Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  MERCENARY REBEL IN SELEUCID ASIA

  Antiochus had something of a dilemma regarding Hannibal right from the beginning in 195. On the one hand, he wasn’t ready to engage the full might of Rome extending ever eastward, nor did he want to provoke a war and bring Rome on either his hereditary or claimed turf. But on the other hand, Antiochus might keep the Romans at bay if they knew Hannibal was his military advisor—a peerless trump card at his side.25 But Hannibal’s motives were to stymie Rome’s expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean. So the king’s ultimate relationship with Hannibal for several years was mostly at arm’s length, and his own military hierarchy surely resented Hannibal’s reputation and counsel both as a foreigner and as a daunting figure of legendary prowess who had commanded large multicultural armies for decades. Antiochus must have even wondered how content Hannibal would be in the limited role of an advisor. Possibly Antiochus himself was threatened by such an experienced general.

  When asked by Antiochus about his Seleucid army’s large and proudly outfitted soldiery, glittering with costly ornaments, a force that even outnumbered Rome’s, Hannibal seems to have also replied sarcastically, “Yes, it will suffice for the Romans, greedy as they are,” because he saw it as worthless and inefficient, and more as booty for the Romans than as an intimidating force.26 If true, such scorn was unlikely to endear him to Antiochus. Even his brief leadership moments were usually limited to naval battles against the more experienced navy of the island of Rhodes who were extremely adept at sea. Hannibal was often outmaneuvered, being out of his element as a land commander. He would have also been more easily exhausted by stressful battle conditions, as he was now almost sixty years old, an age when most experienced soldiers had retired or gone home to nurse their wounds in peace and quiet if possible.27 Hannibal’s time of glory had long passed, and he must have often wondered how badly Rome still wanted her old enemy out of the picture.

  When in 192 Antiochus had himself declared as the “true champion of Greek liberty” and the best mediator between Rome and the Aetolian league, Rome was incensed, “never accepting outside arbitrators” in its interstate disputes.28 Rome’s interpretation of the forces of Antiochus gathering in Greece and his intentions meant that war was inevitable. Decisive battles at sea—where Hannibal may have commanded a small fleet that was repelled—and on land culminated in 190–189 as overwhelming Roman victories. The terms of defeat were heavy against Antiochus: not only had he been forced to give up all claims to Greece but also to all of Asia Minor north and west of the Taurus Mountains. His indemnity was fifteen thousand Euboean silver talents, and he had to pay the war costs, but most germane here, he must turn over Hannibal to Rome as an enemy of the state. Antiochus was compelled to agree to the punitive terms.29

  Hannibal and Scipio met again briefly at some point in the Eastern Mediterranean, generally said to be Ephesus, although both time and venue are debated. Scipio was in Magnesia, a city on the Meander river near Ephesus in Ionia (now Turkey), in 190 with his brother Lucius and in the Roman war against Antiochus, but the time of the meeting between the two great warrior generals is often thought to be slightly earlier—at least around 192. The respect each had for the other did not stop Hannibal from denying Scipio what he sought as they discussed the greatest commanders of all time, a conversation repeated in different ancient sources.30

  Because both of them were steeped in the literature, Hannibal and Scipio knew the battle accounts well from the prior annals of war. When asked by a pensive Scipio to reflect, Hannibal said that Alexander was the greatest and Pyrrhus second, but Hannibal claimed the third spot for himself. Scipio asked, apparently gracefully, “What would you have said if I had not conquered you?” “In that case,” Hannibal replied, “I would not have ranked myself third but first.” Even then, Hannibal denied Scipio his place, but while it was a proud answer, it may have also had some element of jest. We hear of no further enmity between them at this time or ever again.

  Hannibal knew he had to flee again from the grasp of Rome’s lengthening reach after Rome humbled Antiochus.

