Yet, the object of all this attention, Hasdrubal Barca, was once again proving himself to be no Hannibal, not even close. Instead of exploiting his sudden arrival and striking immediately into the heart of Italy, Hasdrubal dawdled around Placentia, which Hannibal himself had judged too well defended to take, apparently to impress the Gauls he wanted to recruit, only belatedly giving up its siege and heading down the peninsula.43 Hasdrubal had a choice of going either west or east of the Apennine mountain spine. On the west, Varro was waiting in unsettled Etruria, and on the east, the capable praetor Licinus was athwart the Adriatic coastal route, with Salinator waiting in Rome, poised to join either one, depending on which way the Barcid turned. Hasdrubal went toward the Adriatic, with Licinus retreating and harassing him all the way, as Salinator raced north to join forces.44 And even worse for the Barcid, his own plea for reinforcements would bring still more Romans down on his head.
After he left Placentia, Hasdrubal dispatched a letter to Hannibal saying he would meet him “in Umbria.” The letter was carried by a party of six horsemen—two Numidians and four Gauls. This was a shot in the dark—sending a bunch of foreign-looking, and presumably not Latin-speaking, horsemen off through a country crawling with enemies and expecting them to find Hannibal, who was always a moving target during campaigning season. It has been suggested that the letter was intended for capture and was meant to mislead the Romans as to Hasdrubal’s projected route,45 but it appears that Hasdrubal was already being closely monitored by Licinus, and if by chance the letter had gotten through, wouldn’t it have confused Hannibal? (“Meet me in Umbria” was hardly specific.)
As it happened, the horsemen made it almost the entire length of the peninsula, arrived at Metapontum (near the arch of the boot) only to find Hannibal gone, and were soon captured by foragers near Tarentum. They brought them for interrogation to Nero. The Roman had been dogging Hannibal back and forth through Bruttium and Apulia in a confusing series of actions that had left the two armies camped in close proximity again near Canusium. Once the predictably rough treatment of the prisoners revealed the truth, Nero decided to stage a vanishing act of his own. He took seven thousand picked troops—six thousand foot soldiers and one thousand horse—from his much larger force and slipped them out of camp under the cover of night, leaving the Carthaginians none the wiser.46
Quite plainly the days of Hannibal the omniscient were over; it was now the Romans who held the intelligence advantage and were capable of strategic maneuvers under the cloak of secrecy.47 Until they were well away from camp, Nero’s men were under the impression they were going to stage a raid on a nearby town. Then he told them the truth; they were heading north to join Salinator.
Messengers fanned out ahead along the 250-mile route requesting provisions as the troops raced north with nothing but their weapons. Livy (27.45) paints a scene of patriotic enthusiasm, with throngs gathered by the side of the road competing with one another to give the soldiers what they needed, and cheering them as they passed. Back in Rome, however, word of the consul’s bold move provoked more anxiety; the voice of the street fretting over Nero’s leaving a hollow army camped in front of the dreaded Hannibal, and remembering the events in Spain, when Hasdrubal had eluded Nero, leaving him “baffled like a little child.”48 Polybius, who was not inclined to exaggerate, agrees, stating in a fragment, “Rome had never been in such a state of excitement and dismay, awaiting the results.”49
The future was in good hands. As Nero neared the combined camps of Salinator and the praetor Licinus at Sena Gallica, he dispatched couriers to ask how the forces should best link up, and was advised to enter secretly by night. The newcomers would be housed in the existing tents, to minimize their footprint and avoid betraying their presence to Hasdrubal, who was just five hundred yards away.50 All went well, and on the following day Salinator and Licinus held a council of war with Nero. Assuming Nero’s men needed rest after their long forced march, Salinator and Licinus suggested postponing a confrontation for several days. Nero objected in no uncertain terms, arguing that delay would only squander the advantage he had gained by his bold move and heighten the danger down south, since it was only a matter of time before Hannibal discovered he was gone and sprang into action. Nero was right, and the others saw it immediately. An order went out for the combined army to move out on the double and begin deploying for battle.51
Hasdrubal stood ready to accept the challenge, lining up his army in front of their camp. But then as he rode forward with his bodyguards, the Barcid smelled—if not a rat, then at least road-hardened Romans, noticing some particularly battered shields, some unusually stringy horses, and a general swelling of the legions facing him. He had his trumpeters sound an immediate retreat and sent out scouts to survey the Romans more carefully. The scouts reported that the encampment itself looked normal, yet the bugles had sounded just once in the praetor’s camp but twice in Salinator’s. Instantly Hasdrubal realized he was facing both consuls, and his mind turned in a fearful direction.52 What bothered him was not so much the apparent reinforcement of the Roman legions here; uppermost, it seems, was the haunting thought that the second consul’s presence meant that Hannibal had suffered a crushing defeat and that Hasdrubal’s assistance had come too late. This at least would best explain his decision to retreat.
