Hannibal’s Last Battle

by Brian Todd Carey; Joshua B. Allfree; John Cairns

  Even as Scipio was preparing to leave Spain for Italy, he was in negotiations with the royalty of Numidia to join Rome in their fight against Carthage. These negotiations divided this key Punic ally and brought to the Roman cause Prince Masinissa, whose cavalry would prove the decisive arm at Zama. Scipio’s ability to secure this key alliance, ironically, did to the Carthaginians in North Africa what Hannibal had tried for fifteen years to do to the Romans in Italy – deprive his enemy of key manpower resources. In fact, when we compare both Hannibal and Scipio as strategists we should keep in mind the vast discrepancy between available manpower for their campaigns. Here Scipio clearly had the advantage, for not only was Rome able to raise large, consular-size armies and several single-legion armies to patrol and garrison northern and central Italy and keep an eye on Hannibal in the south, but the Senate could also muster enough troops to fight against Carthaginian interests in Spain. Hannibal, on the other hand, did not have large manpower reserves to draw on; in fact, the Punic campaigns in Spain often took precedence over his in Italy, forcing Hannibal increasingly to do more with less as the war wore on. All of this makes Hannibal’s achievements even more remarkable.

  But how would Hannibal rate himself as a general? Livy tells us that these two generals met a second time at Ephesus in 193 BCE. Scipio was sent to the Levant by the Roman Senate to ascertain the motives of the Syrian king Antiochus III, a Hellenistic monarch from the Seleucid dynasty who was expanding his influence in the eastern Mediterranean. Hannibal was in exile there, serving as the Syrian king’s military advisor. When Scipio arrived, he asked to see his Punic rival, and it seems these men met and talked on a few occasions. During one of these encounters, Scipio asked

  … who, in Hannibal’s opinion, was the greatest general of all time. Hannibal replied, ‘Alexander … because with a small force he routed armies of countless numbers, and because he traversed the remotest lands.…’ Asked whom he placed second, Hannibal said: ‘Pyrrhus. He was the first to teach the art of laying out a camp. Besides that, no one has ever shown nicer judgment in choosing his ground, or in disposing his forces. He also had the art of winning men to his side. …’ When Scipio followed up by asking whom he ranked third, Hannibal unhesitatingly chose himself. Scipio burst out laughing at this, and said: ‘What would you be saying if you had defeated me?’

  ‘In that case,’ replied Hannibal, ‘I should certainly put myself before Alexander and before Pyrrhus – in fact before all other generals!’ This reply, with its elaborate Punic subtlety … affected Scipio deeply, because Hannibal had set him apart from the general run of commanders, as one whose worth was beyond calculation.’363

  The story may well be apocryphal, but both Livy and Plutarch report it, so it might have happened.

  The End of the Second Punic War

  The defeat of Hannibal’s army left Carthage with no choice but to sue for peace. Livy states that Hannibal was summoned from his main base at Hadrumentum to the Punic capital. It was the first time Hannibal had set foot in his native city in some thirty-six years. Hannibal personally addressed the Carthaginian assembly and admitted that the defeat of his army at Zama was also the defeat of Carthage in the war. The last surviving son of Hamilcar Barca and long-time champion of Carthage advocated making peace with the Romans.364

  After the Battle of Zama, Scipio rounded up his Punic prisoners and sacked their camp, securing great amounts of treasure. When he returned to the coast he received good news that a Roman convoy commanded by one of the consuls for 201, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, had arrived at Utica with fifty warships and one hundred transports with much-needed supplies. Deciding the moment was right to follow up on his battlefield victory, Scipio sent Laelius again to Rome to deliver news of the victory over Hannibal, then ordered his legions to march to Carthage by land, while he set sail from Utica towards the harbour at Carthage, augmented by the newly-arrived warships.365

  Not far from the harbour, Scipio was met by a single Punic ship wreathed in olive branches and carrying ten of the leading men of Carthage. According to Livy, as they drew along side the stern of the Roman flagship, this delegation ‘held out the symbols of supplication, begging and praying for mercy and protection’.366 Scipio ignored these prostrations, save for asking the delegation to meet him later at Tunis, where he would be setting up his new headquarters. Scipio then sailed on to Carthage with his massive fleet in a demonstration of Roman power. In actuality, the Romans posed no immediate military threat to the citizens of Carthage, safe behind their massive walls. Satisfied, Scipio ordered his fleet back to Utica and prepared his army for its march to Tunis.

