Hannibal’s Last Battle

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

  As the Romans went about the business of filling the causeway, the Punic defenders began to secretly cut a new channel to the sea, with work being done at night using all available labour, including women and children. In addition to cutting a new passage, the Carthaginians used the wood within the city to construct a fleet of fifty triremes and lighter support ships from scratch. Appian tells us that the Romans knew nothing of either activity until dawn one morning when the fleet sailed from the mouth of the harbour utilizing the new passage.409 The sudden appearance of this sizeable fleet unnerved the Romans, but inexplicably, the Carthaginians did not seize the element of surprise and immediately attack the Roman fleet, instead taking the ships out for sea trials before returning to the safety of the harbour. It was only three days later that the Punic fleet sailed out again, this time with the intent of engaging the Roman flotilla. The sea battle that took place near the coastline of Carthage was the last naval engagement of the Punic empire. Appian tells us that

  Loud were the cheers on both sides as they came together, and rowers, steersmen, and marines exerted themselves to the utmost, this being the last hope of safety for the Carthaginians and of complete victory for the Romans. The fight raged until midday, many blows and wounds being given and received on both sides. During the battle the Carthaginian small boats, running against the oarage of the Roman ships, which were taller, stove holes in their sterns and broke off their oars and rudders, and damaged them considerably in other ways, advancing and retreating nimbly.410

  Despite the greater manoeuvrability of the triremes versus the larger Roman quinqueremes, this battle ended in stalemate. The Punic ships were ordered to withdraw back into the Great Harbour, probably to repair and refit and fight again the next day. During this retreat, the Carthaginians’ situation began to disintegrate when the smallest vessels attempted to enter the newly-cut passage. Here, some of the smaller ships collided, blocking the entrance. Unable to return to the harbour, the remaining Punic ships pulled back and moored against the stretch of the earthen quay previously used to unload merchant ships too large to enter the harbour. This quay had been fortified over the duration of the siege with a rampart designed to deny the Romans with this landing from which to mount an assault. The Punic captains adroitly backed their ships up to this landing, bow rams facing outward. The Roman ships attacked this position, but suffered heavy casualties from the defending ships and defenders attacking the vessels from the rampart before finally gaining an advantage. Appian tells us that ‘many’ of the Carthaginian warships were able to escape back into the harbour, presumably after the removal of the damaged ships.411

  Scipio now recognized that capturing the earthen quay provided the Romans with their best opportunity to enter the city. He ordered his legionaries to attack the quay’s rampart across the newly-constructed mole. Huge siege engines and battering rams were pulled into position, and the wall was successfully breached in several places. But brave Carthaginians swam naked across the harbour with dry torches and set many of these artillery pieces and rams on fire, causing the Roman forces manning the engines to rout. Fearing the loss of this strategically-important position, Scipio led a cavalry charge across the mole in an attempt to restore order. When the fleeing soldiers refused to stop, Scipio and his horsemen cut them down.412

  In the morning, the Carthaginians began to repair the rampart, free from the molestation of Roman arms. Although new towers were constructed, the Punic fighters were not able to stop the Romans from renewing their efforts. Scipio ordered the construction of new siege engines and assault ramps, and the Romans were eventually able to force the Carthaginians to abandon the ramparts. Scipio next commanded the construction of a brick wall on the quay, one facing the main city wall and equal to its height. It was a large wall, for Appian says it was capable of holding 4,000 Roman attackers.413 This massive project took until the autumn of 147 to complete. Scipio would mount the final assault on the city from this position when the campaigning season began again in the spring of 146.

  Before Scipio could launch the final attack on Carthage, he needed to destroy the Punic army wintering in the well-defended position outside of Nepheris. Taking note of Manilius’ botched campaign two years before, Scipio approached the enemy carefully, breaching the encampment’s walls and then feeding his own reserves inside as another party attacked the far side of the camp. Those Punic defenders which did manage to escape were hunted down by the Numidian prince Gulussa and his cavalry and elephants. Appian recounts a ‘great slaughter, with as many as 70,000, including non-combatants, being killed’.414 Scipio went on to take the city of Nepheris itself. Soon, all of the nearby communities yielded to the Romans. Scipio was now free to complete the reduction of Carthage without fearing an enemy army at his rear.