  AN ANECDOTE ABOUT HANNIBAL TRICKERY IN CRETE

  There is a story repeated enough in antiquity to have some credibility that Hannibal fled from Syria to Crete after Rome demanded Hannibal from Antiochus. Several ancient sources record the event,31 and some historians regard most of the story as true.32 If so, Hannibal resided in some anonymity in lawless Crete, an island full of pirates and brigands and mostly out of reach of Rome at the time. Living in the Gortyna Valley in central Crete but not trusting the loose mores of locals, he made a show of depositing large clay jars for safekeeping in the Temple of Artemis. This was not an unusual practice, since many Hellenistic temples had a thesaurus (“treasury”) guarded by priests and their staff and protected somewhat modestly by a healthy respect for divine wrath and retribution. Such donations functioned mainly as semipermanent votives for celebrating the deity but could have other purposes, possibly including forms of collateral in private arrangement with the temple.33

  But here Hannibal showed his typical craftiness, if the story is true. His large clay jars—likely the common pithoi of Crete, which were very large storage vessels of fired clay capable of holding an adult human in size, but holding liquid or solid volume—were actually filled with scrap metal, possibly mostly lead, and only the top layer up to several hands’ depth, in case anyone searched, had mixed gold and silver, jewelry, ingots or coins, and the like. Instead, he placed his actual silver inside bronze sculptures at the house he rented. Since the ancient lost wax method ensured that such bronze statues were hollow, with heads seamed at the neck and arms fixed to shoulders where lead joints were painted with dark copper sulfide,34 no Cretans seemed to have guessed the trickery. Because his wealth could have put him in danger to the Cretans, one wonders if Hannibal, who was versed in Greek culture, knew Odysseus’ beguiling ancient Trojan Horse stratagem of Greeks bearing gifts and gifts bearing Greeks.

  When a Roman fleet eventually came under Quintus Fabius Labeo in 189, whether to impose law on Crete or looking for him, Hannibal disappeared again and took with him the bronze statues holding his secret treasure. If any of the possibly many dishonest Cretans had heard of Hannibal’s departure while leaving his wealth in the not-so-safe temple treasury and hoped to purloin some of it, they would surely have been surprised when the heavy clay pots were turned over to spill their disappointing lead contents. Even if the story might be a fiction, it is mostly in character with Hannibal’s cunning.

  MILITARY ADVISOR TO BITHYNIA’S KING

  Although it is uncertain exactly where and when he went after leaving Crete, Hannibal soon went east again, possibly again via Tyre. Since Antiochus was diminished and the Pergamenes were allies of Rome, Hannibal went much farther east and visited distant Armenia, where Rome’s sway was barely recognized. If the Greek historian and geographer Plutarch and the Greek historian Strabo are correct—Strabo describes a mountainous land so deep in violent snow that people had long poles that were also breathing tubes ready for avalanches—Hannibal seems to have been at the court of King Artaxias of Armenia, where he might have aided in planning a royal capital at the more salubrious Artaxata on a plain whose river surrounds and protects the city.35 Hannibal certainly would have been an expert in fortification and natural defenses.

  But whether the story of King Artaxias is true or not, we do know that by 186, Hannibal had become a military advisor to King Prusias of Bithynia in his ultimately unsuccessful bid of holding out against Rome’s ally Eumenes II of Pergamum. Prusias had even been courted by Rome, but the sticking point was a claim by both Pergamum and Bithynia to the territory of Mysia. Hannibal encouraged Bithynia’s resistance and reputedly even helped Prusias plan and build a new capital at hilly Prusa (Roman Brusa, modern Bursa) on the Sea of Marmara, as Pliny claims, with Hannibal administering the construction—more evidence of his expertise at organization and supervising defensive fortification.36

  HANNIBAL’S BIO
LOGICAL WARFARE

  Another Hannibal anecdote repeated by a few late ancient sources37 is likewise worthy of mention, whether accurate or not. While Hannibal was working on behalf of the embattled Prusias, King Eumenes II of Pergamum put a navy to sea that Hannibal was compelled to fight in the Sea of Marmara, although the Pergamum force was larger than his own fleet. The story relates that because Hannibal knew he was at a numerical disadvantage in ships, he devised a stratagem that worked marvelously—if also diabolically—and is often quoted, true or not, in modern thought to be one of the first recorded examples of biological warfare.38 Before the naval battle, Hannibal had his forces gather up as many vipers as they could find, loading them into baskets with loose cords that would release if dumped. Then when this superior fleet of Eumenes came alongside Hannibal’s ships to engage, all the baskets were thrown into the Pergamene ships—especially into the ranks of oarsmen.