  While marching from Utica to Tunis, Scipio learned of a new military threat in the form of a Numidian army racing to the aid of Carthage. Raised by Syphax’s son, Vermina, this North African column was quickly located, surrounded and attacked by Roman cavalry supported by some infantry in mid-December 202. Although Vermina escaped, he lost 15,000 of his fellow tribesmen, with another 1,200 captured by the Romans.367 This was the final engagement of the Second Punic War.

  When Scipio reached Tunis he found a Punic delegation of thirty men waiting for him there, probably made up of the city’s Council of Elders. Livy maintains that Scipio’s consilium was at first eager to destroy Carthage, but that further deliberation brought them around to the idea of negotiation. Despite his earlier posturing, Scipio recognized the need to come to terms with the Carthaginians quickly. The Roman general and his war council knew a prolonged siege of Carthage was out of the question and there was mounting pressure from Rome for a change of command in Africa, an act that would have taken the glory from Scipio and his men.368

  Rome’s Strategic Position, 201 BCE

  The terms Scipio set to end the Second Punic War were very harsh, no doubt set as a reminder to the Carthaginians of the truce which they broke when the convoy was attacked off the coast of Carthage in early spring 202. According to the treaty Carthage would:

  Lose all territory outside of Africa and recognize Masinissa as the king of a greatly expanded Numidia.

  Reduce her fleet to only ten triremes.

  Have all her war elephants confiscated.

  Pay an annual indemnity of 10,000 silver talents for fifty years.

  Refrain from making war outside of Africa unless Roman permission was obtained.

  Return all Roman prisoners and deserters without ransom.

  Supply Rome with three month’s worth of food and supplies and pay the occupying Roman army’s wages until the treaty was ratified by the Roman Senate.

  Pay reparations for the loss of the convoy and its supplies.369

  Finally, Scipio demanded hostages from the leading Carthaginian families to ensure their cooperation.

  Not all of the Carthaginian statesmen were willing to bow to the Roman demands. Livy recounts that a Carthaginian politician came forward to oppose the peace and, while giving his speech, was pulled down from the platform by Hannibal himself. Hannibal immediately apologized to the gathering, blaming his lack of etiquette on his thirty-six year absence from Carthage, then proceeded to urge the capital’s leading citizens to accept Scipio’s terms. In the end the Carthaginians agreed with the Punic general and dispatched a delegation to Rome to confirm the terms of the treaty.370

  After heated debate in the Roman government, the Senate finally agreed to accept the peace terms Scipio had proposed. Consistent with Roman custom, the Senate ordered the fetial priests to go to Carthage and sanctify the peace treaty. The Carthaginian envoys were released and in early spring 201 returned from Rome and met with Scipio in North Africa. True to their word, they surrendered their warships, deserters, runaway slaves and 4,000 Roman prisoners of war. Scipio then had nearly the entire Carthaginian fleet, some 500 ships in all according to Livy’s sources, towed out to sea, where they were set ablaze in full view of the city of Carthage as a symbol of the destruction of the Carthaginian thalassocracy.371 Scipio then brought forward the deserters (precisely how many we do not kn
ow) and had the Roman legionaries crucified and the Latin soldiers beheaded.372 With Carthage now officially considered another subject people of Eternal Rome, Scipio returned to Italy as Rome’s greatest hero.373

  Chapter 5

  In Zama’s Wake – The Growth of Roman Imperialism and the Third Punic War

  Hannibal After Zama (201–183 BCE)

  It is curious that Hannibal Barca’s surrender to Rome was not one of Scipio’s conditions. Perhaps Scipio held his rival in too high esteem to bring him back to Italy in chains, or perhaps the Roman general understood that Carthage needed a charismatic and able statesman to implement the conditions of the treaty. Whatever the case, Hannibal was appointed one of the two suffetes of Carthage in 201 and spent the next seven years attempting to reconstruct the Carthaginian economy and pay the high reparations demanded by Rome. Despite nearly two decades of war and the loss of Spain and its navy, Carthage continued to prosper, mostly due to very close commercial contacts with the Levant and its colonies on the southern littoral of the Mediterranean, areas where Rome had yet to interfere.

