by Dexter Hoyos
the practitioner of dirty politics. Romans judged him variously: Cato put him
on a par with Pericles, Epaminondas, Themistocles and the Roman hero
Dentatus, and in Nepos’ short biography he is a mighty figure; then as the
notion spread of his ultimate responsibility for Hannibal’s war, for Livy he is
a great-souled leader driven by anger against the Romans, and for the later
poet Silius a grim patriarch likewise typified by resentment against them, even
as a spirit among the dead.22
There were less splendid aspects of Barca too. He was ruthless whenever
he felt it suitable: with mutinous troops in Sicily in 247, towards captured
rebels in the later stages of the African war, in his treatment of Indortes. His
generalship could be ill judged, careless or both—the unprofitable years on
the heights of Heircte and Eryx come to mind, so too his narrow escape
(thanks to Naravas) from Spendius and Autaritus’ encirclement, his other set-
backs from the rebels, and the miscalculation at ‘Helice’ which led to his
death. He did not always feel it necessary to be over-scrupulous or avoid chi-
canery: he made promises to his mercenaries in Sicily and then left others to
cope with them, and he liquidated the rebels at The Saw by—at best—
questionable dealing.
Hamilcar, rather like Philip II of Macedon a century earlier, built a power-
structure—domestic and imperial—that his son and successor would exploit.
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His achievement was not as enduring as Philip’s because the war his son
launched was finally lost, and with it the Barcid empire. Yet in establishing a
foreign dominion in Spain, levying tribute and exploiting natural and human
resources, cultivating natives as allies as well as subjects, and founding a city,
he not only made Carthage an imperialist power in the mould of those in the
Hellenistic east but created a provincial system that could be taken over and
developed by (ironically) the Romans in their turn.
He was not and probably never intended to be a king, though in Spain he
held virtually monarchic power (as Roman proconsuls would in their
provinces). His position rested on an elected command, and so did that of
his successors in it. The historian Fabius Pictor would criticize Hasdrubal,
not him, for supposedly monarchic pretensions and evil influence on Hanni-
bal. As noted already, their younger contemporary Cato—not normally
pro-Carthaginian in his views—ranged Hamilcar with great Greek and
Roman republican leaders in favourable contrast to kings. Rather like Athens
under Pericles, Barcid Carthage could be described as a republic ruled in fact
by its first citizen.
Whether Hamilcar and the other Barcid generalissimos are portrayed in
regal style on the fine series of coins from their Spanish mints is still, and no
doubt will always be, disputed. Probably not: none offers even an initial to tell
a user that it depicts a Barcid ruler; the supposed ‘Hamilcar’ and ‘Hannibal’
portraits bear the symbolic club of Hercules who was identified with
Carthage’s city-god Melqart; other Barcid coins portray female divinities as
Carthaginian coins had done for generations. But the coinage, Hellenistic in
style and associations, advertised the financial and cultural dynamism of the
Barcid province. It fits in with the other Hellenistic associations cultivated by
Hamilcar’s family, all of them put to use to serve the Punic republic and its de
facto rulers.23
In Hamilcar the Carthaginians found the right man for their times. He gave
them both leadership and vision. Within ten years after the two most draining
wars in their history they had returned to wealth, prestige and power, travel-
ling an expansionist path very different from Carthage’s old island-bound
and trade-based hegemony, and on a par militarily and territorially with the
other great Mediterranean powers. Where the path was to lead, probably
even Hamilcar did not know, though likely enough he expected all of Spain
to be conquered in due course. Likely enough too, considering his attitude to
the Romans, he judged it highly possible that one day they would again inter-
vene somewhere against Carthage’s interests: if so, the Carthaginians must be
as strong as possible so as to deter the threat or else defeat it, while mean-
while keeping on amicable or at least respectful terms with their ex-enemies
to allow Punic strength to develop. Polybius reports just such advice from
him to his successors, though misinterpreting it as part of the supposed
master-plan for a war of revenge.24
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V I
H A S D RU BA L’ S
C O N S O L I DAT I O N
I
Hasdrubal had not accompanied Hamilcar against ‘Helice’, nor was he at
Acra Leuce. He was commanding another force somewhere in the province,
for Diodorus writes that as soon as he learned of the disaster he ‘broke
camp’ and hurried to join Hannibal and his brother. Most likely he had been
watching over the province while Hamilcar operated on its fringes, and gath-
ering extra forces: for Diodorus adds that he brought 100 elephants with
him, giving him 200 altogether in his first campaign as the new general—one
of the largest elephant corps on record. The town of Lascuta east of Gades,
the only Spanish town to put an elephant on its Punic-era coins, may have
housed the elephant corps and was centrally enough sited to keep watch over
all four quarters of Punic Spain. From there Hasdrubal could take the coast
road via Malaca and Abdera to Acra Leuce. Some reinforcements were later
sent from Africa too, if Appian can be trusted.
