers dwelt. There is as yet no archaeological evidence of dwelling-places in the sector, but the ‘New Gate’ inscription mentioned below strengthens the impression. In any case the homes of many of the very poor – Carthaginians and outsiders – must have been flimsy and perishable, leaving no traces. Votive stelae and other inscriptions in Punic, from Carthage and elsewhere, commemorate ordinary folk down the ages: for instance Abdeshmun the scribe, ‘Abdmilqart the tax-collector’ (ngš), Aris a maker of strigils (metal scrapers used in the bath), carpenters named Ariso and Baalyaton, Baalhanno the fisherman, Baalsamor and his son Abdosiri who were each ‘chief of the gate-keepers’, an interpreter named Baalyaton son of Mago, wheelmakers named Bomilcar and Himilco, Bostar the innkeeper (Bd‘štrt hlyn), a merchant Halosbaal son of Bostar son of Abdmilkot, a bow-maker named Hanno, and Mago the butcher (Mgn hέbͥ). Another Mago, ‘son of Himilco 67

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son of Himilco’, was a chariot-maker. There were ‘the craftsmen who made the female statues for the temple of Mkl ’ (a little-known deity); goldsmiths – ‘the founders of gold objects’ – with their foundry; and at a higher social level, the seal-keeper Abdeshmun whose son Baaliyaton became a sufete, and Yehawallon or Yehawwielon a road-builder or engineer. Yehawallon figures in an inscription that is a rarity: a lengthy document in Punic found in the 1960s, attesting not a religious matter but a civic enterprise and dating from the 4th or 3rd Century. This was the building of an important street ‘leading to the New Gate’. Just where the gate was is not certain, but the inscription may state – experts’ interpretations of the Punic text vary – that it was in the southern wall. If so it would represent further development on that side of Carthage, which fits evidence for her urban growth from the 5th Century on. The inscription, on a block of black limestone, ascribes the project to ‘the people of Carthage in the year of the sufetes Safot and Adonibaal’ and ‘the time of the magistracy of Adonibaal’ and at least one other named magistrate, but the stone is damaged, ‘and their colleagues’. What Adonibaal’s office was is unclear, like so much else; were these men the heads (rbm) of the various pentarchies in that period? More interesting still is the range of workers involved in the project: tradesmen, porters and others ‘from the plain of the town’ (the area south of the city wall?), gold-smelters, furnace workers and, less certainly, ‘the weighers of small change’, the artisans ‘who make vessels’ (or ‘pots’), and ‘the makers of sandals’. The relations between workers and employers, and levels of wages, are virtually unknown. With coined money not used by the Carthaginians until the late 5th Century – and even then only in Sicily until the century following – wages would have been paid in goods or valuables. There seems to have been some, probably modest, flexibility in employment. Two Punic inscriptions record transactions in which a man ‘registered himself back into the employ of his master Esmunhalos of his own free will’ and ‘without asking for silver’. One is the Hannobaal mentioned earlier, and the other is named Hannibal of Miqne, possibly the same person (though the names are among the commonest at Carthage). In both the man acts – or claims to act – freely, and Hannobaal seals up the transaction with his own seal. Perhaps he and his namesake were freed slaves owning skills that led Eshmunhalos to entice or coerce them to come back and work for him; the denial of coercion may be just a formula. Even so it was an arrangement that earned written commemoration, no doubt for legal reasons.42 68

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Other men with Carthaginian names, and of plainly low status, made dedications to Carthage’s chief deities, Tanit and Baal Hammon, like the Safot also mentioned earlier, a š ΢dn bd – a slave ‘owned by’, or freedman ‘thanks to’, one Milkyaton son of Yatonbaal son of Milkyaton. So did Baalsillek, ‘š ΢dn bd his master (’dnm) Baalhanno’. Meanwhile Gry, a fuller who was slave of, or worker for, a Hanno son of Abdeshmun, had a tomb of his own in Carthage with his name on it. There is no report of Carthaginian citizens becoming enslaved to other Carthaginians, though it may sometimes have happened (for example as a penalty for debt, as could happen in early Rome), but Carthaginian names could well be given to slaves from elsewhere – and very likely to slave children born and raised among Carthaginians.43 Why freedmen, if that is what these men were, should each be called ‘a man of Sidon’ (š ΢dn) can only be surmised. Diodorus’ report of the Libyphoenicians having intermarriage rights with Carthaginians may be a clue that migrants to Carthage from kindred cities enjoyed certain privileges (at Rome, citizens of her satellite Latin colonies did). Sidon, second only to Tyre in kinship to Carthage, perhaps gave its name to such a status, limited but still privileged in comparison to resident Libyans, Numidians and the like. That would place a thoroughly Punicised and maybe Carthage-born š ΢dn like Safot, if he was a freedman, on a footing close to but not quite equal with Carthaginian citizens – a situation which these surely regarded as fit and proper. Whatever their origins, the inscriptions of Hannobaal, Safot, Baalsillek and Gry suggest some degree of freedom in their doings. Hannobaal left his master or former master for other (unsuccessful?) activities and then returned. Safot and Baalsillek could make their own dedication (seemingly at their own expense, so it means they could earn money for themselves). Gry seems to have run his own fuller’s shop, even if he was supervised by his master or patron. There would be equal or greater flexibility for freeborn Carthaginians working for employers, and still wider opportunities if they had independent professions such as scribes, goldsmiths, statute-makers or builders – professions in which they in turn would have employees or slaves.

SLAVES Slaves worked in the city and the countryside. Their numbers will have grown sizeably with the growth of both the city and the chora, 69

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and still more as Libya in turn became more prosperous. The Carthaginians built up a significant slave population of which only occasional glimpses emerge. As at Rome, rich citizens no doubt owned large numbers, less wealthy citizens fewer, and probably only quite affluent craftsmen and small farmers could expect to afford even one. Freed slaves surely existed too, as suggested above, but their numbers and the terms on which they might gain their freedom are not known. Slaves originated from all round the Mediterranean and some no doubt from beyond. Slave-traders were a Mediterranean fixture at all times, and Phoenician slavers had been known even to Homer – one tried to kidnap Odysseus on his wanderings. Cassius Dionysius, says Varro, recommended slaves from Epirus in north-western Greece for their steadiness and loyalty: another piece of advice which may have come from Mago. Others were born to slave parents – as noted earlier, Mago approved of this – while still others may have been persons (perhaps even Carthaginians?) enslaved for debt or other penalties. Others who could become slaves were men, women and children carried off from their coastal homes by raiding pirates, as happened (in reverse) to the daughters of Hanno the ‘little Carthaginian’. Some children may have been sold into slavery by poverty-stricken parents who lacked means to raise them, a practice found in other cultures. Foreign slaves could also be acquired as war-captives, either taken in battle or seized in attacks on enemy territory, especially in the sack of a city. Thanks to the Carthaginian campaigns in Sardinia, many slaves in the later 6th Century must have been natives of that island, while in the late 5th and through much of the 4th Century quite a number will have been Sicilian Greeks. Carthage’s off-andon wars with the Numidians must have brought in many Numidian slaves from time to time, too. The struggles with Rome between 264 and 201 meant that Roman and Italian slaves in their turn could be found in both city and countryside. Their fates were rather happier. The later historian Appian in fact mentions that Scipio, on invading Africa in 204, rescued Roman captives working the fields who had been sent there from Italy, Sicily and Spain. Ransoms, prisoner exchanges and, at the end of each war, enforced repatriations also took home other Roman and maybe Italian slaves. The glimpses we have of slave numbers are hard to evaluate. Hanno, one of the city’s chief men in the 4th Century, armed a supposed twenty thousand slaves when facing arrest for plotting a coup d’état around 350 – a suspect number, though, because he and 70

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they in their futile attempt at resistance supposedly shut themselves up in a single ‘fort’ (which may have been his country mansion). It is fairly improbable too that, grand though he was, Hanno alone owned so many, especially as the narrative requires these to be males only. He very likely gathered slaves from around the countryside and even perhaps from the city, but Justin’s figure would be more plausible, even then, if divided by ten. The same figure of twenty thousand is given, this time by Polybius, for the ‘slaves’ whom Regulus’ army a century later captured on its march through the Cape Bon region towards Tunes. Romans rarely discriminated, all the same, between seizing slaves and seizing freeborn enemy locals as human booty, so it may be that these were country folk both slave and free, who were later sold off into Roman slavery. Appian offers a third figure: towards the end of the second war with Rome and with Scipio’s invasion looming, the general in command at Carthage bought 5,000 slaves to serve as rowers on his warships. If this report is true, most of them were probably bought within North Africa or even from owners in Carthage’s chora, given the urgency of the situation. Since almost no sea-fighting took place and all the warships were burnt by Scipio at war’s end, these ad hoc oarsmen were perhaps returned to their masters afterwards. As noted earlier, Mago the agronomist recommended sensibly liberal treatment of farm slaves, but actual practice no doubt varied widely. When in 396 the Libyans launched a great rebellion against Carthage – one of the greatest in their history – they were joined by a large number of slaves in besieging the city. This obviously suggests that many slaves were unhappy with their lot, though their grievances were no doubt different in detail from those of the free Libyans. These must have promised their new allies their freedom at the very least. It could be significant that many slaves in 396 must have been Sicilian Greeks, for a new series of wars which had begun in 409 was marked by wholesale sackings of many important Greek cities, Acragas above all. It was in turn a succession of serious reverses at Greek hands in 398–396 which encouraged Libyans and slaves to revolt. The chief or sole grievance of the slaves who followed Hanno the traitor fifty or so years later was most likely again their enslaved condition. This time, though, the hopes of the rebels were centred on a charismatic Carthaginian, not on crushing Carthage herself. Memories of the failed revolt in 396 no doubt persisted, and not only among the slaves. Hanno at first had support from Libyans and even Numidians, though there are no details and they seem to have dropped him quickly.44 71

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On the other hand, the idea that the Carthaginians suffered a constant, destabilising fear of and risk from the slave population has nothing else to go on. The invasion of Agathocles from 310 to 307 caused fresh Libyan unrest, but none is mentioned among slaves. Nor is any heard of during the Roman invasion of 256–255, whereas defections from Carthage by at least some Libyans and Numidians took place. Even more marked is the total silence about slave unrest during the massive rebellion by Carthage’s unpaid mercenaries and heavily oppressed Libyan subjects that followed the First Punic War, even though it lasted over three years and is recounted in some detail by Polybius. None, again, is reported during Scipio’s invasion late in the Second Punic War, during which he made extensive raids into the Libyan countryside and won a series of major battles. By contrast, as mentioned just now, we read of the Carthaginians buying slaves to row warships of the Carthaginian fleet. Finally, in the crisis of 149 when it was made plain that the Romans encamped outside the city meant to end its existence, the Carthaginian senate offered freedom to the slaves, obviously to recruit them for the resistance. Of course this was a risk, but one that proved to be justified, for everyone in the city fought to the end – in striking contrast to the sister colonies and the Libyan hinterland.

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THE GROWTH OF THE CITY By the 4th Century, the roadstead along the shore of the lake of Tunis had been supplemented by an artificial channel extending for nearly a kilometre northward through the marshy lagoons to the area of pottery works and iron foundries next to Carthage’s southern walls. Not much of this facility remains, for it was later replaced by the famous and still visible enclosed artificial ports. But wooden docks, for example, have been identified from evidence of post-holes in the soil of the Îlot de l’Amirauté, the little island in the circular port – now a shallow lake – which was built at the northern end of the old lagoon area in the late 3rd or early 2nd Century. The channel was about two metres deep and some 15 to 20 metres wide – probably wider still where it met the lake – with the earliest datable pottery finds from it dating to the second half of the 4th Century. At the docks in its northern part the Carthaginian shipwrights built their vessels, both commercial and naval, which could then be launched down the channel. Given its width, this may also have received merchant shipping, which would be more sheltered than in the lake and nearer to the city proper.45 The defeat at Himera in Sicily in 480, at the hands of Gelon and Theron, prompted the Carthaginians to consolidate and then develop their position in North Africa – to the sorrow, we have seen, of the hitherto independent Libyans. Investigations in the central sectors of the old city have shown that its defences were improved: for although there was peace with the Sicilians and Libya was coming under control, Carthaginians could not help but be conscious of the vulnerability of the site if left unprotected. During the 5th Century powerful fortifications were built along the sea-front east of Byrsa, as shown by the discovery in recent times of the remains of imposing stone 73

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walls, over five metres thick, and a mighty double gate opening onto a narrow beach. These fortifications extended along the shore as far as the edge of the lagoons: nor would it make sense if the landward sides of the city were still left open, though so far no traces of land walls have been found (Illustration 1). The city itself was expanding, although the stages can only be partially and tentatively traced. It used to be supposed that Carthage’s defeat in Sicily in 480 caused seventy years of reduced trade, limited state activity and general introspection. This was inferred largely from a serious drop in archaeological finds of datable 5th-Century Greek pottery at Carthage, as well as her lack of adventurousness abroad. More recent investigations have not only found new evidence but re-evaluated older finds. It now appears that 5th-Century Attic pottery remains were misdated, or wrongly ascribed to regions like southern Italy (south Italian pottery actually became prominent only in the 4th Century). In addition, substantially more Attic ware has been unearthed in the past few decades at both Carthage and Kerkouane. The continuing business activity thus revealed fits Diodorus’ report about Carthage in the later 5th Century importing

Illustration 1 Sea walls, c. 400 bc: artist’s reconstruction

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olives on a large scale from Acragas. Trade with the Etruscans too did not suffer. These re-evaluations are paralleled by the evidence of the Carthaginians imposing and extending dominance over their Libyan neighbours, and carrying out important building projects in and outside the existing city. Around the end of the 5th Century or rather later, new structures were built just inside the new sea-walls east of Byrsa but separated from them by open ground some 30 metres or more wide: houses and warehouses. Two centuries later at least some of these were enlarged or replaced to create prosperous city mansions, with the built-up area moving right up to the walls (Illustration 1). All this points to a growing urban population, just as it was probably during a stage of vigorous urban development that the New Gate project was launched. This was plainly a large project, for it brought in the (seemingly enthusiastic) participation of a notable range of craftsmen and workers, among them the craftsmen of ‘the plain of the town’, which (as we saw earlier) probably meant the district around the so-called industrial area south of Byrsa and around the lake of Tunis’ harbourage. The New Gate itself, whatever its precise site, could be one stage in the building of land fortifications around the burgeoning city.46 Another important, though less traceable, feature of urban expansion was the development of the garden suburb Megara (M‘rt). Appian almost certainly relies on Polybius, who had been to Carthage, in describing Megara as it was in the mid-2nd Century: a large district next to the city walls, ‘planted with gardens and full of fruit-bearing trees divided off by low walls, hedges, and brambles, besides deep ditches full of water running in every direction’, with properties belonging to Carthaginian citizens. It seems to have been the broad district north of Byrsa and the necropoleis on the hills overlooking the city: the area today from the resort village of Sidi bou Said along the cliff-edged upland called La Marsa and, though probably not from the start, as far as Cape Gammarth (Map 1B). The archaeological land surveys mentioned earlier have found five sites, dating before 300, in this district; from the period following 300, as many as eleven. Westward Megara extended, eventually, to the start of the isthmus that bound Carthage’s arrowhead to the mainland. In the north this was about a kilometre wide, while from Sidi bou Said the district was up to six kilometres wide, and nearly four beyond the lagoon area and the ‘tophet’. Across that neck of level terrain were built, at some date, the massive triple-wall fortifications described by Appian 75

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– perhaps in the aftermath of Agathocles’ invasion but conceivably much earlier, for instance after the great Libyan rebellion in 396 when the city had been put under siege. Such secure defences would have encouraged Carthaginians to develop the area within them still further, even if tracts just beyond the city’s hills had quite likely been exploited for orchards and other produce from the earliest times. Megara in Appian’s description was not a district of houses, apartment blocks and streets, although lanes and perhaps a few wider roads must have run through it for access. In other words it was not an area of planned urbanisation, but was allowed to continue as a semi-rural district. When the city’s great fortifications were built enclosing almost the entire arrowhead of Carthage, from the lake of Tunis to the lake of Ariana and over to Cape Gammarth, the district was at least fifteen times the size of the built-up city (which by then covered roughly 1½ square kilometres). Megara was probably, too, the ‘new city’ which figures in Diodorus’ telling of the foiled coup of Bomilcar in 308. This overambitious general assembled his army ‘in what was called the New City, lying a short distance outside Old Carthage’, then dismissed all but a picked force and with it marched into the old city to seize the market square (the agora in Greek) – only to be driven back with losses through the narrow streets into the ‘new city’, where he and his surviving followers took refuge on ‘a piece of high ground’ but were forced to surrender. The details would fit: an area separate from the old city, but next to it and big enough to parade several thousand soldiers, and with a hilltop for a last stand. If it did count as a ‘new city’, the term suggests that already – during the Agathoclean invasion – it too had fortifications, though these may not as yet have been the elaborate in-depth structures described by Appian.47

TEMPLES AND OTHER SACRED BUILDINGS Naturally the city held temples of its many gods and goddesses. The most magnificent, the temple of ‘Aesculapius’ (Asclepius in Greek, and usually identified as Eshmun) as Appian calls it, stood on the top of Byrsa itself and was reached by a great flight of sixty steps from the foot of the hill. Nothing survives even of its foundations because in Roman times the summit of the hill was completely taken off, levelled and replaced by new structures (some broken remnants 76

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found on Byrsa’s slopes have been tentatively suggested as from the destroyed temple). On the Byrsa side of the marketplace was another grand temple, that of ‘Apollo’, who seems to have been Reshef, lavishly decorated in gold. It may be that the remains of an early 2nd-Century temple, recently discovered near the suggested site of the agora and only a short distance north of the circular port mentioned earlier, was its final version, but this is uncertain. The other major divinities like Tanit, Baal Hammon, Baal Shamim, Baal Sapon, Melqart and Astarte must have had their own temples, not to mention places of worship for the many lesser deities of the Phoenician and Punic pantheon, but where they lay is not known. We might wonder whether Tanit and Baal Hammon at least, perhaps Melqart too, had their seats on Byrsa with Reshef. At the same time, Tanit and Baal Hammon were the chief deities offered votive stelae in the ‘tophet’. The flat-roofed temples of Phoenician and Egyptian traditions were standard in the Phoenician west, too, including Carthage. This is inferred from carvings on stelae and small sculptures. For instance a 6th- or 5th-Century representation from Sulcis in Sardinia and another of similar date from Motya in Sicily present a temple’s goddess standing between the two columns of its porch, just as a 5th-Century stele from Carthage’s ‘tophet’ again has a worshipper (or the god) in the entrance porch between columns. Another stele found at Motya represents a small temple with the usual two-columned porch, the interior cella with a niche for the deity’s image at the back, and an Egyptian-style entablature (its lower part adorned with a sun-emblem and a half-moon curving over this) – complete with the dedication to Baal Hammon by one Mnms son of Hqm. Most notable of all is a fine model or naiskos of a handsomely decorated, seemingly square temple or shrine, found at the Libyan town of Thuburbo Maius (some 60 kilometres south-west of Carthage, on the river Mellane) and perhaps 2nd-Century in date. This may represent a small shrine or ‘chapel’, again with a porch between two fluted columns in front of the interior cella of the building.48 The entablatures of temple roofs were carved in complex geometric patterns like egg-and-dart moulding and Egyptian-influenced motifs; their fluted columns, round or square, could be adorned with Greekderived capitals or sometimes with patterns like palm-tree fronds. Within each chapel and temple, there would be an inner room or rooms with an altar, the deity’s image and pious offerings, cheap or costly, such as statuettes, jewellery amulets and small carvings. A 77

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large sacred precinct would include a courtyard where priests and attendants would gather for ceremonies. Temples in full Greek form, with a two-sided sloping roof and triangular pediment façade, were few at best and left no recognisable archaeological trace. If any did exist, they would probably have been ones dedicated to Greek divinities adopted by the republic – most famously Demeter and Kore (also called Persephone), adopted in 396 – or ones permitted to the resident Greek community. A pleasing white marble stele, now in Turin, depicts Kore or Demeter standing with a horn of plenty in the columned porch of a Greek-style shrine of mixed Doric and Ionian styles, with a crouching lion sculpted in the pediment. The stele is generally judged Carthaginian-made from the 2nd Century, though a dissident view sees it as from Sulcis in Sardinia and dating to around 300. Significantly, its dedicatee was ‘thy servant Milkyaton the sufete, son of Maharbaal the sufete’ – clearly a leading aristocrat, Carthaginian or Sulcitan – and the depicted temple surely stood in his city. An impressive structure – not at Carthage, but in Carthaginianinfluenced Libya – can cast added light on Carthaginian architecture. On the hillside just below Thugga (Dougga, 110 kilometres south-west of Tunis) stands the 21-metre-high tower-like mausoleum of Ataban ‘son of Yofamit son of Filaw’ (these transliterations are approximate), seemingly the Libyan lord of the region around the late 3rd Century. His inscription, now in the British Museum, is in both Punic and Libyan; one of his stonemasons, along with his own son Zimr, is ‘Bd’rš (perhaps Abd’rš, like the Carthaginian sufete mentioned earlier; but interpretations vary) son of Abdastart, while among other specialist workers was an iron-maker named Safot son of Balal or Baalal. These men and their fathers had Carthaginian names, indicating though not proving that they were Carthaginians in Ataban’s service. The mausoleum consists of three tiers. The first is cubic in shape resting on a podium of five steps, with a relief sculpture of a quadriga (a four-horse chariot) in each vertical face; the second also cubic but of narrower dimensions, with engaged square Ionic columns on each face and on a three-step podium; the third a rectangular, still narrower structure resting on a squared pedestal that originally had a horseman at each corner; and topping the whole a low pyramid on a pedestal with a sea-nymph at each of its corners (Illustration 2). This grandiose erection is unlike anything built by Greeks or Romans (except, perhaps, lighthouses on a much more massive scale) but is strikingly like another monument, this time at Sabratha 78

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Illustration 2 Mausoleum at Thugga (2nd Century bc)

on the coast of Emporia, which can be reconstructed from the ruins that remain: a triangular two-tiered structure, with a pyramid much steeper than Thugga’s, on a podium standing on five steps – but with the extra refinement that on both levels all three sides were concave in shape.49 The design was popular. There is for instance another, though smaller and much plainer, rectangular two-tier mausoleum, again topped by a pyramid, at Henchir Jaouf near Segermes (south of Carthage and about 25 kilometres inland from the gulf of Hammamet); it has been dated by pottery fragments to around 175–150. A one-metre-high and half-metre-wide rectangular stone

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marker or cippus found in or near Carthage’s ‘tophet’ has stylised columns carved to frame each of its four faces and is topped by a gabled roof, to resemble a similar structure (Illustration 3); on each of the two narrower faces is carved, in skilful style, a gourd or bottle crowned with a triangle – a religious symbol strongly resembling the ‘sign of Tanit’, to be met below. At Clupea (Kelibia) south of Kerkouane, the stone-cut entrance down to the underground tomb of one Mago has, on its lintel, a plain outline of a pyramid-topped mausoleum; Mago’s family perhaps could not afford a real one, which of course would have been hugely expensive. More striking still are paintings in a tomb in Kerkouane’s Jebel Mlezza necropolis, each depicting in some detail a single-tiered and pyramid-topped mausoleum, with a ritual fire burning on an altar alongside. Such monuments were (we should note) well established by the mid-3rd Century, for as noted earlier Kerkouane was

Illustration 3 Stone cippus from Carthage: rectangular tower design and ‘bottle’ symbol on side

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destroyed then and never rebuilt. If Carthage’s urban terrain was too constrained for similar impressive works, they may have stood in places in the necropoleis on the hillsides of Byrsa, Junon, Dermech and the others, perhaps elsewhere. The ‘tower’ which the Romans found close to the outer side of Megara’s wall in 147, when trying to break into the city, was perhaps one such – not in a necropolis, but neither is Ataban’s.50 A kilometre south of Byrsa hill and just a few dozen metres east of the shore lagoons was the so-called ‘tophet’, an entirely different type of sacred site first discovered in 1922 (Illustration 4). A narrow and elongated tract of walled but open-air ground eventually covering some 6000 square metres, it was the place where the cremated remains of very young children were deposited, in pottery urns and often (not always) with an accompanying stele and graveofferings, with dedications to the goddess Tanit and to Baal Hammon. Cremated animal remains also occur, sometimes in the same urn as those of a child. The earliest deposits can be dated to the late 8th Century; over the ensuing centuries, nine levels of deposits built up. On an informed estimate, about twenty thousand such urns were placed there in the two centuries from 400 to 200. The word ‘tophet’ is not Punic but has been borrowed by archaeologists from the Hebrew Bible, where it is a valley outside Jerusalem in which

Illustration 4 View of the ‘tophet’ at Carthage

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Canaanite children were sacrificed to please the Phoenician Baal until the later 7th Century. Carthage was only one of many Phoenician colonies in North Africa, Sardinia and Sicily with a ‘tophet’: the site was always outside the settlement, though in her case the city later expanded around it, and hers is by far the largest of them all. What was done in the ‘tophet’, or in preparation for the deposit there, is one of the most debated – and perhaps insoluble – questions in Carthaginian studies, as will be outlined later (Chapter VII).

HOUSES AND SHOPS Secular buildings are not often pictured on stelae or in other Punic art, but just enough evidence survives for glimpses of the rest of Carthage’s cityscape. In the same well-decorated Jebel Mlezza tomb, one wall shows a neat and naive painting of a walled city open to the shore (Illustration 5). The city is painted between a niche with a symbol of the goddess Tanit and, on its own other side, a rooster with sharp spurs (apparently a symbol of the soul), so the wall may depict the ‘other-world’ city receiving the soul of the deceased. Its semicircular crenellated wall and the square buildings inside would be based on familiar views of coastal towns – maybe, it has been suggested, of Kerkouane itself. Such views would, conceivably enough, be rather like those of many Greek islands’ small towns

Illustration 5 Painting of city in Jebel Mlezza tomb VIII

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today, although stuccoed instead of whitewashed. Carthage in turn may have resembled an enlarged version of a city like this when viewed from a ship or from the hills on its north side, or – more distantly – from the Cape Bon coast opposite. Diggings further inland in the old city show evidence of big dwelling-places even in Carthage’s early centuries. Similar early houses have been identified at Phoenician sites in south Spain like Toscanos and Cerro del Villar, and later ones at Kerkouane on Cape Bon. They would be flat-roofed, with access by stairs or ladders: cool for sleep in high summer, warm for taking sunshine on winter days. Although there was nothing like standardised floor-plans, many larger houses had interior courtyards reached by narrow corridors from the street and giving access to surrounding rooms, thus letting in light and air. Some large buildings housed apartments, often with the ground-floor rooms let out as shops. On the southern slope of Byrsa hill, diggings have unearthed a sector datable to the early 2nd Century, preserved through being covered over by a deep layer of rubble when the Romans a hundred and fifty years later razed away Byrsa’s summit. This is the so-called ‘Hannibal quarter’, so named because the famous general became sufete in 196 to carry out a number of progressive measures in politics, government and finance which had lasting effects – including perhaps this extensive urban improvement project in what previously was an industrial site (Illustrations 6 and 7). The long-established workshops were replaced with carefully built structures on streets laid out on a grid plan. The streets, 5 to 7 metres wide (wider than in the old city) and of rammed earth, have drainage holes every so often feeding water and other liquids from the buildings lining the streets down into stone-lined wells (soakaways), with the runoff coursing through a basic type of drain made from pottery amphorae fitted together. When rain did fall on the streets, it soaked into the ground or ran off. The excavated street which climbs the hillside is fitted at intervals with short flights of steps: the whole sector, and no doubt much of the rest of Carthage’s crowded terrain, was a pedestrian (and of course pack-animal) precinct. The buildings form rectangular blocks, opening on all sides into the streets and subdivided into houses, apartments and shops. In Roman towns they would be called insulae, ‘islands’. Those excavated measure either some 15½ by 31 metres (a 1:2 ratio), or 15½ by about 10½ (a 3:2 ratio), with the larger buildings lining one side of a street running north to south and the smaller on the opposite side facing them. Each building, small and large, was subdivided into 83

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Illustration 6 View of the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s southern slope

Illustration 7 Another view of the ‘Hannibal quarter’

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separate dwellings with walls that are mostly very solid – 50 centimetres or so. Several are quite narrow at just over 5 metres wide, and while some extend the full depth of their block to the street at the other end, others were subdivided into cramped little units that might serve as lodgings or shops. At least two other dwellings are a contrast: twice as wide as the narrow-fronted ones, and at least one of them handsomely equipped with a stylish entrance of half-columns in white stucco and with stuccoed pillars flanking its marble-mosaic courtyard. Every subdivided house has its own well-made underground cistern for water, sometimes two, and all of them sizeable. Rain, when it did fall, could be collected in wells, basins, and perhaps from rooftops via downpipes to feed into the cistern, while the relatively high underground water-table could also be reached by wells. In the houses, the only adornments surviving are certain floors with patterned mosaic or terracotta-fragment pavements (decorations that the Romans called pavimenta Punica) and pillars covered with white stucco; nor, it seems, have traces turned up of the neat bathrooms fitted with ledge-seats that have been found in some Kerkouane dwellings. The buildings’ size and the strong walls capable of carrying upper floors lend support to Appian’s mention of buildings being six storeys high in precisely this area. The upper storeys would be reached via wooden stairs; there is evidence at Kerkouane again, for staircases in houses (although of course those storeys must have been many fewer). We may recall Strabo’s reference to Tyre’s lofty buildings too. Given the variety of dwelling sizes revealed by the foundations – we have no evidence of how upper floors were divided – it looks as though the population of the quarter must have been quite varied. Its nearness to the crest of Byrsa and its complex of rich shrines surely made it, from the start, an attractive area to many different types of resident. Merchants and priests, scribes, goldsmiths and jewellers (fragments of a jeweller’s cutting implements have been identified, such as obsidian and pieces of coral), architects, roadbuilders, fullers, butchers and bow-makers might all live in the district. Butchers and other shopkeepers, as well as skilled artisans like a bow-maker or statue-carver, could have their shops in rooms opening onto the street while they and their families lived upstairs. Propertyless workers, not to mention visitors to the city, would lodge in rented rooms or whole apartments. A site excavated near Cape Gammarth, in the Megara district, is a contrast: a semi-rural residence with a section for pressing olives 85

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probably from nearby olive groves, along with an unpretentious but affluently adorned house which had stuccoed sandstone columns and floors with Punic-style mosaics. Further investigations in both the city area and Megara will, in time, bring these lively varieties of Carthaginian dwellings and their amenities into sharper focus.51

PUBLIC BUILDINGS Not much is known about Carthage’s non-religious public buildings save their names. As noted already, in later centuries there was a marketplace or square (agora in Greek) near the shore south-east of Byrsa, for Appian describes it as near the city’s famous artificial ports and these occupied the transformed area of the old lagoons sector (Illustration 8). Investigators have noted, in fact, that somewhat north of them the terrain shows a marked absence of finds later than the archaic period (thus after the 6th Century): this would of course be typical in a broad open space. Diodorus’ account of the coup attempted by Bomilcar in 308 describes the marketplace as surrounded by high buildings while the streets around it were narrow. So does Appian when reporting its final capture by the Romans in 146. Besides its role as a market, it would be the obvious place for magistrates to assemble the citizens for elections and lawmaking. That would explain why Bomilcar’s first move was to try to seize it.

Illustration 8 Carthage 1958

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In the original colony, the agora must have been well to the north, since the urban area included only Byrsa and the level ground eastwards down to the shore (compare Map 1A). Even if replaced as the main square in the 5th or early 4th Century, the earlier one may have remained a subsidiary focal point, for quite likely there were other, smaller marketplaces around the city. Kerkouane has a number of small squares, for example, providing extra space for movement and maybe tradesmen’s stalls; in a city of Carthage’s size and complexity, lesser market sites would hardly be surprising. Where in the city the senate, the adirim, met is unknown, but there was (it seems) a senate-house – bouleuterion in Greek – very near to or even alongside the agora. A reference to it by Diodorus seems to put it there, just as in Rome the senate-house opened onto the Forum. Appian, like Diodorus telling of events in 149, writes of returning Carthaginian envoys going to the bouleuterion while a massive crowd waited outside: this also sounds like nearness to the agora. On the other hand, Livy twice reports the adirim holding sessions in the temple of Eshmun (Livy calls him Aesculapius) on Byrsa, in 174 and again in 172 – at night, allegedly for secrecy. Livy’s account seems to imply that it was an unusual venue, but it is worth recalling that the Roman senate too could meet in a temple – or a theatre, as on the famous Ides of March. Just possibly Eshmun’s temple, or another building within Byrsa’s citadel, had been the senate’s original meeting-place and continued to be a venue from time to time.52 The many administrative functionaries attested on inscriptions – not only the magistrates and the generals, but the accountants (mͥšbm), members of the boards of ten and of thirty, and those working in other pentarchies – would have worked in buildings separate or shared. At least one can be identified. When the artificial ports in the old lagoon sector were created sometime around 200, the island in the circular port housed Carthage’s naval headquarters, described by Appian as a high building where the admiral in command could survey both the ships and shipyards below and the sea outside. As a result the island is now called the Îlot de l’Amirauté. The admiralty building can be recognised in the excavations of the long and narrow foundations of a six-sided building, about 80 metres long and 25 at its widest, surrounded by the traces of shipsheds for part of Carthage’s fleet. There would similarly be headquarters for the general or generals commanding Carthage’s land forces, located (at a guess) further inland for ready access to the outside world. Bomilcar, who in 308 began his coup attempt by marshalling 87

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troops in the ‘new city’ Megara, may have done so at his headquarters, for this would no doubt have a parade-ground alongside or surrounding it.

THE LAND FORTIFICATIONS AND THE PORTS Some traces of the city’s earlier fortifications have been found, as noted earlier, and so have impressive remains of the sea-wall built in the 5th Century (Illustration 1). The great walls west of the city, which gave Carthage virtually impregnable security against attack, just possibly were also part of this 5th-Century effort but more likely followed the Libyan revolt and siege in 396: for this was the first great insurrection, and the land walls plainly aimed at guarding the city from just such a threat. Appian’s description of them as they stood in the mid-2nd Century is a classic, though it might give the impression that they bounded Carthage just beyond Byrsa and not four kilometres further west. The walls formed a triple line, each 30 cubits (about 13.5 metres) high plus parapets and towers standing at 2-plethra intervals (about 30 metres). The towers were four-storeyed and 30 Greek feet high (9 metres), while the walls themselves held two storeys with quarters for elephants, horses and troops. Some traces of the outer lines were revealed in the mid-20th Century, first through aerial photographs and then by diggings at various points. These revealed a broad trench on the landward side, then a built-up embankment with many post-holes (probably for stockades), and after this a narrower trench. The innermost wall is thought to have stood some metres east of these positions. According to Appian’s statistics the walls with their two storeys could accommodate 20,000 infantry and 4000 horsemen, the same number of horses, and 300 elephants – this last almost certainly a notional, or wishful, total since the Carthaginians are never recorded as having so many – as well as fodder and other feed for the animals. At the northern end of the fortifications, where these reached the gulf of Ariana, only a single line of wall seems to have run from there northeastwards to cross the hilly terrain which becomes Cape Gammarth, and down to meet the sea north of that cape. Nonetheless it proved no less hard to breach, as the Romans found during the Third Punic War. It was the south side of the city’s defensive enceinte that was less certain. The weak point, Appian remarks, was ‘the angle which ran around from this [triple] wall to the harbours, along the tongue 88

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of land’ forming the shoreline south of the city. He and his source may have been writing from hindsight, for this was the direction from which the Romans launched their final assault in 146. His account of the Roman siege makes it clear that this southern line of wall left an open strand, at least several metres wide, between it and the lake. The harbours that he mentions were the two artificial ports built in the old lagoon area (Map 1A; Illustrations 8, 9 and 10). They continued to be used in Roman times and still survive as shallow lagoons. One was originally rectangular (then changed in Roman

Illustration 9 Carthage c. 200 bc: artist’s reconstruction

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Illustration 10 The artificial ports area c. 1922

times to a long hexagon), while just to its north the other is circular, with the man-made and equally circular Îlot de l’Amirauté in its centre. That these were Appian’s ports has been confirmed only in recent decades, thanks to excavations on the Îlot (earlier doubts had been due to their distance from the site of the original colony). As noted above, earlier the inlet from the lake of Tunis had been developed as a channel for shipping with dockyards extending into the lagoons area, as shown by finds of timber underlying the later works on the Îlot. It had always had a battle with silt – including effluent from the city – and was finally abandoned in favour of the impressive new constructions, which gave much greater room and safety to shipping and to the war-fleet. Appian calls the pair of artificial ports the ‘Cothon’. The water in them was 2 metres deep (in late Carthaginian times, the sea-level was about one metre lower than today). The rectangular port, originally 300 metres from north to south and 150 east to west, was entered from the Mediterranean via a new channel in a gentle arc, some 250 metres long, which reached the port at its south-eastern corner and could be closed off by iron chains. A millennium later Byzantine Constantinople’s Golden Horn would be protected in similar fashion, if on a vaster scale. Some of the south-western side of this entry channel has been found, nicknamed the ‘Mur Pistor’. Built of massive blocks of stone cut from the El-Haouaria quarries on the cliffs of Cape Bon – 50 metres of these have been uncovered on its western side – the port was used by merchant shipping and in turn was linked by a shorter channel to the circular naval port about 100 metres away. 90

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This port, 325 metres across, was the secure anchorage for Carthage’s navy, quinqueremes each crewed by three hundred oarsmen in groups of five and the dominant battleships of the 3rd and 2nd Centuries. Appian offers a vivid description that must come from an eyewitness, very likely Polybius. The circle of water was surrounded by ‘great quays’ and a double wall, so that no one even in the outer port could see what was going on, whereas the island’s tower overlooked everything. The quays could accommodate 220 ships, with magazines above to hold their sails, masts and other equipment. Every ship’s dock had a pair of Ionic columns before it, ‘giving a view of both the port and the island like that of a colonnade’. Excavations have revealed the nature of the docksheds on the Îlot, not mentioned explicitly by Appian but implied in his comment. There were some fifteen built in parallel rows on either side of the central building (the admiralty): each shed 30 to 48 metres long and about 6 metres wide, with a sloping slipway to allow a ship, or even two, to be berthed lengthways. The land circuit of the port has room for only some hundred and fifty or possibly hundred and seventy ship-sheds, not two hundred and twenty as Appian would seem to suggest. They and the island’s thirty, however, would be a total nearer to his, and some could receive two warships. His figure for the port’s capacity is therefore plausible, though it was no doubt a wartime – or even just a theoretical – maximum. The cost, effort and skilful engineering of the two ports match the great harbour projects at Rome’s port of Ostia under the early emperors. The quantity of groundsoil needing to be removed to create the naval port is reckoned at some 115,000 cubic metres, and for the merchant port about 120,000, while to build up the Îlot de l’Amirauté required about 10,000. When they were built is a question still unresolved. North African and Italian pottery fragments found on the island are of styles ranging from the 4th Century to the 1st, and mostly of the 2nd and 1st. As a result, most opinion favours the early to mid-2nd Century for their construction. This would make them a product of Carthage’s recovered prosperity after the Second Punic War – and, more darkly, would make the war harbour a deliberate violation of the peace with Rome, which had ended the war in 201, for this banned any Carthaginian war-fleet larger than ten vessels. Yet, when the Carthaginians surrendered all their existing armaments and munitions to the Roman forces outside the city in 149, Appian’s list of the quantities of armour and weapons for soldiers handed over makes no mention of ships or naval stores. Nor 91

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did Carthaginian warships (unlike Roman) play a part against the ensuing siege until 147, and then it was a squadron of 50 triremes and smaller craft which that had been built out of old timber. A more plausible date for the ports would be sixty to seventy years before 149. The bits of 4th- and 3rd-Century pottery are compatible with a time earlier than the Third Punic War, as would be two coins found on site, one Carthaginian, one from Tarentum in Italy, dating to the later 3rd Century. Historical evidence may suggest a particular time. Whereas Carthage had an unimpressive navy when the second war with Rome began in 218 – about 80 ships, many of them unfit for sailing – over the next decade she sent large fleets to sea, while reports got back to Rome of vigorous shipbuilding going on. In fact the largest reported fleet, in 212, was a hundred and thirty ships strong. The degenerate state of the navy in 218 makes it very unlikely that the elaborate Cothon complex was already in being. By contrast, during the war’s first decade the Carthaginians had the wealth and manpower for such a project – and the fear, for from the start they not only faced a Roman navy of, as it happens, 220 warships but knew that their enemies planned to invade Africa as well as Spain. Even after Hannibal took the war to Italy, one damaging raid after another was inflicted on Carthage’s coastlands by Roman fleets and troops. The need for a secure war harbour, as well as one where merchant shipping could be safe from attacks, was surely acute after 218. After the war, on the other hand, with Carthaginian warships prohibited and prosperity gradually rebuilding, it is conceivable that an overhaul of the circular port was carried out, for instance to make it more suitable for merchant shipping. That could explain why the bulk of the pottery evidence belongs to the earlier part of the 2nd Century, with only a few items from earlier. The Cothon was not Carthage’s only impressive waterside project in her later centuries. Alongside the shore to the south-east of the ports, an exceptionally large platform of stone and rocks also existed. ‘Falbe’s quadrilateral’, now under shallow water and named after the 19th-Century Danish scholar who first studied it, is about 425 metres from north to south and, along its northern side, some 100 wide. There are some remains of walls along its seaward sides, while it narrows southward to project a short way beyond the entrance to the Cothon ports, thus sheltering ships’ access to these. Predating adjoining Roman structures, the quadrilateral or trapezoid can be identified as the choma or quay ‘which’, Appian records, ‘had long existed as a broad expanse in front of the [city] wall for merchants to unload their cargoes’. 92

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Its date is generally thought to be the same period as the ports. This has to assume that, around the same time as the massive Cothon project, the Carthaginians also built up the quadrilateral’s massive structure outside – even though its materials can hardly have come from the sandy and waterlogged ground of the lagoons alongside, but must have originated further afield – and did this for much the same purpose: to improve facilities for shipping. Another possibility, then, could be that the landing platform predates the Cothon. It might have been, for example, an earlier solution to the problematic silting-up of the inlet from the lake of Tunis; while one reason – as just suggested – for the Cothon project could have been to protect the navy and mercantile commerce from enemy attacks, which became a constant menace after the wars with Rome started.53

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THE GODS AND GODDESSES ‘Before Zeus and Hera and Apollo, before the deity [daemon] of the Carthaginians and Heracles and Iolaus, before Ares, Triton, Poseidon, before the gods marching with us [or the gods of those marching with us], and the Sun and Moon and Earth, before [the gods of] rivers and harbours [or seas] and waters, before all gods who possess Carthage, before all gods who possess Macedon and the rest of Greece, before all gods of those in the army [or all gods concerned with warfare]’ – this imposing pantheon, in Greek forms, is invoked as the preamble to the oath sworn by Hannibal, his political advisers, and his army when making a treaty with Philip V of Macedon in 215. The historian Polybius quotes it verbatim in its Greek version, a copy of which had been captured by the Romans. Unfortunately it is just an excerpt in a Byzantine collection of texts; if Polybius added any commentary to it (as he did to his translations of Carthage’s treaties with Rome), it was not kept. Nonetheless, it is the most wide-ranging list of the divine beings worshipped by Carthaginians, at least in their later centuries. At the same time, its Greek form raises predictable questions: who these divinities were at Carthage, how they related to one another, and whether they had undergone any influences from the Hellenistic Greek culture which was now spreading over the Mediterranean world.54 Like every ancient society, the Carthaginians had a very large number of gods and goddesses. Most of their major deities they had brought from Phoenicia. Zakarbaal had been high priest of Astarte at Tyre, Melqart was that city’s protecting god, and Baal Hammon was the most prominent aspect of the chief god, Baal, of Phoenicia. In turn Baal Iddir, Baal Marqod, Baal Oz, Baal Qarnem, Baal Sapon and Baal Shamim were other aspects – or in the eyes of many 94

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Carthaginians were other gods, as the word b‘l essentially means ‘lord’. In fact Baal Shamim (B‘l šmm), ‘lord of the skies’, had been the leading Baal in early Phoenicia, but at Carthage he held a place less prominent than Baal Hammon. Other leading deities were Eshmun, Reshef or Rasap (again in several aspects, like Reshef Hes, Reshef ΢prm, even Reshef-Melqart), and Shadrap or Sadrape. All of these appear on Punic stelae, many too in Carthaginians’ religiously-based personal names. There were other lesser and fairly obscure ones, largely Phoenician again, such as Semes the sun-goddess, Hudis god of the new moon, Kese god of the full moon, Kusor god of intellect (who could take on a female aspect as Kusarit), Hawot goddess of the dead, Pumay to whom the Nora stone in Sardinia was set up, Sakun and the exceedingly obscure Arish, sometimes Baal ’Rš) and D‘m (Dom). Some other divinities at Carthage had important roles, unlike among the Phoenicians. The chief of these, and in later centuries perhaps the city’s paramount deity, was Tnt, usually transliterated Tanit (though Tinit may be a more accurate pronunciation). Tanit’s origins are disputed: possibly she began in Phoenicia as an aspect, or even servitor, of Astarte; or perhaps instead was a separate divinity, named on a stele as ‘Tanit of Lebanon’ (wltnt blbnn); or – least likely but occasionally suggested – a different Phoenician goddess, Anat, who under Libyan influence might have acquired a prefix ta. Tanit appears at Carthage quite late, on stelae from the 5th or even the early 4th Century, with some noteworthy aspects. She is almost always coupled with Baal, always is mentioned first and Baal next, and bears the name Tnt pn B‘l, Tanit pene Baal (or Phane-Baal) – ‘Tanit face of Baal’. She has a distinctive visual symbol or sign, essentially a triangle with a circle at its apex and a line drawn horizontally between the two, so that the ‘sign of Tanit’ looks like a geometric outline of a woman in a long robe and with arms outstretched. The sign appears in mosaics – a famous one adorns the threshold of a private home in Kerkouane (Illustration 11) – and on small items widely used, like figurines and pottery vessels. No other Carthaginian deity had this kind of visual recognition. A further sign of Tanit’s eminence is that in 146, as the siege of the city neared its climax, the Roman commander Scipio Aemilianus called on ‘Juno’, who must be Tanit, in the rite of evocatio: the ‘summoning out’ of an enemy city’s protective deity with promises of greater honours at Rome. Whether Tanit and Baal came to be seen as a married couple is not known, but ‘Zeus and Hera’ in Hannibal’s oath are thought to represent them and were a married couple (as well as being brother 95

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Illustration 11 Entrance to house at Kerkouane, with ‘sign of Tanit’

and sister, not a feature ever suggested of the Carthaginian pair). The great majority of stelae dedicated to Tanit and Baal were in the ‘tophet’, the cremation-cemetery for infants. Even the site of their temple or temples is unknown, though conceivably Byrsa had room for them as well as Eshmun. Temples of many of the other gods are mentioned in inscriptions or literary sources; the city clearly had at least as many sacred places as Rome or Athens, even if the events of 146 and later have left it almost impossible to find any. Hannibal’s oath shows, too, that Carthaginians saw a divine presence or immanence in natural features like rivers and other waters, again an instinct of piety shared by Greeks and Romans. At least two deities at Carthage had no Phoenician background: the Greek Demeter and her daughter Kore, also called Persephone. In 396 the cult of these goddesses was initiated after their temple at Syracuse was destroyed by a Carthaginian army: for a series of disasters had followed, including the great Libyan rebellion mentioned earlier. Priests and priestesses of high-ranking families were assigned to their service (one Hannabaal, hkhnt š krw’, ‘the priestess of Kore’, is attested on a stele); leading Greek residents were also brought in 96

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to assist, and the proper Greek rituals were practised. The fine early2nd-Century stele mentioned earlier – dedicated, probably at Carthage, by ‘thy servant Milkyaton the sufete, son of Maharbaal the sufete’ and depicting Kore in her shrine bearing a basket of fruit – vividly illustrates the continuity of the cult. It spread into Libya as well, to flourish in Roman times. The Egyptian goddess Isis also had a temple in the city, though little is known of it: she is best known now for the beautiful Greek-style sarcophagus of one of her priestesses (see Illustration 12).

Illustration 12 The ‘Isis priestess’ from Ste Monique tomb: marble lid of sarcophagus

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Greeks and Romans nearly always avoided using Phoenician and Carthaginian deities’ own names, preferring to identify them with deities of their own. Melqart was thus treated as Heracles (Hercules in Latin), Tanit as Hera or, in Latin, Juno – in Roman North Africa she would be named Juno Caelestis – while Eshmun was normally identified with Aesculapius, though occasionally, it seems, with Dionysus or even with Heracles’ protégé Iolaus. Other equivalents were again flexible: Reshef is usually thought to have been equated with Apollo, but this is debated; Baal Sapon may have been identified with Poseidon (Neptune) but so too it seems the obscure Baal ’Rš; Shadrap was sometimes seen as Dionysus, occasionally as Apollo. Baal Hammon himself certainly seems meant when Hanno’s Periplus, Diodorus and some others write of ‘Cronus’, and in Roman times he was Latinised as Saturn, the Romans’ name for that god. But references to Zeus or Jupiter, for instance in Hannibal’s treaty, Nepos and Livy, should mean him too – or possibly, but not as convincingly, Baal Shamim despite his less prominent role at Carthage and lack of association with Tanit.55 It is often thought that particular families, at least among the aristocracy, paid special reverence to one or another divinity as their protector or patron. This did happen elsewhere – the Fabian family at Rome, for instance, performed strict cult-duties to an unknown god at a site there – so it may equally have featured at Carthage. On the other hand, the examples thought to show it are not compelling. A votive inscription seems to speak of ‘Baal of the Magonids’ (b‘l mgnm) in a dedication, along with Baal Shamim, Tanit pene Baal, and Baal Hammon. In turn, Hannibal’s family is widely supposed to have revered Melqart as their special god. Yet rather than an undisputed reference to the Magonid family, b‘l mgnm may mean ‘Baal of gifts’ (the gift-giver) or ‘Baal the shield’ (the protector) – other senses of mgn which are also plausible. In Hannibal’s case, his only known connection with Melqart was in offering sacrifice and vows in 218 in the god’s temple at Gades, the oldest Phoenician shrine in the western Mediterranean. One or more coins issued by the Barcids in Spain are thought to portray Melqart, but even if that were certain (actually it is very debatable) it would not explain other Barcid coins or, more important, convey anything about the generals’ own devotions. Hannibal and his family really had more to do with Baal Hammon and Tanit. His father made him swear a famous childhood oath, never to be friendly with the Romans, at the altar of ‘Jupiter’. When his brother-in-law Hasdrubal founded the city of New Carthage in Spain around 228, its four most conspicuous temples were dedicated 98

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to ‘Asclepius’ (Eshmun), ‘Hephaestus’ (probably Kusor), ‘Aletes’ (perhaps a Spanish god) and ‘Cronus’, but the temple of Melqart – there must have been one – was much less prominent. Livy reports Hannibal sacrificing to ‘Jupiter’ before his first battle in Italy, and ‘Zeus’ and ‘Hera’ head his treaty-oath. Years later he chose the temple of Hera, at Cape Lacinium (Capo Colonna) in Greek southern Italy, to house a bronze inscription with a Punic and Greek account of his great campaigns. No doubt he venerated Melqart too, but scarcely in first place. As the treaty-oath implies, a Carthaginian leader held all his city’s deities in religious regard, even if he might feel a special reverence for certain ones. Disputes will continue about who are mentioned under the Greek names in the treaty’s list. Zeus and Hera look like Baal Hammon and Tanit pene Baal: if the names mean Melqart and Astarte instead, it is hard to see where else the two dominant deities of 3rd-Century Carthage occur, especially as there is no mention of Cronus. As mentioned earlier, Apollo is commonly viewed as meaning Reshef and Heracles as Melqart, while ‘the daemon of the Carthaginians’ (it has been suggested) was Astarte; her position next to Melqart in the list would certainly fit. Eshmun might be tentatively identified with Iolaus, but who are the gods represented as Ares, Triton and Poseidon, not to mention all the unnamed divinities? The list continues to be open to a range of theories, perhaps insolubly. What form Carthaginian theology took (if theology is the right term) is not known, save that Melqart, there as well as in Phoenicia, underwent a ritual of death followed by rebirth, either daily or yearly. The priest who performed the rite bore the impressive title of ‘awakener of the god [sometimes ‘of the dead god’] with the scent of ‘štrny’, or perhaps ‘the husband of ‘štrny’. The obscure ‘štrny is known only in this context, though she must be divine too and is sometimes thought to be an aspect of Astarte. We have already met one of the Awakeners: ‘Hanno, sufete and chief of priests (rb khnm, or rab kohanim), son of Abdmilqart’, whose stele lists his priestly role as well. The priesthood was plainly important enough to be taken by leading men in public life. The Awakening rite spread and endured beyond Carthage, for Yazim (Y’zm), a great-grandson of Masinissa king of Numidia, held the priesthood in his own country during the last years of the 2nd or early in the 1st Century. Belief in a mortal person’s life after death is suggested by the food and drink utensils often placed in tombs to accompany the dead, and again, though not very specifically, by the tomb-paintings at Kerkouane’s Jebel Mlezza. One depicts a bird like a rooster – perhaps 99

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the deceased person’s soul – in the air next to a mausoleum of the Thugga type, while in another it approaches the walled city which may represent the city of the next world. How a person qualified for a restful afterlife, what rituals were needed to ensure safe passage, or even whether it involved the gods themselves in any way, it would be interesting to know.56

THE ‘TOPHET’ AND CHILD SACRIFICE The best-known cult practice at Carthage were the urn-burials dedicated to Tanit and Baal in the so-called ‘tophet’, where the earliest burials in the nine-level site date to the 8th Century and the latest to Carthage’s final years. It was noted earlier that ‘tophet’ is merely a term of convenience: what such cemeteries were called in Punic is not known, whereas tophet (with other transliterations like topet, topheth, tofet) was, according to the Old Testament, the name of a site in the narrow valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, in which male children were sacrificed to the Phoenician Baal until the late 7th Century. Crowded with cremation urns which are often, though not always, accompanied by dedicatory stelae, the Punic site has stirred debate ever since urns taken for scientific investigation revealed the ashes and bones of very young children: chiefly infants, stillbirths and some foetuses, in some cases accompanied by bones of animals (mostly young sheep and goats). Similar human and animal remains, though on nothing like the same scale, had previously been found at Nora, Tharros and Motya. Again, a well-known stele from the ‘tophet’ of Carthage depicts a priest in a flat-topped cap, with his right hand raised in a gesture of respect or supplication, and a baby borne in the crook of his left arm – supposedly on the point of being put into Baal’s red-hot embrace. All this fuels the linked questions of child sacrifice and human sacrifice at Carthage and her dependencies. Greek and Roman writers often claim that the Carthaginians practised a rite of sacrificing chosen Carthaginian children to the gods – more specifically, to their chief god ‘Cronus’, Baal Hammon. Cleitarchus, an early commentator on Plato, and then Diodorus both give a pathetic description of infants being placed on the arms of a bronze statue of ‘Cronus’ over a blazing fire, so that they would fall still living into the flames. Plutarch writes that rich parents without children bought children of poor families to sacrifice them; the grieving mother must look on without shedding a tear or the 100

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payment was forfeited, while the children’s screams (he adds) were drowned out by ritual flutes and cymbals. The most famous episode of sacrificed children is reported by Diodorus for the year 310. Facing defeat from the invading forces of Agathocles, the Carthaginians realised that they had brought disaster on themselves through their cavalier attitude towards the gods, especially Cronus who – instead of receiving the sacrifice of the noblest children – had long been fobbed off with substitutes purchased and then nurtured for the rite. So now two hundred noble children were sacrificed to him by the state, and three hundred others voluntarily by families anxious to clear themselves of suspicion. Other source items, varying in relevance, have been adduced in support, including the children ‘passing through fire’ in the Jerusalem ‘tophet’ and several Biblical reports of kings sacrificing their firstborn sons to placate their gods. In Justin, Herodotus and Diodorus respectively, there are accounts of Carthage’s 6th-Century leader Mazeus putting to death his son Carthalo for disrespect, of Hamilcar during the battle of Himera in 480 burning ‘entire bodies’ (of humans, or animals?) and then leaping into the sacrificial fire himself on losing the battle, and of Himilco, the general campaigning in Sicily in 406, seeking to appease Cronus by sacrificing a boy to the god as an epidemic raged in his army. Diodorus later reports a Carthaginian army in 307 sacrificing chosen victim-prisoners by fire after a great victory over the invader Agathocles – only to suffer suitable punishment when their own camp caught alight, killing many. When plague struck the Carthaginians, Justin asserts, they would appease the gods by immolating – that is, sacrificing by fire – both grown men and immature boys. Alexander the Great’s biographer Curtius Rufus states that the Carthaginians persisted in sacrificing a freeborn boy down to the destruction of the city, implying that this happened at moments of crisis (in contrast to their mother city Tyre when besieged by Alexander). Then, imaginatively if quite fictitiously, the epic poet Silius Italicus transports envoys from Carthage to the victorious Hannibal in Italy with an order that he hand over his son for that year’s sacrifice; Hannibal refuses, promising instead to shed Roman blood to please the gods. More noteworthy is a remark by the Christian writer Tertullian, himself a Roman Carthaginian, that in his own day around ad 200 the rite of infanticide was still performed in secret, even though banned by the Roman authorities. What most of these writers have in common is the claim that Carthaginians carried out child sacrifice. In detail, though, there are 101

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disagreements and contradictions among themselves and with the archaeological evidence. Mazeus’ son is an adult – in fact is the priest of Melqart at Carthage; Hamilcar at Himera is a suicide and there is no claim about him acting out a rite; both the sacrifice in Sicily in 406 and the mass killings in 310 were to appease an angry god in a crisis, whereas Curtius and Silius make child sacrifice a regular yearly rite and Diodorus implies that regular sacrificings had been the norm. Plutarch describes the children bought from poor mothers as having their throats cut, not as being cast into fire; he is also the only one to include childless couples among the sacrificers, contradicting the other sources who insist that the sacrificed victims had to be the parents’ own. Still more strikingly, it is older children and even grown men who are given to the god or gods by Biblical sacrificers, by the Carthaginians in 409 and 310, and in Curtius’, Silius’ and Justin’s reports – not infants. In 307, supposedly, it was foreign prisoners after a victory, in other words adult men: a unique event, and a suspect one since (as Diodorus takes care to stress) it promptly brought condign catastrophe down on the perpetrators, whose own camp burnt down with heavy loss of life. None of this incoherent variety makes the written reports look especially reliable. The evidence from the ‘tophet’ presents difficulties in turn. The bones of animals, especially lambs, accompany human bones in some of the urns studied, but most urns contain only human or animal remains respectively. Animal bones are found in larger percentages from earlier periods, like 30 per cent in the 7th and 6th Centuries, than in deposits of the 4th to 2nd Centuries (10 per cent). Analyses of the human bones from urns at Carthage and elsewhere – Motya and Tharros, for instance – show that the great majority are of infants, including some stillborn, or foetuses; the very few exceptions included children between two and four years old, and (at Carthage) a single older child aged between six and twelve. In some urns, the remains of a stillborn child and of an older child were placed together; and on current evidence this other child was normally only a few months older. There is also forensic evidence suggesting that many or most of the infants had died before being cremated. Nor (another noteworthy point) are children’s remains at all common in ordinary necropoleis. It should be added that there is no sign, so far at least, of a mass cremation of many hundred victims like the one that Diodorus reports for the year 310.57 Some stelae from various ‘tophets’, including ones later than the year 146, state that a named person dedicated a mlk, a mlk ’dm, a mlk ’mr, or a mlk b‘l to Baal Hammon (or Baal Hammon and Tanit), 102

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often with the pious formula ‘because he heard his voice’. The meaning of the phrases with mlk, itself pronounced molk or mulk and meaning ‘sacrifice’, is disputed. Some interpretations make mlk ’dm the sacrifice ‘of a male (victim)’ and mlk ’mr that ‘of a lamb’, while mlk b‘l is taken to mean a sacrifice ‘to Baal’. In other views, mlk b‘l is taken neutrally to mean ‘sacrifice of a victim’ or, rather surprisingly, ‘sacrifice of a citizen’; some reject the meaning ‘lamb’ for ’mr (indeed by itself ’mr can mean ‘word’); and a mlk ’dm could mean, not ‘sacrifice of a man’ – an odd term if a baby was meant – but one ‘of reddening [or rouging]’ – a rite, that is, for which the priest put on red-ochre colouring for ritual purposes. With scholarly investigations still being made, a definite answer to the question of child sacrifice is not possible yet. Even so, some comments can be made. First, the normal urn-deposit in the ‘tophet’, especially at Carthage, was usually one of newly-deceased or stillborn infants, or foetuses. Second, very few features of the ‘tophet’ burials match the descriptions in Greek and Roman writers, who claim to be describing the normal rites for human sacrifice at Carthage (above all, the writers depict the victims as older children and sometimes grown men). Third, the presence sometimes in one urn of two babies, unequal in age but close, is inexplicable if the Carthaginians were supposed to be sacrificing one child at a time, and nonsensical if the sacrificed one was supposed to be just the firstborn. It would, though, make reasonable sense if both had died of natural causes in the same period, especially as it is not necessary to suppose that both were always from the same family. Fourth, the inconsistencies among the written sources, and between them and the archaeological evidence, make it virtually impossible to use either to reinforce the other. The sources, incidentally, never mention the ‘tophet’ under any name or say anything about what happened to the sacrificed remains. A Latin inscription of the 2nd or 3rd Century bc, from the town of Nicivibus in Numidia (today Ain N’gaous in Algeria), records parents sacrificing a lamb in gratitude to Saturn – the Latin name for Baal Hammon – for the life of their daughter Concessa. They call the lamb a ‘substitute’ (pro vikario) and the rite a molchomor, which seems to be their transliterated version of mlk ’mr, and use the telling phrases ‘breath for breath, blood for blood, life for life’. While this is often viewed as sacrificing a lamb in order to avoid sacrificing their Concessa, it looks just as likely that the lamb was given to Baal because the god had not taken Concessa’s life – in other words, that she had recovered from a serious illness or accident. The animal 103

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bones in separate ‘tophet’ urns may have a similar explanation while, conceivably, those in the same urn as an infant’s remains may be a sacrificial thanksgiving to Tanit and Baal for not taking a second child as well. The stele of the priest and baby, and Tertullian’s statement about baby-sacrifices still being done secretly in his day, need to be considered. The stele does not in itself depict a sacrifice: interpreting it as doing so is based on assuming that it matches the descriptions in Diodorus and other sources. Strictly speaking, the male figure holding the baby is simply making a gesture of prayer, blessing or greeting: equally likely, then, he may be giving thanks for the baby or offering a blessing on its behalf. Tertullian’s statement should carry particular weight, if we can be sure that he is reporting fact; at the same time, it needs to be noted that he is writing as an assertive defender of Christianity against allegations of secret Christian lusts and crimes (including infanticide), while making no claim of having seen the sacrifice rite himself or even of relying on an eyewitness. Regular and widespread sacrifice of one’s children would be remarkable, though not literally unthinkable, in societies where many children died at birth or before reaching the age of one. Although there are no figures for Carthaginian society, it is generally estimated that in the Roman world of the first three centuries ad (the period of ancient history with the fullest evidence) one in every four babies – or even one in every three – died as infants from natural causes. Small children were again more vulnerable than most adults in epidemics and times of scarcity. If the Carthaginians, and other Phoenician settlers in North Africa, Sicily and Sardinia, were sacrificing still other children of theirs, they were regularly jeopardising their own communal survival.58 The contradictions in the written sources and the near-disconnection between them and the archaeological evidence (itself open to other explanations) make it hard to believe that this did happen. If Tertullian can be trusted, together with Diodorus’ reports of the boy sacrificed in Sicily in 409 and of the child-holocaust of 310, it may be deduced that at certain moments of stress, public or private, the killing of a child was done as an appeasement of the god; and further, that a state sacrifice was rare and, if it did occur, involved an older child or children. Just possibly the child six to twelve years old, whose remains have been found in the ‘tophet’, was a deliberately sacrificed victim (in some assessments, he was a negro boy and so perhaps a slave). On the evidence too, it looks as though a victim was not always kin to the sacrificers, or an infant. The ‘tophet’ itself, 104

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almost entirely devoted to infants, foetuses and animals, will have had minimal connection to such acts.

