by Dexter Hoyos
they might well stand on the defensive and, worse still, raise even larger
forces than usual in the hope of overwhelming him. Any such reactions
would make his own task a good deal harder and slower—and, most danger-
ous of all, Carthage itself could be strangled by a Roman expedition while he
was still campaigning in Italy. His expedition itself, which transferred the bulk
of Punic military strength from Punic territory into the militarily more or less
unknown reaches of Gaul and beyond, needed to win successes both swift
and smashing to maintain his fellow-citizens’ morale. It had to be nicely
timed.
A less likely suggestion is that he meant to await the consul P. Scipio in
north-eastern Spain, crush him there and then invade Italy, but that on learn-
ing of the Gallic revolt (to which Scipio’s original forces were diverted) he
decided the Romans would not come after all and so began his own march. If
that were true, he must have remained unaware of Scipio levying a fresh army
for Spain until he himself was marching through southern Gaul. But this is
implausible, for trade between different regions would not have dried up with
the declaration of war and the Carthaginians had at least one spy even at
Rome (the one detected in 217 after two years’ activity).12
He fairly soon must have learned that Scipio was to invade Spain and Sem-
pronius North Africa; then, not long after, that Scipio had been held up by
the Gallic revolt in Cisalpine Gaul (prompted, ironically enough, by Hanni-
bal’s agents earlier). Once he knew the Romans’ initial expeditionary
destinations, he could march north from New Carthage; then he paused in
the north-east, even after subduing it, because Scipio had been held up in
Italy. With one and not two consuls to confront, he could afford to cut the
size of his army—by over 20,000, or more than one quarter after its losses in
the north-east—to improve flexibility in movement and supply. North Africa
would be defended against Sempronius by the forces he had sent, plus any
further levies the home authorities made.
Finally, when he calculated or learned that Scipio’s expedition was soon to
start he marched into Gaul, arguably to waylay the advancing consular army
(so there was no need for an urgent advance), destroy it and so both assure
Spain’s security and clear his road to Italy. But although his departure from
Spain was late, he then made it as far as crossing the Rhône before the consul
even drew near. By then autumn was drawing near too; his army’s numbers
had fallen, the Boii and their neighbours the Insubres were successfully in
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arms, and the Alps were still to be crossed. There was a skirmish between
reconnoitering Numidian and Roman cavalry—which his men lost, allowing
the Romans to ride briefly up to his camp—but he had to recalculate. If he
waited to cross swords now with Scipio’s army he might not reach Italy until
the following spring, even if he won. Much might happen before then,
including in North Africa.
Arguably, therefore, Hannibal now abandoned the plan to intercept Scipio;
instead he swung north away from him and struck out for Italy. An echo of
the discussion that led to this decision may survive in Livy’s report of how
the general hesitated over the two alternatives and was persuaded to head for
Italy by the Boian and other chieftains who had crossed the mountains to
meet him. But he marched north for only four days more before halting in
friendly territory for some time to rest and refit, even though Scipio’s army
was in pursuit for all he knew. So he may have been hoping that he might still
succeed in enticing the consul after him in search of a battle. In fact Scipio
did march fast to reach the Carthaginians’ crossing-place over the Rhône
three days later and only then turned away.
Hannibal will have learned of this while resting his troops. There would be
no battle in Gaul, but neither would he be dogged by the Romans as he
crossed the mountains into Italy. Scipio he expected to return there too, Poly-
bius writes, but not at any speed. He would continue to hold the military
initiative.13
IV
Invading Italy was an immensely bold venture which in the 23 years of the
previous war the Carthaginians had never tried. But they did have an old tra-
dition of taking war to their enemies. Their earliest warlord, Malchus,
supposedly had led expeditions to Sicily and Sardinia; and down the centuries
Punic armies had several times moved against Syracuse and other Sicilian
Greek cities. Hamilcar’s expedition to Spain had fitted the same vigorous tra-
dition. Where Hannibal’s was unprecedented was in the great distance he had
to travel and the vast resources of his foes. But he could be encouraged by
the century-old precedent of Alexander the Great, who with fewer than
50,000 troops had overthrown the Persian empire in three great battles and
replaced Persian mastery over the east with Macedon’s.
Ironically enough, in this new war the Carthaginians—hitherto renowned
for mastery at sea—would be inferior navally to the Romans, who less than
half a century earlier had not rated at sea at all. This Roman naval superiority
was a drawback, but the Barcids themselves had always been land generals.
