Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (7 page)

T
HE
H
ELLENISTIC AGE REFERS
to the period in the Mediterranean from the death of Alexander in 323
BCE
to the defeat of the last Hellenistic monarch, Cleopatra, at the battle of Actium in 31
BCE
. Hannibal grew up and was educated in the second half of the third century, less than a hundred years after Alexander’s death. This proved to be a defining era for Carthaginian, Greek and Roman history.
¹
The picture we have of Hannibal’s life and death is infused with the complexities of the wider Hellenistic Mediterranean.
²
Ideas of power and empire in the Mediterranean had been permanently transformed by the time Alexander died. Appian describes how writing his history of the period led him ‘from Carthage to Spain, from Spain to Sicily or to Macedonia, or to join some embassy to foreign countries, or some alliance formed with them; thence back to Carthage or Sicily, like a wanderer’ (
Preface
12). By the third century the Mediterranean world was more closely interlinked than ever before. The city-states of the eastern Mediterranean that had existed before Alexander on the fringes of Persian power, each with more or less regional influence, imploded and populations moved around. Big powers and large kingdoms of all kinds (from monarchies to republics) looked to increase their wealth and hegemonic control. The powerful city-states in the central Mediterranean, such as Carthage, Rome and Syracuse, once outside the sphere
of influence of the Hellenistic kingdoms, were pulled farther into the fray.
³
The period has been described as ‘Mediterranean Anarchy’ which sums up the environment in which Hannibal, the most successful general of his generation, would flourish.
⁴

Hannibal’s style of military leadership developed in the wake of the legend of Alexander the Great and his conquests. Alexander’s exploits created a new paradigm for boundless military conquest, and Hannibal would have grown up listening to stories about the legendary leader who had conquered kingdoms beyond the known world. The harsher reality of Alexander’s exploits would have been keenly felt at Carthage when Tyre was sacked in 333
BCE
. Around this time the Carthaginian government sent an envoy named Hamilcar Rhodanus to meet Alexander.
⁵
In one version of the story Hamilcar gained access to the king by stealth, ingratiating himself with his entourage whilst pretending to seek refuge with the Macedonians. Hamilcar then sent reports back to Carthage about Alexander’s plans using hidden texts, written on wood tablets and then covered with wax (Justin 21.6.1–7). He seems to have been a spy embedded in Alexander’s army. On Hamilcar’s return to Carthage after Alexander’s death, he was executed ‘on the grounds that he had tried to sell the city to the [Macedonian] king’ (21.6.7).

The foundation of Alexandria, Alexander’s new city in Egypt, must have caused the Carthaginians some concern over competition for trade routes and encroachment on territory allied to Carthage in North Africa. It was even rumoured that Alexander intended to make Carthage his next great conquest, but any plan was cut short by his premature death (Diodorus Sic. 18.4.4; Justin 21.6.1–7). These stories and legends of the siege of Tyre and Alexander’s plans would have been carried to Carthage with an influx of Tyrian refugees who must have arrived in the aftermath of the destruction of their city.
⁶

Alexander’s death in 323
BCE
left a vacuum and the cities and states of the eastern Mediterranean were swept up in the scramble that followed. The generals who succeeded Alexander (the so-called ‘Successors’) vied to inherit the mantle of power left by his untimely death at the age of thirty-three. Out of Alexander’s empire the Successors shaped large kingdoms through a process of almost constant warfare. An uneasy balance of power existed between these kingdoms of Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Asia and Antigonid Macedonia. As conflict flared around disputed territories, demonstrations of military might became an essential part of the political process. One of the important symbolic notions of the Hellenistic period was conquest – the spear-won land – and the rulers of these kingdoms established their legitimacy through military victory.
⁷

