by Dexter Hoyos
Greek historian Polybius judged Hamilcar the outstanding general of the first
war, and plainly reckoned Hannibal inferior to none in the second except
Scipio Africanus who finally defeated him (and whose family later befriended
the historian).
This impact on Greeks and Romans was much to the Barcids’ posthumous
benefit. Almost nothing survives of Carthaginian records—a few quotations,
paraphrases and references in later authors—and little of contemporary
Roman or Greek ones either. But all were used, in varying degrees of detail
and prejudice, by later authors whose accounts do remain. These record
much about Hannibal, a good deal about his father Hamilcar, and rather less
on the other notable Barcids. At the same time they can be problematic.
Some do not survive in full: for instance Polybius’, Diodorus’, Livy’s and
Dio’s histories of the period. Others are short, like Nepos’ biographies of
Hamilcar and Hannibal, Plutarch’s of Fabius Cunctator and Marcellus, the
treatments by Appian of Roman wars in North Africa, Spain, Sicily and
against Hannibal, later epitomes of past history like those by Eutropius,
Justin and Orosius, and those—late Roman and Byzantine respectively—of
Livy and Dio. The farther away from the period, the more necessarily reliant
these authors were on previous sources, while their own knowledge of the
details of politics, society and warfare (even on the Roman side) varied from
extensive to imaginative. Most applied a pro-Roman tint to their narratives
because the bulk of their sources had it, or because they accepted a teleology
of Roman triumph and Carthaginian defeat. More crucially still, nearly all
were writing to illuminate not Punic history but Roman. Features of Punic
government, society and economy could be ignored except when some detail
was needed to clarify a situation; and then the detail—even if taken from an
early and informed source—might not be too accurately relayed.
4
I N T RO D U C T I O N
To interpret the Barcids, and even to reconstruct what they did and how it
was done, calls then for careful detective work. Hamilcar’s first decade in mil-
itary affairs (for instance) is known in some detail, but less clearly his political
and social connexions. Then for his and Hasdrubal’s empire-building in
Spain we have to rely on an array—a small one at that—of disconnected
notices in Polybius, Diodorus and others. And while the military history of
Hannibal’s war on the Romans is a well-recorded saga, its technical details
(especially in his famous early victories) tend to attract more interest and
analysis than the next decade and a half, the years first of Carthage’s maxi-
mum extent of power and the Barcids’ own zenith, and then of decline in
both. Hannibal’s own deserved reputation as military leader, which loses
nothing in Polybius’ and Livy’s telling, can prompt over-easy generaliza-
tions—dogged Romans and unsupportive home authorities—about why he
and his city finally failed. In all these areas, and others, established dogmas
and issues still under debate both need a fresh look.
As usual in such analyses, much depends on what the ultimate sources
were or may have been for the accounts that survive. Yet identifying them
solves only part of each problem, for like the survivors even the earliest
accounts were partisan to one degree or other. The limited evidence for
much of Hamilcar’s and most of his successor Hasdrubal’s doings com-
pounds the difficulty. The activities of Hannibal and his brothers, while more
fully reported, largely come filtered through Roman historical tradition rather
than direct from Barcid informants, with much resulting distortion suspected
by moderns—and sometimes proved. Even Polybius, our earliest surviving
source and a writer not only conscious that objectivity was difficult but still
keen to achieve it, needs to be assessed with care. Admiring both the Romans
and the Barcids does not guarantee invariable impartiality, clear exposition or
persuasive analysis, and one or other of these qualities goes missing rather
often in his narrative.
The issues that arise over the Barcids and Barcid-era Carthage are there-
fore important and taxing. Judgements have to be made according to the
quantity of evidence, the coherence of one source compared to another’s
where different sources make differing claims, how well the various solutions
to a problem fit in with factors otherwise known, and occasionally even on
how a textual passage is to be read. Much of the time an author has to settle
for probable answers rather than certainties, and inevitably they will be sub-
jective to an extent, however great his effort, Polybius-like, for objectivity.
For the reasons mentioned earlier, the effort is still worth making.
Citations and references
Hannibal, his family and Carthage interest not only specialists in ancient his-
tory but, rightly, a broader range of readers too. In the main text therefore
sources are quoted in translation, with the Greek and Latin originals given in
5
I N T RO D U C T I O N
the notes when it seems useful. The notes supply detailed references to
ancient sources and important modern discussions, with the latter cited by
author’s name and date of publication (or a few by initials like CAH 2). Tech-
nical points too complex to fit comfortably in the text are likewise discussed
in the notes, apart from some that need detailed treatment—these have been
reserved to the Appendix. Full details of the abbreviations used in the notes,
and all the ancient sources, are included in the Bibliography. All dates, unless
accompanied by ‘AD’, are BC.