LITERATURE AT CARTHAGE: DID IT EXIST? When Carthage was sacked in 146, its libraries were handed over to ‘the minor kings of Africa’ (so Pliny the Elder writes), save for Mago’s agricultural encyclopaedia. The minor kings must have been the royal family of Numidia, Carthage’s close neighbour and enemy; perhaps the king of Mauretania received some books too. What was in the libraries is debated, since few Carthaginian authors are known, but along with Mago’s work that of his fellow-agronomist Hamilcar no doubt was in them, together with Hanno’s Periplus and any similar records (one by Himilco, for instance). Other works in the libraries perhaps included the sources used for ‘the Punic books [or books in Punic: Punici libri] that were said to be King Hiempsal’s’, mentioned by the Roman historian Sallust. Hiempsal II of Numidia, a descendant of its unifier Masinissa, reigned from about 88 to 50 bc. Sallust cites Hiempsal’s work for a compressed, and fairly fanciful, account of how the North African peoples originated and how the Phoenicians settled there; perhaps too for his description of Lepcis Magna and the heroism of the Philaeni brothers. As inscriptions and buildings from Numidia show, by Hiempsal’s time and even earlier the kingdom – and especially its capital Cirta, modern Constantine – had extensively assimilated Carthage’s language and culture, so it would be natural to write works in Punic (Sallust needed an interpreter). He seems to suspect that the king was author only in name: whoever did compose the work probably drew on at least some Carthaginian materials as well as Greek ones. The late-Roman historian Ammianus in turn reports that Hiempsal’s grandson Juba II, an unusually bookish monarch and author, drew on Punici libri for the dictum that the Nile rises in a Mauretanian mountain near the Atlantic: maybe those books were his ancestor’s, or else Carthaginian treatises – plainly very speculative – like the ones that Hiempsal too had looked up. Some works in Punic survived into much later times. Ammianus’ younger contemporary St Augustine, a self-consciously proud North African, comments ironically to a fellow African that, if disdainful of their old tongue, the friend then ought to deny the recognised value of the wisdom in ‘Punic books’. He thus implies that not only 105

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did such books still exist but they survived in their original language, and though he does not explicitly say that they were written in Carthaginian times, there is no good reason to doubt it. Incidentally, a tradition that sacred books survived the catastrophe of 146 bc through being hidden away is mentioned by Plutarch in a mysticphilosophical discussion – very Greek in content – about souls after death; but the claim may be a mere fancy to enliven his essay. It is also hard to tell whether Polybius’, Diodorus’, Justin’s and other authors’ sporadic but sometimes detailed reports of events in Carthaginian history go back to Carthaginian accounts (in Punic or in Greek). Hannibal certainly wrote of his own campaigns in seeming detail, originally as a temple inscription in Hera’s temple at Cape Lacinium (Capo Colonna) near Croton in southern Italy; but he no doubt published it at home too. Twenty years later he issued a pamphlet in Greek about a booty-hunting Roman general’s recent actions in central Asia Minor, no doubt taking a critical view of them and him. While he is the only Carthaginian known as writing on historical events, one or two other items may offer glimpses of a narrative tradition. A Punic inscription set up two centuries before his time briefly reports military actions in Sicily by ‘the rbm Adnibaal [Hannibal] son of Gisco the rb and Himilco son of Hanno the rb’, including the sack of Acragas and other measures. The events date to 406, for the two generals and the sack are recorded by Diodorus. More indirect glimpses come in from much later times, such as two verse inscriptions of perhaps the 1st Century bc, at Mactar about 180 kilometres south-west of Carthage. In Neo-Punic, the later form of the language, they were set up by the mzrͥ or citizens’ association there (or one of them) to praise two leaders who had defeated serious attacks on the town and its territory, maybe at different periods – one a revolt and one an incursion from outside – and restored prosperity to Mactar’s landowners. Further away and later still (the mid-4th Century ad or perhaps the later 3rd) Julius Nasif, a Romanised Libyan officer at a rural centre far to the south of Lepcis Magna, had a Neo-Punic poem incised on his burial stele, using the Latin alphabet, to commemorate what must have been the high point of his career: defeating a marauding tribe that had attacked the area and capturing its chieftain.59 It is interesting that all these accounts deal with military matters, even the verse inscriptions. Military verse is not a genre found in Roman inscriptions. Nor has the rhythmic structure of the poems anything to do with Greek or Latin versification: instead they show 106

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features of a distant ancestry in ancient Canaanite and Biblical poetry, as does some of their vocabulary. The biographical and autobiographical aspects of the accounts, both prose and verse, are also worth noting. A stele at Carthage records that the family of a citizen named Milkpilles honoured his memory with an inscriptional biography set up in the temple of Isis – which reminds us of Hannibal’s personal record in the temple of Hera, and indeed of how Hanno the navigator placed the original of his Periplus in Baal Hammon’s. Milkpilles need not have been a military man, even if his biography too was in verse: for Mactar is the origin of another verse autobiography of Roman times – this one in Latin – telling, in endearingly unsophisticated fashion, how a humbly-born farm labourer there advanced through hard work and enterprise to wealth and local honours. While poetic, or would-be poetic, life stories in Latin inscriptions are not unique to North Africa, the ‘rime of the ancient Mactarian’ looks like a civilian match for the Neo-Punic martial paeans. It seems likely enough, then, that at least military-historical and biographical writing was well established at Carthage at any rate from the 5th Century on. The traditions may have gone back much further, for her close relations with Tyre should mean that educated Carthaginians knew their mother city’s ancient ‘annals’ if nothing else. We saw earlier that there is enough plausible detail in the story of Elissa to suggest that the foundation-account had some basis in fact, while the Carthaginians’ interest in family history is clear from the sometimes lengthy ancestral lists lovingly recorded by stelededicators. If written works in these fields have not survived to any extent, probably it is because Greeks and Romans were uninterested in reading or preserving Punic-language literature, not because literary composition was rare at Carthage. Greeks and Romans did pay attention to authors who wrote on Carthaginian affairs in those languages. Some of them were surely read at Carthage too, for instance Philinus of Acragas, the 3rd-Century historian of the First Punic War, and Hannibal’s friends and biographers Silenus (another Sicilian) and Sosylus of Sparta. Even philosophical works found readers. A young Carthaginian philosopher, Hasdrubal, son of one Diognetus (a Greek migrant to Carthage, or a Carthaginian who took a Greek name), lectured at home on the subject, in his own language, till he left for Athens around 163 aged twenty-four. There he adopted the name Cleitomachus on becoming an Athenian citizen, enjoying a distinguished career until his death in 110/109. He became head of the Platonic 107

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academy after his teacher Carneades, and wrote a reported four hundred books – probably in the sense of rolled volumina – to make a lasting impact on philosophy. One of them was a treatise of consolation to his surviving countrymen after the destruction of the city. It was in Greek (Cicero read it) and is yet another pointer to Carthaginians’ familiarity with that language and culture. It would be interesting to know how many, if any, other Carthaginians made the same journey for philosophy’s sake.60

VISUAL ART, INCLUDING COINAGE Works of art at Carthage go back to the city’s earliest centuries, though what remains of them is regrettably limited, consisting chiefly of finds in graves and tombs and, perhaps for this reason, mainly religious in their import. It was noted earlier that various offerings and mementoes could be placed in tombs, including figurines, lamps, ornaments and jewellery, as well as jars and bowls with food and drink to nourish the dead person’s spirit journey to the next world. Yadomilk’s pendant is one such item. From the start, artworks reflected many different cultures or were pieces imported from these, the earliest influence being of course Phoenicia’s and, almost equally early, Egypt’s. Thus from a 7th-Century grave on Byrsa comes a finely-worked ivory piece, the tiny remnant (less than five centimetres high) of an ornamental carving, showing a goat with head turned back, standing on a sacred tree – a long-established motif of plenty in eastern Mediterranean art. From a Douimès necropolis of about the same period there survives a cylindrical ivory handle, about 13 centimetres long, for a bronze mirror: it depicts a woman (probably a goddess) with Egyptian hairstyle and long robe, and hands clasped over her breasts (Illustration 13). It is hard to say whether either of these was an import or was made at Carthage. A terracotta statuette in a more unsophisticated style, dated to the 7th or 6th Century, does look locally made: an abstractly stylised, flat-topped head and roughly cylindrical torso, complete with what seem to be nipples, depicting perhaps a protective goddess (Illustration 14). Perhaps later in date is a tiny terracotta sculpture – again from a necropolis, this time on Borj-el-Jedid – of a mother, in long robe and with a shawl covering her head, who kneels over an open-top bake-oven (or maybe a well) while her child, abstractly rendered with no features, peers over the top to see what is happening (Illustration 15). This simple piece has a 108

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Illustration 13 Ivory mirror-handle depicting a goddess(?), c. 7th Century

Illustration 14 Terracotta statuette of a goddess, 7th–6th Century

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Illustration 15 Mother and child at baking oven

particular appeal in its little scene of domestic life, something rare in surviving Carthaginian art. A contrast to its peaceful image is offered by a splendid tondo or disc in terracotta, only some nine centimetres in diameter and well preserved, from the 6th-Century necropolis on Douimès: it depicts a fully-armed cavalry warrior at full gallop, with crested helmet and round shield, his faithful dog racing alongside, while behind the warrior appears the sacred disc-and-crescent symbol of the sun and moon (Illustration 16). The image occurs elsewhere at western Phoenician sites like Utica and Ebusus, but the energy and sharply-drawn quality of the figures on the work from Douimès suggest that fine artistic activity was already going on at Carthage in that early period. The mother and child theme, this time in firmly religious terms, recurs in a terracotta statuette of later date (perhaps as late as the 3rd Century) that represents a robed goddess wearing a tall, fez-like headpiece and bearing on her shoulder a daughter with similar headgear and an elaborate necklace. The pair may represent Astarte and Tanit, who are sometimes linked together in Phoenician art, or even Demeter and Kore. Other distinctive home-made pieces include many votive masks from graves, notably ones with negro features or with stylised aspects like ferocious grins or staring eyes: their aim 110

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Illustration 16 Terracotta tondo: cavalryman and his hound

was to ward off unfriendly spirits. Wide-open eyes are notable, too, in a full-length statue of a robed male dedicator from Utica, perhaps of the 3rd Century, and 4th- or 3rd-Century ornamental trinkets like glass pearl-shaped pendants with huge painted eyes and intricatelyfashioned glass spirals for hair and beard. Eastern Mediterranean art forms survived more or less to the end: the so-called ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s slope yielded a small terracotta god – it may be Melqart – enthroned, wearing a conical cap, and with right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. Egyptian themes remained popular down the centuries. There is a fine gold amulet-case with engraved Egyptian motifs of 7th–6th Century date; Egyptian divinities like the distinctively ugly Bes and the maternal Isis are represented on amulets; stelae and small sculpted models (like the famous ones from Thuburbo Maius) depict the façades of Egyptian-style temples; and many of the terracotta votive masks placed in graves are Egyptian in style. Some items were probably brought to Carthage from the eastern lands, but others must have been made locally. Other cultures beside Phoenicia’s and Egypt’s contributed to the artistic variety at Carthage. Etruscan objects and styles were always attractive, as shown for instance by a bronze figurine of a goddess or maiden found at Sidi bou Said and thought to have come over in the 6th Century if not earlier; by painted bowls with Etruscan-style motifs of the 4th Century; and by a small terracotta of a chubbily nude seated boy, found at Kerkouane (a 4th- or 3rd-Century version of a widely-spread Phoenician religious image, the ‘temple boy’).61 111

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From around the 5th Century, however, the most pervasive influence was the Greek world. With the Carthaginians carrying on trade with Greeks, warring with the Greeks of Sicily (and before them, the Phocaeans in Corsica) and intermarrying with Greeks even at the highest social levels – like the Greek mother of ‘king’ Hamilcar – this influence was predictable. It never supplanted all others, but its attractions grew as trade expanded, Greek culture flourished and, from Alexander the Great’s day onward, Greek and Macedonian dominance was imposed over more and more of the eastern Mediterranean, including Carthage’s motherland Phoenicia. Apart from the pottery goods imported from the city’s earliest days, the Carthaginians’ interest in things Greek was no doubt partly stimulated, ironically enough, by the artworks looted from Sicilian cities in the 5th and 4th Centuries’ wars. A notorious prize acquired in 406 was the hollow bronze bull made for Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas in the 560s (allegedly for roasting his political enemies alive). Other carefully kept booty included portrait busts, statues – Cicero describes a splendid one of Artemis the huntress, which the Romans restored to Segesta in 146 – and sacred objects of gold and silver. Another stimulus must have been coinage, which Carthage began to produce only late in the 5th Century, to pay her military forces in Sicily: from the start, Carthaginian coins were under Greek influence. Her adoption of Demeter and Kore in 396 gave further impetus. An early example of Greek or Greek-influenced art in a western Phoenician setting was found in quite recent times, not at Carthage but at Motya: the marble statue of a curly-haired youth or ‘ephebe’ wearing a close-fitting cap and standing in a full-length robe of realistically chiselled folds, intended to represent fine cloth – so fine that the viewer is no doubt about his sex – while one hand rests on his hip and the other was perhaps raised in blessing or greeting (the arms do not survive). A remarkable sculpture of early 5th-Century classical style, this represents a young god receiving (or maybe a young priest making) an offering. Motya was of course much nearer and much more exposed to the appeal of Greek Sicily’s art and aesthetics, but it is entirely believable that Carthage too would import similar pieces, or commission resident Greek sculptors and designers to make them – and that eventually there would be Carthaginian workers skilled in the same arts. One such artist was Boethus ‘the Carthaginian’: his and his father Apollodorus’ names are Greek, but on a statue-base at Ephesus bearing their names he terms himself a Carthaginian. The later Greek 112

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travel writer Pausanias saw a gilded statue by ‘Boethus the Carthaginian’ at Olympia, surely the same man. His father may well have been an immigrant to Carthage from Sicily or Greece, while it looks as though Boethus in turn left his native city to seek his fortune in that world. Not every Greek migrant or Carthaginian craftsman skilled in Greek methods need have done the same.62 From around the year 400 art in Greek forms proliferated at Carthage and in the Carthaginian world. Remnants of buildings show Greek types of ornament, like the surviving upper part of an Ionic sandstone pillar in the ‘tophet’ intricately carved with intertwined palm fronds and acanthus leaves in its capital, reminiscent of 3rd-Century Greek decoration, and the remains of an Ionic column from the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on the slopes of Byrsa. Ataban’s Carthaginian-descended mausoleum at Thugga makes use of Ionic columns, just as the ships’ docks in the naval port, as Appian describes them, were each marked out by a pair of them. Elements or wholesale borrowing of Greek styles characterise votive figurines, stelae and other objects: thus a 4th-Century terracotta statuette, found at Kerkouane, depicts a woman musician in Greek garments, their folds realistically rendered (chiton robe, and a himation cloak drawn up over the back of her head), one leg bent slightly forward as she beats her tambourine drum. A grave at Carthage produced another 4th-Century statuette still more in Greek style, of an attractive young woman playing a double flute, swathed in flowing robes and this time with one leg bent slightly back (Illustration 17). Both wear decorated high caps. These make a sharp contrast with another tambourine-player of much the same period: a formal Phoenician-style sacred image, the face abstractly rendered, with ringleted hair and flat painted robe, both hands clasping the tambourine to her breast. This is a valuable reminder that Greek influence did not push aside other forms. Much Greek and Greek-influenced work at Carthage is of memorable quality. On the back of a small bronze mirror there survives a masterful profile, done in high relief, of a goddess with an elaborate coiffure, a silver-inlay earring, and a rather engaging halfsmile: again a work of the 4th Century or perhaps the 3rd, and fully Greek in style even though it must represent a Carthaginian goddess (Illustration 18). Ivory intaglios – ornaments with incised figures or busts, as usual found in graves – of the same period or a little later depict rather sedately dancing maenads (women practising the frenzied ritual worship of Dionysus) and a sensitively realised one of Dionysus himself. The carefully-wrought head of Demeter, or else 113

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Illustration 17 Fluteplayer from Carthage: terracotta statuette, 4th Century

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Illustration 18 Bronze mirror (back), profile of a goddess

another goddess, figures on well-made terracotta incense burners, each around 30 centimetres high, with coiffured hair topped by the incense bowl, while a beautifully designed head of Medusa in terracotta – her curling hair intertwined with snakes identifies her – with staring eyes and slightly parted lips, again fully Greek in style, was an offering in a shrine near the ‘tophet’ (Illustration 19). Just as elaborate, with mixed Ionic and Doric features, is the stele dedicated by Milkyaton the sufete described earlier, representing Kore or Demeter in her temple and dated to the 2nd Century – not long, therefore, before the fall of the city.

Illustration 19 Terracotta head of Medusa

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Works of art (and architecture) in different styles, as well as works combining different traditions, coexisted easily throughout Carthage’s history. A stele set up around 250 in Hadrumetum’s ‘tophet’, and very well preserved, presents a full-frontal winged sphinx standing on a handsome Ionic column, with its dedicator’s inscription above and, over this, a gable-like top (recalling those of grand mausolea like Ataban’s at Thugga) decorated with a series of stylised palm fronds: an impressively executed combination of Egyptian, Greek and Carthaginian elements (Illustration 20). Another stele, probably 3rd-Century, shows the face and shoulders of a young man again entirely Greek in appearance – head turned to one side with a troubled or questioning expression, shoulders covered by a cloak with loose folds and a brooch (Illustration 21).

Illustration 20 Cippus from Hadrumetum

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Illustration 21 Stele of a youth, from Hadrumetum

A small stone ossuary or box for a deceased person’s preserved bones, from the necropolis of Ste Monique on Borj-el-Jedid, has a lid sculpted as a full-length and three-dimensional portrait of a priest with curled hair and beard framing a strikingly lifelike face, its features rather like those traditionally given to Zeus (Illustration 22). Wearing a long robe with intricate folds and a long panel of cloth draped down from his left shoulder, he offers a blessing or prayer with his right hand and clasps an incense bowl in his left. Ossuaries, several of which have been found in necropoleis at Carthage, were common in the Near East including Judaea, less so in 117

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Illustration 22 Ossuary of a priest from Ste Monique tomb, 4th–3rd Centuries

Greece or at Rome. Another from the same necropolis and of much the same era (the 4th or 3rd Century) also depicts a priest named Baalshillek, similarly robed and bearded, with raised right hand and vessel in his left, around whose figure the stone has been chiselled away to raise him above the rest of the lid. Although so much like the other sculpture in these details, Baalshillek’s figure is flat, the details incised into the surface and in a far plainer style, recalling Phoenician forms rather than Greek. Two full-sized sarcophagi, recovered from the Ste Monique necropolis and dating to the later 4th Century, can complete these examples. One corresponds to the unnamed priest’s ossuary: an elderly bearded man with the same robe (including the ceremonial cloth panel draped down from the shoulder) and in the same stance. The other is one of the most remarkable pieces of sculpture found at Carthage. Again it shows a blend of influences: made of Pentelic marble (1.93 metres long and 48 centimetres deep), its gabled lid is carved as a beautiful priestess or goddess, standing upright like the 118

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priests (Illustration 12). She wears a veil which falls over the back of her head to her shoulders and is topped by a hawk-shaped crest – a symbol of the Egyptian goddess Isis – while around her neck is a broad Egyptian-style collar hiding the top of her robe. This in turn is a Greek peplos, gathered above the waist to let a fold fall over either hip, then reaching down to just above her sandal-shod toes. Below the waist, the peplos is sheathed in two great folded wings that touch the ground beside her feet: another Egyptian aspect, recalling both Isis and Horus. In her uplifted left hand the girl holds a scentbox or phial but, in contrast to the raised gesture of each priest’s empty right hand, her right hand wears a wrist bracelet and remains at her side clasping a dove. The statue was brilliantly painted, although only traces survive. While incorporating so many Egyptian hieratic features, its presentation of the girl’s face, figure and robe is altogether Greek of the Hellenistic era, just as similar statues do in Ptolemaic Egypt of the same period. Again there is a sharp contrast in another Isis icon from Carthage (Illustration 23): this one a terracotta statuette of the 4th

Illustration 23 Another Isis effigy: terracotta statuette

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or 3rd Century in much more classic Egyptian style, with long plaited hair falling to the shoulders, hands apparently clasped behind the back, and the body below the waist completely clasped by the deity’s feathered but non-naturalistic wings.63 Greek-style works of art, particularly if large, highly decorated and made of costly materials like marble or ivory, would be expensive to commission or even to buy in a market. Nor need they have appealed to every Carthaginian. Religious and even aesthetic traditions would also help to ensure that other longestablished forms were continued too. The same range can be seen in the genre of tomb-razors unique to Carthage, Punic North Africa, Sardinia and Ebusus: copper or bronze pieces shaped like a hatchet-head with a projecting spur as the handle. Buried with the dead for ritual use in the afterlife, from about 500 on these were incised with pictures of a god of the next world, sometimes with Egyptian themes like Horus or a pharaoh figure, often with a Carthaginian god (especially Melqart), and from the 4th Century on often with Greek deities – not only Melqart’s equivalent Heracles, but Asclepius (Eshmun) and Hermes (perhaps Sakun) among others. Carthaginian coins were not meant to be artworks, but often have impressive artistic quality. They were a relatively late development for the city, which like other Mediterranean cultures had normally used barter, exchange and weighed pieces of precious and semi-precious metals in trade. Late in the 5th Century, a time when coinage was in widespread use in Greek lands including Sicily, the Carthaginians and their Sicilian allies started to strike their own in the west of the island – very likely in preparation for the major offensives which they mounted between 409 and 405 and which needed large and expensive mercenary forces. The first issues were in silver and bronze, based on the tetradrachm (fourdrachma coin) of Athens and its fractions. Then, during the first half of the next century, they also struck gold coins to the standard of the Greek gold stater (worth 20 drachmas), obviously in much less quantity, and ones of electrum – a blend of gold and silver. The coins often though not always bear legends, for instance the name of the issuing city (΢ys, the Punic name of Panormus, or Qart-hadasht), sometimes also words like mͥnt (mahanet, the army) or ‘m mͥnt (ham mahanet, the people of the army), mͥšbm (mehashbim, the accountants, or paymasters), or b’ršt (which seems to mean ‘in the territories’). From the late 4th Century coins were struck at Carthage too, in gold and electrum, again for 120

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state payments – most are found in Sicily again – but along with small bronze coins for local use. Not many decades later a new silver standard was adopted, now for convenience called the shekel, which was slightly lighter than the stater. Larger values, two and three shekels, were also issued at times, as well as fractions of the shekel. This gave a considerable flexibility to the city’s monetary system in an age of growing diplomatic and military commitments. The motifs on the coins were limited. A horse or a horse’s head, a palm tree, and the profile of a goddess or god account for most types, though of course each could have many variations: the horse may be standing still, galloping, or standing with its head turned back, for instance; some coins show only the forepart of the horse; sometimes behind it there is a palm tree, or above it a star or moon. The goddess almost invariably is Tanit – including on coins struck by Hannibal in Italy during the Second Punic War – usually wearing earrings and very often crowned with a cornstalk garland. Occasionally it is Astarte or, in another suggestion, Elissa-Dido in a distinctive Phrygian cap (a soft head-covering with long flaps at back and sides); or still more occasionally Isis. The god is normally Melqart, adorned with a lionskin helm that typifies his Greek equivalent Heracles. In the later 3rd Century a few other types appeared: occasionally a lion (Illustration 24c, d), and the Barcid generals in Spain struck some fine-quality coins with an elephant or a warship’s prow on the reverse as well as Melqart portraits without the lionskin but with a distinctive Herculean club, and with a war-elephant (Illustration 24i). Both striking and pathetic is a small number of 2nd-Century coins discovered only in 1994 – half-melted or worse, they are survivals of the destructive fires set by the Romans once they took the city in 146.64 In most cases and from the start, the artistic quality of the precious metal issues is good to excellent, the bronzes (cheaper in value and larger in quantity) much less so. The styles are virtually all Greek and largely under the influence of Sicilian Greek issues, especially Syracuse’s, but the deities and the types on the reverse are distinctively Carthaginian. The Carthaginians’ ability to adopt, adapt and develop what they wanted from other cultural worlds is no less evident in their coinage.

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Illustration 24 A selection of Carthaginian coins from Sicily and North Africa: (a) silver tetradrachm: obverse, front body of galloping horse, crowned by winged Victory, and corn-symbol, legend Qart-hadasht; reverse, palm-tree with mͥ nt (‘the army’): Sicily, early 4th Century, 17.1 grams (b) silver tetradrachm: obv., Tanit or Kore with dolphins; rev., horse’s head with palm-tree, legend ‘m mͥnt (‘the people of the army’): Sicily, late 4th Century, 16.8 gr. (c) silver tetradrachm: obv., head of Elissa-Dido(?) with Phrygian cap; rev., lion with palm-tree and s‘m mͥ nt: Sicily, 4th Century, 17.05 gr. (d) silver tetradrachm: obv., head of Elissa-Dido(?) with Phrygian cap; rev., lion and palm-tree, with legend s ‘mmͥnt (‘of the people of the army’): Sicily, late 4th Century, 16.9 gr. (e) gold tridrachm: obv., Tanit wearing necklace and earring; rev., standing horse; c. 260 bc, 12.4 gr. (f) silver trishekel: obv., head of Tanit; rev., horse’s head: Carthage, c. 260 bc, 22.3 gr. (g) silver six-shekel : obv., head of Tanit; rev., leaping horse: Carthage(?), c. 260 bc, 44.3 gr. (h) billon: obv., head of Melqart in style of Hercules, with lionskin; rev., lion with Greek legend Libyon (‘of the Libyans’) below, and Punic letter m (mem) above: overstruck on a Carthaginian coin by the rebels in the Truceless War, 241–237 bc, 7.3 gr. (i) silver 1.5 shekel: obv., head of Melqart in style of Hercules, with war-club; rev., war-elephant: Spain, before 218 bc, 10.8 gr. (j) bronze: obv., head of Tanit; rev., standing horse: Carthage, early 2nd Century, 95.1 gr.

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POLITICS AND RIVALRIES: MAZEUS-‘MALCHUS’ The rich élite who ran Carthage’s affairs were pretty certainly not just a merchant oligarchy but a more complex blend. Merchants of course bought property, in Carthage and outside, with some of their profits: this was a reliably safe investment. Meanwhile some wealthy Carthaginians no doubt held most of their wealth in land, and their opportunities for acquiring more land would grow as the city’s control over Libya did. Mago the agronomist’s command, to sell your town house if you wished to be a serious estate owner, implies that such people did exist. It need not be doubted, all the same, that they would often invest in trading ventures. Such families and more strongly mercantile ones surely had close relations (marriage included). Equally they must often have undergone changes in circumstances – some dying out, some deciding to give up the risks of overseas trading in favour of landowning, some the other way round. All the while, newly enriched men would be doing their best to become accepted members of the dominant élite in their turn, which meant above all gaining (and according to Aristotle often buying) public office and joining the adirim (the senate). These factors, competitive and cooperative, were permanent elements in Carthaginian politics and government. It would be unsafe, though, to imagine a sharp difference between ‘merchant’ and ‘landed’ families in society, and still more unsafe to suppose that Carthaginian politics and policies involved tensions between commercial and landed interests. On the other hand, it can be cautiously inferred that most or all of Carthage’s dominant figures down the ages belonged primarily to landowning families. Quite notably, the affairs of the republic from 124

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the mid-5th to at least the early 2nd Century were very often directed by military men: from ‘Malchus’ and then Mago until Hannibal, himself the last in a long series of such rabim mahanet. Perhaps they were all from wealthy merchant families; but wealthy and prominent merchants did not become Carthage’s dominant figures. In spite of Carthage’s maritime reputation, none of her historical leaders was a naval commander, unless Hanno of Periplus fame counts as one (which is uncertain). Nor did her projection of power involve many sea battles: we know only of Alalia, and that was at least tactically a defeat. Much if not most of Carthage’s leadership in historical times consisted, then, of generals. We have already met the charismatic ‘Malchus’, as moderns usually call him, who was both Carthage’s first recorded leader after Elissa and the first of these military men. His doings are told by Justin and by Orosius, the 5th-Century ad compiler of a Christianised world history, but ‘Malchus’ is not his proper name. The manuscripts have Mazeus, Maceus, or Maleus; in these a 17th-Century editor thought that he could recognise the Phoenician mlk, and so printed ‘Malchus’. But mlk applied to a person means king or ruler (Melqart, Mlqrt, literally means ‘king of the city’), and did not become a name until much later, even in the eastern Mediterranean. In any case it is never advisable to amend textual readings unless all the existing ones are unacceptable, which does not apply here. Just possibly the real name should be Mzl or something similar, for in Punic mzl means ‘good fortune’. For convenience, though, Mazeus – the commonest form in both sources – will do.65 In Justin’s telling, he warred successfully in Africa, then conquered part of Sicily – only to suffer a bloody defeat in Sardinia and be ordered into exile along with his surviving soldiers; Orosius’ much shorter account makes him suffer repeated defeats in Sicily as well as Sardinia. When a petition for pardon from his men to Carthage was rejected, the troops sailed with him to the city and laid siege to it, forcing the authorities to capitulate. Mazeus used his victory to put ten senators, his chief enemies, to death, but it was a brief supremacy: accused soon after of aiming at monarchy and of the crime of executing his own son, he was tried and himself put to death. Both writers are rather more interested in the clash between him and his son. While besieging Carthage, Mazeus was snubbed by his son Carthalo, the priest of ‘Hercules’ (thus Melqart): for, returning from Tyre after delivering there Melqart’s share of Mazeus’ Sicilian booty, Carthalo ignored his father’s summons and went into the city to fulfil his religious duties. On coming forth 125

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a few days later in priestly garb, he suffered first a stern lecture on filial duty from Mazeus and then public execution on a cross in his regalia, as a warning to others. The story of Mazeus is about equally accepted and rejected by moderns. Justin’s rather loosely organised account has problematic features – Mazeus’ entire army sentenced to exile, and his surprisingly harsh treatment of his son for putting religious duties first – not to mention the question of whether Trogus found the episode in any reliable previous historian. The Carthaginians, as already noted, probably did have their own historical traditions. Trogus could have drawn on these, even if indirectly – for instance using a Carthaginian or pro-Carthaginian author writing in Greek – as the detail about the tithe-offering to Melqart of Tyre suggests (such offerings were made yearly). The clash between father and son is obviously rhetorically embroidered, especially Mazeus’ harangue to Carthalo, whereas the rest of the account is quite plain in style. If Carthaginian tradition did include Mazeus’ story, that of course does not prove it did happen, but equally does not prove it to be fiction. Some other points suggest that an element of fact underlies it. It was noted earlier that the period assigned to Mazeus’ activities – in Justin, two generations before the battle of Himera in 480; the reign of Cyrus the Great, according to Orosius – would be compatible with evidence for Carthage’s initial 6th-Century intervention in both Sicily and Sardinia. This was a time of tense relations, too, with the Libyans, when the city stopped its stipend to them for several years but was then forced to resume paying it, arrears included. As a tentative hypothesis, Mazeus’ successes against ‘the Africans’, as Justin calls them, marked the start of the Carthaginians’ refusal to pay, a stance which lasted some years – perhaps decades. With that feather in his cap he might well be reappointed general to further the city’s interests overseas. It would be no surprise, in turn, if successes abroad strengthened his position – as his son’s priesthood of Melqart and his army’s devotion both suggest – and at the same time created jealous enemies. The attack on him which led to his armed return may not have been the first (for a comparison, there was more than one against Julius Caesar in Gaul before he staged his own military return in 49 bc), but once he suffered a severe defeat in Sardinia with losses heavy enough to weaken his army, his enemies could act effectively. If he and his rebellious troops then sailed to Carthage, they must have been overseas, most probably in Sardinia. The exile decree could have been, in practice, an order bidding them to stay there indefinitely. 126

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None of this looks impossible to believe, even if Trogus or Justin coloured it up for impact. Nor need it be assumed that the disgraced army consisted solely, or even mostly, of Carthaginians. There would be a cadre of Carthaginian officers and maybe a citizen contingent, but even in the 6th Century the city may have been hiring mercenaries, Libyans among them, just as it was to do for Hamilcar’s expedition to Sicily some decades later. Despite the defeat, the survivors stayed loyal to their general: not just because of his charismatic leadership but because his enemies at Carthage made the mistake of tying the men’s fate to Mazeus’. Their armed return obviously took his opponents by surprise, but the political struggle was between aristocratic cliques manipulating a largely passive citizen body, as their quick capitulation and his ensuing fall confirm. Plainly Mazeus had no soldiers at hand to save him in the end, which again suggests that most of them had been non-citizens and that he, willingly or not, had paid them out and disbanded them. The clash between father and son, which interests Justin and Orosius quite as much as the political events, may be a moralistic fiction as sometimes suggested; or on another interpretation, dramatises symbolically a conflict at Carthage between rival power sources on the old Phoenician model, palace versus temple. This interpretation in effect keeps the name ‘Malchus’ and views him as a genuine king, while not explaining why the rivals should be father and son. If the story is fiction of any type, another puzzle would be why it is made an intrusion into a separate political affair. The report of the son being crucified, in his priestly garb and in sight of the city, is lurid but not inevitably suspect: if such an event occurred, it would remain vivid in people’s memory for a long time. A more prosaic explanation of the clash could be that Carthalo, once appointed priest of Melqart, did put religion ahead of filial duty (just as Thomas à Becket would put religious before royal duty seventeen centuries later). Instead of defending his absent father’s interests, he left for Tyre at a critical moment, so enabling Mazeus’ enemies to gain the upper hand; then made the further mistake of seeming to join them when he returned. If he next emerged in full priestly regalia to see his father, he may just possibly have been trying to act as a religious peace-broker – a final mistake. For a powerful and resentful father to put his son to death is not impossible to believe: other cultures have similar and better-recorded examples, like the emperor Constantine and tsar Peter the Great. Whether Mazeus’ enemies had also tried to harness Melqart in their support – thus compromising Carthalo – can only be guessed, though 127

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that might explain why Mazeus crucified the god’s priest with his symbols of sanctity. Even if shorn of these details, in outline Mazeus’ story is of a leader becoming pre-eminent through military achievements in Libya and the islands, provoking opposition at home and crushing it, then being himself crushed in a political turnaround. Carthage’s increasing prosperity, and her growing influence over her sister Phoenician colonies along North Africa’s coasts, would almost certainly lead to sharper differences in riches and political strengths among her leading families, and so to greater competitiveness. Was Mazeus the first leader to enjoy a lengthy dominance over her affairs? This cannot be known, but his rise was, more likely than not, the product of some decades (if not generations) of social and political jousting among the élite. He may have been also the prime mover of the vigorous projection of the city’s power which developed during the 6th Century, and which was popular enough with all Carthaginians to be carried on long after he was gone, by the next dominant group.

THE MAGONID ASCENDANCY That group (Justin records) was led by Mago and then his two sons Hasdrubal and Hamilcar. Hamilcar’s mother, and so probably Hasdrubal’s too, was a Syracusan, just one of the many intermarriages known in Carthaginian society. (Herodotus calls Hamilcar’s father Hanno and knows nothing of a Magonid family; his ‘Hanno’ looks like a mistake.) It is not certain that Mago’s political dominance followed directly on Mazeus’ fall, but there was probably no great interval, especially if Mazeus’ end dates to the 530s. That in turn would give about half a century for the first two generations of Magonid leaders, as Hasdrubal died before Hamilcar, and the latter then perished at the battle of Himera in 480. Mago and his sons succeeded in consolidating a family ascendancy which was to last more than a century. It was based partly on astutely handling political relationships at home – more astutely than Mazeus had done – and partly on skilful, even though not always prosperous, military leadership. The struggle between Mazeus and his enemies had been politically disruptive, for it had climaxed with them trying to unseat an appointed general (who may also have been sufete) and with him then seizing the city by military means though not by actual violence. 128

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It would be interesting to know whether Mago was part of the opposition, though he was not one of the leaders executed by Mazeus. The dominance that he in his turn enjoyed until his death was due, Justin stresses, to hard work and personal merit as well as military ability, all qualities which created prosperity and territorial expansion for Carthage. Mago’s only specific measure to earn mention was ‘regulating military discipline’ or, rather differently translated, ‘setting in order the military system’ (ordinata militari disciplina) – the first Carthaginian leader to do so, says Justin. Since Carthage had been waging wars before his time, it is not clear what the regulation would amount to, but a good possibility is that he brought military service more firmly under the regular authorities’ control. That Mazeus’ army had been more loyal to their leader than to the republic, even to the point of insurrection, suggests that the business of recruiting and maintaining soldiers (citizen and foreign) had been left to a general’s unfettered discretion. If Mago curbed this, he did so probably more in principle than practice, for he and then his sons effectively controlled the state in any case as generals, sufetes or both. The city’s arrangements for recruiting and paying off soldiers, perhaps too for their training and equipment, are other matters that he may have regulated. Certainly one suggestion, unfortunately unprovable, has been that he introduced the Greek-style formation called the hoplite phalanx, a line or successive lines of well-drilled, heavilyarmed and closely-ranked infantry. Nothing is said about Mago regulating the Carthaginian navy – ancient writers tell us very little, in fact, about Carthaginian naval organisation and equipment in any period – but it is at least conceivable that Mago or his successors kept the city’s war fleet up to date. The trireme was invented in their time in the eastern Mediterranean: a sleek, manoeuvrable warship armed with a powerful bronze ram and rowed by up to 170 oarsmen seated in three levels one above the other. A fleet that went on relying on the smaller penteconter would invite disaster; but on the other hand triremes were more expensive. Carthage therefore needed to add to her resources if she was to update both her navy and her land forces. This would account for the Magonids’ continuing wars which, Justin says, were waged by all three leaders. As shown earlier, the Carthaginians in their first treaty with Rome, around 509, implicitly claimed control over Sardinia and Sicily, with archaeological evidence pointing to their dominating at any rate Sardinia’s most productive regions. These advances were not easily won. Concise 129

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though he is, Justin records Mago’s son Hasdrubal dying in battle in Sardinia, and Hamilcar later perishing in Sicily (though he does not mention the defeat at Himera itself). There was a setback in Africa, too. During the brothers’ shared rule the Libyans confronted Carthage in arms with a demand for the arrears of annual tribute, and after at least one battle – which the Libyans seem to have won – the city (as noted earlier) agreed to pay up rather than fight on. This decision made sense if Hasdrubal and Hamilcar reckoned that the proceeds from annexing resources overseas outweighed the cost (and indignity) of paying the tribute to their Libyan neighbours, not to mention the risk of a war and more defeats. What official positions they and their father held are not clearly reported. Justin summarily says that ‘they carried out and at the same time decided all business themselves’. Greek and Latin authors’ habit of turning Carthaginian magistracies into what they thought or guessed were the Greek and Roman equivalents leads him to describe both Mazeus and the Magonids simply as imperatores, generals, although he does add that Hamilcar held eleven ‘dictatorships’ (dictaturae, at Rome a short-term emergency office with sweeping powers) and celebrated four triumphi (at Rome, victory parades with sacred rituals). But even if Pompeius Trogus perhaps explained what Carthaginian institutions these were, his abbreviator does not. Eleven repeated ‘dictatorships’ hardly look like emergency appointments; on the other hand Justin later writes of Hannibal the Barcid being ‘consul’ at Carthage, meaning sufete. If he is being consistent in terminology (not that this is certain), Hamilcar the Magonid’s ‘dictatorships’ may be the best that Trogus and he could offer as the name for a combined sufeteship and generalship. The word does not have to imply a deliberate contrast with the term imperator. Hamilcar is the only Magonid whose official position Justin records, even in this Romanised form, whereas he terms all these leaders imperatores. The word, then, describes their effective dominance, which was based on military leadership – a quality that Justin stresses for Mago and implies for the rest.66 Hamilcar’s triumphal parades would probably be ritual processions through the streets, perhaps from the agora up to Byrsa and the temple of Eshmun with its sixty-step stairway, to show off to citizens and to the gods the booty and chief captives from his campaigns – a practice common enough in eastern lands like Assyria and Egypt, and indeed not unlike the Roman triumph. As it happens, Polybius mentions a similar parade – which he calls a thriambos, Greek for triumphus – staged at the end of another great African 130

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revolt, two and half centuries later in 237, when the victorious Hamilcar Barca had the captured rebel leader led through the city by young Carthaginians ‘inflicting every torment’ on him. A story is told by Polyaenus about Gisco, a Carthaginian leader recalled from exile in 341, who humiliated his defeated political enemies by placing his foot on their necks as they lay prostrate in chains: a gesture perhaps imitated from Pharaonic Egypt. But the idea that this was also what a general did during his victory procession is just a guess. Gisco, Polyaenus adds, then forgave his foes (pharaohs usually had theirs flayed).67 The Magonids must often have been absent from the city; yet despite this and their intermittent, but sometimes serious, military defeats, they remained in control for decade after decade. The family obviously had strength in numbers. Mago had his two sons, each of whom had three of their own, and after them came further descendants. Other kinsmen, like the relatives of their wives and the husbands of any daughters, and non-kin supporters – especially among the adirim – can be supposed. Interlocking relationships of blood, wealth and political benefits would help explain the strength of the dynasty and its ability to recover from setbacks. Both Hamilcar, who perished in 480, and his brother Hasdrubal who had died earlier left three sons each, all of whom (Justin tells us) together ran the affairs of Carthage from then on. If Justin does not exaggerate, this may have been achieved through sharing out, and taking turns in, the available appointments – as sufetes, generals, priests and heads of pentarchies (if these existed by then). In practice only five of them must have done so, for Diodorus mentions that one of Hamilcar’s three, another Gisco, was exiled as a punishment after Himera. Even so it was a remarkable achievement for the others to collaborate in seeming harmony over some decades, while at the same time placating the rest of the city’s leading families whose share of effective power was held back. The next generation of Magonid ascendancy was when Carthage finally cut off the yearly tribute to her Libyan neighbours and set about imposing a steadily growing hegemony over them instead. Justin claims a wide, and not entirely plausible, range of conflicts in Africa: the ‘Africans’ forced to give up receiving tribute, war waged with the Numidians, and hostilities even against the Mauri or Mauretanians (who dwelt in Morocco). Trouble with the lords and minor kings of eastern Numidia’s peoples was probably inevitable as Carthaginian dominance spread westward, for there was no firm or sharp border, ethnic or physical, between Libya and Numidia. By 131

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contrast, the only clashes feasible with any Mauri would be by sea, in defence of Carthaginian trading-posts or colonies. No other evidence exists for clashes, but it was noted earlier how Justin’s claim may connect with the expedition recorded in Hanno’s Periplus. Meanwhile conflict in Sicily was very sensibly avoided, whereas trade prospered. When Syracuse under Gelon’s brother and successor Hieron joined the Italian Greek city of Cumae, near Naples, in war against the Carthaginians’ old allies the Etruscans and beat them soundly in 474 in a sea battle off Cumae, Carthage stayed neutral. Magonid rule during the 5th Century thus developed Carthage’s strengths at home and over areas that she could dominate. It was pointed out above that the older view of stagnation and economic regress during the century has had to be revised. Indeed by 415, when Syracuse was menaced by Athens, one proposal put to the Syracusans was to seek help from the Carthaginians because ‘they have acquired great amounts of gold and silver’ – though the suggestion got nowhere and the Carthaginians not long after proved more than happy to enrich themselves some more with Sicilian plunder, on a massive scale. Inevitably there would be critics and opponents, led by men or families who failed to win the share of offices and other appointments (to priesthoods, pentarchies and military commands) that they felt they deserved. After Himera, even though the dead Hamilcar’s memory was revered, his son Gisco was exiled in punishment for the defeat, dying at Selinus in western Sicily, a city with strong Carthaginian connections at the time. All the same, with brothers and cousins at the head of affairs, Gisco’s fate seems puzzling. Perhaps he was the only other Magonid with Hamilcar at the defeat and was singled out to be the scapegoat, whom his kinsmen could reject so as to retain the family’s grip on the state. Certainly his son Hannibal did not suffer lasting damage: in the later part of the 5th Century first he and then his cousin Himilco (whose father Hanno ‘the rb’ was, it seems, Gisco’s brother) became the dominant figures leading the state and commanding its armies.

THE END OF THE MAGONIDS What prompted the renewed aggressiveness in Sicily from 409 on is not clear. Diodorus puts it down to Hannibal son of Gisco’s thirst for revenge against the Greeks who had defeated his grandfather at Himera – a rather limited motive, even if shared by his fellow citizens. 132

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The damage recently inflicted on Syracuse by the disastrous Athenian invasion of 415–413 may have made eastern Sicily look attractively weak. Still, Acragas, which had a thriving trade with Carthage, was mercilessly sacked and razed in 406 (Acragas’ tyrant too had fought at Himera). The inscription about the sack has already been quoted (Chapter VII). Possibly too Hannibal and Himilco, descendants of three generations of military high achievers, had as yet no military successes of their own, a problem for a dynasty much of whose claim to leadership relied on distinction in warfare. The Sicilian wars of 409–405 and 397–396 were the last led by Magonids, though only the first in a long series fought against Syracuse and her allies over a century and a half. The victories won by the cousins had their costs – the most notable and ironic of them being the end of Magonid power itself. Hannibal, after unusually ferocious campaigns that included destroying temples and tombs, perished of the plague in 406. Similar sacrileges a decade later supposedly brought about the ruin of Himilco’s expedition against Syracuse and its allies, forcing him to make a shameful peace, abandon his non-citizen troops, and return to Carthage with the citizen remnants of his disease-stricken army. There, shunned by all, he starved himself to death. It was most likely after his spectacular downfall that the court of One Hundred and Four was established (cf. Chapter III). An earlier start is just possible; since its purpose was to discipline generals who had misbehaved on campaign, the court could conceivably date to the 470s following Himera. Gisco’s exile as punishment for his father’s debacle at Himera might seem to support this; but his brothers and cousins were still in power then. Arguably they might feel they had to accept the creation of the One Hundred and Four to placate their fellow citizens, but Gisco could be exiled by other methods (as Mazeus had been), whereas such a court would have remained a standing threat to the family. It is hard to see them agreeing to it, and in fact it would have had nothing much to do for the next eighty years. Although Justin announces the court before Himilco’s catastrophe, his epitome is oddly wilful at this stage. He does not report how the Sicilian Greeks defeated Gisco’s father in 480 but merely that he was killed in battle, then claims that ‘Himilco’ succeeded him in Sicily. Having thus got Himilco’s time wrong, Justin entirely ignores his and Hannibal’s campaigns from 409 to 405 even though their most notable act was the sack of the greatest city in Greek Sicily apart from Syracuse. He is equally mute about the resulting rise to 133

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power of Dionysius I at Syracuse, a tyrant who proved to be one of Carthage’s most enduring adversaries. Later on he claims that Dionysius was finally murdered by his own supporters – confusing him with his son-in-law Dion, who later ended the tyranny of Dionysius’ son but fell victim to treacherous friends. These errors and omissions are Justin’s own doing. A separately surviving contents list of the books of Trogus’ history shows that Trogus did narrate the sack of Acragas and other cities, followed by Dionysius’ rise. Justin’s erratic presentation here is a warning that his seemingly early start for the new court does not prove such a date. Carthage’s avoidance of overseas wars for decades after 480, and her successful imposition of hegemony over her Libyan neighbours, would hardly account for a court being established to try failed generals. Even the disgraced Himilco was not prosecuted in 396, though he would have been a prime candidate and he lived some miserable weeks, even months, at home before taking his own life. It seems likeliest that the court of One Hundred and Four was set up at some point after this, but still long enough before Aristotle’s time for the philosopher to be impressed by its status, powers and range.68

THE ASCENDANCY OF HANNO ‘THE GREAT’ Himilco’s successor Mago in Sicily had been his fleet commander (presumably his ‘second’ or subordinate general, rb šny: cf. Chapter III), who is not described as a relative. Vigorous and resourceful, Mago quelled the great Libyan rebellion of 396, then returned to Sicily in 393 to carry on the war with Dionysius and reach a peace the following year which left Carthage dominant over the western half of the island. When a new war was provoked by Dionysius in 383, Mago was killed in battle – the date is uncertain, but most likely in 382 or 381 – to be replaced as general by his son. (A story told by Polyaenus about a ‘Himilco’ may, but more likely does not, involve this son whose name is not known.) The new general defeated the Syracusans and made a favourable peace with Dionysius, only to disappear from the record afterwards. By mid-century the leading men at Carthage were certainly not of the old dominant family. Carthaginian politics had entered a new and more fluid state. These new leaders were Hanno – already mentioned as the man eventually accused of plotting a coup – and his enemy ‘Suniatus’, a 134

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Latin form of ’Šmnytn, Eshmuniaton. This was not the first time that political rivalries had erupted at Carthage (Mazeus and his opponents being the most obvious predecessors), but for the first time both men were virtual equals in status and influence. Hanno was appointed ‘war leader’, which must mean general, against the ageing Dionysius in 368, which indicates a high military reputation. But Eshmuniaton, according to Justin at any rate, was ‘the most powerful of the Carthaginians at that time’. In due course, having got rid of his rival, Hanno is called by Justin ‘the foremost (princeps) of the Carthaginians’. He had first proved his military capacities in the late 370s, when the Libyans took advantage of a severe epidemic afflicting their Carthaginian overlords to rebel again: Hanno repressed them. This looks, too, like what the contents list of Trogus’ history sums up as ‘the campaigns of Hanno the Great in Africa’, in the context of Dionysius’ last years – campaigns which Justin leaves out. Their date must be earlier than 368 when Hanno was given military command against the tyrant of Syracuse. In this short-lived Sicilian war he showed dash and resourcefulness enough to impel Dionysius to accept an armistice. That effectively ended matters, as the tyrant then died, although a formal peace took longer to arrange. The contents list of Trogus’ history calls this Hanno magnus, ‘the great’. No other source does, but as it happens two other Hannos – in the later 3rd and mid-2nd Centuries – have the same term applied to them in Greek (megas) by Appian and by Zonaras (a Byzantine whose work abbreviates the Roman historian Cassius Dio). It is usually interpreted as a translation of rab, the ‘chief’ of an official body or an army. Yet so many Carthaginians are styled rab on inscriptions down the centuries that it would be strange to find it applied by foreign writers to just these three, and by only a few writers at that. Moreover the father of Himilco the Magonid, another Hanno, is officially termed ‘the rab’ on the Punic inscription recording Himilco’s and Hannibal’s sack of Acragas, yet no ancient author calls him megas or magnus. Besides this, the term is ignored by, or is not known to, most Greek and Roman sources: not only Justin but also Aristotle, Polybius, Diodorus, Livy and Polyaenus (who mentions quite a few Hannos). It looks, then, as though the writers who bestow the epithet on the three Hannos drew it indirectly from a separate historical tradition. Quite possibly this was a biographical record, for as mentioned earlier, Carthaginian aristocrats paid attention to family ties and genealogies. This could suggest too that all three belonged 135

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to the same family. Whether megas and magnus do translate rab, or an inherited family sobriquet of some sort, can hardly be decided. This first Hanno ‘the Great’ had a brilliant yet ultimately disastrous career. After his success in Africa and his appointment as general in Sicily, he destroyed his powerful rival Eshmuniaton by having him convicted of treasonable contacts with Dionysius. Eshmuniaton was no doubt put to death, as Hanno himself would later be. Justin claims that because ‘Suniatus’ had written to Dionysius in Greek, the senate decreed a ban on studying or speaking Greek. This is exaggerated at best, and a fiction at worst, for Carthage’s dealings with the Greek world went on as normal. There is no report of her Greek residents being expelled, for instance; and Dion of Syracuse kept up his friendships with various Carthaginians – at one point being criticised for writing privately to the city authorities there (no doubt to the sufetes, and probably in Greek). If there is anything behind the story, it may be that by 368 some Carthaginians did feel bitter towards Sicilian Greeks and their ways after forty years of repeated wars. This one, the fifth since 409, was an unprovoked aggression by Syracuse. So at any rate Diodorus states, and so it must have looked from Carthage. The sense of outrage, even if short-lived, might be strong enough for Hanno to manipulate it to his political advantage. Eshmuniaton’s ruin may have been achieved through the senate or, more likely, by arraignment before a sufete (the adirim had no judicial authority that we know of, and his case does not look like one which the court of One Hundred and Four would judge). With him gone, Hanno and his supporters now had the upper hand. Their opponents continued to be strong, all the same, while Hanno’s grandiosely showy way of life probably turned other Carthaginians against him. Two stories told about an arrogant Hanno seem to mean him: first, Pliny the Elder writes that a Hanno, ‘one of the most distinguished Carthaginians’, so skilfully tamed a lion as a pet that his persuasive powers were judged a threat to the city’s freedom and he was put to death for treason. A later Greek author, Aelian, offers a still more imaginative story of a Hanno training birds to chant ‘Hanno is a god’, only to find that, when set free to spread this message, they went back to their usual cries instead. Both stories look made up, but the import of both is that this Hanno was rich and arrogant and his fellow citizens thought him dangerously ambitious. Hanno ‘the Great’ certainly was brought down by them when convicted of plotting a coup d’état. The account in Justin is 136

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detailed though not wholly satisfactory (Trogus’ original probably did better). Some time around 350, Hanno allegedly plotted to seize power by murdering all the adirim at his daughter’s wedding banquet. The scheme was discovered but, too powerful to be prosecuted, he was foiled instead by a decree banning all such public feasts. Undeterred, he tried to bring on a slave revolt; he was foiled again. Now he retired with twenty thousand slave supporters to a ‘fort’ – it was shown earlier that Justin probably means his country estate – but failed to attract help from the Libyans and a Numidian king (Justin writes a king of the ‘Mauri’, but they were impossibly distant). He was captured, mutilated gruesomely, and crucifi ed, while Justin claims that his entire family was executed too. This is exaggerated, for at least one son, Gisco, was simply exiled.69 As usual with a résumé, especially one by Justin, much is left unexplained: what prompted Hanno to try a coup if he was already so powerful, why he seems in the story to have no citizen supporters outside his own family, how he organised the slave revolt – which, despite being foiled, still raised thousands of followers for his last stand – and how the successful resistance against him was organised. The account is obviously a version coloured to absolve the rest of Carthage’s élite from any association with the miscreant. An attempted coup by a Hanno did occur before the 330s, for Aristotle mentions it. He implies, too, that there was indeed a faction backing it. He does not date the event, but his Hanno must be Hanno ‘the Great’, for otherwise we would have to suppose two separate Hannos in two different periods, both of them powerful men, who each tried and failed to make himself master of the city. It looks as though Hanno and his supporters overreached themselves – perhaps through trying to monopolise the sufeteship and other offices while prosecuting opponents like Eshmuniaton, and courting popularity with lavish displays and gifts – and as a consequence the resulting tensions finally broke out into conflict. Whether or not Hanno did plot a mass murder of his senatorial enemies, he could readily be accused of it (just as more than one alleged enemy of Rome would be accused of scheming to slaughter the entire Roman senate). In turn he perhaps did flee to his country estate with a body of supporters, not necessarily just slaves, while Justin’s twenty thousand should be estimated downwards to a couple of thousand at most. By force or intimidation, he was captured and the movement collapsed. Whichever faction won this round – Eshmuniaton’s or another – the upheaval unveils further the levels of 137

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competitive tension in Carthaginian public life as the century advanced. Nor would it be the last such drama. The competition and tensions must have been connected, partly at least, to the city’s increasing power and wealth, together with the stresses of repeated, large-scale and costly wars with Syracuse (now a major power too) and from the restive Libyans. In the 370s Carthage even intervened briefly in southern Italy, while in 348 she made a second, updated treaty with the Roman republic, also increasingly powerful in the central Mediterranean (Chapter X). In 344 the internal wars convulsing the Sicilian Greeks encouraged her to make a vigorous new effort to extend her dominance over the island (Chapter IX). The rewards, risks and enticements of political success would sharpen the conflicts among ambitious aristocrats, occasionally even to the point of violence as in Hanno’s case. Not that violence was inevitable: when military setbacks in Sicily led to the exiled Gisco being recalled in 341 and elected general, reportedly he celebrated his victory over his family’s foes only in the symbolic way mentioned earlier, by placing his foot on their prostrate necks in public. The renewed warfare launched in 344 looks like the work of Hanno the Great’s victorious opponents. They would certainly have a need for military success to bolster their position. Defeats undid them instead. One general, Mago, killed himself to avoid being prosecuted (his resentful fellow citizens crucified his corpse). His successors were completely beaten at the river Crimisus in 341, a disaster where no fewer than 3000 citizen soldiers were lost – all of them, we are told, from aristocratic families. It was this debacle that brought Gisco back, and the necks which he symbolically trod on may have included those of the disgraced generals. Whether so or not, his recall marked a triumph over the opposing faction or factions.