  When the new Roman year began in March 146, the Senate rewarded Scipio with a continuation of his imperium in North Africa, allowing the former consul to complete his task of taking the Carthaginian capital. The main assault on the city was renewed that spring, using the newly-fortified quay as the base of operations. Fearing this, Hasdrubal set the warehouses on fire in the rectangular civilian harbour adjacent to the newly-erected Roman wall. Despite this action, it was near this area that one of Scipio’s lieutenants, a man named Gaius Laelius (the son of Scipio Africanus’ loyal friend by the same name) led a raiding party at night over the walls and into the round, innermost military harbour. Punic resistance was light, allowing Laelius to press into the city itself, seizing the agora (marketplace) next to the square civilian harbour. In the morning, Scipio personally led a force of 4,000 legionaries into the city to support his lieutenant.415 As the Roman soldiers moved through the city streets, the gilded temple of Apollo caught their eye and the troops broke rank and stripped the temple of all of its gold, reportedly equivalent to the amount of 10,000 talents. Scipio and his officers were unable to persuade their men to return to duty until the religious building was thoroughly picked over.416 This pillaging stands in stark contrast to the discipline showed by Scipio Africanus’ legionaries when they stormed New Carthage in 209 during the Second Punic War. Long gone were the days of Roman military restraint and the even distribution of all booty seized by soldiers during the storm of a city. Only after a thorough sacking of the temple did Scipio’s men rejoin their general and proceed deeper into the city towards their target, the Byrsa citadel.

  As the Romans began to slowly ascend the hill towards the Byrsa, the Carthaginian defenders made their presence known.417 According to Appian

  The streets leading from the market square to the Byrsa were flanked by houses of six storeys from which the defenders poured a shower of missiles onto the Romans: when the attackers got inside the buildings the struggle continued on the roofs and on the planks covering the empty spaces; many were hurled to the ground or onto the weapons of those fighting in the streets. Scipio ordered all the sector to be fired and the ruins cleared away to give a better passage to his troops, and as this was done there fell with the walls many bodies of those who had hidden in the upper storey and been burned to death, and others who were still alive, wounded and badly burnt. Scipio had squadrons of soldiers ready to keep the streets clear for the rapid movement of his men, and dead or living were thrown together into pits, and it often happened that those who were not dead yet were crushed by the cavalry horses as they passed, not deliberately, but in the heat of battle.418

  Urban fighting in any era is a grisly business, with soldiers clearing buildings floor by floor and subject to sudden ambush from unfamiliar doors, halls and stairwells. After the first buildings were taken, legionaries laid planks from rooftop to rooftop across the alleyways and then cleared adjacent buildings, allowing the soldiers in the street to slowly proceed up the hill toward the Byrsa. Once the citadel was reached, Scipio ordered the buildings running along the streets to be burned behind him. This was done to create a larger path suitable for the siege engines and reinforcements required for the reduction of the citadel. As th
e buildings fell, Roman working parties filled the holes and leveled the wreckage, creating solid wider paths. This project took six days to complete. Scipio was now ready to attack the walls of the Byrsa itself.419

