by Dexter Hoyos
they sending them regular messages on Spanish affairs, but recently—
probably just a few weeks earlier—they had invited in Roman arbitrators to
settle a bout of domestic political strife, arbitrators who were probably these
same envoys or companions of theirs. These had entrenched the diehard
pro-independence Saguntine faction in power—putting to death several of
their opponents to do so. Those opponents had more than likely favoured
bringing Saguntum into the Punic empire as subordinate allies, like so many
other Spanish communities, whereas the arbitrators found the faction refus-
ing any accommodation with the Carthaginians more to their taste.
This outcome was not as foregone a conclusion as often thought. The
Romans would not have been accepted as arbiters if one Saguntine side had
seen them as its enemies. Nor had they hitherto shown any interest in Sagun-
tine affairs, even though the town had shown itself aloof and suspicious
towards Barcid expansion for quite some time—in other words even though
the pro-independence faction had been running its affairs for some time. To
come down now so firmly on this faction’s side (even if it was what most
Saguntines wanted) marked a shift in Roman attitudes.11
From Hannibal’s point of view, a worrying shift. It suggested that the
Romans had decided to keep Saguntum apart from—and not well disposed
to—Punic rule in Spain. Moreover by bloodily confirming the pro-
independence party in power they bound it and Saguntum into dependence
on themselves, a move both ironic and dangerous. It signalled, or it seemed to
signal, that the Roman republic was tying itself more closely to the Saguntines
just as the escalating dispute with their neighbours was threatening to lead
them into a confrontation with New Carthage. Hannibal seems, in fact, to
have inferred that the Saguntines had become Roman allies. He may also have
inferred that the Romans had now decided to take a hand in the affairs of
Spain. That would colour his attitude to the envoys waiting for him at New
Carthage.
IV
As a boy Hannibal had no doubt often heard of how the Romans’ decision to
get involved in Sicily in 264 had led to Carthage’s most disastrous war. He
himself had seen how their out-of-the-blue move to take a hand in Sardinia
in 237 had precipitated a crisis costly and humiliating to his people. Even in
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225 the agreement with his brother-in-law had been, in effect, a one-sided
Roman initiative prompted by Roman self-interest. To be faced now with
what looked like a fresh bout of unprovoked intervention—Polybius empha-
sizes that up to now Hannibal had avoided any confrontation with the
Saguntines—could understandably arouse both irritation and suspicion.
Nor did the envoys Valerius and Baebius behave ingratiatingly: a contrast
to their predecessors in 225 whose job had been ‘petting and conciliating’
Hasdrubal. The present ones ‘solemnly called on’, or in a different translation
‘emphatically warned’, the new general to do two things: keep clear of the
Saguntines, ‘for these lay in their [the Romans’] trust’, and keep firm to Has-
drubal’s promise not to cross the Ebro. 12
Polybius does not elaborate, but by their very nature neither of the two
demands was flexible or conciliatory. Why the Romans took this line needs to
be surmised. It had not been forced on them by circumstances. Saguntum
had been of no interest to them hitherto and the Ebro was not much more
meaningful, from a standpoint in Italy, than the Pyrenees. If they had wanted
to cement friendly relations with the Barcid régime and the new Barcid gen-
eral, they could have asked (for instance) whether he wished to renew
Hasdrubal’s agreement or else discuss a replacement for it, and if he was will-
ing to give a safety-assurance to the Saguntines—in return, say, for an
amicable settlement of their dispute with the Turitani. Even if in fact they
had expected Hannibal to be hostile on both counts, it would have done no
damage to make a show of supposed Roman reasonableness.
To level two non-negotiable demands on such immediately relevant issues,
at this first meeting between spokesmen for the Roman state and the new
leader of the Carthaginians, points to quite a different motive. Not to pro-
voke war (as sometimes thought), for when Hannibal did offer his own
provocation by attacking Saguntum the Romans did nothing about it; but
instead to ensure that the new leader was as willing as his predecessors to
accommodate Roman concerns. The démarche was most likely meant not to
challenge Hannibal to a new confrontation, but to put him and his state in
their proper place—independent, indeed, but confined. Then the Romans
could go about their affairs in northern Italy, the Adriatic and neighbouring
lands without having to keep an eye out for possible Iberian difficulties.
But their demands concerned his own region of operations, not regions of
possible mutual interest further away like southern Gaul or Liguria. If he
agreed to them, he would certainly relieve the Romans of concern about
Spain, but would be granting them—in effect—the right to curb what the
Punic state did in its own part of the world. A right which, of course, the
Romans would never have dreamt of conceding in reverse to the Carthagini-
ans. Had he or Hasdrubal sent over demands about the future of Syracuse
(where King Hiero was nearing 90) or about Roman campaigning north of
the river Po, the people on the Tiber would have been seriously offended;
indeed might have judged it a deliberate provocation.
