Hannibal's Dynasty

by Dexter Hoyos

This was to be the crucial rôle of Hannibal’s new alliances within and

  beyond Italy. They were not just for winning the war but—more important—

  for maintaining his peace. The postwar provisions of the treaty with Philip V

  show this feature plainly and so does the logic of the situation. A lasting Punic

  alliance-system in Italy would deprive the Romans of the massive manpower

  that underpinned their military might, would hem them in geographically, and

  would immediately give the Carthaginians the strategic upper hand if a new

  war broke out.

  Just how all this would work in practice was never of course tried, nor was

  the question explored while the war was on. The vagueness was convenient

  and necessary, for Hannibal’s new Italian friends—some of them anyway—

  had expectations rather different from this. Livy reports the Capuan leader

  Vibius Virrius assuring his countrymen that ‘once the war was finished and

  Hannibal departed victorious to Africa and removed his army’, they would be

  left as masters of Italy. Hannibal himself (again according to Livy) confirmed

  this to the Capuan senate. Quite possibly he did encourage the Capuans in

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  this bracing notion—though Capuan hegemony was hardly a scenario to

  appeal to Bruttians, Samnites or Tarentines.

  Some Italians thought the new situation ideal for settling scores. The Brut-

  tians fell first on their own kinsmen of Petelia who refused to defect, then on

  Greek Croton which was an old foe, and they were prevented from sacking

  Locri only by its timely defection to the Carthaginians. No doubt particular

  defector-states looked for particular benefits from a postwar Italy, but overall

  they probably expected the sort of Italy that had preceded Roman hege-

  mony—in effect a cheerful anarchy.

  None of this would suit the Carthaginians. Quarrelsome disunited Italians

  left to themselves would be a power-vacuum guaranteed to entice and revive

  Roman power, or else attract into Italy a third force like Philip V. Hannibal

  himself need not have intended to stay on indefinitely, but his and Carthage’s

  interests plainly required some continuing Punic presence in the peninsula. It

  would make sense for him to leave forces there to protect his allies from both

  the enmity of the Romans and the dangerous friendship of Philip.10

  Just possibly he meant to annex some Italian territory as a Carthaginian

  possession. Not only is there a Roman tradition that he promised to reward

  his soldiers with Carthaginian citizenship, but another tradition represented

  him as claiming all of Italy in right of victory. Polybius reports him promis-

  ing this to his army a couple of days before Cannae, Livy and Zonaras set it

  out in distorted versions of the treaty with Philip, and Livy depicts the

  defeated consul Varro forecasting Italy as a province ruled from Carthage.

  Strikingly too, Livy has Hannibal make a detailed list of promises to his army

  (and affirm them with a religious rite) in autumn 218 just before the skirmish

  at the Ticinus—citizenship, land in Italy, Africa or Spain, money in lieu of

  land if preferred, even rewards for loyal slaves.

  Much of this would be Roman propaganda, and the promise made before

  Cannae might be just Hannibal’s way of enthusing his men, but these varied

  items all share the theme of direct annexation. Conceivably they draw on a

  kernel of fact: conceivably, for example, he meant to acquire a stretch or

  stretches of Italian land centred on ports in easy communication with North

  Africa, Sicily and Sardinia, paying some sort of taxes and settled with veterans

  as well as, no doubt, civilians from Carthage and its other provinces. Livy’s

  Varro finds the thought repulsive, but it would simply have been an extension

  to the Italian peninsula of Barcid methods of governance. If Punic forces

  and a Punic general were to be left in peacetime Italy, basing them in Punic-

  governed territory with at least some local funding made ample sense.11

  IV

  To bring about all these aims, military, political and diplomatic, a strong

  army-in-being was essential. And the more so as time passed and made it

  clear that the Romans were far from giving in despite all their disasters.

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  How Hannibal kept up his military strength is another debated question.