There were certain things to do before Hasdrubal could retrieve the disas-
ter to Hamilcar—above all, ensure Barcid continuity. Hamilcar had of course
not expected to die in his prime and may well have planned on being replaced
as generalissimo, when the time came, by a mature eldest son. But war by def-
inition is unpredictable and in 228 Hannibal was still in his teens. Now aged
around 40, Hasdrubal was the obvious choice.1
According to Diodorus he was ‘acclaimed general by both the army and
the Carthaginians’. This adds valuable detail to Polybius’ statement that ‘the
Carthaginians entrusted the generalship’ to him, which Appian more or less
echoes. The soldiers making the decision were probably—as in the army vote
on Hanno and Hamilcar during the African war—the citizen officers and
troops, not the mercenaries and levies (Libyan and Spanish) as well. Their
numbers may not have been large but that was irrelevant.
Hasdrubal had no trouble making the arrangements, as it was still winter
and plainly the Orissi and the men of ‘Helice’ did not follow up their success.
To judge by Diodorus’ wording and Hannibal’s later election, the army in
Spain made its decision first, then (in the spring) referred it on to the citizen
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body at Carthage for ratification. Hamilcar’s victories and the shock of his
loss guaranteed Hasdrubal’s confirmation, even th
ough Hanno and other
opponents surely argued against installing, in effect, a dynasty over the Punic
republic. To prove the voters—and the army—right in confirming him,
though, Hasdrubal had to avenge his father-in-law as well as continue his poli-
cies. A visit in due course to Carthage would not come amiss either, especially
if he had not been there since the Numidian rebellion five or six years earlier.2
The Orissi were soon brought to heel. With part or all of an army of
50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and the 200 elephants Hasdrubal marched into
the land around the upper Anas and ‘killed all who had been responsible for
Hamilcar’s rout. He acquired,’ Diodorus continues, ‘their twelve cities and all
the cities of Iberia.’ The first part of this blend of precision and vagueness
may be correct—the geographer Ptolemy credited the Oretani with 14 towns
four centuries later, one of them Castulo—though obviously not the second,
which reads at best like an exaggerated summing-up of his whole career.
Given their treachery to Hamilcar, the Orissi were most likely made tributary
subjects rather than being left as allies, no doubt after condign slaughter,
sackings and enslavements. So the avenging of Hamilcar usefully extended
the north-eastern reaches of the province to the lands of the upper Anas.3
II
Avenging Hamilcar had been not merely a family duty but a political neces-
sity. It retrieved the blow to Punic and Barcid prestige and showed that the
new general was as decisive a leader as his predecessor. But Hasdrubal was
not just a carbon-copy continuator. Younger, originally a popular politician,
he was more assertive and publicity-conscious and he took a rather different
approach to ruling Spain.
According to Diodorus it was after wreaking vengeance on the Orissi that
the new general took an Iberian king’s daughter as his wife, then was
acclaimed by ‘all the Iberians’ as ‘general with supreme power’ (Diodorus
uses the Greek term strategos autokrator). Diodorus’ text—nothing more than
a set of often clumsily made excerpts from two Byzantine collections—is
thus tantalizingly silent on context, calculations and even names. Hasdrubal
may or may not have been a widower by now, for Carthaginians were monog-
amous; even if not, he might well put raison d’état ahead of custom, like the
elder Dionysius of Syracuse and Philip of Macedon in the previous century.
A royal Spanish wife created a closer link with (at least) the communities in
his province who counted as allies. She symbolized a commitment to the
lands he ruled, a relationship more appealing than the plain exploitation
which is all we know for Hamilcar. The same symbolism recurred some years
later when Hannibal in his turn took a Spanish wife.
Hasdrubal’s next move reinforced the bond between Punic general and
Iberian peoples. How he arranged to be acclaimed supreme general ‘by all the
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Iberians’, and just who these were, again can only be surmised. One sugges-
tion is that he summoned a congress of representatives from the peoples
under Punic rule and prompted them to elect him. Or perhaps he arranged
for the Spanish contingents in his army to make the acclamation. They would
be varied enough to allow a propaganda claim that ‘all the Iberians’ had acted,
and for the native troops to do so paralleled suitably his earlier election as
Carthage’s general by the Punic soldiery.
As often pointed out, this was a gesture immediately recognizable beyond
Spain too, and for more than one reason. Syracusan leaders had often been
elected strategos autokrator: Dionysius the Elder, Dion the liberator, Agathocles
and probably Hiero had all been. Obviously Hasdrubal would not use the
Greek term officially but will have styled himself ‘supreme general’ (or
leader) or the like in Punic, Iberian and the other languages of his territories.