  If they mocked at first what kind of weapons basketry made, the Pergamenes soon realized to their horror what had escaped and was slithering inside their boats. Abandoning any battle plan, some Pergamenes dove into the sea, and the rest tried to get to shore as quickly as possible to empty the vessels. Because the alarmed Pergamene navy fled in chaos and fear with Hannibal’s fleet in pursuit at the “double peril” (Justinus’ words) of venomous snakes plus armed enemies at sea, this gave Hannibal a brief moment of naval victory alongside a possible place in the early historic records of biological warfare. Nonetheless, even if this event did not happen as told with Hannibal as perpetrator, the testimony of antiquity confirms that this rain of serpents into ships was not only plausible but must have happened somewhere in the distant past, so why is it not possible given Hannibal’s ingenuity for military stratagems?

  FINAL BETRAYAL AT BITHYNIA

  While Hannibal worked for Bithynia’s king, he was certainly aware of Rome’s ever-encroaching moves toward dominating the East, readily apparent after Antiochus was forced to cede territory in Asia Minor. He also knew that while King Prusias could hold out against Pergamum by itself, Bithynia was no match for Pergamum plus Rome. Even though he had a role in making the new capital of Prusa safer against invasion, Hannibal understood that Prusias had no real loyalty to him as an exile, however gifted.

  By 183, Rome had persuaded King Prusias to give up his war with Pergamum and accept Roman hegemony. The Senate sent as its ambassador Titus Quinctius Flamininus. He was the same general who had defeated Philip V of Macedon: a Roman who was adept at handling Greeks and intrigue in the East; a rising star who was both ambitious and quick to climb the cursus honorum.39 But was this envoy really en route to capture Hannibal? King Prusias had been triply suspect in Rome’s eyes because he was married into the family of Philip V of Macedon,40 had fought Rome’s ally Pergamum, and because he had given refuge to Hannibal.

  Hannibal was alert to the great risk of this Roman visit under whatever guise of diplomatic subtlety. Being an exile for twenty years had raised and fine-tuned his antennae for such a threat. Prusias betrayed Hannibal, whether because Flamininus persuaded Prusias—angrily, according to Plutarch—that Hannibal was the “most dangerous of all living men to Rome” or because Prusias tried to curry favor with Rome by taking Hannibal into custody in a preemptive strike.41 Regardless of which incentive is true or even some possible combination of both, Prusias decided to turn Hannibal over to Rome.

  HANNIBAL’S DEATH

  Hannibal’s servant reported that Bithynian soldiers were stationed at the main entrances to Hannibal’s stronghold in the town of Libyssa (near modern Gebze) on the Bithynian peninsula. Hannibal had every secret exit and bolt-hole checked: an armed soldier was indeed waiting at every exit. Hannibal refused to be taken alive. Because he was prepared as always, he took the fatal poison he always had on his person and ended his own life, denying Flamininus what even Scipio had not demanded. At least one late Roman writer claimed Hannibal had a ring he always wore, and that under its gem he had poison stored for just this moment when it finally arrived as he long expected.42 A few centuries later, Pliny claimed that nothing was left of Libyssa in his day except Hannibal’s tomb,43 but it is conjectural whether there ever was an actual monument there.

  For once, Livy offers—in concert with Plutarch—a sad semblance of dignity to the last moments of Hannibal, claiming a breach of faith by King Prusias, an ironic inversion of the “fides Punica” (Punic trust, i.e., treachery) against Rome in his dying breath.44 Even most Roman writers praise Scipio for restraint the ambitious Flamininus lacked; that Scipio’s clemency and magnanimity contrasted with Flamininus’ vindictiveness. Cornelius Nepos said that Hannibal’s death was the end of the bravest of men.45 Hannibal was around sixty-four years old in 183 when he took the poison. Rome’s greatest enemy and her greatest fear was no more.