The first leader of the ‘Hellenistic mould’ to make a direct impact on Carthage was the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles (
c.
360–289/288
BCE
). Agathocles had seized control in Syracuse (
c
. 317
BCE
) and set out to conquer and consolidate power in Sicily. This brought him into conflict with Carthaginian allies in the west of Sicily. After suffering a serious defeat at the hands of the Carthaginians, Syracuse was essentially under siege by 310
BCE
. Agathocles’ response was to raise a mercenary army and launch a surprise attack on the city of Carthage. It was a bold attempt to alleviate the siege at home. Agathocles’ forces landed not far from Carthage across the gulf on Cap Bon (
Map 1
). Leaving his fate to fortune Agathocles burned his ships and set off to plunder the countryside. There in the agricultural heartland of Carthage he encountered a landscape ‘… full of gardens, of orchards watered by streams. The country houses followed one on the other, built with luxury … everywhere a picture of wealth in the estates of the Punic aristocracy’ (Diodorus Sic. 20.8.3–4).
⁸
The Carthaginians, whose army was distracted by the siege in Sicily, were completely unprepared and pulled together a haphazard force to meet the invader (Diodorus Sic. 20.11). The subsequent defeat inflicted by Agathocles on Carthage was catastrophic and led to chaos in Carthaginian territory and revolt among Carthage’s allies in Africa.
⁹

The Carthaginians struggled to deal with the expedition of Agathocles and a succession of fiercely fought battles challenged their position in Africa for the first time on land. An attempted alliance between the armies of Agathocles and the Ptolemaic king of Cyrene, Ophellas, might have ended in total disaster for Carthage. However, some kind of inexplicable treachery, nowhere well explained, led Agathocles to attack and kill his erstwhile ally Ophellas and incorporate his soldiers into his own army.
¹⁰
Carthage remained isolated and increasingly cut off from her traditional allies in Africa. The Syracusan forces took the allied cities of Utica and Hippo Acra to the north of Carthage and the Libyan allies flocked to the side of the Hellenistic hegemon Agathocles. In 307
BCE
, after four event-filled years with Carthage still standing despite all the odds, Agathocles returned to Sicily to try to retain his power there. He left his army and his sons in Africa to their fate. The Carthaginians eventually won back all the territory they had lost but Agathocles’ bold adventure had exposed to the wider world their vulnerability to invasion (Diodorus Sic. 20.5–69; Justin 22–23).
¹¹

The expedition of Agathocles illustrates exactly how the knock-on effect of the expansionist tendencies of the Hellenistic Age impacted the central and western Mediterranean.
¹²
Conquest became the norm for kings and tyrants like Agathocles and the generals of the Carthaginian Republic who fought
against him. Individual military commanders expanded their horizons for conquest beyond the traditional zones of conflict. Agathocles’ invasion of Africa shifted the rules of engagement within which Carthage and Syracuse had been battling for almost two centuries. It was no longer just about conflict in Sicily and defending allies against incursions from one or the other side. Larger, more geographically expansive power was being sought and the threat of an invasion of Africa would become Carthage’s greatest vulnerability.

In the heyday of the Hellenistic kings an era of the heroic commander feted by writers and the public for his individual military exploits developed. These celebrated generals represented the model of power and ‘heroic leadership’ which Alexander had embodied. As subsequent leaders employed the image of Alexander to claim their legitimacy, the symbolism of power and conquest which he had typified spread across the Mediterranean, from the Successor kings to the city-states of the west.
¹³
The powerful republics of Carthage and Rome were equally influenced by stories of these magnificent feats of military glory. The tales of the great generals inspired by divine patronage were the stuff of legend. Hannibal would have studied their battles, learned their techniques and been schooled in the strategies of war as befitted the son of one of Carthage’s great generals.
¹⁴

