by Dexter Hoyos
the war. Nor was he prosecuted for his conduct of the war or his defeat at
Zama—hallowed though such vengefulness was by Punic tradition, and
though Hasdrubal son of Gisco had only recently been driven to suicide
even without indictment. Dio to be sure claims there was a prosecution and
acquittal (on charges of not taking Rome and of keeping booty for himself)
but not even Nepos knows anything of that.
In fact it is worth noting that, to judge from our sources, no one at
Carthage this time cast the blame for the war on their old leader. The 30
envoys who supplicated Scipio after Zama did not; neither did the envoys
sent to Rome with the terms he imposed, even though they were ‘by far the
first men in the state’ and included—no doubt a politic gesture—Hasdrubal
the Kid. The nearest even he gets in Livy to accusing the general is not in the
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speech to the Senate which Livy then gives him, but in a separate earlier com-
ment blaming the war on ‘the greed of a few men’. No doubt this means the
Barcids and their friends: but it is a strangely muted and undeveloped dictum,
and thus all the more interesting if genuine. Appian, who makes The Kid one
of the envoys to Scipio at Tunes earlier, there gives him an even more rhetor-
ical oration (very reminiscent of Livy’s) which is equally silent about the last
of the Barcids.8
It would be unwarranted to assume that the advent of peace meant the
advent to power of Hasdrubal the Kid and Hanno the Great (who may still
have been alive, though surely not for much longer). As we have seen, even
late in 203 majority opinion at Carthage had been not defeatist but bellicose,
and even after Zama not all the Mighty Ones were ready to hear of peace.
Whatever interests now predominated, they pretty clearly were not con-
cerned to mount a persecution of Hannibal or associates of his.9
One obvious deterrent would be if he did continue as general and com-
manded troops. But this cannot have been the sole factor. Had powerful
elements at Carthage really wanted to attack him they could have enlisted
Roman help, as his enemies were eventually to do. For instance, in 200 there
arrived the Roman embassy to complain about Hamilcar the renegade in
Cisalpina and also that not all Roman deserters had been surrendered as the
peace treaty required; it visited Masinissa too, to wheedle a contingent of cav-
alry from him to serve in the Romans’ new war with Philip V. The
Carthaginians did their best to mollify the envoys and furthermore sent huge
gifts of grain to Rome and to the legions operating in Macedonia. But noth-
ing was said on either side about Hannibal.
III
The state of politics at Carthage from 201 on can only be surmised, but not
randomly. As suggested earlier, until Zama Hannibal and his supporters had
maintained a tenuous ascendancy. But by 195, as Livy tells it, the ordo
iudicum—probably the tribunal of One Hundred and Four resurgent—was
dominant, though there was plenty of resentment against it. The all too likely
shipwreck of the Barcid ascendancy after 202 would allow the ‘judges’ to
complete a process which (again as suggested earlier) had begun in the
middle years of the war as Barcid fortunes waned.
Livy portrays the ‘judges’ lording it over the rest in serried solidarity, all for
one and one for all. ‘Everyone’s possessions, reputation and lives lay under
their authority; antagonizing a single one made enemies of them all and a
prosecutor was sure to lay a charge before hostile judges.’ Making allowance
for some exaggeration (his account is very much on Hannibal’s side) we infer
that they were once again enjoying the primacy that Aristotle had attested a
century and a half earlier. They were, after all, members too of the Mighty
Ones, and if Hasdrubal in the 220s had broadened their judicial rôle that
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would add still further to their status and influence—especially once the
dominant hand of a Barcid generalissimo was withdrawn.
Many if not most of the Hundred and Four in 196 must have joined the
tribunal during the years of Barcid ascendancy. Some indeed would be Barcid
kinsmen. So Livy’s insistence on their total solidarity is probably not literally
true, but on the other hand the ties that had bound most of them to the Bar-
cids in the days of military glamour and success would have lost their
strength by 201. Instead we could expect to find leading individuals and their
supporters vying for office and influence, as in pre-Barcid times: including
men who had previously been in the Barcid bloc or allied with it (like the late
Hasdrubal son of Gisco).
Two factors perhaps limited the intensity of postwar competition among
them and encouraged a measure of solidarity. First, it was important to keep
Hannibal and his remaining supporters from recovering political dominance.
The Barcids might be down but were hardly out: not only was Hannibal
elected a popular sufete for 196 but, even after he was forced into exile, a
‘Barcid faction’ (in Livy’s phrase) continued to exist for some years at least,
and in 193 its absent leader still believed it able to regain control. Enemies—
and former friends—could not afford too luxuriant a level of competitiveness
among themselves after 201 if that gave Hannibal the chance to build a new
coalition. He could be tolerated as an eminent figure, but nothing more.
