Helmet and spear

by Alfred John Church

We last heard of Hasdrubal as defeating the two Scipios in 212. What hindered him from following up this success by an immediate march into Italy it is impossible to say. Livy's account of the transactions of the next five years is wholly incredible, and Polybius' narrative is lost. It is rash to pronounce a judgment where we know so little of the facts. Still it is generally true that few commanders have the same power of perspective which Hannibal seems to have possessed. It is at least possible that Hasdrubal may have overrated the importance of what he might be able to do in Spain, and have forgotten that the war had really to be decided in Italy. It is a fact that he put off his advance in Italy for four years, and that when he made it his general prospects had not improved. A very able young commander, afterwards known as Scipio Africanus, had appeared upon the scene, and had achieved the great success of capturing New Carthage. This he followed up in 209 by defeating Hasdrubal himself. This defeat, however, did not prevent the Carthaginian general from carrying out his original plan. Either in this year or in the next he crossed the Pyrenees. He spent a considerable time in Gaul, where he was able to enlist a large number of recruits, and, after an easy passage of the Alps, descended into Italy early in the year 207. And here, again, we find him neglecting, as far as we can see, the main issue, and wasting strength and time on a quite subordinate matter. He besieged Placentia, a strongly fortified colony, and so gave the Romans time to recover from the surprise of his unexpectedly early arrival. By the time he had made up his mind to raise the siege of Placentia, one of the Consuls, Livius by name, had advanced to bar his way.

The Roman generals must have been aware that the main object of Hasdrubal's descent into Italy was to effect a junction with his brother. And now, by a lucky chance, they found out how this was to be done. Hasdrubal sent a party of six horsemen charged with a letter to his brother, in which he announced his arrival in Italy, and suggested that they should meet in Umbria. These messengers traversed nearly the whole of Italy in safety, only to fail at the last. When they were some thirty or forty miles from Metapontum, where Hannibal was encamped, they took the wrong road, and made for Tarentum. They fell into the hands of a foraging party, and were brought before the officer who was in local command. To him they confessed, under threats of torture, that they carried despatches to Hannibal. The officer sent them on to the Consul Nero, who was watching Hannibal. Nero at once conceived a bold design. The junction of the two Carthaginian armies must be prevented at any cost, and the best means of doing this would be to strengthen the army of the north, and crush Hasdrubal before he could unite his forces with his brother's. But there was no time to be lost. Nero picked seven thousand men out of his army, the very best troops that he had, and hurried northwards. No one knew of his plan; even the authorities at Rome were hoodwinked. Nor did he hamper himself with transport. He would be passing through a friendly population, and he judged it sufficient to send messengers before him with directions that ready-cooked provisions should be brought down for the use of the army, with such horses as would suffice to carry what was absolutely necessary. Everything turned out well. The soldiers made forced marches of extraordinary length, and reached their journey's end without mishap, entering the camp at night, as it was desirable to keep their coming a secret. This, however, was not effectually done. Hasdrubal had at least some suspicion of what had happened. Riding up to the Roman camp, he observed some shields of unfamiliar pattern. Some of the horses were leaner than those he had seen before, and there were, as he thought, more of them. Another suspicious circumstance was one for which he had been on the lookout. There were, it should be explained, two Roman camps, one in charge of the Consul Livius, the other commanded by the prætor Porcius. In the Consul's camp the signal was sounded twice, indicating that both consuls were there. On the other hand there was the perplexing circumstance that the limits of the camps had not been extended. If a large reinforcement had arrived, where could they have been put away? Above all, was it possible that a general so consummately skilful as Hannibal had allowed such a manœuvre to be made? Or was it possible that Hannibal had been destroyed? The general result of these questionings was great discouragement. He declined the battle which the Consuls, who had made up their minds to fight without delay, offered him as soon as possible after Nero's arrival, and in the course of the following night struck his camp and moved away. It is not easy to say what was his object in thus retreating, for a northward movement was a retreat, the Metaurus river, which he wished to cross, being some miles to the north of his camp. Possibly he wished to get to a region where the population would be friendly. Anyhow, the movement ended in disaster. Two guides whom he had pressed into his service contrived to disappear in the night-march, and the ford of the Metaurus could not be discovered. The army proceeded slowly up the right bank of the river. It was a fatiguing march; many men fell out, and all were wearied and dispirited. Early in the next day the Roman army came up, and Hasdrubal saw that he must fight. He posted his elephants as usual in front of the centre, with the Ligurians behind them. On the right were his Spanish troops, veteran soldiers of his own, and of the very best quality. These were under his personal command. The Gauls were on the left, but seem to have taken but little part in the battle that followed. The Spaniards acquitted themselves in a way worthy of their military reputation, and maintained the struggle for some time on equal terms. The result of the day was in a great measure decided by a bold movement of Nero. He judged that he might safely neglect the Gauls, who were his special antagonists, and wheeling rapidly from the left, fell upon the enemy with crushing effect. The elephants behaved as usual. Formidable at first, they threw the lines of the enemy into disorder; then becoming unmanageable did not less damage to their friends. Livy says that more were killed by their drivers than by the enemy. The battle was long and fierce. So much is amply testified by the amount of the Roman loss. No less than eight thousand men were slain, a very large proportion, it is certain, of the number engaged. The Carthaginian army, of course, suffered more. Probably few of the Spanish troops survived. Some of the Ligurians escaped, and many of the Gauls. They were not far from their own country, and the Romans were probably too much exhausted to make an energetic pursuit. "Let some be left alive," said the Consul Livius, when he was urged to follow the Gauls, "to carry home accounts of the enemy's losses, and of our valour." These could hardly have been his real reasons. But the total loss in killed and prisoners is put at sixty thousand. Hasdrubal fell in the battle. As long as there was any hope of victory he had done his best, reforming the line again and again, encouraging the wearied, and putting fresh spirit into the discouraged. When all was lost, he set spurs to his horse and charged the enemy's line. Seven days afterwards his head was thrown among the advanced guards of Hannibal's camp.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] A colony, I may remind my readers, was practically a military outpost. It was inhabited by old soldiers to whom land had been granted. There were two classes of colonies, Roman and Latin, as there were two kinds of citizenship, Roman and Latin. Livy has an interesting passage about the behaviour of the Latin colonies in the year 209. There were thirty in all. Twelve of these declared themselves to be unable to comply with the requisitions for men and money made upon them. The other eighteen expressed themselves in an opposite sense, as willing to do even more than was asked of them. Among these we find Brundisium, Luceria, Venusium, Paestum, and Beneventum, all important places in the region generally occupied by Hannibal. Livy goes so far as to say that it was their support that was the salvation of Rome. "After all these years they must not be forgotten or deprived of the praise which they so well deserved."