The third century was a period of economic growth and increased trade around the Mediterranean. It was also a time of increasing prosperity at Carthage. The city was ideally situated in the middle of the Mediterranean to capitalize on the trade from an ever-widening world.
¹⁵
As great wealth and royal rivalries drove the successors of Alexander to further competitive warfare they began what must have been one of the world’s first arms races, as bigger and better warships, catapults, siege engines and weaponry were commissioned.
¹⁶
One of the earliest and most celebrated of the Hellenistic kings to explore the potential of advanced weaponry was the Macedonian Demetrius known as
Poliorcetes
(Besieger of Cities). Plutarch, the first-century
CE
compiler of great Greek and Roman lives, wrote that ‘Demetrius was skilled in directing catapults and battering rams to crush city walls’. Demetrius’ tortoise-like armoured battering rams were 180 feet long and manned by 1,000 men. His giant catapults hurled 180-pound stone balls a quarter of a mile and his most fearsome device was an enormous wheeled fortified tower called
Helepolis
(the Taker of Cities). This tower was 50 feet square at its base, more than 100 feet tall and was armed with its own banks of catapults and sling throwers.
¹⁷
Reports from Agathocles’ assault on Utica describe a siege engine with prisoners from the city dangling from the machine as it was moved into position to attack – thus presenting a quandary for the defenders
inside the walls, forced to shoot their own citizens to defend themselves against the machine (Diodorus Sic. 20.54.3–7).

Nowhere was the innovation more apparent than in the investment and development of warships. Control of the sea brought control of the lucrative trade across the Mediterranean. Shipwreck evidence from around the Mediterranean reveals a jump in the number of ships frequenting the shores. This augmented connectivity resulted in more trade and greater wealth. Corresponding to this growth was an enormous increase in the number and size of warships. In the Classical period, the standard oared ship was the trireme, a ship that had three levels of oars with a single oarsman pulling each oar.
¹⁸
The trireme was the main warship until the arrival of the four (
quadrireme
) in the fourth century, which Aristotle (via Pliny) tells us was a Carthaginian innovation (
NH
7.207–8). A four was a different concept, with two banks of oars and two men to each oar. Then came fives and sixes (
quinqueremes
and
hexiremes
).
¹⁹
Exactly how the fives functioned is still debated, however they seem to have had either two or three banks of oars with five oarsmen on each side.
²⁰
The more imposing fives and sixes originally functioned as the flagships of the naval commanders but by the mid-third century Polybius implies that the five had become the standard warship in the Carthaginian navy (1.20.9–16). Innovations in the technique of naval warfare developed out of the main maritime battles, and especially significant in the ancient sources were the sea battles fought by Carthage and Rome in the First Punic War.
²¹

The Carthaginians had inherited the traditions of a sophisticated maritime culture from the Phoenicians and by the third century the city was renowned as a naval power. The naval prowess of Carthage was something that had developed organically. Her influence rested on the sea, and ships were the means by which Carthage communicated and connected with her allied cities. Much of the wealth of the state seems to have derived from maritime commerce with the control of the ports and the duties charged for access. Consequently Carthage attained the reputation for naval prowess over her rivals, being ‘superior at sea both in efficiency and equipment, because seamanship has long been their national craft’ (Polyb. 6.52.1–2). The self-perception of the Carthaginians was also connected to the sea and the citizens of Carthage both commanded and manned her navy. As it was the principal means of power at Carthage there was an important focus on the skills involved in all aspects of the navy, from command to construction. From the production of ships to the workings of the ports to the seamanship of the sailors, the navy touched all strata of the population at Carthage.
²²
Evidence suggests there was a standing
navy at Carthage but in times of need there are indications that this was supplemented by privately funded naval enterprises. It seems that individual citizens built, equipped and manned ships for specific missions. For example, in 250
BCE
a Carthaginian admiral named Hannibal the Rhodian and his excellent crew were able to evade the Roman blockade of Lilybaeum in Sicily. We are told that the Rhodian had fitted out the ships himself (Polyb. 1.46.4–13). There may have been an incentives culture associated with success in naval warfare at Carthage, which gave further impetus to the individual in command.
²³

The Carthaginian reputation as a naval power was severely threatened over the course of the middle third century. Carthage had previously confronted few rivals who could equal her control of the sea in the western Mediterranean. The advent of new Hellenistic hegemons and Roman expansion challenged the status quo at Carthage. This is also the critical period that links Hannibal’s story and that of the Hellenistic world through the advent of Pyrrhus, king of the Greek Adriatic state of Epirus (319–272
BCE
).