Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  Finally, last but not least, I can never thank enough my most patient editor at Simon & Schuster, Bob Bender, Vice President and Executive Editor, who endured my absences over a decade of archaeological field seasons as this book evolved and whose encouragement has sustained years of research and writing. I also thank Johanna Li, Associate Editor, always efficient but also amazingly sensitive to nuance; Phil Metcalf, Associate Director of Copyediting and a most careful proofreader; and their publishing team. All errors in this book that have escaped attention are my own; if they are interpretive only, perhaps time will settle some debates even as it may leave others unsolved. My family has been most supportive even during fieldwork absences and late nights poring over details, especially my wife, Pamela, whose gentle exhortations will never be repaid or forgotten. To all these, my many debts are obvious while they have enriched my life in uncountable ways.

  Stanford, 2017

  * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © BEATRICE HUNT

  Patrick N. Hunt holds a PhD in archaeology from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, University of London, and is an archaeologist, historian, and biographer who has taught humanities, archaeology, mythology, and the arts at Stanford University since 1993. He was director of the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project from 1994 to 2012, and subsequently directed the Hannibal Expedition in the Alps from 2013 to 2016. In 2007 and 2008 his Hannibal Expedition was sponsored by the National Geographic Society’s Expedition Council, and he often speaks at National Geographic-sponsored events.

  A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Hunt has been a featured scholar on documentaries for National Geographic Explorer and Nova on PBS and in BBC Radio and Reuters News broadcasts. Articles about his Hannibal research have appeared in National Geographic, Archaeology, and Earth magazines, among others. He has walked every major Hannibal battlefield and tracked Hannibal from Carthage through Spain, France, Italy, and Turkey. He is also a National Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America and an Expert for National Geographic Expeditions.

  VISIT THE AUTHOR AT WWW.PATRICKHUNT.NET

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Patrick-N-Hunt

  ALSO BY PATRICK N. HUNT

  Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History

  When Empires Clash: Twelve Great Battles in Antiquity

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  * * *

  NOTES

  ONE: THE VOW

  1. We do not know if this story about Hannibal under his father’s chair is true. Our best source is Valerius Maximus (first century CE), in his Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium (Memorable Deeds and Words), bk. 9, 3.2. Here Valerius mentions four sons of Hamilcar, but most historians acknowledge only three: Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago. In any case, Hannibal appears to be the eldest male sibling.

  2. Patrick Hunt, “The Locus of Carthage: Compounding Geographical Logic,” African Archaeology Review 26, no. 2 (2009): 137–54.

  3. Commentaries on the Aeneid by Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) tell a different story about the founding of Carthage. Romans tell of a family feud in which one brother king of Tyre was murdered by another brother. The widow queen, known as Elissa or Dido, fled with her loyal Tyrians and founded Carthage. The grudging local African chiefs gave nominal permission to the Phoenician exiles, telling them they could have as much land as a bursa, or “ox hide,” could measure. Dido’s clever counselors capitalized on this stingy land permit by “treacherously” cutting the hide into one long strip, enough to measure out the territory for a whole citadel. It is more historically likely that the original seafaring Phoenicians found this location with its deep bay and a potential ideal harbor to be the perfect stepping-stone from Africa across to Italy by way of Sicily, opening new trading colonies and markets beyond.

  4. Dexter Hoyos. Hannibal’s Dynasty: Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean, 247–183 BC (London: Routledge, 2003), 21.

  5. The Atlas Mountains were then fairly heavily forested (note Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 248–49, “pine-wreathed head” Atlantis, cinctum . . . piniferum caput), but they have been much deforested since the late Roman Empire. Whole cities such as Hippo, Hadrametum, Sabratha, and Leptis Magna were later gradually abandoned as alluvial silt from the deforested Atlas slopes clogged the rivers. The waterways eventually stopped flowing when rainfall mostly ceased in the long subsequent Saharization of North Africa; most likely partly anthropogenic, or human influenced, by a combination of overpopulation and deforestation. Again see Hunt, “Locus of Carthage,” 137–54, esp. 142 and the following pages (ff.).

  6. Raymond Chevallier, review of Hannibal, by G.C. Picard, L’Antiquité Classique 36, no. 2 (1967): 730–33, esp. 730.

  7. M. E. Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1–5, 6–11ff.

  8. Serge Lancel, Hannibal, trans. Antonia Nevill (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 23.

  9. Polybius, The Histories, trans. W. R. Paton, bk. 3, 10.4.

  10. Aaron Brody, “From the Hills of Adonis Through the Pillars of Hercules: Recent Advances in the Archaeology of Canaan and Phoenicia,” Near Eastern Archaeology 65, no. 1 (2002): 69–80, esp. 76.

  11. This needs further study. See F. Brown, S. F. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 1075; H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1761.