POLITICS AND WAR IN THE LATE 4TH CENTURY: BOMILCAR’S PUTSCH Gisco was able to make a fairly good peace with the Sicilians, which will have confirmed his effective supremacy in the republic. As time passed, however, the competition between factions or individuals became more evenly balanced, to judge from Aristotle’s view in the 330s that Carthage’s political system was mostly admirable. Gisco’s conciliatory attitude seems to have lasted, while at the same time his family remained prominent. This pleasing state of affairs lasted 138

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some twenty years, encouraged no doubt by concern over the momentous developments in the east: Alexander the Great’s extraordinarily fast conquest of the Persian empire, his sacking of Carthage’s mother city Tyre – an ordeal witnessed by Carthaginian envoys to the sacred rites of Melqart there – and the annexation of Egypt, with whom Carthage shared the centuries-old frontier set by the brothers Philaenus. The Carthaginians watched these events carefully, avoiding domestic discord if only because new civil dissensions would make them look an easy further target for Alexander. As Phoenician descendants and off-and-on foes of Greek Sicily they might count as extra prey. Besides, they welcomed Tyrian women and children sent to them for safety. Reportedly they sent an agent named Hamilcar to pose as an exile and win entry to Alexander’s entourage so as to keep Carthage informed on his doings – but it was the king himself who told their envoys at Tyre to take home the warning that he had plans to march in Carthage’s direction eventually. His death in 323 and the disruption of his empire eased their worries. Several generations of in-fighting among the empire’s successor states followed, including Egypt under its new Greek pharaohs, the Ptolemies. (Incidentally, the suspicious Carthaginians put their agent to death on his return, claiming that he had intended to betray the city to Alexander.) By then, Carthage was concerned at developments in Sicily that, in the end, would bring down a near-catastrophe on her in Africa.70 Ironically the republic played a part in the revived truculence of Syracuse, now the most powerful state in the island, by first opposing and then helping the unscrupulous populist leader Agathocles to become its effective ruler – ironically, because Carthage’s dominant faction more than once showed itself anxious not to fight a new war in Sicily. No fewer than four times – around 325, in 319, 315 and then 314 – she intervened in the Syracusan and Sicilian Greeks’ squabbles to persuade the antagonists to patch up agreements. None was lasting, yet there seems to have been no serious opposition to this sensible approach to Sicilian affairs. Only when Agathocles in 312 went back on the spirit of the third agreement did frustration affect Carthaginian politics. The general commanding in Sicily since at least 319, another Hamilcar, was then accused by both his fellow citizens and also Carthage’s Sicilian allies of betraying his city’s interests – even of seeking Agathocles’ help to make himself master of Carthage. Resentment plainly ran high. Hamilcar was convicted in a secret hearing without his knowledge and only then recalled, but died before he could be punished. Justin claims that the senate found 139

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him guilty, but this is probably a mistake for the court of One Hundred and Four (which consisted of senators). His replacement was Hamilcar son of Gisco, ‘one of the most distinguished’ Carthaginians according to Diodorus. The two men might seem political rivals, given that the first Hamilcar’s shabby treatment benefited the second. But it is possible instead that the first Hamilcar lost the trust even of his own faction when the policy of restraint in Sicily backfired, for an item in Justin suggests that the two Hamilcars were connected by blood or else had been allies. One of the generals commanding in Libya three years later, the Bomilcar who afterwards attempted a coup but failed, died on the cross denouncing his fellow citizens for repeated injustices towards past leaders – allegedly false charges against Hanno ‘the Great’, Gisco’s exile, and the secret verdict on ‘his uncle Hamilcar’. The second Hamilcar, son of Gisco, had recently been killed at Syracuse and did not form part of this litany. But for Bomilcar to link himself and his uncle with Hanno and Gisco suggests at least a political association between them all, and maybe kinship too, while the second Hamilcar was Gisco’s son and Hanno’s grandson. By contrast, the other general appointed with Bomilcar against the Syracusan invasion was a family enemy, Hanno – because, says Diodorus, the Carthaginians saw such rivalry as a guarantee against either man becoming a danger to the state. With the city on the verge of disaster at Agathocles’ hands, this reasoning seems more of a recipe for state suicide than for survival; nor was it ever tested, since Hanno was soon killed in battle. It seems just as likely that Carthage’s two main factions or rival families joined forces to present a united front in the crisis, but that Bomilcar’s failed coup after Hanno’s death prompted a later notion that they had been jointly appointed to prevent precisely such an attempt. But the fact that family reasons made the two men political rivals shows that factional politics had indeed endured down the decades, even if on the whole Hanno the Great’s family and their friends kept the upper hand. What tempted Bomilcar to his putsch? Perhaps he feared that his political group was losing its pre-eminence in the city’s affairs, or at least in its military affairs – with his uncle secretly convicted and recalled, the other Hamilcar defeated, captured and shamefully killed at Syracuse, and he himself required to join hands with his long-standing opponent. More personally, he may well have feared being prosecuted over the defeat which had cost Hanno his life, while at the same time being encouraged by the acquisition of power recently won by so many generals overseas: not only Agathocles in 140

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Sicily but Alexander the Great’s marshals in the east, including Ptolemy I over in Egypt. Incidentally, both Diodorus and Justin claim (with slightly differing details) that he had ideas even of joining forces with Agathocles. It may be that Bomilcar, like his uncle, thought that Carthage should try to live at peace, so far as possible, with Syracuse rather than carry on wars which either ended in stalemate or, as at present, threatened disaster; and that he was the best person to bring this about. The putsch failed, all the same, because he lacked enough support. Although the military situation gave him the excuse for mustering his forces in Megara, he could rely on a mere 500 citizen soldiers and 1000 mercenaries for the attempt to seize the agora, no doubt along with the senate house and other key buildings. Diodorus says that he ‘proclaimed himself tyrant’, which of course corresponds to no Punic word. It may mean that Bomilcar declared himself sole sufete and general (or chief general), or even perhaps borrowed the Greek term strategos autokrator, ‘supreme general’ – the standard title taken by Sicilian Greek leaders bent on tyranny. If he hoped to overawe his fellow citizens he was badly mistaken. Their reaction proved his lack of wide support. After initial panic, ‘the young men gathered and, forming up in ranks, attacked the tyrant’, who was driven out of the old city back into the new. Then with ‘all the citizens coming together under arms’, the putschists, cornered on a Megara hilltop, capitulated under promise of amnesty. Bomilcar alone was tortured to death in the middle of the agora, no doubt in ways reminiscent of the execution of Hanno ‘the Great’. It was there, in Justin’s telling, that he denounced the Carthaginians for how they had treated Hanno and the others. Three generals were next appointed, all it seems of equal rank: Himilco, Adherbal and another Hanno, and during 307 the Greek invasion – which had for a time mastered virtually the entire Libyan interior and even taken Utica and Hippacra – ignominiously collapsed. It is not at all probable that the new generals came from the faction, still less the family, of Hanno the Great and Gisco, unless somehow its survivors managed with amazing speed to shake off any association with Bomilcar and keep out the friends and supporters of Bomilcar’s late colleague and foe Hanno. More likely it was this Hanno’s group that benefited from the abortive coup, while whatever was left of Hanno the Great’s and Gisco’s was badly hurt at least.71 Disappointingly, political life at Carthage falls into virtual darkness for most of the next six decades, as our already limited 141

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Greek and Latin sources turn their attention to other states. It can be surmised that powerful families – including ones newly risen to prominence – and their circles of supporters continued competing for office at every level. If, as suggested earlier, the supposed nickname magnus or megas misunderstands some kind of Punic family epithet, then Hanno the Great’s family was not obliterated or barred forever from public life, for during the 240s one of the city’s leading figures was another Hanno the Great, according to Appian. All the same, the lengthy parade of Carthaginian generals and admirals again recorded from the 280s to the early 240s – bearing the usual handful of personal names – are bereft of known political links. It is more likely than not that by the time of the first war with Rome, the ruling élite included not only long-established factional groups but more recently-arrived ones. In the politics of the years that followed, while the second Hanno the Great would play a major part, at some stage before 250 the family of another Hamilcar, nicknamed Barca, came to prominence too.

THE LIBYANS AND NUMIDIANS In the 4th and early 3rd Centuries Carthaginian rule over inland Libya extended a good distance up the Bagradas valley, to judge from the invading Greeks’ capture of Thugga in 307 (‘Tocae’ in Diodorus), a hundred and twenty kilometres west of Carthage. Diodorus names quite a number of towns in the hinterlands of Libya and Numidia affected by the operations of Agathocles and his lieutenants in 309–307, but in contrast to identifiable places on the coast – like Utica, Hippacra and Hadrumetum – all except Thugga are in Greek forms otherwise unknown: Phelline, Meschela, Miltine, Acris and a few others. It is pretty certain, though, that the lands lying between the Bagradas and Byzacium were equally under Carthage’s power, and so too the territory north of the Bagradas: the highlands of the Monts de la Méjerda (or Kroumirie) and of Mogod near Hippacra. On the other hand, Sicca 175 kilometres south-west of Carthage, Theveste south-west of Sicca and 260 kilometres from Carthage, and districts in between like the territories of Mactar and Zama, were not brought under her hegemony, it seems, until the mid-3rd Century (Chapter X). There was little if any ethnic difference between the Libyans, meaning the communities ruled by Carthage, and the Numidians to their west. The Greek notion that Numidians were so named because 142

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they were nomads was a fancy, for the name was indigenous (a community called the Nemadi still lives in Mauritania). Both Libyans and Numidians were a mixture of small settled communities and pastoral rural dwellers, though pastoral and semi-nomadic life was more prevalent than the settled form the farther west one travelled from Carthage. Libya was dotted with villages and rather larger fortified centres separated by pastures, cultivated tracts and woodlands which spread across hills, plateaux, valleys and the Méjerda range, the Téboursouk range (the southern side of the Bagradas valley) and the Zaghouan range (separating the gulf of Hammamet from the interior). From the edges of Libya to the river Muluccha (today the Moulouya, just east of the port of Melilla) were the Numidian lands, with Mauretania beyond them. The Libyan mountains are spurs of the great Atlas complex that extends westwards across Numidia and Mauretania, forming a series of parallel ranges separated by high plateaux and valleys, while the Sahara lies to their south. Carthage’s Libyan territories were not much larger than the island of Sicily and, it seems, were equally well populated. The Libyans were hard-working and productive, while the Carthaginians’ intermittent practice of settling citizens in the countryside with substantial land grants probably furthered the territories’ economic development (and perhaps population). It seems that they consisted of a number of regions, each termed an ’rΣ t (approximately pronounced ereset). A Neo-Punic inscription of 128 BC near Mactar, a region seized by the Numidian king Masinissa before 150, commemorates a kinsman of his, Wlbͥ, who was ‘governor (or administrator: ’š ‘l) of the ’rΣt of Tšk‘t ’ or Thusca, while Appian mentions that this region covered fifty towns. Thusca and some other Libyan areas in Roman times were termed pagi (‘rural districts’ in Latin), for a dedication in the 50s bc at Utica mentions three named Muxsi, Gususi and Zeugei, while in ad 113 the emperor Trajan was honoured by ‘the 64 communities of pagus Thusca and Gunzuzi [no doubt another spelling of Gususi]’. As it happens, some Carthaginian coins struck for use in Sicily during the First Punic War bear the legend b’rΣt, ‘for the region’ or, on another view, ‘for the lands’, meaning the Sicilian territories dominated by Carthage. Thusca’s region, Gunzuzi’s, and the others mentioned are usually seen as the main administrative subdivisions of Carthaginian-ruled Libya, along with the Cape Bon peninsula, Byzacium, and sometimes the ‘Great Plains’ around Bulla in the west, even though these are not recorded as ’rΣt or pagi. On the other hand, still more pagi are 143

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found in Libya and Numidia in Roman times, including much smaller ones. There were, for example, ‘the pagus and civitas [district and civic community] of Thugga’; one at Uchi, 10 kilometres from Thugga; a pagus Gurzensis in 12 bc with many civitates near Hadrumetum and thus within Byzacium; a pagus Minervius near Hippacra, and others in the territory of Sicca far to the west of Carthage. The ’rΣt of Thusca, Gunzuzi, Muxsi and Zeugei were perhaps traditional Libyan regions, and so too pagus Gurzensis. Not all the names can be explained, though ‘Gurzensis’ was named from a town called Gurza near Hadrumetum, and Zeugei possibly from the town of Ziqua (Zaghouan). In Roman times, at least, their communities could act together for ceremonial purposes. They perhaps shared local religious rites and events. But that they were administrative units, even if just for tax purposes, should be doubted. A Numidian royal could be appointed to govern one (hardly anything less would suit his rank) without this offering firm evidence for Carthaginian practice. Nor does a Roman law of 111 bc, regulating among other things the tax and other financial arrangements for the recentlyannexed provincia Africa, mention any large administrative units. Once Libya became a province, however, followed a century later by Numidia, the Latin pagus could come into use for a wide range of territorial districts, large and small, in both. Carthage’s administrative districts in Libya were more likely smaller, with several in each of the ’rΣt, to judge from the Thusca-Gunzuzi and pagus Gurzensis inscriptions. Each district would embrace various towns and villages and each, perhaps, had an administrator called an ’š ‘l or ishal – a Phoenician term, though not found in Carthaginian documents. These officials need not always have been Carthaginians, for as time passed there would be a growing élite of Punicised Libyans too. They would report to the treasurers (mͥšbm) at Carthage, or to a general commanding in Libya when there was one. Carthaginian tax-collecting was often harsh: the 3rd-Century Hanno the Great earned a grim reputation for his methods, no doubt loyally imitated by the putative ’š ‘l in every Libyan district.72 By the mid-3rd Century, as mentioned earlier on Polybius’ evidence, Libyan taxes and produce enabled the city to maintain her armaments and wage wars. The Libyans also furnished recruits, willing or conscripted, for Carthage’s armies. Herodotus includes Libyan troops, presumably paid recruits, as early as 480 in the army defeated at Himera, while by the Barcid Hannibal’s time Libyan conscripts formed one of the most reliable corps in his army. The 144

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one indicator of what Libya paid in taxes is that, as the stressful First Punic War of 264–241 wore on, the Carthaginians took half of all rural produce and doubled the money taxes of the towns. If the agricultural tribute too was doubled over its pre-war level, that earlier level would have been one-quarter, but this is not certain. A widespread level of taxation on produce in ancient and later times was the tithe, a 10 per cent levy: this was applied in the territories of Syracuse in the 3rd Century, was extended to the rest of Sicily by the island’s Roman rulers, and was generally viewed as a fair level which did not obstruct prosperity. The normal tax on Libyan agriculture must have been higher, since it aroused so much repeated resentment – Diodorus writes that Agathocles in 310 expected support from the Libyans for this reason – and may be estimated at around 15 per cent. No doubt it rose further whenever Carthage needed more revenues, nor would the first war with Rome be the sole, or the earliest, time that it rose to fully half the yearly output. It need not follow, either, that the towns’ pre-war taxes had been a quarter of townsmen’s overall incomes, for it is very unlikely that these now had to give up half their entire income. Such a proportion in the ancient world (and of course even today) would be an unsustainable burden on most of the population. The taxes levied on towns could range between 10 and 15 per cent without wrecking their local economies – but could rocket to twice that when their overlord was hard pressed for funds. The Carthaginians’ often high-handed treatment of their Libyan subjects repeatedly provoked rebellion. It happened in 396 after the disastrous campaign in Sicily, when much of the army perished from plague and its commander Himilco abandoned the rest to bring home his surviving citizen soldiers. A fresh rebellion followed in the 370s, again a time when the Carthaginians were weakened by a severe epidemic. Two generations later Agathocles’ invasion of North Africa from 309 to 307 encouraged a new revolt (just as he hoped) because, as Diodorus puts it, the Libyans ‘hated the Carthaginians with a special bitterness because of the weight of their overlordship’. Libya did grow in prosperity in spite of this treatment. The other major factor enticing Agathocles to invade North Africa was the wealth of its countryside: a feature confirmed by the amount of plunder garnered both near the coast and in the interior. Sixty-six years later, when the Libyans rebelled yet one more time against the extortionate treatment meted out to them in the First Punic War, enthusiasm was so great (writes Polybius) that women too contrib145

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uted all that they could, even their jewellery. Jewellery would come only from more affluent levels of Libyan society. There is no way of reckoning what that proportion of the population was, but all the Libyans’ contributions together put enough funds into the rebel leaders’ hands for them to finance a major war against Carthage. After putting down this revolt (it took three harrowing years: Chapter X), the Carthaginians seem at last to have improved their relations with their subjects. When the Romans invaded Libyan territory three and a half decades later, plundering and ravaging much in the style of Agathocles, no defections to them are reported. Similarly, Carthage’s sister colony Utica joined the great rebellion in 238, yet remained stubbornly loyal under a long Roman siege from 204 to 202. If the tax regime and conscription burden was now lighter, one reason could be that the Carthaginians realised they needed to conciliate their Libyphoenician allies and Libyan subjects. Another would be the conquest of southern Spain from 237 on, which created a new and rich source of revenues – rich enough to sustain Carthage’s great-power ambitions and a new war with Rome without a renewed crushing burden on Libya. In 149 too, when the Romans went to war to destroy Carthage, most Libyans were more loyal than some of the Libyphoenicians like Utica, Hadrumetum and certain other coastal towns, which defected to the invaders. The rest of the Libyans and Libyphoenicians surrendered only three years later, when the city faced the final Roman assault (Chapter XII).73 Over the centuries, Carthaginian influences did leave an imprint on Libya. No doubt too there were Libyan influences on Carthaginian culture, even if the evidence is now sparse. The Carthaginians who periodically settled among them, the Libyans’ own dealings with the city and – no doubt another important factor – so many Libyan soldiers’ service with Carthaginian armies over three centuries, would all contribute to these outcomes. The evidence for Carthage’s impact dates mostly from after the fall of the city. For example, Neo-Punic and Latin inscriptions commmemorate local sufetes at many places in both Libya and eastern Numidia. At Carthage herself, votive inscriptions were set up by sufetes from unknown towns called Glmt and Pͥls (one of them Kerkouane, perhaps?). An inscription of 139 at Thugga, honouring the late Numidian king Masinissa, terms his Numidian grandfather Zilalsan ‘the sufete’: so if Zilalsan had been elected – maybe as an honour – to the sufeteship there, Thugga must have adopted the Carthaginian magistracy for itself by the mid-3rd Century at latest. This is only a possibility, all the same, for the 146

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grandee Zilalsan may (just possibly) have been accorded a sufeteship or its honorary title at Carthage herself, rather than at up-country Thugga. Sufetes are, however, attested after the fall of Carthage at quite a number of places, such as Thinissut, Curubis and Siagu in or near the Cape Bon region. The citizens, b‘lm, of towns sometimes earn mention too. The inscription at Thugga, for example, records a temple being set up by them to Masinissa, who had annexed the region decades earlier and whose son Micipsa now ruled them. To a degree, therefore, official institutions from Carthage were imitated at many centres across Libya and, in time, further west too.74 Carthaginian names became common among Libyans and Numidians: one of Masinissa’s sons was named Mastanabal (he was father of Rome’s later enemy Jugurtha), one of Micipsa’s an Adherbal, while the officials of pagus Gurzensis in Byzacium all bear Carthaginian names – Hamilcar son of Milkyaton, ‘Boncar’ (Bomilcar) son of Hasdrubal, Muttunbal son of Safon. Carthaginian gods and goddesses, notably Baal Hammon, Tanit (often with her visual ‘sign’), Astarte and also Isis, Demeter and Kore, had numerous shrines and offerings. Most strikingly of all, the Punic language flourished in both Libya and Numidia for centuries after 146, with St Augustine mentioning its use among rural folk even in the last half-century of Roman Africa. Numidia’s many peoples had had dealings with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians from very old times. Carthaginian trade-settlements like Hippo Regius, Rusicade, Icosium and Iol dotted the coast not only as entrepôts for Numidian trade but as way-stations for ships en route to or from the far west. The Numidian people formed two broad tribal groups, the Masaesyli dwelling in the west and centre, the Massyli in the east, each with district and clan sub-groups. Until the 4th or even 3rd Century, most Numidians lived in rural settlements and were proverbial for their itinerant way of life, with movable huts (Latinised as mapalia) of brushwood, twigs and leaves. They pastured flocks, and also their famous small horses which made Numidian cavalry the best in the western Mediterranean. A few more substantial centres came into being perhaps in the 4th Century: notably Cirta in a commanding position over a deep gorge of the river Ampsaga, which became the Massylians’ capital, and Siga the Masaesylians’, just inland from the coast 900 kilometres to the west. Carthage never subdued the Numidians, despite fighting plenty of wars against them as well as regularly recruiting them for overseas campaigns. Carthaginian culture, on the other hand, began to exert 147

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influence there in the 3rd Century at latest, most notably on Numidian chieftains and their retinues. Not only did the Massylian prince Zilalsan bear the title of sufete, in whatever connection, but his grandson Masinissa spent his boyhood being educated at Carthage. During his fifty-five-year reign, from 203 to 148, Masinissa made Punic the language of government, introduced Carthaginian methods of administration, gave some of his sons Carthaginian names as just noted, and adopted features of Carthaginian religion – one of his great-grandsons is found with the priestly title of ‘awakener of the god’ (of Melqart, that is) in a late-2nd-Century Neo-Punic inscription. As we have seen, more than one marriage between Numidian princes and the daughters of aristocratic Carthaginians is known. Indeed even one of the city’s last generals, Hasdrubal, was a grandson on his mother’s side of the prolific Masinissa. It has already been noted, too, that the Numidian royal family were given Carthage’s libraries by Scipio Aemilianus. Ironically enough, the expanded Numidian kingdom after 146 inherited, and propagated, the culture of the city whose destruction Masinissa played a major part in procuring.

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THE CARTHAGINIAN WAR MACHINE: THE NAVY It was firmly held by Greeks and Romans, and is still widely believed, that throughout her military history Carthage focused her own energies on seamanship and hired foreign professionals to man her armies. Polybius reflects this conviction when comparing Carthaginian and Roman war-making: Whereas for a naval expedition the Carthaginians are the better trained and prepared – as it is only natural with a people with whom it has been hereditary for many generations to practise this craft, and to follow the seaman’s trade above all nations in the world – yet, in regard to military service on land, the Romans train themselves to a much higher pitch than the Carthaginians. The former bestow their whole attention upon this department: whereas the Carthaginians wholly neglect their infantry, though they do take some slight interest in the cavalry. The reason of this is that they employ foreign mercenaries, the Romans native and citizen levies. […] The result is that even if the Romans have suffered a defeat at first, they renew the war to the fullest, which the Carthaginians cannot do. This is Greek generalised theorising and nothing more. Polybius’ own narrative of the First Punic War proves that the Carthaginians were as tenacious as the Romans; and since he was interested in Agathocles, he should have known something of their earlier wars in 149

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Sicily, in which they showed the same qualities, and deployed citizen troops as well as others.75 Carthage’s fleets were certainly crewed by citizens, as ancient sources insist. All the same, the very large ship numbers reported at various times – for instance 100 triremes and 300 other craft during Himilco’s operations in the early 390s, 200 in 340 during the war with the Greek liberator Timoleon, 300 or more quinqueremes in 256 when the Romans threatened Libya – needed tens of thousands of oarsmen. As noted earlier, a trireme properly required 170 of these and a quinquereme no fewer than 300. Even a fleet of 100 triremes, then, would call for 17,000 crewmen – to say nothing of officers and any shipboard soldiers – while 220 quinqueremes (the total accommodated in the circular naval port of later times) required no fewer than 60,000. It is rather hard to see Carthage alone being able to provide them all, even supposing that inhabitants of the city’s chora were liable to serve as well as the city-dwellers. Moreover, her Libyphoenician allies such as Utica, Hippacra and Lepcis are never mentioned as providing ships for her fleets (a contrast with Rome’s maritime allies in Italy). In fact, when Scipio arrived in 203 and put Utica under siege, the only Carthaginian naval movements reported were made by ships coming from Carthage. It does look likely, therefore, that the Libyphoenicians (and maybe Libyan coastal communities too) contributed only manpower to her navy. The republic always had warships available, but the details of naval administration are not recorded. The forested mountains of Libya would provide plenty of wood, such as oak from the Mogod and Monts de la Méjerda uplands north of the Bagradas river. Numidia’s forests may have been an extra resource. Carthaginian shipbuilding is vividly illustrated by the remnants of two warships found in 1969 on the sandy shallow seabed off Marsala (ancient Lilybaeum). They probably sank, or rather were sunk, in some battle or storm of the First Punic War; whether they were biremes, triremes or even quinqueremes is debated. The ram of one survives, while there is enough of the other’s wooden hull to reveal that it was built by a standard ancient method: once a spine of keel, stern-post and bow-stem was put together, horizontal courses of interlocking planks were fixed to it to form the shell of the craft; then the internal timber ribs were fixed to these. The shell was constructed using mortise-and-tenon joints (as in skilled joinery), with carefully cut tongues projecting from one plank to fit into matching slots in the next. In turn, a wooden dowel was driven at right-angles through each of these joins for added strength, while other dowels and nails 150

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fastened the vertical internal timbers to the shell. The deck or decks were finally built into this completed frame. Such hulls were not only strong but required remarkable skill to construct. The skills of the workforce are further illustrated by the Punic lettering – in several differing hands – on the keel and planks of the ‘Marsala wreck’, for their purpose was to identify the positions of the timbers in precisely the pattern needed. Ships could be built to a virtual blueprint under the supervision of literate overseers; the ordinary workmen may have been literate too as sometimes thought, but in fact they needed only to learn and recognise the standard letters. With forests readily accessible, a large number of ships could be built very quickly. Diodorus, as it happens, mentions that fire destroyed the dockyards in 368 – fire was an ever-present risk in such places – yet the Carthaginians were soon able to launch 200 ships to crush a rash naval offensive by Dionysius of Syracuse.76 Carthaginian ships must originally have been built beside the roadsteads on the eastern shore, but later in the dockyards south of the old city, using the channel from the lake of Tunis. When the circular artificial port was built, probably in Hannibal’s day, this became the headquarters of the navy (Map 1A), but its dimensions and Appian’s description suggest that the shipbuilding yards lay elsewhere. The Carthaginians did use the port in 149 for building 50 hasty warships, but this was because the city was surrounded by besiegers. Where the navy was housed during the winter and between expeditions, before the ports were built, is unknown (moorings in the lake of Tunis might be guessed). To build, maintain, refurbish and eventually replace these hundreds of warships demanded not only crewmen aboard ship, but also craftsmen ashore with every kind of skill, from sailmakers and joiners to potters, bronze-smiths and armourers. Not all, perhaps, worked full-time for the navy alone, for in peacetime – which was fairly frequent – and in winter it would make fewer calls on craftsmen and suppliers. On the eve of a major expedition, contrastingly, there would be heavy demand for them. Carthage’s earliest recorded sea battle was the clash against the Phocaeans around 535 with a fleet of 60 penteconters; though a tactical defeat, it was a success in the longer run. Towards the end of the same century, the trireme became the dominant ship of the line: so the 200 warships which Diodorus reports for the expedition to Sicily in 480 will have been mostly or entirely triremes. This was an attack craft with sleek hull, narrow width and bronze-clad ram. Each oarsman pulled his own oar, with the rowing-benches along 151

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each side of the hull arranged vertically in threes. Space even for water was minimal, which meant that like penteconters it could not spend more than one or two days at sea before having to put in to land for fresh water (and cleaning out). If supply ships accompanied the fleet, longer continuous trips may have been feasible, but resupplying like this is rarely recorded. A larger warship called a quadrireme, claimed by Aristotle to be a Carthaginian invention, came into use around 400 (others credited it to Dionysius of Syracuse). It must have had oarsmen grouped in fours, perhaps two per oar, but quadriremes played smaller recorded roles in warfare than triremes or the later quinqueremes. The next sea battle reported in Carthage’s history was not fought until 406, off Mt Eryx on the west coast of Sicily, against the Syracusans – again a defeat, though this time only of a squadron. Over the following century, naval honours were about even between the Carthaginians and the Sicilian Greeks: there were defeats and setbacks (like storm damage) in 396, 311 and 307, but victories in 396 again, 368 and 309. It proved impossible to stop Agathocles invading North Africa in 310, but by 307 Carthaginian control of her own waters cut off the abandoned remnants of his army from escaping abroad (they sensibly changed sides instead). These seesaws of fortune may surprise, for the predominant view is that Carthage enjoyed clear naval superiority over every other state in the western Mediterranean at least until she fought Rome. The Carthaginians themselves may well have believed the stereotype. A general in Sicily in 264 warned the Romans not to involve themselves there, lest Carthage prevent them even from washing their hands in the sea. The war that followed was to destroy this over-confidence. The era after Alexander the Great’s death brought incessant wars to the eastern Mediterranean both on land and at sea, which in turn made the quinquereme (in Greek, penteres, supposedly invented by Dionysius of Syracuse) the main naval warship. The quinquereme did not become dominant in the west until later, it seems, for as late as 307 Diodorus still records triremes as the standard warship in clashes between Carthaginians and Sicilians. The design and mechanics of a quinquereme remain debated. Its oarage probably consisted of rowers grouped vertically in fives along the hull – two on a top bench pulling one oar, two more beneath them pulling another, and the fifth man pulling a third on the lowest bench – for a total of three hundred men, with room on deck for soldiers too. It was obviously heavier and more difficult to manoeuvre than a trireme, but it had a massive ram: the main tactic was, it seems, to 152

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try for a head-on blow against an enemy ship to hole it, then back off and turn against another while the first one sank. As well as soldiers the quinquereme could carry archers and even catapults, making it a formidable war machine. Styles could vary, for an improved version was owned (and perhaps designed) by one Hannibal the Rhodian around 250. When he and it fell into the Romans’ hands, they used it as the prototype of a new fleet which they launched in 242 to win the First Punic War.77 Carthage’s late adoption of the quinquereme may have unexpected extra significance for history. After Agathocles’ final defeat, she fought only one more war in Sicily before 264 – against Pyrrhus of Epirus in 278–276 – which involved little sea-fighting. When war with Rome broke out, therefore, the quinquereme navy had not had serious combat experience, nor indeed had that generation of crews. As a result, the gigantic naval battles of the First Punic War may not have been fought by opponents who were as dissimilar as usually thought (historic sea-warriors versus venturesome landlubbers).

CARTHAGE’S ARMIES Another of Carthage’s naval paradoxes is that the sea was not normally the dominant or chief element in her wars. After the Carthaginian and Etruscan expedition against the Phocaeans around 535 and before the first war with Rome in 264, her fleets generally operated in support of land campaigns. This was inevitable, since campaigns took place as a rule in Sicily or Sardinia – and occasionally in Libya when an enemy invaded. In the Second Punic War the navy played an even more secondary role to the great military operations of Hannibal and other generals. Carthage’s wars were primarily waged on land, to take and control territory or to repel attackers. It was noted earlier that down to the 6th Century her armies were probably small and already included hired contingents (Chapter IV). Citizen soldiers, all the same, were regularly involved too. They may be the ‘Phoenicians’ in the army sent to Sicily in 480, or some of that contingent. For the great expeditions from 409 on, citizen troops were recruited along with Libyans and mercenaries at least until the last years of the 4th Century. We meet other evidence too: Carthaginians arming themselves and sallying from their homes during a false alarm that Libyan rebels had broken into the city (this was around 379), and their descendants doing the same in 308 to defeat Bomilcar’s coup. 153

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Aristotle had been told that Carthage encouraged military valour by allowing citizens to wear decorative armbands to show how many campaigns they had fought; he plainly found no surprise in the report. Polybius’ dismissive claim about Carthaginians neglecting military service, except perhaps as cavalry, would apply at most to the 3rd Century, when their armies did consist largely of subjects and mercenaries. Yet even in his own account, citizen troops still appear from time to time: notably when the city’s mercenaries and Libyan subjects together revolted in 241, nearly forty years later when Hannibal recruited citizens as well as others to enlarge the army which he led to Zama, and in the city’s last wars when her forces were formed, of necessity, chiefly from Carthaginians defending their homeland. Just how many Carthaginian citizens served in an army is seldom reported, but we have a few indications. When the humiliated Himilco was forced to terms in 396 and sailed home with only his surviving citizen soldiers, 40 triremes were enough to carry them. Even if the decks were packed to danger point, not more than forty to fifty men can have travelled aboard each besides the oarsmen. Since a disastrous plague had killed thousands of the original expedition, both military and naval personnel, maybe some of the surviving Carthaginian soldiers plied the oars as well, but hardly more than 8–9000 citizens in all (seamen and soldiers) can have sailed for home. The original contingent of soldiers probably totalled between 5000 and 10,000. This would match the other figures recorded. Ten thousand Carthaginian citizen infantry, distinctively equipped with white shields, were part of the army defeated at the river Crimisus by Timoleon in 341, with 2500 of them forming a body called the Sacred Battalion (in Greek hieros lochos), recruited from wealthy aristocrats and expensively and showily accoutred. In the disaster, out of 10,000 dead from the Carthaginian army no fewer than 3000 were citizens. How many more were among Timoleon’s 15,000 prisoners is not known. When war with Agathocles broke out thirty years later, Hamilcar son of Gisco’s expeditionary army of 14,000 included 2000 citizen troops, ‘among whom’ (writes Diodorus) ‘were many of the aristocracy’. Agathocles’ arrival on Carthage’s doorstep the following year brought forth a uniquely large army of citizen troops, if Diodorus can be believed: 40,000 foot including once more the Sacred Battalion, along with 1000 horse and 2000 chariots (a war vehicle sometimes used by Carthaginian armies in this century). This meant 154

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perhaps some 45,000 men altogether, all of them citizens because ‘they did not wait for the soldiers from the countryside (chora) and the allied cities’. Such numbers, if closely or even roughly accurate, must have accounted for most Carthaginians of military age available in the city. (They suffered a humiliating defeat, partly through the treachery of the plotter Bomilcar.) In turn, ‘the soldiers from the chora’ may mean not solely, or mainly, rural citizens but also Libyan levies, while those from ‘the allied cities’ would be Libyphoenician contingents. Three years later three separate armies, totalling 30,000, were again ‘sent out from the city’ against the invaders, who had vulnerably split up their own forces. Many in these three armies must have been citizens again, but Diodorus specifically notes that Carthage was now so crowded with refugees from the countryside that sending out so many men relieved the pressure there. The armies probably then included Libyan and Libyphoenician soldiers as well, and maybe even mercenaries brought in from overseas, so the citizen elements cannot be estimated. Sixty years were to pass before another mention occurs of citizen forces. Even though the Romans’ first invasion of Libya in 256 almost brought Carthage to her knees, citizen combatants are not reported at any stage. Quite likely they were fully involved in the very large fleets of the time – up to 350 ships fought at Cape Ecnomus against the Roman invasion fleet, and 200 a year later off Cape Bon (the Hermaea Acra to Polybius) trying vainly to repel another. But in 240, with the city blockaded from Tunes by some rebel mercenaries and Libyans, while a small army operated rather fruitlessly in the countryside against others, Hamilcar Barca was elected general to lead out a second force of about 10,000 troops, made up of citizens, loyal mercenaries and even some deserters. Since he cannot have left Carthage herself undefended and there was still a navy of sorts in being, his citizen contingent (perhaps 6–7000 strong) would not represent anything like the total number of military-age Carthaginians at the time, but what that was cannot be guessed. The final appearance of citizen troops – before the special conditions of the Third Punic War – was in Hannibal’s army at Zama in 202. There they formed its second line together with Libyan infantry, while a corps of recently recruited foreign mercenaries stood in front of them and Hannibal’s own veterans from Italy behind. One wing of the army, too, consisted of Carthaginian (apparently citizen) cavalry. Unfortunately, and even though Hannibal had spent nearly a year training them, all these compatriots proved to be poor fighters against Scipio’s veterans.78 155

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Until the Punic Wars, or the later 4th Century at earliest, the total strengths reported for armies are not very plausible. Hamilcar’s expedition in 480 supposedly involved nearly one-third of a million troops – half of whom, the victors claimed equally implausibly, were killed at Himera. His grandson Hannibal’s army in 409 was reckoned at 200,000 foot and 4000 horse by Ephorus, one of Diodorus’ sources; by another, the Sicilian Timaeus of Tauromenium, at the more modest but not much more convincing total of 120,000. Diodorus then claims a death toll of 150,000 in Himilco’s plaguestricken army in 396 (no doubt the fanciful guess of Ephorus or Timaeus again). Half a century later, in 344, Mago the general in Sicily had a rather more credible 50-60,000 troops, with 300 war chariots, while three years later at the river Crimisus the army, including the Sacred Battalion and other citizen troops, supposedly numbered 70,000 foot and several thousand cavalry. If these mid-4th-Century army figures represent not just the troops operating in the field but an estimate of all Carthaginian forces in the island – field army and garrisons together – they may be rather more realistic than the colossal totals alleged for the 5th Century. Even so the estimates look more than a little exaggerated. There are, in fact, hints that the army at the Crimisus was smaller than claimed. Timoleon with at most 11,000 troops first crushed the Sacred Battalion and the other citizen infantry – 10,000 Carthaginians in all – as they forded the fast-flowing river; then the ensuing rout of the rest of the army would be easier to understand if originally it numbered fewer than 60,000 (though it is possible that even 60,000 Libyan conscripts and foreign mercenaries might dissolve into simple panic when the citizen forces were smashed). Again, after losing 10,000 dead and 15,000 captured, the army ceased so completely to be a fighting force that at Carthage there were fears of an immediate Greek invasion. The forces reportedly ranged against Agathocles in Libya thirty years later – 40,000 in 310, 30,000 in 307 – look rather more reliable, facing invaders who never numbered more than 20,000. Over in Sicily in the same period, Hamilcar son of Gisco started operations with 2000 citizen troops, 10,000 Libyans, and 2000 Balearic and Etruscan mercenaries (the only appearance, incidentally, of Etruscans in Carthaginian service). On the other hand, his supposed 120,000-strong army later besieging Syracuse unsuccessfully is plainly another ludicrous exaggeration. The wars with Rome in turn involved armies rarely more than 60,000 or 70,000 strong, at any rate according to our chief sources. 156

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For instance, the army sent in 262 to relieve Acragas is given as 50,000 foot and 6000 horse, while two decades later the strains of the war reduced Hamilcar Barca’s to barely 20,000. His son Hannibal at Cannae in 216, on the other hand, commanded 40,000 foot and 10,000 horse, and at Zama fourteen years later an army rather smaller. Whether the Carthaginian army that Scipio defeated at Ilipa in Spain in 206 really numbered 74,000 (as Polybius states), or 54,500 (as Livy writes), or neither, is a moot question. As Polybius’ remarks show, the Carthaginians were famous – or notorious – for using mercenaries in their armies, whereas citizen and Libyphoenician soldiers and Libyan conscripts were forgotten in the stereotype. It was noted earlier that conscripts and foreign professionals are recorded at least from 480 on, when Hamilcar the Magonid recruited not only Carthaginians and Libyans but also Iberians (that is, Spaniards), Ligurians (from northern Italy), Gauls, Sardinians and Corsicans. His grandson Hannibal’s forces seventy years later consisted of Carthaginian citizens, Libyans and Iberians; then Diodorus reports the enrolment three years after that, in 407, of Libyphoenicians, Numidians, Mauri, and Campanians from Italy to serve alongside the citizen and Libyan divisions.79 Different regions furnished different types of soldier. Libyans, Iberians and Gauls were primarily infantry, the Iberians often armed with a distinctive curved sword, Gauls with long swords for slashing. The Numidians were most famous for their formidable cavalry but could also arm infantry, at any rate for fighting within North Africa. Balearic islanders were limited in number but were light infantry wielding dangerously accurate leather slingshots with stone or iron balls to soften up enemy forces at the start of battle or harass them during and after it. Campanians, from the region of Italy south of Rome, were primarily armoured infantry but also provided some cavalrymen; enterprising and often ruthless, they were used from the late 5th down to the 3rd Century – and by Sicilian Greek states too – though their availability may have lessened as Rome increased her control over their homeland. Ligurians, highlanders from the coastal Italian Appennines, were light-armed warriors of rather loose discipline. The western Mediterranean thus regularly furnished manpower for the republic’s armies till the year 201. Greek mercenaries, the most highly valued in the east, were not recruited by Carthage until the mid-4th Century, unless perhaps in small numbers earlier. They are first mentioned in the Carthaginian forces facing the liberator Timoleon of Corinth when he arrived in Sicily in 344. Greek cities’ allied troops were a separate matter: as 157

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early as 480 Selinus in south-west Sicily offered cavalry to Hamilcar’s army, and ‘Greek allies’ – unspecified – earn a mention in his grandson’s army in 409. Valued though they were, Greek professionals played a part in Carthage’s armies only on and off, and for only about a century. Their loyalties may have been slightly suspect to generals in wars against Greeks. One story tells how in 344 excessive friendliness between Timoleon’s and the Carthaginian Mago’s Greek mercenaries alarmed Mago into evacuating Sicily altogether. Nor are Greeks mentioned in the next army sent over against Timoleon, or in the war against Agathocles in Libya near the end of the century. Fighting the Romans was a different matter, as the timely role of Xanthippus of Sparta in 255 illustrates, but Greek mercenary numbers then seem to have run down again as the long war dragged on and the republic’s finances deteriorated. When the great revolt of the mercenaries broke out in North Africa in 241, the only Greeks in the rebel forces were what Polybius calls Mixellenes, ‘mixed Greeks’ or possibly ‘half-Greeks’ – most of them slaves and deserters, he adds disdainfully – who are not afterwards reported in events. They may have been a composite of Greeks and others from south Italy, rather than mercenaries from the east. The armies of the Barcid generals over the next four decades, Hannibal’s in Italy included, had no Greek mercenaries at all: we do not know why. How contingents of a Carthaginian army were organised is not known in detail, but each contingent would consist at least of a number of sub-units like infantry companies and cavalry squadrons. In large formations there may have been other subdivisions, just as a Roman legion of Agathocles’ time was made up of manipuli subdivided into centuriae. The Carthaginian republic paid their mercenaries’ and conscripts’ wages – though sometimes with lengthy gaps between payments – and presumably paid citizen troops too when these were in service, though the fancy armour and other accoutrements of bodies like the Sacred Battalion must have been at a warrior’s own expense (cf. Illustrations 25, 26). In every period the highest officers in an army were, it seems, all Carthaginians, though below them the various contingents, both conscript and mercenary, commonly had commanders and officers of their own. Some senior Carthaginian officers are known, most of them from the era of the wars with Rome. We do meet a ‘Synalos’ (probably Eshmunhalos) in 357, military governor of Carthaginiancontrolled Heraclea Minoa in Sicily, who gave much-needed help to his Syracusan friend Dion in the quest to free that city from tyranny. 158

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Illustration 25 Heavy-armed infantry on the march: jasper scarab from Kerkouane, 4th Century bc

In the following century, a Hanno was the garrison commander at Messana in 264 whose ineptitude contributed (at least in his compatriots’ eyes) to bringing about the First Punic War; at the war’s end one Gisco was the subordinate left in charge in Sicily by the departing Hamilcar Barca. Hannibal’s cavalry commander Maharbal gave his famously fruitless advice to march directly on Rome, supposedly after Cannae in 216; another trusted subordinate was Hannibal’s best friend Mago, nicknamed ‘the Samnite’ (we do not know why), 159

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Illustration 26 Front and back parade armour (4th–3rd Centuries bc) found at Ksour Essaf, near Sousse

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who served with him for twenty years; and Hannibal’s own nephew Hanno was still another, and one of the best, of his lieutenants in Italy. African and foreign officers are sometimes heard of, again chiefly during the Punic Wars. It was a Spartan mercenary, Xanthippus, who against all tradition at Carthage was granted practical – though not official – command in 255 and destroyed the Roman invaders under Regulus. Just a few years later, the fortress seaport of Lilybaeum was saved for the Carthaginians by Alexon of Achaea, who thwarted a treacherous scheme by other mercenary officers to hand it over to its Roman besiegers. In the great rebellion of 241 in North Africa, one of the most bloodthirsty rebel leaders was the Gaul Autaritus, leader of the Gallic mercenaries in Hamilcar Barca’s old army. On the other side, Hamilcar gained the loyal support of a Numidian prince, Naravas, whose cavalry played a vital part in his campaigns and who may afterwards have married one of Hamilcar’s daughters. Hippocrates and Epicydes, two officers in Hannibal’s army in Italy, were brothers of part-Syracusan ancestry (their grandfather had lived in exile at Carthage): sent to Syracuse in 213 to manoeuvre that city into alliance with Carthage, they succeeded brilliantly, at least in the short term. Then, after the Roman sack of Syracuse, Hannibal sent a vigorous Libyphoenician cavalry officer, Mottones (Mattan) of Hippacra, to rally Carthaginian forces in the island. Non-Carthaginians’ services were not always fully appreciated by the republic, in later times anyway. Xanthippus found it discreet to exit North Africa after the victory that saved the city; a few years later, some unpaid and mutinous mercenaries were dumped on a small island (Ustica north of Sicily, perhaps, or Linosa between Malta and Byzacium) by their general. The Gallic chief Autaritus shared and sharpened his men’s widespread discontent at their employers’ shabby efforts to haggle over their overdue pay. The Numidian Masinissa, perhaps Naravas’ nephew, served Carthage well in Spain in Hannibal’s time but was then dropped in favour of his rival Syphax (a slight for which the republic was to pay dearly). Mottones’ prowess so annoyed Hanno, the general in Sicily, that in the end the disgusted Hippacritan went over to the Romans – who in appreciation made him a Roman citizen, Marcus Valerius Mottones, as he shows in his and his sons’ votive inscription at Delphi, set up twenty years later. Carthaginian armies, like those of many other Mediterranean states, included a wide range of combatants. Heavily-armed infantry and agile, often Numidian cavalry formed their core, while among 161

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other important arms were lightly-armed infantry and distinctive contingents like the Gauls – ferocious though loosely-disciplined warriors, wielding fearsome broadswords – and the small but valued companies of Balearic slingers. A 4th-Century jasper scarabornament from Kerkouane depicts a group of heavy infantrymen on the march (Illustration 25): their armament of plumed helmets, shingreaves and spears is fully Greek, and their purposeful stride implies a high level of discipline (the plumes perhaps suggest officers). The sort of parade armour available at least to generals and their immediate subordinates is illustrated by the magnificently wrought bronze armour, for breast and back, found at Ksour Essaf near the coast about 30 kilometres south of Sousse (Illustration 26). It is apparently a south Italian product and 4th- or 3rd-Century in date. Its owner could have served against Agathocles (or indeed with him) or in one of the great wars of the following century, and then took this item of personal treasure with him to the grave. War chariots figured in some important 4th-Century campaigns, for instance against Agathocles, while one or two surviving stelae attest chariot-makers such as the Mago son of Himilco mentioned earlier. All the same the weapon, a survival from old Near Eastern warfare, was about as ineffective in the republic’s conflicts as Persian chariots were against Greek enemies like Alexander. After 300 or so they were given up in favour of elephants. Elephants are of course the popular symbol of Carthaginian warfare. In reality, like Greek mercenaries they were used for a much more limited period than often thought. The great powers of the eastern Mediterranean had started to use them in the wars after Alexander the Great’s death. They first appear in 262 in Sicily – though possibly some had been used there in 278–276 against Pyrrhus, who had elephants of his own – and are mentioned for the last time at Zama in 202. Most of their service, then, was against the Romans in the first two Punic Wars. Carthage’s elephants were acquired from the forests of the Atlas mountains; smaller than those from India which the eastern kingdoms used, they could carry only their riders but could inflict serious damage when skilfully used, especially against troops and horses unaccustomed to them. At the same time they needed large amounts of food, were difficult to transport across water, and could be neutralised – or even turned against their own side – by a resourceful enemy, as Scipio did at Ilipa in Spain in 206 and four years later at Zama. Elephants were a mixed success for Carthage. In their first major battle against the Romans, at Acragas in 262, they made little 162

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impact and nearly all were captured. By contrast, Xanthippus’ use of them seven years later against Regulus contributed to his victory. Hamilcar Barca similarly made good use of elephants in fighting the rebel mercenaries and Libyans from 240 to 237, and thereafter in his campaigns in Spain where the Barcid generals built up a powerful elephant corps supposedly, though maybe exaggeratedly, 200 strong (Illustration 24i). Hannibal’s feat in 218, shepherding 37 from Spain across the Alps and into Italy, both helped him to his first big victory at the river Trebia and immortalised him in the memory of future ages – but then all save one died in the bitter winter that followed. When next he had a large body of elephants (80 at Zama) they inflicted a more devastating impact on his own army than on Scipio’s.

CARTHAGINIANS AND GREEKS IN THE 5TH CENTURY Carthage’s dominance over the western parts of Sicily, established under the first Magonids, led to recurrently strained dealings with other peoples in the island, above all the Greek city-states. These had been founded between the later 8th and early 6th Centuries, Syracuse for example in 734 and Acragas in 580. Many quickly grew in size and wealth, often competing and sometimes co-operating with one another. The Sicilian Greeks, as warlike as their kinsmen in Greece, developed a populous and powerful civilisation (their repetitive conflicts notwithstanding) even more impressive than their colonial brethren’s in southern Italy. Competition, though, could be lethal. Syracuse destroyed its own recalcitrant colony Camarina not once but twice (in 533 and then 484) as well as another, Megara Hyblaea, in 483. Naxos, on the east coast near Mt Etna, was depopulated first by Gela in the 490s and then by Dionysius ninety years later. As noted earlier, Greeks from further east sought more than once, too, to plant themselves in districts under Carthaginian influence: Pentathlus in the west of Sicily around 580, then Dorieus towards the end of the same century – first near Lepcis in the Emporia region and then in western Sicily again. Carthage treated them, like Corsica’s Phocaean settler-pirates, as threats. When, in the 480s, Syracuse under Gelon and Acragas under his kinsman Theron seemed intent on imposing a shared hegemony over the rest of Greek Sicily, the republic reacted anew. A conflict around 485 was indecisive and probably was small-scale: we know of it only because in 480 Gelon 163

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complained to envoys from Greece that Athens and Sparta had earlier refused to help him against the Carthaginians’ ‘barbarian army’, while Justin vaguely alleges ‘constant wrongdoings’ inflicted by the Carthaginians on the hapless Sicilians. Disconcertingly, Justin also makes these summon the Spartan prince Leonidas to lead them (in fact he was to die that year at Thermopylae) – no doubt a blurred confusion with the Spartan Dorieus a generation earlier.80 The great clash came when Hamilcar the Magonid and his army landed in 480, reportedly after three years of preparation. The enterprise was not a clash simply of Carthaginians versus Greeks. Hamilcar himself was responding to an appeal from friendly Greeks: Terillus the ex-ruler of Himera on the north coast – recently deposed by Theron – and his powerful father-in-law Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium on the straits opposite Messana which was under Anaxilas’ control too. Terillus was a guest-friend of Hamilcar, himself of course half-Greek on his Syracusan mother’s side, while Anaxilas was so keen for intervention that he gave Hamilcar his own children as hostages. Selinus on the south-west coast also aligned itself with Carthage, even promising a contingent of cavalry (Anaxilas in the end supplied no troops). Theron and Gelon’s power bloc, of quite novel size in the island, plainly alarmed not just Magonid Carthage but other western Greek states, while the links between all the leading individuals remind us that – whatever propaganda might claim – the Carthaginians were far from genuine outsiders or mysterious aliens in the Greek world. To them the new bloc posed a far worse threat to their Sicilian epikrateia than Dorieus ever could. Given this sound reason for confronting the expansionist tyrants, it is not essential to believe the story in Diodorus – not in Herodotus – that Hamilcar’s enterprise was concerted to match Xerxes’ mighty expedition against Greece. Possibly enough Carthage kept in touch with Persia, via Tyre, about their two expeditions, but anything beyond that looks like imaginative Greek embroidery. Hamilcar landed at Panormus with his impressive armament, but while he was besieging Himera for his friend and protégé he was attacked by Gelon and Theron, his army was crushed after a long battle, and he himself was killed or – according to Herodotus’ Carthaginian informants – threw himself into the great fire in which he had been offering sacrifice after sacrifice for victory (the tale sometimes viewed as supporting claims of Carthaginian human sacrifice: Chapter VII). Herodotus was also told that memorials to him had been set up at Carthage and other cities, with Hamilcar himself receiving cult offerings. As with Elissa, 164

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all the same, this claimed divinisation has no trace in surviving Carthaginian evidence. The wars of the 480s opened a long and fruitless cycle of Carthaginian-Greek struggles in Sicily, which was to last two centuries even though Gelon’s and Theron’s own bloc did not last beyond another decade or two. Each war followed a predictable path: either a Carthaginian thrust against hostile Greek cities – usually but not always including Syracuse – which after some successes was beaten back, or a Syracusan thrust into the epikrateia which, often after some successes again, failed to maintain itself. A peace that restored more or less the pre-war status quo then ensued until the next clash. Not only in 480 but in several later wars, Carthage had Sicilian Greek allies who preferred associating with her, an overseas and (relatively) distant overlord, to falling under the control of a powerful and dangerous Greek neighbour which, more often than not, was Syracuse. The war of 480 was the shortest of them all, a few months at most. Its effects were limited. The victors did not follow up their success by moving against Carthage’s epikrateia, Selinus was not victimised for supporting her, Anaxilas made his peace with Gelon, and the prospect of Syracusan-Acragantine hegemony over Sicily disappeared after Gelon and Theron died in the 470s. The cost in men, materials and money to Carthage must have been severe even if the entire expedition was not annihilated (as our sources claim), but she maintained her grip over western Sicily while turning her attentions to imposing control over Libya. The Magonids continued in power even though Hamilcar’s son Gisco was scapegoated for the disaster, to die in exile at Selinus. Trade and relations with the Greek world went on. Although the shame of the defeat was not forgotten, the Carthaginians for the next seventy years left the rest of Sicily politically and militarily to itself. They were not tempted to intervene when a powerful native Sicilian leader, Ducetius the Sicel, united most of the remaining independent native peoples in a league that proved a temporary match for Syracuse and Acragas in the 460s and 450s; nor when Syracuse and Acragas, having defeated the Sicels, fell out. Carthaginian restraint is all the more striking in face of Syracuse’s expanding strength and adventurousness. Its naval victory of 474 over the Etruscans in waters near Naples, and sea raids in the 450s against the Etruscan coasts and even Corsica, failed to upset the Magonids. Nor did they react against Syracuse’s broadening hegemony over other Sicilian states, both Greek and Sicel. When Rhegium, Syracuse’s neighbour Leontini, Camarina and Segesta wanted support against 165

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Syracusan expansionism in the 430s, they made alliances with Athens – without much benefit until years later. The Magonids’ hands-off attitude to Greek Sicily for most of the 5th Century contrasts remarkably with their warlike policies down to 480 and, still more so, from 409 on. The benefits that accrued from this restraint, combined with the vigorous development of Carthaginian power in Africa, much impressed Greeks. Thucydides reports the Syracusan Hermocrates in 415 extolling Carthage’s wealth in gold and silver; around the same time Athenian general Nicias (at least according to Diodorus) was insisting that her military strength far outdid his own city’s. Hermocrates claimed, too, that she was as worried as Syracuse about Athens’ ambitions for conquest. But throughout the great Athenian expedition against Syracuse, from 415 to 413, Carthage stayed aloof. The destruction of the invaders was achieved by the Syracusans with some help from Sparta – while the Magonids’ attitude to Athens, at any rate after the catastrophe, may be gauged from a treaty of friendship made between Carthage and the Greek city in 406, marble fragments of which survive in Athens.

CAR THAGE VS DIONYSIUS I Had Carthage maintained her hands-off policy towards Greek Sicily, simply staying on guard against any incursions that might be made into her territories, much wasteful bloodshed could have been avoided over the next century and a half. The changeover to vigorous and even vengeful aggression from 409 on is therefore surprising. As noted earlier, the claim that Carthage’s leading citizen Hannibal, the now elderly grandson of Hamilcar the Magonid, was eager to avenge his forebear’s disaster hardly seems reason enough – especially as the war began with the total obliteration of Selinus, Carthage’s ally in 480 and his own father Gisco’s home in exile later. At odds with nearby Segesta, Selinus had turned to Syracuse for help, prompting Segesta to call on Carthage. It looks as though the republic now decided deliberately on a reversal of dealings with Greek Sicily, for which she enlisted native Sicilian allies as well: now it was to be projection of power well beyond the epikrateia. Apart from the current Magonids’ likely keenness for military distinction, the impulses for change must have been Carthage’s success in developing an effective empire in North Africa and her concern at Syracuse’s expanding dominance in Sicily. Diodorus in fact mentions 166

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this concern, which Hannibal played on to persuade his fellow citizens to act. Greece and the Aegean world, moreover, were now absorbed in the last stages of the Peloponnesian war, with Athens so uninterested in the fortunes of Greek Sicily as to become a formal ally of Carthage. The ferocious energy of the offensives that began in 409 stunned the Sicilians. Selinus was besieged, sacked and depopulated, then Himera. Two years later Carthaginian and other North African colonists founded a new city, Thermae Himeraeae, at hot springs not far west of Himera. Then a new campaign began in 406, led by Hannibal and Himilco, which led to the sack of Acragas after most of its inhabitants had fled. There followed in 405 the same treatment for Gela and Camarina. Tens of thousands of refugees were left to wander across the island. The remorseless Carthaginian advance in those years was only briefly halted by a plague that killed Hannibal among others (it was to appease Baal Hammon that Himilco then sacrificed a boy victim), and by Syracusan forces led by the ambitious and devious Dionysius, soon to make himself tyrant of his city. With most of central and eastern Sicily occupied but his forces beset by sickness, Himilco made peace on very favourable terms: the epikrateia in western Sicily recognised, the southern Greek cities from Acragas to Camarina made tribute-payers to Carthage, and others in Sicily’s centre and north-east guaranteed their independence. The peace of 405 looked like a triumph for Carthage and her Magonid leadership. In reality it was fragile, as every informed Carthaginian must have realised. Himilco brought back not only victory but plague. Dionysius soon moved to take over many eastern and central Sicilian cities, like Leontini, Catana and the Sicel stronghold Enna, despite their promised independence. After an ostentatious military and naval build-up over the next few years, including his newly-invented warship the quinquereme, he opened a new war in 397 using huge military forces – reportedly eighty thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry and two hundred warships. He matched the sack of Selinus, Himera and Acragas by besieging the island city of Motya with massive siege machines, building a causeway to the walls from the mainland. Motya’s last hours saw fighting in a tableau which one day would be strangely recalled in the sack of Carthage herself, as the attackers fought on wooden plank-bridges from one tall house across to the next on the crowded island:

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The Sicilian Greeks found themselves in a very difficult position. For, fighting as they were from the suspended wooden bridges, they suffered grievously both because of the narrow quarters and because of the desperate resistance of their opponents, who had abandoned hope of life. As a result, some perished in hand-to-hand encounters as they gave and received wounds, and others, pressed back by the Motyans and tumbling from the wooden bridges, fell to their death on the ground. (Diodorus 14.51.5–52.4 (Loeb tr.)) What had been one of Phoenician Sicily’s most flourishing centres was reduced to a deserted wreck. Himilco retook it the following year but it was never fully restored. Instead the Carthaginians founded a new port named Lilybaeum on the mainland, a short way south, which proved to be impregnable against all attackers, even the Romans.81 Himilco struck back in 396, but his and his deputy Mago’s new series of successes – Messana taken and razed, Dionysius’ fleet defeated, Syracuse laid under siege – were ruined by a fresh onslaught of plague. This was the occasion when the Carthaginians sought to appease Demeter and Kore, whose shrine outside Syracuse had been destroyed along with many others, by inducting their cult into the city. Himilco himself bribed Dionysius to let him and the surviving citizen troops sail home, abandoning everyone else. This disgrace drove him to his suicide. More calamitously for the Carthaginians, it led to the great Libyan and slave rebellion which for a time threatened the city’s own existence. The rather wearisome sequence of wars went on. The new general in Sicily was Himilco’s deputy Mago – not, it seems, a member of the Magonid family, which now disappears from record – who put down the Libyan rebellion, warred with large forces against Syracuse in 393 and 392, but then negotiated a new peace. It kept the gains of 405, but conceded the Sicel communities in the central regions to Dionysius’ unsympathetic rule. This step backwards may reflect difficulties at home resulting from the recent revolt and the longlasting plague. Dionysius, left alone for the next nine years, used ruthless methods to create an impressive Syracusan dominion in eastern Sicily and even southern Italy, along with naval interventions in the southern Adriatic and a spectacular raid on Pyrgi on Italy’s Etruscan coast. The Carthaginians probably foresaw a new war with so dynamic a power, so when Dionysius (predictably) began to seek alliances with cities in the island’s west – ignoring Carthaginian remonstrations – they sent Mago against him in 383.

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A disaster followed, with Mago defeated and killed in battle; but when Dionysius countered a peace offer with ill-advised demands that Carthage abandon Sicily altogether and pay him a large indemnity, she put Mago’s son in command of fresh forces which shattered the Syracusans at Cronium (a place apparently near Panormus) probably in 382 or 381. Carthage still wanted peace, as Dionysius too now did, but not surprisingly her terms were sharp: he had to pay a thousand talents and accept a demarcation line at the river Halycus, today’s Platani just west of Acragas, and in the north at the territory of Thermae Himeraeae (the city founded by Hannibal and Himilco in 407 to replace Himera). The name of Mago’s son and the date of the new peace are not certain. An anecdote in Polyaenus of a military stratagem might refer to him (a general called Himilco deceiving Dionysius’ men outside Cronium), but in the same paragraph another Himilco story is about the earlier general who later committed suicide. On Diodorus’ evidence, the peace soon followed the victory at Cronium. But Carthage in 379 or 378 re-established the town of Hipponium in southern Italy, destroyed earlier by Dionysius – an action which, if part of the same war, would put the peace during the 370s. This is not a strongly convincing argument, all the same, for peace before then would not ban Carthage from intervening at the edge of the tyrant’s area of south Italian dominance. In the later 370s fresh troubles at home afflicted the republic. The plague came back to kill large numbers in the city. This in turn encouraged both Libyans and Sardinians to rebel once more, rebellions successful so long as the epidemic continued to rage. The Libyans made no attack on the city, unlike in 396; perhaps they simply renounced Carthaginian authority, refusing to pay tribute and resisting efforts to bring them back into obedience. The Sardinians ‘attacked the Carthaginians’, which must mean the settler population, but seem not to have taken any cities like Tharros, Sulcis, Carales or Olbia. As soon as Carthage recovered her strength she put down this revolt fairly quickly, which suggests that the Sardinians had made only limited gains. Control was reimposed in Libya perhaps rather earlier, for only with her African territories secure could the republic feel free to act decisively beyond. By this time Hanno ‘the Great’ was directing affairs: he was the general who achieved the submission of Libya (Chapter VIII) and he then had to face the latest challenge from Dionysius. Encouraged by Carthage’s troubles, according to Diodorus, and further heartened by news of the disastrous fire in Carthage’s dockyards, the ageing 169

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tyrant mobilised for yet another war in 368 but (not for the first time) his plans went awry. Despite the dockyard blaze, no fewer than 200 Carthaginian warships annihilated his fleet anchored near Drepana and Mt Eryx; little happened after that, with Dionysius dying in 367 and his son and namesake leaving the war in limbo until a formal peace years later. The two sides’ regions of dominance seem to have stayed much as before. Carthage had not wanted the war any more than the previous one. Hanno had other concerns, like keeping the Libyans subject and dealing with his enemy ‘Suniatus’. The supposed ban in 368 against studying or speaking Greek – whatever its real content – would fit a resentful attitude towards Greek Sicily. The results of the four decades of conflicts were mostly bad, particularly for Sicily with their countless sieges and sackings, enslavements and at times slaughtering of cities and their populations. Carthage did replace Motya with Lilybaeum and Himera with Thermae Himeraeae, both destined to prosper, and settled war refugees at Tauromenium near the destroyed town of Naxos on the east coast (it would soon be the birthplace of the historian Timaeus). Dionysius founded the city of Tyndaris in 396, on the north-east coast, with war refugees from Greece. These creations hardly compensated, though, for the damage inflicted in southern Italy as well as Sicily.