Second, the proliferation of abuses in public finance that Livy sketches, some
no doubt dating back to the war-years, would prompt mutual support because
the abuses benefited the ‘judges’ as a class (or order) while the rest of the citi-
zenry in effect footed the bill. The last thing desirable was someone
promoting any programme of reform, however modest.10
Not that the tribunal itself gained new legal powers. All the other institu-
tions of government continued: the Mighty Ones, the various magistracies,
and presumably the pentarchies or Boards of Five. The supremacy of the
One Hundred and Four was political and social, as Livy’s terminology
implies: it was the ordo of judges that dominated, and exerted dominance
through control of the courts and, likely enough, the senate. Critics were
harassed, or worse, through vexatious and biased prosecutions; but not it
seems struck down by arbitrary executive fiat, far less by extralegal violence.
In turn, the siphoning-off of state revenues and other forms of corrup-
tion would most readily be carried on by holding magistracies, belonging to
pentarchies if these still existed, and the like. Aristotle had noted that a
Carthaginian could hold more than one office at the same time, and this fea-
ture the ‘judges’ (like Carthaginian aristocrats of earlier eras) surely made the
most of. Nor of course need the abuses have started only from 201. During
the war-years opportunities for graft of every kind would have been exten-
sive—not only direct theft of state funds but also bribery, corrupt public
contracts and other profiteering. And it would be overoptimistic to s
uppose
that the Barcids and their supporters had kept their own hands clean; or that
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Barcid leaders at Carthage, concerned to maintain an increasingly fragile
political ascendancy, had always been zealous about cracking down on abuses
and abusers.11
In 199 the 200-talent payment of the war-indemnity caused a scandal at
Rome because the sum, supplied in silver coin, turned out on testing to be 25
per cent short thanks to the presence of base metal. To make up the shortfall
the Carthaginian envoys had to borrow money on the Roman market: to
some, a vivid example of how impoverished the Punic state had become
thanks to the ravages of war. But while it is true that silver coins had been
badly debased during the war, falling sometimes to under 20 per cent pure,
peculation of public monies is a likelier cause of the shoddy coins of 199.
Not only were the new indemnity instalments smaller than those set in 241
but the Romans had found no reason to complain of the payment or pay-
ments in 201 (the compensation for the plundered supply-ships and, if this
was paid then, the initial indemnity instalment). By 196, on the other hand,
embezzlement of public funds was an open scandal.12
Besides, some economic recovery was already under way in Punic Africa,
and that should have made payment in relatively sound coin more practica-
ble. The Carthaginians, in a rather pathetic effort to show their goodwill the
year after peace was made, had made large gifts of wheat (400,000 modii in all)
to the city of Rome and the Roman armies operating in the Balkans. Possibly
enough, given postwar conditions, they put themselves out to make the gift
sizeable—though on later occasions far larger quantities would be given—
but it was a noteworthy gesture of reviving productivity. Trade recovered, for
Spain was still a market even if lost as a province, while dealings with Sicily
and Italy soon revived too, as finds of Punic pottery there show, plus sizeable
quantities of early second-century Campanian ware in Punic Africa. Plautus’
comedy Poenulus, probably of the 190s, treats the ordinary Carthaginian mer-
chant as a standard visitor to trading cities, an agreeably amusing figure with
his distinctive habits of dress and speech. All this adds to the likelihood that
the debased coins of 199 were chiefly not due to a struggling economy but
rather to corrupt administrators.13
If the return of some prosperity benefited mainly the highest level of the
Carthaginian community, and inevitably the ordo of judges in particular, dis-
content was likely to simmer among other citizens. Not just among the Punic
poor but among others—landowners and merchants—in between as well,
including at least some of the less exalted aristocracy. By 196, Livy reports,
both carelessness with state revenues, and some leading men’s direct pecula-
tion, had reduced these to a level that made it impossible to pay the Romans
their indemnity. This would help to explain the sort of reforms Hannibal was
to enact: he opened the ranks of the One Hundred and Four to yearly elec-
tion, and struck at financial corruption to avert a foreshadowed new tax on
all citizens, ensure that the state received all its due revenues, and pay the
indemnity.
