Hannibal's daughter

by Andrew Haggard

What a glorious career of successes it was that was inaugurated with this cavalry victory near the Ticinus! Had not the blood-thirsty monster Monomachus been slain by young Scipio at the very end of the action, he might not only have been able to gratify his wish of plunging his arm into the blood—although it proved not indeed the life-blood—of the Roman General, but he might have bathed repeatedly during the next twelve months in rivers of blood. Success followed on success. Like rats that leave a sinking ship, the Gauls in the Roman army deserted in their thousands and joined Hannibal; the Boii and other Cis-Alpine tribes first sent him ambassadors and hostages, and then themselves came over with all their fighting men, and, after the battle of the Trebia, the whole of Cis-Alpine Gaul was in the hands of the invading Carthaginians.

Now the battle of the Trebia was in this wise. After the cavalry action just described, the wounded consul Publius Scipio fled with his army first across the Po, and then, after considerable losses at the crossings of all the rivers, to some high ground near the River Trebia, where the now-dreaded Numidian Cavalry were unable to get at him. Here he was joined in his camp by the other consul, Tiberius Sempronius, who brought his army from Ariminum, the combined Roman forces amounting to over forty thousand men. The two consuls were utterly unable to decide upon a concerted plan of action; the wounded General wishing for time to get well, and to accustom his newly-raised legions to campaigning for a while before risking a general action. Tiberius, however, was anxious to gain some military glory for himself, apart from his brother consul; he was, moreover, jealous of the possible successes of the succeeding consuls, the time for whose election was near at hand. He was therefore only too anxious to risk a combat, and was constantly urging Scipio to allow him to take the combined consular forces against Hannibal.

But now mention must be made of the youthful Eugenia and her amours with Mago.

Mago, the younger brother of Hannibal, was immediately, on the death of Hannibal Monomachus, appointed to the supreme command of all the Carthaginian cavalry. After the affair of the Ticinus, he was ordered on to the pursuit, and he ceased not to harass Scipio, even when he had encamped under the walls of the city of Placentia. Here, one day in a bold foray, he destroyed a portion of the camp outside the town, and in the tent of one of the generals of the Roman allies, which he looted, he captured an Italian maiden named Eugenia, a girl about twenty years of age, and of surpassing beauty. She was by birth an Etruscan, and by some is reported to have been the daughter, by others the niece, of the general in whose tent she had been found.

Terrified at first, she was soon fascinated by the charm of Mago, who was a young man of most handsome appearance, and who loaded her with gifts and gold, which were liberally supplied by Hannibal for a purpose. After a very few days, as Mago was well acquainted with the Latin tongue, he had so completely won her to him that she would have readily allowed herself to be burned with fire for his sake, or, at least, to have given her life for his. Not being a Roman, but an Etruscan, she had no particular love for Rome; but youthful and ardent, and anxious to prove to Mago her great love for him, she readily fell in with his wishes. Accordingly, after Scipio had encamped upon the heights on a spur of the Apennines, she one day, being aided by Mago, pretended to escape to the Roman camp, where she arrived with torn raiment, dishevelled hair, and an appearance of the greatest misery. Her curses and invectives against the Carthaginians, and the story which she related of her imaginary wrongs, utterly and at once disarmed all suspicion. The fair maid Eugenia was therefore received with open arms and made a most welcome guest in the Roman camp, where everyone pitied her for the terrible misfortunes she had endured. Thus, there was nothing that transpired there that she did not know, and when she had found out all that was going on, she one night took an opportunity of escaping, and rejoined her lover Mago. To him she revealed everything, and Hannibal was at once put in possession of all the information he required. Having thus gained knowledge of all the cabals that were going on in the Roman headquarters, Hannibal knew how to act, and determined to precipitate a conflict before the Roman infantry were really sufficiently seasoned.

This he easily managed.

To Mago, through whose pretty lover he had gained so much useful information, he assigned the most arduous post—that of hiding by night in ambush in a wet water-course, with a party of two thousand chosen horse and foot, to appear at a seasonable moment.

Then early in the morning, after his own men had breakfasted by the camp fires, a party of light-armed troops were sent out to draw out the Romans from their camp, which was easily accomplished, the Romans, under Sempronius himself, thronging out, all unfed as they were, and pursuing the apparently flying foe across the swollen River Trebia. What followed is but history. After a bloody and prolonged fight, Mago and his hidden troops suddenly appeared from the water-course in rear of the Romans, and a frightful slaughter ensued, the Numidians under Maharbal and Chœras charging, as usual, in small groups, and advancing and retiring, utterly disconcerting the enemy. The result of this terrible battle, which was fought in a fearful snow-storm, was that out of forty thousand troops engaged, only ten thousand survived and escaped to Placentia. But the savage elephants, despite the snow, pursued and slaughtered for hours and hours, until they could slay no more. And this was the last fight in which the elephants were of any avail, for the bitter cold weather which now set in soon killed them all but one, and killed also thousands of the allied Carthaginians. As, however, during the battle, the greatest losses among the Carthaginians had taken place among the Celts or Gauls, Hannibal still retained a large number of his original army of Libyans and Iberians with whom to continue the campaign.

After this battle in the early spring, there were some terrible times, during which, over and over again, it must be confessed, Maharbal longed, but longed in vain, that he had taken the opportunity offered him by the Chief of returning to New Carthage with the letter to his beloved Elissa.

But there was no going back now, and, as he had cast in his lot with his wonderful Chief, so was he compelled to go on. Therefore, in the early spring, he crossed the Apennines, and for four consecutive days and nights marched through the horrible swamps and morasses between Lucca and Fæsulæ, where the only dry places to be found at nights was upon the bodies of the dead baggage animals. Here daily and nightly he strove to minister to Hannibal, who, sorely afflicted with a terrible attack of ophthalmia, which cost him an eye, nevertheless concealed his own agony, and daily and hourly, riding upon the sole elephant that survived, encouraged by his presence and example the troops under his command.