Hannibal

by Patrick N Hunt

  4. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28; Final Conquest in Spain, 46.16.

  5. Polybius, Histories, trans. Paton, bk. 3, 33.18. Polybius writes, “The fact is that I found on the Lacinian promontory a bronze tablet on which Hannibal himself had made out these lists during the time he was in Italy, and thinking this a first-rate authority, decided to follow the document.”

  6. Lancel, Hannibal, 157.

  7. Mary K. Jaeger, “Livy, Hannibal’s Monument and the Temple of Juno Lacinia at Croton,” Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA) 136 (2006): 389–414, esp. 390; others call Livy’s text here a “caesura” (390n3).

  8. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 12.

  9. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 21.2.

  10. Lancel, Hannibal, 150.

  11. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, 58.

  12. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 27, 13.

  13. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 22.3.

  14. Polybius, Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield, notes Brian McGing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xiv.

  15. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 24.3.

  16. Lancel, Hannibal, 150.

  17. Polybius, Histories, bk. 11, 25–33.

  18. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 16.

  19. Lancel, Hannibal, 159.

  20. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 18. Livy says the two generals did this to please Syphax.

  21. Ibid., 18.9.

  22. Richard A. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus: Rome’s Greatest General (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008), 139.

  23. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 38.

  24. Lancel, Hannibal, 161.

  25. Polybius, Histories, bk. 10, 5.6.

  26. Andrew W. Lintott, “Electoral Bribery in the Roman Republic,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 1–16, esp. 4, using the word ambitus in relation to electoral bribery, illegal in Rome while noting Scipio’s munificence; also apropos are Lintott’s etymologies: ambitus from the verb ambire, “to go around” and “to canvas support,” and ambitio was “pursuit of office and political fame (perhaps to excess),” 1.

  27. Helmut Berneder, Magna Mater-Kult und Sibyllinen (Innsbruck, Aus.: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2004).

  28. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 29, 10, 14.

  29. For example, see Juvenal, Satires, bk. 3, 126ff; Appian, Hannibalic War, 56 (a source for the story of Claudia pulling the boat stuck in the river).

  30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 29, 14.9; Lancel, Hannibal, 163.

  31. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus, 83.

  TWENTY-TWO: ZAMA

  1. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 44.

  2. F. W. Walbank, Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 328.

  3. Polybius, Histories, bk. 12, 56.

  4. Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 287–88. It seems Scipio’s numbers at Zama were closer to thirty-four thousand if counting Massinissa’s reinforcements of Numidian cavalry and men.

  5. Bradford, Hannibal, 206.

  6. Frontinus, Strategemata, bk. 1, 12.1.

  7. Hunt, “Locus of Carthage,” 137–38.

  8. Polybius, Histories, bk. 14, 3.

  9. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 21, 4.9; bk. 22, 6.12; bk. 28, 44.4; also see Erich S. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, Martin Classical Lectures (Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 13ff.

  10. Azedine Beschaouch, “De l’Africa latino-chrétienne à l’Ifriqiya arabo-musulmane: questions de toponymie,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (CRAI) 130, no. 3 (1986): 530–49.

  11. P. G. Walsh, “Massinissa,” Journal of Roman Studies 55, nos. 1/2 (1965): 149–60; Haley. “Livy, Passion and Cultural Stereotypes,” 375–81. Wife stealing was apparently not unusual for Numidians, a people considered as tribal rather than as a nation by the Romans. While it was reputedly practiced by barbarians (how the Romans saw the Numidians), Roman writers such as Livy are implying that Numidians are inherently very different than lawful Romans in their accepted mores.

  12. Appian, Punic Wars, 28.

  13. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 36–37.

  14. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 27, 9, says Hannibal slaughtered three thousand horses; also see Garland, Hannibal, 108.

  15. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 20.

  16. D. L. Stone, D. J. Mattingly, and N. Ben Lazreg, eds., Leptiminus (Lamta): The Field Survey, Report No. 3, supp. 87, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2011).