6
I
T H E H E I G H T S O F H E I RC T E
A N D E RY X
I
The safest time to sail along an enemy coast is at night, so that was probably
when the Carthaginian ships entered the little Sicilian bay between its two
steep and massive headlands. They anchored close to shore and Hamilcar the
general gave the order for his troops to disembark.
The Carthaginians knew this area well. Not far to the south-east on its
coastal plain, the city of Panormus had once been the jewel of Punic Sicily
but for seven years now had lain in the Romans’ hands, along with most of
the old Punic province. In the pass leading down to the little bay between the
two mountain headlands stood the fort of Heircte, still held for Carthage.
The Romans had once tried to capture Heircte and failed. After that they
ignored it—something they would now rue.
Probably as dawn broke the troops climbed the tracks up the steep-sided
mountain that loomed above Heircte and the bay on the western side, to gain
the summit. This was a broad, undulating plateau with a rim measuring 100
stadia—more than 11 miles, or 18 kilometres. The heights had broad mead-
ows, no dangerous creatures, healthy winds from the sea and access to
plentiful water. There were only two paths up on the land side and one from
the shore; much of the summit was edged by cliffs, the rest easily fortifi
able.
A hillock on the plateau gave the occupiers a panorama of north-western
Sicily and the Mediterranean beyond: to the east Panormus and its fertile
plain bounded by uplands; over to the west a deeply indented coast backed by
serried hills; on the south yet more heights, plateaux and valleys dotted with
small villages and scattered stone-walled towns. The heights offered a bastion
in the heart of Roman-held Sicily, yet one that was virtually impregnable.
The year was 247, the eighteenth of the longest war in Carthaginian his-
tory. The war was at a stalemate. Hamilcar, recently appointed to command
in Sicily, was trying something new.1
II
The Carthaginians had not wanted to fight the Romans in 264. Nor had a
Punic war been on the Romans’ minds. For two and a half centuries the two
7
T H E H E I G H T S O F H E I RC T E A N D E RY X
states had had trade and treaty relations, and they had recently renewed these.
In 264 the Romans meant to intervene in Sicily against the reviving might of
Syracuse and in search of easy plunder in the island’s east.
But when they made allies of Syracuse’s enemies and the Carthaginians’
own protégés the Mamertines of Messana, the Carthaginians abruptly turned
against both. They allied with the king of Syracuse to keep the Roman
legions out of Sicily. But the legions did cross and King Hiero soon came to
terms with them. From mid-263 the Carthaginians were faced with Roman
dominance over eastern Sicily and no certainty about their ultimate aims.
The Roman republic had come a long way from the medium-sized central
Italian state which had made those earlier treaties. By 264 Roman territory
covered a third of peninsular Italy, and the republic dominated the rest.
Etruscans, Samnites, the Greek colonies of the south and all the other once-
independent peoples of the peninsula were its obedient allies. Most of this
expansion had taken place in the last forty years and it was barely complete
when the Mamertines’ troubles with Syracuse gave the Romans an opening
into Sicily. The prospect alarmed the Carthaginians; they had not wanted war
with the Romans, but did not want them in the island either. By mid-263,
with Hiero out of it, the war was purely Carthage versus Rome.2
The Romans in turn, to judge from their actions, had had no wish to make
war on the premier sea-power of the western Mediterranean. But just as the
Carthaginians would not stand for Roman influence in eastern Sicily, so too
the Romans would not accept a Punic threat to their alliance with Messana and
taming of Hiero. Neither side made a peace move. Instead the war broadened.
Over the years it cost both sides heavily. Sicilian towns and cities were
sacked, like historic and splendid Agrigentum (Greek Acragas) which suf-
fered first at Roman hands and later at the Carthaginians’. Each raided the
other’s coasts in Italy and Punic Africa. Overall the war went badly for the
Carthaginians. An unpleasant surprise befell them four years into the war:
not only were their enemies militarily superior on land but now they created a
major war-fleet for the first time in history, and between 260 and 255 inflicted
one naval defeat after another on the one-time masters of the western seas.
In Sicily the Carthaginians lost strongpoint after strongpoint, despite some
intermittent successes. After 252 they held on to only the heavily fortified
west-coast ports of Drepana and Lilybaeum.