  The following day, a Carthaginian delegation carrying olive branches walked out of the Byrsa offering to surrender. Scipio granted the request, and a throng of 50,000 men, women and children emerged from the gates, only to be sold into slavery by their Roman captors. Only the Roman and Italian deserters, some 900 in number, refused to surrender. These men barricaded themselves into the temple of Aesculapius, where they eventually burned themselves alive rather than be taken by the Romans. Hasdrubal, abandoning his wife and children, surrendered to the Romans, while his wife killed their children and then herself.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147 BCE, Phase I. Roman forces blockade Carthage from both land and sea. The Roman fleet commander, Lucius Mancinus, attempts an assault against an area with strong natural defences that has a lower wall and fewer defenders than other areas. Though he succeeds in gaining a foothold, the attempt is unplanned and poorly executed. Mancinus’s sailors and legionaries manage to escape by sea as reinforcements under Scipio Aemilianus arrive from Utica.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147 BCE, Phase II. Inspired by Mancinus’s fleeting success, Scipio orders assaults against two widely separated points of the city wall (1). The Romans manage to seize an adjacent tower, gain the rampart, and open a gate, admitting Scipio and 4,000 legionaries (2) who move into the urban landscape of the Megara (3). Scipio realizes his small force is vulnerable to ambush, that the Megara lacks defensible positions, and orders a withdrawal (4). Hasdrubal responds to the incursion by hauling Roman prisoners atop the walls and torturing them in view of their comrades.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147 BCE, Phase III. Scipio orders the old camp along the shore of Lake Tunis burnt (1) and constructs a new, fortified camp closer to the city walls (2). The Romans also build a twelve-foot-high rampart with a tall central tower to better observe Carthaginian activity inside the city (3). To tighten the noose to seaward, Scipio orders a mole to be constructed across the mouth of the harbour (4). Hasdrubal counters by ordering a channel cut at night (5). Fifty additional triremes and support ships are built to bolster the Carthaginian fleet.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147 BCE, Phase IV. Hasdrubal orders the fleet to sortie against the Romans (1) and a sharp naval battle ensues (2). The manoeuvrable triremes fail to defeat the larger Roman quinqueremes and the Carthaginians attempt to re-enter the harbour via the cut in the quay. Several ships collide, blocking entrance, and the remaining vessels back against the quay next to a rampart (3), where they are able to stave off several Roman attacks. The channel is finally cleared and the surviving Carthaginian vessels return to the harbour.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147 BCE, Phase V. Scipio realizes the quay may prove to be the chink in the Carthaginian armour and orders an assault against the rampart (1). Siege engines and rams breach the wall in several places, but the Roman artillerymen are put to flight and their pieces burned (2) by Carthaginians who have swum across the bay. The Roman attack wavers and Scipio leads a cavalry force across the mole (3). The infantry fails to rally and the cavalrymen ride them down.

  The Siege of Carthage, 147–146 BCE, Phase VI. Scipio orders new siege engines built and constructs assault ramps, finally forcing a Carthaginian withdrawal. He then refills the cut in the quay and builds a wall equal in height to the city wall from which to launch an assault in the spring of 146 (1). During the winter, Scipio attacks and destroys a Carthaginian army near Nepheris, to the southeast of Carthage (2), allowing him to fully concentrate on his siege of the city.

  The Siege of Carthage, 146 BCE, Phase VII. Scipio launches the final assault from his base on the quay. Hasdrubal orders the warehouses next to the Roman’s wall set afire (1), but this tails to check the assault. A raiding party under Gaius Laelius (3) overcomes light Carthaginian resistance, enters the militar) harbour area and seizes the adjacent Agora (4). Scipio reinforces the raiders with 4,000 legionaries, but the Roman infantrymen stop to loot the gold-covered Temple of Apollo near the Agora.

  The Siege of Carthage, 146 BCE, Phase VIII. The Romans push through the streets against stiff Carthaginian resistance (1). Scipio finally gains the walls of the Byrsa and orders the buildings leading back to the breach burned to make way for the siege engines. After six days of pounding, the Carthaginians offer to surrender. Scipio accepts and then sells the populace into slavery. Nine hundred Roman and Italian deserters retreat to the Temple of Aesculapius and burn themselves alive rather than fall into Roman hands. Hasdrubal surrenders to Scipio, while his wife kills their children before committing suicide.

  With the Byrsa now in Roman hands, the siege of Carthage was complete. In accordance with Roman custom, Scipio allowed his soldiers several days of pillage. Interestingly, he did place the cities’ temples off limits and denied those men who sacked the Temple of Apollo from sharing in the spoils. Some of the plunder was placed on a messenger ship and sent to Rome, precipitating rejoicing throughout the city. Rome sent a commission consisting of ten Senators to Carthage to supervise Scipio’s razing of the city. Although the complete destruction of Carthage is a myth (archaeologists have found several walls dating back to this period), the days of the Punic Empire were no more. Those cities which had sided with Carthage were also destroyed, while those which had aided Rome were rewarded with freedom and grants of former Carthaginian lands. Finally, some 5,000 square miles were annexed to form the new Roman province of ‘Africa’.

  Scipio Aemilianus returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph fit for a general who had destroyed Carthage. Like his grandfather, he took the cognomen ‘Africanus’, but unlike his namesake, he enjoyed a long and fruitful political career. He even served as consul again in 134, returning to Spain where he finally subdued the peninsula, ending the Celtiberian War. Scipio Aemilianus ‘Africanus’ died in 129, a celebrated man who represented the ideal second-century aristocrat – an honourable Roman soldier and statesman who appreciated Greek culture.

