The Sword of Rome

by Jeremiah McCall

  The capture of Syracuse brought the eastern half of Sicily firmly back into Roman control, but the west was still in a state of revolt, aided by Carthaginian forces. The Syracusan renegade Epicydes and the Carthaginian commander Hanno at Agrigentum, that southern port city a little more than 100 miles from Syracuse, were now joined by a new commander sent by Hannibal, Muttines. He was a Libyophoenician, one of the North African peoples brought under the rule of the Carthaginians over the centuries. He had served with Hannibal and learned the business of command in the process. He initiated a series of raids at the head of a force of Numidian cavalry.78 Numidian horsemen were renowned as light cavalry. They were masters of the horse and able to maneuver and move precisely and quickly, often to the dismay of slower infantry and cavalry forces. These soldiers were ideal for quick raids, and with them Muttines harassed the territories of the Romans and their allies as part of an effort to sway more Sicilians to leave the Roman alliance. Likely the preoccupation of many of the Roman forces at Syracuse made it even easier for Muttines to move freely around the countryside. His raids created enough uncertainty in the political alignments of the countryside that Hanno and Epicydes led their army out to the River Himera, a natural border between western and eastern Sicily, and pitched camp, presumably on the western bank of the river.79

  News that the Carthaginian army had left the safety of Agrigentum and marched towards Syracuse reached Marcellus and he responded by bringing his own army within four miles of the Carthaginians so that he could wait and observe. Muttines’ Numidian cavalry crossed the Himera and harassed the Roman guard posts almost immediately. The next day he followed up with more raids. Livy says that during the second day Muttines almost fought a ‘proper battle’ and forced the Romans to retreat within the fortifications of their camp. It is not exactly clear what Livy meant by this. If Muttines only had the Numidian forces at his disposal, while they would have been the ideal force to harass and terrorize a larger slower Roman army, they would hardly have been sufficient in numbers or strength to commit to anything like a pitched battle. Muttines, on the other hand, may have been drawing from some or all of the Carthaginian army – which would explain the comment that a proper battle almost began.

  Either way, his successes came to an end when a number of Numidians began to mutiny at their base camp; several hundred reportedly left the camp and travelled to Heraclea Minoa, another southern coastal city west of Agrigentum.80 Muttines allegedly left to win back the withdrawing Numidians. According to Livy, there was friction among the Carthaginian commanders at this point. Muttines instructed Hanno and Epicydes to wait for his return. Hanno, indignant that a Carthaginian subject should dictate orders to a Carthaginian, decided to cross the river and offer a full battle while Muttines was away.81 It is certainly reasonable to suppose that Hanno and Muttines were not on the friendliest of terms. The one had been formally placed in command over the Carthaginian forces. The other was a recent addition, supplied by the commander Hannibal, and it would have been difficult for Hanno to avoid the conclusion that Muttines had been sent to him because Hannibal at least, did not have full confidence in his abilities. Certainly, this would not have been the first or last time that tensions between commanders of a joint force had led to a split in commands.

  Subsequent events in Livy’s record suggest that there was a considerable amount of disorder in the Carthaginian forces, both among soldiers and commanders. Marcellus was game for a decisive engagement and indulged Hanno’s desire for a pitched battle. As he set in motion the orders for his soldiers to adopt their formations and assume the correct positions, a handful of Numidian cavalry approached and reported the defection of their comrades. They also passed on that Muttines had left the camp. Consequently, the Numidian cavalry who trusted their commander were unwilling to fight and would keep out of the impending battle. When the Carthaginian forces advanced into battle, the Numidians remained in their initial positions on the wings, refusing to support the main army. This, in and of itself, must have been a major blow to the morale of the Carthaginian infantry, who had suddenly and unexpectedly lost the security of skilled cavalry protecting their flanks.82 The Roman forces knew in advance of the Numidian defection. They had suffered at the javelin points of the African cavalry over the past few days. No doubt it boosted Roman morale greatly to know that the Numidians would stay out of the battle and, in doing so, deliver a nasty surprise to the Carthaginian army.83 Livy reports that the battle was decided in the first clash of the front lines. The Carthaginian soldiers had no stomach for battle that day, particularly now that they felt the sudden shock of betrayal and since the soldiers on the flanks were left vulnerable without their cavalry. The main army retreated to Agrigentum while the Numidian forces dispersed to any number of nearby cities.84 That day, Livy reports, the Romans killed thousands of Carthaginians, and captured thousands more in addition to eight war elephants.85

