Ancient Rome: The Lives of Great Men

by Mary Agnes Hamilton

The battle of Cannae (216) was Hannibal’s greatest victory and the most terrible defeat for Rome in all its history. The Roman charge drove right through the Carthaginian centre: too far, so that the Carthaginians turned and attacked on all sides. The slaughter was terrible. Of 76,000 Romans who fought in the battle the bodies of 70,000 lay upon the field, among them Aemilius himself and the flower of the noblest families in Rome. It was said that a seventh of all the men of military age in Italy perished. Of the higher officers Varro was the only one who escaped; with him was a tiny handful of men, all that was left of the mighty army.

The news of Cannae came to Rome and the city was plunged in mourning. Yet despite the hideous losses and the extreme danger no one gave way to weakness or despair. The strife of parties died down. Men and women turned from weeping for their dead to working for their country. Rome still stood and to every Roman the city’s life was more important than his own. Not a reproach was uttered against Varro, even by those who before had distrusted and blamed him. After the battle he had done well. With great courage and energy he collected together and inspired with new faith the scattered units that remained, and at their head he marched back to Rome. The Senate and people went in procession to the city gate to meet him and the scattered remnant of travel-worn, bloodstained men who had escaped with him from Cannae. Before them all Varro was thanked because he had not despaired of the Republic. Well might Hannibal feel that even after Cannae Rome was not conquered. It was not conquered because the spirit of its people was unbroken. Rome stood firm. The rich came forward giving or lending all they had to the State; men of all classes flocked to the new armies; heavy taxes were put on and no one complained. If the ordinary man was ready to give his life, the least the well-to-do could do was to give his money. The people of Central Italy stood by Rome. In the south rich cities like Capua opened their gates to Hannibal; some of the southern peoples joined him. But there was no big general rising. Nor did the help Hannibal needed come from home, Carthage, or from his other allies in Sicily and Macedonia. The people of Carthage were not like those of Rome. They were sluggish and a big party there was jealous of Hannibal and would do nothing to support him.

Marcellus, the general who took the field after Cannae, was a fine soldier who believed with Fabius that the way to defeat Hannibal was to wear him down. In Marcellus Hannibal found an enemy he must respect. When Marcellus was killed at last and brought into the Carthaginian camp Hannibal stood for a long time silent, looking at his dead enemy’s face. Then he ordered the body to be clothed in splendid funeral garments and burned with all the honours of war. He had the ashes placed in a silver urn and sent to Marcellus’s son. He had in the same way buried Aemilius with all honourable ceremony.

Time was on the Roman side. Yet for eleven years Hannibal, with a small army, kept the whole might of Rome at bay. He was driven further south, that was all. His great hope was that though the Carthaginians would not stir, his brothers Hasdrubal and Mago would send him help from Spain. In Spain after his own departure the Romans had reconquered most of the country, but four years after Cannae Publius Scipio (defeated on the Ticinus) and his brother Cneus were both defeated and killed, and during the next few years Hasdrubal won nearly the whole of Spain. In 208 he was able to move north. He crossed the Pyrenees; spent the winter in Gaul; and in the spring, as soon as the snows melted, crossed the Alps by an easier pass than that taken by his great brother. Before any one expected him he was in Italy. The danger, if he could join Hannibal, was extreme. So serious was it indeed that Fabius, now a very old man, went to the two consuls, Livius and Claudius Nero, and begged them to act together. They hated one another. Fabius had learned how dangerous such quarrels might be to the State, and what harm his own advice had done between Varro and Aemilius Paulus; he now used all his great influence to get the consuls to put an end to personal strife. They agreed and joined their armies. Together they were much stronger than Hasdrubal. On the river Metaurus he was defeated (207). There Hasdrubal himself, fighting like a lion, was killed with ten thousand of his men.

Unhappily the victorious Nero showed in his treatment of his dead enemy a spirit very different from that of Hannibal. He threw the bloody head of Hasdrubal in front of Hannibal’s lines. It was the first news he had of the fate of his brother. He had lost not only a man dearer to him than any on earth but, with him, his last hope of success. He knew that all was over; the fortune of Carthage was at an end. For a moment he hid his face in his mantle. What deep bitterness and pain held his heart in that moment none may guess.

Two later Roman writers, Livy and Horace, have described the battle of the Metaurus, which was, indeed, the turning-point of the war: for Hannibal a fatal turning.

Metaurus, and After

Hasdrubal had often shown himself a great leader, but never so great as in this, his last battle. It was he who supported his men in the fight by words of encouragement and by meeting danger at their side; it was he who, with mingled entreaty and rebuke, fired the spirit of his troops, weary and despairing of a hopeless struggle; it was he who called back the fugitives and in many places restored the broken ranks. At last, when fortune declared itself in favour of the enemy, he would not survive the great host that had followed him, but spurred his horse into the thickest of the Roman legionaries. There he fell fighting, as became the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal.

The consul, C. Claudius, on his return to the camp ordered the head of Hasdrubal, which he had carefully brought with him, to be thrown down in front of the enemy’s sentries, and he exhibited African prisoners in chains. Two of them he freed and sent to Hannibal to inform him of everything that had happened. Hannibal, stricken with grief at such public and personal loss, exclaimed, as we are told, ‘I recognize the doom of Carthage.’ Then he withdrew to Bruttium in the southern corner of Italy, with the intention of concentrating there all the allies, whom he could not protect if they were scattered.

Livy, xxvii. 49, 51.