Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (2 page)

6.
Hannibal Crossing the Alps
by Heinrich Leutemann, 1866. This hand-coloured etching captures the nineteenth-century fascination with the life of the Carthaginian general and the drama of the Alps crossing.

7. Painting by Giambattista Tiepolo, 1725–1730. This early eighteenth-century painting illustrates the moment when Hannibal recognizes his brother Hasdrubal’s head after it was catapulted into his camp following the defeat at the battle of the Metaurus (in 207
BCE
).

8. Hannibal’s head as portrayed on a monument in Gebze near Istanbul, twentieth century. The monument was commissioned by Atatürk and built after his death. Gebze is thought to be a possible location of ancient Libyssa, where Hannibal died.

9. Hannibal(?) marble bust from Capua. The best-known image of Hannibal may not actually be Hannibal. The portrait was found in or near Capua and is clearly that of a helmeted military figure wearing the cloak (
paludamentum
) of a Roman commander.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T
HERE ARE SO VERY
many people who have been incredibly helpful in the process of writing this book. First on that list are my very patient editors at Yale University Press, Heather McCallum and Rachael Lonsdale. I also valued the comments of the anonymous readers who provided a great deal of clarity, useful observations and encouragement, as well as pointing out many errors, problems and omissions. Any left are mine alone. My good friends and colleagues Sandra Bingham and Stephen Copp have helped in the creation of this story in so many ways, including very practical ones. My students at the University of Reading who took the ‘Carthage’ module and had many ideas, thoughts and comments that helped to focus my thinking on the topic of Hannibal in the final stages of the book. There are also many other good friends, family (often both) and colleagues who have always been willing to encourage and listen when I am sure there were better things to consider than Hannibal – again many thanks. The greatest thanks of all must go to my husband, Keith Tracey, whose patience, editorial skills and even more patience helped to make this a much better work.

N
OTE
We know of at least six children born to Hamilcar Barca. The first three were girls and these anonymous daughters were married to form political and military alliances. His sons, ‘the lion cubs’ reared to destroy Rome (Valerius Maximus 9.3.2 claims four sons), fought together in the Second Punic War, as did his grandson Hanno (who commanded the left wing of cavalry at Cannae according to Appian,
Hann.
20). Except for Hannibal’s, the ages are largely hypothetical. Cornelius Nepos tells us that Hamilcar was ‘very young’ when he took command in Sicily. However, by that time he was already the father of four children so he could not have been that young – the estimate used here places him in his late twenties at the time of Hannibal’s birth in 247 (Lancel, 1999, 9). Hannibal’s niece was married to Masinissa’s uncle; she was the daughter of one of his sisters, but which one is unclear. For the family history see Hoyos, 2005, 21–23.

* All dates in
BCE
.

Map 1
The central Mediterranean: Carthage, Rome and Sicily

Map 2
The western Mediterranean

Map 3
Carthage and environs

INTRODUCTION

NO ORDINARY ENEMY

W
HEN DUSK FELL
on a hot, windy day in the summer of 216
BCE
on the plains of Apulia near the town of Cannae, as many as 45,000 Roman soldiers lay slain.
¹
The following morning a ghostly landscape appeared with the dawn. A mist had settled on the heaps of bodies during the cooling temperatures of the night and some of the wounded, not yet corpses, staggered up out the grey light only to be finished off by the enemy (Livy 22.51.6–7).
²
On this field at Cannae lay many of the governing elite of the city of Rome, one standing consul, ex-consuls, praetors and other magistrates killed in the battle. Cannae was the scene of one of the most devastating military defeats ever inflicted on a Roman army and the architect of that defeat was a thirty-one-year-old Carthaginian commander named Hannibal Barca. Hannibal’s victory had brought the Roman Republic to the brink of oblivion.

As a result of Cannae and his other victories, Hannibal is often referred to as the one great enemy in the epic story of the rise of Rome. To the Roman historian Livy he was almost superhuman, ‘possessed of enormous daring in facing dangers and enormous resourcefulness when in the midst of those dangers. He could be physically exhausted or mentally cowed by no hardship … On horse or foot he was by far the best soldier, the first to enter battle, he was the last to leave once battle was joined’ (21.4.5–8). Hannibal was brave, inexhaustible and virtually impossible to defeat. When Pliny the Elder singled him out as ‘no ordinary enemy’, he had become the standard against which all other enemies of Rome were measured (
NH
7.29). Hannibal’s reputation,
even among those who fought against him, was as the most brilliant and determined military commander of his generation.

From the precipice of Cannae the Romans fought back. In a long war, which encompassed the whole of the western Mediterranean, they went on to defeat Hannibal (218–202
BCE
). In the Roman and many modern views the battle against Hannibal was the turning point in the history of Rome’s power.
³
Once the Romans had defeated Hannibal, no one stood between them and complete dominance of the Mediterranean; no other enemy would challenge Roman hegemony like Hannibal. The war with Hannibal defined Roman
imperium
and articulated all the future battles that Rome would fight in its progress to empire. Just over fifty years after the Hannibalic War the Romans went on completely to destroy Hannibal’s city, Carthage (146
BCE
). From that time they took sole ownership of the man, his identity and reputation, and they alone were able to construct his legend.

The great Roman orator Cicero asked, ‘who of the Carthaginians was superior to Hannibal in wisdom and valour, and actual achievements?’ He was the man in Cicero’s estimation ‘who had single-handedly fought for so many years for empire and for glory with such numbers of our generals. His own fellow citizens banished him from the city; but we see that he, though our enemy, is celebrated in the writings and memory of our citizens’ (
Pro Sestio
68.142). Roman ownership of Hannibal’s story was further compounded when, a century after the destruction of Carthage, Julius Caesar camped near the ruins of the city during the civil wars and dreamt of a ‘whole army weeping’ (Appian,
Lib.
136). Out of that dream came a new Roman colony, called
Colonia Iulia Concordia Karthago
, established by Caesar’s heir Octavian Augustus.
⁴
The new Carthage sat directly on the ruins of the old, the Romans built over the heart of the Carthaginian town, the Byrsa hill, and any remaining vestiges of Hannibal’s city were destroyed. From that moment onwards the Romans were fully in possession of the story of both Hannibal and Carthage. ‘Here I begin the war by which the fame of the
Aeneadae
was raised to heaven and proud Carthage submitted to the rule of Italy’ wrote Silius Italicus in his first-century
CE
narrative poem the
Punica
(1.1–3).
⁵
The Roman writers and historians constructed the legend of the Great War fought by the implacable enemy general and the Carthaginian culture that produced him.