by Dexter Hoyos
then on he and Hanno did co-operate smoothly to bring about final victory.
VI
Hanno had masterminded a skilful comeback, or so it might seem. Polybius
specifies that when he went out to Hamilcar he was general once more; and
the stress on their reconciliation and co-operation indicates that, as before,
the two were equals in authority. The death of Hannibal had probably left the
way open for him to win re-election, if only because there was no other lead-
ing commander available. Yet even with Hamilcar’s prestige temporarily
dented it would have been fatuous, not to mention perilous, to appoint to
equal rank someone guaranteed to wrangle with him and oppose his plans.
Obviously he did have a following among the citizens, but so did Hamilcar,
whose interests were being sustained by Hasdrubal and others. And Hanno’s
troops would be those sent from Carthage, no serious match for Hamilcar’s
veterans in numbers and experience.
By going to Hamilcar with the 30 senators Hanno was not just signalling
his readiness to co-operate for their country’s good but, in effect, conceding
the other’s political superiority. At the same time he made it clear, through his
equal status as general and the troops he brought with him, that he was still a
force to be reckoned with. This was an arrangement that Hamilcar could
accept, quite likely under advice from his son-in-law (who may even have
been one of the 30), even if it took some effort—‘many and varied argu-
ments’, Polybius writes—by the envoys to bring him round.
The war entered on its last stage, probably around autumn 238. As the
Carthaginians could send city troops to Hamilcar, clearly as reinforcements,
the rebels had probably abandoned Tunes. Certainly they neither attacked
Carthage nor threatened Hamilcar after their success, and they are next heard
of near Leptis Minor, in Byzacium to the south—an obvious refuge since the
Punic field army barred the way northwards. No longer able to threaten
Carthage or bring help to Utica and Hippou, their only hope was to try to
rouse the Libyan hinterland anew.
But like Spendius and his confrères earlier in the year, they were harried
relentlessly until driven to stake everything at last on a pitched battle. Poly-
bius mentions skirmishes ‘around Leptis and some other cities’ and then a
final calling-in, by both sides, of all available allied and garrison troops. This
suggests that the campaign went on for some weeks or months. What garri-
son troops the rebels might still have by then is not clear—but there were
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T H E R E VO LT O F A F R I C A
some in towns in Byzacium, one of which became their last refuge—while
for allies they were probably limited to some Numidian chieftains plus Utica
and Hippou, none of which seems likely to have furnished many men.
Hamilcar and Hanno by contrast would have few problems maintaining or
even adding to their numbers and keeping them well supplied. When the last
battle came, it is no surprise that they won. The rebels who survived fled to a
nearby town (we are not told its name) and then gave themselves up. Mathos,
captured separately, was taken back to Carthage for a horrific death-march
through its streets some time later, apparently as part of Hamilcar’s and
Hanno’s triumphal parade.
The whole of the Libyan hinterland was now back under Punic rule. The
last stage of all was forcing Hippou and Utica on the coast, Carthage’s sister
cities, to yield. They were fearful of surrendering because their treatment of
the Carthaginians in their midst had been so merciless—but it was not long
before Hanno outside one city and Barca outside the other prompted a
change of mind. Quite possibly the generals offered mild terms, for Utica at
any rate kept its special relationship with Carthage. Indemnities (noted by
Polybius) and the handover of the rebel faction leaders can be surmised.
At some point too, perhaps when reasserting Punic control over the
Libyan hinterland, the generals may have extended the boundaries of control
over some of the Numidian peoples who had miscalculated which side to
back in the revolt. The Carthaginians were unforgiving. One tribe, the
Micatani, Diodorus mentions elsewhere: it suffered wholesale slaughters,
women and children as well as menfolk. Hamilcar no doubt found Naravas
an invaluable ally for this too, though (rather oddly) the young Numidian lord
never reappears in our sources.