On the other hand when writing in Greek he may well have used the term,
and historians after him could follow suit, like the pro-Barcid Silenus and
Sosylus.4
Election or acclamation as leader by an alliance was also common in the
Hellenistic world. Alexander the Great had been leader, hegemon, of the
League of Corinth against Persia a century earlier; Pyrrhus seems to have
been leader of the Sicilian Greeks against the Carthaginians before getting
himself acclaimed their king; and the continuing use of both these Greek
terms in Hasdrubal’s day is shown by the Macedonian king Antigonus
Doson’s election in 224 as hegemon of the Achaean League around the time
that the Achaean statesman Aratus had been appointed its strategos autokrator.
Hasdrubal’s signals were both to his own political world, in Spain and
North Africa, and to the world outside: he was the leader of two peoples—
Carthaginians and Spaniards—with the interests of both at heart; and was
the chief of a major state, a power on a level with the other major powers and
with a similar coalition of dependent allies and subjects. Of course to the
allies and subjects this remained essentially a gesture. The high command of
the army and even of Carthage’s thinned-out fleet continued to be exclu-
sively Carthaginian. Like Hannibal after him, Hasdrubal no doubt had
senators from Carthage in his advisory council along with his chief officers.
The reality of dominance was much the same as that which the Romans and
the kings of Macedon enforced over their own hegemonies.5
III
Political considerations also prompted the new general, it seems, to visit
Carthage soon after. For this we have only a report by the unfriendly Fabius
Pictor relayed by Polybius.
Hasdrubal, ‘after acquiring great power in the Spanish lands’, travelled to
North Africa, in a move to overturn the laws of Carthage and transform
its political system into ‘monarchy’. If Polybius relays Pictor correctly the
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wording suggests that the visit followed the new general’s opening measures
in Spain, including his acclamation as the Spaniards’ strategos autokrator— but
not a long time later, since Pictor also implied that he went on ruling Spain
for quite some while afterwards. As for his supposed goal at Carthage, the
Greek word monarchia need not mean actual kingship but, literally, one-man
rule: Pictor’s obvious point was that Hasdrubal wanted autocratic power over
the republic.
But ‘the leading men in the state, foreseeing his scheme, got together
and opposed him; Hasdrubal, feeling suspicious, departed from Africa and
thereafter governed Spain according to his own judgement, paying no atten-
tion to the Carthaginian senate’. Pictor blamed Hasdrubal, too, for passing
on his acquisitiveness and arrogance to Hannibal, with the Second Punic War
the result of these vices.6
Polybius may overcompress this report but he does not deny Hasdrubal’s
trip to Carthage (his interest is in denying Pictor’s claim that the Carthagini-
ans at home were hostile to Hannibal). How Hasdrubal meant
to carry out
his supposed coup, and who its opponents were, Polybius does not state,
although Fabius Pictor himself may have offered fuller details. Worth notice,
though, is the comment about the general ‘feeling suspicious’, presumably of
his opponents. It implies a scenario of intrigue and uncertainty, suitable
enough to the story. Certainly Hasdrubal would not have arrived in Carthage
trumpeting a plan to overturn the existing constitution and make himself
legally the autocrat of the state. At most he would urge fair-sounding
reforms, even if he had a hidden agenda. Nor could opposition to his sup-
posed scheme have been overt if it simply roused his suspicion.
In other words, Pictor knew of some sort of muffled political contest
between the new general and anti-Barcid interests, and inflated it into a sup-
posed coup-attempt on the model of Peisistratus or Dionysius the Elder. A
more plausible picture can cautiously be drawn.
Hasdrubal sailed over to Carthage late in 228 (staying for the winter,
maybe, as campaigning in Spain would be in recess) or else during 227. Later
than 227 is not likely, both for the reasons already mentioned and because on
returning to Spain he launched his biggest project, a new city-foundation
which was well under way by 226. Essentially the purpose of his visit home
must have been to confirm his political grip there, so it was not one he would
make until he had an opening military victory—the avenging of Hamilcar, at
that—to his credit. But he may well have had some domestic measures that
he wished to enact too, measures political enough to prompt Pictor’s notion
that he was aiming at ‘monarchy’.
It is hardly likely that Hasdrubal was forced to abandon them, though
Pictor obviously suggested this, and retreat in dudgeon to a quasi-kingdom
effectively divorced from his mother city. Hannibal’s smooth succession in
221 at Carthage as in Spain is the best token of the Barcids’ continuing grip
on the state. On all the evidence, both of Hamilcar’s successors were the
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elected supreme generals of the republic, governing lands and waging wars
and making treaties on its behalf just as Punic generals had done down the
ages.
Thus Hasdrubal’s proposals probably did not include adding to the powers