CARTHAGE AND TIMOLEON The general peace in Sicily after 367 was overthrown from 357 on, although the Carthaginians still stayed carefully aloof. The younger Dionysius, cultivated and feckless, was deposed by his high-minded but unbending brother-in-law Dion (helped initially by his friend ‘Synalos’ or Eshmunhalos, the commandant at Heraclea Minoa). The cost was anarchy at Syracuse and across Greek Sicily, with Dion murdered in 353, petty tyrants seizing power in other cities, and the ousted Dionysius II trying twice between 356 and 344 to retake Syracuse by force. That city from 345 on was held by one Hicetas, who like so many Sicilian Greeks had good relations with Carthage and who, faced with the ex-tyrant’s return, called on her for help. Hanno ‘the Great’ was gone, and with him the hands-off policy towards Greek Sicily. Whatever faction or competing factions had taken over, they needed military as well as political successes, for Hanno’s group remained active even though his son Gisco was exiled. The republic had recovered prosperity, as her powerful and 170

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lavish armaments of the next four years imply; the convulsions in eastern Sicily offered the real chance of repeating, even outdoing the achievements of 409–405. Hicetas was sent help: 50,000 infantry (including many Greek mercenaries), up to 10,000 cavalry and 300 chariots under a Mago, whose colleague Hanno had 150 triremes. There were, Diodorus states, ‘weapons and missiles of all kinds, a profusion of siege engines, and a great quantity of food and other supplies’. Mago was able to place some troops actually in the sector of Syracuse held by Hicetas against Dionysius II – the first and last time that Carthaginian forces ever set foot there. Yet again a promising start ended badly. Hicetas had earlier sought help from Syracuse’s mother city Corinth. An elderly Corinthian leader, Timoleon, now arrived with a few hundred Greek mercenaries, to make an immediate impact on events. Dionysius II agreed to go and live in Corinth. Next, reportedly after Mago’s and Timoleon’s mercenaries began fraternising, the Carthaginians abandoned their mission entirely to march back to the west (it was now 343). This aroused such anger at home that Mago killed himself, though his unforgiving fellow citizens insisted on crucifying his body; his deputy is not heard of again. Two new generals, named Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, took the field in 341 with still larger forces, as described earlier. The lengthy preparations, though, had given Timoleon time to strengthen his position in Sicily. He met the Carthaginians at the river Crimisus (probably today’s Belice) north of Selinus, in late May or early June, where his army – badly outnumbered, but aided by a gigantic thunderstorm – shattered the Carthaginians. The Sacred Battalion of 2500 eminent citizens, and with it over 7000 other citizen troops, were destroyed, thousands more soldiers were captured, and the booty was colossal. The Carthaginian army virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force. Although Timoleon was content to return in security and glory to Syracuse, at Carthage there were panic-stricken fears of a Greek invasion. The city’s next move was to recall Gisco, son of Hanno the Great, and appoint him general, or possibly general and sufete together for full control. Gisco opted for caution and the status quo, making a peace which returned the island to the dividing-line of 367 at the Halycus. Carthage’s expeditions of 343 and 341 failed not through inadequate resources but because of poor generalship. None of the generals performed well, while the Greek side found a totally unexpected rescuer in the charismatic Timoleon – not only a phenomenally successful commander, but a remarkable political and social 171

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leader. He had much to do: grass was growing in the agora of a wrecked and depopulated Syracuse; other cities were in a similar plight; and tens of thousands of new migrants from Greece were needed to rebuild the devastated and depopulated island. Yet in a few years his measures began to revive Greek Sicily, which of course promised to make any Carthaginian attempt to overpower it still more problematic. Gisco preferred to take the republic back to his father’s non-interventionist attitude; so did his successors until around 320.

THE AGE OF AGATHOCLES: CARTHAGE AT BAY The Carthaginians had other overseas developments to watch. Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire – including Tyre and then Egypt – threatened to re-order Carthage’s priorities, especially given the king’s unsubtle threats that he had military ambitions for the west too. We saw earlier that Hamilcar, the secret agent at his court, was later put to death by his unappreciative countrymen: perhaps it was because he had failed to wean Alexander off this idea. The breakup of the empire after Alexander died in 323, and Egypt’s new ruler Ptolemy’s indifference to westward ventures, finally eased that worry. Timoleon’s pacification measures began to unravel in the 320s. The oligarchs he put in change at Syracuse sought to imitate the elder Dionysius’ interventions in southern Italy, while their rule was challenged by a new popular leader, Agathocles – born, it so happened, at Thermae Himeraeae around 360 to a father exiled from Rhegium. Rather than see another tyrant take over Syracuse, the Carthaginians supported the oligarchs, even helping them in 319 with troops led by the Hamilcar whose obscure link with Gisco’s family has been mentioned before. Then, paradoxically, Hamilcar and Agathocles came to a hands-off agreement that allowed the Syracusan to become, in practice, tyrant after all. In a style that became one of his trademarks, Agathocles cemented his rule in 316 by massacring his oligarchic opponents with their families. Why Hamilcar switched his support is hard to tell, yet he was not punished. Perhaps he and his friends at home reasoned that the oligarchs had no long-term future, making a good relationship with their rival the only prospect for stability. If so it was mistaken optimism. The next decade and a half became a saga of evenly172

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matched and dramatic conflict never before seen in Carthage’s or Sicily’s history. Agathocles soon began to reimpose Syracuse’s old dominance over the rest of Greek Sicily. This naturally drew anxious attention from Carthage. In 315 her envoys put a stop to him attacking Messana; then in 314 Hamilcar brokered a peace of sorts between Syracuse and its growing number of opponents, though this failed to last and tension now grew between Syracuse and Carthage too. When a Carthaginian fleet stopped Agathocles in 312 from taking Acragas after at last seizing Messana, he invaded the epikrateia to bring a number of places (unnamed) under his power. So began the next great Sicilian war, defeating Carthage’s long efforts at averting it. Hamilcar died before he could be recalled in disgrace, to be replaced by his kinsman or friend Hamilcar son of Gisco. The new general, combining his own troops with anti-Agathocles Greeks, defeated the tyrant near Gela in 311, won over most of eastern Sicily with a (slightly paradoxical) message of liberation, and laid siege to Syracuse by land and sea. Agathocles responded with astonishing bravado, which at the time surely seemed mad. On 14 August 310 (the day before a solar eclipse), he slipped out of Syracuse with a small army of 13,500 on 60 ships, evaded pursuit, and landed near Cape Bon. Burning the ships, he marched on Carthage. This epic expedition lasted three years, causing upheavals even worse than those of the Libyan rebellions earlier in the century, partly because yet again the Libyans launched their own revolt. The Carthaginians were taken utterly by surprise. Their first resistance measures, drawing on the city’s own resources because the invaders had largely cut it off from the chora and Libya, were disastrous. Of the two generals, Hanno was killed along with most of the new Sacred Battalion, while his political rival Bomilcar retreated to focus on the city’s own security. This led to the notorious mass sacrifice of hundreds of children from aristocratic families which Diodorus describes. Agathocles could not assault Carthage but established his headquarters at Tunes, then marched through the countryside plundering it. He brought the east coast under his power, from Neapolis and Hadrumetum to Thapsus, and in 309 defeated another Carthaginian army. The war was also going badly for Carthage in Sicily. Hamilcar failed in two attempts to capture Syracuse – and the second, in 309, ended with his army totally routed and Hamilcar himself captured by the Syracusans. They tortured him brutally to death in the streets, sending his head over to Agathocles. Disgusted at these defeats, 173

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Carthage’s Sicilian Greek allies including Acragas broke away to act for themselves, convulsing much of the island with fresh fighting, sieges and sackings. Carthaginian fortunes seemed bleak enough to encourage Bomilcar to make his coup attempt late in 308, just at the time when Agathocles was reinforced from Cyrene by a fresh army under an ambitious commander named Ophellas. Ophellas’ notion of a North African kingdom for himself was promptly snuffed out by his murderous ally, but Agathocles kept his soldiers and went on to capture both Hippacra and Utica, just to Carthage’s north. Then, as so often in previous wars, the situation reversed itself. Syracuse’s own fortunes in Sicily worsened, causing the tyrant (by now calling himself ‘king’ like Alexander’s successor generals) to leave the expeditionary forces under his son Archagathus’ command while he returned home. Stalemated at Tunes, the invaders turned to raiding inland. An officer named Eumachus made a profitable sweep through western Libya, taking Thugga and later Hippo Regius on the coast. His next foray took his division into Numidia, though we have seen that the places in Diodorus’ narrative – Miltine and three ‘cities of the apes’ – cannot be identifi ed. Eumachus’ booty-haul was again great, but the pressure on Carthage had eased. Three new armies, small but efficiently led by the new generals Hanno, Himilco and Adherbal, fell on the equally divided invasion forces. What was left of these retreated to Tunes where they were themselves blockaded. Agathocles hurried back from Sicily, only to be defeated in his turn. The Carthaginians did give him some unintended respite, accidentally setting their own makeshift camp ablaze with much loss of life (allegedly they were sacrificing their choicest prisoners by fire, but this is a dubious Greek claim: Chapter VII). Nevertheless Agathocles realised that the game in Africa was lost. With the same rational ruthlessness as always, the self-styled king slipped away by sea late in October 307, abandoning even his two sons whom the furious soldiers at once murdered. The Carthaginians ended the war quickly in both theatres. Most of the deserted army took service with them; the rest were enslaved and put suitably to work restoring the ravaged countryside. We happen to know that Archagathus’ killer Arcesilaus, an officer and former friend of the king, settled at Carthage as an exile: he would have interesting grandsons (Chapter XI). Rebel Libyans were brought back under control, no doubt with heavy penalties. Agathocles, still facing bitter enemies in Sicily, was ready to make peace, and the Carthaginians were prepared to make it bearable for him. 174

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The division of the island at the Halycus was confirmed; he earned (ironically enough) a large Carthaginian subsidy too; and he remained free to subdue his Greek enemies, bringing virtually all Greek Sicily under his rule. Some years later he copied Dionysius I by intervening in southern Italy and across the Ionian sea. On the evidence we have, this war, one of the longest – and surely the costliest – that Carthage had ever waged, had not been sought or planned by her. She had made repeated efforts to keep Sicily stable, against continual prodding and provocation from Syracuse. Nor was it well waged. The attempt to fight it on traditional lines was met by Agathocles’ untraditional, desperation-born response; her generals in both theatres showed little ingenuity and élan, in contrast to Agathocles in Libya and some of his lieutenants in Sicily. What did distinguish Carthage was her solid resolution not to give in. At no stage were the invaders offered terms. The war in Libya showed that she could maintain access to munitions and manpower although most of the hinterland was cut off. The defeat of one army was followed by the raising of another, just as was done in Sicily after Hamilcar’s first siege of Syracuse failed. Even with the city short of food, in early 307, the authorities could still assemble, equip and send out the armies that turned the tables. The war illustrated, too, the mixture of fragility and strength in her dominion in North Africa. Subjects and even allies could turn readily against her when an inviting opportunity came, yet were soon brought back under control. Another striking feature was the secondary role played by her navy. Besides transporting armies and supplies, it was used mainly in blockading Syracuse by sea – not always successfully. A further feature of Agathocles’ war was the unquenchably, often viciously competitive energy of Greek Sicilians. They waged wars more often among themselves than against Carthage; repeatedly inflicted and suffered slaughter and devastation; then regouped, recovered and, after a generation, fought bitterly again over territory, plunder and hegemonies. The only real gainer from the century of wars from 409 to 306 (at horrendous cost) was Syracuse. Under Dionysius I and then Agathocles it achieved a level of hegemonial power in Sicily and southern Italy that made it almost the equal of the great powers of the eastern Mediterranean, reducing one-time rivals like Acragas and Gela to local autonomy at best. In the west, Carthage had for long been the only great power, though never powerful enough to impose dominance on the many Greek and Italian states with which she did business. The imperial greatness of Syracuse would not 175

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last; but, halfway up the Italian peninsula, another concentration of power and hegemony was growing, which would one day sweep up all the rest. The Carthaginians gained few lasting benefits from the wars. The gains that did come their way were short-term, like the wider Sicilian hegemony won in 405. Peace based on the limited status quo of the Halycus or, arguably, even the narrower status quo of 480–410 would have avoided the social, economic and physical damage of the wars on Carthage while (arguably) doing far more for her prosperity. The growing impact of Greek culture would quite likely have been still greater, and Carthage’s own contribution to western Mediterranean life likewise.

CARTHAGE AND PYRRHUS The peace of 306 lasted until Agathocles died in 289. Carthage had to be watchful, for the king’s dominions kept growing: southern Italy as far north as Croton, and for a few years the island of Corcyra, modern Corfu, once he had amassed a 200-strong navy. His daughter married Pyrrhus, the ambitious warrior-king of Epirus. Still dissatisfied, according to Diodorus, he was planning a new war against Carthage when he sickened and died. This was no doubt a relief to the republic, but the outcome was to renew her involvement in the rowdy affairs of Greek Sicily. Quite soon her general in the epikrateia intervened to settle political strife at Syracuse; but before long a new tyrant named Hicetas (maybe a descendant of the tyrant of the 340s) took power there, while intercity enmities blossomed anew. Agathocles’ Campanian mercenaries, forced to leave Syracuse, seized Messana – slaughtering or expelling the male citizens – then under the warlike name of ‘Mamertines’ (Mamers was the Campanian war-god) became a plundering terror to the entire island for decades. Tyrants again arose in cities everywhere, Diodorus dolefully remarks. Acragas’ tyrant, Phintias, asserted his city’s ambitions in typical ways: he emptied Gela of its population to make them found a new city nearby named Phintias (Licata today), and warred against Syracuse. Hicetas defeated Phintias, then chose to invade Carthaginian Sicily, perhaps hoping for quick booty and more prestige. Instead he was so badly defeated that a rival overthrew him in 280. Phintias’ successor also intervened at Syracuse. Now roused to action, the Carthaginians sent troops and ships to lay the city and the warring 176

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leaders under siege, rather as they had done in 344–343 against Dionysius II and the earlier Hicetas. The reprise was completed when another Greek outsider joined the action: Pyrrhus of Epirus, who was waging war against the Romans in southern Italy as Tarentum’s ally and rescuer. Pyrrhus’ own ambitions were grander than just saving the Tarentines – a western empire appealed to him – but his victories over the Romans, like Agathocles’ over the Carthaginians, merely produced a stalemate. At this point an invitation from Syracuse to be its rescuer arrived. Of course he agreed. While he was negotiating (fruitlessly) with the Romans about peace, the Carthaginians made a pact with them – backed up with a large subsidy delivered by an admiral, Mago – requiring that, if either state made an alliance with the king, this should still allow each to aid the other if it was attacked (obviously by Pyrrhus). It also set the rules under which that help might be rendered. As matters turned out, the Romans did not make peace with Pyrrhus, who then warred on Carthage and later against Rome again.82 Pyrrhus crossed to Sicily in 278, eluding a patrolling Carthaginian fleet to lead an alliance of Sicilian Greeks in a new drive against the ‘barbarians’. But much the same happened as with his Italian war: success followed by frustration. First he swept right across the epikrateia, capturing one place after another – even the mountain fortress of Eryx above Drepana, and Panormus – until the Carthaginians held only the heavily-fortified port of Lilybaeum. It was a blitzkrieg unparalleled in their two and a half centuries in western Sicily. They offered him terms, including an indemnity and ships for transport (back to Italy, apparently) – terms which ignored Rome despite the recent pact. Pyrrhus rejected the offer. But his Sicilian allies were aghast at his proposal to invade Libya; they began to suspect his ambitions and were affronted at his high-handed behaviour towards them. As defections spread, the king left the island in disgust in 276 to rescue Tarentum all over again – only to be defeated by the Romans the following year and abandon Italy too. Tarentum capitulated in 272 to become Rome’s newest subject ally. At Syracuse a new and intelligent general, Hiero, came to power in 275 or 274, more concerned to curb the lawless Mamertines than to prolong hostilities with Carthage. The old status quo along the Halycus was restored, with the modest improvement that Acragas remained free from, and suspicious of, Syracuse and therefore had friendly relations with Carthage. The Carthaginians continued to watch Syracuse’s doings carefully, but now they kept an eye on events in Italy too, where by 270 Rome exerted total control. 177

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THE SEC OND AND THIRD TREATIES WITH ROME Carthage’s relations with Rome went back many centuries, as shown earlier. They were mainly commercial and were regulated from 509 on by the first treaty between the two, which laid down how merchants from Rome should and should not do business in Carthaginian territories, and made stipulations about attacks on cities in each other’s neighbourhoods. These stipulations, so far as is known, never had to be acted upon. Livy and Diodorus report another treaty in 348, without details, while Polybius gives the text in Greek – this time with no comment on its archaic Latin. It declared friendship between the Romans and their allies on one side, and ‘the Carthaginians, Tyrians and Uticans’ and their allies on the other. Some provisos resembled the old treaty. Should Carthaginians take any ‘city in Latium’ not subject to Rome, they could keep the booty and prisoners but must hand the city over to the Romans; a Roman could do business freely at Carthage and in Sicily ‘which the Carthaginians govern’, and a Carthaginian ditto at Rome; but Romans were not to sail past the Fair Cape (either Cape Farina or perhaps Cape Bon); and if a Roman or Carthaginian had to stop over in the other state’s territory for provisions, he should not harm the locals and must leave within five days. On the other hand, the new treaty put some fresh bans on Romans. No sailing, either, past Mastia Tarseion – apparently the Iberian town in south-eastern Spain which Carthage later refounded as New Carthage – and no raiding, commerce or city-founding in Libya or Sardinia (the old treaty had allowed trade in both). For the Carthaginians, if they captured any persons who had ‘a written peace’, meaning formal treaty links, with Rome and brought them 178

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into a Roman port, a Roman could free them; this applied vice versa to Romans.83 Much in this new agreement surprises. Rome was far more powerful and prosperous in 348 than around 509, so banning Roman traders from Libya and Sardinia must have been very disagreeable to them. Perhaps, after the rebellions around 370, the Carthaginians aimed to recoup the economic and financial damage by monopolising Libyan and Sardinian commerce. Banning Romans from sailing past a given site in south Spain looks superfluous if they could not sail westwards past Cape Farina in any case; perhaps it was just fussy drafting. Again, to ban Roman city-foundings in Libya and Sardinia is peculiar, for such settlements were being planted only in the regions around Rome itself, such as southern Etruria and Latium. Diodorus does have the Romans send a small colony ‘to Sardinia’ (Sardonia – not the usual Sardo or Sardous) in the 380s: but this may well be an error for the one they placed at Satricum in Latium in 385. Peculiarly too, the Carthaginians were not banned from planting a city anywhere they might like in Italy or indeed Latium. Nor was Rome banned from founding one in Sicily – in or outside the epikrateia – though it was surely out of the question, from Carthage’s viewpoint, to let that happen. The Campanians already in the island, like the mercenaries who had taken over Entella in the west in 404 and those settled by Carthage herself near Mt Etna later, gave enough trouble. Aristotle’s description a few years later of treaties made ‘to prevent unjust acts by anyone’ and ‘for mutual commerce and dealings’ – noting those between Carthaginians and Etruscans as examples – fits this one well. All the same, it put more prohibitions on the Romans than on the Carthaginians. Strikingly, it offered no fuller recognition of Roman hegemony in Latium than the first one did, and it only implicitly acknowledged Rome’s diplomatic ties beyond Latium (in the ‘written peace’ clause, which did not specify Latin persons alone). The treaty seems something of a selective potpourri: modifying some existing rules, adding new ones which included superfluous or very hypothetical provisos, and leaving out other matters that were arguably just as or more relevant. Conceivably it may have been based on a standard template that Carthage used for territorial and commercial agreements. We might even wonder whether the text that Polybius saw was in Greek and was used by both signatories. Polybius, who found the first two treaties, the anti-Pyrrhus pact of 279, and the later Roman–Carthaginian treaties in an archive at Rome, found too that neither Romans nor Carthaginians in his time 179

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knew of them. Later writers were just as uninterested, apart from registering treaty dates (real or supposed): thus Livy reports a ‘third’ renewal in 306 and a ‘fourth’ in 279. An exception was the pro-Carthaginian Philinus of Acragas, who reported that Rome and Carthage had a treaty banning the former from Sicily and the latter from Italy. This allowed him to put the Romans in the wrong over the outbreak of war in 264, when Roman legions crossed to Messana. Polybius, the only source for his claim, dismisses it because Philinus knew none of the other treaties and his supposed text was not in the archive. By contrast, many moderns dismiss Polybius instead.84 The chief argument for the ‘Philinus’ treaty is that it fitted international conditions in 306 better than a renewed 348 treaty, for by 306 Rome directly controlled not only all Latium but much of Italy, notably Campania and Etruria. By 279 in turn, Roman hegemony covered the entire peninsula except its Greek south. This could seem to make nonsense of Polybius’ report that the pact against Pyrrhus ‘confirmed the existing agreements’, if that meant confirming the seventy-year-old treaty. Later ancient historians, Livy included, certainly tried hard to find some Carthaginian act before 264 which could count as an incursion against Italy: obviously they were seeking to turn Philinus’ claim to Rome’s benefit. Yet in 306 Carthage was in no position to think about warring in Italy, and the Romans were still fighting the Samnites and Etruscans. Neither had military or political grounds for making an agreement like Philinus’ – even apart from the obvious fact that neither had control over ‘all Sicily’ or ‘all Italy’ in 306. Later writers’ anxiety to put the Carthaginians in the wrong before 264 proves only that they had read and believed Philinus. The one item in the 348 treaty making no sense in 306 or 279 was the ‘cities in Latium’ clause: but, without the words ‘in Latium’, even this could still apply as late as 279, though Polybius might well ignore (or overlook) the omission. Philinus very probably knew of the 279 pact, for he not only recorded the First Punic War but began with an introductory book leading up to it. As outlined above, the terms added in 279 bound each state, if it were to ally with Pyrrhus, to retain the right to help the other militarily. Carthage would supply naval transport for troops of either state, and would send warships too to help the Romans ‘if need be’. As it proved, neither Rome nor Carthage did ally with Pyrrhus, or ask the other for help – not even when the Carthaginians were confined to Lilybaeum by the king’s blitzkrieg. The only fruit of the pact was that before he crossed to Sicily, a small Carthaginian force went over to Italy via Roman-held Rhegium, to 180

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do minor damage to a Greek ally of his. Philinus might draw the seemingly clear deduction that military intervention in Italy or Sicily was normally disallowed. He did not know the real treaties of 509 and 348, which envisaged and regulated just such acts.

THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR Pyrrhus supposedly remarked on sailing from Sicily: ‘What a fine wrestling-ground we are leaving for the Romans and Carthaginians!’ This may be ben trovato rather than true, for at the time those states were trading partners and allies (of a sort) against him, the Tarentines’ war was not yet lost, and the remark left out of account the other great power in the island. All the same the wrestling began just a few years later, in strange circumstances.85 In 264, facing destruction from Hiero of Syracuse, the trapped Mamertines at Messana appealed both to nearby Carthaginians – a fleet at Lipara under one Hannibal – and to the more distant Romans. As in 315 against Agathocles, once again Carthage saved Messana, putting some troops into the city to deter the Syracusans. The Mamertines accepted the troops until they learned that Rome would also help: then they sent the Carthaginians away. Their appeal to Rome had made much of their Campanian background, but at Rome a good deal of debate had taken place over whether to agree to an alliance with such thuggish freebooters. According to our sources, Polybius included, the interventionists – among them the consuls, Rome’s equivalent of sufetes – argued that Italy was menaced by Carthaginian expansionism, and also that there would be plenty of plunder. Finally one consul, Appius Claudius, was sent with a consular army of two legions to cross the straits at Rhegium to aid the new allies. In reality aid was not needed, as Hiero (now King Hiero by acclamation) had taken his forces home. But when word reached Carthage that her force at Messana had been dismissed, her reaction was both fast and thoroughly unexpected. The force’s commander was crucified (for stupidity), troops were set in motion, alliances were made both with Acragas and – unprecedentedly – with Syracuse, and together the new allies Carthage and Syracuse put Messana under siege by land and sea. Facing this remarkable turn of events, the consul at Rhegium belied his earlier warlike stance by sending an offer to negotiate. It was rejected by both the Carthaginian general (another Hanno) and Hiero, an act they may soon have regretted. 181

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Eluding Carthaginian warships, Appius ferried his legions across to Messana; then defeated first the Syracusan and next the Carthaginian army, which retreated to their own territories. In this way hostilities began. The reasons for the outbreak of war have been debated from that time to this. One standard explanation basically accepts the ancient one: the Romans feared Carthage’s expansionism and acted to avert it militarily. Another reverses it: the Romans were aggressive, expansionist, and greedy for the wealth of both Sicily and Africa, and therefore launched the war – while of course seeking to cover this up by blaming their opponents. A blended view (going back to the later Roman historian Cassius Dio) sees both powers as greedy, aggressive, suspicious of each other, and keen to annex each other’s territories. The events themselves suggest a different and less easily defined set of causes. The Mamertines had sought Rome’s help against Hiero; Appius offered talks when he found himself facing not just Syracusan forces but also Carthaginian. Having driven them off, he and then his campaigning successors the consuls of 263 focused their offensives on Syracuse until Hiero in summer 263 asked for peace. The Carthaginians sent Syracuse no help until too late (a fleet sailed up just after Hiero made peace; then sailed away). Once Hiero was out of the war, on easy terms, one consul returned home with half the Roman forces. In sum, these events indicate that in 264 the Romans had expected to fight alongside their new Mamertine allies against Syracuse. Eastern Sicily was renowned for its wealth (even if this had not recovered fully from past wars) while Hiero’s city, though far below its Agathoclean power, was rebuilding its strength and reach. The Romans, having replaced Agathocles’ and Dionysius’ mastery over southern Italian Greeks with their own, could feel entitled to worry. Carthage had been concerned about Syracuse, too, as the rescue of Messana showed, yet was prepared to hold her nose and ally with her old enemy against the town she had just rescued: the reasonable inference is that she feared letting the Romans into Sicily, whatever Appius’ peaceful protestations. They had been her trading partners and nominal allies for two hundred and fifty years; but to have them permanently in the same island as the epikrateia was plainly seen at Carthage as a threat – rightly or wrongly. The astonishing speed with which Rome thrust Syracuse out of the war, and thus effectively achieved dominant power over eastern Sicily, made the threat still more critical. If so, hostilities resulted from a series of fears and miscalculations, starting with the Roman decision to accept the Mamertines as allies 182

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and Carthage’s double volte-face in reaction, attacking Messana and allying with Syracuse. It was another mistake to refuse to talk with Appius at Rhegium – not to mention the failure after that to block him from crossing with some 16,000 troops – and yet a third error was to leave Hiero to carry on the war alone. Syracuse’s capacity to fight wars for years, and its physical impregnability, had so impressed the Carthaginians for more than a century that they no doubt expected the same again, only to find that they had miscalculated.

PHASES OF WAR: 264 TO 257 The First Punic War turned into something entirely new in Carthaginian experience. It lasted almost a quarter of a century, nearly as long as all of Carthage’s 4th-Century Sicilian wars put together. It demanded large and lasting forces both on land and at sea, with operations that ranged over all her territories. Her fleets played a much more crucial role than ever before, without enjoying more than a few successes. At no time in twenty-three years did she use her naval strength to send military forces into Italy, not even after the Romans’ invasion of Africa in 256–255. Of course, doing so might have had no better luck than that adventure. On the other hand, the impact could have been crucial to her fortunes. Instead the Carthaginians showed themselves more conservative than their enemies in waging war. They had always warred in Sicily, Africa or Sardinia: this one brought no change of practice. By contrast the Romans moved their war effort outside Italy for the first time (Polybius notes the historical significance of this); and then after a time took a still more momentous initiative – becoming a naval as well as a land power. It may have been only because they waged the war with remarkable clumsiness that Carthage was able to keep fighting until 241. Another novel feature was that most of the war in Sicily was fought in the island’s west, especially the epikrateia. Already in late 263 Segesta there declared for the Romans. A planned Carthaginian counter-offensive in 262 was derailed by the new consuls (Roman commanders changed yearly). Four legions besieged Acragas, defended by the Mamertines’ rescuer Hannibal, and routed a relief army under Hiero’s old collaborator Hanno, whose 60 elephants were badly mauled – incidentally, the first Carthaginian elephant corps we hear of. When the Carthaginians left Acragas to its fate in early 261, Greek Sicily’s second city was sacked yet again, with up to 183

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50,000 people made slaves. More significantly still for Carthage, it was now (as Polybius tells it) that the Romans decided to drive her altogether out of Sicily. To put it another way, three years into the war Rome finally resolved to impose its own hegemony over the entire island. The fateful resolve to create a Roman navy followed, once Carthaginian warships started raiding Italy’s western coasts from Sardinia. A Carthaginian quinquereme captured by Appius Claudius three years before gave the Romans their model; their Italian coastal allies, Greeks included, supplied most of the crews; and an unknown designer hit on a device to combat the Carthaginians’ greater battle-skills – fitting a long wooden bridge attached, through a slot at one end, to a pole on each ship’s foredeck and with an iron spike at its other end. It could be swung with ropes to fall immovably onto an enemy deck as the two ships closed for action, allowing the 300 or so waiting Roman troops to charge across and overwhelm the enemy. This was the famous ‘raven’ (corvus), another Roman initiative. In 260 the grand fleet (built in sixty days, says Polybius) of about 120 ships under the consul Duillius met and thrashed Hannibal’s 130 off Mylae. The corvus took the Carthaginians by surprise, accounting for heavy losses in ships and men. As was noted earlier, even for Carthaginian crews the quinquereme was probably still a fairly recent acquisition, and they lacked much combat practice. The tactic of head-to-head ramming could be outmatched, they discovered, if a Roman ship swerved aside a little and then dropped its boarding-bridge, for Roman and Italian allied heavy infantry were too much for the Carthaginians’ shipboard troops. A later copy of Duillius’ understandably pleased triumphal inscription survives, rather damaged, to tell both of his exploits on land (he rescued Segesta from siege) and of his naval victory over the Carthaginian ‘dictator’ Hannibal with copious booty and prisoners. Yet even with naval equality established, the Romans for some years merely raided Sardinia and Corsica. Another victory, off Sulcis in 258, so shamed the defeated Carthaginian crews – many if not most of them citizen sailors – that they themselves crucified their admiral Hannibal (probably the same man as before). This lesson failed to prevent a third setback off Tyndaris in 257. It is another example of their conservative approach to war that the Carthaginians never copied the corvus or devised some means of countering it.

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AFRICA INVADED AND SAVED: 256–255 On land the war briefly moved eastward in 259 with a Carthaginian victory near Thermae Himeraeae and the capture of both Enna and Camarina, but the Carthaginian forces were pushed back to Panormus the following year. Then the entire struggle stalled. This led the Romans to try a fresh initiative: invading Africa. A hugely increased fleet – Polybius’ perhaps exaggerated figure is 330 warships – led by both consuls of 256 used the corvus to demolish a comparable Carthaginian fleet off Cape Economus west of Heraclea Minoa, and disembarked four legions of Romans and Italian allies on the Cape Bon peninsula. These then took the little town of Clupea (Aspis to Greeks) and marched south. A few old Carthaginians surely had vivid memories of Agathocles landing near there half a century before. In spite of a surprising, and hard to explain, order from the senate at Rome now recalling one consul, the fleet and part of the army, the invasion force of some 15,000 Romans and Italian allies under Marcus Atilius Regulus rolled forward much as Agathocles’ had. The same wealthy countryside was plundered, some twenty thousand people were seized for enslavement, and numbers of enslaved prisoners from Italy were freed. The Carthaginian army that confronted Regulus at ‘Adys’, probably Uthina near the river Catadas 40 kilometres south of Tunes, was totally defeated on a hilltop (where its elephants proved useless). It had probably not been helped by having no fewer than three generals in command: Hasdrubal and Bostar appointed at Carthage, and Hamilcar summoned over with troops from Sicily. Things grew worse, with refugees flooding into Carthage and, again as in Agathocles’ time, revolts starting to erupt in the countryside. Though Polybius calls the rebels ‘Numidians’, he all but certainly is writing about the Libyan subjects of Carthage. Over the winter of 256–255 the Carthaginians did what they had refused to do with Agathocles: they sent envoys to Regulus to ask for his terms. We know of his demands not from Polybius but from Dio, whose list gives some which look plausible: Carthage to abandon Sicily, free all her prisoners of war and ransom her own prisoners from Rome, and indemnify the Romans for their war costs. Others in his list, tacked on like an addendum, are invented exaggerations of later peace terms (no fleet, no war or peace without Rome’s permission), but even the plausible demands were more than the Carthaginians 185

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would accept. Instead they succeeded in turning the tables by accepting the guidance of a newly-arrived Spartan mercenary officer named Xanthippus (not that it made him popular with his employers, as mentioned earlier). The Romans were brought to battle in spring 255, on level ground, by a roughly equal army 16,000 strong, with no fewer than 100 elephants across its front. These broke up and trampled the Roman infantry while on the wings the Carthaginian cavalry drove off the enemy’s: then it was virtually inevitable that the victorious horsemen would strike the legions in flank and rear, causing a catastrophe. Regulus and a few hundred others fell into Carthaginian hands; 2000 survivors got away to Clupea, where a fresh Roman fleet eventually arrived to rescue them after first smashing an opposing fleet off Cape Bon. A further and still grimmer Roman disaster followed, for a summer storm caught the returning Romans off Sicily’s unfriendly south-eastern coast, sinking all but 80 of their several hundred ships and drowning the nearly unbelievable total of some 100,000 seamen and soldiers. The Roman invasion had lasted only about a year, in contrast to Agathocles’s three. Its failure no doubt delighted the Carthaginians, but offered them some sobering though perhaps unappreciated lessons too. The Romans might have done better had they not reduced their invasion force and had Regulus made some effort to collaborate with the Libyan, or ‘Numidian’, rebels. The Carthaginians might well have done better had they put one general, such as the experienced Hamilcar from Sicily, in command from the start. They owed the final victory to a foreigner – something they resented, it seems, for Xanthippus soon left their service for that of the king of Egypt. (That the ungrateful Carthaginians had him murdered is a myth, like the famous tale of them later torturing Regulus to death when he would not urge the Romans to make peace.)

VICTORIES, DEFEATS, STALEMATE: 254 TO 242 The war, already almost a decade old, shifted focus back to Sicily where in 254 it began to go wrong again for Carthage. An unusually sophisticated amphibious Roman assault on Panormus in 254 cost her the richest city in the shrinking epikrateia, where the Romans extracted ransom in the usual way from the residents who could pay (some fourteen thousand altogether) while the rest, about thirteen thousand souls, were sold into slavery. Other places, such as Solous 186

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and the isolated allied town Tyndaris, were lost too. When a Carthaginian general, Carthalo, retook shattered Acragas, he could not hold it and therefore razed it. By 253 the epikrateia was merely a stretch of the west coast from Drepana in the north (now a strongly fortified port) round to Heraclea Minoa in the south. Thermae and the Lipara islands were still in Carthaginian hands, but went the way of Panormus and Tyndaris a year later. On the other hand, the rebels in Africa were subdued by Hamilcar, and a large new Roman fleet which raided Libya’s east coast in 253 was devastated by another storm on the open sea between Sicily and Sardinia, with thousands more men drowned. On one theory the corvus was given up after these tragedies, because its weight could overbalance ships in heavy weather. At any rate, it never reappears in the historical record. Both sides were by now under severe strain. Carthage had suffered much lower losses of life overall, but around 250 approached Ptolemy II of Egypt to lend her 2000 talents (12,000,000 Greek drachmas, a very large sum), a request which he diplomatically turned down. The war, again limited to western Sicily, continued more or less at a standstill until a sudden pounce at Panormus, at harvest-time in 250, by the then Carthaginian general Hasdrubal. He had no fewer than 140 elephants and hoped to retake the city, held by two legions under Lucius Caecilius Metellus, but once more the animals brought trouble on his army – running amok under a hail of spears and javelins from the walls to trample the Carthaginian infantry – with the catastrophe then completed by a bold Roman sortie. Not only were the Carthaginians bloodily beaten but scores of elephants (if not the entire herd) were captured by Metellus, who sent them off to Rome for display. Hasdrubal suffered the regular fate of disgraced generals at Carthage. By now she had lost all of her old territories in Sicily except the two fortress ports Drepana and Lilybaeum. The rest of the war focused on these two closely-besieged places; save for Hiero’s moderately-sized kingdom, the rest of the island was controlled by Rome. Carthage’s first victories since the defeat of Regulus, and her last in the war, were won in 249. When one consul tried to take out the Carthaginian fleet anchored in Drepana’s harbour, Adherbal the general there brilliantly outmanoeuvred him to sink or capture 93 of his 120 ships and thousands of prisoners. Next his colleague Carthalo, arriving from Africa with naval reinforcements, first mauled the surviving Roman warships anchored near the army besieging Lilybaeum, then sailed round against a second enemy fleet escorting a large supply convoy along the south coast. Without a 187

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battle he forced them to beach on the unfriendly shores between Camarina and Phintias, where he left them to the even unfriendlier mercies of yet another giant storm. The 800-strong supply convoy was wrecked, as were all but two of the other consul’s 120 warships. In perhaps a couple of weeks, in a sequence of remarkable fleet actions, two enterprising Carthaginian commanders thus wiped the existing Roman navy off the sea. Yet the victories were not effectively followed up, partly because the Carthaginians were now financing the war on a shoestring, despite squeezing massive taxes out of their Libyan subjects. Adherbal’s and Carthalo’s victories did not break the twin sieges; by 247 both were replaced, never to reappear. The agile fleets and crews of 249 were reduced to convoying and raiding. The Romans, too, made no new naval push but maintained the relentless pressure on the western ports, while also encouraging private citizens’ ships to harass Carthaginian merchant craft. In 247 the new general in Sicily, an officer named Hamilcar, tried to shift the focus of action by seizing a broad mountaintop in the hinterland of Panormus – various locales have been suggested – to launch attacks on enemy forces in Sicily and renew seaborne raids on Italy’s coasts. The Romans responded by putting him, too, under blockade on the mountaintop, though he still broke out from time to time. After three years he made a lightning move over to Mt Eryx above Drepana, obviously hoping to have greater impact on the besiegers there. But this time, able to occupy only a ridge under the enemy-held summit and above their siege camp outside Drepana, he was still more restricted. Hamilcar’s raiding style, or his skill at fighting on in these hard positions year after year, earned him the nickname ‘Barca’ – Baraq in Punic, meaning either ‘lightning’ or (rather likelier) ‘blessed’ – and quite unstinting admiration from Polybius, who judges him the war’s most outstanding general. His achievements were very limited in fact, mainly because the forces he had were small and funds hard to find. By war’s end the mercenary and Libyan troops in Sicily, including the garrisons of the ports, numbered only about 20,000, a far cry from the imposing armies of previous decades, and they had not been paid in a long while. One brighter spot for Carthage was that in these years her Libyan territories expanded. This was achieved by another newcomer on the scene, the second Hanno to be called ‘the Great’ in Greek and Roman authors. While Hamilcar operated in Sicily, Hanno campaigned in the hinterland, around 247 taking – and treating humanely – the town of Theveste in the fertile plateau-country some 188

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250 kilometres south-west of Carthage. He may well have annexed Sicca too, again in a fertile countryside north of Theveste and about 175 kilometres west of Carthage, for this town was under the city’s control by 241. Their regions, and those nearby around Mactar and Zama, meant fresh taxpaying sources at a time when the republic’s finances were under worse pressure than ever. Even though Hanno the Great later became Hamilcar Barca’s irreconcilable opponent, they probably began as political collaborators around 248–247: Hamilcar as general in Sicily, Hanno as an equal-ranking general in Libya. Hanno in these years certainly enjoyed military success, and therefore prestige, denied to Hamilcar. He seems to have been Carthage’s leading figure politically, with Hamilcar relying (partly anyway) on his support to keep his own command across the water.

PEACE AND REVOLT The seemingly endless war was at last decided on the sea. The Romans raised a citizens’ loan in 242 to launch a brand-new fleet, again modelled on an up-to-date Carthaginian quinquereme (this one recently captured outside Lilybaeum). Somehow taken by surprise when the fleet arrived in west Sicilian waters unseasonally early in 241, the Carthaginians had a desperate scramble to resupply the blockaded ports with munitions and troops. In the first week of March a different Hanno sailed out with ill-prepared ships, poorlytrained crews, and laden transports. On the 10th, in rough seas, the consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus and his deputy, the praetor Marcus Valerius Falto, met the Carthaginians off the Aegates Islands just west of Drepana. Fifty of Hanno’s warships were sunk, 70 taken, and 10,000 prisoners captured. On his return to Carthage the authorities put him on a cross (ironically, the fate of the first Hanno at Messana twenty-three years earlier), while authorising Hamilcar at Eryx to negotiate peace. Unsurprisingly, the terms agreed on were painful. Carthage withdrew from western Sicily, three hundred years after the first campaigns by Mazeus. She paid Rome 1000 talents (6,000,000 Greek drachmas) at once, with another 2200 payable over ten years. Hiero was guaranteed against attack: that ancient rivalry, too, was done. Yet there was no ban on trade with Roman-dominated Sicily or Hiero, or any control over what the Carthaginians could do elsewhere. The implications for Rome of acquiring, in effect, the first province of a future empire took time to be realised: the subject 189

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Sicilians were lightly controlled until the 220s or even later, while Syracuse held on to a modest level of independence. The Romans were soon ready for business with Carthage once again, even ready to help their ex-foes when they fell into dire straits. Carthage had suffered rather fewer losses than Rome in ships and lives, but was financially desperate, especially after paying the 1000 talents. The war cost her a strategic and revenue-rich buffer in Sicily. It inflicted a severe blow to both her prestige and – more severely perhaps – her sense of security. The fleets had not in practice justified her reputation for unequalled naval skills, nor had most Carthaginian generals been any better than their Roman opposite numbers. Under the current Hanno the Great’s exacting supervision as general in Libya, countryside and towns had to pay the harsh taxes and levies described earlier: yet all that their rulers could show in return were losses and tragedies. It was not the first time that setbacks abroad caused a backlash in Africa, but this proved to be the worst. The republic misguidedly tried to bargain down the arrears of pay owed to Hamilcar Barca’s returned army. Hamilcar himself, no longer general, stayed in the background. The men – 20,000 foreign mercenaries and Libyan conscripts – were sent out with their families from Carthage to Sicca, nearly 200 kilometres inland, where Hanno tried but failed to negotiate reductions. The angry troops marched back to Tunes to force fresh talks. Then, just after the Carthaginians finally conceded their demands, a violent coup at Tunes late in 241 installed new and radical leaders who murdered the old commanders and instigated a revolt. The new generals were a Libyan, Mathos, a Campanian Roman deserter called Spendius, and Autaritus the leader of the Gallic mercenaries. What caused the revolt is not clear in Polybius’ narrative, the only detailed source. It may be that the radicals exploited Carthage’s current military weakness (she now had only Hanno’s small army in the countryside) and fears by the Libyan troops for their own fate once the foreign mercenaries were paid off and departed. Since most or all the Libyan communities promptly joined the revolt, the rebels no doubt hoped for a swift victory with plunder and the end of Carthage’s hegemony. The foreign mercenaries may well have looked forward to settling in Libya, on the lines of the Campanians at Entella and Messana in Sicily. The ‘Truceless War’, as Polybius calls it, lasted over three years with abrupt changes of fortune and a grim level of brutality by both sides. It again brought out the dogged and resourceful side of the Carthaginians when faced with possible disaster. With Hanno 190

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achieving little, Hamilcar was reappointed general during 240. He organised a small army of citizens and others, sortied from Carthage in spite of the rebels’ blockade, and put fresh vigour into the fightback by defeating Spendius beside the Bagradas and then marching inland to begin reimposing control. His resources were limited and his strategy risky. At one point he was surrounded by Spendius’ and Autaritus’ troops and by a force of Numidian cavalry, actuated perhaps by sympathy for their Libyan kinfolk as well as hopes of booty – but persuaded Naravas the Numidians’ leader to change sides and help him defeat the rebels. Naravas looks like a son of the Massylian king Zilalsan mentioned earlier (Chapter VIII), for an inscription set up by a Numidian lord at Mactar in 128 names an ancestor as Nrwt son of Zilalsan (Zllsan). Hamilcar promised the young prince one of his daughters in marriage, a promise he seems to have kept. Hamilcar’s strategy focused on the Libyan heartland and largely ignored the coastlands. There Carthage was blockaded from Tunes, Hippacra and Utica besieged, and Hanno (it seems) able only to keep the rebels from doing worse. Other misfortunes occurred: the mercenaries in Sardinia seized the island, slaughtered all the Carthaginians they could, and won over a force sent to confront them. Probably during 239 Hippacra and Utica both changed sides. The war’s savagery intensified – the rebels mutilating and killing their prisoners, Hamilcar retaliating (he had his elephants trample captives, a method imitated from Alexander’s successor generals). He then had to call on Hanno to combine forces with him, but their disagreements paralysed their military efforts. The authorities at Carthage directed the soldiers themselves – no doubt the citizen troops and officers – to decide between them: Hamilcar was chosen by the men, resuming operations with Hanno’s more compliant replacement and with Naravas’ sterling cavalry. Nevertheless Carthage’s troubles encouraged Mathos at Tunes to tighten the blockade into a closer siege for several months, roughly from late summer 239 until early 238. The Libyans, or at any rate their military leaders, were emphasising the solidarity of their movement by striking coins (in some cases, overstriking Carthaginian coins) with the Greek word Libyon, ‘of the Libyans’ (Illustration 24h). This and the coins’ find-spots in Sicily, not North Africa, suggest that they were used to pay traders from the island who dealt in arms and other supplies. Roman and Italian traders took part in this commerce too at first, leading to hundreds being intercepted by Carthaginian warships. After a 191

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Roman protest they were freed: a sensible step, since the Romans then banned such trading and rendered Carthage valuable other help, like repatriating thousands of war-prisoners ransom-free. Hiero of Syracuse, aware of the peril of losing Carthage as a counterbalance to Rome, was another generous helper. Even so the tide was very slow to turn. Hamilcar cut off Mathos and his men from the interior so effectively that they gave up besieging Carthage to fall back on Tunes. Still too weak, it seems, to attack them directly, Hamilcar returned inland to continue reasserting Carthaginian control, shadowed by another large rebel army under Spendius and Autaritus. The climax of a lengthy campaign of manoeuvres, marches and clashes came when this army was trapped at a place that Polybius calls ‘the Saw’ (Prion), seemingly a mountain ridge somewhere in Libya. After holding out to the point of cannibalising their captives and slaves, the rebels tried to capitulate, only for Hamilcar to turn on them and wipe them out save for the two generals and their lieutenants. These he took with him back to Tunes to crucify on a hilltop (perhaps in today’s Parc du Belvédère) in full view of Mathos’ troops. Mathos revenged Spendius and the others by defeating Hamilcar’s colleague there – Hamilcar’s division was on the far side of Tunes – and crucifying him and other eminent prisoners on the same crosses. Politics and common sense intervened at Carthage to impose a temporary reconciliation on Hamilcar and Hanno, who from then on cooperated intelligently to force Mathos from Tunes out to Byzacium, where they were conclusively crushed. All Libya capitulated, as did Hippacra and Utica by early 237. The last scene of all, Polybius records, was the young men of Carthage leading Mathos in triumph through the streets while torturing him to death – much like the fate in 309 of the Hamilcar captured by the Syracusans. The punishments inflicted on the rebel communities are not reported. This time the Carthaginians may have acted with restraint: Utica at least did not lose its special relationship with Carthage and was stubbornly loyal under Scipio’s siege thirty-five years later, nor did Libyan communities defect to him during his marches through their lands. The resources to rebuild the shattered state would be found in Spain.

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THE SARDINIA CRISIS Hamilcar Barca had effectively saved Carthage, if with invaluable help from Naravas the Numidian and Hanno the Great. It was Hamilcar and his supporters who reaped the benefit: over the next thirty-five years their ‘Barcid’ group dominated the republic’s affairs. First Hamilcar, then his politically skilful son-in-law Hasdrubal, and finally his eldest son Hannibal were in turn elected generals and, in effect, the commanders-in-chief of Carthaginian armed forces, able to have their own choices appointed as subordinates. At Carthage their kinsmen and political supporters had similarly effective control of offices, though probably never a monopoly. Barcid generals commanded in all the important theatres of war (and some less important ones) from 237 to 201, while at Carthage the adirim and sufetes – whenever a glimpse of them occurs – are found seconding Barcid wishes and voting down rival arguments. Hanno the Great and his group were completely ineffectual (as they complained repeatedly), at least until the end of the Second Punic War.86 Ironically, the Barcids’ dominance at Carthage was a fact that both they and their opponents wanted to deny by the end of the war. Their opponents, and Roman friends of these like the contemporary historian Fabius Pictor, argued that the Barcid generals in Spain had launched the war in the teeth of universal opposition at home. The Barcid side, Hannibal included, claimed that he lost because the home authorities had refused to support him properly. Both claims are still widely believed, though neither is convincing. The reality is that in the Barcids, as in the Magonids and the family of the first Hanno the Great, Carthage found a new ruling house, its success resting on military prowess and adept political skills until these assets collapsed. 193

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Hamilcar’s planned expedition to southern Spain in 237 made sound sense from Carthage’s point of view. The old Phoenician cities there, notably Gades, were suitable bridgeheads. Hamilcar had a veteran army that he could count on for success. The land was well developed, its towns and peoples long in close contact with Phoenician and Carthaginian civilisation, and its regions rich in mineral resources: silver above all. Spain was also on the opposite side of the western Mediterranean from Rome. Besides this expedition, another was readied to recover Sardinia where the rebel mercenaries had been thrown out by the native Sardinians and appealed to Rome for help. The Romans now made a sudden, this time unwelcome, return to Carthage’s affairs. Claiming that Italy and not Sardinia was the real target, they refused to negotiate but instead declared formal war on Carthage to get their way. In no condition to resist, she had to give up Sardinia and pay out no less than 1200 talents more. These extraordinary actions Polybius himself condemns as unjust, without trying to explain them. The Romans, however, surely knew that their renowned recent adversary Hamilcar was now effectively in power. With Sicily lost, Sardinia’s position and wealth would be invaluable in efforts to rebuild Carthage economically and militarily. The immediate payment exacted – larger than in 241 – strengthens the impression that the Romans sought to check a rapid Carthaginian recovery. Hamilcar felt the humiliation keenly. His son in later life told the famous story of how his father agreed to take him, aged nine, to Spain once Hannibal swore on the altar of ‘Zeus’ – Baal Hammon or Baal Shamim – ‘never to be friendly towards the Romans’ (often misrepresented as always to be the enemy of Rome, a very different attitude). Polybius and others, rightly or wrongly, judged the seizure of Sardinia to be the first of the causes of the next war.

THE NEW EMPIRE IN SPAIN From 237 until his death in 229 Hamilcar extended Carthaginian domination over most of southern Spain, especially the lower and middle valley of the river Baetis (modern Guadalquivir). The Carthaginians, based at Gades, conquered some communities by force while winning over others as allies, though the excerpts and passing comments in Polybius, Diodorus and others give minimal details. As in the war in Libya, Hamilcar could use brutal methods when it suited him – for instance mutilating and crucifying Indortes, 194

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a defeated Iberian chieftain – but this seems to have been rare. By 228 the province extended across southern Spain, with military forces over 50,000 strong and a corps of 100 elephants from Africa. Hamilcar’s control of affairs over there is well illustrated by his despatch of his son-in-law Hasdrubal at one stage to put down a rising by a Numidian people, called by Diodorus the ‘Micatani’ (they may have been foes of Naravas’ Massyli). Hamilcar made Carthage more of a land power than ever before. While the Spanish territories expanded, the navy contracted. While in the first war with Rome Carthaginian fleets numbered between 120 and 350 ships, on the outbreak of the second the quinqueremes and triremes at Carthage and in Spain totalled just over 100 – with nearly 20 of them unfit to fight. His successes had the desired impact at home. According to Cornelius Nepos’ brief biography, ‘with horses, weapons, men and money he enriched all Africa’. The horses and men (probably war-prisoners) may have been sent over to work in towns and the countryside like the enslaved men from Agathocles’ army after 307, while the weapons would include highly-regarded swords and javelins, all of iron. The money of course came from booty, tribute, and increasingly from mines – old ones like the workings in the Río Tinto region by the Atlantic, newer ones in the mountains north of the Baetis and around Mastia, the later New Carthage. How the new province was governed is obscure. The Phoenician cities such as Gades, Malaca and Abdera must have been formal allies, tribute-free but perhaps required to provide ships and crews for transport, even maybe a few warships. The Iberian and Celtic communities allied with Carthage would provide stated contingents of infantry and cavalry, while those subdued by force probably had to supply both soldiers and tribute. Some, if not all, of the mines were state-owned, though in practice leased to contractors, as was done in Greece and by the Romans. Pliny the Elder’s report of 300 pounds of silver mined daily in Hannibal’s time at a place (unknown) called Baebelo may really be a misunderstanding of the yield – equivalent to some 9,000,000 drachmas or 1440 talents a year – from all the mines in Barcid Spain by then. The silver coins, shekels and other denominations, struck by the Barcid authorities in strongly Greek styles, were products of this wealth (Illustration 24i). Hamilcar’s constructive activities included founding a new city which Diodorus calls Akra Leuke – White Cape or White Fort. It may be the Lucentum of Roman times, today’s Alacant (Alicante) on the south coast, though other identifications are possible. Akra Leuke, if it was Lucentum, was both a good port linking Barcid 195

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Spain with North Africa and also advertised the growing grandeur of Hamilcar himself as leader of his state. The Carthaginians had not been noted city-founders like the Phoenicians, with Lilybaeum and Thermae Himeraeae their only creations in centuries. Hellenistic rulers on the other hand were enthusiastic about it, starting with Alexander whose Egyptian Alexandria was only his most famous foundation. In winter 229–228, campaigning somewhere in mountainous country above Mastia, Hamilcar lost his life, attacked by a supposedly allied king from further north. He saved his sons Hannibal and Hasdrubal, but perished on horseback in a torrential river. His son-in-law Hasdrubal was acclaimed general in his place by the troops and confirmed by the citizens at Carthage. A winning though not always mild personality, the new leader consolidated the province as well as extending its borders up to the river Tagus. Perhaps by now a widower (or perhaps not), he married the daughter of a Spanish king, encouraged his brother-in-law Hannibal to take a Spanish wife too, and convened a gathering of Spanish leaders, no doubt carefully chosen, to declare him their supreme general: strategos autokrator, according to Diodorus, though what term the Spaniards used is not known. In 227 or 226, Hasdrubal in his turn founded a city, transforming or entirely replacing the old Iberian town Mastia with a grandly conceived creation which he named Qart-hadasht, New City: a ‘Carthage’ for Spain. Sited between a safe harbour along its south side and a salt-water lagoon along the other, on its many hills stood the temples mentioned earlier of Baal Hammon, Eshmun, perhaps Kusor and the perhaps Iberian deity Aletes (Chapter VII), while the splendid palace of the generalissimo himself crowned another. That Hasdrubal thus declared his independence from his native land is an idea going back to his contemporary Fabius Pictor, who passed on accusations from Carthaginian anti-Barcids. This ignores the other Carthages in the Mediterranean such as the even older one in Cyprus (Chapter I); a possible one in Sardinia; Neapolis, as the Greeks called the Qart-hadasht on the gulf of Hammamet; and Carthage’s own outer suburb the ‘New City’. Rather, Spanish Carthage – with its striking hilltop – announced the renewed strength of the Carthaginian state to the Mediterranean at large and also to the Spanish peoples whose loyalty Hasdrubal was working to win. He was not simply the peace-builder as later ages liked to paint him. He increased the regular army in Spain to 60,000 foot and 8000 horse, putting his brother-in-law Hannibal in 224 in charge of his 196

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cavalry forces where, we are told, the young man saw plenty of action. Other army officers would become famous, such as Hannibal’s brothers Hasdrubal and Mago, and the cavalry commander Maharbal. The territories under Barcid rule now covered roughly half the Iberian peninsula. The Romans were among those who noticed. They had paid Carthage limited attention, if any, after the Sardinia affair. A supposed fact-finding embassy to Hamilcar in 231 (mentioned only by the later historian Dio) is probably fiction and, even if genuine, nothing came of it. The Romans were more active both in continental Italy, where the dominant peoples were Gauls who had given them repeated trouble since around 390, and from 229 in Illyria and Dalmatia across the Adriatic, where they fought a serious war to impose a loose control. Then in 226–225 they faced the threat of a huge Gallic invasion from the north, causing them not only to mass powerful forces against it but also to send envoys to Spain. They persuaded Hasdrubal to promise that the Carthaginians would not campaign beyond the river Iber (Ebro) in north-eastern Spain. This agreement, not formally a treaty since it was signed off by him alone, came to play a role in arguments ancient and modern over why the Second Punic War broke out, with Roman writers claiming that it also protected Saguntum, a small but rich city on Spain’s east coast trading with Rome. This was a fiction, caused by the agreement’s plain implication that Rome had no objection to the Carthaginians campaigning – and of course subduing everything – up to the Ebro. This was a necessary fiction because Hannibal’s later capture of Saguntum was the shaky basis for Rome declaring war in 218. The Ebro-line may have seemed apt to the Romans because it would keep Carthaginian expansion well south of the Pyrenees, beyond which lay Gaul with its restless and excitable warrior peoples. Hasdrubal surely agreed to the line because it tacitly promised him freedom, in turn, from Roman interference to its south. The agreement once made, the Romans destroyed the invading Gauls and conquered their lands, then in 219 fought a second Illyrian war to confirm their trans-Adriatic hegemony. From 225 to late 220 they paid Spain and Carthage no further attention.

THE COMING OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR Hasdrubal’s assassination in 221 by an aggrieved Spanish warrior passed the generalship to his brother-in-law Hannibal, again by vote 197

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of both the army in Spain and the people at home. This was the third, and so far as we know the last, time that citizen troops had a say in who should command them. At twenty-six the new general had spent most of his life in the new province, had as a wife the daughter of a Spanish king – making the Barcid family kin to two sets of royal families, in Spain and Numidia – and was already a charismatic leader at the head of well-tested troops. Events moved swiftly from now on. Hannibal at once showed himself a pugnacious commander: campaigning in late 221 and then in 220 across central and northwestern Spain as far as the river Duero, storming towns, and defeating a regional Spanish army along the Tagus, near Toletum, by letting them start to ford the river and then striking with elephants and cavalry followed by a general attack. Other communities, overawed, sent offers of submission, so that by autumn 220 he could claim to rule Spain as far as the Ebro (except Saguntum). In twelve months he had added nearly as much territory to the province as his predecessors had done in sixteen years, though his conquests were not so populous or developed. This drew Rome’s attention for the first time in half a decade. Two envoys arrived late in 220 to urge him not to cross the Ebro and, additionally, not to molest Saguntum. With Cisalpine Gaul (as north Italy was now called) in their hands, the Romans were clearly interested in stalling any further Carthaginian expansion northwards. It seems to have suited them, too, to demand that friendly but non-allied Saguntum should be left alone, perhaps to be a Spanish listening-post for them or – since it had been acting as one for years and been consistently ignored – more likely to symbolise to Hannibal and Carthage that the victor of the previous war was never going to acknowledge them as its full equal. In either case the move backfired, for Hannibal treated it as a threat. As Polybius implies in his account, he will have remembered how the Romans had used the mercenaries from Sardinia as the pretext for seizing it. He may also have had in mind their intervention over Messana. In spring 219 he put Saguntum under siege as a deliberate challenge to them. After a difficult siege of over seven months – Saguntum was a very different target from his previous captures – he took and sacked the city. The Romans had done nothing to help it. Why, remains a muchdebated question. Essentially it seems that, just as in 264, they were at odds over whether or not to act until Hannibal’s success finally pushed them into acting. In March 218 envoys, this time travelling 198

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directly to Carthage, declared war when the adirim predictably refused to hand their general over.