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It is rather surprising that so soon after the most disastrous war in Punic
history the ruling élite, or some of them, should misbehave so crassly. Livy
no doubt exaggerates for dramatic effect how thoroughgoing the oligarchy’s
arrogance and solidarity were (his depiction may go back to a pro-Hannibalic
witness like Silenus or Sosylus) but Hannibal’s attested reforms confirm that
serious flaws did exist and did arouse serious discontent. One cause of lead-
ing men’s unprincipled attitude to public funds may well have been the
damage to countryside and infrastructure inflicted, first, by the many Roman
war-raids on North Africa, then—and probably much worse—by Scipio’s
ruthless and wide-ranging harryings from 204 to 202. It is worth noting that
one of the concessions he offered for the armistice after Zama was an instant
stop to devastation. Of course everyone in the Romans’ way had suffered,
but only the economically and politically weighty were in a position to take
early steps to recover.
A further factor was doubtless the passing of Barcid dominance itself. The
‘judges’ may have fostered solidarity in exploiting their financial opportuni-
ties and repressing their critics, but that would hardly inhibit competitiveness
among leading men for office and eminence—and competitiveness would,
almost predictably, reach new heights once the overall control of a dominant
group and leader had crumbled. At Carthage, as Aristotle had stressed and
Polybius would reiterate, money played a crucial political rôle and bribery was
a norm. The Barcids had exploited this ancient tradition, with decades of
Spanish treasure to draw on. Political competitors after 201 had to fall back
on other, more domestic sources. If Hannibal and his remaining supporters
were seen as less tainted than rival groups, his own aversion to such methods
may well have been only one reason: another might simply be that before
196, thanks to widespread aristocratic opposition, his circle was less success-
ful in winning office with its accompanying opportunities.14
IV
Hannibal kept out of public life after giving up the generalship. He may have
felt out of place and unpractised in civilian life after a virtual lifetime in mili-
tary and administrative command (as his words to the senate had implied
after silencing Gisco). Nor had he as wide a network of kinsmen and friends
as 20, or even ten, years before. Some had died—his own brothers would not
be the sole relatives lost—and some would turn their backs on a defeated
semi-stranger, however worldwide his fame.
It would be instructive to know what became of notable wartime hench-
men and subordinates like his nephew Hanno (last heard of as following the
son of Gisco in the African command, if this was indeed his nephew), Han-
nibal’s own friend Mago the Samnite who had operated in south Italy as late
as 208, Maharbal the cavalry commander (last heard of in 216), Bomilcar the
admiral, the cruel Hannibal Monomachus, and the energetic half-Greek
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Epicydes who after the wreck of his and his brother’s Syracusan venture had
got away to Carthage. Several no doubt survived the war and it is unlikely
they were attacked when their old general was not, but if they associated with
him they quite probably were sidelined politically. Politics, though, may not
have appealed to them all; while some conceivably enough found it more
comfortable to fall in with one faction or other among the ‘judges’ and enjoy
the benefits resulting. Certainly when Hannibal re-emerged into public life—
and afterwards when he left for exile—no friend or relative, or wartime
lieutenant, is mentioned along with him.
The scandal of the fla
wed indemnity in 199 did not draw him back into
public life. Taking efficient charge of Barcid property in Africa, all that was
left to the family now that Spain was lost, would demand much time espe-
cially in the first years of peace. So would his duties as head of what
remained of the family. Nor can we simply take it for granted that the extent
of public corruption and maladministration drew his ire from the start. For
one thing, as suggested above, this situation may have worsened significantly
only after the return of peace; for another, Hannibal himself (on the evi-
dence of people who knew him) appreciated the value of money and the
importance of acquiring it, therefore need not automatically have looked
askance at other aristocrats doing so until they caused a serious problem; and
for a third, with his faction in its weakened postwar state he may well have
had more interest, at first anyway, in trying to build alliances with past sup-
porters and with newcomers to politics, rather than confronting practically all
vested interests straightaway.15
V
Over four or five years, however, things plainly changed. His first move on
taking office as sufete was to initiate a clash with the ordo iudicum, and on win-
ning this he turned to reform of the state finances. These were in such a mess
that by 197 it was hard to raise even the funds to pay the all-important war-
indemnity—and the only solution the authorities could think of was to
impose a levy on all citizens. The Carthaginians as a whole, in other words,
were going to be made to subsidize the misbehaviour of the currently ruling
factions.
This no doubt brought discontent to a head and gave Hannibal his open-
ing. Likely enough he himself felt the abuses had gone too far by now,
especially if they threatened to jeopardize relations with the Romans. The
renegade officer Hamilcar had continued stirring up trouble for them in
Cisalpina (he was at length suppressed only in 197), which was bad enough.
Worse, a dispute had arisen with Masinissa. We are not told what it was, only
that when Roman envoys came to Carthage in 195 on their anti-Hannibal
mission their pretended brief was ‘to settle the disputes that the Carthagini-
ans were having’ with the king. Since all later disputes with him were over his