The great revolt, begun in the late months of 241, had lasted three years
and about four months—so Polybius records. Early in 237, then, North
Africa was again at peace. This left only Sardinia to be dealt with, and its
recovery now looked all the easier: the native islanders had recently been so
provoked by their mercenary occupiers that they had risen up to drive them
over to Italy, whose rulers had recently shown them no sympathy at all.15
VII
The effects of this lengthy struggle are hard to gauge in detail. Besides the
main campaigning that we hear of, there must have been many smaller con-
flicts and scuffles around Punic North Africa—loyal Punic groups versus
rebel ones, defecting Libyan communities confronting loyal ones, deserters
and brigands operating impartially at everyone’s expense—not to mention
the marches, countermarches, raids and skirmishes by the field armies in their
excursions into the hinterland. Some regions may have remained fairly
untouched, like the Syrtes coasts, or lightly affected (Byzacium, and other
places well removed from Carthage’s environs like Thabraca, Thugga and
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T H E R E VO LT O F A F R I C A
Theveste). Yet losses in men, animals and goods must have been heavy on
both sides. So too the money costs: as one indicator, the gold and silver coins
struck by the Carthaginians and rebels during the war seem even worse
debased than those of Carthage in the war with Rome.16
The Carthaginians had been at war, in practice, for 27 years: first with the
Romans, then with their own rebels. They had lost territories, and their own
countryside had been fought and refought over. They can scarcely have kept
their trade and finances flourishing at the levels of 264. Across the Mediter-
ranean they had a former enemy, even if now a friend, with might and
resources much greater than in 264 and a vigorous commercial community in
its own right. To avoid becoming by default a satellite of Roman power, the
Punic state had to recover from its trials as fast as possible.
Recovery depended on making fullest possible use of what advantages
remained. The city was essentially untouched, so far as we can tell. Trade and
a small navy had operated throughout the war; and revenues, indemnities and
fines could now flow in from the reconquered territories (nothing suggests
that the Libyans were let off lightly). But more was surely needed to pay for
restoring what had been lost and to rebuild prosperity—not to mention
paying the Romans their war-indemnity, whether or not this had been sus-
pended in the meantime. New and copious sources of wealth were needed.
/>
Sardinia might be retaken and there were plenty more of Numidia’s broad
uplands that might be annexed, but the island’s wealth was limited and the
Numidians were not easy to hold down against their will. Hamilcar had a dif-
ferent project in mind, one he probably formed before the war ended but
when its end was in sight: the Carthaginians’ major move should be into
Spain.
Spain, or Iberia to the Greeks, had long been part of their western network
of trade and influence, with its Phoenician colonies stretching along the
south coast to the Atlantic at Gades, and its wealth in precious metals and
agriculture. Mercenaries from Spain—Iberians and Celtiberians—were
important elements in Punic armies (and in the recent rebel forces). The
Carthaginians’ special interest in southern Spain was shown, for instance, in
their second treaty with the Romans, struck around 348: not only were
Romans barred from sailing along sensitive North African coasts as in the
first treaty, but now they were barred too from sailing beyond ‘Mastia Tar-
seiou’—probably if not certainly the port of Mastia in south-eastern Spain,
today’s Cartagena.
But the Carthaginians had never directly conquered or settled Spanish ter-
ritory. An expedition to save Gades from enemy neighbours is mentioned,
probably in the time of the early Magonids, but once the danger was over the
force went home. Gades and other Phoenician settlements in Spain were
probably allies of Carthage, but on terms looser than the ones binding the
settlements in Africa (for instance they did not fight in Punic wars). Hamil-
car’s grand design was to transform these light and indirect relationships into
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T H E R E VO LT O F A F R I C A
direct and firm domination. What his predecessors had done in Libya—
Hanno among them—he would do across the Mediterranean in southern
Iberia.17
The benefits would be enormous. Spanish wealth could be exploited and
also further developed. Carthage’s trading position—damaged by the war
with Rome, which for instance had effectively abolished the treaty of 348—
would be strengthened. Iberians could be recruited not only as mercenaries
but if necessary as conscripts, like the Libyans. The result would be a great
increase in Punic military resources, a factor particularly important now when
the republic, under the eyes of the entire Hellenistic world, had lost and suf-
fered so much in its two ordeals of fire.
The benefits to Hamilcar and his group of friends and supporters would
be enormous too, so long as they were given charge of the project. Whatever
Hanno’s recent services were, it was Hamilcar who enjoyed the lion’s share of
public favour as saviour of the city—deservedly. He saw no reason to include
Hanno and Hanno’s faction in future activity. Before the war was fully over
he was busy planning the expedition to Spain and making his own faction
dominant in affairs at home: a combined political and military initiative that
would affect the history of the rest of the century.
46
I V
BA RC A S U P R E M E
I
With the close of the Mercenaries’ War, events both at home and overseas
collided in yet another crisis. Preparations to recover Sardinia and invade
Spain were disrupted by a totally unexpected confrontation with the Romans
that ended in yet another Punic humiliation. But when Hamilcar did at last
set off on his grand design, he was unmistakably the political leader of
Carthage.
As we saw earlier, the time indications in the ancient accounts point to the
war ending early in 237, and Hamilcar being in Spain before mid-year. This
shows that events moved fast and that domestic events overlapped with for-
eign, which need not be a surprise. It implies too that some moves must have
got under way before Hippou Acra and Utica capitulated, again no surprise
since their resistance was limited to their own walls. The generals hardly
needed to share the entire Punic field army, by now 30,000–40,000 strong,
between them to besiege the two cities. Some troops could be detached to
prepare for the retaking of Sardinia at least.