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But the Carthaginians had been defeated in war once, had been forced to
surrender territory twice, and a few years ago had agreed to soothe Roman
concern about Spain and Gaul. The Romans no longer saw them as on a
completely equal footing with themselves, any more than they so saw (or
would in future see) other defeated states inside or outside Italy. It was quite
in order to put demands to them to satisfy Roman convenience.13
Nor does Polybius’ term for the ambassadors’ manner suggest a friendly
delivery or any effort to mollify the import of their démarche. To two senior
senators, a general not yet out of his twenties in command of a bi-continental
empire may have seemed just the sort of Hellenistic virtual king who had to
be spoken to firmly and made to recognize his duties. Hannibal quite clearly
found both their message and their manner offensive.
But to him the envoys’ manner was probably the lesser evil. It must have
been at this interview that he concluded that the Romans were aiming to
destabilize Punic Spain or even provoke a war.
Nothing they had done previously suggested such a goal—even as recently
as Hasdrubal’s murder they had not tried to sow mischief—but this only
strengthened the abruptness of what he took to be their volte-face. Here
were the Romans, who in previous years had sponsored contentious friends
to Carthage’s hurt—Mamertines in 264 and mercenarie
s in 237—and who
had laid down for Hasdrubal a military ne plus ultra to spare themselves worry,
seeking to entrap him in the same way. To him that would explain both the
sudden championship of the Saguntines whose leaders they had now firmly
re-established in control, and the suddenly renewed line of the Ebro, a line
whose original significance for them was long past.
Though the Barcid generals had never planned a Roman war it was always,
after 237, a contingency which they had to bear in mind. Now, so far as we
can tell, Hannibal judged that the contingency was real and his duty lay in
confronting it. No surprise then if he was angry and showed it. Still, to con-
front envoys who had come on a limited if imperious mission, the first in half
a decade, with the accusation that their state was seeking to provoke war
would have been wildly impolitic. Nor would Polybius’ suggestion, that he
should have complained about the events of 237, have been any more suit-
able. (For Polybius, of course, Hannibal was planning a justified revenge-war,
the Romans knew it, and the envoys’ interview with him merely confirmed
that he would launch it: none of which is plausible.)
Instead the general ‘affected to be guarding the interests of the Saguntines’
and complained that in the recent arbitration the Romans had unjustly exe-
cuted leading men of Saguntum and ‘these treacherously treated men he
would not overlook, for it was an ancestral principle of the Carthaginians to
overlook no one who had been unjustly treated’. This was unmistakably a dig
at the Roman claim that the Saguntines ‘lay in their trust’, their fides, a virtue
that was one cornerstone of their revered mos maiorum or ‘ancestral princi-
ples’. It was a bitter dig, for fides had been invoked to justify their helping the
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Mamertines, and maybe the Sardinia mercenaries too. Hannibal was turning a
Roman shibboleth against its users.14
More ominously, he thus openly signalled that he meant to intervene in
Saguntine affairs to champion the supposedly victimized faction. In itself
this may not have been a spur-of-the-moment decision. From the time the
Turitani came under his sway he must have seen a showdown with Saguntum
as likely, and what he learned of the Roman arbitration would only confirm
this. But the envoys’ demand obviously crystallized his thinking. He signalled
to them that he would act and, a few months later, act he did.
On the other hand, though he may indeed have been angry he was not
mindlessly so—contrary to Polybius’ notion. He did not mention the Ebro at
all. Not only was it plain there would be no Roman negotiating over that, but
as an issue it had just lost its primacy to Saguntum. And his one accusation
against the Romans was that they had abused their trust as arbiters, not (as
sometimes supposed) that they had no right to arbitrate at all or had violated
some treaty in doing it; still less that their actions amounted somehow to anti-
Carthaginian aggression.
He thus laid down a limited challenge. He would impose Punic hegemony
on Saguntum now that the place had clearly become a problem. By implica-
tion, if the Romans chose to support it they would ignite a new Roman–Punic
war—one which, plainly, he judged himself and Carthage capable of waging
victoriously. At the same time he may have reckoned that a policy so abruptly
begun at Rome might be just as abruptly reversed if resolutely confronted:
another reason for letting his anger show impressively.
Saguntum was small, surrounded by Punic territory and (he may have reck-
oned too) not harder to subdue than earlier strongpoints like Althia and
Hermandica. A vigorous stroke could neutralize it before the Romans could
intervene militarily, and then conceivably they might decide that it was futile
to fight over a faraway ex-protégé of which most Romans knew nothing. If
they did want war, at all events he would thus gain the strategic advantage.