IX

HANNIBAL'S LAST BATTLE

What Hannibal proposed to himself by remaining in Italy after the disastrously decisive day of the Metaurus it is not easy to say. Perhaps he continued to hope against hope that the great anti-Roman combination, for which he had been working for more than ten years, might yet come into being. To us, who know what Rome became in after days, it seems strange indeed that the kingdoms which she was destined to crush one after another should not have joined with Carthage in the attempt to destroy her. If Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt could have combined while Hannibal had still a footing in Italy, she could hardly have survived. But they were too jealous of each other, or too short-sighted. Possibly they were unwilling to make Carthage, which the Greeks had no reason to love, too powerful. And what was not done after Cannæ would hardly be attempted after the Metaurus. Anyhow, Hannibal remained in Italy for four years after Hasdrubal's death. He now held only the extreme south of the Peninsula, and the limits of the region which he occupied were slowly contracted by the loss of town after town. Still he clung to his position; he could have gone at any time; but he could not bear to give up the dominating hope of his life, and he lingered on. At last, late in the year 203, in obedience to an urgent summons from home, he embarked his army. No attempt was made to hinder him. The Romans indeed were unfeignedly glad to see his departure. They had lost three hundred thousand men during the fifteen years of his stay. The huge dragon of his dream had indeed desolated Italy. It is said that when he took his last look of the land where he had met with such successes and such disappointments, he bitterly reproached his countrymen for the grudging support which they had given him. "It is not the Roman people, so often routed in the field, it is Hanno"—the leader of the Peace party in Carthage—"that has vanquished me." The charge can hardly have been true; but it is natural to one who had finally to abandon one of the most splendid schemes that man ever devised. Livy adds that Hannibal now bitterly regretted that he had not led his troops against Rome immediately after the great victory of Cannæ.

It is needless to dwell on the events that followed Hannibal's return to Africa. We have not, indeed, the means of drawing out a quite clear and consistent narrative of them. The romantic story in which Syphax, Masinissa, and Sophonisba (daughter of Hasdrubal, son of Gisco) play the chief parts, does not belong to my subject, and I pass on at once to the battle of Zama.

Hannibal ranged his elephants, as usual, in front of his line. Immediately behind them were the mercenaries, a mixed multitude, to whom Polybius applies the famous verse in which Homer describes the many-tongued battle-cry of the Trojans and their allies. Behind these mercenaries were the native Carthaginians, brought once more into the field by the extremity of their country, and in the rear of all, as a reserve which in the last resort might restore the fortunes of the day, the veterans whom Hannibal had brought with him from Italy. Scipio departed in one particular from the usual rules of Roman tactics. Usually the intervals in the front line were filled up in the second, and the intervals in the second filled up in the third. On the present occasion the intervals were continuous, giving a free passage from the front of the army to the rear. This was done with a view to lessening the danger from the elephants. For the same reason the space between the lines was made greater than usual. The more space these animals were allowed in which they might move, the less likely, Scipio thought, they would be to trample down the ranks of his men. Lælius with the Roman cavalry occupied the left wing, with the native Carthaginian horse opposed to him; Masinissa on the right had a body of African horse fronting men of the same or kindred nationalities in the service of Carthage. The elephants were of even less use and did even more damage to their friends than usual. The stock of trained animals had been long since exhausted, and the untaught creatures now brought into the field were unmanageable. In this instance they turned against the Carthaginian cavalry, and put them into such disorder that Lælius won an easy victory over them. On the Roman right Masinissa, one of the best cavalry officers that the world has ever seen, defeated his antagonists. But in the centre the victory was less easily won. The mercenaries were veteran soldiers skilled in all the arts of war, and they more than held their own against the Roman infantry, largely consisting of recruits. If they had been properly backed up by the Carthaginians behind them, they might have changed the fortunes of the day. But the citizen soldiers remained stolidly in their places. It was only when they were themselves attacked—the mercenaries, we are told, enraged at being thus deserted, turned against them—that they drew their swords. The line of veterans, under Hannibal's personal command, made a fierce and obstinate resistance. It was only when they were charged on both flanks by the victorious cavalry that they gave way. After this the rout was general. Twenty thousand men were left dead on the field of battle, and as many more were taken prisoners. Of the conquerors fifteen hundred fell. It was not a high price to pay for the victory that, as Polybius puts it, "gave to Rome the sovereignty of the world." Hannibal made his way to Adrumetum, and from thence to Carthage with a body of six thousand troops.

The terms of peace were unexpectedly lenient. Carthage was to retain its independence, and its African possessions. But it was to pay an annual tribute of two hundred talents and an indemnity of ten thousand, and it was to retain only ten ships of war. Hannibal was so strongly impressed with the necessity of accepting these terms that he forcibly pulled back into his seat a senator who had risen to speak against them.