  * * *

  This was Marcellus’ last battle on the island. With the year coming to an end and consular elections for 210 approaching, he left the island and returned to Rome. If he had traveled to Rome occasionally during winter respites or lulls in the fighting, there is no record of it, and so it appears that Marcellus had spent more than three years on the island living the life of a field commander. During that time he humbled rebel Syracuse through perhaps the greatest siege in living Roman memory and acquired riches that he would soon spread throughout the city of Rome. He had also defeated several Carthaginian field armies. Most importantly for the Republic, he had quelled the rebels, and tightened Roman control over the eastern portion of Sicily – though as will soon be apparent, the island was still to be a source of struggle. As a successful general who had accomplished such distinguished achievements, it was time to return home and seek the immediate rewards that could accompany such exploits; a military triumph, formal praise for his deeds from the senate and people, perhaps an additional consulship. Marcellus no doubt expected these rewards were rightly his and would come easily; he was, after all, the general who had matched Hannibal, and taken mighty Syracuse. As he would soon find, however, his most recent victories, grand as they were, only inspired his opponents further to obstruct his claims for honours.

  Chapter 4

  The Political Battle for Syracuse

  Late in 211 or early in 210, Marcellus returned from Sicily. He left his troops there under his successor, though apparently unwillingly, since he hoped to bring them home at least in part to serve as witnesses to his deeds.1 The timing of his return to Italy can only mean he intended to seek the consulship; otherwise, his command would not have expired until the new consuls were inaugurated sometime in March of 210. Clearly, Marcellus also intended to claim a triumph for his victory over Syracuse. Accordingly, he did not enter the city in observance of an important religious restriction. According to Roman custom, a proconsul, one who held the military powers of a consul by special appointment of the senate, no longer retained his imperium once he crossed the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city. Once lapsed, the proconsul’s term of command was formally over. Since the army marched along with the general in a triumph, the celebration was technically an exercise of command, and thus it was necessary for the commander to retain imperium up to the day of the triumph. Then a vote of the assembly was secured so that, for the day and purposes of the triumph, the commander could hold imperium within the pomerium. Thus a commander seeking a triumph, in practice, would wait outside the city walls until he could be granted the victory celebration by the senate and an exemption to the normal loss of imperium by the people.2 And so, Marcellus waited until the senate could approve his request. The praetor Gaius Calpurnius facilitated the process by summoning a meeting of the senate at the Temple of Bellona, outside the pomerium on the outskirts of the city.3

  Though the capture of a city as great as Syracuse may have made a triumph seem like a foregone conclusion, Marcellus may have thought he needed to mount a special argument. In part, this may h
ave been because his soldiers had remained in Syracuse at the command of the senate. Ordinarily, a general’s soldiers were the critical witnesses of his deeds and to that extent were important in approving his victory celebration. Livy illustrates this most powerfully in an episode from more than forty years after Marcellus took Syracuse. A military tribune, Servius Servilius Galba, had a grievance against Aemilius Paulus, the commander who spectacularly defeated King Perseus and reduced Macedonia to a subject state. Galba endeavored to block Paulus’ triumph by inciting the commander’s soldiers to vote against granting him a triumph. Many of the soldiers appear to have been more than willing, resenting the fact that Paulus had not given them greater shares of the Macedonian loot. According to Livy, Galba noted that the plebeian assembly would surely follow the lead of the army and refuse to grant honours to Paulus if his own soldiers would not.4 Though it is far from clear that hesitant soldiers could always block the triumph of a general in such a way, the testimony of those Romans who had actually observed their general’s conduct in battle must have been a powerful incentive to award or deny a triumph. After all, they were the ones best positioned to judge the general’s performance.