HANNIBAL INVADES ITALY The new war was as unnecessary as the previous one, for neither Carthage nor Rome needed conflict. Hannibal still had much of Spain to be busy in, not to mention vast areas of western North Africa. The Romans, on existing evidence, were more interested in the eastern Mediterranean. Trade and hospitable contacts between both states were as busy as ever. Yet – as in Europe in 1914 – these features were overbalanced by mutual suspicions, insecurities and ambitions. Carthage, with her new resources and territorial dominions, was once again at least as powerful as Rome. The Romans with their Italian allies could call on about three-quarters of a million men of military age, in a total population of three to four million. Carthage with her chora, allies and subjects from Lepcis Magna to Gades will have had a population roughly similar. In 218, according to Hannibal’s own figures (so they seem from Polybius’ account), she put into service some 122,000 troops, while Rome’s field armies totalled 71,000. Nor was any Roman general of the day – or the first decade of war – any match for Hannibal. Two drawbacks did exist: the fleets in both Spanish and African waters were puny compared with Rome’s 220 fully-equipped warships; and none of the other Carthaginian commanders in the entire war, even Hannibal’s brothers, proved better than the enemy’s. Hannibal had expected war before the Romans declared it. He readied a large army to invade Italy: for the alternative, to wait for them to attack him in Spain – and invade Libya too – was out of the question. The first years of his Italian expedition are by far the best known, marked by his crossing of the Alps and three great victories over one Roman army after another: at the river Trebia in December 218, Lake Trasimene in June the year after, and Cannae in Apulia in August 216 which put most of central and southern Italy at his mercy. The brilliance of these victories has made his reputation immortal – the only Carthaginian, indeed, with a name still instantly recognisable. Much of southern Italy changed sides to ally with him after 216, so that Carthage by 212 had Rome hemmed in on almost every side. Besides these new supporters, she had as allies the Numidian kings, the Gauls in northern Italy, Syracuse in Sicily, and the kingdom of Macedon across the Adriatic. She also controlled most of Spain. From 199

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late 216 to the middle of 207, Carthage was the greatest power in the western Mediterranean, facing a shrunken and tormented Rome. This supremacy was not easily won or free of severe flaws. When Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees in mid-218, leaving his brother Hasdrubal in charge of Spain, he had 59,000 troops – but, after he arrived in northern Italy, only 26,000. The usual explanations for this staggering loss are attacks by the Gauls along the route and Alpine snow and ice; but in reality the Gauls’ off-and-on attacks, all told, amounted to just seven days’ fighting, while snow and ice were met only in the final week, on the pass and the way down to Italy. Supplies en route were plentiful, even in the autumnal Alpine valleys. Nor did he leave garrisons in Gaul. The likeliest explanation is that numbers of the Libyan, Numidian and Spanish troops simply deserted – both in southern Gaul, and later in north Italy before his roll-call. Luckily, the Gauls in north Italy had risen against their Roman conquerors and brought him valuable extra forces. The Romans’ response from 218 to 216 was to confront the invaders head-on, in the normal way of Mediterranean warfare. It was Hannibal’s way, too. Alexander the Great had shown how a series of devastating victories could bring down even the most imposing enemy; after his three, Hannibal looked to the shattered Romans to talk. Their response, unconventional by Mediterranean great-power standards but entirely in line with their own responses to Pyrrhus and to their First Punic War disasters, was to refuse talks of any kind. Meanwhile they changed their military strategy. Hannibal did have at least two opportunities to put crushing pressure on them, but avoided it. After Trasimene, the Romans and his own side expected him to march direct on Rome, only four days away for an army and fewer for cavalry. A fleet from Carthage sailed to the Etruscan coast to link up with him, only to find that he had swung east to the Adriatic. After Cannae a year later, with almost no Roman forces left in the field, he again chose not to advance on the city. Livy’s famous tale has his bold cavalry general Maharbal comment sourly that ‘you know how to win, Hannibal; you don’t know what to do with victory’. It was certainly impossible to take Rome by siege. Cutting it off from outside, though, was feasible especially when there were no organised Roman forces in the countryside to cause trouble, and could have been done as early as the aftermath of Trasimene. Like Mathos’ and Spendius’ mutiny at Tunes in 241, this could also – and perhaps decisively – have been the signal to all of Rome’s restive fellow-Italians to come over to the clearly dominant invader. 200

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HANNIBAL, MASTER OF SOUTHERN ITALY Hannibal preferred to operate in central and southern Italy and seek to win over their cities and cantons. He sent home non-Roman prisoners without ransom to spread word that he had come to free Rome’s oppressed allies. Nothing came of it until his crushing victory at Cannae: then a series of Italians, beginning with the Campanians of Capua – despite their shared citizenship with Rome – began to defect. Between late 216 and summer 212 the Capuans were joined by most of the Samnites, Lucanians and Bruttians, several Apulian cities, and many of the southern Italian Greeks – especially Tarentum, won over by a bloodless coup in 212. Cannae also encouraged the king of Macedon, Philip V, to make an alliance in 215 with the conquering Carthaginian, for he too had resentments against Rome. A year later the ring around Rome tightened further when Syracuse – no longer ruled by old Hiero – joined Hannibal’s coalition largely through the efforts of a resourceful pair of brothers, Hippocrates and Epicydes, officers in Hannibal’s army and grandsons of Arcesilaus, the Syracusan exile at Carthage who had killed Agathocles’ elder son in 307. Carthaginian aims in the war must be inferred from events. No statement of aims survives apart from Livy reporting that Hannibal assured Roman prisoners after Cannae that ‘for him it was not war to the death: his fight was about honour and power’. Whatever later ages thought, physically destroying Rome was not a goal, nor even reducing it to a political nullity. The alliance with Macedon guaranteed that each state would help the other should another war occur with the Romans – taking for granted that there would still be a Rome capable of making war. In fact Hannibal had already sent one of his senior lieutenants, Carthalo, to sound out the Romans about talks (Carthalo had a family guest-friendship with the Roman leader Quintus Fabius Maximus, famous for his ‘delaying’ tactics against the invaders), though the senate at Rome refused him access.87 Even if Rome continued as a state, common sense required Hannibal and Carthage to make sure that it would be as shackled as possible. The treaty with Philip V promised Macedon the districts in and around Illyria which the Romans controlled, while Carthage’s alliance with Syracuse in 214 notionally divided Sicily between the two signatories at the old Halycus line. In Italy Hannibal had to be tactful. Treaties with Capua and other Italian states guaranteed their freedom and self-government, and compulsory military support was 201

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not required from all (not from Capua, for instance). The Capuans, and maybe others, expected him to go home after the war – in the Capuans’ opinion, it was their turn to dominate Italy. But this was hardly an outcome that Hannibal could envisage, even if he had to pretend he did. Only a strong postwar Carthaginian presence, no doubt with him or another Barcid leader in charge, could prevent Italian chaos from erupting, enabling the surviving Roman state to regain its dominance or Philip V to be tempted to intervene.

LIMITATIONS AND SETBACKS The unyielding determination of the Romans brought Carthage’s hopes down. Instead of seeking terms after their defeats as other states commonly did (Carthage included), they returned to Fabius’ tactics of avoiding battle, shadowing Hannibal’s movements, and attacking the rebel Italians. By 212 there were 25 legions in the various theatres of war from Italy to Spain, as well as powerful fleets at sea. Up to a third of Roman and loyal Italian manpower was under arms. Despite his victories and new allies, Hannibal was put essentially on the strategic defensive, with the Romans as early as 214 beginning to subdue places that had defected. This solid fightback was an important reason why he sought allies beyond Italy, to stretch Roman resources as widely as possible. Carthage’s own war-effort was comparable to Rome’s. Hannibal built up his forces with Samnite, Lucanian and Bruttian recruits to numbers big enough to enable him, for a couple of years, to detach a secondary army under his nephew Hanno for operations further south while he fought in Campania. Overseas, large armies operated against the Romans in Spain and Sicily, and the navy was revived with fleets in African and Spanish waters. It may well have been in these years, too, that the Barcid authorities governing Carthage constructed the famous artificial ports to accommodate her expanding fleet (Chapter VI). With the Roman navy regularly raiding her coasts, protected harbours for both naval and merchant shipping would be vital. The years from 212 to 210 began a slow turn in the fortunes of the war. Macedon and Syracuse proved useless as allies, with Macedon soon pushed out of Illyria and Syracuse captured in 212 by the redoubtable general Marcellus. Carthaginian relief forces failed both before the capture, when an army with its general perished (not for the first time) in Syracuse’s malarial marshlands, and after, when, as 202

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mentioned earlier, a new general’s arrogance towards his best officer Mottones caused the latter to join Marcellus and contribute to defeating his ex-friends. In Spain, Hannibal’s brothers and a colleague named Hasdrubal son of Gisco succeeded in shattering the Roman invaders in 211 (with able help from Numidian cavalry led by Naravas’ young kinsman Masinissa), yet did nothing to exploit their victory. Hasdrubal made no effort to lead forces to Italy, either, where he had been awaited since 215. Hannibal himself could neither prevent nor break the Roman siege of Capua which began in 212 – not even by launching his famous march on Rome in 211, for he could not pull the besiegers to pursue him and the city was firmly garrisoned. After Capua surrendered, he spent the next eight years in southern Italy: trying to defend his shrinking parcel of allies as one after another fell back into Roman hands, still winning or drawing occasional battles, but being constantly harassed – especially by Marcellus until the latter’s death in action in 208. The loss of Capua was followed by a thunderbolt in 209. Publius Cornelius Scipio, the twenty-five-year-old new Roman commander in Spain, captured New Carthage in a surprise attack by sea and land while all three Carthaginian generals were over-confidently quartered elsewhere. In 208 and 206 Scipio defeated them in two great battles, at Baecula and Ilipa, which ended Carthage’s thirtyyear rule in the peninsula. Scipio returned to Rome to become consul in 205 and prepare to invade Africa.

METAURUS, ZAMA AND PEACE Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal did leave Spain to reach northern Italy in 207, but brought no help to his increasingly beleaguered elder brother in the south. Hannibal was so circumscribed by Roman armies that the consul Gaius Claudius Nero could lead an élite force northwards to join his colleague Marcus Livius Salinator facing Hasdrubal. They destroyed the new invasion at the river Metaurus, just inland from the Adriatic. Nero took Hasdrubal’s head back to deliver to his brother: Carthaginians might remember how in 309 the Syracusans had sent the head of Hamilcar son of Gisco over to Agathocles. Hannibal hung on in the very south of Italy for four more years. Now he probably hoped that, as long as he stayed, he would keep Africa safe from invasion; indeed old Fabius Maximus opposed Scipio’s project for this very reason. Moreover in 205 Italy was yet 203

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again invaded by a Barcid, Hannibal’s surviving brother Mago. Yet by landing in Liguria Mago gave himself no better chance than Hasdrubal of reaching their brother; eventually his invasion was crushed and he himself mortally wounded. By then Scipio was conquering Libya, and Hannibal was finally called home. The defence of North Africa was first led by the Barcids’ ally Hasdrubal son of Gisco and Syphax, king of Numidia. Originally king of the western Numidian Masaesyli, Syphax had united the country by driving out the would-be king of the Massyli – Masinissa – and had married Hasdrubal’s daughter, the cultured and beautiful Saponibaal (in Latin, Sophoniba, often misrendered ‘Sophonisba’). They failed to repel Scipio, who landed near Utica in 204 to be joined by Masinissa. After a lengthy period of insincere negotiations, he destroyed their camps and armies in a night attack early in 203, then defeated their new armies inland on the Great Plains near Bulla in the upper Bagradas valley. With Syphax captured, Masinissa was recognised by Scipio as king of all Numidia – though the new king was forced to renounce his new wife Sophoniba, whom he married after falling in love at first sight (or so the tale was told). At his command, she took poison, completing the romantically tragic story. The last two years of the war limited it to North Africa. After the Great Plains, the Carthaginians sought and accepted Scipio’s peace terms, which removed Carthage’s military and naval capabilities, annexed Spain, and exacted a large indemnity, but left her home territories intact. Peace was then confirmed at Rome, but meanwhile the Carthaginians had sent Hannibal and Mago a recall – and when Hannibal landed at Hadrumetum with his veterans, to be joined by the survivors of his brother’s army, he continued to act as though the peace did not apply to him. Nor, it seems, did his countrymen object, causing Scipio in turn to renew operations inland. It took Hannibal most of 202 to build up and train a new army, so that only in October did he set out to find Scipio. Before the last battle, the two leaders held a famous personal meeting near Naraggara, 40 kilometres west of Sicca, which resolved nothing but let each get to know the other. Next day, probably 19 October, Scipio defeated his opponent in the so-called battle of ‘Zama’ – a misnomer perpetrated by Nepos – by routing his elephant corps and cavalry, then beating down each of Hannibal’s three rather disconnected battle lines in turn. The battle was still in the balance, with Hannibal’s third line of mainly Bruttian veterans fighting Scipio’s legionaries (most of them survivors of Cannae), when the Roman and Numidian cavalry returned to strike the veterans in the rear, a 204

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reversal of Hannibal’s coup at Cannae. Hannibal got away with a few horsemen and told his countrymen to seek peace. Scipio’s new terms were rather harsher: no Carthaginian navy except ten ships, no overseas wars at all and none in Africa without Rome’s permission, an indemnity of 10,000 talents over fifty years (60,000,000 Greek drachmas or Roman denarii), and – a clause which would bring future trouble – Masinissa was entitled to the lands held by his ancestors. But Carthage remained intact, independent and in control of Libya: in fact Scipio surveyed and confirmed her existing borders. Hannibal was left untouched. In 201, as his last act in Africa Scipio anchored the navy of Carthage, large ships and small, in sight of the city and burned them: the symbolic end of Carthage as a great power. From then on she had to make her way in a changed world.

HANNIBAL’S WAR: AN ASSESSMENT Could Carthage have won the Second Punic War? Rome’s military strength is often pointed to as the critical factor for victory – as a contest of Goliath versus David in which Goliath won. Another argument, less popular today though going back to Polybius, is that a nation of comfortable merchants who paid others to do their fighting had no chance against a tough farming people who each year went out to inflict massive damage on their foes. In reality, as mentioned above, Carthage’s military strength from the start was at least equal to Rome’s. Even in 207, when some 130,000 troops were still serving in Roman armies from Italy to Spain, Carthage’s armies as reported by Polybius and Livy totalled as much as 150,000. Moreover her revived navy grew to well over 100 quinqueremes. The unwarlike-merchants picture is just as flawed: the ruling élite was as much, or more, a landowning class accustomed to military as well as naval leadership. Roman society, in turn, was already commercially developed by 264 and still more so by 218, while the Roman authorities were alert to the importance of trade: so the fuss with Carthage in 240 over the arrested Italian traders showed, and then the war with the Illyrians in 229 over Illyrian piracy. The war might, arguably, have been won had Hannibal marched directly on Rome after his crushing victory at Lake Trasimene in 217, or after Cannae the year after. He might have retrieved the situation as late as 207, if he had made a better effort at leaving Apulia to join forces with his brother (as Hasdrubal was expecting). 205

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A less noticeable point, but just as important, is that large reinforcements sent to Italy by sea – not to Spain or Sicily, as they were – could have made the difference even as late as 212; Hannibal’s only reinforcements were 4000 men and 40 elephants in 215. Indeed, had Mago in 205 brought his 25,000 troops and elephant corps to Bruttium, the Romans might not have authorised Scipio to go to Africa, although by then the best that Carthage could hope for would be a compromise peace. As for the Romans, they may have thrown away their best chance for an early victory, saving tens of thousands of lives, by electing to abort the planned invasion of Africa in 218 while continuing the expedition into Spain. An African invasion would have met no Carthaginian general of Hannibal’s abilities (nor were Greek mercenaries in service by now), while there was as yet no navy able to prevent a Roman blockade of the city by sea as well as land. The Carthaginians’ greatest weakness – or inhibition – was over an invasion of their home territories, as both Agathocles and Regulus had shown and as Scipio proved. It took Scipio only two victories in one year to bring them to terms, even if Hannibal’s return then required a third before peace finally came.

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POLITICS AND REFORMS The loss of Spain’s mines and taxes, the seaborne raids during the war, and the ravaging of parts of Libya by Scipio all left Carthage in a poor state. An instalment of the indemnity, 200 talents in silver coin, paid to Rome in 199 was found to be one-fourth base metal, while a late Roman writer tells of Hannibal putting his ‘legions’ to work in Africa planting olive trees. All the same, a year after the peace, Carthage thought it best to send as a gift 200,000 bushels of grain to Rome and the same amount to the Roman troops operating in Greece once more against Philip V – gifts, incidentally, matched by Masinissa of Numidia. Politically the Barcids’ dominance was over. Carthage was governed by an anti-Barcid faction which Livy calls ‘the order of judges’, apparently a resurgent court of One Hundred and Four. For even if many of these judges were Barcid allies or at least appointees, most surely switched sides after 201, some even earlier as the Barcids’ prospects soured. Hanno the Great, their longest-lasting opponent and still active in 202, may soon have died as he is not heard of again, but his supporters – one of them is known, Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’ – probably belonged to, or were, the dominant element among the ‘judges’. The new faction was close-knit and intolerant, with the added advantage of judicial power, but the drawback of incompetence. By 197 or 196 it had landed the republic in strife with Masinissa and was proposing a new tax on citizens to fund the next war-indemnity instalment. This led to Hannibal being elected sufete, no doubt on a programme of reforming abuses and with an unknown but compliant colleague. Whether he openly promised to reform the One Hundred and Four, too, is less clear – but as soon as he was defied by the ‘quaestor’ allied with them – probably the rb mͥšbm, ‘head of the 207

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treasurers’ – the new sufete proposed successfully to the citizen assembly that judges be elected annually but not in two consecutive years. He next carried out a thorough investigation of public accounts and peculations, which enabled him to stabilise the public expenses, recover substantial embezzled funds, and cancel the personal tax measure. There may even have been enough funds recouped to pay for the urban building project of the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s southern slope, which dates to just about this time (Chapter VI). He could not settle the dispute with Masinissa, though.88 How the reforms were applied in detail is not recorded, for Livy (our sole source) prefers to focus on how Hannibal was driven into exile. Even earlier his enemies had used their contacts with leading Romans to accuse him of intriguing with Rome’s latest opponent, Antiochus III the Seleucid ‘great king’ of the east. When the Romans – against Scipio’s urging – sent over envoys in 195, supposedly to settle the quarrel with Masinissa, Hannibal avoided arrest by taking ship to join the king, never to return. With his going, the revived Barcid faction lost its last taste of power.

PEACE AND PLENTY The reforms seem to have endured, all the same. The Barcid group continued to be influential for some years: Hannibal sent a Tyrian friend, Aristo, to consult them in 193 in hopes – which proved unsuccessful – of securing his return. The ‘judges’ faction seems never to have regained its monopoly, though very likely its members pursued politics under other colours, as perhaps did pro-Barcid Carthaginians. Nothing is recorded of who held office or influence over the next forty years but, whoever they were at any given time, they always showed submissive respect towards Rome as that state advanced to dominate the entire Mediterranean. Not only were the indemnity instalments now paid without trouble but in 191, when Rome was at war with Antiochus, the Carthaginian authorities sent an offer to repay – at once – the remaining forty years’ worth, meaning 8000 talents or 24,000,000 denarii, equal perhaps to nearly two years of Rome’s average revenues in the early 2nd Century. In practice it might have been a strain to fulfil the offer, had the Romans accepted it. But coming from a state that, just half a decade earlier, had been in dire straits over paying a single instalment, it indicates the impressive fiscal progress that Carthage had 208

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made. The Romans preferred to keep the symbolic dependence of year-by-year payments, and they also paid for – rather than accept as a gift – large quantities of grain (perhaps 800,000 bushels) and barley (500,000) at the same time. These suggest Carthage’s and Libya’s agricultural recovery too. Other offers of foodstuffs are reported in later decades, while Polybius’ glowing eyewitness description has already been quoted on how prosperous the countryside was in his time (Chapter V). Trade seems to have been busy, too. Besides Plautus’ comically versatile merchant Hanno the ‘Poenulus’ in the 190s, pottery vessels and figurines identified as Carthaginian-made occur at plentiful sites along western Mediterranean shores as late as the mid-2nd Century. At Carthage in turn, Campanian-made pottery products (bowls and dishes, for instance) were imported at a steadily growing rate from the early years of the century until 149. Second-Century Carthaginian and Numidian coins have been discovered in the Balkans; while a late-era Carthaginian coin found in the Azores may suggest that a Carthaginian – or Gaditane? – trader sailed even that far (of course this is no proof of regular trade). As noted earlier, archaeological work on Carthage’s circular port has turned up very few items datable before the mid-2nd Century; but rather than showing that she was now rebuilding a navy and so breaking the peace terms, this suggests that the port had substantial work done on it then. The likeliest reason for the overhaul would be that merchant shipping had outgrown the capacity of the outer commercial port. The reported claim by Roman envoys to Carthage in 153, that they had seen quantities of wood stored for building a war fleet, may misrepresent this project; similarly Masinissa’s son Gulussa’s allegation to the Roman senate in 151 that the Carthaginians were evilly scheming a fleet – a claim he had already wrongly made over twenty years earlier. The senate, it is worth noting, treated all these assertions with remarkable sang-froid, probably aware that there were no such plans. One dissident aspect of the picture is the monetary quality of Carthaginian coinage, which had not been very high for a long time but grew worse after 201 (Illustration 24j). This needs a cautious appraisal. By itself it might seem to show economic decline, but it is not a compulsory explanation. Carthage’s coins had been struck primarily to pay mercenary troops or subsidise allies in war. After 201 neither existed. At Carthage and in Libya the other, traditional means of exchange – weighed pieces of precious metal, barter, and even foreign coins – should have continued. Masinissa struck coins, 209

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too, but his kingdom’s economy did not use or need them as a necessary engine for development. It was in this last period that the city’s population, according to Strabo, numbered 700,000. So great a throng could never have lived within the walls, while Megara was mostly a garden suburb, but Strabo may have mistaken a credible figure representing both city and chora as applying to just the city (or expressed himself badly). Where he found the number he does not say, but it would seem most likely to be from a census of citizens and resident Libyphoenicians, for Libyphoenician cities shared some political rights with Carthage (Chapter IV). If so, the physical city’s inhabitants, excluding slaves but counting in resident Libyphoenicians and Libyans, may be estimated at around 200,000 or a little more – for they had to fit into two or at most three hundred hectares, the built-up ‘New City’ area of Megara included. Adult male Carthaginians, who alone could vote, hold office, or serve in war, would probably not number above 180,000 in city and chora together. The Libyphoenician cities and the Libyan peoples must have had a much larger population all told – up to two or three million – but not even an ancient guess survives. Carthage continued to be a cosmopolitan centre, open to comers from around the Mediterranean. Numidia was a close social and cultural neighbour. Masinissa had been educated there before 218, while a niece of Hannibal’s, probably during the war, had married an elderly uncle of his (and so briefly became queen of the Massyli). One of Masinissa’s daughters in turn married a Carthaginian sometime in the 190s or 180s, no doubt an eminent citizen: they had a son Hasdrubal who was to be elected a general in 149. By the 150s he was a member of the faction that vigorously supported good relations with the king at whatever cost. Other Numidians too had Carthaginian connections. For instance, two high-ranking Numidian officers chose to desert to Carthage in the war between the two states in 150 (Appian names them Hagasis and Subas). Still later, in 148 during the Roman siege when the city’s prospects were already dimming, so did another lord named Bithyas (was this the Phoenician name Bitias or Pdy ?). In 149 there were Italians residing in the city, no doubt mostly merchants. Leading Carthaginians continued to have social contacts with their Roman opposite numbers, too. They used these to whip up suspicions at Rome against Hannibal in the 190s, as we have seen. Four decades on, one of the best commanders in the Third Punic War was a dashing cavalryman named Himilco, always 210

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called by his nickname Phameas (a Greek version of Pumay?) who – like Hannibal’s officer Carthalo the ancestral guest-friend of Fabius’ family – had a family friendship first formed with Scipio Africanus’ father nearly a century before. In the end Phameas too went over to the besieging Romans, whose most vigorous officer was Africanus’ grandson Scipio Aemilianus. Among Romans of the time, one Decimus Iunius Silanus had so complete a grasp of the Punic language that he was put in charge of translating Mago’s agricultural encyclopaedia after 146; he too surely had close Carthaginian contacts. Dealings with the Greek world remained strong. In Hannibal’s lifetime (he died in Bithynia in 183) there appeared the histories of Philinus on the First Punic War, and Silenus’ and Sosylus’ on the Second. Hannibal’s own war memoir, inscribed in Punic and Greek in the temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium in Italy, has been mentioned too, and his pamphlet twenty years later about improper Roman activities in Asia Minor. Again as noted earlier, by the middle years of the century there was enough interest in Greek philosophy at Carthage to enable a young thinker named Hasdrubal to give Platonist lecture courses in his own language.

CARTHAGE AND NUMIDIA Carthage’s gifts and offers to Rome, as well as her instant decree of exile against Hannibal after he sailed away and the Roman envoys denounced him, showed how well the authorities realised that the world had changed. Between 200 when the Romans went to war again with Philip V and humbled him, and 188 when they imposed peace on the beaten Great King in the east, meanwhile strengthening their hold over southern and eastern Spain, Carthage could only watch as her former foes imposed an entirely unprecedented hegemony across the Mediterranean’s countless states and peoples. The eastern kingdoms, once-fractious successors to Alexander’s empire, now performed all their circumscribed actions under a thoughtful, if sometimes uninterested, Roman gaze. The middling and minor eastern states – such as Athens, Sparta, the Aetolian and Achaean leagues, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Hannibal’s last refuge Bithynia – treated Rome frankly as their new hegemonial lord. Nearer home, Carthage’s ancient rival and sometime equal Syracuse was a tribute-paying component of the Roman province of Sicily. Worst of all from the Carthaginians’ point of view, Numidia was 211

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now a single kingdom under the ambitious, wily and ostentatiously Rome-friendly Masinissa. Masinissa was determined to make his kingdom a state to be reckoned with. He encouraged economic life, with great benefit to his revenues, made his capital Cirta an impressive and populous city, and gave his royal court (if nowhere else) a solid veneer of Greek as well as Carthaginian culture. One son, Mastanabal, is commemorated in an inscription at Athens as taking part in sacred chariot races, another – the king’s eventual successor Micipsa – as a student of philosophy. Maybe he attended some of Hasdrubal Cleitomachus’ early lectures. Masinissa predictably eyed Carthage’s prosperous Libyan hinterland with interest. He could argue that because the peace of 201 allowed him to recover ancestral lands, he was entitled to parts of Libya, for the region or much of it must have belonged to his (very distant) ancestors. His dispute with Carthage in the 190s was over territory, though our information is confused and contradictory. Livy offers implausible details: a Numidian rebel named Aphther fleeing through Emporia, Masinissa later attacking the same region. Polybius more convincingly dates these to the 160s. Whatever the dispute was, it fizzled out after Scipio led an embassy in 193 to mediate. Appian, not always a reliable authority, has the quarrel ended by a treaty which – he writes – ceded territories to the king but also established unbroken peace for fifty years, all of which looks exaggerated if not made up. In 182 Livy reports a new dispute, over unnamed territory, supposedly leading to a fierce military clash; but in reality Carthage was forbidden to make war unless Rome permitted, and the senate’s reportedly tepid reaction to the affair gives this episode too the suspicious look of later invention or (at best) gross exaggeration. Then Livy reports a third occurring in 174–172 and supposedly costing Carthage seventy towns and forts: so he has their envoys complain at Rome. If Masinissa did carry out such a land grab, he may have been forced by the Romans to hand it back, for Appian has him seize the Thusca region with its ‘fifty towns’ – a description which sounds similar – only in 153 or 152, a period for which Appian’s chief source seems to have been Polybius. It is rather likelier that the earlier episode is again an overblown exaggeration, involving details borrowed from the events of 153–152. But during the 160s Carthage lost the entire Emporia region in a royal grab which the Roman senate condoned. It looks as though the ageing king, now in his seventies, at last decided on a frankly expansionist programme. Maybe the barely-known rebellion (and escape to Cyrene) of Aphther a few years before had seriously hurt his 212

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resources and prestige. Some years before 162 he invaded and took over Emporia’s open country but could not capture the towns (Lepcis Magna and its sisters). When the dispute went before the Roman senate, however, he was awarded them as well – even though it is hard to see how he could have a genuine ancestral claim – with the Carthaginian envoys’ counter-arguments failing utterly. Carthage had to hand over not only Emporia but also 500 talents – supposedly the revenue which the king should have received from the towns since his original invasion. His incursions nine or ten years later took away a huge slice of her western lands, if Appian’s report is accurate. Both the pagus of Thusca and the Great Plains region further north, around Bulla and the upper Bagradas, were seized probably in 152. The Theveste region, too, must have gone now if not earlier. Geographically and ethnically these regions perhaps better fitted a claim that they had once been Massylian, or at any rate Numidian. These thefts pushed Carthage’s Libyan territories back to where they had been three hundred years before, and perhaps halved her agricultural and tax resources. Her reaction was drastic, and fatal.

POLITICS AT HOME AND WAR WITH MASINISSA The course of events in the 150s is not at all clear, for the chief accounts are in an epitome of Livy’s lost books and the idiosyncratic history by Appian. Appian writes of three political factions at Carthage: a pro-Roman one led by ‘Hanno the Great’; a pro-Masinissa faction led by one Hannibal nicknamed ‘Starling’; the third a ‘democratic’ one, with Hamilcar ‘the Samnite’ and Carthalo at its head. These factions, plausible at first sight, look less so when scrutinised. How a pro-Roman faction would differ from the Masinissafriendly one in practice is not clear, for by the 150s Rome’s attitude had become fairly pro-Masinissa. If the Masinissa faction simply urged complying with his demands, it cannot have been too popular, for the demands seemed endless. Nor is it obvious why a ‘democratic’ faction should be at odds with either of the others; the issue of popular rule was internal, not one of attitudes to foreign states.89 The true basis of the mid-century factions was probably much the same as in the past: allegiances to powerful individuals through kinship or other ties. It is true that Hannibal Starling’s group were seen as favouring Masinissa, for after the king’s new success forty of them 213

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were exiled by the ‘democrats’, who had used the crisis to win the political upper hand – and the exiles fled to Cirta. Meanwhile Hamilcar the Samnite’s and Carthalo’s supposed people’s-rule platform may be simply a Greek view of the popular support which they earned by urging resistance to Numidia. As for the ‘Roman’ faction and this latest ‘Hanno the Great’, they played no recorded part in events and quite possibly are a mistaken hangover in Appian. Neither Carthage’s appeals to Rome about previous encroachments, nor a series of Roman embassies during the 150s, reversed Masinissa’s various hauls. She did not appeal again after losing her western territories, but Masinissa’s son Gulussa told the Romans that she was preparing both military and naval forces: a fairly obvious effort at arousing Roman hostility. The senate was not that interested (though the Carthaginians were indeed readying troops), since it took no action except perhaps to authorise yet another embassy. Livy’s epitome has the senate vote for war unless the Carthaginians undid the alleged preparations: an unconvincing claim, for no fleet existed nor did war follow when Carthage went on to use the new army. Early in 150 Masinissa besieged another Carthaginian town, ‘Horoscopa’ (perhaps Thubursicu near Thugga). The Carthaginians sent out the new army under one of the ‘democrat’ faction, Hasdrubal, but after a chequered campaign his force was trapped by the ninetyyear-old warrior king, forced to surrender, and then mostly massacred – events which recall Hamilcar Barca’s dealings with the rebels at ‘the Saw’ in 238. Scipio Africanus’ grandson, Scipio Aemilianus, had been visiting the king and had offered to broker a compromise peace, but Hasdrubal had unwisely refused its terms. Whether a newly-arrived Roman embassy now arranged a truce is not known, but hostilities seem to have ended. Hasdrubal, still active, was condemned to death by the Carthaginians along with Carthalo and perhaps others in their faction like Hamilcar – though in fact the general lived to fight another day. The Carthaginians, however, found themselves in deadly danger. The Roman envoys went home to report that the peace of 201 had been broken, with the Carthaginians at war without Rome’s permission and against Rome’s ally.

THE OUTBREAK OF THE THIRD PUNIC WAR Polybius, in a surviving excerpt, and Appian assert that Rome had decided on war long before declaring it in 149. Livy’s epitome is 214

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more nuanced: it reports Cato the Censor constantly demanding a pre-emptive war from 152 on because he had observed Carthage’s revival, the equally eminent Scipio Nasica (a cousin of Aemilianus) equally constantly urging restraint, and the Romans coming to no decision as a result. Whether or not to engage in a third Punic war was as debated at Rome as the previous two had been. The pace of events is not fully clear. Carthage now sent two embassies to Rome, one after the other, essentially to ask forgiveness and avert war. The first was told enigmatically that it would depend on ‘if the Carthaginians give satisfaction to the Romans’. The ensuing embassy received the still more delphic reply that ‘the Carthaginians knew very well’ what this meant. Was this a cat-and-mouse game to keep them from readying their defences? But the defences were already in excellent shape, with impressive stocks of military equipment available, as the recent Roman envoys could have reported. The opaque responses may hint that the debate over how to deal with the situation in North Africa had still not ended. All the same, Cato and his supporters were close to success. Now unexpectedly Utica, Carthage’s oldest sister colony, her loyal ally during Hannibal’s war, declared itself in Rome’s power. Utica not only had a safe harbour within a day’s sail of Carthage but, more important, was a signal that Carthage might lose the support of the other Libyphoenicians. With Masinissa already close to the city, the prospects of Rome forcing her immediate capitulation – and then unimpededly plundering her accumulated wealth – surely looked excellent, provided that impressive forces were sent. In winter 150–149 the Romans formally declared war. Why they wanted war, not just a capitulation, was debated at the time and has been ever since. Polybius in another surviving excerpt sets out different views that he found in Greece: some approved the war because of the violated treaty of 201, or because Carthage was Rome’s inveterate enemy; others ascribed it to Roman duplicity, arrogance and greed. Modern judgements are still more divided. That the Romans feared Carthage is no longer very widely believed, for after nearly half a century of being consistently submissive to Rome, as well as disarmed, she was utterly beaten by a Numidian army. Moreover the Romans expected a fairly easy victory or even a prompt surrender. Another once-influential view saw Rome acting to prevent Masinissa from mastering all North Africa as well as Carthage’s maritime potential. Masinissa himself certainly seems to have been disappointed at their intervention. This explanation looks unlikely, all the same – the obvious way to keep Carthage out of the 215

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king’s hands would have been to ally with her against him, not to attack her (and expect him to help). Other suggested reasons are greed both for Carthage’s commercial advantages and more immediately for the huge plunder from a sack; and direct aggressiveness, since military successes supposedly were vital to a leading Roman’s success in politics. An economic motive is hard to judge; yet, if Carthage’s excellent site and hinterland were such objects of desire, it is strange that the Romans left the city a deserted wreck for a hundred years and gave privileges (notably tax-free status) to the towns like Utica and Hadrumetum which had defected to them during the war. A wish for military glory perhaps did lend impetus – but the strongest advocate for war was the eightyfour-year-old Cato, whose military career was long over; while its strongest opponent Scipio Nasica, if in no need of glory himself, had a son and a nephew who would surely have welcomed it (and did serve in the expedition). Again, the consuls who commanded the invasion of Africa in 149, Manilius and Marcius Censorinus, were neither of them particularly distinguished – surprising choices when many other Romans of grander status should have been fighting for the opportunity to crush the homeland of Hannibal. The Romans’ motives were no doubt varied. The attractions of easy Carthaginian booty (which did draw in plenty of ordinary recruits), a push by perhaps some participants to earn war -renown, and a vengeful bitterness among those like Cato who remembered Hannibal’s invasion may all have influenced Romans for war. Just conceivably some leaders may have worried, too, that the nonagenarian Masinissa would leave behind a fragile kingdom which Carthage would dominate, thereby becoming a real danger to Rome’s Mediterranean dominance. On the surviving information, all the same, the full reasons for the war will always remain elusive.

THE THIRD PUNIC WAR The consuls of 149 had no problem in assembling large forces because, unlike the wars then being waged in Spain, this one was expected to be short, easy and profitable. The armament that crossed to Sicily in the spring is reported as having 80,000 foot and 4000 horse, with 50 quinqueremes and 100 smaller warships. Another desperate embassy from Carthage, arriving meanwhile at Rome with full powers to negotiate, could only match Utica by offering unconditional surrender. The Roman concept (deditio in fidem) was much 216

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like the one applied to Germany and Japan in 1945. The surrendering side put itself absolutely into the other’s power and must submit to whatever the victors imposed. The Carthaginians certainly knew this standard Roman practice, nor had their own habits been very different in their Greek Sicilian wars. Now the Romans did start a cat-and-mouse game. The consuls in Sicily first required three hundred children of the city’s leading families to be handed over to them as hostages. They then sailed over to Utica in full strength, where the Carthaginians at their demand delivered all their military stores – no fewer than 200,000 sets of armour, 2000 pieces of artillery, and other weapons. Then came a last demand: the citizens must leave their city and settle 80 stadia, about 16 kilometres, inland. The figure was not realistic, for it would have placed a quarter of a million Carthaginians along the difficult range of heights stretching from Tunes to the Bagradas. It really meant any distance that the Romans would judge convenient, leaving the city to be plundered and demolished. Carthage exploded with anger and outrage, vividly recorded by Appian. The unfortunate envoys who came back to report the ultimatum were lynched by furious crowds, as were senators who had urged appeasement. Resident Italians were manhandled or killed. On the same day, the adirim declared war, freed the slaves in the city, and sent an appeal for aid to the recently-condemned Hasdrubal – now commanding 30,000 troops in the countryside and probably shadowing Masinissa. The other Hasdrubal, Masinissa’s grandson, was elected general too and took command in the city. Temples and squares became ad hoc weapons workshops; women cut off their hair to make cords for catapults. The Romans meanwhile marched down from Utica to open the siege. Masinissa, it seems, retired to Cirta to watch. The siege of Carthage lasted three years. Her 23 Roman miles (34 kilometres) of walls – including the triple line across the flat isthmus outside Megara – defeated repeated assaults from the isthmus, the sea and the lakeshore. The citizens within the walls were not completely alone. The forgiven Hasdrubal operated in the countryside with his army, while Hippacra, Nepheris and Clupea-Aspis near Cape Bon held out too. According to Appian, the Romans were supported locally only by Utica and (on the east coast) Hadrumetum, Leptis, Thapsus and Acholla. Hasdrubal was able to send supplies in to the besieged, and until the summer of 147 foreign merchants could still reach the city despite the Roman blockade. Parts of Megara itself were probably cultivated for food. 217

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In 149 and 148 the Carthaginians kept the besiegers at bay. Attacks on the walls were met by counter-attacks; early on, much of the Roman fleet was set ablaze by fire-ships, and Censorinus’ troops on the lakeshore were hit by an epidemic in the hot summer. Hasdrubal moved to Nepheris near the coast and could not be dislodged. Even after Himilco Phameas changed sides following a conversation with his friend Scipio Aemilianus, now an officer with the army, Carthage’s situation largely held firm. Piso, the consul in command in 148, spent that summer failing to capture Hippacra, while on Masinissa’s death the Numidian lord Bithyas with his 800 horsemen joined Hasdrubal’s army. Carthaginian spokesmen moved around Libya encouraging resistance. By now discipline in the besieging army was badly deteriorating due to setbacks and poor leadership. What had promised to be a straightforward and profitable expedition was now a war as strenuous, expensive and longlasting as those in Spain. The situation began, nevertheless, to worsen for the Carthaginians. The army at Nepheris could not seriously harass Carthage’s besiegers. Sometime in 148 its general Hasdrubal, now in the city and suspicious or merely jealous of his namesake the grandson of Masinissa, convinced the Carthaginians that this general – despite his vigorous leadership – was a traitor. Masinissa’s grandson was bludgeoned to death by his fellow citizens. More ominously still, Scipio’s exploits during the siege gained him election as consul for 147 and the command in Africa. With him, incidentally, he brought his friend Polybius the historian. Scipio reinvigorated the army and the siege. New fortified camps on the isthmus cut all land communications. He frightened Hasdrubal into abandoning Megara, built a mole out into the sea below the southern city wall to block off the Cothon – the artificial ports – and seized the ‘Falbe quadrilateral’. A small Carthaginian fleet, built by the citizens from leftover materials in the circular port and launched through a channel secretly dug through to the sea alongside, was poorly led and suffered defeat. In the city Hasdrubal became virtual tyrant, murderously intolerant of criticism and reportedly living in luxury with his troops while the citizens starved. Deaths and desertions mounted dramatically. During the winter, Scipio attacked and destroyed the army at Nepheris under its Greek (or Greek-named) commander Diogenes and captured Nepheris itself, with up to 70,000 enemy troops and civilians reportedly killed and 10,000 taken. All of Libya now capitulated, including the Libyphoenician loyalists such as Hippacra. 218

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No hope remained for Carthage. In spring 146 the Romans launched the final assault. Attacking first through the naval port, then over the lakeshore wall, they moved past the ‘tophet’ and Cothon to reach the agora with its surrounding public buildings, like the senate house and the golden – and instantly looted – temple of ‘Apollo’ (Reshef). Byrsa’s citadel, the last refuge of thousands of surviving citizens, was connected to the agora by three streets lined with six-storey apartment houses where many people were still trapped. Each had to be taken against bitter hand-to-hand resistance on every level: assault troops reaching the upper floors used planks to fight their way across to another while more fighting raged on the ground far below – a struggle recalling the horrors of Dionysius’ capture of Motya. Once his men reached the walls of Byrsa, Scipio had all the houses along these streets destroyed to clear access. Next day, the seventh since the assault began, Byrsa capitulated. The last Carthaginians, fifty thousand men, women and children, came out to be enslaved. Hasdrubal and 900 Roman deserters held out in the temple of Eshmun until the general emerged, alone, to surrender to Scipio. In a Dantesque scene the deserters set the temple on fire and hurled curses on him before perishing in the flames. So did his own wife, who then slew their two small sons and threw both them and herself into the inferno. Scipio put the city to the torch and pronounced a solemn curse on any who might seek to dwell there. Polybius saw him weeping as he watched Carthage’s funeral pyre: the general explained that he was thinking that one day this could happen to Rome.90

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The Romans annexed Carthage’s remaining territory as the province ‘Africa’, granting tax freedom and other privileges to Utica and the other towns which had deserted her, while the rest paid taxes and were subject to the Roman governor. Not all Carthaginians perished or became slaves: many had fled to Numidia during the war, some had deserted to the Romans, and the three hundred child hostages (we may hope) lived out their lives. They may have been among the survivors for whom Hasdrubal-Cleitomachus in Athens wrote his work of consolation. The site of Carthage itself remained desolate – apart from a failed effort to create a Roman colony alongside it twenty-five years later – until Rome’s new despots Caesar and then Augustus ignored Scipio’s curse to found a city which, like the rest of North Africa, would flourish far into the future. (They did not, incidentally, need to scrape away any salt: it was not Scipio in 146 bc but a historian in 1928 who scattered that over the ruins.) Masinissa’s expanded kingdom continued to thrive too, even after being annexed by Caesar in 46 bc. Carthage’s language, civilisation and religion did not disappear. We have seen St Augustine five and a half centuries later reporting that the country folk around Hippo Regius still spoke Punic at home; and when asked who they were, they replied ‘Chanani’ – Kn’nm. The cities and towns of Libya and Numidia for centuries used Punic on the hundreds or thousands of inscriptions in their temples and tombs, public buildings, and artworks. Baal Hammon was Latinised as Saturn, Tanit as Juno Caelestis; and with agriculture growing ever more productive, the cult of Demeter – Ceres in Latin – and Kore flourished as ‘the two Cereres’. Local grandees, even in Africa provincia, kept their Carthaginian names until Augustus’ day, as shown in the patronage inscription of 12 bc linking the governor of the province (the emperor Nero’s grandfather) with 220

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pagus Gurzensis near Hadrumetum through the pagus’ magistrates Hamilcar, Bomilcar and Muttunbal. Carthage made lasting impact on the ancient Mediterranean, practical, cultural and political. The practical included Mago’s farming encyclopaedia and a range of everyday items and techniques: the mosaic decoration of patterned terracotta pieces called pavimentum Punicum, the plostellum Punicum threshing-cart, pomegranates which the Romans called mala Punica (‘Punic apples’), and the fish-sauce called garum which had helped Carthage grow rich and became an obsession for the Romans. Culturally her influence spread not only through Libya and Numidia but to Sardinia, Sicily and southern Spain, promoting urban life in towns both old and newly-founded. Her political impact included creating a system of hegemony over several different lands, few under direct rule from the city (only perhaps her chora was) but still producing the benefits of rule: taxes, regulated or monopolistic trade, centres where citizens could settle, foodstuffs, and military and naval supplies and personnel. Moreover, the Carthaginians evolved a republican political system which in subtlety and openness matched any Greek state, not to mention Rome. They showed that such systems were not a monopoly of those peoples. Their own could attract tempered praise from a serious analyst like Aristotle – as well as a backhanded compliment in Polybius’ suggestion that it had been better (because not so democratic) before Hannibal’s war. After 146 bc Romans and Greeks had harsh things to say about the Carthaginians. Plutarch’s is the classic example, anachronistically writing of them two and a half centuries later in the present tense: the character of the Carthaginian people … is bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to its decisions, disagreeable and hard in its attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. He contrasts them with the tolerant and lighthearted Athenians of old, naturally ignoring Athenian actions like the savagery at Melos, their judicial murder of Socrates, and their fawning over successive Hellenistic monarchs. Diodorus, Livy and later writers delight in telling of Carthaginian cruelty, treachery and irreligion, even though their own narratives contradict the claims. Livy insists on 221

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Hannibal’s viciousness and atheism, just after reporting his boyhood oath on the altar of ‘Jupiter’ and not long before describing how he worshipped at Gades’ temple of Melqart and later dreamt of being divinely guided to Italy. Of course, as Carthage receded into memory while Rome’s devious and harsh behaviour towards her from 150 to 146 caused discomfort to later generations, exaggerations and plain fictions could flourish. Such moralising accusations are much less in evidence before 146, when Greeks and Romans from Herodotus to Plautus and Polybius actually knew the Carthaginians. Complaints then were political and military: their endemic bribery for office (noted by Aristotle), reliance on mercenaries (as by Polybius, ignoring the roles of Libyan recruits and often of citizen soldiers), or the supposed menace of Carthage, along with the Campanians, to the Sicilian Greek way of life (thus the author of a 4th-Century essay once ascribed to Plato). Criticisms by one society of how another ran its affairs were common, then as now. In the same centuries Greeks saw great faults in the Persians, not to mention in other Greeks, while the increasingly Greek-influenced Romans grew more and more contemptuous of the Greeks they actually dealt with. Cato the Censor was notorious for this, and at the same time it is worth noting that he ranked Hamilcar Barca alongside three historic Greeks – Themistocles, Pericles, Epaminondas – and the Roman general Manius Curius Dentatus as leaders superior to any king.91 Carthage was a vigorous cultural crossroads. Beginning as a Phoenician settlement, she soon formed close links with her Libyan neighbours and kept them after making the Libyans her subjects. From the start, too, Carthaginians traded and intermarried with Greeks, perhaps also with Egyptians and other Mediterranean peoples. They added and adapted Libyan, Egyptian and Greek art forms and religious practices to their own, developing a lively civilisation which they then carried to other western lands. The accusation, still sometimes made, that Carthaginian civilisation was a commercially tainted dead-end is essentially an offshoot of the embarrassed, and maybe guilt-ridden, criticisms by Greeks and Romans after 146. By the time they were destroyed as a state and people, the Carthaginians had a growing literature, strong if eclectic artistic and architectural traditions, advanced economic skills, and were kin to almost every other Mediterranean people. Had they and not the Romans become masters of the Mediterranean world, taking in the vast energies of Italy, the far western lands and the Hellenistic world, the civilisation that resulted 222

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would have spoken Punic and Greek rather than Latin and Greek, but would certainly have made an equally momentous contribution to history.

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N O T ES

ABBREVIATIONS Appian, Lib. Aristotle, Pol. CIS DCPP FGrH HAAN HaP ILS KAI Kl P Pliny, NH Pol. 1. 2.

3.

4.

Appian, Libyca Aristotle, Politics Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (F. Jacoby et al., eds.) Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord (Gsell) Hannibal ad Portas (Peters) Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae Kanäanische und Aramäische Inschriften (Donner and Röllig) Der Kleine Pauly Pliny the Elder, Natural History Polybius, Histories

Canaans (Kn’nm): St Augustine, Letter to the Romans 13. Ponim (alternatively Ponnim): Krahmalkov (2000), 11. Sidon and Tyre: Herodotus 2.45; Strabo 16.2.22–4; Justin 18.3.5; Aubet (2001), 20–1, 29; Markoe (2000), 33. Sidon’s area: Markoe (op. cit.), 68, 199. Tyrian ‘skyscrapers’: Strabo 16.2.23, C757. Old Testament denunciations: Aubet (op. cit.), 119–26, and her Appendix II. Cassiterides: Note 35. Ithobaal I: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.317, 9.138; Aubet (2001), 46; DCPP 233 s.v. Ittobal 2. Governor or vice-regent (soken) of the ‘New City’ of Citium: Manfredi (2003), 341–2. Tyrian annals, Menander of Ephesus: Josephus, Against Apion 1.116–27. Nora and its stele: Pausanias 10.17.5; Aubet (2001), 207; Lipiĥski (2004), 234–47. Philistus on Carthage’s foundation: FGrH 566 F47; cf. Euripides, Trojan Women 220–1. Appian on ‘Zorus’ and ‘Carchedon’: Lib. 1.1.

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NOTES

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

Foundation-date for Utica: Pliny, NH 16.216; Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mirabilium Auscultationibus (Observations of Marvels) 134; Velleius Paterculus, 1.2.1 and 3, gives 1103 bc for Gades. Timaeus’ date for Carthage and Rome: Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 1.74.1. Archaeological evidence: e.g. F. Rakob in Lepelley and Lancel (1990), 31–43; Aubet (2001), 212–26; Docter (2002–3). Trogus’ foundation story: Justin 18.4.3–6.10. Zakarbaal high priest of ‘Jupiter’: Justin 18.5.2; Virgil Aeneid 1.446 makes him priest of ‘Juno’, which some moderns prefer – e.g. Alvar and Wagner (1985). Earliest houses and animal bones: Docter et al. in Bartolini and Delpino (2005); opposed by M. Botto, ibid., 579–627. ‘Byrsa’: different interpretations by E. Lipiĥski in Lepelley and Lancel (1990), 126–9; in Itineraria Phoenicia, 481–4; Aubet (2001), 216. Elissa ‘Theiosso’: Timaeus, FGrH 566 F82. Phoenician ’lt: Krahmalkov (2000), 56–7. Yadomilk’s pendant: Krahmalkov (1981), in DCPP, 394 s.v. Pgmlyn, and in Kaltner and McKenzie (2002), 213–14; illustr. in HaP, 269 no. 4. Bitias: Livy in Servius’ commentary on Aen. 1.738; Krahmalkov (op. cit.), 190–1. Site and size of early Carthage: Lancel (1995) 41–5; F. Rakob in Vegas (1998), 15–46; Aubet (2001), 218–19; Docter (2002–3), with remarks too on Carthaginian iron-smelting. Water supply: Fantar (1993), 1.138–41. Carthaginians sent out to Libyan countryside: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1273b; 6.1320b. Libyphoenicians: Diodorus 17.113.3, 20.55.4; Livy 21.22.3; H. Ben Younès in Krings (1995), 820; Manfredi (2003), 397–404. Bodmilqart son of Istanis: M. H. Fantar in Amadasi Guzzo et al. (2002), 230. Thucydides 6.2 on Phoenicians and Greeks in Sicily. El-Haouaria quarries: DCPP 149; Lipiĥski (2004), 372. No obvious Carthaginian presence in hinterland before 400: Lund (1988), 50–4; cf. Greene and Kehoe (1995),. Full citizens and lesser ones: thus Fantar (1993) 1.177–83. Safot (and others) as freedmen ‘thanks to’ former master: so Huss (1985), 497–8; see below, Note 48. Hannobaal and Esmunhalos: Krahmalkov (2000), 200. Kyrious Karchedonious: Pol. 7.9.5; Huss (1985), 467. Citizens and artisans at New Carthage: Pol. 10.17.6–9; 10.17.15; Gsell, HAAN, 2.227–9. Associations, communal meals: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1272b; Ameling (1993) 164–8, 180–1. Mzrͥ: Krahmalkov (2000), 274 (translating mzrͥ-reference). Marseilles Tariff: text in KAI no. 69; illustration in HaP, 320–1. Isocrates’ praise, Nicocles 24; at Carthage ‘tyranny’ had given place to aristocracy, Aristotle, Pol. 3.1316a. Sufetes: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1272b–73a (‘kings’); Plato, Laws 674a–b; Nepos, Hannibal 7.4; Livy 30.7.5, 34.61.15 (sufetes judging cases in

225

NOTES

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

193), cf. 28.37.2 (at Gades, 206); Festus, De Verborum Significatu, 404 s.v. ‘sufes’; Huss (1985), 458–61. Four sufetes: Cato, Fragmenta incerta 32 (ed. Jordan: from Festus, 154); cf. W. Huss, Le Muséon 90 (1977), 427–33. ‘The 120th year’: Krahmalkov (2000), 478. Manfredi (2003), 379, interprets the inscription as ‘the twentieth year’ – as does Krahmalkov too in Kaltner and McKenzie (2002), 214. W. Huss sees no date at all: (1986), 437–42). Hamilcar ‘king’ in 480: Herodotus 7.165–7. Hannibal, Himilco and Mago in 409–383: Diodorus 13.43.5, 14.49.1 and 54.5, 15.15.2; below, Chapter VIII. Abdmilqart and Abd’rš, and two generals: Krahmalkov (2000), 440 s.v. rb VI. Baalay, ibid. Arishat: HaP, 95 no. 4. Pn ‘of the nation of Carthage’: Krahmalkov (2000), 434. ‘Iomilkos’ (Himilco) at Delos: Masson (1979). Carthage’s senate: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1273a; Carthage ‘democratically ruled’: Pol. 3.1316b. More democratic by Second Punic War: Pol. 6.51.3–8, disapprovingly. Pentarchies: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1273a (Loeb tr.), 1275b. Board of ten for sacred places and of thirty for taxes: Krahmalkov (2000), 400 s.v. ps (‘the thirty men who are in charge of the payments’); 404 s.v. p‘m 3; 477 s.v. špέ II. ‘Accountants’, mͥšbm: Huss (1985), 465; Krahmalkov (2000), 277–8. The rab (rb): Huss (1985), 464–5; Krahmalkov (2000), 439 s.v. rb IV (cf. 440, rb VI). Bribery, money-making, corruption in public life: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1273a–b; 3.1316b; Pol. 6.56.4. More than one office held simultaneously: Aristotle, Pol. 2.1273b. Generals: Politics 2.1273a. ‘Second’ general: Krahmalkov (2000), 441; also 473 (interpreting hšn’ as ‘second general’). Court of 104: Pol. 2.1272b–73a; Justin 19.2.5–6 (100 senators). Citizen assembly: Pol. 2.1273a, and cf. Note 19. Thugga’s voting ‘gates’, ILS 6797; Sznycer (1978), 583–4; Huss (1985), 551. Lepcis Magna: E. Acquaro (1998), 415. ‘Altars of the Philaeni’: Pol. 3.39.2; Sallust, Jugurtha 79; Strabo, 3.5.5 C171; 17.3.20 C836; Lancel (1995), 93–4. Ebusus: Diodorus 5.16.2–3; C. Gómez Bellard in Krings (1995), 762–75. ‘All belongs to the Carthaginians’: Pseudo-Scylax, Periplus 111; Lipiĥski (2004), ch. IX. Tribute of Lepcis c. 193: Livy 34.62.3. Xenophon on Carthage and Libyans: Memorabilia 2.1.10. Gems from African interior: Strabo 17.3.11 C830, 17.3.19 C835; Pliny, NH 37.92, 95–6, 104; Biffi (1999), 394–5. Mago the waterless traveller: Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2.44E; Geus (1994), 177–8. Pharusii: Strabo 17.3.7 C828.

226

NOTES

27. Pithecusan and Euboean pottery dating 775–750 at Carthage: Aubet (2001), 218. ‘A puinel from Carthage’ – mi puinel Karthazie ( )elps … na: F. W. von Hase in HaP, 72. 28. Phocaeans, Herodotus 1.165–6; Colaeus, 4.152. Pyrgi tablets: Lancel (1995), 84–6; Schmitz (1995); D. W. R. Ridgway in Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1282. Close Carthaginian–Etruscan trade links: Aristotle, Pol. 3.1280a (Loeb tr.). 29. First treaty with Rome: Pol. 3.22.4-–13; Scardigli (1991), 23–46; Huss (1985), 86–92; Ameling (1993), 130-–3, 141-–54; Bringmann (2001), dating it to 348/7. 30. Carthage in Sardinia: C. Tronchetti in Krings (1995), 712–42; P. Bernardini in HaP, 142–83. Battle of Alalia: Herodotus 1.166; Krings (1998), 93–160. Mago and his sons: Justin 19.1.1–2.1. 31. Carthaginian ‘conquest’ of Sicily: G. Falsone in Krings (1995), 674–97; A. Spanò Giammellaro in HaP, 184–92. Pentathlus: Diodorus 5.9; Pausanias 10.11.3–4; Krings (1995), 1–32. Dorieus in Sicily: Herodotus 5.43–48, 7.158; Diodorus 4.23.3; Pausanias 3.16.4-–5; Justin 19.1.9 (preposterously replacing Dorieus with Leonidas of Sparta). 32. Very early pottery from Spain: F. Rakob in Ennabli (1992), 31–33. Carthage’s supposed aid and treachery to Gades: Justin 44.5.2–3. 33. Carthaginians’ silent trading on Africa’s Atlantic coasts: Herodotus 4.196; cf. Picard (1961), 233. 34. Hanno’s Periplus: Pliny, NH 2.169; 5.8; 6.199–200; Demerliac and Meirat (1983); Geus (1994), 98–104; Lipiĥski (2004), 435–76. ‘Gorillas’: Lipiĥski in Geus and Zimmermann (2001), 79–85; K. Brodersen, ibid., 87–98. 35. Himilco’s voyage: Pliny, NH 2.169; Avienus, Ora Maritima 117–29, 380–9, 402–15. Cassiterides: Herodotus 3.115; Strabo 3.2.9 C147, 3.5.11 C175–6 (quoted), 3.5.11 C175–6 (ship-captain story); Pliny, NH 4.119, 7.197. 36. Carthage’s wealth and power: Thucydides 6.34.2; Diodorus 12.83.6; Pol. 18.35.9; Cicero, Republic 2.7. 37. Penteconters: O. Höckmann in HaP, 101–2. Carthaginian merchant ships: P. Bartoloni in Krings (1995), 282–8; Lancel (1995), 121–5; Höckmann (op. cit.), 96–9. Large-scale imports from Greece, especially Athens: J.-P. Morel in Lepelley and Lancel (1990), 67–99; Lancel in Hackens and Moucharte (1992), 269–81. Olive oil from Acragas: Diodorus 13.81.4–5. Wide-mouthed amphorae: Lancel (1995), 275–6. Tagomago and Marsala wrecks: M. E. Aubet Semmler in HaP, 325–6. 38. Hanno in Plautus’ Poenulus: lines 930–49 and various interjections between 994 and 1027; S. Faller (2004). Carthaginian cargoes at Rome: Palmer (1997), 31–52.

227

NOTES

39. Greeks at Carthage in 396: Diodorus 14.77.5. Italians there in 149: Appian, Lib. 92.433–4; Zonaras 9.26. Cirta’s Hanno the gugga (ͥn’ hgg‘ ): Krahmalkov (2000), 135. Nobas son of Axioubos: Rhodes and Osborne (2007) 216–18, no. 43. Aris’ and Mago’s amphorae: Lancel (1995), 275. 40. Carthage’s chora: Pol. 1.71.1. Citizen population in late 3rd Century: Hoyos (2003), 225. Diodorus quotation: 20.8.3–4 (Loeb tr.); cf. Picard and Picard (1968), 129. Roman loot from chora in 256: Pol. 1.29.7. Wealth of countryside around 150: Appian, Lib. 69.312; Pol. 12.3.1–5 (tr. E. S. Shuckburgh); Strabo 17.3.15 C833; cf. Biffi (1999), 406. 41. Mago, Hamilcar and Cassius Dionysius: Varro, de Re Rustica 1.1.10, 1.38.1, 2.1.27; Cicero, De Oratore 1.249; Columella, de Agricultura 1.1.13 and 18, 12.4.2; Pliny, NH 17.63, 18.22–3 (Mago translated by order of Roman senate), 18.35, 21.110–12. 42. Some ordinary Carthaginians (from Krahmalkov (2000)): e.g. Abdmilqart, Ariso and Baalyaton, 325; Baalsamor and his son, 476 s.v. š‘r II; Halosbaal, 341; Mago the butcher, 201 s.v. έbͥ; ‘the craftsmen who made the female statues’, 198–9; Abdeshmun the seal-keeper, 200. ‘New Gate’ inscription: Fantar (1993), 1.114–15; Lancel (1995), 142–4. Hannobaal and Safot: Note 11 above. Hannibal of Miqne: Krahmalkov (op. cit.), 34. 43. Safot’s and Baalsillek’s stelae: Krahmalkov (2000), 34. Gry the fuller: ibid., 223 s.v. kbs. On the sense of bd see Huss (1985), 497–8; Fantar (1993) 1.183–4; Krahmalkov (2000), 84–5, 98. Inscriptions with š ΢dn listed in Huss (1985), 498 n. 26. 44. Roman and Italian slaves of Carthaginians: Zonaras 8.12 (in 256); Appian, Lib. 15.61 (in 204). Hanno the traitor and slaves: Justin 21.4. Regulus’ slave-haul: Pol. 1.29.7. Hasdrubal son of Gisco buys 5000 slaves for fleet: Appian, 9.35 (but not in Pol. or Livy). Great Libyan revolt 396 and slave recruits: Diodorus 14.77. 45. Artificial channel from lake of Tunis in 4th Century: L. Stager in Ennabli (1992), 72; Lancel, Carthage (1995), 182–9. 46. Alleged 5th-Century stagnation: Warmington (1964), 57–62; Picard (1968), 79–80, 111–15; Moscati (1968), 161–2. No stagnation: Morel in Lepelley and Lancel (1990), 78–84; Lancel in Hackens and Moucharte (1992), 269–81. 47. Megara: Appian, Lib. 117.559 (Loeb tr.), 135.639. Land surveys: Green and Kehoe (see Note 10), 111–12. Bomilcar’s failed coup: Diodorus 20.43.1–44.6 (my tr.). 48. Temples: Lancel (1995), 212–15. Possible remnants of Eshmun’s, Fantar in HaP, 226; of early 2nd-Century temple near agora (?): Rakob in Vegas (1998), 28–31. Flat-roofed temples: e.g. Lancel (1995),

228

NOTES

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

313–14 (Thuburbo sculpture); Rakob (op. cit.), 30. Motya stele: Spanò Giammellaro in HaP, 186, with 195 no. 14. Demeter and Kore stele: S.-M. Cecchini and M. G. Amadasi Guzzo in Lepelley and Lancel (1990), 101–11; G. Bergamini in HaP, 234 no. 10. Dougga mausoleum: G. Hiesel in HaP, 63, 66. Sabratha mausoleum: Lancel (1995), 309–11. Henchir Jaouf mausoleum: Quinn (2003), 20, 23–4, 34. Mausoleum drawing, Clupea: Lancel (1995), 281. Jbel Mlezza paintings: ibid., 222–3. ‘Tower’ outside Megara in 147: Appian, Lib. 117.557. Archaic Carthaginian houses: Rindelaub and Schmidt (1996); T. Schäfer in HaP, 216–20. The ‘Hannibal quarter’: Lancel and Morel in Ennabli (1992), 43–68; Lancel (1995), 152–72. Villa at Cape Gammarth: ibid., 280. Agora in 308: Diodorus 20.44.3–5. In 146: Appian, Lib. 91.340 (with the senate-house), cf. Diodorus 32.6.4. Senate meetings in temple of ‘Aesculapius’: Livy 41.22.2, 42.24.3. Carthage’s outer walls: Appian, Lib. 95.449–51; Lancel (1995), 415–19. The ports: Lib. 96.452–5; ‘Cothon’, 127.605–8; cf. Strabo 17.3.14–15 C832–3; Picard and Picard (1961), 28–33, and (1983), 34–7; J. Debergh in Hackens and Moucharte (1992), 283–97; L. Stager in Ennabli (1992), 73–8; H. Hurst, ibid., 79–94; Lancel (1995), 172–88. Falbe’s quadrilateral: Appian, Lib. 123.582–3 (choma); Fantar (1993), 1.126–7; Lancel (1995), 179–80. Gods in Hannibal’s treaty-oath: Polybius 7.9.2–3 (my tr.); Picard (1967), 26–35; Walbank (1957 ff.), 2.46–52; Barré (1983); W. Huss in Bonnet et al. (1986), 223–38; Lancel (1995), 208–9; Barceló (2004), 145–6. Tanit at Carthage: Huss (1985), 513–16; Lancel (1995), 199–204; Lipiĥski in DCPP 438–9. Demeter and Kore: Diodorus 14.70.4, 76.4, 77.5. Hannabaal khnt š krw’: M. Le Glay, DCPP 128. Carthaginian deities with probable or possible Greek and Roman equivalents: Huss (1985), 521–5. ‘Awakener of the god’, and ‘scent of ‘štrny’ or ‘husband of ‘štrny’: Krahmalkov (2000), 309; DCPP s.v. Astronoe. Hanno sufete and awakener, and Y’zm great-grandson of Masinissa: Krahmalkov, ibid. Rooster images: Lancel (1995), 223–5; G. Maass-Lindemann in HaP, 263. Greeks and Romans on Carthaginian child-sacrifice: Cleitarchus, FGrH 137 F9; Diodorus 20.14.4–7 (in 310); Plutarch, de Superstitione 13; Curtius, Alexander 4.3.23; Tertullian, Apologeticus 9.2–4. Mazeus and his adult son: below, Note 65. Hamilcar’s disappearance in 480: Herodotus 7.167, claiming Carthaginian informants. Boy sacrificed in

229

NOTES

58.