  As one of the chief magistrates of Carthage, Hannibal found himself butting up against traditional enemies of the Barca clan, those who believed that trade, not war, was the main occupation of the Punic state. This political faction had plagued his father Hamilcar Barca and other influential military families throughout the third century BCE who were hawkish in their pursuit of Carthaginian foreign policy. Hannibal understood that Rome’s influence in the western and central Mediterranean had now grown to the point that it would no longer tolerate a balance of power with Carthage. Hannibal watched as this peace faction laid the blame for the loss of the Second Punic War entirely at his feet, and retaliated by denouncing a number of prominent Carthaginian officials whose peculations he had uncovered.

  To make matters worse for Hannibal, he continued to have powerful enemies in Rome. There were many senators who felt Scipio’s peace terms were too lenient and this, combined with Hannibal’s ability to raise the large annual war indemnity, enraged those Romans who wanted to use this failure as an excuse to invade North Africa. Although Scipio intervened on behalf of his former enemy, admonishing his fellow Romans for their interference in Carthaginian affairs, it did not take long for the Punic peace faction and these bellicose Romans to form an alliance with the primary goal of ousting Hannibal from power. Ultimately, this strange alliance proved too strong, and when combined with the charge in 195 that he was conspiring with another enemy of Rome, the Seleucid king Antiochus III (‘the Great’) of Syria, Hannibal calculated that his days were numbered and prepared his escape from Carthage.

  In 195 BCE the Romans sent a commission to Carthage to investigate the alliance between Hannibal and Antiochus. Ordered to North Africa by one the new Roman consuls, Marcus Porcius Cato (Scipio’s former quaestor, known to history as Cato ‘the Elder’), this commission was determined to bring Hannibal back to Rome as a prisoner. Hannibal knew well that his enemies in Carthage were about to betray him to his long-time enemy, so he put into effect his escape plan. After receiving the Roman envoys, he had them escorted to their quarters in the citadel on the Byrsa Hill above Carthage, then continued his normal activities in the city during the day. On the pretext of taking his evening ride, he set out for a villa near Hadrumetum, using horse relays set up beforehand to make good time. Once there, he slipped on to a waiting ship, his personal belongings and private fortune already sent ahead. Weeks later he made his way to the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre and to the court of King Antiochus, where he would serve as the Hellenistic king’s military advisor. Hannibal was about fifty-two when he went into exile in the Levant. He would spend his last thirteen years in the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia, serving kings and evading the Romans.

  Although celebrated as a hero by the enemies of Rome in the eastern Mediterranean, Hannibal was not always warmly received by the generals and advisors who surrounded Antiochus. Hannibal wished to use the Syrian king’s resources to make war with Rome again. As usual, the Punic general’s plan was bold. He would take a Syrian force of 100 ships, 10,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry with him to North Africa and induce the Carthaginians to revolt, while Antiochus threatened to invade Italy across the Adriatic. Once Carthage was secured, he would invade Italy directly from North Africa.374 In the end, Antiochus refused Hannibal’s wishes because the advancing shadow of Rome was now directly threatening the Balkans and Antiochus’ territory in Asia Minor.

  King Philip V of Macedonia had been busy since the end of the First Macedonian War in 205. Over the next two years he pressed westward into the Roman protectorate of Illyria, but protests from Rome forced him to seek lands elsewhere. In 202 the Macedonian king entered into a secret pact with Antiochus with the ultimate goal of attacking and dividing up the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, a monarchy hamstrung by civil war. Under this agreement, Philip would expand eastward into Thrace in order to seize control of the important Black Sea shipping lanes, while Antiochus would expand south into Palestine and threaten Egyptian territory from the northeast. By 201 Philip was fully engaged against King Attalus of Pergamum and the powerful naval power of Rhodes. When Philip threatened Athenian territory in Attica in 200, pleas for aid from Athens, Pergamum and Rhodes finally piqued the Roman Senate’s interest in the region, initiating a Second Macedonian War (200–196 BCE).