He sought refuge under the cover of night and ordered his men to silently collect their baggage and head back toward the Metaurus River, around twelve miles to the northwest, in hopes of finding a ford and safety. Then, being no Hannibal, he lost control of the situation. His guides, unwatched, absconded, and his troops, many of them Gauls, tended to fall out and go to sleep. When the caravan finally blundered into the Metaurus, Hasdrubal told them to follow the bank, but it grew steeper and more circuitous and provided neither a place to cross nor much progress away from the pursuing Romans.53
First Nero rode up leading the cavalry, then Licinus followed with the velites, both of them harassing the Carthaginians to a standstill. At this point Hasdrubal saw his best chance in establishing a camp on a steep hill by the bank of the river. But shortly after he began work, Salinator marched up with the heavy troops in full battle array, ready to deploy. Now Hasdrubal had no choice but to fight.
According to Ovid54 and the Roman calendar, the day was June 22, 207 B.C. As usual the exact location of the climactic battle remains unknown, with at least six sites south of the river having been proposed,55 but at least we have a fragment from Polybius (11.1–3.6) describing the action, which can act as a check on Livy. There are some differences between the two historians’ accounts, but in the main they can be reconciled.
Hasdrubal seems to have anchored his line on the steep hill with the partially constructed camp, leaving his least reliable troops—the Gauls—there, since it was the easiest point to defend. In the center, if we are to believe Livy,56 Hasdrubal placed the Ligurians he had recruited on the way to the Alps. For the moment they were fronted by a screen of ten elephants. Finally, on his right were his most trusted troops, those he had brought with him from Spain; this was his attack force, and as the fighting developed, the elephants would be shifted in front of them with the aim of compounding their momentum.57 That was the hope at least.
For their part the Romans lined up with Salinator on the left facing the Spaniards, Licinus in the center, and Nero on the right looking at an uphill battle against the Gauls. As the action opened, Nero found he could make no progress, not because the Gauls were fighting so hard, but simply because the terrain made advancing nearly impossible. Using his head and his force structure for something besides a battering ram, Nero cut loose the rear ranks of his part of the line and marched them over to the extreme left, setting up for a devastating flank attack on the Punic right.
Here Salinator was engaged in a furious struggle with the troops from Spain, the elephants as usual sowing confusion as they trampled both sides with panicked impartiality. Nero soon broke the stalemate, leaving the Spaniards in a death grip, fron
t and rear, to be cut to pieces. Most were killed at this point, along with six of the elephants; the remaining four elephants wandered off to be recovered later. Meanwhile, the Romans had rolled up the rest of the Carthaginian line and had reached the campsite, where, Polybius reports, they butchered many of the Gauls, whom they found drunk and asleep.58 As for Hasdrubal, Livy and Polybius agree that once he saw that all was lost, he made no effort to escape but died bravely in the midst of the fighting.59
Nero, the architect of the victory, made sure Hasdrubal’s corpse was recovered and that he, Nero, had a full measure of revenge for being given the slip back in Spain. Like Scipio, Nero had plainly been working with his troops and upgrading their tactical capabilities, giving them the capacity to radically shift objectives and exploit opportunities as the situation developed on the battlefield. His secretive advance to the Metaurus stands as one of the most dramatic and successful strategic maneuvers of the entire war. The maneuver was capped off by his leaving the night following the battle and driving his weary legionaries back to their camp near Canusium in six days—almost fifty miles a day, one of the greatest marches in history.60 But as good a general as Nero was, Hannibal remained in Italy through his consulship and beyond. Earlier, Nero had had roughly the same opportunity as Publius Scipio to deal decisively with the Barcid power base in Spain, and he had made very little of it. Twenty-two hundred years is a long way back for definitive personnel judgments, but the facts speak for themselves. Getting rid of Hannibal was a job for somebody else.