59.

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

406, Diodorus 13.86.3; prisoners sacrificed in 307, 20.65.1–2. Silius Italicus’ tale: Punica 4.763–829. Carthage’s ‘tophet’: Lancel (1995), 227–56; Aubet (2001), 245–6; S. Ribichini in HaP, 247–56. Stele of priest with baby: HaP, 257. On child sacrifice: e.g. Gras et al. (1991); L. E. Stager in Ennabli (1992), 72–5; Schwartz (1993), 28–57, with forensic evidence; Fantar (1993), 2.300–3; Docter et al. (2001/2); Azize (2007); Shaw (2007), 12–18. mlk ’dm a sacrifice of ‘reddening’ or ‘rouging’: thus Azize (2007), 199–201; cf. N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed. (London and New York, Continuum: 2002), 186 and n. 44 (red ochre). Nicivibus inscription about Concessa: Azize (2007) 191, 195–6, 202. On infant mortality in Roman times (one in three or four): e.g. Hopkins (1983), 70–3, 225. ‘The minor kings of Africa’: Pliny, NH 18.22–3. Hiempsal’s ‘Punic books’: Sallust, Jugurtha 17.7; Morstein-Marx (2001). St Augustine on ‘Punic wisdom’: Letters 17.2. Hidden sacred books: Plutarch, Moralia 942C. Hannibal’s inscriptional memoir: Pol. 3.33.18, 3.56.4; Livy 28.46.16. Inscription on sack of Acragas: Krahmalkov (1974), and in Beyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages, ed. S. L. McKenzie and J. Kaltner (Leiden, Brill: 2002), 214; Schmitz (1994). Verse inscriptions at Mactar: Krahmalkov (1975). Julius Nasif: Krahmalkov (1994). Milkpilles’ biography: Krahmalkov (2000), 477 s.v. špέ, 289 s.v. Mlkpls. The ‘ancient Mactarian’: ILS 7547. Silenus’ and Sosylus’ histories of Hannibal: Nepos, Hannibal 13.3; one papyrus fragment of Sosylus survives (FGrH 176 F1). Hasdrubal-Cleitomachus: Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.54; Geus (1994), 150–3. Ivory of goat on sacred tree: HaP, 337 no. 6. ‘Fez’-capped goddess with daughter: HaP, 236 no. 17. Wide-eyed dedicator: Picard and Picard (1968), plate 29. Enthroned Melqart (?) from ‘Hannibal quarter’: HaP, 237 no. 19. Amulet-case: ibid., 240 no. 33. Etruscan bronze figurine, ibid., 78; ‘temple boy’, 234 no. 9. Phalaris’ bull and other Sicilian booty: Cicero, Second Verrines 4.72–4; Diodorus 13.90.3–5. Ephebe of Motya: Lancel (1995), 323–5, denying implausibly that such art would have been favoured at Carthage. Boethus ‘the Carthaginian’: Pausanias 5.17.4; A. Rumpf, Kl P 1.916. Kerkouane tambourine-player: Fantar (1995), 103. Ivory intaglios: HaP, 238 nos 24–5. Baalshillek’s ossuary: DCPP 356, fig. 264. Priest’s sarcophagus from Ste Monique: ibid., fig. 265. Isis-priestess: Lancel (1995), 326–7; M. Maass, HaP, 284–5 no. 61. Isis (?) statuette: HaP, 285 no. 63. Carthaginian and associated coinage: Jenkins and Lewis (1963); DCPP s.v. Numismatique, 320–7; P. Visonà in Krings (1995), 166–81; H. R.

230

NOTES

65. 66.

67.

68.

69.

70. 71.

72.

73. 74.

75.

Baldus in HaP, 294–313 (pp. 302–13 show a large selection of coins). Half-destroyed coins from 146: ibid., 313 nos 88–9, with Baldus’ notes. ‘Malchus’: Justin 18.7.1–18; Ameling (1993), 73–9; Krings (1998), 33–92. Note mzl = ‘good fortune’: Krahmalkov (2000), 273. Mago and his sons: Justin 18.7.19–19.1.17 (two generations before Himera, see 19.1.1–2.1). They decided everything, 19.2.5. Tribute still paid to Libyans until after 480: 19.1.3–4, 19.2.4. Hamilcar Barca’s victory parade in 237: Pol. 1.88.6; cf. Chapter X. Gisco’s return in 338: Diodorus 16.81.4; Polyaenus, Stratagems 5.11; Picard and Picard (1968), 143, 160. Hannibal’s motives in 410–409: Diodorus 13.43.6. Himilco’s defeat and suicide: Justin 19.2.7–3.12; Diodorus 14.70–76; Orosius 4.6.10–15 (dating it to Darius’ reign!). Court of 104 in Justin: Note 22. Capture of Selinus, Acragas, Camarina and Gela in 410–406: Trogus, Prologue 19. Revolt of Libyans and Sardinians in 370s: Diodorus 15.24.2–3, 73.1. ‘The campaigns of Hanno the Great in Africa’: Trogus, Prologue 20. Hanno and ‘Suniatus’: Justin 20.5.11–14. Tales of arrogant Hanno: Pliny, NH 8.55; Aelian, Varia Historia 14.30; Plutarch, Moralia 799E; Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 32.3. Geus (1994), 106–8, 129, holds (unpersuasively) that three separate Hannos are involved – the ‘Great’, the traitor, and the lion-tamer. Hanno’s fall: Aristotle, Pol. 5.1307a; Justin 21.4.1–8. Carthage and Alexander: Arrian, Alexander 2.24.5, 7.15.4; Curtius, Alexander 4.2.10, 4.3.20, 4.4.18. Hamilcar the spy: Justin 21.6.5. Accusations against and secret trial of Hamilcar in 312: Diodorus 19.72.2; Justin 22.3.3–5, 22.7.9–10. Bomilcar’s attempted coup in 308: Diodorus 20.43.1–44.6 (his colleague Hanno a hereditary enemy, 20.10.1–2); Justin 22.7.7. Himilco, Adherbal and another Hanno appointed: Diodorus 20.60.3–4, 61.3. Royal Numidian governor in 128 bc: Huss (1985), 260 n. 65; Lipiĥski in DCPP, 133 s.v. Djebel Massoudj. Pagi in Roman Africa: e.g. ILS 9482 (Muxsi); Picard et al. (1963) on Thusca and Gunzuzi; ILS 9399, 9404 (Thugga); ILS 6095 (Gurzensis); ILS 6118 (Minervius). Taxes on Libya: Diodorus 20.3.3; Pol. 1.72.1–5. Glmt and Pͥ ls: Manfredi (2003), 438. Zilalsan: KAI no. 101; Y. Thébert, DCPP 135 s.v. Dougga; Krahmalkov (2000), 306–7 s.v. mqdš. Sufetes in North Africa after 146: Manfredi (op. cit.), 376–80 (with list). B‘lm: Manfredi (ibid.), 386–9, 404, 430, 436, 446. Polybius on Carthaginian and Roman war-making: 6.52.1–6 (tr. E. S. Shuckburgh, slightly adapted); similarly Diodorus 5.38.2–3 (plainly thinking of the 3rd Century). Carthaginian warfare: e.g. Gsell, HAAN, 2.331–460; Connolly (1981), 147–52; Huss (1985), ch. 475–9;

231

NOTES

76.

77.

78.

79.

80. 81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

Ameling (1993), 155–235, and in HaP, 88–93; Goldsworthy (2000), 30–6; Daly (2002). Marsala wrecks: Frost (1991), and at www2.rgzm.de/Navis/Ships/ Ship056/NaveMarsalaEnglish.htm (retrieved 20/02/2009); Höckmann in HaP, 96, 103–5. Dockyard fire in 368: Diodorus 15.73.3–4. Quadrireme: Pliny, NH 7.207 (citing Aristotle); Diodorus 2.5.6; 14.41.3, 42.2, 44.7 (Dionysius I). Quinquereme: Diodorus 2.5.6; 14.41.3, 42.2–5 (but triremes still used in 307: 20.61.7). On all these warships see Steinby (2007), 23–7; on quinquereme battle-tactics, Murray (1999). Carthaginians’ armbands: Aristotle, Pol. 7.1324b. Citizen troops: e.g. Diodorus 13.44.5–6 (410–409); 13.80.3, 88.3, 110.6 (406); 15.15.2 (383); 16.80.4–5 and Plutarch, Timoleon 27.4–5, 28.10 (at Crimisus); Diodorus 20.10.5 (309); Pol. 1.75.2 (240). Claimed army strengths: e.g. in 480, Herodotus 7.165, Diodorus 11.20.2; in 409, Diodorus 13.54.1, 54.5–6, Greek allied troops, 58.1. In 396 plague kills 150,000: 14.76.2; troops at the Crimisus, 16.77.4; Plutarch, Timoleon 25.1; in 262, Diodorus 23.8.1; at Cannae, Daly (2002), 29–32; at Ilipa, Pol. 11.20.2; Livy 28.12.13; Appian, Iberica 25.100. Mercenaries: e.g. Ameling (1993), 183–225; Daly (2002) ch. IV. Gelon’s complaint in 480: Herodotus 7.158; Krings (1998), 312–13. Carthaginians’ ‘constant wrongdoings’: Justin 19.1.9. Fall of Motya: Diodorus 14.51.5–52.4 (Loeb tr.). Carthage’s dealings with Greek Sicily: e.g. Gsell, HAAN, 3, ch. I; Warmington (1964), chs. II–V; Meister (1984); Asheri, (1988); Franke (1989); Lewis (1994); Picard (1994); L.-M. Günther in HaP, 81–7; cf. Zambon (2008). Dionysius I: Caven (1990). Timoleon: Talbert (1974). Agathocles: Consolo Langher (2000). Pact with Rome in 279: Polybius 3.25.1–5; Walbank Commentary on Polybius, 1.349–51; Huss (1985), 210–12; Scullard (1989), 532, 535–7; Scardigli (1991), 163–203; Hoyos (1998), 11–14. Second treaty with Rome, 348: Polybius 3.24.1–16; Walbank, Commentary 1.345–9; Scullard, 526–30; Scardigli (1991), 89–127; Hoyos (1998), 7–9. Treaties ‘to prevent unjust acts by anyone’ etc.: Aristotle, Pol. 3.1280a–b. Philinus’ claimed treaty: Pol. 3.26.3–5; Huss (1985), 204–6; Scardigli (1991), 123–62; Lancel (1995), 380–3; Hoyos (1998), 9–11; Serrati (2006); Steinby (2007), 78-84. The Punic Wars: e.g. Gsell, HAAN, 3, chs. 2–8; de Sanctis (1968), vols 3.1 and 3.2; Lazenby (1978, 1996); Caven (1980); Harris (1989), 142–63 on the Third Punic War; Lancel (1995), 361–427; Goldsworthy (2000); Le Bohec, Guerres puniques (2001); K. Zimmermann,

232

NOTES

86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91.

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240

IN D EX

Abdera (Spain) 4, 50, 195 accountants (‘treasurers’, mͥšbm, mehashbim) 31, 41, 87, 120, 144, 208 Acherbas: see Zakarbaal Acholla 39, 63, 217 Acragas (Agrigentum) 17, 49, 56, 60, 71, 75, 106-7, 112, 133-5, 157, 162-3, 165, 167, 169, 173-7, 180-1, 183, 187 Adherbal (general in 250–249) 34, 187-8 Adherbal (general in 307) 174 adirim, ’drm: see senate of Carthage Adriatic 168, 197, 199-200, 203 Adys (battle) 185 Aegates Islands (battle) 36, 189 Aelian (writer) 136 Aesculapius (Eshmun) 28, 76, 87, 98; see also Asclepius, Eshmun Agathocles (tyrant and king of Syracuse) 29, 64, 72, 76, 101, 139-42, 145-6, 149, 152-4, 156, 158, 162, 172-7, 181-2, 185-6, 195, 201, 203, 206 agora at Carthage: see town square Alalia (Corsica) 43, 46, 125 Alashiya 4, 9 Alexander the Great 2, 101, 112, 139, 141, 152, 162, 172, 174, 191, 196, 200, 211 Alps 163, 199-200 Ammianus Marcellinus (historian) 105

amphorae 12, 44, 50, 60, 62, 83 Anaxilas (tyrant of Rhegium) 164-5 annals of Tyre 5 Antiochus III 208 Apollo (Reshef?) 15, 77, 94, 98-9, 219 Appian 6, 28, 30, 70-1, 75-6, 75-6, 85-8, 90-2, 113, 135, 142-3, 151, 212-14, 217 Appius: see Claudius, Appius Apthther 212 Apulia 199, 201,205 Arcesilaus 174 Ariana (Sebkhet Ariana) 13, 15, 76, 88 Aristo (Hannibal’s agent) 208 Aristotle 6, 17, 22, 24-33, 35-7, 42, 44, 63-5, 124, 135, 137-8, 152, 154, 179, 221, 222 Asclepius (Eshmun) 76, 99, 120; see also Aesculapius assembly, citizen (‘m, ham) 23, 25, 29-30, 36-8, 50, 208 Assyria 1-2, 4-5, 10-11, 130 Astarte 9-10, 23, 44, 53, 77, 94-5, 99, 110, 121, 147 Ataban (Numidian lord of Thugga) 78, 81, 113, 116 Athens 22, 57, 60, 96, 107, 120, 132, 164, 166-7, 211-12, 220 Augustine, Saint 105, 147, 220 Augustus 2, 220 Autaritus (Gallic mercenary general) 161, 190-2

241

INDEX

Byrsa (hill and citadel) 7-15, 28, 36, 73, 75-7, 81, 83-8, 96, 108, 111, 113, 130, 208, 219 Byzacium 39, 63, 65-6, 142-4, 147, 161, 192

Avienus, Ora Maritima 54 ‘awakener of the god’ (priestly office) 99, 148 Azores 209 Baal (except B. Hammon and B. Shamim) 23, 77, 94-6, 98, 100, 194 Baal Hammon 53, 77, 94-5, 98-9, 100, 102-3, 147, 167, 194, 196, 220 Baal Shamim 77, 94-5, 98, 194 Baalshillek (ossuary of) 118 Baalsillek (freed slave) 69 Babylonians 1, 55 Baebelo (silver mine, Spain) 195 Baecula (battle) 203 Bagradas (Mejerda, river) 13, 15, 65, 142-3, 150, 191, 204, 213, 217 Balearic Islands mercenaries 156-7, 162 Barca (Elissa’s brother) 20 Barca: see Hamilcar Barca Barcid family 33,-4, 37-8, 57, 98, 121, 144, 158, 163, 193, 195, 197-8, 202, 204, 207-8 basileus, basileis 25-8, 51 Belus (Elissa’s father) 20 Belvédère, Parcu du (Tunis) 192 Bithyas (Bitias?; Numidian officer in 148) 210, 218 Bithynia 211 Bitias (in Elissa legend) 10 Boethus the Carthaginian (sculptor) 112-13 Bomilcar (general and putschist, 310–308) 76, 86-7, 140-1, 153, 155, 173-4 Bomilcar (in Second Punic War) 34 books, Carthaginian 66, 105-6, 108 Borj-el-Jedid 12, 15, 105, 117 bribery at Carthage 32-3, 168, 222 Bruttians, Bruttium 201-2, 204, 206 Bulla (western Libya) 65, 143, 204, 213 Byblos 1-2

Caere (Etruria) 43-4 Caesar, Julius 39, 126, 220 Camarina (Sicily) 163, 165, 167, 185, 188 Campania 60, 157, 176, 179-81, 190, 201-2, 209, 222 Cannae (battle) 29, 157, 159, 199-201, 204-5 Cape Bon 13-15, 18,39, 44, 64, 67, 71, 83, 90, 143, 147, 155, 173, 185-6, 217 Cape Farina 15, 44-5, 178-9 Capua (Campania) 201-3 Carales (Cagliari) 4, 46, 169 carbon-14 dating 7, 9 Carchedon (Greek name for Carthage) 6 Carthalo (general in 250–249) 187-8 Carthalo (Hannibal’s officer) 201, 211 Carthalo (high priest) 101, 125-7 Carthalo (politician in 150s) 213-14 Cassiterides islands 3, 50, 54-5 Cassius Dio: see Dio Cassius Dionysius of Utica 66, 70 Catadas river (Mellane) 13, 65, 77, 185 Cato the Censor 26, 64, 67, 215-16, 222 Catulus, Gaius Lutatius 189 cavalry 16, 110-11, 147, 149, 154-9, 161, 164, 167, 171, 186, 191, 195, 197-8, 200, 203-4 Cereres (Demeter and Kore) 220 Chanani (Kn’nm) 220 chariots, war 154, 156, 162, 171 child sacrifice, reports and allegations 82, 100-5, 174 choma (quay, Falbe’s quadrilateral) 92

242

INDEX

chora (Carthage’s home territory) 63-5, 69, 71, 173, 199, 210, 221 Cinyps (river) 40 Cirta (Numidia) 42, 62,105, 147, 212, 214, 217 Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) 198 citadel (Carthage): see Byrsa Citium (Cyprus) 4, 9 citizens of Carthage 17, 20-3, 25, 29, 36-9, 63, 65, 69-70, 75, 86, 130, 132-3, 136, 138-41, 143, 150, 154-5, 157, 167, 171, 191, 196, 207, 210, 217-19, 221 Claudius Nero, Gaius (consul) 203 Claudius, Appius (consul) 182-4 Cleitarchus 100 Cleitomachus: see Hasdrubal Cleitomachus Clupea (Aspis, Kelibia) 18, 80, 185-6, 217 coinage, coins 2-3, 11, 25, 57, 62, 68, 92, 98, 112, 120-1, 123, 143, 191, 195, 207, 209 Colaeus of Samos (mariner) 43, 55 Columella (agricultural writer) 65-6 Concessa (at Nicivibus) 103 Constantine (emperor) 127 consuls 28, 33, 130, 181-5, 187-9, 203, 208, 216-18 copper trade 1, 4, 120 Corcyra (Corfù) 176 Cornwall 3, 55 Corsica 43, 46, 60, 112, 157, 165, 184 corvus (‘raven’, naval weapon) 184-5, 187 Cothon (artificial ports at Carthage) 90, 92-3, 218-19 council, ‘more sacred’ 30-1 Crimisus (Belice: river and battle) 138, 154, 156, 171 Cronus (Baal Hammon?) 53, 98-101 Croton (Italy) 106, 176 crucifixion (of Carthaginian traitors) 35-6, 127-8, 137-8, 184 curse on Carthage (Scipio Aemilianus’) 219-20 Curtius Rufus (historian) 101-2

Cyprus 1-2, 4, 7-9, 11, 196 Cyrene 18, 40, 174, 212 Cyrus the Great 46, 126 Darius 57 deditio in fidem (unconditional surrender) 216 Demeter and Kore 78, 96, 110, 112-13, 115, 123, 147, 168, 220 democracy, ‘democrats’ (at Carthage) 25, 29, 37, 213-14, 221 Dermech 81 Dido: see Elissa Dio (Cassius Dio) 135, 182 Diodorus 17, 27, 29-30, 34, 41, 47-8, 60, 62, 64, 69, 86-7, 98, 100-2, 104, 106, 131-2, 135-6, 140-1, 145, 151-2, 154-7, 166, 169, 171, 173-4, 176, 178-9, 194-6, 221 Diogenes (Carthaginian general in 147) 218 Dion (Syracusan liberator) 134, 136, 158, 170 Dionysius I (tyrant of Syracuse) 33, 134-6, 151-2, 167-72, 175, 182, 219 Dionysius II (Syracuse) 134, 170-1, 177 Dionysus 98, 113 docks, dockyards at Carthage 67, 73, 90-1, 93, 113, 151, 169-70 Dorieus of Sparta 40, 48-9, 56, 163-4 Douimès 10-12, 15, 108, 110 Drepana (Trápani) 170, 177, 187-9 Duero (river, Spain) 198 Duillius, Gaius 184 dye trade 3, 13, 60 Ebro (river) 197-8 Ebusus island (Ibiza) 4, 41, 50, 54, 56, 59-60, 110, 120 Egypt 1-2, 17, 40, 77, 97, 108, 111,116, 119-20, 130-1, 139, 141, 172, 186-7, 196, 222 elephants, war 42, 88, 162-3, 185-7, 191, 195, 198, 206

243

INDEX

El-Haouaria quarries (Cape Bon) 18, 90 Elissa (Dido) 7-12, 15-17, 20, 23-4, 107,121, 123, 125, 164 Elymi (Sicilian people) 47-8 Emporia (region, gulf of Sirte) 39-42,45, 5, 65, 79, 163, 212-13 Enna (Sicily) 167, 185 Entella (Sicily) 179, 190 Ephorus (historian) 156 Epicydes (Syracusan-Carthaginian activist) 161, 201 epikrateia (Carthaginian territories in Sicily) 49, 164-7, 173, 176-7, 179, 182-3, 186-7 Eryx, Mt (Erice, Sicily) 152, 170, 177, 188-9 Eshmun (and temple) 28, 87, 98-9, 130, 219 Eshmuniaton (‘Suniatus’, 4th Century) 134-7, 170 Etruria, Etruscans 3, 43-6, 54, 57, 63, 75, 132, 156, 165, 179-80 Euboea 43, 49 Eudoxus (historian) 6 Euripides 6 Fabian family (Rome) 98 Fabius Maximus, Quintus (‘the Delayer’) 201-3, 211 Fabius Pictor, Quintus (historian) 193, 196 Fair Cape (Cape Bon or Cape Farina) 44-5, 178 Falbe’s quadrilateral (Carthage) 92, 218 fleet and navy, Carthaginian 10, 34, 36, 41, 52, 56, 72, 90-3, 129, 134, 149-53, 155, 173, 175, 177, 181-3, 185-90, 195, 199-200, 202, 205-6, 209, 214, 218 fleets and navies, foreign 56 (Etruscan); 92, 150, 155, 184-8, 189, 202, 218 (Roman); 168, 170, 176 (Syracusan) foundries at Carthage 13, 15, 67-8, 73

Gades 3-6, 32, 50-1, 53, 60, 98, 194-5, 199, 222 Gammarth (Cape) 12, 75-6, 85, 88 garum (fish-sauce) 60-1, 221 Gaul, Gauls 43, 60, 126, 157, 161-2, 197-200 Gela (Sicily) 163, 167, 173, 175-6 Gelon of Syracuse 49, 57, 73, 132, 163-5 generals, Carthaginian 17, 27, 29, 32-4, 36, 38, 46, 49, 52, 76, 83, 87, 101, 125, 128, 131, 134, 139-40, 144, 152, 155-6, 161, 168-9, 171, 176, 181, 187-91, 196, 198-200, 202, 206, 210, 217-19 gerousia (Carthaginian senate) 25, 28, 30; see also senate of Carthage Gibraltar, straits of 3, 41, 43, 45, 52-4 Gisco (Magonid, 4th Century) 137-8, 140-1, 154, 156, 166, 171-3 Gisco (Magonid, 5th Century) 131-3, 165, 170 gold trade 11, 51, 60, 132 ‘Gorillas’ 52-3 Great Plains (western Libya) 143, 204, 213 Gry the fuller 69 Guadalquivir (river, Spain) 50, 194 gugga (joke term for merchant?) 62 Gulussa (son of Masinissa) 209, 214 Gunzuzi (Libyan region) 143-4 Hadrumetum (Sousse) 65, 116-17, 142, 144, 146, 173, 204, 216, 221 Halycus, river (Platani) 169, 171, 175-7, 201 Hamilcar (general in 250s) 185-7 Hamilcar (general in 341) 171 Hamilcar (general in 320s–310s) 139-40, 172-3 Hamilcar (general, son of Gisco) 140, 156, 173, 175, 192, 203

244

INDEX

Hamilcar (magistrate of pagus Gurzensis, 12 bc) 221 Hamilcar (Magonid, died 480) 17, 24-7, 33, 42-3, 47-9. 52, 56, 63, 101-2, 112, 127-8, 130-2, 157, 164-6, Hamilcar (secret agent at Alexander’s court) 139, 172 Hamilcar ‘the Samnite’ (politician in 150s) 213-14 Hamilcar (writer on agriculture) 65-6, 105 Hamilcar Barca 16, 22, 24, 142, 157, 159, 161, 163, 188-97, 214, 222 Hammamet, gulf of 18, 21, 79, 143, 196 Hannibal (general in First Punic War) 181, 183-4 Hannibal (son of Gisco, Magonid) 27, 106, 132-3, 135, 156-7, 166-7, 169 Hannibal (son of Hamilcar Barca) 16-17, 20-1, 23-4, 29-30, 32-4, 36-8, 63, 66, 83, 92, 94-6, 98-9, 101, 106-7, 121, 125, 130, 132, 144, 151, 154-5, 157-9, 161, 163, 193-208, 210-11, 215-16, 221-2 Hannibal (trierarch in 250) 34 Hannibal ‘the Rhodian’ (in First Punic War) 153 Hannibal ‘the Starling’ (politician, 2nd Century) 213 Hannibal quarter (quartier Hannibal), Carthage 83-5, 111,113, 208 Hanno (admiral in 241) 35-6, 189 Hanno (general in 310) 140-1, 173 Hanno (general in 307) 141, 174 Hanno (general in 264–262) 181, 183 Hanno (general in 213–211) 161 Hanno (Hannibal’s nephew and lieutenant) 161, 202 Hanno (in Poenulus) 61-2, 209 Hanno (Magonid, 5th Century) 106, 135, Hanno (officer at Messana in 264) 159, 189

Hanno (sufete and chief priest) 32 Hanno (sufete and voyager) 50-5, 59-60, 98, 105, 107, 125, 132; see also periplus Hanno ‘the Great’ (4th Century) 22, 70-1, 134-8, 140-2, 169-71 Hanno ‘the Great’ (3rd Century) 30, 34, 135, 142, 144, 188-93, 207 Hanno ‘the Great’ (2nd Century) 135, 213-14 Hannobaal (freed slave?) 21, 68-9 harbours at Carthage 15, 67, 75, 88, 91-2, 94, 202 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian general 151–146) 17, 29, 214, 217-19 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian general in 250s) 187 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian general in 310) 185 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian general in 341) 171 Hasdrubal (Carthaginian general, grandson of Masinissa) 17, 148, 210, 217 Hasdrubal (Hannibal’s brother) 24, 34, 196-7, 199-200, 203-5 Hasdrubal (Hannibal’s brotherin-law) 33-4, 38, 193, 195-7 Hasdrubal (Magonid) 24, 47-8, 56, 128, 130-1 Hasdrubal (son of Gisco, general in Second Punic War) 203-4 Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’ (politician) 207 Hasdrubal Cleitomachus (philosopher) 211-12, 220 Hera 94, 98-9, 211 Heraclea Minoa (Sicily) 158, 170, 185, 187 Heracles, Hercules 5, 7, 48, 94, 98-9, 120-1, 123, 125 Hermocrates of Syracuse 59, 166 Herodotus 2, 24, 27-8, 46, 48, 51, 54-7, 59-60, 101, 128, 144, 164, 222 Hicetas (4th Century) 171 Hicetas (3rd Century) 176

245

INDEX

Hiempsal II (king of Numidia, 1st Century) 105 Hiero (king of Syracuse, 3rd Century) 177, 181-3, 187, 189, 192, 201 Hieron (tyrant of Syracuse, 5th Century) 132 Himera (Sicily) 17, 43, 46-7, 52, 57, 73, 101-2, 126, 128, 130-3, 144, 156, 164, 167, 169-70 Himilco (general in 307) 141, 174 Himilco (Iomilkos, in 279) 28 Himilco (Magonid, active 410–396) 27, 33-4, 101, 106, 132-5, 145, 150, 154, 150, 167-9 Himilco (voyager) 54-5, 59, 105 Himilco Phameas (officer, 2nd Century) 210 Hippacra (Bizerte) 4, 9, 13, 40, 65, 141-2, 144, 150, 161, 174, 191-2, 21-18 Hippocrates 161, 201 Hiram (king of Tyre) 3-4 Hittites 1-2 Horoscopa (in Libya: Thubursicu?) 214 hostages 164, 217, 220 Hundred and Four, Court of 35-6, 38, 133-4, 136, 140, 207 Iberian mercenaries 157 Ilipa (battle) 157, 162, 203 Illyria 197, 201-2, 205 Îlot de l’Amirauté (Carthage) 73, 87, 90-1 iron trade 3, 11, 60 Isis 97, 107, 111, 119, 121, 147 Isocrates 25, 33 ivory 3, 42-3, 50, 108-9, 113, 120 Jersualem 3, 81, 100-1 Josephus 4, 8 judges 27, 32, 36 judges, order of (faction, 2nd Century) 32, 207-8 Jugurtha (king of Numidia) 17, 147 Julius Nasif (military poet, 4th Century ad) 106

Juno 44, 53, 95, 98, 220 Junon (hill) 12, 81 Jupiter 8-9, 24, 98-9, 222 Justin 5, 7-12, 16-18, 24-5, 28, 35, 39, 42, 46-51, 56, 62-3, 71, 101-2, 106, 125-37, 139-41, 164 Kerkouane 14, 18, 39, 67. 74. 80, 82-3, 85, 87, 95-6, 99, 111, 113, 146, 159, 162 kings and monarchy at Carthage 24-5, 27-8, 33 Kn’nm (Chanani) 1, 220 kyrious Karchedonious 21 La Marsa 75 Lacinium, Cape (Capo Colonna, Italy) 98, 211 lagoons area at Carthage 14-15, 73, 75, 81, 86-7, 89-90, 93, 196 lake of Tunis 13-15, 67, 75-6, 89-90, 93, 151 Latium (Italy) 44-5, 178-80 lead trade 3, 55 Lepcis Magna 4-5, 11, 39-41, 45, 105-6, 150, 163, 199, 213 Leptis (Minor; Lamta) 217 libri Punici (‘Punic books’) 105 Libyon (coin-legend) 123, 191 Libyphoenicians 17, 63, 69, 146, 150, 155, 157, 210, 215, 218 Liguria, Ligurians 157, 204 Lilybaeum (Marsala) 61, 150, 161, 168, 170, 177, 180, 187, 189, 196 Lipara (Islands) 181, 187 Livy 10, 17, 23-4, 26, 28, 30-2, 87, 98-9, 135, 157, 180, 200-1, 205, 207-8, 212-14, 221 Lixus 3-5, 50-2 Lucania, Lucanians 201-2 Macedon (kingdom) 21, 94, 112, 199, 201-2 Mactar (Libya) 106-7, 142-3, 189, 191 Mago (admiral in 279) 177 Mago (explorer) 42 Mago (general 344/343) 35, 154, 156, 158, 171,

246

INDEX

Mago (general 390s–380s) 27, 33-4, 134, 168-9, Mago (Hannibal’s brother) 24, 197, 199, 204, 206 Mago (ruler of Carthage) 22, 24, 47-8, 55-7, 125, 128-31, Mago (writer on agriculture) 65-6, 70-1, 124, Mago ‘the Samnite’ 159 Magonid family 23-5, 35, 47, 52, 98, 128-33, 135, 157, 163-8, 193 Maharbal (officer of Hannibal) 159, 197, 200 Malaca (Málaga, Spain) 4, 50, 195 ‘Malchus’ 19, 26, 36, 46, 124-5, 127; see also Mazeus Mamertines of Messana 176-7, 181-3 Manilius (consul in 149) 216 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius 202-3 Marcius Censorinus (consul in 149) 216 Marsala (Lilybaeum) 61, 150-1 Marseilles Tariff 22 Masaesyli (Numidian people) 147, 204 Masinissa (king of Numidia) 17, 99, 105, 143, 146-8, 161, 203-5, 207-10, 212-15, 217-18, 220 Massyli (Numidian people) 147-8, 191, 195, 204, 210, 213 Mastia Tarseion (Spain) 178, 195-6 Mathos (Libyan rebel leader) 131, 190-2, 200 Mauretania, Mauri 3, 16, 42,51-2, 105, 131-2, 137, 143, 157 mausolea (in Libya) 78-80, 100, 113, 116 Maxula (near Carthage) 15-16 Mazeus (‘Malchus’) 46-8, 55-7, 101-2, 124-30, 133, 135, 189 Megara (M‘rt, suburb of Carthage) 13, 16, 75-6, 81, 85-6, 88, 141, 163, 210, 217-18 Mejerda (river): see Bagradas Méjerda, Monts de la 142-3, 150 Mellane: see Catadas

Melqart 5, 7, 9, 12, 23, 56, 77, 94-5, 98-9, 102, 111, 120-1, 123, 125-7, 139, 148, 222 Menander of Ephesus (writer) 4, 6-8 Meninx (Jerba, island) 65 mercenaries 33, 56, 72, 120, 141, 149, 153-8, 161-3, 171, 176, 186, 188, 190-1, 194, 198, 209, 222 Messana 17, 35, 159, 164, 168, 173, 176, 180-3, 189, 190, 198 Metaurus (battle) 203 Metellus, Lucius Caecilius 187 Micatani (Numidian people) 195 Micipsa (king of Numidia) 147, 212 Milkpilles 107 Milkyaton (various) 21, 24, 69, 78, 97, 115, 147 mines 1, 55, 195, 207 mlk, mlk ’dm, mlk ’mr, mlk b‘l 102-3 Mogod (mountains) 142, 150 molchomor 103 molk: see mlk Monte Sirai (Sardinia) 45-6 Mottones (later Marcus Valerius Mottones; cavalry officer) 161, 203 Motya (Sicily) 4, 48, 57, 77 100, 102, 112, 167-8, 170, 219 Muluccha river 143 Muthul river 65 Muxsi (region) 143-4 Mylae (Sicily) 184 mzrͥ (mizreh) 22, 106 Naples 3, 12, 17, 132, 165 Naravas (Nrwt: Numidian prince) 161, 191, 193, 195, 203 navy: see fleet and navy Neapolis (Nabeul, Tunisia) 18, 39, 173, 196 necropolis, necropoleis 14, 75, 80-1, 102, 108, 110, 117-18 Nepheris 217-18 Nepos, Cornelius (writer) 26, 98, 195, 204

247

INDEX

New Carthage (Cartagena) 21, 98, 178, 195, 203 New City (district of Carthage) 76, 88, 196, 210 ‘New City’ (name) 4,11, 17-18, 76, 88,167, 176, 195-6, 210 New Gate (at Carthage) 38, 67-8, 75 Nicivibus (Ain N’gaous, Algeria) 103 Nobas son of ‘Axioubas’ 62 Nora (Sardinia) 4-5, 23, 37, 46, 95, 100, 147 oaths, Hannibal’s 94-5, 98-9, 222 Oea 39 Oestrymnides islands 54 Olbia (Sardinia) 4, 27, 45, 169 Old Testament 2-3, 100 olives 60-1, 64, 66, 75, 85-6, 207 One Hundred and Four: see Hundred and Four Orosius (historian) 46, 48, 125-7, 214 ossuaries 117-18 Paday (Pidia, Pdy) 10; see also Bitias pagus, pagi 143-4, 147, 213, 221 Panormus (Palermo) 4, 47-8, 120, 164, 169, 177, 185-8 pavimentum Punicum (tessellated mosaics) 221 pentarchies 27, 31, 35-6, 68, 87, 131-2 Pentathlus of Cnidus 47, 163 penteconter 52, 56, 60, 129, 151-2 periplus 41 (of Pseudo-Scylax); 50-4, 98, 105, 107, 125, 132 (Hanno’s) Persia 43, 46, 55-7, 139, 162, 164, 174, 222 Peter the Great (tsar) 127 pharaohs 1, 120, 131, 139 Pharusii (Mauretanian tribe) 42 Philaenus, Philaeni brothers 40, 45, 105, 139 Philinus of Acragas 107, 180-1, 211 Philip V (king of Macedon) 21, 94, 201-2, 207, 211

Philistus 6 Phintias (Licata, Sicily) 176, 188 Phintias (tyrant of Acragas) 176 Phocaeans 43, 46-7, 54-6, 60, 112, 151, 153, 163 Phoenicia, Phoenicians 1-5, 10-11, 12, 16-17, 48-9, 95, 105, 147, 153, 196 Pithecusae (Ischia) 3, 12, 49 Plato 26, 100, 107, 211, 222 Plautus (playwright) 61-2, 209, 222 Pliny the Elder 5-6, 53-5, 65-6, 105, 136, 195 plostellum Punicum (threshingcart) 221 Plutarch 100, 102, 106, 221 Poeni 1 Poenulus (comedy) 61-2, 209 Polyaenus 131, 134-5, 169 Polybius 18, 21, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 40, 44-5, 59, 63-4, 71-2, 75, 91, 94, 106, 144-5, 149, 154-5, 157-8, 178-80, 184-5, 188m 190, 192, 194, 198-9, 205, 209, 212, 215, 218-19, 221-2 Ponim 1 population 11, 17, 42, 55, 63, 67, 70, 72, 75, 85, 143, 145-6, 170, 199, 210 ports, artificial (Carthage) 73, 77, 86-7, 89-93, 150-1, 202, 209, 218 pottery 4, 7, 9,12, 14, 41, 43, 45, 49, 60, 62, 68, 73-4, 79, 81, 83, 91-2, 95, 112, 209 praetor 28, 33, 189 priests, priesthoods 9, 22, 24, 32, 78, 85, 96, 99, 119, 126, 131-2 Ptolemies of Egypt 119, 139, 141, 172, 187 puinel (‘Carthaginian’) 43 Pumay 5, 8-9, 23-4, 95, 211 Pumayyaton 8-9 Pygmalion 6-8, 10, 13, 23 Pyrenees 197, 200 Pyrgi (Etruria) 44, 168 Pyrrhus (king of Epirus) 153, 162, 176-7, 179-81, 200

248

INDEX

Qart-hadasht (city-name) 4, 6, 9, 18, 21, 120, 123, 196 quadrireme 152 quaestor (at Carthage and Gades) 32, 207; see also rb, rab quinquereme 56, 91, 150-3, 167, 184, 189, 195, 205, 216 rb, rab (offices and title) 27, 31-6, 99, 106, 134-5, 207 rebellions and revolts, Libyan 33, 38. 42, 47, 65, 71-2, 76, 88, 96, 106, 131, 134, 145-6, 154, 158,161, 168, 173, 179, 185, 190, 212 Regulus, Marcus Atilius 29, 71, 161, 163, 185-7, 206 Reshef 5, 77, 95, 98-9, 219 Rhegium (Reggio) 17, 164-5, 172, 180-1, 183 Rhodes 60, 211 Río Tinto (Spain) 50, 195 Rususmon (Cape Farina) 15 Sabratha 39, 42, 78 Sacred Battalion (hieros lochos) 154, 156, 158, 173 Safot (various) 21, 24, 68-9, 78 Saguntum (Spain) 197-8 Sainte Monique (Carthage) 12, 43, 87, 117-18 Sallust 5, 39-40, 105 Salombaal (Salammbô) 24 salt on Carthage (legend) 220 Samnites (central Italy) 159, 180, 201-2 Sardinia, Sardinians 4-5. 13, 17-18, 26-7, 29, 33, 44-8, 50, 54, 56, 59, 70, 77-8, 82, 95, 104, 120, 125-6, 129-30, 153, 157, 169, 178-9, 183-4, 191, 193-4, 196-7, 221 Saturn (Baal Hammon) 98, 103, 220 Savage, Thomas 53 Saw, the (Prion) 192, 214 Scipio Aemilianus, Publius Cornelius 95, 148, 211, 214-15, 218-20

Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius 21, 30, 71-2, 150, 155, 157, 162-3, 192, 203-8, 211 Scipio Nasica 215-16 Segesta (Sicily) 48-9, 112, 165-6, 183-4 Selinus (Sicily) 47-8, 132, 158, 164-7, 171 Semiramis (legendary queen of Assyria) 10 senate of Carthage (’drm, adirim) 22, 24-30, 35, 37, 72, 87, 124, 136-7, 139-41, 219 senate-house (bouleuterion) 86-7, 141, 219 shellfish 2, 13, 60 shops, workshops at Carthage 13-14, 67, 82-3, 85, 217 Sicca 142, 144, 189-90, 204 Sicharbas: see Zakarbaal Sidi bou Said 12, 75, 111 Sidon 1-2, 4, 59 Siga (Numidia) 41, 147 Silanus, Marcus Iunius (translator of Mago) 211 Silenus (historian of Hannibal) 107, 211 Siliana (river) 65 Silius Italicus 20, 101-2 silver trade 3, 50, 55, 60, 194-5 Sirte, gulf of 39-40 slaves 21, 61, 63-4, 66-72, 104, 137, 158, 168, 170, 174, 184-6, 192, 195, 210, 217, 219-20 Sophoniba (Saponibaal, ‘Sophonisba’) 17, 23, 204 Sosylus (historian of Hannibal) 107, 211 Sparta 22, 25, 33, 35, 40, 48, 107, 158, 158, 161, 164, 166, 186, 211 Spendius (mercenary rebel leader) 190-2, 200 stele, stelae 5, 17, 23-4, 26-7, 32, 38, 67, 77-8, 81-2, 95-7, 99-100, 102, 104, 106-7, 111, 113, 115-17, 162 Strabo 2, 40, 42, 54-5, 65, 85, 210

249

INDEX

strategos (Greek term for general) 33, 141, 196 streets 14, 61, 67-8, 76, 83, 85-6, 130, 173, 192, 219 sufetes 25-30, 32-3, 35, 37-8, 49, 55, 68, 78, 83, 97, 99, 115, 128-31, 136-7, 141, 146-8, 171, 181, 207-8 Sulcis 4, 45-6, 77-8, 169 Suniatus: see Eshmuniaton Synalos (Eshmunhalos, 4th Century) 158, 170 Syphax (Numidian king) 17, 161, 204 Syracuse, Syracusans 12, 17, 33, 43, 49, 56-7, 62, 96, 121, 132-6, 138-41, 145, 151-2, 156, 161, 163-6, 168-77, 181-3, 90, 192, 199, 201-3, 211 Tagomago wreck (Ibiza) 60, 139 Tagus (river) 196, 198 Tanit pene Baal 98-9 Tanit 23, 53, 69, 77, 81-2, 95-6, 98-9, 100, 104, 121, 123, 147, 220 Tarentum 17, 92, 177, 181, 201 Tartessus 43, 50, 55 Tauromenium (Taormina) 156, 170 taxes, Carthaginian 31, 42, 63, 67, 144-6, 188-90, 207-8, 213, 216, 220-1 Téboursouk, Monts de 143 Terillus of Himera 164 Tertullian 101, 104 Thapsus 63, 173, 217 Tharros 4, 45, 100, 102, 169 Thebes (Greece) 62 Thefarie Velianas (king of Caere) 44 Theiosso (Timaeus’ name for Elissa) 10 Thermae Himeraeae (Sicily) 169-70, 172, 185, 196 Theron of Acragas 49, 73, 163-5 Theveste 142, 188, 213 Thuburbo Maius 77, 111 Thubursicu 65, 214 Thucydides 17, 59, 166

Thugga (Dougga) 37, 65, 78-9, 100, 113, 116, 142, 144, 146-7, 174, 214 Thusca (Tšk‘t: region) 143-4, 212-13 Timaeus 6-7, 10, 156, 170 Timoleon 150, 154, 156-8, 170-2 tin 1, 3, 40, 54-5 Tingi (Tangier) 51-2, 61 Tocae (Thugga) 142 tombs 50, 52, 69, 80, 82, 97, 99, 108, 118, 120, 133, 220 tophet (children’s ritual cemetery) 14, 17, 75, 77, 81-2, 96, 100-4, 113, 115-16, 219 Toscanos (Spain) 13, 83 town square (agora, at Carthage) 14, 28, 36, 76-7, 86-7, 130, 141, 172, 219 Trasimene, Lake (battle) 199-200, 205 treasurers: see accountants treaties 18, 21, 44-7, 50, 59, 94, 98-9, 129, 138, 166, 178-80, 197, 201, 204-6, 212, 215 Trebia, river (battle) 163, 199 trierarch (naval official) 34 trireme 92, 19, 150-2, 154, 171, 195 triumphal parades (at Carthage) 49, 130-1, 192 Trogus, Pompeius 6-7, 9-11, 126-7, 130, 134-5, 137 Truceless War 123, 190 Tunes (Tunis) 15,63, 71, 155, 173-4, 185, 190-2, 200, 202, 217 Tunis, gulf of 6, 12, 15 Tyndaris (Sicily) 170, 184, 187 Tyre (Sor), Tyrians 1-11, 13, 20-1, 23-4, 55-6, 69, 85, 94, 101, 107, 125-7, 139, 164, 172, 178, 208 Uchi 65, 78, 144 Ugarit 2, 230 Uthina 185 Utica 3-6, 8-9, 13, 15, 39, 65-6, 110-11, 141-3, 146, 150, 174, 178, 191-2, 204, 215-17, 220

250

INDEX

Varro 66, 70 Vicus Africus (Rome) 61, 67 workshops: see shops, workshops Xanthippus of Sparta 158, 161, 163, 186 Xenophon 42 Xerxes 57, 164 Yadomilk 10-11, 23-4, 108 Yehawallon (engineer) 68

Zaghouan (mountains) 143 Zakarbaal (Elissa’s uncle) 7-8, 23, 94 Zakarbaal (king of Byblos) 1 Zama (town and battle) 30, 36,142, 154-5, 157, 162-3, 189, 204 Zeugei (region) 143-4 Zeus 9, 94, 98-9, 117 Zilalsan (Zllsn: Numidian prince) 146-8, 191 Ziqua (Zaghouan) 144 Zorus 6

251

Introduction There are those who would have us believe that man is a peace-loving animal, asking for no more than to be allowed to live in harmony with his fellow beings, rearing his family and pursuing his interests in contented prosperity. Such aspirations are savagely disrupted by the excesses of powerhungry despots and their brutal soldiery. The pious then regard history as little more than a tragic record of how peace is shattered by a few evil men; while military history is dismissed as a corrupting influence, glorifying war and promoting xenophobia. Yet wars have never been intermittent occurrences disrupting the natural, orderly condition of man, but rather an activity pursued with relentless consistency, sometimes with relish, and under many different guises. As Professor Sir Michael Howard said in his David Davies Memorial Institute lecture entitled Weapons and Peace (January 1983): The anises of war are as diverse as those of human conflict itself, but one factor common to almost all wars has been on the one side, or both, a cultural predisposition for war, whether this has been confined to ruling elites, or widespread throughout society. This is a factor which has been so often overlooked by liberalminded historians, the existence of cultures, almost universal in the past, far from extinct in our day, in which the settling of contentious issues by armed conflict is regarded as natural, inevitable and right.

However unpalatable, the realities surrounding war should be recognised. Rather than taking refuge in wishful thinking, to avoid wars we should investigate their causes, consider how they might be prevented and prepare to defend ourselves, in itself a powerful deterrent. The

study of military history then provides some perspective and enables us to learn from the lessons of the past. The Greek historian Polybius wrote: 'There are only two sources from which any benefit can be derived, our own misfortunes and those which have happened to other men.' Bearing these words in mind, we can turn to the three human misfortunes known as the Punic Wars which, in spite of their remoteness, possess a remarkable contemporary relevance. Two largely incompatible civilisations confronted one another in a rivalry that quickly became a to-the-death fight for supremacy. The lessons of that struggle clearly demonstrate the need for positive and consistent national policy, and the importance of co-ordinated land and naval operations; equally they highlight the consequences of failing to adapt military force structures and thinking to match circumstances, the impact of new technology (as exemplified by the corvus) and the relevance of certain battlefield principles which are common to any war. The three Punic Wars, which lasted for more than 100 years in all, though with long periods of peace in-between, and extended throughout the Mediterranean were to decide the future of the Western world. The contest was between two races: the lndo-Germanic, which incorporated the Greeks and Romans, and the Semitic, which included the Jews and Arabs. The one side had a genius of order and legislation, the other the spirit of commercial adventure and a love of gold, blood and pleasure. There are basically two different ways of presenting the wars that determined the course of European, if not world history: an across-the-board chronological account, or a sequential examination of the different campaigns, each in its entirety. The

Essential Histories • The Punic Wars

conventional method has been the former, but 1 have chosen the latter because I consider any difficulty in interrelating events occurring at the same time in different theatres to be far outweighed by the ability to follow through the development of each separate campaign. To

support this approach the chronology at the end of this introduction presents the milestones of the wars and details of the events which led to Sicily becoming the principal battlefield of the First Punic War. Finally, there is a glossary of names of the principal characters.

Chronology 814 BC The founding of Carthage by Phoenician settlers from Tyre. 800 BC After some unknown natural catastrophe which decimated the population, Phoenician migrants return to Sicily, followed by Greeks. 750 BC The traditional date for the founding of Rome. 509 BC Treaty of friendship signed between Rome and Carthage defining trading rights. 415 BC Athenian expedition (during the Peloponnesian War) attempts to wrest Syracuse from the Spartans and cut their grain supplies from Sicily but is totally annihilated, leaving Doric Syracuse as the dominant and most prestigious city in Sicily. 480 BC Gelon of Syracuse defeats the Carthaginians at Himera and effectively removes their influence from the island for 70 years. 405 BC A resurgence of Carthaginian influence in Sicily leads to a second war with the Greek settlements, ending with the Carthaginians in possession of most of the western part of the island. 380 BC A second treaty is signed between Rome and Carthage confirming their respective trading rights. 310 BC In a third war between the Carthaginians and Greeks, Agathocles of Syracuse extends his domain in Sicily and lands in North Africa, marches on Carthage but being too weak to take the city, returns to Sicily. 290 BC Following the death of Agathocles, the Carthaginians attempt to reassert their domination but in 278 BC Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, crosses over to Sicily and secures most of the

279 BC

275 BC 264 BC 256 BC

241 BC

240 BC 241 BC 236 BC

237 BC

229 BC

229 BC 221 BC

220 BC

island until forced to leave through lack of support. A third treaty is drawn up between Rome and Carthage. It confirms the earlier treaties and adds the significant clause that they would go to one another's assistance if attacked. The Carthaginians regain most of Sicily. The Romans intervene in Sicily and the First Punic War begins. Carthaginian naval supremacy is broken at the battle of Ecnomus, enabling the Romans to land in North Africa where they are heavily defeated. A new Carthaginian fleet is destroyed, which leads to the end of the First Punic War. Disgruntled returning Carthaginian mercenaries revolt. The Gauls invade Italy. The Romans respond to a request from Carthaginian mercenaries and seize Sardinia. Hamilcar Barca begins the conquest of Spain and establishes a Barcid empire. Hamilcar is drowned when attempting to escape across a river. He is succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal. The Romans invade Illyria. Hasdrubal is assassinated and following the army's unanimous choice, Hannibal is confirmed by Carthage as the new commander in Spain. Saguntum is placed under Roman protection but taken by Hannibal, the last of many incidents leading inevitably to war.

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218 BC Hannibal marches from Spain, crosses the Alps and invades Italy to begin the Second Punic War. 217 BC Hannibal defeats the Romans at Lake Trasimene. 216 BC Hannibal wins an annihilating victory at Cannae and the Romans go on the defensive, avoiding any major encounter. 215 BC The war expands to Spain, Sardinia, Sicily and lllyria. 211 BC After threatening Rome, Hannibal is in retreat and progressively confined to southern Italy. 207 BC Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal leaves Spain and crosses the Alps but is defeated and killed at the battle of Metaurus. 206 BC Scipio secures Spain. 205 BC Scipio lands in North Africa.

203 BC Hannibal is recalled to defend Carthage. 202 BC Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama. 201 BC The Carthaginians accept the Roman Senate's peace terms confining them to their African territories, surrendering their fleet and paying a large indemnity of silver. 200 BC Polybius, who wrote the history of the Punic Wars, is born in Arcadia, a country in the centre of Peleponnesus, now a part of modern Greece. 155 BC Cato starts urging the Senate to renew hostilities against a rejuvenated Carthage which, he claims, poses a mortal threat to Rome. 149 BC The Carthaginians refuse a Roman ultimatum to surrender their city and the Third Punic War begins. 146 BC Carthage is captured and obliterated.

Background to war

Two great Mediterranean powers With hindsight it is hard not to conclude that war between Carthage and Rome had a degree of inevitability, but at the time there seemed no reason why this should be so. Rome had established its hegemony over the whole of the Italian peninsula only relatively recently and the Senate showed no inclination for further expansion, while Carthage had no territorial designs beyond the retention of her colonies and trading posts scattered around the Mediterranean Gravestone from a children's cemetery. The Carthaginians practised the sacrifice of children. (Edimedia, Paris)

seaboard. In a later chapter I will examine how the conflict arose, but first let us take a closer look at the two protagonists, Carthage and Rome. The classical sources only give us restricted information. The wars themselves are well covered but otherwise we only have sporadic data, such as what the Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing in the 4th century BC, has to say about the Carthaginian constitution, or the writings of Polybius on the Carthaginian Mercenary Revolt. Moreover, as Carthage was totally destroyed after the Third Punic War, in 146 BC, no records have survived. All we have are the results of archaeological excavations in cemeteries which, though providing much information about the minor arts (for example, terracotta figurines, carved ivory and jewellery, together with inscribed stelae bearing figures), tell us nothing about the human dramas that unfolded, or the day to day activities and concerns of the civilian population. It is much the same with the Romans of this period: records deal almost exclusively with the actual fighting, without any mention of, for example, how the women bore such stupendous losses amongst their menfolk or, indeed, how they themselves aided the war effort.

Carthage Founding It was Phoenician settlers from Tyre, just north of today's border between Israel and Lebanon, who founded Carthage not far north of modern Tunis, in about 814 BC. According to one source, those who settled in Tyre were given the name Phoenician, meaning 'dark skinned' by the Greeks. Others maintain the name derived from the purple

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dye, phonix, which was obtained from molluscs of the Murex genus and used extensively in the dyeing of linen or woollen goods. For their part, the Romans called them Poeni, which led to the name Punic. But whatever their etymological origins, the Phoenicians were a Semitic race and a seafaring people who, according to Herodotus, the Greek fifth-century BC historian known as the 'Father of History', sailed down the Gulf, round Africa and returned to the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar to establish a number of trading posts. Amongst these, near the head of a sandstone peninsula that provided shelter for both warships and merchant vessels, was Carthage. Though by far the largest city, there were many others in North Africa, Spain, with its rich gold, silver and copper mines, Sardinia, Cyprus, Malta and - most importantly - Sicily, where Carthaginian expansion was eventually checked by Greek settlements in the east of the island.

People What is known about the Carthaginian character comes from Roman sources and so may not be altogether impartial. Polybius refers to the more virtuous Roman attitude towards money matters, whereby wealth obtained by unlawful transactions was widely disapproved of and bribery was punished by death. The Carthaginians, on the other hand, obtained office by open bribery and nothing which resulted in profit was thought disgraceful. Cicero, the firstcentury AD Roman consul, orator and writer, identified the Carthaginians' most distinguishing characteristics as being craft, skill, industry and cunning, all of which in moderation can reasonably be associated with people who made their living through trade. Others allege, however, that the Carthaginians combined these characteristics to an inordinate degree. 'Punic honour' and a 'Carthaginian mind' were derogatory terms in Roman times. In spite of these unflattering labels, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Carthaginians were, like all mortals, neither wholly good nor wholly

An example of a murex shell, from which purple dye can be obtained. (Ann Ronan Picture Library)

bad. They were traders who lived by profit in a time when their political institutions were in decline and their religious practices a cause for disgust, but their personal and collective conduct might have appeared corrupt to the Romans, who were at an earlier, more austere and virtuous stage of their evolutionary development.

Religion References to the Phoenician religion and that of Carthage in particular are fragmentary and at times contradictory. What we do know is that the Carthaginian religion was polytheistic, characterised by the worship of a number of deities who controlled the totality of man's needs and the needs of society. In this respect it is not

Background to war

dissimilar to several other civilisations, with a pantheon of superhuman beings who had to be propitiated and placated in accordance with established rites. What was different, however, was the way in which the political independence of the city states enabled them to develop a diversity of religious interpretations. Each city organised its own form of worship, creating individual traditions, assigning prominence to a range of elected deities of their own choosing and attracting their own somewhat surprising customs. For example, Astarte, the Phoenician female warrior deity, was also connected with Aphrodite, or Venus, and her worship involved temple prostitution, a sexual ritual that slaves and other women fulfilled on payment, catering particularly for foreign visitors. During the fifth century BC Carthage began to adopt an increasingly independent theology and liturgy. When relations with Tyre were broken off, the worship of Melquarth, Lord of the City, was replaced by that of Baal Hammon, and Astarte was renamed Tanit. These changes gave a sinister turn to Carthaginian religion since Baal Hannon had to be placated by human sacrifice. It was not, however, only the Carthaginians who followed such a practice, as is borne out by the biblical prophet Jeremiah, who relates how the children of Judah did evil in that they built topeths 'to burn their sons and daughters in the fire', a custom which was continued among the Canaanites and later by the Israelites. There is considerable controversy as to the extent of human sacrifice. Some scholars maintain that it was fairly common, while others, especially archaeologists, now consider it to have been reserved for times of extreme danger, and suggest that the cremated remains of children found near all the Carthaginian settlements were usually of those who had died from sickness or other natural causes and had been 'offered' to the gods. Against this moderating interpretation must be set the barbarous description given by Diodorus Siculus, a first-century BC Greek historian: 'There was a brazen statue putting forth the

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palms of its hands bending in such a manner towards the earth, so that the boy to be sacrificed who was laid upon them would roll off and fall into a deep fiery furnace.' Though prisoners were also sacrificed, it seems unlikely that Carthaginian religious practices would have determined their conduct on the battlefield. Hannibal and others sacrificed animals to the gods before undertaking some hazardous enterprise, but that seems to have been about all.

Constitution Although the other Phoenician cities each had their government, they were dependent on Carthage for defence as they had no military forces of their own. There was then no solid political unity or cohesion between them. It was the rather loose constitution as it affected the city states that certainly contributed to Carthage's downfall. As for the subject territories in Africa and Sardinia, they were made to pay tribute, and their discontent was reflected in the part they subsequently played in revolts. Carthage had merely created a feudal empire with no sense of corporate loyalty, whereas Rome, as we will see, had forged a confederation of states which, for the most part, held together even when gravely threatened Despite this lack of cohesion, Cicero had this to say: 'Carthage could not have maintained her pre-eminent position for six hundred years had she not been governed with wisdom and statesmanship.' A rare tribute from a Roman at a time when the bitter legacies of the long struggle of the Punic Wars must still have been very much to the forefront of his compatriots' minds. Though we know little about the circumstances in Carthage itself that produced such estimable results, they can to a large extent be attributed to the political stability provided by the aristocracy. The patriciate of Carthage was never as hereditary as that of early Rome, and the interminable constitutional struggles which racked the Roman political and social scene were relatively unknown in Carthage. Elevation to the aristocracy was by wealth,

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Background to war

which ensured a steady flow of new, enterprising families who invigorated public life. This was offset, however, by widespread corruption: not only could the highest offices be purchased, but a return on this investment was demanded. As in any state, corrupt political leadership permeates all levels of society.