The Romans, in spite of their territorial successes, suffered repeated blows
too, especially from 255. An invasion of North Africa in 256–255 ended in
catastrophic defeat. Two powerful fleets then foundered in storms off North
Africa, with huge loss of sailors’ and soldiers’ lives. In 249 came their worst
and the Carthaginians’ finest hour. A fleet under one consul was defeated just
off Drepana, and soon afterwards the other consul’s fleet was manoeuvred
by a second Punic commander into a shattering gale off Cape Pachynus
south of Syracuse. The losses, both in men and ships, were catastrophic
again. All told, the figures reported for losses at sea between 255 and 249
8
T H E H E I G H T S O F H E I RC T E A N D E RY X
were 550 ships and more than 200,000 men, numbers gigantic in any age—
and almost ruinous when the total population of the Italian peninsula hardly
exceeded 3 million. Small wonder that the Roman census of 247 recorded a
drop in registered male citizens of 50,000 compared to the last prewar
census.3
Even so the Romans refused to abandon their sieges of Drepana and Lily-
baeum, begun not long before. They had taken the decision long before, after
capturing Agrigentum in 261, to drive the Carthaginians out of Sicily and
they held to it. This was not so much because they wanted to exploit the
island for themselves: during the war the Sicilian communities, even apart
from Hiero’s niche realm of Syracuse, enjoyed a good deal of autonomy, and
afterwards the Romans would pay them only limited attention for nearly 15
years. But from the Roman viewpoint even a loose hegemony in Sicily could
not coexist with a continuing Carthaginian presence—not even if this stayed
in the western region of the island where it was three centuries old. How
many times, after all, had the Carthaginians sallied forth from there to make
war on Sicily’s Greeks and come near to making satellites of them all?
The Carthaginians were no more inclined to compromise. By contrast with
the island’s Greeks, Sicels and Elymians—their sparring partners or intermit-
tent allies over those centuries—the Romans were uncomfortable neighbours,
as the other communities of Italy had found. Entrenched Roman influence in
even a corner of the island (the Mamertines had become members of the
republic’s network of alliances) would be a permanent threat. As early as 263,
cities in the Punic-dominated west had made overtures to the newcomers:
Segesta for instance, which claimed a shared Trojan ancestry, and Halicyae its
neighbour. The Carthaginians could expect some of these ties to have been
strengthened in the decade and a half since. Besides, the Romans held a notori-
ous interest in war-booty—it had been one of the enticements proffered by
those urging a Sicilian intervention in 264—and this alone would make any
neighbour of theirs nervous. If the Carthaginians wished to stay in Sicily, they
had to ensure that the Romans left.
Their resolve on this did not waver, it seems, even when the position was
most desperate. When the consul Regulus’ invasion army was carrying all
before it outside their walls, they sought his terms but then rejected them as
too harsh. Regulus demanded (according to our limited evidence) an indem-
nity and Punic withdrawal from Sardinia and Sicily. An indemnity could be
haggled over, and Sardinia with its Punic territory in the fertile south was a
secondary though valuable possession; if any demand really was too harsh
for the Carthaginians, it must have been the one for Sicily. Close to ruin
though they were, they went on fighting. They soon turned the tables on Reg-
&
nbsp; ulus too.4
It is a surprise, then, that they did so little to follow up the smashing suc-
cesses of 249. Good commanders were on hand—Adherbal and Carthalo,
the victors at Drepana and Cape Pachynus, and the soon-to-be-appointed
9
T H E H E I G H T S O F H E I RC T E A N D E RY X
Hamilcar. The enemy was disheartened and short of money. Yet it proved
impossible to break the sieges of Drepana and Lilybaeum or Roman mastery
of the countryside; and the only other Punic move was a raid on the Italian
coast—perhaps near Rome—that fizzled when Roman defenders approached.
The probable reason for this anticlimax was lack of funds. A few known
items point to this. Around 250 (according to a late source, Appian) the
Carthaginians had sought a loan of 2,000 talents, equivalent to 12 million
Greek drachmas or 120 million asses in third-century Roman money, from
Ptolemy king of Egypt. He politely rebuffed them. In 248, following
Carthalo’s abortive expedition to Italy, his troops mutinied for lack of pay. He
took drastic measures, such as marooning some of them on deserted islands
and sending others (ringleaders probably) to Carthage under arrest, but the
rest were still rebellious when his successor Hamilcar arrived. Not paying
your soldiers, when they constituted more or less your entire overseas
army—and numbered little more than 20,000—was an unwise policy: the
Carthaginians had to have good reason for it.
Another pointer to money woes is the decrease in the number of Punic
ships on active service. The powerful fleet of 170 quinqueremes was moth-
balled, apart from the force used for raiding the Italian coasts and keeping
Lilybaeum and Drepana supplied. Nor was the docked fleet maintained in
fighting trim at Carthage: when relaunched many years later for fresh fight-
ing, it was undermanned and such sailors and marines as it had were newly
levied and poorly trained. Plainly not much money had been spent on it. This
economy was safe enough at first: Roman losses had been so heavy in 249—
by one calculation, they were left with a mere 20 quinqueremes in
service—and Roman resources so depleted that the Carthaginians had little
naval opposition to face. The best the Romans could do in these years was to
lend individual ships to citizens to launch privateering raids on North Africa’s