Back in Rome, however, getting rid of Hasdrubal was enough … at least for now. Polybius reports that when the news first arrived, the anxious inhabitants refused to believe it, and it was only after more messengers repeated the good tidings that relief and joy swept over the city. All the holy places were decorated and the temples were set to bursting with offerings. Livy would have us believe that “Cannae was avenged” with the death of the Carthaginian general and fifty-six thousand of his troops.61 But the magnitude of the Roman victory was likely more modest, Polybius’s estimate of around ten thousand total Punic casualties, including Gauls, probably being closer to the mark. Except perhaps at its very core, Hasdrubal’s army had in no way been qualitatively the equal of Hannibal’s. Rather, the circumstances of its recruitment indicate it was more akin to the typical Carthaginian rent-a-force, essentially a disposable asset.
Still, the Romans were happy. At summer’s end the generals were brought to Rome. Salinator (who was technically in charge) was given the first triumph of the entire war, and Nero, riding behind him, got an ovation.62 There was reason to celebrate. After almost twelve years of fighting, Rome had at last won decisively on Italian soil. Polybius concludes that “It seemed to everyone that Hannibal, whom they formerly so much dreaded, was not now even in Italy.”63
He still was, but the results from the Metaurus filled him with foreboding. As is so often the case in family matters, among the principals he was the last to know, and it could not have come in a more awful manner. The grim Nero had the carefully preserved head of Hasdrubal delivered to an outpost of Hannibal’s camp in Canusium, along with two captured Africans to tell him what had happened. Upon hearing the news, Hannibal immediately decamped to Bruttium down in the very toe of Italy, where he stayed. It was said that, staring at his brother’s dead features, Hannibal declared that he saw the fate of Carthage.64 He might have been looking at his own reflection. For he, more than anybody else, was responsible for the city’s doom.
[4]
With the departure of Hasdrubal Barca, the effort to keep Spain Punic seems to have shifted still more to those representing metropolitan Carthage, though not necessarily with any more success. To fill the void, Hanno, a new general, was sent over from Africa with reinforcements and money to hire recruits in Celtiberia, where he joined Mago, the remaining Barca brother in Spain.65 Scipio, whose spadework with the Spanish tribes was paying off, knew all about this effort and was determined to nip it in the bud. He sent the propraetor M. Iunius Silanus with a flying column after them. Guided by Celtiberian deserters, the Romans arrived without warning, found the enemy split into two camps, and ended up routing first the largely untrained Spaniards and then the Carthaginians who’d come to their support. Hanno was captured, but Mago managed to escape with all of his cavalry and around two thousand veteran infantry. He eventually found refuge with Hasdrubal Gisgo at Gades (modern Cádiz), Hasdrubal having been basically chased there by Scipio after dispersing his army.66 So 207 ended in Spain not much better than it had in Italy for the Punic cause.
Yet Hasdrubal Gisgo, now pretty plainly the generalissimo in Spain, was far from finished. He still had a base at Gades, plenty of money for mercenaries, and the persistence of a true Carthaginian. By the following spring he and Mago had managed to reassemble the scattered Spaniards and hire still more to put together a force that, if you believe Polybius,67 numbered seventy thousand foot soldiers, four thousand horse, and thirty-two elephants—all intended for a decisive blow against Scipio. Whereas he had refused battle the year before, now Hasdrubal Gisgo crossed the Baetis River, marched to the vicinity of a town called Ilipa (around eight miles north of modern Seville), and sat down on high ground backing an open plain—a clear sign he wanted a fight.68
Scipio arrived similarly predisposed, but probably significantly outnumbered. His force consisted of a basic consular army of two legions and two alae, plus an equivalent number of local warriors recently raised from Spanish tribal allies, for a total of around forty-five thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. As he was setting up camp on the opposite side of the field, Scipio received an unambiguous indication that the Carthaginians meant business: Mago and Masinissa swept toward the legionaries in a coordinated cavalry attack. But the two quickly discovered that this was one hard Roman to catch off guard. Behind a nearby hill Scipio had already concealed an equivalent number of his cavalry, who then galloped out to hit the Punic horsemen in the flank, eventually chasing them back to their lines in considerable disorder.69
And Scipio was hardly through messing with Carthaginian minds. The next several days were repetitious but inconclusive—some desultory skirmishing among the cavalry and light troops, along with the heavy infantry deploying but never advancing to within fighting range. The Punic forces took the field first, lining up with their best troops—the Libyans at the center, flanked by the Spaniards on either side and the cavalry and elephants at the wings. The Romans would then follow in a roughly similar manner—legionaries at the center, the alae on their flanks, and their own Spanish troops to the outside, with cavalry covering each end.