Rome Founding The development of Rome into a dominating power throughout the Italian peninsula happened over three broad periods. The first lasted from the traditional date of the city's founding in about 750 BC until its absorption by the Etruscans about 100 years later; the second period of Etruscan colonisation lasted some 250 years until around 400 BC; then, after its brief occupation by the Gauls in 386 BC, Rome's own expansion gradually began, so forming the third and final period of its growth. This was completed in 270 BC with the surrender of Rhegium (Reggio). Though the earlier periods are of historic interest and relevant to our wider understanding of the Roman political, religious, cultural and economic customs and attitudes, we are only concerned with the final period of expansion and the subsequent development of Rome into a confederation. As Rome had extended her hegemony, she had come into conflict with Greek cities scattered around the peninsula's southern coastlines. One of these cities, Tarentum (Taranto), had appealed to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (Map 8) for help. Crossing the Adriatic in 280 BC Pyrrhus defeated the Romans in a hard-fought contest, prompting him to exclaim: 'Another such victory and we are undone', giving rise to the immortal expression, a 'Pyrrhic victory'. Responding to an appeal from the Greek city of Syracuse, still Pyrrhus crossed over to Sicily in 278 BC and was soon in possession of most of the island, driving the Carthaginians into its western extremity. His high-handedness, however, eventually lost

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him the support of the Greek cities he had come to assist and he was forced to withdraw. As he set sail he looked back and prophetically observed: 'What a field we are leaving to the Carthaginians and the Romans to exercise their arms.' His importance for us in trying to understand the relationship between Carthage and Rome is that he seemingly brought them closer together while they faced him as a common enemy. That said, however, Pyrrhus' adventurous excursion could have extended Roman ambitions beyond the confines of the Italian peninsula, and though there is nothing to suggest that this led directly to the Romans seeking further territorial gains, it must have encouraged the patriarchal Claudii family, who favoured a southerly expansion, to oppose the powerful Fabii, whose interests lay to the north, where some 300 of the family had been killed defending the frontiers. Antique sculpture of Pyrrhus. (Museo della Civilta. Rome/Edimedia, Paris)

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People

Religion

The Romans who participated in the conquest of the Greek cities witnessed unimagined wealth and luxury, but they were nevertheless still predominantly a rural society. Their intellectual horizons had not been widened by close contact with others who possessed more questioning minds and more sophisticated standards, and the loosening of their strict, simplistic code of behaviour had hardly begun. The Roman paterfamilias ruled his family as an autocrat, instilling obedience, loyalty and integrity with a severity approaching the institutionalised training of the Spartan youth. The result of this upbringing, upheld and fortified by the rigorous demands of public opinion, was that the Romans displayed high standards and set themselves an ideal of virtue based on willpower, self-restraint, a seriousness devoid of frivolity, perseverance and a binding sense of duty to the family, social group or military unit, all established in the hierarchy of state authority. The importance of the individual was subordinated to his corporate responsibilities, and a willingness to sacrifice his own interests or even his life for the good of his group was accepted as the normal standard of personal conduct.

As the Romans extended their conquests, so they absorbed the religion and culture of the races they had subjected, and in the process, modified their own earlier animistic worship. It was the influence of the Greek cities in southern Italy and later in Sicily which made the greatest impact. By the 3rd century BC the Greek gods and goddesses had been assimilated by the Romans. Greek names were Romanised: Demeter became Ceres; Poseidon and Ares became Neptune and Mars; Zeus and Hera became Jupiter and Juno; and Aphrodite and Hestia became Venus and Vesta, though this renaming did not change their fickle natures and wanton ways. There was no established church as we know it, with a hierarchy, creed and moral code. Nor was there a single all-powerful god, but rather a multiplicity of deities interfering with and squabbling over their different interests and mortal proteges. To the majority of Romans the mythology that we regard as little more than a collection of fables was, in varying degrees, a portrayal of immortals to whom established rights were due and who had to be propitiated. The fulfilment of these obligations would ensure the safe return of mariners by Neptune or victory in battle by Mars, while Ceres would provide an abundant harvest and Jupiter, rain. Neglect, on the other hand, would lead to abandonment, if not the purposeful infliction of disaster. Nevertheless, there were a few hardy souls like the consul Publius Claudius Pulcher who, before the battle of Drepana off Sicily, lost patience when the sacred chickens would not eat and so provide a favourable omen. He flung the birds overboard with the short-tempered advice: 'If you won't eat, then try drinking instead.' Whether his subsequent disastrous defeat can be ascribed to his irreverence is a matter for conjecture, though the gods cannot have been too enraged since he managed to escape with his life.

This gave rise to a pragmatic, dour and persistent breed of men, supported by obedient and respectful wives who occupied themselves with the running of their households and the rearing of children. Few would have held doubts about the rectitude of the state's policies and most were deeply conservative, probably not very imaginative, and profoundly superstitious. They were certainly parochial in outlook but bound together by a powerful moral code of reciprocal loyalty. They were hard-working, brave through training, and hardened mentally and physically by the vicissitudes of nature and a life of laborious toil. They made hardy, courageous and disciplined soldiers, whose strength was tempered only by superstition and the usual measure of human failings.

As there was no church, responsibility for official religious ceremonies was a function of the state, the chief officials being the College of Pontiffs, headed by the Pontifex Maximus

Background to war

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Constitution After the kings had been displaced by consuls, and following a period of strife between the Plebeians (the common people) and the Patricians (the hereditary aristocracy), a more stable and durable constitution evolved. According to Polybius this consisted of three elements: consuls, senators and the people. Each element possessed sovereign powers which were regulated with such scrupulous regard for equality and equilibrium that no one could say for certain whether the constitution was democratic, despotic or aristocratic: the consuls could be regarded as despots, the senators as aristocratic and the people as democratic.

Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and corn (Greek Demeter), mother of Persephone. (Ann Ronan Picture Library)

(Chief Priest), who were the judges and arbiters of divine and human affairs and the interpreters of portents, augurs and omens. Their role was of great significance since the gods could only make their wishes known through coded messages. Divination, however, was not confined to these officials; so long as he could afford to do so, no citizen entered into an undertaking of any importance without offering a sacrifice and reading for himself the signs in the victim's entrails. Beliefs varied considerably, and religion and its role in determining the course of men's lives was as varied as it is now. Even so, after allowing for this individuality, there can be little doubt that religion influenced military decisions. Major ventures were frequently not undertaken through lack of favourable portents, causing delay and hesitancy. Among soldiers too, individual interpretations inevitably had some bearing on the way they faced an impending battle. A favourable omen could raise morale but an unfavourable one could cause anxiety.

The consuls had complete control of the administration, raising levies on Rome's allies, appointing the military tribunes and spending public money as they chose. They also commanded the legions when the army took to the field. They were, however, only elected for a year, and had to account for their stewardship on leaving office. Moreover, being a pair, they were subject to one another's vetoes. The Senate, which numbered about 300, came to be largely hereditary and aristocratic. It had the right to exercise authority in many public areas without consulting the people, so was also to some extent despotic. The hereditary nature of the Senate inevitably led to the perpetuation of factional party interests, represented by three family clans who exerted a powerful, and at times contradictory, influence on Rome's policy. The Fabii saw Roman and their own interests being best served by a northern expansion, coupled with a policy of moderation and co-operation with Carthage. The Claudii believed that the future of Rome lay to the south and increasingly came to regard Carthage as a rival to be eliminated. Finally, the Aemilii favoured overseas expansion rather more indiscriminately, but later inclined towards the western Mediterranean. The power that remained with the people seems small, but in fact related to a number of important functions. Apart from various assemblies, they also had sole authority for deciding honours, ratifying or refusing peace treaties, passing sentences of death and imposing major fines. The powers to

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Background to war

Neptune, god of the oceans. From an ancient bust. (Ann Ronan Picture Library)

honour and punish were placed in the hands of the people; in Polybius' view it is these two things and these alone that hold human society together. As Rome extended her hegemony, states defeated in battle were allied to Rome by treaty and incorporated into the Roman Confederacy. Those with the strongest ties were the Latin cities, amongst which Rome had originally been counted when the Latins had settled around the lower reaches of the River Tiber and named the region Latium. Except for foreign policy, allied states were permitted a considerable measure of local government, were free to retain their political

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parties and they paid no tribute. Though Roman garrisons were established at strategic points, after the 4th century BC the land belonging to the allied states was seldom encroached upon. They were, however, expected to provide troops organised on Roman lines and grouped alongside a Roman legion to form a consular army. The allies did not have to pay for their soldiers' food and weapons, and when called upon to provide troops in excess of their treaty obligations, they received special payments from Rome. In this way Rome was able to field a substantially greater number of men than her limited manpower would have allowed. The goddess Venus, portrayed on a Roman mosaic from Low Ham, Somerset. (Edimedia, Paris)

Warring sides

Carthaginian and Roman forces on land and sea The Carthaginian army Carthage was primarily a trading nation seeking to extend its commercial connections, its sphere of influence and its empire. A maritime nation supported by military force, Carthage was able to maintain her role and trading monopolies for three centuries, mainly through a superior navy which was not averse to sinking rival trade vessels. Such incidents were not regarded as acts of war, especially since many such losses were probably attributed to natural disasters, given the absence of any survivors to testifyto the contrary. The Carthaginian army consisted mainly of mercenaries recruited from the various subject territories who, except in Spain, seldom served in their own countries, and remained isolated from one another through differences of language and religion. They were then largely dependent upon the Carthaginian fleet for supplies, and discipline was enforced via a strict code which included capital punishment. Each territory provided special military skills: Numidia supplied a nimble, courageous and indefatigable cavalry armed with spears and javelins. These lightly clad horsemen, who rode without saddle or bridle, had superb fighting skills, both in the hills or on the plains, manoeuvring like flocks of starlings that wheel and change direction as though by instinct. Threatening and enticing, surprising with sudden and unexpected moves, there was no cavalry on the battlefield to match them. From the Balearic Islands came the formidable slingers, organised into corps of 2,000 men who were armed with two types of slings, one for long-range engagements against a densely packed enemy and the other for close-quarter, individual targets

up to some 600 feet. Their delivery of stones or lead, which could penetrate a helmet or light protective armour, matched the rate of fire and accuracy of contemporary archers. They were savage fighters who were often paid in women rather than gold or silver. Though infantry soldiers were recruited from Spanish hill tribes, they were in perpetual conflict with one another, a national disharmony which had simplified the Carthaginian conquest of Spain. They were experts at guerrilla warfare but of temperamental disposition and doubtful loyalty, not best suited to set-piece battles. Their basic weapon was a short sword suitable for cutting and thrusting. Also recruited from Spain were lightly armed cavalry whose horses could carry a second rider, ready to dismount and fight as an infantryman. The largest mercenary contingent, however, were the Libyans of Tunisia. Hardened by the harsh conditions of their own country, they were versatile fighters who served both as light infantry skirmishers and in the heavily concentrated infantry of the line. There were Gauls too but relatively few until Hannibal's invasion of Italy encouraged them to join in substantial numbers to fight their traditional enemies, the Romans. They fought without armour and showed great dash in the attack, but they were unreliable, especially when hard-pressed. Then there were the elephants. Initially the Carthaginians only used the African elephant found in the forests around Carthage, at the foot of the Atlas mountains and along the coast of Morocco, but later it seems probable that Hannibal obtained some of the larger Indian elephants from Egypt. Until tactics had been developed to counter them on the battlefield, elephants struck terror into men and horses alike and their small numbers were disproportionately

Warring sides

A Numidian cavalryman as shown in an eighteenthcentury representation. (AKG, Berlin)

effective. When frightened, however, they sometimes wreaked devastation in their own ranks by turning and fleeing. There were also native Carthaginians in the army, but their number was never very great and they were mainly confined to a few hundred heavy infantry called the Sacred Band. From this force the long-term professional leadership was selected, thus ensuring that the generals who commanded the mercenary army came from amongst their own citizens, though the Numidian cavalry did produce their own commanders. Carthage's reliance on a mercenary army was probably caused by the shortage of manpower: there may have been just too few men to do any more than crew their extensive fleet of warships and numerous trading vessels without endangering their commercial activities. Historians differ in their views as to the effectiveness of the Carthaginian army. Some claim that the mercenaries were not united by any common or reciprocal interest and had no long-term concern for the well-being of those they served, who were, in turn, largely indifferent to the mercenaries anyway. Serving only for money, plunder and rape, they could not be relied upon to face extremes of danger with zeal, or disaster with resolution. Others point out that though there were incidents of desertion and

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cowardice, as well as bloody mutiny, such incidents were not exclusive to mercenaries. On balance, except for the long time it took to recruit, train and deploy a large mercenary army in an emergency, the defects and inadequacies of the system look exaggerated. The old British Indian Army, with its Sikhs, Gurkhas, Rajputs and Bengalis - to name but a few - incorporating both Hindus and Moslems, was a mercenary army cemented together by its British officers. Whatever the composition of Hannibal's army and however few Carthaginian officers he may have had in relation to his men, these were not factors of great significance; what counted was the magnetism of his leadership.

The Carthaginian navy The navy played a vital part in the Carthaginian war machine and, unlike the army, it was manned entirely byCarthaginians. There were three basic types of ships: large cargo vessels which were easily converted to troop transports; warships; and small, general-purpose vessels. The cargo vessels, or transports, had rounded hulls to provide capacious holds and were about four times as long as their width. The warships, needing speed rather than capacity, were long and narrow in order to accommodate the greatest possible number of oarsmen. Unlike the earlier Phoenician and Greek triremes which had three levels of oars, each with a single rower, from the 4th century the Carthaginian trireme, and then the quinquereme - the classic warship of the Punic Wars - had four and five rowers respectively, sitting on the same bench and plying the same oar. Thus the sides of the ships were lower than the Greek triremes, which enhanced stability. Both the trireme and the quinquereme were about 40 metres long and 6 metres wide, with a draught of no more than 2 metres. With 30 oars on each side, they had crews of around 240 and 300 respectively, together with some 30 to 40 sailors who handled the sails and worked on deck. The ships had two

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Representing the battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, this painting shows the use of war elephants. Atributed to Leonard Thiry. (Edimedia, Paris)

Warring sides

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The Carthaginian quinquereme was the work horse of the Punic Wars. No images are extant, but the picture shows a diagram of the Roman quinquereme, based on the relief from the Isola Tiberina monument. (JF Coates)

sets of sails: the central main mast provided propulsion and the smaller mast, mounted on the prow, allowed the ship to be manoeuvred in cross winds. Only sails were used on the approach to a battle area, but once the enemy was sighted, the masts were lowered and the rowers took over. The basic tactical unit consisted of 12 ships, which could be grouped together to form a fleet of varying size - 120 ships, or 10 tactical units, was the normal number. The general-purpose vessels were smaller, swift and easily manoeuvrable, and were mainly employed on reconnaissance and communication tasks. Two such vessels have been found off the western coast of Sicily and show how the Phoenicians constructed their ships. The wooden components were prefabricated and assembled later. This discovery helps explain how the Romans were able to dismantle and copy a Carthaginian ship once they had captured one. Battles usually took place near the shore, where the ships could be handled in relatively calm water.

There were two basic battle tactics. In both instances the fleet was initially deployed in line ahead, but the subsequent action depended on the enemy's dispositions. If there was sufficient space, the Carthaginian ships would move alongside the enemy and by suddenly turning, ram them amidships. If there was not enough room for this manoeuvre then the Carthaginian vessels would break through gaps in the enemy line and turn about sharply to take them in the rear. The Carthaginians, then, had a potent navy which assured them of sea supremacy at the outbreak of hostilities. With the versatile use of cargo ships as troop transports, they possessed a strategic mobility that offered a unique advantage over any opponent, so long as they had commanders capable of exploiting this superiority.

The Roman army Under normal conditions all males between the ages of 18 and 46 who satisfied the property criteria were eligible for military service and were recruited into the cavalry or the infantry. The infantry, who were by far the most important arm and formed the

Warring sides

main element of the principal fighting formation - the legion - were expected to serve for 20 years. Selection for the cavalry was even more heavily dependent upon wealth, but carried a commitment of just two years. Military service was regarded as a mark of honour without which public recognition and advancement were virtually impossible, especially since it was only after 10 years' duty that a man could hold public office. A legion consisted of some 4,000 infantry, except in times of special danger when the number was increased to 5,000. These were organised into 10 cohorts, and 300 cavalry who were formed into 10 squadrons. The legion had been developed from the Greek phalanx into a more flexible formation, better able to manoeuvre over broken ground and face the highly mobile Gauls. Each cohort was organised into three maniples comprising soldiers of different ages. Forming the first rank were the hastati, 120 young men in 12 well spaced files, each 10 men deep; behind the hastati, at a distance equivalent to the frontage of the maniple, came the princeps of 120 slightly older men, again organised into 12 files

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10 men deep, so disposed that they faced the gaps between the files of the hastati to form a chequerboard pattern. In this way a solid front could quickly be established by either the hastati withdrawing or the principes advancing. When adopting this more compact order, a legionary standing to arms occupied three feet and, unlike the Greek phalanx, three further feet separated him from the men on either side, thus enabling him to use his sword freely and change the position of his shield. The third maniple of 60 older men, usually veterans, were called the triari. They were also deployed to cover the gap of those in front of them, but were in six files, each 10 men deep. In addition, each cohort had a squadron of cavalry and 120 light infantry for use as skirmishers, flank protection or to form a rearguard. The hastati in the leading maniple were each equipped with a short cutting and thrusting sword, together with two javelins to be thrown on approaching the enemy. The shields they carried were some four feet long and two and a half feet wide, bound Trireme. (Roger-Viollet)

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Essential Histories • The Punic Wars

A Balearic slinger (Osprey Publishing)

with iron at the upper edge to withstand a sword blow and at the bottom to enable them to be rested on the ground without damage. The legionaries wore body armour and helmets, but though the principes and triari were similarly protected, they carried a spear instead of two javelins. The light infantry were armed with a spear for thrusting or throwing, a sword, and a round shield three feet in diameter. The cavalry, who were not considered much more than an adjunct to the infantry, were poorly armed and wore no body armour. Command was exercised at four different levels: centurions, tribunes, legates and consuls. The centurions were long-service professional officers equating to company commanders. Two of them were selected by merit to command each maniple, the one on the right being the senior. The cohorts were commanded by tribunes who had either been promoted from amongst the centurions, in which case they would have been battlehardened professionals, or were magistrates

who had been posted to the army to serve for a few years before returning to civilian life. A legion, which in modern terms could be compared with a division, was commanded by a legate, another temporary civilian appointment, but one of senatorial rank. An army was formed by combining two legions and was commanded by a consul appointed by the Senate. One of the legions was invariably Roman, but as mentioned above, the other was generally recruited from one of the allied cities. The slow progress that had been made towards improving tactical flexibility was discarded at the battle of Cannae with disastrous consequences. The Romans reverted to massing as a phalanx, in the belief that they would then burst through the thinly drawn Carthaginian centre. Though there were deserters - 900 in Carthage when the city fell who preferred to fight to the death rather than be taken alive and crucified, we do not know whether they were Roman or mainly from amongst the allies. The legionaries, both Roman and allied, were motivated through a combination of harsh discipline and public esteem. The certain and severe punishment they faced for cowardice was more feared than the prospect of death on the battlefield. Bravery and victory, on the other hand, brought rewards: a triumph for the consul, spoil and esteem for those who had shared in his achievements. The Romans do not appear to have been any braver than their opponents; if they showed greater perseverance over a longer period, it was because of their training and their social conditioning.

The Roman navy The history of the Roman navy is strange indeed. Following the third treaty between Rome and Carthage, drawn up in 279 BC at the time of Pyrrhus' campaign in Italy, Carthaginian naval supremacy had been recognised: they would aid the Romans by sea should the need arise. The Roman conquest of southern Italy had been achieved with just an army and no attempt

Warring sides

had been made to reduce the coastal cities using a combined land and sea assault, or even a blockade. Eventually, however, the Romans recognised their maritime deficiency and with their usual thoroughness set about putting things right. A Carthaginian quinquereme which had run aground during a naval brush was dismantled and used as a model for the construction of a whole Roman fleet. The recorded facts relate how 100 quinqueremes and 20 triremes were ordered to be ready in two months. While the workmen were busy building and fitting out the ships, the recruiting and training of the sailors proceeded apace. Skeleton ship frames were constructed along the shore and the rowers drilled under the command of their officers. It was a stupendous undertaking involving some 35,000 men, suggesting a considerable amount of pre-planning, with the crews being recruited, the timber felled and shaped, the skeleton frames constructed and the ships themselves all completed before the two months training, including a period at sea, actually began. Even so, it is small wonder that in the first encounters with the Carthaginians the Romans proved to be hopelessly inadequate. To compensate for their lack of nautical expertise, however, the Romans introduced a technical innovation that exploited their legionaries' aptitude for close-quarter fighting. A 12-foot pillar of wood with a pulley on the top was fitted to the prow of every vessel. To this pillar a boarding bridge was attached which could be hoisted up and swung around in the required direction. At the end of the bridge there was a large pointed spike called a COITUS which, when released, drove itself into the deck of the opposing vessel, locking the two ships together. Then the legionaries could storm aboard and slaughter the near-defenceless crews. As an example of a technical innovation which led to a precipitous reversal of battlefield superiority that had endured for centuries, the corvus outclassed all subsequent developments such as

gunpowder, the tank, radar, submarines, air power and electronic warfare.

A Roman sword (gladius). (Edimedia, Paris)

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Bronze relief of Roman legionaries (Edimedia, Paris)

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Outbreak

Collapse of the Third Treaty of Friendship The causes of war are seldom explicit or simple, nor do they lend themselves to broad generalisations, such as commercial rivalry, social unrest, or religious fanaticism. To isolate one single factor, however prominent, risks over-simplification; equally, to follow too many threads can result in confusion. Furthermore, to rely on subsequent statements by those directly involved is notoriously dangerous: memories of complex events become clouded and perhaps even adjusted, if only subconsciously, with hindsight. When considering what occurred over 2,000 years ago, it must be recognised that much of the available evidence is fragmentary and, even at the time, the opinions expressed are largely hearsay. Even so, although there may never be any way of determining exactly why Carthage and Rome went to war, there are two clearly identifiable factors which make such a war more probable. First, the Romans saw an opportunity to advantage themselves; secondly they saw that the Carthaginians were unprepared militarily, and succumbed to this temptation. Nothing has changed in human nature during the last 20 centuries. Whether as individuals or collectively, most of the human race displays an unfortunate proclivity for opportunism, unless deterred by the threat of sufficiently painful consequences. Bearing in mind the limitations of this examination, let us then take a look at what occurred. While the Romans had remorselessly extended their conquests down the length of the Italian peninsula, the Carthaginians had maintained their policy of non-intervention. Whether this was primarily because they were already occupied in Sicily and had no wish to

enter a new and potentially hazardous undertaking or whether they felt their overall interests were best secured by not antagonising this emerging power, is not known. But the result remains the same: the Carthaginians did not provoke the Romans any more than the land-bound Romans directly challenged Carthaginian interests. Both powers then appeared to be respecting the Third Treaty of Friendship, drawn up in 279 BC, which amongst other things had committed them to go to one another's assistance if attacked. We have seen how, only a year or two after the treaty, Rome and Carthage were drawn closer together when Pyrrhus first crossed the Adriatic to help the Greek cities opposing Roman domination, then sailed the straits of Messina to assist the Greek cities in Sicily against the Carthaginians. Yet some 10 years later Carthage and Rome were at war: what went wrong? A modern strategist might point out that the possession of Sicily would have brought untold advantages: strategically placed between Italy and Africa, it provided an important springboard for military operations in either direction, while dominating east-west trade routes across the Mediterranean at its narrowest point. For the Romans it also offered a forward operating base from which sea communications between Carthage, Sardinia and Spain could be interdicted. Yet clearly such an analysis played no part in Roman thinking, since Rome lacked a fleet for its implementation. That the Carthaginians could have pursued such reasoning is more plausible, but they had shown no wish to renew their earlier endeavours to conquer Sicily so their goal seems to have been limited to achieving a monopoly of trade throughout the island.

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Bronze coin of the Mamertini. (The British Museum)

There are two other considerations which support this contention. Spain was by far the most important source of wealth for the Carthaginians, and their attention must have been drawn westwards rather than towards an area in which they had had so much difficulty in establishing a presence. Secondly, whenever the Carthaginians had mounted an expedition to Sicily, it had

been in response to the loss of their trading possessions, not in direct search of further conquests. As there was no such expeditionary force in Sicily during the period we are considering, it can be concluded that the Carthaginian state of readiness was far too low to undertake a major campaign. We must, then, look for less dynamic reasons for war.

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The straits of Messina. (Roger-Viollet)

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First hostilities The actual catalyst for conflict was a request by some unscrupulous adventurers called the Mamertines, from Campania on the western seaboard of the Italian peninsula. The Mamertines had fought in Sicily as mercenaries for Agathocles of Syracuse against the Carthaginians. After Agathocles' death in 289 BC the inhabitants of Messana welcomed the Mamertines into their city and the Mamertines promptly set about massacring the leading citizens, appropriating their wives and property, and creating a vassal empire around the city which extended over the north-east corner of the island. This brought them into conflict with Hiero of Syracuse, who was building an empire to succeed that of Agathocles. Adopting a high moral tone, Hiero condemned the Mamertines for the treacherous manner by which they had obtained Messana 15 years earlier and, marching north with his army, he brought them to battle on the Longanus river, where he defeated them decisively. Before Hiero could reap the full rewards of this victory, however, the Carthaginians moved swiftly to assist the Mamertines by placing a garrison in Messana. This prompt action did not arise from any concern for the Mamertines but rather from a determination that the Syracusans, against whom the Carthaginians had waged war for so many years, should not obtain possession of the harbour of Messana and so be in a position to dominate the narrow straits between Sicily and Italy. Although they had been saved from Hiero, who quickly realised that he was no match for the Carthaginians and withdrew to Syracuse, the Mamertines had no wish to be subjected to a regime that put the orderly conduct of trade before their own self-interested piracy. Furthermore, since the Carthaginians had not displayed great consistency of purpose or undisputed skill in their military campaigns, the wheel of fortune might take a less favourable turn and leave the city once again exposed to the ambitions of Hiero. An

alliance with the Romans looked a better bet: they were after all fellow countrymen with a shared heritage; furthermore, the Romans allowed a considerable degree of independence to the cities and tribes they had assimilated into their Confederation. Envoys were despatched to Rome, seeking an alliance and Roman protection. This request put the Romans on the horns of a dilemma. Agreeing to it would clearly risk war with Carthage; not doing so would mean letting an opportunity to secure a foothold in Sicily slip away. The move was strongly advocated by those like the Claudii who believed that the future of Rome lay in the south. The Senate was probably divided, on account of its changing social composition. The old families who had once dominated the Senate by aristocratic right were seeing their position eroded by the promotion of a new class of men who had either won distinction on the battlefield or recognition in the democratic assembly of the people. Another war would threaten the Senate with a renewed influx of candidates borne on a wave of public fervour. Additionally, the popular assembly had acquired increasing influence and power because of its ultimate right to declare war and approve terms of peace, while the Senate was still left responsible for the direction of the war and the consequences of failure. The people had thus acquired power without responsibility; the Senate was attempting to combine in a single assembly two diverse factions, one based on the inherited privilege of aristocratic birth and the other on plebeian approval. Apart from these conflicting interests, in which the views of the Claudii prevailed, there were obvious attractions in responding positively to the Mamertines' appeal. As long as the Carthaginians held Messana they were in a position to dominate the Straits with their all-powerful fleet and, more menacingly, they might be tempted to extend their conquests on to the mainland of Italy. Thus the occupation of Messana by a Roman garrison would not only provide a

Outbreak

foothold for further expansion, but also ensure that the key cities either side of the Straits were in Roman hands. No doubt there were some who also saw an opportunity to secure the whole of Sicily as a Roman province, but the inherent dangers of such a position probably deterred all but the most ardent. There must have been much debate about the recently reaffirmed treaty with Carthage which declared friendship and a readiness for military co-operation; any unprovoked breach of this treaty would be seen as an act of flagrant aggression. The argument that the despatch of Roman troops would only be in response to an appeal for protection against Syracuse and not directed against Carthage was sheer sophistry: a Carthaginian garrison was already installed and would have to be evicted. For Rome to be perceived as an aggressor would not only be a contradiction of the virtuous standards so purposefully inculcated into her people, but would also endanger her dealings with the other states which were, at least in public relations terms, based on equally noble ideals. There was a further moral problem facing those in the Senate who pressed for the occupation of Messana. A few years earlier the Roman garrison in Rhegium had seized control of the city and established a tyrannical government similar to the one which the Mamertines, probably in imitation, now practised. When Rhegium was eventually recaptured the mutinous survivors were assembled in the Forum in Rome, flogged and then beheaded. What then was the moral justification in responding to a call for assistance from criminals in Messana who had been fortunate in preserving their skins, if not their possessions, under Carthaginian protection? The answer was self-evidently none. At the time of the Mamertine request, there was nothing to suggest that the Romans had anything to fear from the Carthaginians in the foreseeable future. In Messana itself there was only a small garrison, and the hesitancy of its commander, Hanno, in resisting the Romans

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when they did eventually land, which resulted in his crucifixion, hardly suggests that he or his troops were preparing for a Carthaginian invasion of Italy. Even the Carthaginian fleet was absent from the harbour of Messana and had done nothing to contravene the Third Treaty of Friendship, let alone attempt to dominate the Straits. Surprisingly, however, although lacking both provocation and a fleet to transport and sustain their army, the Senate could not persuade its contesting factions to determine a rational policy, and instead delegated the responsibility for reaching a decision to the popular assembly. Though constitutionally correct, this was a high-risk enterprise relying as it did on a popular vote that was probably even more heavily influenced by powerful voices with vested interests than would have been the Senate itself. This does not mean that Rome and Carthage would not have eventually fought for supremacy in the Mediterranean given Rome's imperialistic ambitions and Carthaginian preoccupation with their commercial empire this was almost inevitable - but in 264 BC there was no obvious reason for these two powers to become embroiled in a major war. The fact that they did so, and over such a minor and unworthy cause, was unequivocally the fault of the Romans. When commenting on the Punic Wars, reference to the three levels of war strategic, operational and tactical - helps explain the course of the fighting. This is not to suggest that either Carthage or Rome possessed such a military vocabulary or indeed recognised the conceptual differences between these three levels. Strategic level: the definition of strategic objectives to be achieved in fulfilment of government policy. Operational level: the planning and execution of military operations to achieve stated strategic objectives. Tactical level: the planning and conduct of battles in pursuit of the operational aim. To put it simply, having decided what you want to do, you plan how this is to be achieved and co-ordinate the actual battles to be fought in its fulfilment.

The fighting

The three Punic Wars The First Punic War 264-241 BC For the sake of clarity, the First Punic War will be considered in four phases, though the fighting in Sicily did not end in 261 BC and then begin again three years later. Something of a stalemate had been reached, so the Romans shifted the war's centre of gravity to North Africa, leaving Sicily very much a backwater. Similarly, the war at sea did not end in 256 BC, but thereafter it formed such an integrated part of the land campaign that they are best considered together. The four phases are: The opening round in Sicily 264-261 BC The maritime dimension 260-256 BC The African campaign 256-255 BC The return to Sicily 254-241 BC

The opening round in Sicily 264-261 BC After the decision had been taken to aid the Mamertines, the problem facing Appius Claudius, the commander of the expedition, was that his two legions were some 400 miles north of their port of embarkation at Rhegium and the necessary shipping, all of which belonged to the allies, had to be assembled. Appreciating that any delay would cost him the element of surprise, Claudius despatched a smaller force, which managed to cross the Straits undetected and quickly secure the town of Messana, allowing the Carthaginian garrison to leave unmolested. However, Hanno, the unfortunate Carthaginian commander, was subsequently crucified for his lack of resolution. Appius Claudius was later able to make a night crossing with his main force without being intercepted, though he must have been detected as it was then that the Carthaginian quinquereme, which served as

the model for the construction of a Roman fleet, charged so furiously that it ran aground. Once ashore, Claudius found himself confronted by the Carthaginians under Hanno and the Syracusans under Hiero. These two former opponents failed to co-ordinate, let alone concentrate, their respective forces, so were defeated separately, though not decisively. Both were able to withdraw, Hanno into some neighbouring Carthaginian cities and Hiero into Syracuse, which became the Romans' next objective. With two new consuls and reinforced by a further two legions, the Romans' determination and overwhelming force quickly persuaded 67 Syracusan and Punic cities to reach an accommodation with Rome; shortly afterwards Hiero too entered into an alliance. Meanwhile the Carthaginians had been raising a mercenary army, mainly from Spain, and when their training had been completed they were transported to the fortified city of Agrigentum on Sicily's south coast. Here the Carthaginians were besieged but managed to slip out through the Roman lines during the night, leaving the hapless population to be butchered. Until the capture of Agrigentum, the Romans had drawn a distinction between the garrisons of foreign cities and the civilian population, but with the ferocious reprisals that had now been taken, an example was set which possibly was intended to serve as a warning to others contemplating siding with Carthage. The effects of this new policy are not clear; some inland cities went over to the Romans, but those on the coast which could be sustained by the Carthaginian fleet stood firm. Whatever the members of the Claudii had hoped for, with their ambitions for southern expansion, there was no long-term Roman strategic objective for becoming involved in

The

Eighteenth-century copperplate engraving of a Roman warship, showing the corvus, the beam with which the Romans attacked other ships. (Ann Ronan Picture Library)

fighting

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Sicily; more an uncertain drift towards total conquest. On the other hand, for the first three years of the war the field commanders were quite clear as to their operational objectives: the occupation of Messana, the subjugation of Syracuse and the reduction of Agrigentum. These precise aims had enabled them to achieve a concentration of force and to take and hold the offensive. In 261 BC, however, the situation was reversed. There was now an unequivocal strategic objective to clear the Carthaginians from Sicily but no operational plan as to how this was to be achieved. Roman strength lay in the set-piece battle, the decisive clash of opposing armies that settled the issue one way or another, but Hamilcar, the Carthaginian commander who had replaced Hanno, was not to be drawn. Instead he used the flexibility within his fleet to dominate the seaboard and its cities. The fighting then became diffuse and

reactive as city after city flared into revolt or declared for Carthage. The problem facing the Romans was that even if they were to seek a conclusive action by first concentrating against the main Carthaginian base at Lilybaeum on the west coast, they would be unable to reduce it by siege unless they were able to prevent reinforcements and provisions coming in by sea. Meanwhile, they would incur the risk of being cut off from their own supplies, as had nearly occurred at Agrigentum. An entirely land-based strategy could not break this stalemate and the need for a Roman fleet was self-evident.

The maritime dimension 260-256 BC We have seen how the Romans hastily constructed a fleet, and to compensate for their inferior seamanship raised corvi on the prows of their ships to enable the legionaries to swarm aboard opponents' vessels. It was

The

in 260 BC at Mylae (Milazzo), on the north coast near Messana, that this development was first used, when 130 Carthaginian ships closed with a superior Roman fleet of 145 vessels and lost nearly half their total strength in the encounter. The victory at Mylae presented the Romans with two strategic options: either they could continue the Sicilian campaign, or they could go on to the defensive in Sicily and assault the African mainland with a view to destroying Carthage. They decided on the former, maintaining a consistent strategic objective but one which required a change of operational tactics. Though the Romans had energetically sought to enlarge their fleet, like their army, it was still not sufficiently powerful to deal with widely spread objectives. Yet in 258 BC, this is exactly what they attempted to do: instead of concentrating their resources and mounting

fighting

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Relief showing a Roman trireme with legionaries on board. (Sopraintendenza Archeologica per le Provincie di Napoli e Caserta)

combined land and sea operations against the coastal cities in Sicily, so cutting their supply lines to Carthage, or alternatively, ending the politically embarrassing raids against the Italian seaboard by subjugating Sardinia and Corsica, the Romans attempted to conduct both campaigns at once. The result was that, although the Romans won another naval victory and had some successes in Corsica, they were too weak to exploit their achievements and in Sicily they suffered a severe reverse when Hamilcar Barca suddenly took the offensive. The prevailing stalemate led to growing disenchantment and then to an alternative strategy: to carry the war to North Africa. In so doing they set the scene for one of the largest naval battles in history.

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In the summer of 256 BC a Roman fleet of 330 ships, of which 250 were probably quinqueremes, set sail southward from Messana, along the eastern coast of Sicily to Phintias, a substantial port on the southern coast lying under Mt Ecnomus, where two legions were waiting to embark. Meanwhile the Carthaginian fleet, which was about the same warship strength, sailed from Lilybaeum, and following the shoreline, encountered the Romans as they set sail for Africa. The Roman commander, Marcus Atilius Regulus, had divided his fighting ships into four squadrons. Two made up the sides of a triangle, the third, with the transports in tow, formed the base, while the fourth squadron deployed in a single, extended line to the rear to cover the flanks of the third squadron and the transports. The Carthaginians also divided their fleet into four squadrons. Three were placed in line from the shore so that the one on the extreme seaward right did not directly face the Roman wedge but remained free to advance and attack their left flank. The fourth was deployed forward of the others, parallel to the shore, so that it was already in position to attack the Roman right flank without having to change direction.

wedge were forced to flee in earnest, leaving the Romans free to turn back and assist their other hard-pressed squadrons. Now heavily outnumbered, the Carthaginians' two remaining squadrons were broken and forced to withdraw as best they could. Once again the com had proved their usefulness, and although nearly as many Roman ships were sunk as Carthaginian, 24 and 30 respectively, 64 Carthaginian ships were captured. The Romans were now free to cross over to Africa, but some delay occurred while essential repairs were completed, not only to their own vessels but to the Carthaginian ships, which were now pressed into service. When all was ready the Romans put to sea a second time, while the Carthaginians abandoned any attempt to hold forward in the seas around Sicily but fell back to the Gulf of Carthage. Instead of making the direct approach anticipated by the Carthaginians and sailing into the gulf on the western side of Cape Bon, the Romans made an indirect approach and disembarked on the eastern seaboard, thus accepting the greater natural obstacles on land that would have to be overcome in the march on Carthage rather than risking another sea battle.

The Roman wedge drove forward towards the Punic fleet. As they approached the two squadrons directly facing them, the Carthaginians turned and feigned flight. The Romans then hastened in pursuit but in doing so, became separated from the third squadron towing the transports. At a signal from Hamilcar, the Carthaginian commander, the two squadrons pretending to flee turned on their pursuers; the squadron that had been deployed beyond the Roman wedge fell upon its rear, and the squadron posted parallel to the shore advanced to attack the Roman squadron that was towing the transports. Three separate battles raged and the hapless transports were cast off and left to drift unattended. For a while both navies held their own, but eventually, despite their brilliant initial tactics, the Carthaginian squadrons engaging the apex of the Roman

The African campaign 256-255 BC The Carthaginians did not have enough troops in Africa to do more than defend Carthage, so they withdrew into the city leaving the Romans to establish themselves ashore without hindrance some 40 miles along the coast to the east. Though the delay following the battle of Ecnomus may have caused considerable disruption, as messengers had to be sent back to Rome seeking further instructions, it appears that the Romans' operational planning had again been defective. They had probably assessed that Carthage, like the fortified coastal cities of Sicily, could only be taken if blockaded from both land and sea. Winter, however, was now approaching and it would have been too late to undertake such an enterprise. There was also a logistical problem with the fleet: if it were to remain in North Africa the Romans faced the task of

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feeding some 75,000 rowers, who greatly outnumbered the soldiers. It is hardly surprising then that when orders arrived from Rome, only 40 warships were to remain, with 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. The others, including all the transports, were to return to Rome. Loading on board the 20,000 slaves that had been rounded up, together with booty, one consul went on his way leaving the other, Marcus Atilius Regulus, the co-victor of Ecnomus, with two legions and sufficient ships to keep open communications with Rome. After recalling 5,000 infantry and 500 cavalry from Sicily, the Carthaginians felt strong enough to try to prevent the Romans ranging unopposed through the countryside, plundering at will. Their foray, however, was swiftly defeated and this encouraged the Romans to advance their forward base to Tunis, a few miles south-west of Carthage. Fame and a triumph now lay within Regulus' grasp; all that was required of him was the reduction of Carthage, apparently tottering on the brink of starvation. This was not, however, to prove so easy. Responding to a Carthaginian appeal to the Greeks, Xanthipus, a Spartan general who had received the rigorous training associated with his countrymen, had arrived at the head of a substantial number of Greek mercenaries and quickly appreciated that it was Carthaginian generalship that was at fault, not the mercenary soldiers. Having put things right, in the spring of 255 BC Xanthipus marched out of the city with some 12,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and an unspecified number of elephants. In the ensuing battle the Romans were routed by the elephants, which smashed into the legionaries. Despite heavy losses they fought on manfully until assailed by the Numidian cavalry from the rear. Only 2,000 of the Romans escaped and some 500 prisoners were taken, including Regulus himself. When news of the defeat reached Rome, plans had to be radically recast. Abandoning all hope of laying siege to Carthage, an expedition would be mounted instead to rescue any survivors. The strategic aim of the

war would then revert to the securing of Sicily. In the early summer, 350 Roman ships sailed to the tip of Cape Bon. There they encountered and heavily defeated the Carthaginian fleet, which thereafter made no effort to intervene. The Romans were then free to re-embark their surviving legionaries unmolested in a thoroughly successful operation. However, they foolishly provoked the weather gods by a display of hubris. Scorning the pressing advice of the pilots to steer to the west of Sicily to avoid the sudden summer storms which frequently arose off the southern coast, the Romans met with disaster. Off Camarina, towards the south-eastern extremity of the island, the fleet was struck by a savage storm and all but 80 ships were lost, together with their crews and the soldiers they were transporting. Altogether some 100,000 men may have been drowned. A stupendous effort would now be required to replace their losses. Remarkably, the Romans achieved this in seven or eight months. The Carthaginians also had to replace substantial losses, as well as contend with widespread uprisings throughout their African possessions. Punic primacy and overlordship had been challenged. It would have to be re-established before Carthage could confidently resume the struggle.

The return to Sicily 254-241 BC In the spring of 254 BC the new consuls left Italy with two fresh armies and 220 new ships, bound for Messana. There they joined up with the ships and survivors from the disastrous storm off Camarina. Once preparations had been completed, the 300-strong fleet sailed round Cape Pelorias along the north coast, while the legions marched to Drepana, embarked and then sailed to Panormous (Palermo), one of the largest and richest Carthaginian coastal cities, with a good harbour. The Romans landed under the outer walls that encircled the town, breached these defences and set about butchering its inhabitants, a sight which must have encouraged those sheltering behind the old city's inner defences to surrender and face slavery.

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The fall of Panormous induced a number of other cities to throw in their lot with Rome, leaving the Carthaginians mainly confined to the west of the island. But in 253 BC the Romans lost sight of their strategic objective. The two new consuls travelled through Sicily and crossed over to North Africa, not to threaten Carthage but to raid the Libyan coastline some 200 miles to the south. The Romans probably wished to sustain the unrest among the Libyans, but this division of their resources proved ineffectual. Having been fortunate not to lose their fleet off the Libyan coast when it was ignominiously stranded on an ebb tide, the Romans were caught in a storm on the passage back and lost 150 of their 200 ships. For the next two years Roman resolution seemed to falter. The land campaign was conducted in a desultory manner and the lost ships were only partially replaced. The Carthaginians on the other hand had quelled

The fighting

the dissident Libyans and sent reinforcements to Sicily under Hasdrubal, the son of Hanno, who had served with Xanthipus. For two years he dominated the countryside around Lilybaeum, but he was eventually defeated in a messy battle near Panormous from which he managed to escape. He was later recalled to Carthage and, like his father, summarily executed; being a Carthaginian general was no sinecure. Though the Romans finally received naval reinforcements and troops for the investment of Lilybaeum, they were unable to prevent the garrison being supplied from the sea, while on land they faced a Herculean task. Although they had four legions available, the city lay on a promontory and was secured by a massive wall and a deep ditch that required the erection of siege fortifications. Not long after these had been completed a violent wind blew down some of the Roman towers protecting their works, and this encouraged the Carthaginians to sally forth and set them ablaze. Following this reverse, the Romans gave up trying to take the city by storm and settled down to starve the garrison into

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submission. Eight years later, when the First Punic War ended, Lilybaeum remained unconquered. The Romans' next move was to try to destroy the Carthaginian fleet sheltering at Drepana, just north of Lilybaeum. Publius Claudius Pulcher, who had earlier flung the sacred chickens overboard, set sail with 120 ships, none of which were now equipped with the corvus, since it adversely affected their handling, especially in bad weather. However, surprise was lost and the Romans found themselves trapped between the shore and the Carthaginian fleet. Unable to manoeuvre and less experienced than the Carthaginian sailors, the Roman fleet was virtually destroyed, though Pulcher managed to escape with about 30 ships. He was fortunate not to be a Carthaginian as, although responsible for the loss of some 20,000 lives, on his return to Rome he suffered no more than public disgrace and a heavy fine. While these dramatic events had been unfolding, at the other end of the island Cape Bon. (Bury Peerless)

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a massive Roman fleet consisting of 120 warships and 800 transports, had sailed from Messana and, after rounding Cape Pachynus (Cape Passero), found itself facing the Carthaginian fleet. Before any serious fighting could begin, the Carthaginians, recognising the signs of a pending storm, broke off the engagement and took shelter in the lee of the cape, where they were able to ride out the rough weather. The Roman fleet never had a chance to escape, so was driven on to the rocky shore and almost annihilated. Roman fortunes were at a low ebb but the Carthaginians were not faring much better. Success at sea had been nullified by impotence on land and most importantly, following the ousting of the war party by the great landowners, attention was diverted from Sicily to interests nearer home. On the positive side, Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal's father, a skilful and energetic commander, had been despatched to Sicily, but he had not the resources to do more than conduct a guerrilla war while the Carthaginian fleet was withdrawn. This was as a result of political rivalries. After four years of inconclusive fighting, the Roman Senate decided to make a supreme effort to end the costly and unrewarding conflict. In 243 BC a new fleet was constructed, which set sail the following year to seal off Lilybaeum from the sea. Only late in the day did the Carthaginians recognise the danger and return to Sicilian waters to confront the Romans in the naval battle that was to decide the war. It was not an engagement marked by audacious manoeuvre: the two fleets lined up and clashed head on to slog it out until, after losing more than 50 ships, the Carthaginians conceded defeat and retired to Carthage. Deserted and with no hope of further support, Hamilcar Barca was left to negotiate the best peace terms he could with Catulus, the Roman commander. In the event both commanders showed themselves to be reasonable in their demands, and a treaty was concluded whereby the Carthaginians would retain their arms but withdraw from Sicily and pay a substantial war indemnity. After

24 years of fluctuating fortunes, with a heavy cost in lives and resources, the war had ended, but it was not to bring peace to either side.

Strife between wars 241-218 BC Almost as soon as the treaty between Lutatius Catulus and Hamilcar Barca had been signed, both Carthage and Rome found themselves engaged in bitter fighting against other opponents. For Carthage it was first against her mutinous mercenaries and then the conquering of Spain. For the Romans it was a renewal of the age-old conflict with the Gauls and then an extension of their power across the Adriatic into lllyria. Though these conflicts were not sequential, for clarity's sake they will be related as though this were; when they interacted with the Punic Wars, as they sometimes did, this will be brought out.

The mercenary revolt 241-237 BC The cause of the revolt by the mercenaries on returning to Carthage from Sicily was twofold: arrears of pay and the unfulfilled promises of special rewards in recompense for all they had faced during the long years of arduous campaigning. Carthaginian prevarication led to an open revolt, headed by two rabble-rousers who had nothing to lose: Spendius, a fugitive Roman slave who feared the prospect of being handed over to the Romans to face certain death by torture, and Matho, an African who, as the chief instigator of the trouble, could expect a similar fate if taken alive. Joined by a number of African cities that had been subjected to exorbitant taxes and had had land confiscated as the cost of the war had emptied the Carthaginian treasury, the vicious war spread and lasted for three years. Eventually the mercenary army was trapped against an unidentified range of mountains and was destroyed. The cost in lives and material resources had been enormous, out of all proportion to the arrears of salary due the Sicilian veterans.

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The Gallic invasion 226-220 BC

The Illyrian expeditions 229-219 BC

Spearheaded by the Fabii, who regarded the Alps as forming Rome's natural northern boundary, the Romans had progressively annexed territory from the Gauls inhabiting their fertile plains surrounding the river Po. With no firm boundaries and tribal rivalries, there had been intermittent warring amongst the Gauls themselves as well as with the encroaching Romans. In 226 BC these flickering conflicts came to a head when the Gauls united against the Romans and assembled an army of some 50,000 foot soldiers and 20,000 cavalry and chariots. It was at this crucial moment that news of the Carthaginian conquests in Spain reached the Romans and, as Polybius relates in measured terms: 'They were seized with no small consternation.' The Romans' dread of the Gauls had not diminished since they had devastated Rome in 390 BC, barely 170 years earlier. Now, faced with another invasion that threatened them more directly than anything that was happening in Spain, they settled for a treaty with the Carthaginians designed to limit their territorial expansion.

The initial Roman involvement with Illyria began as a result of the pirates who, regarding the Adriatic as their undisputed hunting ground, sallied forth from amongst the many islands and deep indentations to plunder and murder at will. There was nothing new in this. Back in the fifth century BC the Athenian phrase 'to sail the Adriatic' was just another way of saying 'to undertake a hazardous journey'. The Romans had at first tolerated their losses, but the incidents had become so numerous that two envoys were despatched to demand an explanation from the autocratic Queen Teuta. According to Polybius, Teuta reacted 'like a true woman with much passion and resentment' and then had the envoys murdered, thus igniting war on another front.

The Gauls opened the campaign by striking towards Rome through Etruria, on the west coast, plundering and wasting the countryside as they went. After inflicting heavy casualties on a Roman army closing with them, they decided to return home rather than risk losing the vast quantities of booty they had acquired. Still pressed by the Romans, the Gauls took the easiest route along the coast, with their left flank protected by the sea, only to find their way blocked by a full consular army from Sardinia, which had disembarked ahead of them. Trapped between the two Roman armies and fighting back to back, 40,000 Gauls were killed and 10,000 taken prisoner. The way was now left open for the Romans to advance the following year, cross the Po and carry the war into the Gauls' homeland. After another Roman victory, the Gauls sued for peace but their terms were rejected and the fighting resumed. During the next two years, 221 and 220 BC, Cisalpine Gaul was finally conquered.

The fighting that followed was with the limited aim of establishing Roman control over the eastern shore of the Straits of Otranto. There was never any question of the Romans wanting to subjugate the whole of Illyria; they merely sought to end Illyrian supremacy in the Adriatic by decisively defeating them in battle. The Romans were assisted by the Illyrian commander Demetrius, who, fearing for his own safety after arousing his queen's wrath, had transferred his allegiance, so enabling the Romans to be welcomed as deliverers in some of the coastal cities. This was 229 BC. To secure their position, the Romans next induced a number of inland cities and tribes to sign treaties of friendship before turning northwards to clear the coastline. In the spring of the following year the Illyrians sued for peace and accepted the resulting restrictions on the movement of their warships, besides paying a substantial tribute. Eight years later, in 220 BC, seeing the Romans' preoccupation with the Carthaginians in Spain, Demetrius flouted their authority by attacking a neighbouring tribe whose independence had been guaranteed by the Romans. The Roman response was vigorous and devastating. The next year an army descended on the coast of Illyria and swiftly annihilated all opposition,

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though Demetrius himself escaped to Macedonia, where he assiduously fuelled the latent enmity to Rome. Later this led to Philip of Macedonia entering into an alliance with Hannibal during the Second Punic War.

The conquest of Spain

ended, Hamilcar Barca was determined to restore Carthage to her former eminence and avenge the humiliation suffered in Sicily. Appreciating, however, that oligarchic interests could once again prevail and blight his intentions, he decided to establish his own power base and make himself independent of Carthaginian vacillation.

This is running ahead of events, and we . must now step back to 237 BC to see what had been happening in Spain. Having ousted the peace party when the Mercenary War

Hamilcar Barca swears an oath of eternal hatred to Rome. Eighteenth-century painting by Claudio Francesco Beaumont. (Edimedia. Paris)

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He would conquer Spain and exploit her riches to pay off the war debt and raise a mercenary army whose allegiance was tied to him personally, ultimately enabling him to challenge Rome. As Carthage no longer had an effective navy, Hamilcar had no alternative but to march along the African coast to the Straits of Gibraltar, with a few supply ships keeping pace with him. In 237 BC he ferried his army across the straits and having done so, proclaimed that he ruled by divine power. This soon transformed simple clan and tribal superstitions into a mystical theology centred on the Barcic family, and a dynastic religion was born that tied the loyalty of the army to him and his relations, while debarring ambitious aspirants from Carthage. Having established his authority, Hamilcar began his campaign of conquest by securing southern Spain, with its high-quality silver mines, before advancing along the eastern coast. He had hardly achieved these objectives when in 229 BC, while negotiating with a tribal king, he was caught off his guard. In attempting to escape across a swollen river, he was swept from his horse and drowned. He was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who, having ruthlessly avenged Hamilcar's death, extended Carthaginian domination northwards before founding New Carthage, modern-day Cartagena, on the east coast. This gave him possession of a magnificent harbour and further rich silver mines in the surrounding hills. News of these developments reached Rome but, as we have seen, preoccupation with the Gallic invasion meant that the Romans could do little more than draw up a treaty confirming Carthaginian possessions to the south of the Ebro. In 220 BC Hasdrubal was assassinated in his palace by a Celt whose chieftain had been crucified for plotting against the emperor king. When called upon to elect a successor, the army unanimously voted for the 25-year-old Hannibal, who promptly began to extend Carthaginian territory into the north-western highlands of Spain. When news of these developments reached Rome,

further envoys were despatched who, though convinced that Hannibal was intent upon war, never imagined that this would be fought anywhere but in Spain. Once again Roman attention was focused elsewhere, this time on Illyria, which enabled Hannibal to consolidate his hold on Spain with the capture of the important town of Saguntum after an eight-month siege. Lying some 250 miles north of New Carthage, Saguntum may not have been a formal ally of Rome the treaty had not as yet been ratified - but as it lay well within the Romans' sphere of influence, its capture and sacking was an irrevocable step towards war.

The Second Punic War 218-201 BC From the Ebro to the Alps 218 BC Leaving his brother Hasdrubal Barca in charge of affairs in Spain, in the spring of 218 BC Hannibal set out from New Carthage on a campaign that was to last for 17 years. The plan to march overland had almost certainly been developed by his father, who, having been precipitously abandoned in Sicily as a result of political irresolution and an incompetent fleet, was determined that henceforth he would be master of his own destiny. After crossing the Ebro, Hannibal was stoutly opposed by tribes who were friendly with Rome and, by the time he had crossed the Pyrenees, his army numbered 50,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, with losses of 40,000 and 3,000 respectively since setting out from New Carthage. Not all of these were battle casualties, since a substantial number of Spanish mercenaries had been sent back home (which probably means they deserted). From the Pyrenees to the Rhone, some 160 miles, progress was rapid, since all Hannibal required of the tribes he encountered was freedom of passage and the purchase of provisions. It seems that they were only too willing to help and speed him on his way. On reaching the Rhone, however, Hannibal found the far bank held

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Chateau Queyras, a medieval fortress on the rock referred to by Polybius. (Spectrum Colour Library)

by hostile Gauls, so he delayed his own crossing until a strong detachment had reached the other side further upstream and taken the Gauls in the rear. Using a mass of assorted rafts and canoes, Hannibal's leading troops were able to cross virtually unopposed. After ferrying the rest of the army over, Hannibal headed for the Alps and after reaching the foothills some 10 days later, his long column started threading its way along a narrow pass towards the towering, snow-capped mountains. After only a few days, the Carthaginians encountered the hostile Allobroge tribe, which had occupied the high ground dominating the pass ahead. Hannibal sent forward a reconnaissance party of Gauls, who reported that the Allobroges abandoned the

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heights at night, so he ordered them to be seized under cover of darkness and at dawn the advance was resumed. The Allobroges, however, soon found alternative positions and attacked the densely packed column in several places, causing the cavalry horses and pack animals to panic and plunge to their death in the gorge below or turn back to bring chaos to those behind. The situation was only saved by the Carthaginian troops holding the heights attacking the Allobroges from the rear and eventually putting them to flight. For the next five days the army continued its advance unmolested, then encountered another ambush laid by Gauls. Though caught in a deep ravine, after some heavy fighting the Carthaginians forced the Gauls to withdraw and resort to harrying tactics, moving along the mountain ridge to hurl down rocks and stones. However fraught this situation, it was not as desperate as the

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previous encounter when the Carthaginians had faced a sheer drop on one side. On the ninth day Hannibal arrived at the main watershed where he rested his men for two days and allowed the stragglers to catch up before starting his descent. Following a steep winding track, made more treacherous by the heavy snow that was now falling, stumbling and sliding, nearly as many men and animals were lost over the precipices as had been killed in the fighting. Their faltering progress was halted by a landslide which blocked the track and had to be 'cleared. Three days later, 15 days since he had set off to cross the Alps, Hannibal at last reached the fertile expanse of the plains; only 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Spaniards and 6,000 cavalry had survived, about a quarter of the number that had marched out of New Carthage some six months earlier. The route Hannibal took in crossing the Alps has been convincingly identified by Gavin de Beer in his book Hannibal as being the Col de la Traversette. At some 9,000 feet, it is one of the highest passes, accessible through the valley of Queyras with its medieval fortress perched on the top of a huge sugar loaf-shaped rock.

The epic years 218-216 BC A study of Hannibal's strategy, operational concept and tactical thinking makes it easier to understand the course of his campaign. Although some of the Cisalpine Gauls now joined him, as we have seen, the hard core of his army numbered only 26,000. As for the Romans, we know that at the time of the Gallic invasion, which had flared up only two years previously, the Romans were able to mobilise some 700,000 men. Clearly they could do so again. Though many of these would have been no more than elderly reservists or garrison troops of little military consequence, the Romans still enjoyed a vast numerical superiority, so what was Hannibal's strategic objective? From a treaty drawn up later between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedonia we know that this was not to conquer and subjugate the whole of Italy - an impossible task anyway - but was

limited to breaking up the Roman Confederation and reducing it once more to a number of states. These could then be held in check by those whose independence had just been restored to them. The cohesive power of Rome lay in its army, so Hannibal's operational aim was clearly to inflict such defeats on the army that the subjugated states would be encouraged to rise in revolt. To achieve this, Hannibal would have to avoid being drawn into positional warfare that would permit the Romans to concentrate overwhelmingly against him. This consideration alone debarred Hannibal from tying down his army to some prolonged endeavour such as a city's siege. The fact that he had no siege train was the result and not, as has been suggested, the cause of this restriction. Had he wished to obtain the machines necessary for a siege, he could have arranged for their construction. As it was, he adopted manoeuvre-based tactics to bring the Romans to battle on ground and at a time of his own choosing. Hannibal undoubtedly respected the prowess of the Roman soldier in close combat, but the orderly progression of rigidly linear deployment upon which the Romans relied could be broken using surprise and flexibility - two vital elements of Hannibal's tactical thinking behind which always lay the aim of encirclement. We will consider Hannibal's campaign in three phases. The first, which is the subject of this section, while only lasting for two years, from 218 to 216 BC, was the most dramatic, when Hannibal's strategic aim of breaking up the Roman Confederation came nearer to fulfilment that at any other time. The second phase, which lasted for four years from 216 to 212 BC, saw Hannibal initially holding the strategic initiative but failing to achieve the encirclement of Italy. The third phase, which lasted 10 years from 212 to 202 BC, saw the consequences of the tide having turned decisively in Rome's favour. Back in October 218 BC Hannibal rested his army after crossing the Alps, then seized Taurasia (Turin) and defeated Publius Cornelius Scipio and his fellow consul on the

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Tribia, a tributary of the Po. These two deft and determined successes won over most of the Cisalpine Gauls, who until then had been divided in their support for the Carthaginians. The following spring Hannibal marched south through Etruria, burning and devastating the countryside, keeping Cortona and the hills surrounding it to his left and making as though to pass Lake Trasimene to his right. Gaius Flaminius, who had failed to intercept Hannibal because of Mis and the Senate's conviction that Hannibal's objective was Rome, now set off in pursuit, without waiting for his fellow consul to join him. Here we have an example of religious observances affecting military operations. Intolerant of any delay, Flaminius had scorned the usual preliminary sacrifices and vows on assuming command. Instead he had taken over in the field, leaving his fellow consul, Geminus Gnaeus Servilius, to busy himself with the traditional formalities. When Hannibal reached Lake Trasimene, after following the northern shoreline, he set an ambush along a strip of land between the defile of Borghetto and Tuoro. Here, facing the lake, a semicircle of hills forms a natural amphitheatre. The shore area would have been considerably smaller than it is today since the water level was lowered by the construction of a canal between the lake and the river Nector in the fifteenth century. Hannibal positioned his Spanish and Libyan infantry conspicuously on the ridge to the west of Tuoro, while the Balearic slingers and his light infantry concealed themselves on the high ground facing the lake. Similarly, the cavalry and Gauls were hidden in folds in the ground running down to the Borghetto defile. In this way the entire area encircled by the hills was dominated by the Carthaginians. Flaminius reached Lake Trasimene, near Borghetto, late in the evening, and at dawn the legions started to move forward through the defile across the valley floor. Seeing Hannibal's troops drawn up in battle to their front, the Romans deployed into line until the bulk of the two legions had passed through the Borghetto defile. Suddenly

assaulted by the light infantry and Balearic slingers on their left flank and the Numidian cavalry to their rear, blocked in front and hemmed in by the lake to their right, most of the Romans died where they stood. Others were either weighed down by their armour and drowned, or were despatched by the Numidians, who rode out into the lake after them. Though some 6,000 managed to fight their way out of the trap, at least 15,000 are estimated to have died, amongst them the impious Flaminius. However, the Romans' woes were not yet over. Servilius, who was belatedly hurrying down the Via Flaminia, was intercepted by a mixed force commanded by Maharbal, the Numidian cavalry commander, and routed. Half the men of the two legions were killed and the remainder taken prisoner. When the magnitude of the defeat reached Rome, the city was thrown into a state of near despair, with the crowds thronging the public places as the wildest rumours spread. Thoroughly alarmed, the Senate appointed an aristocrat, Fabius Maximus, as dictator with full imperium, which meant that, unlike the consuls, he did not have to consult the Senate about his plans. At the head of four legions Fabius marched down the Via Appia and closed up to Hannibal, but he had no intention of accepting battle in circumstances of Hannibal's choosing. Instead he would hover, threatening and harrying Hannibal but keeping to the high ground to nullify the superiority of the Numidian cavalry in particular. He earned himself the title Cunctator, or 'The Delayer'. This was a difficult course to pursue, not least because it left Hannibal free to burn and plunder at will while the Romans looked on, apparently too timid to intervene. Such a policy could not endure. The allies could not be expected to remain loyal under such circumstances and internal political pressures for resolute action were too strong. At the end of Fabius' year as dictator he was replaced, in 216 BC, Saguntum, captured by Hannibal. The gate theatre is a later Roman addition. (Roger-Viollet)

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by two consuls, Marcus Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paulus. The Senate decided that Hannibal must be brought to battle, so four new legions were mobilised and ordered to join the four already shadowing Hannibal in Apulia; concentrated together they would then crush him, in accordance with traditional military thinking. So it was that the fatal day arrived and it was Varro who exercised command at Cannae when, at first light, he moved the Roman army across the river Aufidus on to the east bank. He positioned the cavalry on the right wing, resting on the river, with the legions next to them and the cavalry of the allies on the left wing. In front of the whole army were the light infantry. The deployment was conventional enough, but Varro shortened the frontages of the legions and reduced the distances between the maniples within them. There was a reversion to the theory of sheer mass, so flexibility was renounced and the rigidity

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View of Lake Trasimene, looking down from where the Gauls and light horse were. The cavalry were behind the hill on the right of the picture, beyond which lies the defile of Berghetto, on the lake's shore. (Author's collection)

of the phalanx was reinstated. The Roman army numbered some 80,000 infantry and more than 6,000 cavalry. While the Romans were completing their deployment, Hannibal brought his army into line. His light infantry and Balearic slingers formed a screen behind which his main force matched the Roman deployment. On his left flank were the Spanish and Gallic cavalry, resting on the river, next to them his heavy infantry. The Gauls were thrown forward in an arc, facing and extending beyond the Roman front, with the Numidian cavalry on his right flank. Being thinly spread, Hannibal's 40,000 infantry retained the tactical flexibility to manoeuvre and slowly give ground before the massed Roman legions; the arc would be reversed to curve rearwards and as the Romans pressed forward, they would be enveloped. The risk was that the centre of the arc would be torn apart, in which case the battle would be lost, but Hannibal's cavalry were superior both in number - some 10,000 - and quality, so could be relied upon to defeat their Roman opponents and then complete the encirclement. That is exactly what happened. As the Romans pressed forward, the Carthaginian infantry overlapped

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their front and assaulted them on the flanks. Compressed together and unable to protect themselves, the casualties mounted and the forward momentum began to falter. Meanwhile the Roman cavalry had been routed and the returning Numidians fell upon the Roman rear. Completely surrounded and still further compressed, the Romans were slaughtered where they stood. According to Polybius, only some 3,500 Romans managed to escape, while 10,000 were taken prisoner and 70,000 left dead on the battlefield. Amongst those who escaped was the perpetrator of the disaster, Varro; the unfortunate Paulus was counted amongst the dead. After such an overwhelming victory the question arises as to why Hannibal did not then march on Rome. Instead he continued to try to bring about the dissolution of the Roman Confederation. Many explanations are possible, but even with hindsight it would be unwise to pass judgment on a complex decision about which we only have the most rudimentary knowledge. Before following Hannibal any further, mention should be made of the fact that though the Romans had suffered grievously at home, the two Scipio brothers, Gnaeus and Publius, had landed in Spain and conducted a wellexecuted land and sea campaign. However, lacking the resources, they had been unable achieve anything decisive.