V
The Roman ambassadors must have been dismayed at the reception their
straightforward demands about Saguntum and the Ebro aroused. A furious
generalissimo virtually promised to annex Saguntum and totally ignored the
Ebro. Later on they may well have convinced themselves that Hannibal’s out-
burst had made it clear ‘there must be war’ between Rome and Carthage. But
though Polybius has them thinking so at the time, this is not likely, for what fol-
lowed in 219 shows that the Romans were not in fact inclined to fight. On the
other hand the outburst told Valerius and Baebius that, instead of achieving a
simple confirmation of the diplomatic status quo between the two republics,
they had tapped an unforeseen vein of resentment. This was obviously going
to lead to complications: if nothing else, an imminent attack on Saguntum.
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Valerius and Baebius had no leeway to negotiate, even if they had wanted
to. The Senate had sent them to put simple requests to the general and accept
his compliance. Failing to get this they could only take their leave.
They sailed, not back to Rome, but over to Carthage in Africa, ‘wishing’,
Polybius writes, ‘to put the same demands’ (or ‘warnings’) there. Without a
doubt their ship from Spain to Africa was paced or outpaced by a courier-
craft from Hannibal to the home authorities. Polybius does not tell what
answer they were given at Carthage but almost certainly it was non-committal
(had the sufetes thrown a Hannibalic tantrum or disclaimed all responsibility
for their general, this would surely have got a mention). There was no gain in
having the Punic state officially repeat what Hannibal had forecast about
Saguntum: far better to leave the other side guessing. This must have been
nearly as unsatisfactory to Valerius and Baebius, who had to travel home with
their mission effectively in ruins.
Hannibal had sent home another message too, this one surely for public
attention, as its language shows. The Saguntines, ‘relying on their alliance
with the Romans’, were harming Punic subjects (the fractious neighbours in
other words) and he wanted instructions on what to do. Now a Punic general
did not have to ask for guidance on how to treat provincial aggressors. Noth-
ing suggests that he or Hasdrubal had waited for orders before dealing with,
for instance, the Orissi or the Olcades. This message was to alert his fellow-
citizens to a confrontation potentially very different: a signal (probably the
first) that the new affair could involve great-power politics.15
Naturally he was given a free hand by the authorities. These messages back
and forth must have taken place while sailing was still practicable, and so in
the autumn of 220. Appian’s report of him then making a pretended offer of
arbitration in his turn, this one to sort out the quarrel between the Saguntines
and their neighbours, may be correct: he had the winter to do it in, and some
show of justification was desirable before he launched his attack on the town
in the spring of 219.
The Saguntines wer
e predictably immune to either cajolements or threats.
Very possibly they sent word to Rome about his offer too, as Appian states
(though in winter the messengers would have had to travel by land), but after
what had happened at New Carthage it must have been all-but-expected
news. What is more striking—and less expected—is that when news of the
attack itself arrived the Romans did nothing. And over the eight months that
it progressed, they went on doing nothing.16
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T H E I N VA S I O N O F I TA LY
I
Hannibal besieged Saguntum from about May 219 to the end of the year or
the start of 218. This can be worked out from the rather sparse time-details
in Polybius. Hannibal moved at the start of the campaigning season and
‘when summer already had begun’, and spent eight months on the siege. So
the town fell during the winter following. The Romans reacted as promptly as
was practicable, sending an ultimatum to Carthage virtually as soon as the
envoys could sail.1
The siege did not show Hannibal’s military skills in the best light. Eight
months was a long time to beset a small and friendless city, however strong its
hilltop site and defences—even longer than Alexander the Great had taken to
capture Tyre, a city on an island. Polybius limits himself to a general picture
of the general’s leadership and bravery, and stresses the ‘hardship and anxi-
ety’ of the siege. Livy tells a stirring story of assaults and counter-assaults,
Punic siege-engines and Saguntine heroism; and (even if embellished by
Roman historical tradition) something of the sort must have occurred across
the eight months.
Early on, again according to Livy, Hannibal was badly wounded by a javelin
in the thigh, and later he was called away to put down restiveness among the
recently conquered Oretani and Carpetani, leaving his vigorous officer
Maharbal, son of Himilco, to maintain the siege. If accurate, these details
only illustrate the dangerous frustrations of a long and fixed commitment.
Against resolute resistance, the Carthaginians had only attrition to use.2
Whether or not the Saguntines themselves got a message out to Rome, the
Romans certainly heard about the siege. Yet, while month after month the
town that Valerius and Baebius had warned Hannibal not to attack kept