All the same, the Carthaginians during the next few years did again build up
their sea-going forces, so as suggested above Hannibal may now have sent
around orders for fresh shipbuilding, as well as for properly manning all the
ships already available. He may also have backed the scheme for building the
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artificial ports in the southern quarter of the city, if these do date to the
period from 218.14
His own concern was the army he was leading to Italy. Made up of infantry
from Africa (no doubt mostly subject Libyan conscripts with Carthaginian
officers) and Spain, and cavalry partly Spanish and partly Numidian—
Numidian horses and their practised riders were arguably the best light
cavalry in the world at that time—it numbered 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse
according to Polybius and Livy. But as often pointed out, not only are these
figures implausibly huge in themselves but they clash with others that the
same historians offer. Thus Hannibal reportedly crossed the Pyrenees with
50,000 foot and 9,000 horse, then the Rhône with 38,000 and 8,000 respec-
tively, finally arriving in Italy with 20,000 and 6,000. Polybius drew at least
these last figures from Hannibal’s later inscriptional record in the temple of
Hera at Cape Lacinium, just as he did his detailed breakdown of the forces
transferred between North Africa and Spain, so it is likely that the other
totals have the same origin.
Therefore if the original strength is correct too, the general’s forces must
have fallen by 43,000 men—over 40 per cent—even before he reached the
Pyrenees, which is extraordinary. True, he suffered ‘great losses’ in subduing
north-eastern Spain and then he left his officer Hanno with 10,000 foot and
1,
000 horse to hold the region, while another 10,000 disillusioned Celtiberi-
ans were allowed to go home. But that would mean his fighting losses in the
north-east were great indeed, over 20,000 men—more than his coming losses
at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae. This is not very plausible.
Polybius may have drawn, and in his inscription Hannibal may have
chosen to give, the wrong impression about the starting total. For although
102,000 as the grand army’s original strength is hard to account for if it actu-
ally left Spain numbering only 59,000, such a figure fits fairly well if the
15,000 troops entrusted to Hasdrubal to hold Spain are counted in and if the
general lost about 7,000 men subduing the north-east. These plus the 21,000
sent home or left with Hanno add up to 43,000, which would leave Hannibal
his 59,000 to lead into Gaul. The only difficulty is with the cavalry, whose
various attested figures—Hasdrubal’s 2,500, Hanno’s 1,000 and Hannibal’s
9,000—add up to rather more than 12,000, with at least some hundreds
more lost in the campaign beyond the Ebro. But the discrepancy is probably
only about 1,000, and some rounding-off of totals (even by Hannibal) can
be surmised.15
In other words the original total more likely shows the full military strength
that the Carthaginians had in Spain by mid-year. Hannibal himself then prob-
ably marched from New Carthage at the head of 87,000 men, including
about 10,000 cavalry. He may have chosen to blur this in his Cape Lacinium
record to impress readers with both the vastness of his original resources
and, contrastingly, the smallness of the army he actually brought into Italy
and with which he wrought such monumental havoc on the Romans. All the
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same, 87,000 was a massive force: bigger than his brother-in-law Hasdrubal’s
largest reported armed strength, twice as large as two full consular armies,
larger than either of the armies that the kings of Syria and Egypt would put
into the field when they met in battle the year after. Together with the 20,000
troops holding North Africa and Carthage, it means that to confront the
Romans in this new war the Punic republic under its Barcid leadership had
mobilized 122,000 men on land alone. The Romans with their six legions and
allied contingents, some 71,000 all told, were in fact outnumbered in 218.16
V
As winter gave way to spring 218 the Punic generalissimo learned at New
Carthage of the Roman embassy to old Carthage and its theatrical declara-
tion of war. With Saguntum captured around the end of 219, the earliest that
the Romans could send envoys overseas (short of risking their lives and,
more important, their mission) was March. This helps explain why two of the
envoys were the consuls of the previous year: they left office on 15 March.
The embassy’s mission was to demand ‘compensation’ over Saguntum—not
help or recompense for the Saguntines, who no longer counted, but that the
Carthaginians hand over Hannibal and his senatorial councillors for punish-
ment. When predictably the senate at Carthage rejected this, the leader of the
embassy symbolically let fall war from a fold of his toga. Many senators
shouted their acceptance: no doubt Barcid kinsmen and supporters espe-
cially, but even senators outside the ruling faction might well be antagonized
by the Romans’ non-negotiable stance.
This outcome to the ultimatum was no doubt expected on both sides.