  Twenty-four

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  HANNIBAL’S LEGACY

  Not all Romans were like Livy in trying to undermine Hannibal’s achievements, especially those who saw Rome’s last days of fading glory, when its territories were shrinking. Possibly because of Rome’s wane, the late Roman author P. Flavius Vegetius (circa 400–450 CE) looked back on Roman military history with an apparent modicum of humility. He singled out military discipline as explaining Rome’s eventual greatness, an outcome not guaranteed in the initial contests with their neighbors:

  Victory in war does not depend entirely upon numbers or mere courage; only skill and discipline will insure it. We find that the Romans owed the conquest of the world to no other cause than continual military training, exact observance of discipline in their camps, and unwearied cultivation of the other arts of war. Without these, what chance would the inconsiderable numbers of the Roman armies have had against the multitudes of the Gauls? Or with what success would their small size have been opposed to the prodigious stature of the Germans? The Spaniards surpassed us not only in numbers, but also in physical strength. We were always inferior to the Africans in wealth and unequal to them in deception and stratagem.1

  Careful not to mention him, Vegetius is clearly referencing Hannibal in his description of African deception and stratagem, both of which practices in war were so often shunned in writing (especially Livy) as unmanly or un-Roman. This denial continued even when brilliant generals such as Scipio and Caesar excelled at tricks and traps, both following Hannibal as the master tactical teacher of such devices that our militaries now embrace as necessary psy-ops.

  SCIPIO’S PARALLEL EXILE

  Some of the greatest ironies surrounding Hannibal’s last years and his growing legacy were not lost on his contemporaries, especially how he was as feared by enemies in his own motherland who knew his leadership could challenge theirs and effect change that would not be in their interests. Even Scipio experienced exile after not being fully appreciated by Rome. After rumors of embezzlement and false charges of bribery in the East, he retired to his estate above Naples at Liternum near Cumae in Campania, long before he should have been forced out of Rome’s circles of power in the Senate. Scipio died in exile the same year as Hannibal, in 183, and Valerius Maximus much later gives this as his putative bitter epitaph: “Ungrateful fatherland, you will not even possess my bones.”2 The striking parallel to Hannibal in Rome’s cavalier treatment of its best general reminds how threatened lesser minds too often deal with originality and brilliance not so easily controlled or subverted.

  OTHER ROMAN VOICES ON HANNIBAL

  Livy is the most virulent voice against Hannibal, especially accusing him of almost criminal cruelty, among other vices. But Livy was not alone in demonizing Hannibal. Seneca too makes Hannibal the paragon of cruelty and inhumanity (Latin crudelitas), delighting in bloodshed as he supposedly exclaimed, “What a beautiful spectacle” when seeing a vast ditch full of blood.3 Horace and Juvenal4 used “dire” (Latin dirus) as a stock adjective meaning “dreadful, terrifying, abominable” to describe Hannibal. Ovid also uses multiple examples of Perfidious Phoenicia in reference to Rome’s often repeated refrain o
f alluding Hannibal’s “untrustworthiness”5 in treaties as well as serving up judgment on how many tricks he used in tactics. As one scholar points out, the “whole question of fides (faithlessness) was a Roman obsession here imposed on the Carthaginians.”6

  In his life of Flamininus, Plutarch too uses the epithet of “terrifying,” one who caused great fear ( phoberòn in Greek) to describe Hannibal and one not easily deceived in his life of Fabius and inversely full of ambushes and stratagems himself in his life of Marcellus.7 Diodorus Siculus paints the “savage cruelty” of Hannibal in his telling of how he pitted captive family members against one another in single combat fights to the death and how cavalierly he slaughtered twenty thousand men who did not want to accompany him back to Africa, along with three thousand horses and countless pack animals he did not want to fall into Roman hands and in an “excess of anger” also slaughtered four thousand Numidian cavalry who deserted.8 Dio Cassius details how Hannibal deliberately plowed Cannae to stir up dust for the wind to blow in the Roman army’s faces and threw slain Roman scouting parties into the Aufidus stream to spoil Roman drinking water.9 Even Polybius mentions the awful suggestion of H. Monomachos, a counselor in Hannibal’s circle, that he teach his troops to employ cannibalism of their dead comrades to avoid starvation, as mentioned here in the chapters on his Alpine passage, although Polybius asserts that Hannibal rejected such an atrocity as bad advice.10 Overall, how many of these accumulated stories are true or embellished from primary sources such as Polybius is difficult to gauge, but historian Brizzi suggests the many corroborating Roman accounts of Hannibal’s atrocities lead to a sufficient truth,11 that where there is smoke there is fire.