  Every battle imposed some losses, though they were low compared to

  Roman losses and—down to 216 anyway—fell mostly on his Gauls. Wounds,

  illnesses, desertions and mishaps must have taken further tolls. After Cannae

  he called for reinforcements from Carthage and 4,000 Numidian cavalry and

  40 elephants, plus large funds, were sent over in 215 under an officer named

  Bomilcar. But the 13,500 infantry and cavalry, 20 elephants and further funds

  that were to follow these went instead to Spain, to offset a big Roman victory

  over his brother Hasdrubal, and a similarly strong force was voted for Sar-

  dinia to support the rebellion there. Their other brother Mago was sent to

  Spain to raise fresh troops for Italy, but none actually went. Bomilcar’s corps

  was the only reinforcement Hannibal ever had from abroad.12

  Yet the general obviously kept a powerful army in being. He attacked major

  towns like Neapolis, Nola, Nuceria and Tarentum—not to mention marching

  on Rome itself in 211—and fought big battles, like those around Nola in

  216–214 and at Herdonea and Numistro in 210. From 216 to around 211 he

  could divide his field forces into a main northern army under himself and a

  smaller southern command led first by his brother Mago and then by Hanno,

  whom Appian calls his nephew. More than that, he installed garrisons at

  many allied towns, not just Capua: Arpi reportedly housed 5,000 Punic

  troops in 213, Salapia 500 Numidians in 210, and a couple of Samnite towns

  were garrisoned by 3,000 men that same year; at Tarentum a year later there

  was a garrison partly of Bruttians and partly of ‘Carthaginians’, probably

  meaning non-Italian troops. A passing comment in Livy implies that even as

  late as 207 Lucanian, and presumably other Punic-allied, towns normally had

  Punic garrisons, and at Locri in 205 a Punic force was holding the citadel

  when the Romans recaptured the town.

  To judge from all this, the Carthaginians’ total forces in Italy from 215 to at

  least 207 must have been sizeable, even if they lessened as years went by and

  Punic fortunes gradually waned. Between 216 and 211, when two field armies

  as well as garrisons were operating, Hannibal overall may have had as many as

  60,000–70,000 troops in arms between Campania and Bruttium. Yet his re-

  inforcements from abroad were minuscule.

  The answer must be that he replaced losses among his original troops with

  mostly Italian recruits. Mercenaries from abroad may have made their way to

  him too but cannot have been all that numerous, while for Italians in the

  Punic army there is a fair amount of evidence. As mentioned earlier, Samnite

  spokesmen as early as 215 put it to him that all their young men were serving

  with him (no doubt an exaggeration). In 2
14 his lieutenant in the south,

  Hanno, had 17,000 largely Bruttian and Lucanian infantry and ‘a few Italians’

  in his 1,200 cavalry, when the proconsul Ti. Sempronius Gracchus badly

  defeated him at the river Calor near Beneventum. This was not Hannibal’s

  own army but it suggests that he too could recruit locally. By 207, when his

  area of control had shrunk to little more than Lucania and Bruttium, he is in

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  fact recorded sending Hanno, still in harness, to raise fresh levies from the

  Bruttians.13

  Nor is that the end. At his departure from Italy in 203, hostile Roman tradi-

  tion claimed, he massacred Italian troops who refused to sail with

  him—20,000 according to a credulous Diodorus. If this atrocity tale is based

  on anything, it may be that he did put to death some recalcitrants (who would

  count as mutineers); at all events the story presupposes he had Italian troops

  to punish. Then Livy describes his reserve corps at the battle of Zama—the

  veterans from Italy—as mostly Bruttians. Polybius more carefully calls them

  ‘the ones who came over with him from Italy’. Though he has Hannibal make

  them a speech recalling their past glories as far back as the Trebia, the corps

  was most likely made up not just of the survivors of that and the other battles

  but of later, mainly Italian recruits as well, and these were probably the major-

  ity. Like any well-knit army they would have taken on the esprit and traditions

  of their older comrades. Appian, for what his word is worth, stresses their

  military quality.

  The population of the Italian defector-states, then, probably did supply

  manpower to Hannibal’s army, not in separate allied contingents but as vol-

  unteers under direct Punic command. This surely suited him much better, for

  otherwise he would have had to cajole semi-autonomous contingents out of

  his allies, with the inevitable headaches that that would have entailed. Like the

  Spanish and African infantry, Numidian cavalry and Balearic slingers, his Ital-

  ian troops were probably organized in regional units, for instance the

  Bruttian force at Tarentum.

  Overall, the part played by Italian troops in his operations from 216 on is

  not to be underestimated. Although Hannibal called for reinforcements from

  home directly after Cannae, this was at a stage before such recruiting can seri-

  ously have begun. By mid-215 it was probably well established, since the

  further reinforcements being readied for him at Carthage were diverted to

  Spain without any known protest from him or noticeable damage to his own

  campaigning. In the first half-decade or so after Cannae his areas of recruit-

  ment would have been widest, which explains how he could afford so many

  garrisons and—strikingly—could maintain both a northern and a southern

  field army for some years. In the last years, by contrast, his range of both

  operations and recruiting shrank: as a result so did his forces, even if he kept

  them well-trained and tough enough to be the mainstay of his army at Zama.14

  V

  Italian recruitment to Hannibal’s forces explains why the Carthaginians used

  their other military resources as they did. In 215, as noted, the much larger

  army due to follow Bomilcar’s initial cavalry reinforcement to Italy was

  rerouted to Spain instead. Another army, just as large, was sent to Sardinia to

  help the rebellion there. Two years later 25,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 12

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  elephants (forces larger than Hannibal had brought to north Italy in 218)

  arrived in Sicily to support the Syracusans in their new Roman war. In Spain

  strong Punic armies regularly operated down to 206.