Already Hannibal’s military preparations, and his soundings in Gaul, the Alps
and north Italy, were well under way. He had ceremonially visited the ancient
temple of Melqart, Carthage’s patron god, on the island where Gades stood,
to fulfil old vows and swear new ones in hope of future success (so much for
Roman claims of his irreligion). Already too the Romans had authorized
Scipio and Sempronius to levy armies and fleets for Spain and Africa. But
Hannibal had neatly got them to bring on the war in formal terms, and to do
it so gracelessly that even wavering Carthaginian citizens must see their coun-
try as a victim of aggression. This plus the wealth from Saguntum united his
fellow-countrymen behind him, all at any rate save Hanno the Great and his
thinned-out political circle.17
All the same, for the reasons suggested above he did not launch his expedi-
tion until almost mid-year and even then did not cross the Pyrenees for
another two months or so. No one in his council was under illusions about
the risks of the invasion. Polybius even tells a story of how at one meeting
the officer Hannibal Monomachus declared that the only way they would
make it was to live off human flesh (prisoners’, presumably), though Hanni-
bal refused to consider this. He certainly had to face the possibility of some
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opposition en route even though his agents had striven to conciliate the
peoples between the Pyrenees and north Italy, and also the dangers of poor
supply and—even worse—of desertions.
Both Hannibal’s sense of mission and his overall confidence are shown in
his visit to Melqart’s temple during the winter and then by his famous dream,
recorded by his friend and historian Silenus. On the march up the east coast
towards the Ebro, at a place Livy calls Onusa, the general dreamt he was sum-
moned to a council of the gods, whose chief gave him a divine guide for the
road to Italy. Bidden to follow the guide without looking back, he neverthe-
less disobeyed and saw a monstrous serpent ravaging the land. This, he was
told, was the fate of Italy. The chief of the gods, naturally called Jupiter in
the Roman versions, must have been Ba’al Hammon: so Hannibal could be
confident, and could assure his officers and men, that the expedition was
blessed by both the supreme deities of Carthage.18
VI
Beyond the Ebro the peoples brought into subjection, according to Polybius,
were the otherwise unknown Aerenosii and Andosini, the pro-Roman but
just as obscure Bargusii, and the ‘Ilurgetes’. Of these Livy gives only the last
two and adds the rather better-known Ausetani and Lacetani—who later on
that year reappear as Punic allies instead. These two were probably mistaken
guesses by a source of Livy’s, baffled by the genuine but unrecognized tribes’
names. As for the Ilergetes, the well-known people whose chief town was
Ilerda, modern Lleida or Lérida in Aragon, they were almost certainly on the
Carthaginians’ side already, for their powerful leader Indibilis had ‘always’
been strongly pro-Punic (so Polybius affirms elsewhere) and he dominated
nearby peoples too, including the Lacetani. Hannibal’s conquest may have
been another, smaller community of Ilergetes, perhaps a breakaway branch,
attested on the coast between the later cities of Tarraco and Barcino.
These may all have put up a fierce resistance and cost him men, but as was
noted earlier they cannot be the main reason why he chose to fight them him-
self and took so long to move into Gaul. As for the 11,000 troops he left
behind under Hanno, t
hey were not enough to cope with a consular army
but—again as argued earlier—Hannibal himself was expecting to meet and
destroy Scipio somewhere in Gaul. In any case it was open to the comman-
ders left behind (Hasdrubal included) to call on allied Spanish communities
for auxiliary corps and, of course, to levy further forces from Carthage’s
Spanish subjects. The 10,000 disgruntled Carpetani and others whom he
released from service may well have found conscription-agents looking for
them after a year or two.19
To Hanno he also entrusted all the heavy baggage that the grand army had
brought along from New Carthage. With it now more streamlined though
smaller, and reckoning that the Roman consul was close to setting out for
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Spain, the general marched in three columns through the Pyrenees and into
Gaul on the true start of his epic venture.
Not everything was or could be planned for a certainty. The Gauls along
the route had not agreed in advance to let the army pass, so he had to placate
an armed and suspicious warrior assembly gathered at Ruscino (today’s Per-
pignan) with reassurances sweetened by gifts to their chieftains. Why he had
not done this earlier, when he was sending agents to Cisalpine Gaul, is hard
to understand. According to Livy he had, though it still needed to be fol-
lowed up with gold; but if he did seek their agreement earlier he cannot have
been very successful, and Polybius in fact mentions him forcing some of
them en route to concede it.
Rather than a mere oversight, the failure to conciliate the Gauls in advance
may have been due to his strategic plan as suggested above. Fighting the
Romans in Gallic territory, even if he won the Gauls as allies or kept them
neutral, was not a scheme likely to please people whose lands would bear the
brunt. Even if he had claimed that he meant to march directly to Italy, they
could not be sure the Romans would let him. Only the fresh reassurances,
and gifts, at Ruscino won him passage.20
The same suspicions explain why the Volcae on the lower Rhône opposed
him crossing their river though they were no more inclined to the Roman side
than to his. Hannibal had to disperse them by skilful use of a detached cav-
alry column under his nephew Hanno, which crossed higher up and struck