  Marcellus seems to have believed that he might be at a disadvantage with his army still in Sicily; at least this is suggested by the account of the meeting that day. Marcellus protested, gently according to Livy, as much for his soldiers as for himself, that they had been ordered to remain in Sicily even though they all had completed the mission assigned to them in their province.5 One wonders whether Marcellus meant all of his soldiers should have been allowed to return home, even those from the Cannae legions who had served with him but were forbidden by the senate to leave Sicily. If so, Marcellus was testing the authority of the senate. He may, however, simply have been referring to his two legions that had come to the island over the course of 214.

  Marcellus also requested – perhaps, as Livy says, demanded – to be awarded a triumph for his victory. A lengthy debate ensued in the senate. The main outlines Livy provides are plausible enough. On the one hand, Marcellus, while still in Sicily, had been awarded a public thanksgiving by the senate for his successes. This was an official time of prayer and sacrifice to the gods that could precede the granting of a triumph. Might it not seem outrageous to deny him a triumph now after such a thanksgiving? On the other hand, Marcellus had been ordered to transfer his army to a successor. This was done explicitly because there was still a war in the province. How could he triumph, then, if the war in the province was not over and his army was not with him to witness his right to celebrate this grandest victory celebration?6

  There are some thorny issues here that beg to be investigated. If Livy accurately represents the technical details of the senate’s debate, there were competing definitions of Marcellus’ province being cast about in the temple that day. The term provincia (‘province’), it is worth noting, did not always correspond to modern ideas of imperial or national provinces. In the Republic, particularly during times of war, a province was often simply the region to which a commander was assigned to prosecute a war – though the term could also refer to a more peaceful assignment, such as governing a pacified territory or even administering justice in Rome itself. In this particular case, Marcellus’ province was clearly a military assignment, and the senate debated whether he had finished the war there. What exactly was Marcellus’ province, and did it remain the same throughout his time in Sicily? It is hazardous to place too much stock in Livy’s precise wordings of senatorial military assignments, but it is a start to untying this knot. Livy, as noted in the last chapter, reported in his entry for the senate’s assignment of commands in 213 that Marcellus had been assigned by the senate ‘Sicily with the boundaries that Hiero’s kingdom had had,’ while Publius Lentulus, with the rank of propraetor, was assigned ‘the old province’, the area of Sicily under Roman control since the First Punic War ended.7 For 212, Livy asserts that Marcellus’ proconsular command was extended again by the senate; his province was ‘Syracuse and up to the former boundaries of Hiero’s kingdom.’ Lentulus continued as propraetor within ‘the limits of the old province in Sicily.’8 Perhaps this change in phrasing reflects the extension of Marcellus’ command to include Syracuse, which would be reasonable if the final revolt and siege of Syracuse did not take place until somewhere between March of 213 and March of 212. March, after all, was the month when the first senate meetings of the new political year were initiated and commands were normally assigned. That would explain why Livy or his source added Syracuse explicitly to the province when that city was already within the old kingdom of Hiero. In 211, though, Marcellus’ command was extended again so that ‘as proconsul in Sicily he might finish the remainder of the war with the army which he had.’ The newly elected praetor Gaius Sulpicius was assigned to ‘Sicily’ – no mention of the old province here – and took command of the two legions under Lentulus’ command.9 If the addition of Syracuse was purposeful in Livy’s account, what should be made of Marcellus’ assignment in 211, which appears broader in scope than those of the previous years? First off, by any chronology seriously entertained by historians, Syracuse must have been taken well before the spring of 211. Consider that Appius Claudius, Marcellus’ subordinate, must have left for Rome at the end of 213 in order to be elected consul for 212. Polybius says that the city was besieged by Appius and Marcellus for eight months.10 If indeed Appius was there for the entire siege, and assuming Polybius was only referring to the time up to the breaching of the Epipolae walls, then the first stage of capturing the city was complete by the end of 213. Livy associates the final siege of Achradina and the arrival of the plague with the fall,11 which must be the fall of 212. If the city had fallen at any time before the early spring of 211, when the senate would assign commands for the year, this would explain why the senate omitted Syracuse and included the task of finishing up what was left of the war in 211. Marcellus could have fought his last significant battle in Sicily late in 212, as Livy suggests, or sometime during 211; since no one at the time could know it was to be Marcellus’ last battle, neither dating would undermine the suggestion that Syracuse was considered taken by March 211 and Marcellus’ province for that year was to mop up.12