  17. Paul Davis, 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 51.

  18. Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 237. Along with most reasonable historians, Fronda doubts Livy’s dramatic assertion in History of Rome, bk. 30, 20, that the Italians in the sacred shrine of Juno Lacinia who refused to accompany Hannibal were then butchered, deducing that others who repeat this (Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 27, 9.1; Appian, Hannibalic War, 59) are only attempting to reinforce Hannibal’s alleged brutality.

  19. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 20.

  20. Davis, 100 Decisive Battles, 47, maintains that Hannibal had forty-five thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry at Zama. Others, such as Lancel, Hannibal, 175, suggest he had an army of fifty thousand, possibly counting his cavalry, in agreement with G. C. Picard, Hannibal (Paris: Hachette, 1967), 206, who adjusts the number upward to fifty thousand, based on Appian. The best estimates seem closer to forty thousand if we can trust Polybius, as suggested by Goldsworthy, Punic Wars, 307.

  21. Nowhere is this better told than in O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 13, 245–52.

  22. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 5.

  23. P. S. Derow, “Polybius, Rome and the East,” Journal of Roman Studies 69 (1979): 1–15, esp. 3–4.

  24. Davidson, “Gaze in Polybius’ Histories,” 10–24, esp. 12.

  25. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American, Boston: Da Capo, 1993 (originally Dodd, Mead & Co., 1929), x.

  26. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 22, 53.

  27. Polybius, Histories, bk. 14, 9.6; Davidson, “Gaze in Polybius’ Histories,” 20.

  28. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 30.

  29. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 7.

  30. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 31.

  31. Ibid., bk. 31–32.

  32. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 177.

  33. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 10–11.

  34. F. M. Russell, “The Battlefield of Zama,” Archaeology 23, no. 2 (1970): 120–29; “Zama (‘Aelia Hadriana Augusta’) Tunisia,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976.

  35. T. A. Dorey, “Macedonians at the Battle of Zama,” American Journal of Philology 78, no. 2 (1957): 185–87; unless they were possibly there without official Macedonian sanction.

  36. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus, 187–88.

  37. Peddie, Hannibal’s War, 212.

  38. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 177–78.

  39. Gabriel, Scipio Africanus, 188.

  40. Caven, Punic Wars, 251.

  41. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 33.

  42. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 112–13, 115–16. Polybius details how Aemilius Paullus was not happy with the potential battleground at Cannae (112.2); how close the Romans were to the River Aufidus (113.3), how crowded the Roman maniples were (115.6), and how impossible movement became for the Romans finally compressed on all sides (116.10–12).

  43. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 34.

  44. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 12.

  45. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 33.

  46. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 14.

  47. Howard Hayes Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970), 154, claims instead that only 1,500 Romans perished at Zama.

  48. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 178.

  49. Polybius, Histories, bk. 15, 15.

  50. Picard, Hannibal, 208. />
  51. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, 225.

  52. Jakob Seibert, 474.

  53. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 252n93 and 286, uses 2009 estimates at $13.25 per-ounce spot price; in 2016 the per-ounce spot price was $16.62.

  54. Lancel, Hannibal, 182.

  55. Note that the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 assigned responsibility of blame for World War I to Germany. Two years later, following negotiations, the London Schedule of Payments assessed Germany 132 billion gold marks (equivalent to $33 billion) in reparations, to be paid in installments—although in the end, the actual payments were insignificant. See William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, eds., The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 329.

  56. O’Connell, Ghosts of Cannae, 252, calls Hannibal without an army “a military oxymoron.”

  57. J. Roger Dunkle, “The Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late Republic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA) 98 (1967): 151–71, esp. 156–57.

  58. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 28, 42. Here Fabius implies that Scipio fancies himself more a king than a consul; if Scipio’s character were different, this might have been possible, especially after Zama.

  59. Lancel, Hannibal, 179.

  60. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 30, 37.7.

  61. Ibid., bk. 30, 44.4–11.

  62. Polybius, Histories, bk. 3, 8.6–10. As mentioned at the outset of this book, even Polybius, in the first paragraph of bk. 3 (1.1), called it the “Hannibalic War” (ton ’Annibiakon). However, surely he was not the first.

  63. Ibid., bk. 15, 15.

  TWENTY-THREE: EXILE

  1. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 33.

  2. Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 118–19.