Having gotten the Carthaginians used to this routine, Scipio set about wrong-footing them, ordering his men to eat an early breakfast and to march out of camp at dawn, and just to make sure his wake-up call was not missed, he sent his cavalry and velites right up to the enemy camp to let loose a wave of javelins.70
Hasdrubal Gisgo reacted reflexively, ordering his own cavalry and skirmishers out to meet the Romans, and his infantry to take the field in the same order and formation as usual—all before anybody had a chance to get breakfast, the same trick Hannibal had pulled on Tiberius Sempronius Longus at the River Trebia. And there would be more, a Scipionic bait and switch. Once out on the field, Hasdrubal realized that the Romans were now lined up with the Spaniards in the middle and the two legions and alae flanking them on either side, facing his weakest troops. Yet if he tried to redeploy, he ran the risk of Scipio’s attacking in the midst of the maneuver and creating havoc; so he waited … and waited.71
For Scipio was in no hurry. He let hunger and the heat of the day have their exhausting way with the Punic troops of the line, while his cavalry and velites continued sporadic skirmishing with their Numidian opposites. Hours probably passed before he sounded the retreat and opened the files to let them pass through, and subsequently stationed them on each wing.72
At this point the real maneuvering began. Scipio ordered his whole line
to start moving forward until they closed to approximately five hundred paces, at which point he had the Spaniards continue to march forward slowly, thereby pinning the Africans. Meanwhile, he broke each of his wings off to operate separately, taking command of the right and leaving the left under Silanus and Marcius, the commander the troops themselves had earlier elected. There followed a complicated evolution, which Polybius describes in highly technical language open to multiple interpretations.73 The choreography seems to have consisted of everybody taking a quarter turn to the right or left in order to form two columns (led by the velites and cavalry, and followed by the triplex acies). The commanders then wheeled the columns around and marched toward each Carthaginian flank until, right under the noses of the enemy, they wheeled again, repeated the quarter turn, and re-formed the three-tiered battle line. Since a column of men can move much faster than the same number of men in a line, Scipio managed to very quickly put his cavalry and velites on each Punic flank and allow his legionaries to get at Hasdrubal’s Spaniards, while leaving his own Spaniards unengaged.74 The Carthaginians watched it all happen, beguiled, doing nothing until it was too late.
Modern sources agree that such a move (whatever it exactly constituted) was not only extremely dangerous in such close proximity to the enemy, but testified to the extraordinary training and discipline of the legionaries involved. Ilipa was plainly a step beyond Baecula and far in advance of Varro’s force at Cannae. By first manipulating the formal rituals by which battles were begun, and then through precise and daring maneuvering, Scipio had overcome a significant numerical disadvantage and had put his force in a position to crush their adversaries. It was a feat worthy of Hannibal himself.75
The Roman horsemen and skirmishers made a point of going after the Carthaginian elephants, panicking them under a cloud of javelins and sowing confusion as the elephants ran amok.76 The Spaniards on the Punic wings put up a surprisingly stout resistance, but outflanked by the velites and cavalry and assaulted ahead by the legionary meat grinder, they slowly began to give ground. Meanwhile, the Africans in the middle remained unengaged, unable to force the fight with the Spaniards facing them, or come to the aid of the wings without fatally disrupting the stability of the formation. Their only option it seems was to follow the step-by-step retreat.77 Hasdrubal did what he could to encourage them, but then the Roman pressure caused the Spaniards on the wings to collapse, and everybody seems to have cut and run. The Carthaginian forces appear to have reformed their ranks at the base of the hill backing the battlefield, but the Romans drove them to their camp, which the Romans were about to storm when a sudden and particularly violent cloudburst put an end to the fighting.78
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