  Rome Transformed: The Legacy of the Punic Wars

  After Scipio Aemilianus Africanus’ passing, Rome entered the last century of the Republic, a tumultuous time when the fruits of empire building would be challenged by the realities of governing an empire. Rome’s victory in the three Punic wars (264–146 BCE) had catapulted the Italian power from a regional hegemon to master of the western Mediterranean, while simultaneous wars in Macedon, Greece and Anatolia had placed the Romans in an ideal position to continue their conquest of the remainder of the Mediterranean coastline. By 146, six permanent overseas provinces had been established (Sicily; Sardinia and Corsica ruled as one; Nearer Spain; Further Spain; Africa and Macedonia), with two more established by the end of the century (Asia and Transalpine Gaul).420 In little more than a century, Rome’s conflict with Carthage had produced a political, military and economic juggernaut and laid the foundations of a lasting Mediterranean empire.

  But was Rome seeking an overseas empire when it initiated hostilities against Carthage in 264 BCE? Polybius offers the theory that Rome went to war with Carthage for purely defensive reasons.421 Rome feared the Carthaginians would take over all of Sicily and dominate the Italian coastline. Punic attempts to annex the island in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE certainly fed these fears, but treaties with Carthage and the presence of a powerful Hellenistic city-state in Syracuse, provided a counterweight to Punic expansion in Sicily in the mid-third century. Despite Polybius’ assertion of self-defence, Rome saw the plea for assistance from Messana as a way of continuing their expansionist policies into Sicily.

  But Rome’s Sicilian campaign illustrated a lack of coherent strategy and the dangers of what modern historians call ‘mission creep’. Initially, the Roman Senate regarded the seizure of Messana as a limited undertaking, though when Punic resistance proved light, the Romans decided to seize the rest of Carthaginian Sicily. To meet this objective, Roman g
enerals dispersed their legionaries across the island, only to be bogged down in ineffective sieges against well-defended Punic cities like Lilybaeum and Drepana. Unable to secure Sicily, the Romans expanded their objective to the destruction of Carthage itself, sending an expedition to North Africa in 256. Once again, inadequate siege capabilities thwarted their desire to take the Punic capital, while a battlefield defeat at Tunis in 255 forced a reversion back to their original objective, the capture of Sicily.

  Although there were numerous opportunities to end the decades’ long conflict, Rome would not settle on anything short of victory in the First Punic War. Perhaps nothing illustrates this determination more than Rome’s wholesale construction of a fleet of warships from the keel up to compete directly with Carthage for command of the sea. One historian places the number of ships constructed between 260 and 241 at nearly 1,000, with most of these being the large quinqueremes.422 Despite setbacks, Rome successfully defeated the North African thalassocracy at Mylae, Ecnomus, and Aegates Islands, and then demanded a harsh peace from the Carthaginians in 241.

  The interwar period between the first and second Punic wars witnessed a Roman grab for Sardinia in 237, further straining Romano-Punic relations. Carthage moved to expand in Spain, but recognized future hostilities with Rome were inevitable. As military governor of Spain, Hamilcar Barca prepared a strategy to bring the war directly to the Romans in Italy, and by breaking up the Roman confederation, reduce Roman power in the region. Hamilcar’s son, Hannibal, implemented his lather’s plan in 218 when he crossed the Alps, striking Rome’s sensitive northern border. Although Hannibal recorded four significant victories (Ticinus in 218, Trebia in 218, Lake Trasimene in 217, and Cannae in 216) in just three years, the Carthaginian general could not overcome Rome’s massive manpower reserves, and more importantly, the Roman civilization’s unrelenting desire to win. Rome held its confederation together, contained Hannibal in southern Italy, and sent three Scipios and their legions to Spain to destroy the Carthaginian general’s own base of operations. With Spain pacified by 205, Rome took the war directly to North Africa in 204, a campaign which culminated in the Battle of Zama in 202 and a second defeat of Carthage. Rome waged a form of total war in its battle against Hannibal, marshalling its wealth and natural resources to raise, pay, feed, clothe and equip its armies, while simultaneously building and equipping large fleets. And when these armies or ships were lost, Rome built new fleets and raised new armies to replace them, sometimes at the expense of private citizens when public coffers ran low.