  12. Phoenician and Punic religions are very complicated. Interpretations are contentious regarding what happened in normative Phoenician and Punic sacrifice. See Richard Clifford, “Phoenician Religion,” Bulletin of the American Society of Oriental Religion 279 (1990): 55–64. On the tophet at Carthage, see Lawrence E. Stager, “The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage,” in New Light on Ancient Carthage, ed. John Griffiths Pedley (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 1–11; Stager, “A View from the Tophet,” in Phönizier im Westen, ed. H. G. Niemeyer (Mainz, Ger.: Philip von Zabern, 1982), 155–66; Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage: Religious Rite or Population Control?,” Biblical Archaeology Review 10 (1984): 30–51; Patricia Smith and Gal Avishai, “The Use of Dental Criteria for Estimating Postnatal Survival in Skeletal Remains of Infants,” Journal of Archaeological Science 32, no. 1 (2005): 83–89.

  Diodorus Siculus (first century BC) also wrote in his Library of History (Bibliotheca Historia), bk. 20, 6–7, a contentious passage about human sacrifice that has usually been deemed Roman propaganda but seems credible nonetheless. On the other side, among those who argue against Lawrence Stager and Joseph Greene and the interpretation of Carthaginian child sacrifice are credible Italian and Tunisian archaeologists and historians such as Sabatino Moscati, M’hamed-Hassine Fantar, and Piero Bartoloni, and most recently Jeffrey Schwartz. It is understandable that Tunisians and Italians who might consider their ancestry to be of mixed Punic descent would challenge any idea that such sacrifice was normative or even occasionally casual. Instead, the counterargument maintains that these child bones are merely a children’s cemetery and may reflect high infant mortality or disease. With almost seven centuries of accumulated stratigraphic evidence piled up layer after layer, and more than three thousand votive urns (that is, offered with vows) containing infant and animal human remains excavated in 10 percent of the total possible tophet in Carthage, Stager’s premise that it was infant human sacrifice is bolstere
d by the presence of animal remains mixed in some urns and votive inscriptions to deities such as Tanit and Baal. Furthermore, Carthage is not the sole location of a tophet; other Punic tophets can be found at Motya in Sicily as well as Sousse in Tunisia, and Tharros, Sulcis, and Monte Sirai in Sardinia. One primary question is whether this was a normative practice or merely occasional; perhaps the even more important question is whether this was truly sacrificial or merely a sacral deposit of stillborn at the earliest age or already dead children at a more advanced age.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 11.5–8; repeated in Livy, The History of Rome, and Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, among others.

  14. Polybius, Histories, bk. 2, 1.6.

  TWO: YOUNG HANNIBAL

  1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 9.6, specifically the “wrath” (thumós) of Hamilcar.

  2. Giovanni Brizzi, “L’armée et la guerre,” in La civilization phénicienne et punique: Manuel de recherche, ed. V. Krings, Handbuch der Orientalistik, sec. 1: Near and Middle East, vol. 20 (Leiden, Neth.: E. J. Brill, 1995), 303–15, esp. 303 and 304–6.

  3. J. S. Richardson, “The Spanish Mines and the Development of Provincial Taxation in the Second Century BC,” Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976): 139–52.

  4. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, From Saguntum to the Trebia, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, 10.

  5. Cassius Dio, fragment 46. This story is not attested anywhere else and seems dubious.

  6. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 25, 10.3–4; Polybius, Histories, bk. 2, 1.8; Cornelius Nepos, Hamilcar 4.2; Lancel, Hannibal, 37, dismisses the tale of Appian of Alexandria (Roman History: Iberia 5) as too fantastic a death, where circling wagons were set afire by Celtiberians, and Hamilcar perished inside the flaming circle.

  THREE: SPAIN

  1. Brizzi, “L’armée et la guerre,” 303–4ff.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 8.1–9.5.

  3. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 24, 41.7.

  4. Ibid., bk. 21, 4 (translation mine).

  5. Richard Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (New York: Viking, 2011), 263–64.

  6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 1, 68.6; Lancel, Hannibal, 12–19.

  7. Ora Negbi, “Early Phoenician Presence in the Mediterranean Islands: A Reappraisal,” American Journal of Archaeology 96, no. 4 (October 1992): 601.

  8. Roger Collins, Spain: Oxford Archaeological Guide (New York: Oxford University Press), 1998, 13, 100, 104–6.

  9. R. F. Glover, “The Tactical Handling of the Elephant,” Greece & Rome 17, no. 49 (1948): 1–11; F. E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957, esp. chap. 4, “Cavalary, Elephants, and Siegecraft”), 47–63.

  10. Vicki Constantine Croke, Elephant Company (New York: Random House, 2014, chap. 26, “The Elephant Stairway”), 269–77. Regarding elephants and mountains, here is excellent corroboration about how Asian elephants can climb very narrow paths on steep cliffs in mountains step by step, recounted from a trek experience in World War II in Burma, while noting Hannibal’s difficult mountain experience as precedent.

  FOUR: SAGUNTUM

  1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.1.

  2. Brian Caven, The Punic Wars (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), 88–99; Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (London: Cassell, 2000), 144, notes that Saguntum should have been included or mentioned in the Ebro declaration if the link was strong at that time (226 BCE).

