by Dexter Hoyos
It is hard to see what prevented Hannibal from returning in 204 rather than
waiting, as he did, until his countrymen had suffered these devastations and
defeats. Arguably the Romans might have intercepted him at sea en route, but
the risk was still there in 203 when he did cross successfully. The squadron
guarding the Italian coasts was only 50 strong in 204 (though it fell to 40 in
203); in fact the Romans’ overall naval strength in the earlier year was less
than in the later one. Returning in 204 would have put at his disposal the
resources and armaments, including the Numidian allied forces, with which
Hasdrubal confronted Scipio in 204 and 203—disastrously as usual—and to
them Hannibal would have added his veterans from Italy.12
The reason for staying where he was was more likely political than military.
As was noted earlier, the leading Carthaginian in North Africa by 204 was the
son of Gisco: an independent partner now, with his own friends and follow-
ing. By 204 Hannibal and his supporters could run Carthaginian affairs only
in coalition with such an ally, and this would require allowing Hasdrubal
scope to exercise authority. If so, the command in Punic Africa, whatever his
actual title and official relation to Hannibal, was Hasdrubal’s price for sup-
porting the Barcids politically.
So too with the negotiations over winter 204–203 between him and Syphax
on one side and Scipio on the other. Syphax played (or Scipio led him to
believe he was playing) the mediator’s part, while it was Hasdrubal who spoke
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for the Carthaginians. No doubt, for political reasons, any agreement would
have had to gain Hannibal’s approval, but nothing suggests that Hannibal was
consulted or even kept informed as the talks proceeded—something the
winter would have made difficult anyway.
All the same, the terms that Syphax proffered with Hasdrubal’s blessing,
and that Scipio for a time professed to find agreeable, were ones that Hanni-
bal surely would approve at this bleak stage of the war. The Romans should
evacuate Africa, the Carthaginians Italy, and each side should keep ‘the posi-
tions in between’ that they currently held. This effectively meant ceding Spain
too to the Romans, even if it was not expressly mentioned: in other words,
sacrificing what the Barcids had built. But Hannibal, though he might grieve
at the sacrifice, was certainly realistic enough to face what had to be done to
achieve peace. He was, it seems, willing to offer much the same a year later
when he met Scipio before Zama.13
IV
Scipio, it turned out, was using the long-drawn-out talks to lull his opponents’
alertness and spy out their two camps. He finally told them that while he liked
the terms, his counsellors did not, and left them to infer that the talks were
over. Yet the terms were essentially those he offered later in 203, and close to
those he imposed after the battle of Zama in 202, after more battles and
vastly more bloodshed. True, these later terms had extra clauses, notably a
heavy indemnity and limitations on the Carthaginians’ war-making capacity.
By contrast the implication in Syphax’s terms, so far as we have them, was
peace on the status quo alone. Did Scipio decide it was worth continuing the
war to squeeze those extra concessions out of the Carthaginians, as a way of
reducing the Carthaginian state to impotence?
That is possible: yet then it is puzzling why even the final terms were not
more sweeping. In the peace of 201 Punic Africa was not bound tightly to
Roman dominance, for instance by making Carthage and other cities like
Utica and Hippou dependent Roman allies, even by annexing some Punic ter-
ritory. Hannibal himself was left unmolested and free to hold further
office—conceivably even a fresh generalship. True, by then Numidia was
under the rule of Masinissa, who in the following decades would prove a
thorn in the Carthaginians’ side, but this was hardly foreseeable in 201.
Masinissa had had close Carthaginian ties before and his notorious episode
with Hasdrubal son of Gisco’s daughter Sophoniba in 203 might be a warn-
ing that such ties could easily be resumed. Plainly such possibilities did not
trouble the Roman peacemaker.
Did Scipio have much larger aims initially, say the total dismemberment of
the Carthaginian state, and so break off the talks to achieve them—only to
find the ensuing campaigns, including the one in 202 against Hannibal, so
arduous that he had to scale his aims down to the terms finally imposed? It is
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unlikely, for the victories he won were not all that costly to him (even Zama
cost only some 1,500 Roman casualties) and after Zama the Carthaginians lay
at his mercy. Nor was the notion of dismembering the Punic state ever
raised, any more than the idea of sacking and destroying Carthage itself.
Did he, then, break off the talks so as to chase military glory against Has-
drubal and inevitably Hannibal? He was running the dual risks of being
defeated in battle or being replaced by another ambitious commander who
fancied his own abilities (as more than one consul did in the coming years).