  In 200 BCE, the Romans sent the consul Publius Sulpicius Galba to Greece to support their Athenian allies against the Macedonians. Over the next three years, the Romans and Macedonians sparred, with neither side gaining a significant advantage. But in 197 the Roman Senate sent the young consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus (he was only thirty years old at the time) to Greece with hopes of bringing the war to a successful conclusion. In the hilly region of Thessaly, Flamininus’ and Philip V’s columns unexpectedly bumped into one another as they approached a pass from opposite directions. The opposing armies were almost equal in number.375 The resulting Battle of Cynoscephalae was a stern trial between the Roman legion and the classical Macedonian phalanx, the legion’s flexibility eventually proving superior. Faced with a crushing defeat, Philip was forced to settle with Rome.

  The Second Macedonian War ended in 196 with Philip giving up all claims on Greek territory and paying an indemnity of 1,000 talents of gold. The Greek poleis in the Balkans were placed under Rome as a protectorate, as were any Greek city-states in Anatolia, further blunting Philip’s aspirations to expand eastward into Asia Minor. But the increased Roman presence in Asia Minor would also place Rome in direct conflict with Antiochus, who considered this peninsula to be in his sphere of influence. Soon the realities of garrisoning the Greek world sunk in, and Flamininus announced at the Isthmian games in Corinth a ‘Treaty of Freedom’ giving the Greeks the autonomy to live their lives under their own laws and customs free from Roman or Macedonian control. This brilliant political move not only freed up valuable Roman manpower to deal with future threats, most notably Antiochus of Syria, but also expanded Roman influence in the East while securing Greek friendship and loyalty. By the end of 196 the Romans had removed all of their forces from Greece.

  The Battle of Cynoscephalae, 197 BCE, Phase I. Titus Quinctius Flamininus leads an army consisting of 18,000 legionaries, 8,000 Athenian-led phalangeal infantry from the Aetolian League, 2,000 cavalrymen, and 20 elephants. They face a Macedonian army of 25,500 infantry and 2,000 cavalry under Philip V. Both sides deploy skirmishers to search for the enemy.

  The Battle of Cynoscephalae, 197 BCE Phase II. The battle opens as the skirmishers clash in the fog-enshrouded Cynoscephalae hills (1). After initially holding the upper hand, the Roman light infantry retreats in good order as the Macedonian cavalry advances against them (2). Philip orders his infantry forward, occupying the ridge line (3). The Romans begin to advance as well (4).

  The Battle of Cynoscephalae, 197 BCE, Phase III. The Macedonians launch a downhill charge against the Roman left (1), but the move occurs before their own left has fully
deployed (2). The Roman’s left is pressed back by Philip’s charge (3), but Flamininus’s right attacks the lagging Macedonian left (4) and pushes them back as well (5).

  The Battle of Cynoscephalae, 197 BCE, Phase IV. As the Roman right pursues the Macedonian left, a Roman tribune orders his maniples to wheel to the left (1) and engage Philip’s victorious right in the rear (2). The Macedonians, unable to protect themselves against this unanticipated onslaught, raise their sarissas in surrender. The Romans fail to understand the gesture and slaughter Philip’s infantry.

  Interestingly, Rome’s containment of Philip V allowed Antiochus to expand westward in 195, across the Bosporus and into Thrace. Now the Syrian king was threatening to control the Black Sea sea-lanes and intervene in Greek affairs. It was during this tense time that Scipio Africanus and Hannibal Barca had their famous second meeting, when Scipio was dispatched by the Senate to Ephesus to ascertain Antiochus’ intentions. After five years of tension the Roman Senate ordered Lucius Cornelius Scipio, younger brother of Scipio Africanus, to march through Greece and into Asia Minor, where he defeated Antiochus at the Battle of Magnesia in 190, after nearly two weeks of manoeuvring to gain a tactical advantage. Scipio Africanus was present at this battle.