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The war expands 215-206 BC When news of Hannibal's victory at Cannae reached Carthage, a wave of enthusiasm for the war swept through the city, ambitions rose and Hannibal's plans for broadening the canvas of the war were accepted. In essence Hannibal proposed a strategic encirclement of Italy, the execution of which would be the responsibility of the Carthaginian Senate, and an inner encirclement of Rome itself through the detachment of her allies, for which he would continue to be responsible. Whether this plan was conceived with a measured intellectual approach or, as seems more probable, opportunistically and pragmatically, is not known, but however arrived at, it was both grandiose and imaginative in its design. We already know Hannibal's operational concept for isolating Rome from her allies, but we need to look briefly at his wider strategic concept for the encirclement of the Italian peninsula. With the succession of the 17-year-old Philip V to the Macedonian throne, the influence of Demetrius, who had taken refuge in the Macedonian court after losing his Illyrian possessions, weighed heavily in persuading Philip to side with the Carthaginians and evict the Romans from the Adriatic seaboard. Much the same situation arose to the south in Sicily, where Rome's ally Hiero of Syracuse had been succeeded by his 15-year-old grandson Hieronymus, who, under pressure from Hiero's two sons-in-law, agreed to enter into an alliance with Hannibal. To the west, in Sardinia, where a Carthaginian trading presence had long been amicably tolerated, a revolution was festering following the Romans' ruthless subjugation of the whole island after the First Punic War. With Carthaginian reinforcements assured for Spain, and the Romans' loss of an entire consular army against the Gauls to the north in 216 BC, given a fair share of good fortune and an adequate degree of competence in its execution, in the aftermath of Cannae the prospects for Carthaginian strategic encirclement looked favourable. The inner ring round Rome only required Hannibal to continue with his seemingly effortless

succession of victories. What went wrong and why this double envelopment failed will now be examined theatre by theatre.

The campaign in Spain 215-206 BC After receiving over 4,000 cavalry and infantry reinforcements and being relieved in southern Spain by a new army recently arrived from Carthage, Hasdrubal marched north to settle accounts with the Scipios. These two armies were of almost equal strength and when they met, in obvious imitation of his brother's tactics at Cannae, Hasdrubal thinned out the Spanish infantry, holding the centre, and concentrated the Libyans and cavalry on the wings. Hasdrubal was no Hannibal, however, and the Romans broke through his centre, destroyed his army and regained the line of the Ebro. After two years of inconclusive fighting the Scipios decided to divide their army between them; this dispersion of force resulted in them being handsomely defeated and counted amongst the dead. The opportunity for Hasdrubal to recover the whole of Spain came and went through internal dissension. Time was allowed for Roman reinforcements to arrive in 210 BC, including a new commander-in-chief, the 25-year-old military genius who was later to be known as Scipio Africanus, the son and nephew of the two Scipios who had been killed two years earlier. After rallying his disheartened troops, the following year Scipio struck at New Carthage rather than attacking the two Carthaginian armies lying near Gibraltar and Madrid, whose commanders were still not able to reconcile their differences and co-operate. It took Scipio seven days to reach New Carthage, and he began his assault on the city almost immediately, from both land and sea. As the day matured and the casualties mounted with no prospect of success, Scipio sounded the retreat before making his next move, which would prove to be decisive. Learning from some fishermen that at ebb tide it was possible to Nineteenth-century painting by Evariste Vital Luminais. showing a fight between Romans and Gauls. (Edimedia, Paris)

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ford one of the lagoons and approach the city from the rear, Scipio sought surprise by deception. Renewing his assault on the section of the wall he had attacked the previous day, Scipio drew the defenders to what they regarded as the critical point while he led a 500-strong contingent across the lagoon and scaled the weakly defended northern wall. The city was soon secured, most of its citizens massacred and an immense amount of booty taken. Following the fall of New Carthage, Scipio turned his attention to the field armies and in 208 BC Hasdrubal, after suffering a defeat on the headwaters of the Guadalquivir, inexplicably decided to join Hannibal in Italy. As we will see later, it was a fateful move, both for him personally and for those he commanded. Though substantial reinforcements had arrived from Carthage, in 206 BC the Carthaginians were finally defeated at Ilipa, some 10 miles north of modern Seville, to end the war in Spain. There

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were two main causes for the Carthaginian defeat: first, their long enduring political dissension, reflecting the rivalry between the Barcids in Spain and those in power in Carthage; secondly, the superior generalship of Scipio. So much for Spain; we must now look and see what was happening elsewhere. Sardinia 215 BC In 215 BC, the year after Cannae, a small Carthaginian expedition sailed for Sardinia but ran into a violent storm and was blown off course to the Balearic Islands, where the ships had to be hauled ashore for repair. All this caused considerable delay, and by the time the Carthaginians reached Sardinia, the Romans had been alerted and had reinforced the island with a second legion, quickly suppressing a premature revolt. When the Carthaginians landed, little effective support was available and, lacking adequate strength by themselves, they were soon defeated. Their commander was taken prisoner and the

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View of the river Rhone by Alexander Dunouy,. (Edimedia, Paris)

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survivors were left with little alternative but to flee to their ships. Fate had not favoured the Carthaginians, but whether they would have prevailed otherwise is far from certain.

Sicily 215-210 BC Hieronymus of Syracuse, who had inherited the throne and decided to side with the Carthaginians, was assassinated by members

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of the pro-Roman party and for a time it looked as though Carthaginian intentions had been thwarted. However, the pro-Roman faction behaved with such wanton cruelty that they in turn were overthrown. This caused the Romans to reinforce Sicily, as in Sardinia, with a second legion. Syracuse now became the Romans' primary objective but with its formidable fortifications, which had been further strengthened by the ingenious war machines of Archimedes that could hurl boulders and grapple ships, it was no easy undertaking. Indeed, the first land and sea assault was a costly failure. Meanwhile the Carthaginians had sent formidable reinforcements. The situation looked critical for the Romans, until two further legions were sent, thus enabling them both to lay siege to Syracuse and to confront the newly arrived Carthaginians. In 212 BC the Romans achieved a decisive victory. The Syracusans' enthusiastic indulgence during a religious festival had left them with unsteady legs and less than clear heads, and they were easily surprised. The Romans scaled the outer defences under cover of darkness to open one of the city's gates, and swarming in, the Romans soon established themselves in an unassailable position ringing the inner defences. Deserted by their fleet and so deprived of any relief, the garrison surrendered. Having secured the city it was given over to plunder by the Romans, who destroyed three centuries of civilisation and massacred the population, including Archimedes, one of the antique world's greatest mathematicians and physicists. With the fall of Syracuse the campaign seemed to be coming to an end, but the arrival of further Carthaginian reinforcements prolonged the struggle for another three years. Unlike the First Punic War, the Carthaginians had made strenuous efforts and sent two reinforcing armies, together numbering nearly 40,000 men, besides A third-century Roman mosaic showing the death of Archimedes. (Roger-Viollet)

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constructing a powerful fleet and a large number of supply ships. Why then did they fail? It was quite simply a matter of poor generalship on both land and sea, but before rushing to crucify any surviving general, as was the Carthaginian wont, let us wait until the concluding analysis of this complex war is completed.

Illyria 215-205 BC Unlike the other campaigns we have considered, there was no direct Carthaginian involvement in Illyria, so it was left to Philip of Macedon to try to drive the Romans from their foothold on the Adriatic coast. This task added a new dimension to Macedonian interests, which hitherto had been almost entirely concerned with the land-locked country's eastern and southern borders. With Macedonian manpower gravely depleted by the adventures of Alexander the Great, Philip was in no position to fight a war on more than one front. In order that he could turn against the Romans, a peace treaty had to be concluded with Aetolia, a powerful Greek state with which he was at war; but before Philip was ready to begin his campaign, he found himself under attack. The envoys he had despatched, informing Hannibal of his intentions, had been intercepted by the Romans, who now decided to reinforce their coastal garrison with an additional legion and take the initiative themselves. Surprised by the sudden Roman move, Philip was caught off-balance and forced to withdraw, but in 213 BC he was able to go on to the offensive himself and secured several Roman allied coastal cities. Soon afterwards, however, he found himself marching and counter-marching, either to expel aggressors inspired by the Romans, including Aetolia, or to respond to appeals for help from his allies. This scrappy and exhausting campaign eventually came to an inconclusive end in 205 BC. Though Philip had won nearly all his tactical battles, he had apparently not appreciated the precariousness of his position at the

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The Col d'Izoard, leading to the valley of Queyras, from which Hannibal was attacked. (Spectrum Colour Library)

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An eighteenth-century engraving showing Archimedes' counter-weighted beams which snapped and capsized Roman warships in 212 BC. (Ann Ronan Picture Library)

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operational level: instead of fighting on just one front as he had intended, he found himself almost simultaneously engaged on four. The grand strategic design had failed, partly through bad luck, as perhaps in Sardinia, partly through miscalculation, as with Philip of Macedon, but mainly through inadequate Carthaginian leadership, as in Spain and Sicily. Now we must turn to see how Hannibal had been faring with his inner encirclement of Rome.

The waning years 216-211 BC After Cannae Hannibal was faced with a dilemma from which he could find no escape. Following the secession of a number of Rome's former allies, he found himself having to protect them and, in so doing, losing the initiative he had previously enjoyed. If he were to win over more defectors, he would have to operate offensively, yet if he were to retain those cities he had already gained, he would have to act defensively. With an army that was not strong enough to undertake both commitments simultaneously, the clarity of Hannibal's operational aim was lost. In contrast to Hannibal's restricted capability, the Romans had the means to hold the fortified cities, which then formed a defensive framework around which the field armies could operate. In this manner, wherever Hannibal decided to campaign offensively, the Romans would go on to the defensive, but when he was not present, they would take the offensive against former allies who had deserted them. In this way Hannibal was forced into a restless pursuit of ever-shifting and elusive objectives. Undaunted by his difficulties, however, Hannibal still managed to conduct a robust campaign and one which denied any prospect of early victory for the war-weary Roman population; as we have seen, much of their strength was already being diverted to reinforce Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and Illyria. Yet despite this drain, by lowering the age of recruitment to 16 and enrolling slaves, the Romans were able to maintain 20 legions

under arms in the various theatres of war, 16 of which were in Italy itself. The most important city to defect after Cannae had been Capua, the capital of Campania, second only to Rome itself in size and prosperity. Retaining Capua was of prime importance to Hannibal if he were to have any hope of encouraging other cities to seek their independence from Rome. In 211 BC Capua was being threatened by the Romans, who had constructed two lines of siege works round the city. Concerted attempts by Hannibal to break in, and by the garrison to break out, were repulsed, leaving Hannibal no alternative but to seek an indirect means of relieving Capua. He would march on Rome. Without any hope of being able to storm its formidable fortifications, his move was a bluff, intended to create such alarm that the armies investing Capua would be summoned back to defend the threatened city.

Hannibal in retreat 211-205 BC Hannibal's sudden arrival before the walls of Rome caused consternation in the city, with the wildest rumours gaining currency. One even claimed that he would never have dared to threaten the city so brazenly had he not already destroyed the armies at Capua. Having made this demonstration, Hannibal began his return march but, though he inflicted heavy casualties on the Romans pursuing him, he realised that he was incapable of relieving Capua. His gamble had failed, and though he still remained the undisputed master of the open battlefield, from now on Hannibal found himself in retreat. From the Romans' point of view events had not yet tilted decisively in their favour. Certainly in Italy the situation had improved, and in Sicily Syracuse had been captured, but in Spain the two Scipios had died with their legions after crossing the Ebro, and in Illyria Philip of Macedon was still on the offensive. Everything still hung in the balance. In Capua all hope of relief had died; 27 of the senators wined and dined in generous excess before taking their own lives by

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poison. The next day the inhabitants opened one of the gates to the Romans, who rounded up the remaining senators, scourging and then beheading them, while the aristocrats died more slowly in various prisons and the rest of the population was sold into slavery. Until 208 BC the fortunes of the campaign had ebbed and flowed, with neither Hannibal nor the Romans gaining the ascendancy, but in that year the important city of Tarentum (Taranto), on the heel of Italy, was captured by the Romans while Hasdrubal, who had marched from Spain, was wintering in Gaul with his 20,000-strong army. In the spring of 207 BC he crossed the Alps, following the same route as his brother had done, evidently without serious incident, and marched to the east coast, where he turned due south towards the Metaurus river, which flows through Umbria. Not knowing Hannibal's whereabouts, Hasdrubal had sent six horsemen to try to locate him, rather unwisely bearing a letter giving his intentions. After having ridden nearly the entire length of Italy, the horsemen were picked up by the Romans near Tarentum and the plan was revealed. Acting rapidly, the Romans closed in on the Metaurus, surrounded Hasdrubal and trapped him in the winding steep-sided river course. Seeing that all was lost, Hasdrubal rode into the thick of the fray, where he was killed together with some 10,000 of his men. A few days later Hasdrubal's severed head was thrown into one of Hannibal's outposts and two African prisoners were released to recount the disaster. The Romans did not press their advantage and the following year saw little activity, but in 205 BC Scipio stepped on to the scene and everything changed.

The Romans carry the war to Africa 205-201 BC Hitherto it had been the Carthaginians who had held the strategic initiative with their attempted encirclement, but now it was the turn of the Romans, who would do no more

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than contain Hannibal in Italy while taking the offensive in Africa. Throughout 205 BC the preparations in Sicily for the invasion continued, and the next year the expedition sailed from Lilybaeum. Once ashore the Romans set about ravaging the fertile Bagradas valley, and after defeating a Carthaginian army, set siege to the important city of Utica on the coast. The military reverses brought about a realignment of political power in Carthage, where the big landowners and wealthy merchants who had always wished to avoid war with Rome in favour of their African territorial and commercial interests, ousted the Barcid faction and after 16 years in the wilderness came to power. Thirty members of the Council of Elders, superior even to the Senate, came to prostrate themselves before Scipio and after cravenly blaming everything on Hannibal, sought his pardon. Scipio acted with commendable moderation when he laid down his peace terms: all prisoners of war and deserters were to be handed over, all claims to Spain and Mediterranean islands were to be renounced, a substantial indemnity was to be paid, and only 20 warships could be retained, the remainder were to be surrendered. Probably realising that the terms could have been much harsher, the Carthaginians accepted them and envoys were sent to Rome to seek ratification. Meanwhile, in the same year, Hannibal had been recalled and with his arrival those wishing to prolong the fighting displayed a new truculence, first seizing a number of Roman ships that had been scattered in a storm, then intercepting and destroying others carrying envoys returning from Carthage. Though a delegation had arrived from the Senate informing Scipio that his proposed peace-terms had been accepted, the acts of treachery made Scipio determined to settle the long-drawn-out struggle between the Roman and Carthaginian peoples. Hannibal was to be brought to battle and his army destroyed before Scipio directed his attention to Carthage itself.

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The two armies confronted one another at Zama, some 100 miles south-west of Carthage. Though the Romans had a superiority in cavalry, overall numbers were probably about equal, some 40,000 apiece. Though it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Zama, with the Carthaginians fighting for their lives and homeland and the Romans for the supremacy of their empire, as the two commanders appear to have matched one another tactically, the battle was little more than a grisly slogging match in which the Romans prevailed. The details then need not concern us, but what is of interest about Zama is how it demonstrated the interplay between the operational and strategic levels of war. By ravaging the Bagradas valley, Scipio had drawn Hannibal away from his own secure base into a hostile interior where he had to fight on ground and conditions not of his own choosing. This would have been a difficult operational situation to have created in Italy but, by taking the strategic decision to transfer the war to Africa, it was achieved almost effortlessly. Hannibal had escaped from Zama and was able to exert a moderating influence on those who argued against accepting the Romans' inevitably harsher terms. The number of warships allowed was halved, the indemnity increased, and Punic military rights were drastically curtailed, leaving Carthage as little more than a client state of Rome. The war that had brought devastation to the whole of the Mediterranean during the previous 17 years had come to an end, leaving Rome as an imperial power of unmatched military might. The following section deals with some of the major events which occurred during the next 50 years that led up to the Third Punic War, so all that needs to be said here is that when Scipio Africanus returned to Rome, he was indisputably the most powerful figure in the city. As political in-fighting tore reasonable compromise apart and the passage of time diminished Scipio's moderating influence, in 184 BC

he finally withdrew from public life in disgust.

The Third Punic War 149-146 BC Carthage had been built on a naturally strong defensive position and then extensively fortified. There were only two restricted land approaches, either along the 3,000-yard wide isthmus to the north, protected by three lines of massive defence works towering one above the other, or along the narrow spit of sand to the south, which terminated at the foot of the city walls. The two isthmuses were separated by the unfordable Lake of Tunis and washed by the sea on their outer shores. The single 22-mile city wall enclosed the great harbour, the entrance of which lay just to the east of the southern sandbar, as well as the citadel constructed on the prominent Byrsa mound, not far from the harbour. The Romans divided their forces between the two isthmuses, and when ready, attempted to carry these two directly approachable defence works by storm. Not surprisingly, they met with a bloody repulse in the north. Undeterred, they flung themselves forward for a second attempt that was equally unsuccessful. On the sandbar to the south they fared somewhat better. By using massive battering-rams propelled by several hundred soldiers and sailors, a breach was made in the city wall, but the assault troops failed to exploit the opportunity, so allowing the Carthaginians to throw up fresh barriers during the night and man the surrounding rooftops. It was a brief respite. Though the Romans were met with a hail of missiles and were driven back, when they resumed the attack the following day an unseemly withdrawal was prevented from turning into a rout only by the timely intervention of Scipio Aemelianus, the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, who was serving as a tribune with the Fourth Legion. Roman impetuosity was then sharply curbed, and they settled down

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A reconstruction of the circular inner harbour for warships at Carthage (above), and the harbour as it is today. (AKG. Berlin)

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The River Aufides (Ofante), with an ancient colonnade erected later, inscribed with a quotation from Livy: 'No other nation could have suffered such tremendous disasters and not been destroyed'. (Sopraintendenza Archeologica delle Puglie,Taranto)

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promoted to consul and given command in Africa. He at once set to work constructing a huge mole, which was to extend from the sandbar across the harbour mouth and bottle up the Carthaginian fleet, as well as sealing off any further supplies. At first the Carthaginians did not believe that the Romans could succeed, but as work progressed relentlessly, they took counter-measures and cut a new entrance from the inner harbour, giving access to the sea from the east. Fifty triremes then sailed out in a triumphal display of contempt; but it was an unwise gesture, as they lost the element of surprise and so the opportunity to destroy the Roman fleet, which was lying unmanned at anchor while the sailors toiled on the mole.

Stele, one of the remains of Carthage. (Roger-Viollet)

to the more prosaic business of blockading the city. The Carthaginians, however, did not rest on the defensive and made a determined sortie along the northern isthmus. Catching the Romans by surprise, they forced them to abandon their forward position in favour of one further back. The following year, in 148 BC, although the Romans secured a number of small inland cities and others along the coast, the obvious lack of leadership, which had wasted the first two years of the war, led to demands for the appointment of a more vigorous commander. As a result, with the enthusiastic support of the Roman people and the army, Scipio Aemelianus was

Nothing daunted, Scipio positioned his battering rams and other siege engines at the end of the now completed mole and made a partial breach, but during the night a Carthaginian raiding party swam out to the mole and set fire to the closely packed siege equipment. The Carthaginians then worked feverishly to repair the damage and raise additional towers along the wall. However, it was only a matter of time before the Romans had secured a foothold between the outer sea wall and that of the harbour, which enabled them to block the newly constructed harbour entrance. Cut off from both land and sea, Carthage's fate was sealed. While the preparations for the final assault were under way, Scipo took the opportunity to mount a mopping-up operation into the interior and extinguish the last flickering embers of Carthaginian resistance beyond their capital's crumbling defences. The final assault was mounted from the harbour area where the Romans had established themselves the previous autumn. After some desperate fighting they managed to breach the city wall and then penetrate into the sprawling dockyard buildings, which the Carthaginians set alight once their strength began to fail. A new defensive line was adopted, centred primarily on the citadel Ruins of the Acropolis of Carthage. (Roger-Viollet)

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The

commanding the ridge of high ground extending west and east from the Byrsa. Every remaining house had been turned into a stronghold and was contested with the courage born of despair, and the Romans had to clear the whole area, house by house and street by street. For six days the battle raged; on the seventh, the Carthaginians offered to surrender, begging for their lives in return. After Scipio had accepted their request, some 50,000 terrified men, women and children, nearing the limits of exhaustion and starvation, filed out, later to be sold into slavery, but 900 Roman deserters, who could expect only crucifixion if taken alive, fought on. At first they held out in the enclosure surrounding the temple crowning the Byrsa citadel. Then, as their numbers declined,

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they retreated to the temple itself and finally to its roof before immolating themselves. The city was then given over to plunder before the ruins were levelled to the ground. After six centuries Carthage had been destroyed and the Phoenician race dispersed to suffer extinction, leaving no readily discernible religious, literary, political, or social heritage. An eastern civilisation had been planted in the western Mediterranean, but after a period of luxuriant growth, it had been violently uprooted and exterminated. Meanwhile Rome, in an unchallengeable position, was left free to subdue and pacify Europe and, after the Imperial City had become the Holy City, to spread the Christian religion throughout the world.

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Hannibal Barcid and Scipio Africanus Since leadership plays such a vital part in all we have discussed, it seems appropriate to consider the qualities displayed by the two greatest leaders to emerge from the Punic Wars, Hannibal and Scipio; though it should be remembered that we have no contemporary assessments, only later, often unsubstantiated, opinions and, of course, accounts of their doings and sayings. This does not mean that we cannot attempt to piece together a picture of the two men, though it does mean the end result will be far from complete and in some aspects distorted, even perhaps to the extent of being factually incorrect.

Hannibal In making any assessment of Hannibal's character and the force which motivated him to pursue war with such single-mindedness, it is essential to understand his background and upbringing. Born in 247 BC, Hannibal was only six years old when the First Punic War ended with his father's ignominious expulsion from Sicily. The event could hardly have affected him personally had it not been for his father's enduring determination to seek revenge. Slowly the enormity of the setback to Barcid pride and ambitions must have been conveyed to the boy, then it was indelibly stamped upon his conscience during a religious ceremony. In 237 BC, when Hannibal was 10 years old and his father was preparing to take his army to Spain, while propitiating the gods with a sacrifice, he took the opportunity to make his son swear an oath on the sacrificial animal that when he grew up, he would never forget that Rome was the deadly enemy. Once in Spain, the mould of Hannibal's character and motivating force behind his

life would have been forever cast. There could be no turning back, especially as Hannibal, like his father before him, was a warrior by nature. Perhaps the highest tribute that can be paid to Hannibal's ability as a leader is to recognise the remarkable way in which he welded such a disparate force of unpatriotic mercenaries into a cohesive fighting force, inspired with self confidence and audacity, ready to face severe hardships and near unbelievable risks. Some of this loyalty can be ascribed to factors other than personal devotion, such as the way his father had been able to transform the various tribal superstitions into a mystical theology centred on the Barca family - they ruled by divine right - or, at the other end of the spectrum, the religious cynics, adventurers and materialists seeking plunder and rapine. That Hannibal understood fully the capabilities and limitations of those he commanded is shown in the way he deployed them on the battlefield. At Cannae, for example, it was the tough and reliable Libyans whom he placed in the two key flank positions where the encircling movement was to be hinged; his dashing and opportunistic Numidian cavalry were deployed on his open right flank. Hannibal always led by example, whether swimming a river first in Spain, to encourage his men to follow, or, as Livy tells us, sharing their hardships and living like an ordinary soldier when campaigning, always sleeping on the ground wrapped only in his military coat. However much Hannibal's own powerful personality was stamped upon his army, he knew how to decentralise authority, relying on the intimate group of generals who commanded its various components. Following the example of his father and the traditional Punic custom of nepotism,

Portrait of a soldier

Hannibal appointed his close relations to positions of responsibility, hence his brother Hasdrubal being left in charge in Spain. Natural leaders from outside his clan were also selected for command, such as the two great Numidian cavalry commanders, Carthalo and Maharbal, who protested at what they saw as Hannibal's excessive prudence in not marching on Rome after Cannae. Having praised Hannibal for his soldierly qualities, Livy proceeds to list, though without preliminary evidence, his shortcomings, depicting him as 'excessively cruel, with a total disregard for the truth, honour and religion, for the sanctity of an oath and all that other men held sacred'. The charge of cruelty might be a matter of mistaken identity: one of Hannibal's commanders is alleged to have advocated that his soldiers should be trained to eat human flesh, thus easing the army's logistics problem. It is possible that this ferocious individual, named Hannibal Monomarchus, committed acts of cruelty that were mistakenly attributed to Hannibal himself. Admittedly Hannibal must have shared many of the characteristics of a harsher age, but as a professional soldier he was undoubtedly a genius. His strategic vision threw the Romans on to the defensive and, for the first five years of the Second Punic War, permitted them to do little more than react to protect their homeland. After the Third Punic War Hannibal was forced into exile, but wherever he sought refuge the Romans pursued him, accusing him of plotting against them - which he probably was - and demanded his extradition. Finally there was no way of escape. As Plutarch wrote, Hannibal was cornered 'like a bird that had grown too old to fly', a state of affairs Hannibal himself must have recognised since he made no attempt to escape, contenting himself with saying: 'Let us now put an end to the great anxiety of the Romans, who have thought it too lengthy and too heavy a task to wait for the death of a hated old man.' He took poison, and in 183 BC, at the age of 64, the scourge of the Romans departed this life.

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Scipio Africanus Though Scipio was only accorded the title of Africanus at the end of the Second Punic War upon entering Rome to receive the greatest triumph ever, he has been referred to as Africanus from the start, in order to save possible confusion with his father, Publius Cornelius Scipio, after whom he was named. Scipio was born in 235 BC. During his formative years he was greatly influenced by Greek philosophy and literature, but above all by Hellenistic rationalism which, combined with his instinctive pragmatism, induced a sceptical contempt for the superstitions of others. His tastes, however, were not all intellectual; he also appreciated the material comforts that the more advanced and sophisticated Greek civilisation had to offer. He later came under criticism from the quaestor (financial administrator) for his facility to imitate the Greeks and in so doing incur excessive expenses while Third or second-century BC Carthaginian monument at Dugga, Tunisia. (Roger-Viollet)

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Silver Carthaginian coin thought to show a portrait of Hannibal. (Roger-Viollet)

preparing for the invasion of Africa. Scipio promptly sent him packing with the words: 'I do not like so exact a quaestor.' Compared to his contemporaries, Scipio must have been unusually liberal minded, open to new ideas but still placing a high value on both intellectual and moral values. Perhaps he accepted the belief that by performing just acts and acquiring good habits, a man's character is formed and the qualities of a leader established. His moderation and sense of justice were displayed by his attitude to Carthage after her defeat, and his morality showed in his behaviour to women after the capture of New

Carthage. On one occasion a young woman of particular beauty was brought to Scipio by some of his soldiers. Polybius relates how Scipio 'was struck with admiration for her beauty and replied that, if he had been a private citizen, he would have received no present which would have given him greater pleasure, but as a general it was the last thing in the world he could accept'. Polybius also relates how after capturing New Carthage Scipio refused to take anything for his own private use, and when returning from Africa allowed nothing to be mixed up with his private property. Following his retirement, however, he had a fracas with some officials who had arrested his brother for financial irregularities, whereupon Scipio released him, destroyed the order for his arrest and said:

Portrait of a soldier

'I shall not give an account of four millions of sesterces when I put two hundred million into the treasury. For myself, I have only brought back the title of Africanus.' The self-assurance Scipio displayed was in part derived from a sense of direct communion with the gods, especially with Jupiter, to whom he displayed a particular devotion and from whom, reflecting the Roman religious belief, he could expect reciprocal favours. A thoroughly realistic and pragmatic association far removed from the religious fanaticism that cleaves much of the world today. Whereas Hannibal virtually disassociated himself from political machinations by maintaining his father's independent power base in Spain, Scipio found it necessary to enter into the political fray. With near impeccable credentials, as the son of a soldier killed on the battlefield, a participant in the first major clash with Hannibal after his crossing of the Alps and one of the few survivors of Cannae, Scipio presented himself at the Forum for election as an aedile (responsible for public works and activities), which was an essential preliminary to higher office. Here his youthful vigour and ardent convictions won the rapturous support of the people, long tired of endless defeat and yearning for an inspirational leader who would offer them hope for the future. Having been elected aedile, he later presented himself as a candidate for consular command of the army in Spain, and though there were some who resented this precocious youth, he was again elected. Without detracting from his qualities, amongst which high intelligence and clarity of vision figured prominently, in many ways Scipio was fortunate in that opportunities presented themselves; unlike Hannibal, he did not have to create them. Had his father not been killed, Scipio would not have been given the chance to distinguish himself as a 25-year-old in Spain, and without that achievement he would not have been given command of an army and entrusted to carry A bronze statue of Scipio Africanus. (Edimedia, Paris)

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the war to Africa. When coming face to face with Hannibal he was still a young man with the full vigour of his youth, whereas Hannibal had already been campaigning for 17 consecutive years in Italy. It is not unreasonable to suppose the years had taken their toll on Hannibal, both physically and mentally, and we should perhaps not discount the possibility of Hannibal feeling a bit below par at Zama. As we have seen, however, Scipio's good fortune did not endure after his retirement. For the first few years his reputation put him above the political in-fighting with which he was surrounded, but as time passed his critics became more vocal until he went into voluntary exile at Liternium, a disillusioned and embittered man, forgotten by the country which he had set on the path to universal conquest of the known world. He died in 183 BC at the age of 52, and though there are memorials to him in both Rome and Liternium, he has no known grave.

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The political, social and economic impact In this chapter we will look at the effects of the war on the civilian population though, as has already been mentioned, since there are no Carthaginian records and because the ancient historians only lightly touched upon such matters, our examination can be neither even-handed nor complete. Though much will then be left to the reader to draw his own conclusions, we can at least try to get a feel for the situation as it affected the ordinary people.

The Carthaginians During the First Punic War Hanno the Great, the leader of the aristocratic party in Carthage, who was implacably opposed to the overseas expansionist policies of Hamilcar Barca and the Barcid party, was authorised to exploit the Carthaginian agrarian empire in North Africa. This extension of the Libyan conquests, coupled with the task of subduing unrest amongst the Numidians while simultaneously maintaining a substantial fleet and sustaining the campaign in Sicily, was more than even the well-stocked Carthaginian treasury could afford. An attempt was made to negotiate a loan from Ptolemy II of Egypt, but he sagaciously declined on the grounds that he was a friend of both the Carthaginians and the Romans. One of these undertakings then had to be renounced, and since Hanno would not have contemplated restricting his African enterprises and found it virtually impossible to extricate the army in Sicily, he took the easiest option and withdrew the fleet. Divided political interests then assured the Romans of naval superiority in Sicilian waters and, ultimately, of victory. We do not know if the financial burden of campaigning weighed down on the Carthaginian people as a whole,

or whether it was just the aristocratic landowners who were suffering, but wherever it fell, the mere fact that an attempt was made to raise an overseas loan indicates that the crisis was real enough. As we have seen the Mercenary Revolt which followed the First Punic War arose because the Carthaginians were unwilling to pay the mercenaries their due. The enthusiasm with which the African cities threw in their lot with the mercenaries was largely due to the harshness of the treatment they had received during the closing years of the war. Persuaded that the exigencies of the situation justified such measures, the Carthaginians had commandeered one half of the annual produce of the lands throughout their subject territories and doubled the annual tribute imposed upon the cities. No compunction was shown in extorting these dues, regardless of the devastating consequences for those living by a subsistence economy. Small wonder that the young men flocked to join the revolt, while the women and others who remained behind met together and solemnly swore not to conceal any of their possessions but to offer them all to the common cause. As a result, the two leaders of the revolt, Spendius and Matho, were not only able to complete the payment of arrears due their men, but from that time on were able to defray the cost of the uprising. This suggests that the cause of such deep resentment was not so much the actual raising of the money by the Carthaginians as the harshness and indiscriminate manner in which it was done. According to Polybius, the Carthaginians were by then nearly exhausted by the demands of the recent prolonged war and found themselves without any revenue to support an army. The situation cannot have been quite this forlorn since shortly

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afterwards the Carthaginians were able to take the field in considerable strength, obtain new mercenaries, refit their surviving warships, arm all their able-bodied citizens, raise a new force of cavalry and muster the 100 elephants remaining to them. Again, in the absence of any Carthaginian records, to attempt to comment on the true situation and the extent of the suffering endured by the Carthaginian people themselves would be sheer speculation. After Hamilcar Barca had established himself in Spain, the wealth there not only enabled him to meet his own requirements but also to replenish the Carthaginian coffers and recompense the authorities of Gades (Cadiz) for their loyalty when he had first crossed from Africa. We do not know the relative proportion of these three allocations, but the amount supplied to Carthage must have been considerable: not only did it enable the war debt to be paid off to Rome, but it provided discreet payments to political supporters. The political effect of the First Punic War had been to weaken the position of the great landowners who favoured good relations with Rome. The merchants now saw the riches of Sicily flowing into the Roman treasury instead of into their own pockets, and the secure sea routes throughout the Mediterranean threatened, if not actually broken; the commercial domination they had enjoyed was dissolving before their eyes. But it was not just the merchants who were discontented. The war with Rome had virtually destroyed the navy and put a large number of Carthaginian citizens connected with maritime activities out of work. The disquiet of these classes provided a strong undercurrent of support for those like Hamilcar Barca who advocated expansion overseas. After the end of the Second Punic War, the pendulum swung back, bringing the big landowners into power. The commercial classes, and even the Barcid faction, which had supported first Hamilcar Barca and then Hannibal, now accepted the realities of the situation and sought an enduring accommodation with Rome. However harsh the peace terms and

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however reduced the opportunities for trade, the prospect of prosperous commercial activity still remained.

The Romans It was the succession of maritime disasters, resulting in the loss of at least 500 fully manned warships and 1,000 transports which saw the First Punic War reach a low ebb for the Romans. Not only did the state face bankruptcy and exhaustion, but a population census showed a fall of some 17 per cent, excluding the allies. To call for new taxes and further levies of manpower risked social unrest, and in 247 BC political change became inevitable. The Fabii, with their policy of moderation towards Carthage in favour of their northern landed interests, were exerting increasing influence over public opinion, while the Claudii, who stood to gain more from southern expansion, were becoming discredited and faced accusations of impiety - perhaps given substance by Claudius Pulcher, the member of the Claudian clan who cast the sacred chickens overboard after they failed to provide a favourable omen. Perhaps the most significant political development followed the acquisition of Sicily at the end of the First Punic War. Hitherto the Romans had never exacted payments in cash or kind from subjected territories, but instead demanded military service from those they termed as allies and with whom they shared the spoils of war. Now, however, they found it more convenient to adapt the entire concept of government to the existing administrative system in Sicily: they would impose a tribute and rely on self-administration through bureaucratically appointed councils, while providing the military garrisons themselves. These measures elevated Rome from mere leader of an Italian Confederation to an imperial power. There was also an important internal political consequence of the First Punic War. As had occurred in the past, new plebeian families who had distinguished themselves

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were elevated to the Senate. Though this did not lead to the creation of an influential military faction, it did mean that consulships were distributed with greater political and social evenness, though it is difficult to identify any improvement in the quality of leadership. Varro, who was responsible for the disaster of Cannae, had been elected by the plebeian party as their representative. The losses at Cannae had caused unprecedented terror and confusion in Rome. Only the previous year a consul and his army had been lost at Trasimene and now two more had suffered the same fate, leaving Rome without an army in the field, no commander of distinction and most of Italy overrun. In an attempt to calm the population, the Senate forbade women to leave their houses; they were to remain at home where they would be informed of their personal losses. Silence was imposed everywhere, family mourning was strictly curtailed and the city gates were closed to keep the people in as well as Hannibal out. As if the military disasters had not been enough, an act of gross impiety added to the general alarm. Two of the Vestal Virgins, charged with keeping the sacred flame in the temple of Vesta alight, were convicted for illicit sexual activity. One of them committed suicide and the other was buried alive, while the debaucher, the Lesser Pontiff, was beaten to death by no less a personage than the Pontifex Maximus himself. Similar panic and turmoil occurred a few years later when Hannibal was trying to relieve pressure on Capua by marching on Rome. The fearful cry of Hannibal ad portas rang through the city and exaggerated reports abounded. Weeping and wailing women ran aimlessly around the shrines, sweeping the altars with their loosened hair and appealing to the gods to save them and their children. As the war dragged on, people sought solace in the superstitions of eastern cults. Instead of worshipping in the privacy of their homes, crowds of women thronged the forum and other public places where they offered sacrifices and prayers in accordance with unaccustomed rites. This gullibility gave

rise to a new breed of soothsayers and prophets who were quick to exploit the opportunity for personal gain. Of more immediate concern to the Senate, however, was the demand for new recruits. Commissioners were appointed, charged with searching for those fit to bear arms, even if this meant enrolling boys below the age of 17, while slaves were recruited and criminals released from prison to fill the depleted ranks of the legions. Towards the end of the Second Punic War, shortly before Hannibal was recalled to Carthage, the Senate strove to achieve a return to normality and, in particular, to get the people back on to the land. This proved to be no easy task, since most of the free

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farmers had been killed in the war, slaves were scarce, cattle had been carried off and farm buildings destroyed. It was against this backdrop that Scipio had to persuade an anxious Senate to permit him to carry the war to Africa. Concern was expressed about the social consequences for the Roman people should he enter into a decisive battle against his formidable opponent, especially on his home ground. There was also the matter of public opinion to be considered: how would the Roman people and their allies react to the inevitable demands for additional manpower and resources to open up a new theatre of war? Twelve of the Latin colonies had already refused to make any further contributions, and the people had

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shown how near to exhaustion they had become, but after referring the issue to the people, the Senate, somewhat evasively, granted Scipio his request so long as he judged it to be in the interests of the state. From all this it is apparent that the Romans remained a cohesive society in spite of the appalling losses they suffered in human lives and material resources. We may not know of any individual cases, but it is not hard to imagine what it must have been like for the many thousands of families deprived of their bread-winner and with no state aid to fall back on. Remains of the house of the Vestal Virgins in Rome. The statues are those of high priestesses. (AKG, Berlin)

P o r t r a i t of a civilian

Carthaginian trade; a Roman senator The only Carthaginian politician of prominence was Hanno the Great, but as so little is known about him, his personality lies beyond our reach; we will look instead at Carthaginian trade and colonisation, which were closely linked, the latter generally following the former, to create the bedrock of their civilisation. It should be appreciated that the Mediterranean climate during the third century BC was very different from that of today, affecting to some extent both what was traded and so the siting of settlements. North Africa, for example, was thickly wooded and supported a multitude of game such as elephants, lions, panthers and bears, while Sicily produced an abundance of wheat, vines and honey. Similarly, the Bible refers to Palestine as 'a land flowing in milk and honey', which is confirmed by bore holes sunk in the former Lake Hula by the Israelis, showing evidence of seeds and cultivation which died out in subsequent centuries. Reflecting a more highly developed civilisation than was general throughout the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians exported manufactured articles such as household furnishings of ivory-inlaid cedar, bronze and silver bowls, jewellery, glass vessels, purple cloth and small practical utensils like tweezers and razors. Imports supplied the raw materials - precious stones, ivory, gold, silver, copper and tin, the last two providing the alloy from which many of the utensils were made. Trade was not confined to importing raw materials and exporting finished wares and products. Amongst many other things, Phoenician ships carried gold and silver to Greece and slaves to Near Eastern markets, while amphorae from Carthage were used for transporting wine and olive oil throughout the Mediterranean.

Herodotus tells us how the Carthaginians conducted their trade. They unloaded their goods, arranged them tidily along the beach and after returning to their boats raised smoke. Seeing the smoke, the natives then came down to the beach, placed a certain amount of gold on the ground in exchange for the goods and then withdrew. The Carthaginians then came ashore and if they thought the gold represented a fair price, they collected it and took it and went away; if on the other hand they thought it too little, they would go back on board and wait. The natives would then come and add to the gold until they were satisfied. There was perfect harmony on both sides, the Carthaginians never touched the gold until it equalled in value what they had offered for sale, and the natives never touched the goods until the gold had been taken away.

Clearly this primitive sort of commerce could not endure, so first trading settlements were established and then colonies similar to Carthage itself. Diodorus Siculus gives an insight into how this development occurred in Spain. The country has the most numerous and excellent silver mines ... The natives do not know how to use the metal, but the Phoenicians, experts in commerce, would buy the silver in exchange for some other small goods. Consequently, taking the silver to Greece, Asia and other people, the Phoenicians made great earnings. Thus practising the trade for a long time, they became rich and founded many colonies, some in Sicily and on the neighbouring islands, others in Libya, Sardinia and Iberia.

Following the pattern of their trade, Carthaginian colonies were mainly established along the coast on promontories

Portrait of a civilian

or small coastal islands facing lagoons of no great depth as their ships only required a shallow draught. The Greek colonies, on the other hand, which were being established at much the same time, were mostly sited inland, reflecting the Greeks' agricultural and more localised commercial interests. To end this short survey we will take a look at Carthage itself, leaving aside the fortifications which have already been described. As a maritime nation the port was of supreme significance and consisted of two interconnecting harbours. The inner circular harbour was for warships and the outer rectangular one for merchant vessels. It will be remembered that when access through the mercantile harbour was blocked by Scipio, a new outlet was cut from the inner harbour from which the warships sailed in a display of contempt for the Roman endeavour. Outside the city itself, Diodorus Siculus describes the surrounding countryside as abounding with fruit trees and vines, irrigated by sluices and canals, pastured with sheep, herds of cattle and breeding mares and populated by villages displaying the wealth of their owners. No doubt, as in any society, there was also an unseemly side, but the overall picture is one of great prosperity bordering on luxury. Marcus Cato, the scourge of Carthage. (Roger-Viollet)

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Marcus Cato At the same time as the Scipios were being fêted with triumphs, Marcus Cato arose who, amongst many other things, was to be the patrician family's greatest critic. It will be remembered how Scipio Africanus summarily dismissed Cato as his quaestor for criticising Scipio's extravagance while preparing for the African expedition. This was far from being an isolated incident. As a red-headed young man with penetrating blue eyes but of near barbaric appearance, Cato could alarm both friend and foe alike. He was so precocious that in his childhood he was called Cato (Catus, 'wise'), though his family, presumably because of his appearance, called him Porcius (swineherd). He seemingly did not have an easy start to life: able, but born into an undistinguished family when society was dominated by the aristocracy, he was driven by a near demonic energy to succeed and had an unquenchable desire for recognition, ambitions which called for rigorous single-mindedness and relentless self-discipline. Already gifted with a robust constitution, Cato further hardened himself physically by manual labour; sharing the hardships of those with whom he worked on the land, living frugally, drinking the same wine as his slaves and purchasing only the simplest of food in the market. He indulged in none of the excesses associated with youthful ardour, but instead prepared himself for higher purposes in life, becoming increasingly attracted to the ideals of simplicity and self-discipline, while practising and perfecting his oratory by appearing as an advocate for all who needed him without demanding a fee. Like all those seeking political careers, Cato first served in the army and at the age of 17 saw active service in Spain, being wounded and distinguishing himself for his gallantry. However, according to Plutarch: 'He never stinted his own praise, and could never resist following up a great achievement without a boastful description of it.' From this it seems reasonable to conclude that self-advertisement prompted him to sell his

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horse, rather than incur public expenditure in transporting it back to Italy. If his motive really had been public economy, he could have paid the cost himself, but this would have attracted little attention, except perhaps cynical disbelief. Cato's treatment of his slaves also suggests a callous ruthlessness - he sold them when they became too old to work. As Plutarch said: I regard exploiting them to the limits of their strength, and then, when they were old, driving them off and selling them, as a mark of a thoroughly ungenerous nature ... A kindly man will take good care of his horses even when they are worn out in his services, and will look after his dogs not only when they are puppies, but when they need special attention in their old age.

Though Cato is alleged to have been a good father and a kind husband, his deep suspicion of Greek physicians who practised in Rome, and perhaps his own frugality, led him to treat his family and slaves himself when they fell sick. The results were hardly reassuring. Both his wife and son died of disease, as probably did other unfortunate members of his household. His own physique had a more enduring quality as even in advanced age he continued to indulge his sexual appetite, first comforting himself with a slave girl, then marrying the young daughter of one of his secretaries, much to the surprise of the latter, who regarded Cato as being well past the age of marriage. Cato's most enduring, if discreditable, reputation is for contributing to the destruction of Carthage, not in the military sense but as a result of his advocacy. Returning from a diplomatic mission to North Africa, Cato warned the Senate that the crushing defeats the Carthaginians had suffered had done little to impair their strength or diminish their recklessness and over-confidence. They remained a potent threat to Rome. He ended his speech by dropping some gloriously over-sized Relief of a Carthaginian merchant ship. (Roger-Viollet)

figs on to the floor of the Senate-house, declaring that where they came from was only three days' sail from Rome. Henceforth he continually rubbed in the point whenever

Portrait of a civilian

his opinion was called for on any subject, by concluding with the words: 'And furthermore it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.' He never lived to see his wish

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fulfilled, dying shortly after the Third Punic War began. He was an austere, single-minded and ruthless man, but one who possessed both physical and moral courage.

Conclusion and consequences

Expansionism and the disposition for war Since the history of the Punic Wars is written almost entirely from a military point of view, inevitably the conclusions will also be military. The consequences, however, which will be considered at the end of this chapter are not so restricted. But let us first look at the causes for war, then briefly consider its conduct by both antagonists, before drawing a broad conclusion as to why the Carthaginians were vanquished. The causes of war are seldom explicit or simple, nor do they lend themselves to broad generalisations, such as commercial rivalry, social unrest or religious fanaticism. Usually there are also a number of interacting, if subsidiary, factors. These can include national or individual ambitions, prejudices and fears, all heightened by a generous measure of misunderstanding and miscalculation. To isolate one of these factors risks over-simplification, while to follow several can result in confusion. Then there are the theorists: some consider war to be a cyclical process, the revulsion of a generation which has participated in a prolonged conflict being replaced by the romantic ardour of the next. Others put forward the theory of delinquency: nations are human beings writ large who inevitably squabble and then fight. A third group believes that wars arise from ignorance, which, through increased commercial, personal, cultural and other contacts, can be abolished. Although such explanations all contain elements of truth, in the light of experience none has given grounds for thinking that it is capable of standing alone. If so much contemporary analysis and theorising has been devoted to determining the causes of war, it may well be asked what purpose will be served by considering what happened over 2,000 years ago. The available

evidence is fragmentary, the opinions expressed often hearsay, even at the time, and the relevance of such distant events is questionable. Even so, there are two clearlyidentifiable factors which made the First Punic War more probable and remain just as relevant today. First, the Romans saw an opportunity to gain a foothold in Sicily by aiding the Mamertines; and secondly, because they saw that the Carthaginians were unprepared militarily, they succumbed to the temptation. The seemingly obvious cause of the Second Punic War was Hannibal's determination to avenge the loss of Sicily and his father's humiliation. This was certainly the immediate cause of the war but the overall setting was far more complex. There was an undeniable momentum behind Roman expansion: periods of peace were temporary interludes to be broken when a favourable opportunity for advancement presented itself. So it was with Sardinia, which the Romans seized in 238 BC and then unconvincingly claimed that it was one of the islands referred to as Tying between Sicily and Italy' ceded to them following the First Punic War. In Italy itself, the Romans annexed Ager Gallicus on the Adriatic coast from the Gauls and incorporated the Etruscans into their confederation. Given Rome's clear cultural disposition for war, another conflict with Carthage was inevitable, only the timing was uncertain until decided by Hannibal. The cause of the Third Punic War can be attributed to the loss of Scipio Africanus' moderating influence when he fell victim to political in-fighting, and his replacement by Cato with his advocacy of vigorous confrontation with Carthage. We can see the timelessness of these events by looking

Conclusion and consequences

back to the Cold War, when the Soviets incorporated most of Eastern Europe into their brand of confederation, attempted to secure Berlin by blockade and drew down the Iron Curtain. Fortunately the West was more able to defend itself against confrontation than was Carthage. Looking at the events of the three Punic Wars, we can see how important it is to adjust force structures to changing political and military requirements, and then to conduct war with a purposeful strategic aim. As we have seen, the Romans began a war which clearly had a major maritime dimension without possessing a navy, while the Carthaginians had an army which, without a long period of mobilisation, was incapable of defending its widely dispersed possessions. Then there was the direction of the war itself. The Romans initially had the limited, shortterm objective of securing a foothold in Sicily; but by failing to define their long-term aim, they drifted into a prolonged conflict. In the Second Punic War the Romans were initially thrown on to the defensive by Hannibal's superior generalship, until he lacked the strength to maintain the offensive and defend the cities he had gained. Ultimately the Romans prevailed on the battlefield because, however incompetent and divided the leadership was at times, military service formed a part of every aspiring citizen's upbringing. In sharp contrast, the Carthaginian politicians were mainly merchants, irreconcilably divided between those wishing to preserve their overseas interests by opposing Rome and those wanting to compromise in order to expand their African possessions. This was a political division which precluded any clear strategic national aim. In the end it was this, together with the inattention paid in peace-time to the provision and training of competent commanders, that led to Carthage's downfall rather than, as has sometimes been suggested, the Romans' greatly superior human and material resources. Finally, let it be repeated: human nature does not change, only the circumstances with which it is surrounded. We should then never

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be led astray by wishful thinking, especially about totalitarian regimes, as was Chamberlain by Hitler at Munich, and Roosevelt by Stalin at Yalta; both were deceived and ultimately betrayed at terrible cost. Since Carthage was obliterated and its population dispersed, it is only the Romans with whom we are concerned, so we cannot do better than begin by relating the prediction made by Scipio Africanus' grandson, Scipio Nasica. Shortly before the Third Punic War he warned the Senate that though Rome's position as a dominant power should be preserved, Carthage should not be destroyed as a rival. Were this to occur, there would be no check to Rome's arrogant disregard for the legitimate interests and concerns of smaller states. Moreover, in the absence of any external threat, the Roman Confederation would be in danger of disintegrating as fractious political and social groups pursued their own self-interested ends. Events proved Scipio's prediction to be remarkably perspicacious. With ruthless determination the Romans extended their boundaries to the Euphrates, Danube, Rhine and Atlantic Ocean. A single city had expanded into an immense empire, but its arrogance brought its nemesis. The legions were no longer a citizen militia controlled by the Senate and enrolled to meet a passing need, but a long-service force of independent contingents whose loyalties had been transferred from a distant state to its immediate military commanders, many of whom had political ambitions. So it was in 49 BC when, at the head of five cohorts, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the river marking the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Roman Italy, to unleash a civil war which was to extend from the Italian peninsula to Greece, Syria and Cappadocia, down through Africa, Sicily and Sardinia to Spain. Internecine struggles first weakened then extinguished the military vigour of the Roman world until Rome itself was sacked in AD 410 by Alaric the Visigoth. The relentless expansion of the Roman Empire transformed the social and economic fabric of the Italian Confederation as the

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spoils of war poured into Italy. While the young men were drafted into the legions deployed along the empire's distant frontiers, they were replaced by tens of thousands of slaves who worked on the land or in domestic service. This could include concubinage, as was provided for Cato, or more debauching vices such as paedophilia, a practice acquired from the Greeks. But as time passed many slaves were enfranchised and became Roman citizens, though judging by Scipio Aemelianus' rebuke of those once thronging the Forum - 'Silence, spurious sons of Italy!' - of intemperate if not insolent behaviour. Thus a new breed of people arose who, holding different beliefs, customs and expectations, frequently rejected the social discipline and solid virtues practised by their Roman predecessors. There had been an equally traumatic shift in economic conditions. Much of the new-found wealth found its way into the pockets of the powerful, including members of the Senate, who bought up land which they then worked with slave labour, displacing those peasant farmers who remained. The resulting impoverishment of the peasant class was further aggravated by long-serving soldiers being obliged to surrender land which they were unable to manage, leaving them homeless and destitute once they had completed their military service. A resentful class of Rome's once-loyal citizens then swelled the ranks of those seeking social justice. In 133 BC Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune and bold reformer, was assassinated for attempting to reverse this trend, as was his younger brother Gaius, when he tried to revive the reform. In this way the old inculcated Roman virtues of uprightness and duty to the state slipped into a decline marked by selfishness and insatiable greed. In spite of the wealth that had flowed into Italy following the Romans' overseas conquests, its misappropriation and economic mismanagement necessitated higher taxes, a burden that was shifted by the rich and powerful on to the poorer classes, who, as Gibbon expressed it, 'bore the weight without sharing the benefits of

society'. The rot at home invited the intervention of ambitious overseas commanders who, as we have seen, were not slow to pursue their own interests. So Scipio Nasica's second prediction was fulfilled: internal disintegration would follow from the defeat of Carthage; a disintegration which ultimately led to the collapse of the Roman Empire. On the positive side, however, we should recall that Rome's defeat of Carthage paved the way for Western civilisation and the establishment of the Christian religion. For a brief period Rome unified most of modern-day Europe, to such an extent that, though the centre of gravity has shifted northwards, it is comparable with what is occurring some 2,000 years later. Gibbon, however, had harsh words to say about the impact of Christianity: The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of the military spirit were buried in the cloister; a large portion of private and public wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion.

However, to balance this critical assessment, he went on to say: The pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced to its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the Barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his virtuous religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors. This awful revolution may be usefully applied to the instruction of the present age.

A knowledge of history plays an important part in understanding how we got where we are and in helping us to decide what we should do in the future; which brings us back to Polybius' contention, quoted at the beginning of this book: 'There are two sources from which any benefit can be derived; our own misfortunes and those which have happened to other men.'

Glossary of names Agathocles Tyrant of Syracuse who eluded the Carthaginian siege of the city and carried the war into their North African homeland. He died in 289 BC. Archimedes The most famous mathematician and physicist in antiquity. Native of Syracuse, whose war machines devastated the Roman fleet during the siege in which he was killed when the city fell in 212 BC. Cato Roman senator who fought in Spain. His implacable hatred of Carthage was a major cause of the Third Punic War and the city's destruction. Fabius, Maximus Quintus Roman consul nicknamed Cunctator (Delayer) because he shadowed Hannibal in the Second Punic War, hoping to wear him down without giving battle. Flaminius, Gaius Roman consul killed with most of his men at the battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, when trapped byHannibal. Hamilcar Barca Father of Hannibal. Commanded the Carthaginian forces in Sicily during the First Punic War. Suppressed the Mercenary Revolt in Africa (240-237 BC). Created an independent power base in Spain, where he was drowned when trying to escape across a river. Hannibal Son of Hamilcar Barca. Secured the family base in Spain after the death of his father. Led his army from Spain over the Alps into Italy to begin the Second Punic War. After being called back to defend Carthage, he was defeated by Scipio Africanus at Zama in 202 BC. Hanno (The Great) Leader of the aristocratic party in Carthage from 240-200 BC. Favoured development of the African provinces, so was the chief opponent of Hannibal and the Barcid party seeking overseas expansion.

Hanno Carthaginian general sent to Sicily at the outbreak of the First Punic War. Defeated at the naval battle of Ecnomus in 256 BC. Hasdrubal Barca Left in command in Spain when his brother Hannibal crossed the Alps to campaign in Italy at the beginning of the Second Punic War. Later tried to join Hannibal but was killed on the Metaurus in 207 BC. Hiero King of Syracuse who sided with the Carthaginians over the Mamertine problem in 264 BC but after being defeated by the Romans, changed sides and gave his allegiance to the latter. Remained a faithful Roman ally until his death in about 214 BC. Maharbal Numidian cavalry general who crossed the Alps with Hannibal in 218 BC. Fought at the battles of Trasimene in 217 BC and Cannae in 216 BC. Marcellus, Marcus Claudius Four times consul and Rome's most vigorous field commander in Sicily and Italy during the Second Punic War. Took Syracuse but was killed in battle in 208 BC. Paulus, Lucius Armilius Roman consul sharing dual command with Varro at the battle of Cannae, where he fell in 216 BC. Philip V King of Macedonia who entered into an alliance with Hannibal during the Second Punic War in 225 BC. Driven out of Illyria by the Romans and finally defeated in the Second Macedonian War in 192 BC. Regulus, Marcus Atilius Roman consul who defeated the Carthaginians in the naval battle of Ecnomus in 256 BC. Invaded North Africa, where he was defeated by Xanthipus in the following year. Scipio, Gnaeus Cornelius Uncle of Scipio Africanus. Killed with his brother Publius Cornelius Scipio in Spain in 211 BC.

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Scipio, Publius Cornelius Roman consul and father of Scipio Africanus. Carried the campaign to Spain in the Second Punic War, where he was defeated and killed with his brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio in 211 BC. Scipio Africanus After the deaths of his father and uncle in battle, he was given command of the Roman army in Spain in 209 BC and captured New Carthage. Landed in Africa in 204 BC and defeated Hannibal at Zama two years later. Scipio, Nasica Grandson of Scipio Africanus who, after the Second Punic War, tried to persuade the Senate that it was in Rome's own interest not to destroy Carthage.

Spendius Roman deserter who, with the Libyan Matho, led the Mercenary Revolt in 240 BC. Syphax King of Numidia who sided with the Carthaginians and was defeated in the Great Plains by Scipio Africanus and Masinissa in 209 BC. Varro, Marcus Terentius Roman consul sharing command with Lucius Armilius Paulus but under whose direction the battle of Cannae was fought and lost in 216 BC. Xanthipus Spartan mercenary who trained and led the Carthaginian army which defeated the Romans under Marcus Atilius Regulus in North Africa during the First Punic War in 255 BC.