  3. Ernle Bradford, Hannibal, reprint (repr.) (London: Folio Society, 1998), 26.

  4. Lancel, Hannibal, 47.

  5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 17.5–7.

  6. John F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War (Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips, 1978), 25.

  7. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.4.

  8. Paul Erdkamp. “Polybius, the Ebro Treaty and the Gallic Invasion of 225 BCE,” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 495–510, esp. 508.

  9. Thomas F. Madden, Empires of Trust: How Rome Built—and America Is Building—a New World (New York: Penguin, 2008). In pers. comm. (2008), this author has corresponded with Madden about this as he raises this issue from his thesis onward: that Rome’s late republic and eventual empire were built on trust, and Saguntum was the first breach of trust that needed such a huge repair as to forever become policy.

  10. Silius Italicus, Punica, bk. 1, 350–64.

  11. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 30.3.

  12. Klaus Zimmerman, “Roman Strategy and Aims in the Second Punic War,” chap. 16 in A Companion to the Punic Wars, ed. Dexter Hoyos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 280–98, esp. 281–82.

  13. Lancel, Hannibal, 54.

  FIVE: OVER THE PYRENEES

  1. For his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE, Xerxes had an army that Herodotus claims was over 2 million people, which is most unlikely, regardless of how many were mercenaries or even slaves pressed into battle. For the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE, Arrian claims 600,000 soldiers in the Persian army, which is generally considered implausible, and even his 10,000 Greek mercenaries seems small. Diodorus Siculus claims 400,000 soldiers for Darius III, and Quintus Curtius Rufus claims 250,000 soldiers for Darius III. See, by way of comparison, Donald Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Peter Green. Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 B.C, repr., A Historical Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; John Warry. Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilisations of Greece and Rome (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 1995.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 40.2.

  3. Patrick Hunt. “Ebro River,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 2259–60.

  4. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 35.2.

  5. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 23.4–6.

  6. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 43.14–16.

  7. Ibid., 44.4–9.

  8. Ibid., 40.7–8.

  9. Francis Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services: The Ancient Near East, Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Arab Muslim Empires, the Mongol Empire, China, Muscovy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974), esp. chaps. 3–5 on the ancient classical world. Dvornik relates some of the Greek and Roman types of spycraft; also see Chester G. Starr, “Political Intelligence in Classical Greece,” supplement (supp.) 31, Mnemosyne: A Journal of Classical Studies (1974); N. J. E. Austin and N. B. Rankov, Exploration: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople (London: Routledge, 1995), esp. 10, 13, 35, 53, 60, 63, 90–91.

  10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 34.2 and 48.1–4.

  11. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, The Disaster of Cannae, 33.1. Note the recommendation that spies live in dense urban environments where they can mingle in crowds undetected. Anon. Strat. 42.7 quoted in J. A. Richmond, “Spies in Ancient Greece,” Greece & Rome 45, no. 1 (April 1998): 6.

  12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22.1; Richard Gabriel, Hannibal: The Military Biography of Rome’s Greatest Enemy (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011), 239n36.

  SIX: CROSSING THE RHÔNE

  1. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 42.1.

  2. Ibid., 42.2–4.

  3. Dexter Hoyos, Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 109, makes the relevant point that the Volcae were aware of the advancing Roman army and left the field to allow the two intruder armies to fight it out to the reduction of both without any further loss to themselves.

  4. S. O’Bryhim, “Hannibal’s Elephants and the Crossing of the Rhone,” Classical Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1991): 121–25.

  5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 44.5.

  6. Ibid., 45.1–4.

  7. Ibid., 49.1.

  8. Hoyos, Hannibal: Rome’s Greatest Enemy, 109.

  SEVEN: GAT
EWAY TO THE ALPS

  1. Livy, History of Rome, 21, 31.9. Most reputable and serious philologists competent in Greek and Latin (Walbank) and philologists-archaeologists (Lancel) dispute Livy on this matter regarding Hannibal’s route. Livy, in obvious confusion—“veered now to the left (ad laevam),” as if he now turned west—and then has Hannibal return to the Durance River watershed through other montane passes to the southeast after traveling north. Walbank, as the preeminent modern Polybius historian, and Lancel, as a classical archaeologist of the first order—who was also more familiar because he lived long term in this region—refute Gavin de Beer’s arguments on this geography. See Lancel, Hannibal, 74–76, and Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass,” 37–45, and Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), which maintain that de Beer was utterly mistaken because he was not trained as a classical philologist and makes untenable linguistic claims. Again, see Walbank, “Hannibal’s Pass” and Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World, 24, 164–68ff.

  2. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.6.

  3. Lancel, Hannibal, 74.

  4. Jean-Pascal Jospin, “Grenoble de Cularo à Gratianopolis,” in Atlas culturel des Alpes occidentales, ed. C. Jourdain-Annequin (Paris: Picard, 2004), 128–29; Jospin, Allobroges, Gaulois et Romains des Alpes.

  5. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.5.

  6. Hunt, “Rhône,” 5843–44.

  7. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.10–11.

  8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 49.7.