  3. David J. Mattingly and R. Bruce Hitchner, “Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review,” Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 165–213, esp. 200 and 204.

  4. Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus, 37.2–3.

  5. Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 60ff.

  6. Walter Ameling, Karthago: Studien zu Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft. Vestigia: Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte 45. Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1993, 82.

  7. E. Lipinski, ed. (dir.), “Suffète,” Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique (Paris: Brepols, [Turnhout] 1992), 429. Lipinski also references an earlier Semitic word in shapitum from Akkadian.

  8. F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 1047: “judge, lawgiver” with Punic cognate sufet noted.

  9. Robert Drews, “Phoenicians, Carthage and the Spartan Eunomia,” American Journal of Philology 100, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 45–58, esp. 54.

  10. G. C. Picard, “Hannibal,” in Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique, ed. (dir.) E. Lipinski (Paris: Brepols, [Turnhout] 1992), 207.

  11. Cornelius Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7.4. The Roman biographer also equates the office with a Roman praetor.

  12. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 210.

  13. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 33, 46.

  14. Bradley, 228.

  15. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7. 7.

  16. Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty, 129ff.; Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage, 298.

  17. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 33, 47.

  18. Lancel, Hannibal, 192.

  19. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 7.10ff. Undermining some of Nepos’ credibility is that he follows these details with Hannibal returning to Cyrene with five ships within three years of flight (8.1–3).

  20. John Ray, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 133–34; Patrick Hunt, Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History (New York: Penguin/Plume, 2007), 4–5.

  21. Gabriel, Hannibal, 221.

  22. While in qinah (lament) poetic form over its future destruction, Ezekiel 27 surveys one of Tyre’s great periods in the early sixth century BCE. See I. M. Diakonoff. “The Naval Power and Trade of Tyre.” Israel Exploration Journal 42, nos. 3/4 (1992) 168–93; its purple dye murex trade and Carthaginian connections are noted on 176.

  23. Roger Batty, “Mela’s Phoenician Geography,” Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 70–94, esp. 79–83.

  24. Fergus Millar, “The Phoenician Cities: A Case-Study of Hellenization,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 209 (1983): 55–71; Andrea J. Berlin, “From Monarchy to Markets: The Phoenicians to Hellenistic Palestine,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 306 (May 1997): 75–88, esp. 76–77.

  25. Lancel, Hannibal, 193.

  26. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), V.v.5: Satis, plane satis esse credo Romanis haec omnia, etiamsi avarissimi sunt.

  27. Lancel, Hannibal, 203.

  28. Among others, see Livy, History of Rome, bk. 35, 14; Plutarch Flamininus, 21.3–4; Appian, The Syrian Wars, bk. 11 in Roman History.

  29. Arthur M. Eckstein, Rome Enters the Greek East: From Anarchy to Hierarchy in the Hellenistic Mediterranean 230–170 BC (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

  30. R. M. Errington, “Rome Against Philip and Antiochus,” chap. 8 in Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. 8, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC, ed. A. E Astin et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 285–86.

  31. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 9; Justin (Marcus Junianus Justinus), Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, bk. 32, 4.3–5; Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Epode 9. Lancel, Hannibal, 205, however, suggests the story should be taken with a considerable grain of salt.

  32. Francis Cairns, “Horace Epode 9: Some New Interpretations, Illinois Classical Studies 8, no. 1 (1983): 80–93; Bradley, 235.

  33. Tullia Linders, Studies in the Treasure Records of the Temple of Artemis Brauronia Found in Athens (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1972); Linders. “The Treasures of Other Gods in Athens and Their Functions,” Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 62 (1975); Meisenheim; Georges Roux, “Trésors, Temples, Tholos,” in Temples et Sanctuaires, ed. Roux (Lyon, Fr.: Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient 7, 1984), 153–72; Josephine Shaya, “The Greek Temple as Museum: The Case of the Legendary Treasure of Athena from Lindos,” American Journal of Archaeology 109, no. 3 (2005): 423–42, esp. 425–27ff. on temple treasury and ensuing record lists of votive gifts. “Hellenistic” refers to the culture fusing Greek and Oriental influences in the Greek cities after the reign of Alexander the Great.