  Clearly, Marcellus had sacked Syracuse and soundly defeated the largest known Carthaginian force on the island before he returned to Rome. To arrive at Rome early enough to seek the consulship for 210, he presumably departed Sicily in late in 211 or perhaps early in 210. Subsequent events in Sicily, however, revealed that there was a Carthaginian military presence on the island after he had left. This was beyond Marcellus’ ability to predict or control: Carthaginian transports had landed infantry and Numidian cavalry reinforcements on the island after Marcellus left. These forces persuaded the towns of Murgentia and Ergetium to rebel against the Romans as well as Hybla and Macella, all in the eastern part of the island. Not for long; the praetor Marcus Cornelius Cethegus now commanded the Cannae legions and with those forces returned the rebels to the Roman fold. 13

  Returning to the debate over Marcellus’ triumph, some senators noted, according to Livy, that Marcellus had been ordered to turn his troops over to a new commander, something that was done only when a province was not completely pacificed.14 Indeed, later in the same chapter, after describing the debate, Livy jumps back to Sicily and narrates briefly the need for Cethegus to extinguish the rebellion. Though his structure here implies a connection between the debate in the temple and the new uprising in Sicily, it is highly doubtful that any word of the new rebellion could have reached Rome. If, as Livy suggests, this small Carthaginian invasion force came to Sicily after Marcellus set sail for Rome,15 and Marcellus met with the senate upon his arrival from Sicily, it is highly unlikely that Cethegus could have received word of a new Carthaginian invasion and informed the senate before it met with Marcellus.

  While this entire debate could be seen as simply an honest and earnest discussion of the technical qualifications for celebrat
ing a triumph, this was only the tip of the iceberg. At the heart of this debate was the struggle between Marcellus and those of his rivals who sought to limit his prestige and achievements. It was one of the many examples of the broader tensions that existed between the senatorial aristocracy and any of its members, especially successful generals, who rose too far above the rest in honour and prestige. The political system of the Republic, complete with its unwritten rules on competition for offices and honours, was intended to, among other things, give a variety of aristocrats access to powerful offices and the chance to win military victories. These opportunities for offices and victories in turn allowed those aristocrats to win the glory and fame that were the currency for the political elite. So, it was generally accepted that a consul would achieve measures of glory unavailable to other senators, possibly a military victory of sorts, perhaps a triumph; after all, the office circulated to new holders every year and others would have their chance for fame. When someone like Marcellus was the commander, the situation changed. Here was an individual whose record already dwarfed almost every other senator. He had already held several consulships and triumphed, which put him in an exceptionally small group. Now he had to his credit the conquest of mighty Syracuse. But if he was denied a triumph for this victory it would diminish his honour or at least check it from growing further at the moment. There must have been many senators who simply felt that Marcellus had had more than his fair share of glory, a deeply Roman and, indeed, deeply human sentiment. Thus the subtext to these arguments about the technical requirements for a legitimate triumph was essentially about limiting the amount of glory any individual could win.