But if he was anywhere near as confident in his own genius as Polybius, other
ancient writers and many moderns believe, these were risks he would judge
worth taking for the sake of imperishable renown. He may even have hoped
that the surprise destruction of Syphax’s and Hasdrubal’s camps and armies
might liquidate those leaders too, putting Carthage with one stroke at his
mercy.14
If so he was disappointed, but the survival of both men did them little last-
ing good. While Hannibal prowled around his virtual cage in Bruttium under
the watchful eyes of the usual Roman armies, Hasdrubal energetically as
usual—within 30 days if Polybius’ figure is right, but more probably within
50—raised fresh troops from the city and countryside, made a rendezvous on
the Great Plains 75 miles (120 kilometres) inland with a new Numidian army
likewise put together by Syphax, was also joined by some Celtiberian merce-
naries just arrived from Spain, and then with them and Syphax was
shatteringly defeated by Scipio all over again. Only the doomed valour of the
Celtiberians allowed Hasdrubal and his local forces to escape. Syphax, pur-
sued all the way back to his own land, was soon beaten and captured by
Masinissa and Scipio’s lieutenant Laelius, a prize which led his capital, Cirta,
to surrender. This brought much of the Numidian kingdom into Masinissa’s
hands, with Scipio’s blessing once the new king got rid of Syphax’s wife
with whom he had rashly fallen in love, Hasdrubal’s beautiful daughter
Sophoniba.15
At the same time the fleet at Carthage bungled an attack against Scipio’s
ships at anchor near Utica, an attack that might have done something to
redress his land victory if the fleet commanders had fully exploited Scipio’s
absence inland. Instead they waited until his return march took him to Tunes,
from where he could see their ships put ou
t to sea. They then took overnight
to reach the Romans’ roadstead, allowing him to get by land to his encamp-
ment and organize defence. As a result the Punic attack was beaten off with
limited Roman losses. This last action in the war by the navy of Carthage
lived up to the ineptitude it had shown more or less consistently since 218.
Hasdrubal son of Gisco now disappears from Polybius’ and Livy’s narra-
tives. Appian may be right that his infuriated fellow-citizens removed him
from his generalship, even voted his death—a common penalty in pre-Barcid
times for military failure. Much more dubiously, Appian has him raise a
rough-and-ready force on his own account, including slaves, and carry on
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resistance to the Romans for a time (a friendly tradition may have invented
this). During 202, according to Appian, he died—forced to kill himself to
avoid being lynched by an angry mob in the city. Dead in any case was his
pre-eminence in the state. If his faction did not completely disintegrate, at
least many of its members must have betaken themselves elsewhere. With
few of them likely to gravitate to Hanno the Great’s peace-group, the biggest
beneficiaries of his ruin were probably the Barcids.
If Appian is right, the new general by land was Hanno son of Bomilcar,
who as noted earlier may be Hannibal’s nephew, last heard of in Bruttium in
207: if so Hannibal must have sent him back to Carthage. But whoever did
take over the command plainly could do little except await the enemy’s next
move, and press Hannibal to come home.16
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D E F E AT
I
With their only ally Syphax fallen, Hasdrubal’s generalship discredited, the
countryside open to the invader—and already inclined to rebellion, Polybius
claims, because of heavy war-taxation—and Scipio preparing to blockade
their city, the Carthaginians had only two real alternatives: seek terms from
the enemy, or carry on the fight and recall Hannibal and Mago from their use-
less footholds in Italy. Dispirited yet still pugnacious, the Punic senate
promptly did both.
This was not due to a compromise between peace-inclined doves and war-
like hawks in the aristocracy. Not only was the most obvious peace-group,
Hanno the Great and his friends, sidelined as before but such a combination
of peace-moves and war-moves was not so much a compromise as a self-
contradiction. Everyone had to be aware that at some stage—not too
distant—the Carthaginians would have to choose one course or the other
and stick to it. Even if a faction of doves did push the senate into seeking
terms, they could have got their way only with support from a majority of
senate and citizens: the same senate and citizens who equally supported
recalling the Barcid brothers. But though doves there surely were at Carthage
(Hanno the Great’s circle at least) they probably played little part in 203.
When the time to choose came later that year, the great majority chose war
and there is no evidence of opposition from any doves.
More likely the decision to seek peace-terms and simultaneously send for
Hannibal and Mago was pushed through by the same men: the battered but
still vigorous Barcid group of kinsmen and supporters, now probably
enlarged by ex-supporters of the fallen Hasdrubal, maybe led by the new
Punic field commander Hanno if this was Hannibal’s nephew, and in collabo-
ration with other bellicose senators. This coalition could command a majority
in the senate and its inner ‘sacred council’, and hold the support of the tri-
bunal of One Hundred and Four and of the citizen body generally. Hannibal
and his supporters thus had one last chance to restore Barcid dominance
enduringly—so long as they won the war or, at the very least, did not lose the
peace.1
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Seeking terms and simultaneously sending for the brothers now became
official decisions of the Carthaginian state, decreed by its senate and backed
by its citizens. The Romans could scarcely see them in any other light and the
Carthaginians never denied it. There was in other words an element of insin-
cerity, if not duplicity, built into the approach they made to Scipio. This
makes sense only as a calculated risk. The most that the Carthaginians could
now hope for from peace-terms was to keep Punic North Africa intact while
giving up everything else, and even this they could not count on. Far harsher
Roman demands were conceivable: not only a heavy indemnity but territorial
cessions, the destruction of the navy and the ports, even the surrender of
Carthage itself to Roman occupation like so many other cities in the war. The
only bargaining-chips left were Hannibal, Mago and their armies.