  34. Joan R. Mertens, “Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 43, no. 2 (1985): 5–66, esp. 13; Bruce Christman, “The Emperor as Philosopher,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 3 (1987): 100–13; Carol Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary: From the Beginnings Through Fifth Century B.C., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989, 15–17ff.; Alessandra Giumlia-Mair, “Techniques and Composition of Equestrian Statues in Raetia,” in From the Parts to the Whole, vol. 2, Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996, supp. 39, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2002): 93–97, esp. 95.

  35. Strabo, Geography, bk. 11, 14.6; Plutarch, Life of Lucullus, 31.4–5

  36. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 5, 148.

  37. Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 10; Justin, Epitome, bk. 32, 4.6.

  38. Gavin de Beer, Hannibal: The Struggle for Power in the Mediterranean (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), 299; James W. Martin, George W. Christopher, and Edward M. Eitzen, “History of Biological Weapons: From Poisoned Darts to Intentional Epidemics,” in Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare, ed. Z. F. Dembek (Washington DC: Borden Institute, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 2007), 1–20, esp. 2; also see Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological Warfare in the Ancient World (London: Duckworth, 2009), 188: “the Carthaginian general had many ad hoc animal tricks.”

  39. Plutarch, Flamininus, 2.1–2.

  40. Eckstein, 89; Prusias’ wife, Apama
, was the half sister of Philip V of Macedon.

  41. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 39, 51.2.

  42. Flavius Eutropius (or Victor), De Viris Illustribus, 4.42.

  43. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 5, 43.

  44. Lancel, Hannibal, 210.

  45. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 39, 51.9–11; Plutarch, Flamininus, 20.5, 21.1–3; Appian, Syrian Wars, 11; Nepos, Life of Hannibal, 13.

  TWENTY-FOUR: HANNIBAL’S LEGACY

  1. Vegetius (Publius Flavius Vegetius Renaus), De Re Militari (The Military Institutions of the Romans), bk. 1, 1.

  2. Valerius, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium, V.3.2b: “Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis.” He continues: “Cineres ei suos negavit quam in cinerem collabi passus non fuerat.” (“Ungrateful fatherland, you will not have my bones.” “He denied his ashes to her whom he had not let collapse into ash.”)

  3. Seneca, De Ira (On Anger), bk. 2, 5.4.

  4. Horace, Ode 3, 6.36; Juvenal, Satires, bk. 7, 161.

  5. Ovid, Fasti, bk. 3, 148, bk. 6, 242.

  6. Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, 375n2.

  7. Plutarch, Life of Flamininus, 21.2, Life of Fabius, 5.3, Life of Marcellus, 24.6.

  8. Diodorus, Library of History, bk. 36, 14.2; bk. 27, 9.1–10.1.

  9. Cassius, fragment, 15.57.25.

  10. Polybius, Histories, bk. 9, 24.4–8; Rawlings, “Hannibal the Cannibal?,” 1–30.

  11. Brizzi, “Carthage and Hannibal in Roman and Greek Memory,” 483–98, esp. 484.

  12. Garland, Hannibal, 136–37; Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 4, 622–26. Some of this interpretation of Virgil is from Fairclough; other parts are my own. (I had to translate this passage as part of my graduate Latin assignment at the University of California, Berkeley, in the summer of 1982.) The phoenix allusion and metonymy between ashes and bones is a wordplay device called subtle or concealed paronomasia. See Patrick Hunt, “Subtle Paronomasia in the Canticum Canticorum: Hidden Treasures of the Superlative Poet,” Goldene Äpfel in silbernen Schalen. Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 20 (1992): 147–54. The phoenix was known from Greek writers, including Hesiod, fragment, 171.4, and Herodotus, 2.73. The phoenix building a funeral pyre—like Dido—is also known in the first century to Statius (Silvae II.4.22 ducite flammis funera). That the phoenix progeny emerges from the bones only every few hundred years, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15, 393; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bk. 10, 2.4; also “phoenix” in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1372. That both the actual phoenix and Hannibal are unnamed reinforces the brilliant wordplay, also because Virgil knows that it would be anachronistic for Dido to mention Hannibal.