  This was not because Hannibal had lost control of the Carthaginian war-

  effort, still less because a hostile or suspicious home government starved him

  of forces. If he could recruit enough troops for his own army where he was,

  he could let other forces be deployed where they could be useful—not that

  they always proved to be so, notably in Sardinia and Sicily. Polybius empha-

  sizes not only how he kept overall direction of the war but the obvious point

  that many of the other commanders were relatives, like his brothers Has-

  drubal and Mago, or officers of his like the half-Carthaginian Syracusan

  Hippocrates, who with his brother Epicydes brought Syracuse over in 213,

  and Mottones of Hippou Acra who later on operated in Sicily too (only to let

  Hannibal down).15

  The terrific successes of the first three years of war in Italy cannot have

  weakened Barcid political dominance at Carthage, even if things were going

  less well in Spain. There is no reason to visualize the Mighty Ones, magistra-

  cies and official boards as packed wholesale with Barcid nominees, for other

  aristocratic families and interests still existed, like Hanno the Great’s, even if

  his was the only one overtly critical. But 20 years of victory and wealth can

  only have produced a large pro-Barcid majority, in which relatives and friends

  no doubt enjoyed prime status. It must as always have meant supporters win-

  ning offices and—just as important—other office-winning and place-holding

  aristocrats continuing to see it in their own interest to give support too. The

  first years of the new Roman war probably brought this dominance to its

  zenith.

  Livy’s picture of the Punic senate joyfully receiving Mago’s account of

  Cannae—with only Hanno the Great like a wise but tiresome old owl coun-

  selling caution and indeed peace—may be embroidered but can hardly be far

  from the truth. Like the general himself, everyone expected ‘that the war

  would soon be ended if they were willing to make a small extra effort’. Soli-

  darity on the home front was strengthened by the tasks that Hannibal gave

  the authorities to do: for instance, preparing reinforcements and funds for

  the war-effort overseas.

  Such delegation of tasks was probably well established by now. As men-

  tioned earlier, Hannibal from the start may have listened to suggestions by

  Barcid supporters at Carthage, for instance on questions like the city’s ports

  and fleets. Naval operations too from North Africa must have been orga-

  nized, and presumably were authorized, at Carthage. Once Hannibal had

  accepted that such operations had a rôle to play, this arrangement made

  sense, even after he was able to re-establish regular contact with home from

  southern Italy. So too with other theatres of war. As long as loyal men were in

  charge at home, it made sense to leave many tasks to them, though under

  direction from him if he chose to exert it.

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  So too with the generals in other theatres. Some were members of the

  Barcid group by definition, including Hannibal’s brothers Hasdrubal and

  Mago, and subordinates of his in Italy like Maharbal and nephew Hanno;

  others, during the early and middle years of the war anyway, were probably

  either members of the group too or else allies—a distinction that may not

  have been too sharp
in some cases. Notable among them were Hasdrubal

  (nicknamed ‘the Bald’, for reasons perhaps obvious at the time), sent to Sar-

  dinia in 215, and Himilco and Hanno the successive commanders in Sicily in

  213 and 212. Probably an ally—a leading figure with his own independent

  connexions—rather than a group member was Hasdrubal son of Gisco, as

  we shall see in a while, but he too was part of the war-effort led by the Bar-

  cids at Carthage and supervised by Hannibal.16

  On the other hand, as just noted, Hannibal sensibly left theatre operations

  to the local commanders and intervened rarely, just as he left to the authori-

  ties at Carthage tasks best performed there. Thus most obviously the dealings

  with Hieronymus of Syracuse. These began with Syracusan envoys being

  sent to Hannibal in Italy. He then despatched his trierarch Hannibal to Syra-

  cuse, and this officer in turn accompanied new Syracusan envoys over to

  Carthage to negotiate an alliance. In 213, with Syracuse now under the pro-

  Carthaginian brothers Hippocrates and Epicydes and the Romans preparing

  to move against the city, a letter from Hannibal seconded a call for military

  support from the brothers, prompting despatch of the already-mentioned

  army from North Africa to Sicily. In 212, trying to rescue the situation after

  the Romans captured Syracuse, the Carthaginians sent over a new general, yet

  another Hanno, while from Italy Hannibal transferred his able cavalryman

  Mottones, of Hippou Acra, to serve under him. These two eventually fell out

  and Mottones went over to the Romans, but his initial appointment shows

  how Hannibal could intervene as he thought fit. Hanno’s appointment was

  made at Carthage no doubt because a general officer could not be spared

  from the army in Italy, and quite possibly it was with Hannibal’s agreement.

  There is no point seeing him as a latent anti-Barcid: though he despised the

  non-Carthaginian Mottones, Epicydes—another trusted agent of Hanni-

  bal’s—stayed with him throughout.17

  Already mentioned too was the scheme that Hasdrubal should march from

  Spain to join his brother, a prospect the Romans were worrying about as early

  as 217. Early in 215 the senate at Carthage reportedly sent Hasdrubal his

  marching orders, and reiterated them over his objection that it was too risky

  to leave Spain (as it turned out, the brothers Scipio prevented him anyway). It