Yet for bargaining purposes the brothers were useless in Italy. The Romans
had their measure. That summer Mago was defeated and seriously wounded
in Cisalpine Gaul, putting an effective end to his expedition and making his
brother’s even more questionable. Plainly not even a new march on Rome
(even were it feasible, as Fabius Maximus reportedly feared) would deflect
Scipio in Africa. If things continued this way, the last three fading foci of
Punic power—Hannibal’s army, Mago’s, and Carthage itself—would merely
wither separately into ultimate surrender.
But if all three could join forces, there was still a chance of ending the war
on less than disastrous terms. The fighting spirit at Carthage would be re-
inforced, Scipio would face the risks of battle against the greatest general of
the age and might prefer to compromise on moderate terms, and if warfare
did drag on there might yet be pressure at Rome to end it on such terms.
There was, too, the possibility of Scipio being replaced by another comman-
der—who more than likely would be easier prey for Hannibal. From the
Carthaginians’ point of view it was not just sensible but even essential to
recall the Barcids at the same time as they sought peace, and what looked sen-
sible at Carthage cannot have looked otherwise in Bruttium.
It cannot be supposed that Hannibal was ignorant of the peace-talks that
now opened with Scipio, or disapproved of them. He may even have known
(from prisoners or traders, for instance) that by now, in the greatest irony of
the war, the Roman Senate was anxious to keep him and Mago in Italy and
had ordered the consuls to see to it, obviously to prevent the brothers from
complicating Scipio’s life. But it would take time to organize transport to
Africa and, if hostilities there were pressed meanwhile, his countrymen—
already suffering hunger under the Roman blockade—might yet be forced
into capitulation. Peace negotiations made military sense.
The same calculations would be obvious to Scipio. But he took a calculated
risk too: that if strong enough pressure was put on the Carthaginians before
the Barcid brothers could leave Italy, he could force a victorious end to the
war. It is much less likely that he wanted a pause merely so that Hannibal
could return and be defeated by him. Not
only was any battle’s outcome
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unpredictable, as Regulus had found in 255, but at least one consul in 203 was
keen to supplant him in Africa so as to win that glory for himself, and Scipio
had no guarantee that the next year’s pair would leave him alone either.
According to Livy, his trusted lieutenant Laelius in person made it clear to the
Senate that Scipio did not want Hannibal and Mago back in Africa until peace
was made: a comment distorted in Livy’s telling, as we shall see, but in itself
probable enough.
If peace was made the Barcids would still have to come home, of
course—but peaceably. Even after Zama, Scipio was uninterested in captur-
ing or humiliating Hannibal. Had lasting peace been made in 203, he would
no doubt have been satisfied with the brothers returning and entering civil
life and their armies being disbanded. In sum, an early peace was attractive
to him too, so long as it made the Romans’ victory clear. Thus both he and
the Carthaginians, for quite opposite reasons, had reason to press on with
talks.2
II
The talks were not lengthy. The thirty senators of the ‘sacred council’ went to
Scipio at Tunes and prostrated themselves Persian-style before him and his
war-council—quite possibly an exaggerated flattery for the Romans’ benefit,
since prostration is not otherwise known among Carthaginians and, a Poly-
bian excerpt reports, the envoys even kissed the Romans’ feet. This certainly
riveted the Romans’ attention.
According to Livy the envoys proceeded to lay all the blame for the war on
Hannibal and ask for fair terms. Polybius’ account does not survive but, in
seeming contrast, the later excerpt has a Roman spokesman remind the
Carthaginians that their envoys had accepted all the blame—obviously in the
name of the Punic state. Even so this does not disprove Livy’s report. Hanni-
bal was the elected generalissimo of the state, acting in its name and
sanctioned by senate and citizenry. Even if they sought to blame him for
devising the war, they could not deny that the republic had agreed to it (and
had told the Roman envoys so in 218). At worst Livy is guilty of focussing on
the envoys’ blame of Hannibal to the exclusion of any broader admission by
them. Roman historical tradition, moralizing and cantankerous towards foes,