Politically Hamilcar moved to confirm his pre-eminent position. Diodorus,
whose history for this era survives only in extracts and snippets but was
plainly based on circumstantial sources, reports that after the war’s end
Hamilcar ‘formed a political group of the lowest sort of men, and from this
source, as well as from the spoils of war, amassed wealth’. He capitalized on
the popularity won by his successes—‘currying favour with the populace’, in
Diodorus’ pained phrase—to have the people grant him ‘the generalship of
all Iberia for an indefinite period’. The text is faulty but this is the best inter-
pretation of it.l
This was not the same episode as the one Appian records, of him being
saved from a messy trial by ‘the leading men’. As shown earlier, Appian’s
story should belong to the aftermath of the war with Rome. By 237 Hamilcar
himself was the leading man, in fact was acclaimed (by many though not all)
as saviour of his country. His purpose was now very different.
Punic generals were normally elected for the length of a war. When the
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BA RC A S U P R E M E
war ended, so did their command—a practice Hamilcar himself had taken
advantage of in 241. On the surrender of Hippou and Utica, then, both his
and Hanno’s generalships would lapse. Hanno might have hoped that they
would both then retreat into more discreet, elder-statesmanlike rôles, leaving
centre stage to a new generation. Instead Hamilcar exploited his own popu-
larity, and (a point worth noting) the wealth he had accrued, to win election to
a new command, one effectively open-ended. Using wealth to gain office was
a time-honoured aspect of Punic public life, as Aristotle had stated 100 years
earlier. The note of disapproval comes from the source Diodorus followed,
one friendlier to Hanno’s side than to Barca’s.
Who was to command the expedition—no doubt a smaller one—to retake
Sardinia is unknown. Hamilcar very probably intended it to be either himself
or a supporter, and Hanno’s position was probably too weak to prevent this.
Certainly Hamilcar was so confident of his own dominance over Punic
affairs, only a few weeks or months later, that he took his popular son-in-law
Hasdrubal with him. But meanwhile the recovery of Sardinia had been
aborted, and the Spanish expedition made more urgent, by the confrontation
that came out of the blue with Carthage’s hitherto helpful ex-enemies.2
News arrived that not only had the mercenaries driven from Sardinia been
sympathetically received now by the Romans, but these were readying their
own expedition to the island. The Carthaginians reacted angrily and no doubt
quickly, sending off envoys to advise their former foes of the true situa-
tion—the mercenaries were rebels, Sardinia was a Punic territory and in fact a
force to bring it back under Punic authority was being readied. What came
back
was a thunderclap. The Senate and People had denounced the prep-
arations at Carthage as being aimed against the Romans themselves and had
gone on to declare war.
This extraordinary—and to the Carthaginians surely appalling—news was
brought, it seems, by a Roman embassy. Its audience quite likely found it hard
to believe their own ears. The Romans had been full of helpful concern for
Carthaginian fortunes almost up to the present; had refused to accept Sar-
dinia from the rebel mercenaries while these were actually in possession of it;
but now had declared war on the basis of preposterous allegations. If they
were serious—Hamilcar and the rest of the ruling élite may have wondered
whether they could be serious—this had to be settled urgently and at any
cost, for it was an utter impossibility that the Punic state could go to war with
the Romans. The field forces, even if veteran and loyal, were at best equiva-
lent to two consular armies, and there were few reserves. The naval forces
were totally outclassed. And the moment Roman ships and troops touched
land in Africa, most or all of Libya would go over to them (or so the
Carthaginians could reasonably fear).
A new embassy was deputed to travel to Rome. It included, at least accord-
ing to the very late writer Orosius, the ten most eminent men in the
state—though there is no evidence that Hamilcar, Hasdrubal or even Hanno
48
BA RC A S U P R E M E
the Great was a member. Whether or not it was dawning on Hamilcar,
Hasdrubal and their associates that the Roman accusations camouflaged a
hidden agenda, they had little choice but to try to mollify the other side. The
Carthaginians ‘at first sought to come to an agreement on every point,
expecting that they would prevail on the merits of the case’. After all it was
easy to show that Sardinia had been a Punic possession from time more or
less immemorial, the mercenaries there had been rebels, and the force being
readied to recover it was far too small to look like a threat to the Romans or
any of their allies.
The response was a switch in the Romans’ accusations: now they com-
plained about the traders arrested early in the recent war. These supposedly
had been ill-treated, some even murdered; now compensation must be
