But in the spring he crossed the Apennines, and made his way through the marshy and malarious district around the lower Arno, where it is said he lost an eye from ophthalmia, to meet the consul Flaminius, who had been sent to cover the approach to Rome with a large army. Slipping past Flaminius, Hannibal concealed his army among the hills and woods on the eastern shore of the lake of Trasimene, along the western bank of which the railway now runs on its way from Florence to Rome; and here he lay in wait for his prey. Flaminius walked into the trap laid for him; his army was totally destroyed, and he himself was killed. There was now nothing to stop the conqueror if he chose to march straight on Rome.
But Hannibal’s plans did not include a siege of Rome; he had brought no siege apparatus, and at no time during the war did he succeed in getting any from Carthage, or in making it in Italy. His real object was to bring the Italians over to his side, to isolate Rome, and to put a free Italy (so he is said to have phrased it) in place of a Roman dominion. So he turned his back on Rome, and made his way at leisure down the eastern coast of central Italy to the corn-lands of Apulia, which were henceforward to serve as his chief base of operations. Hence he might easily reach the great sea-ports of Tarentum and Croton, and so get into touch once more with Carthage, and perhaps, too, with another power from whom he was already looking for help, Philip, king of Macedon. But during this southward march he learnt, apparently for the first time, that Italy was studded with Roman and Latin colonies, each a fortress, each provisioned and ready to resist him: each, too, a miniature Rome, disseminating among the Italians the honour and pride of Roman citizenship, and the animating spirit of Italian unity under Roman leadership. One or two of these fortresses he vainly tried to take, and he must at this time have begun at last to realise that the mortal hatred of an individual is no match in the long run for the organised vitality of a practical people.
His one chance was to win another great battle, and so to overawe south Italy, to make his base absolutely secure, and to force gradually northward the leaven of anti-Roman feeling on which he calculated. For the rest of that year, 217 B.C., he could not get this chance; the Senate, still cool-headed, had appointed a cool-headed dictator,[6] who knew that his slow and steady citizen soldiers were no good match for a mobile professional army skilfully handled, and steadily refused to accept battle. Not even when Hannibal forced his way northward to the rich plain of Campania, and tried to gain over the wealthy city of Capua, would Fabius be tempted to fight; he dogged the enemy’s footsteps, and once tried to catch him in a snare, from which Hannibal escaped by a clever ruse. But next year the Senate dispatched the two new consuls, with an army not far short of 100,000 men, to deal with the enemy in southern Italy; and here, reluctant though one at least of them was, Hannibal enticed them into a battle by seizing a valuable dépôt of stores at a town called Cannæ, near the sea, in the plain of Apulia. Though far inferior in numbers, he contrived by consummate tactics to draw the solid Roman legions into a net, and then used his mobile Numidian cavalry to prevent their escape to the rear. The fight became a butchery, in which 80,000 Romans are said to have fallen. The largest army ever yet sent out from Rome was totally destroyed, and it would seem as if she could no longer escape from her deadly foe.
At this point, the high-water mark of Hannibal’s successes, we may pause to see how the Senate met the news of this most terrible disaster. At no moment in Roman history is the sterling quality of the Roman character and spirit so conspicuously shown. The Senate had to meet not only the immediate military crisis in Italy, but the problems of military and naval policy in Spain, in Sicily, and in the plain of the Po. At home, too, they had to deal with what we may call a religious panic; the people, and especially the women, were beginning to lose nerve, and to fancy that their gods had forsaken them. We can believe the Roman historian when he says that any other people would have been crushed by a catastrophe like this. But the wise men of the Senate simply sat down to repair it, never dreaming of giving in. The city was made safe, fresh legions were enrolled, and thanks were voted to the surviving consul “for not despairing of the republic.” They would not ransom the prisoners in Hannibal’s hands, nor receive the officer whom he sent for this purpose. They were not moved even by the news that southern Italy, the Bruttians, Lucanians, Apulians, and most of the Samnites, had joined the enemy, and that isolated towns farther north had deserted them. Capua, the second city of Italy, was betrayed to Hannibal, and he was thus enabled to advance his base from Apulia into the plain of Campania, without leaving an enemy in his rear: but the Senate did not despair. In due time the ranks of this Senate, sadly thinned since the war began, were filled up by a dictator with the best and most experienced citizens available. All possible means were adopted of keeping up the idea of “the peace of the gods”; an embassy was even sent to Delphi; the religious panic speedily quieted down. At the beginning of the next year provision was made as usual for the military commands in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and also for a fleet which was being got together at Ostia, the port at the mouth of the Tiber. Within a few months after the battle all was going on in Rome as usual.
So the overwhelming defeat of Cannæ did but lead the Romans to victory—to a victory of all the nobler elements in their character over momentary doubt and despair. A people that could recover from that disaster, and go quietly about the work of repairing it, was not likely to be crushed out of existence even by a Hannibal; and though he was to remain as a standing menace for many years on Italian soil, it may fairly be said that henceforward he had no real chance of ultimate success. Two moments of grave anxiety were still to come, but Rome survived them both. One of these came three years later, when a desperate effort was being made to snatch Capua out of Hannibal’s grasp. To induce the Roman government to raise the siege, he made a sudden march on Rome, knowing that no covering army was between him and the capital. He encamped on the Anio, three miles above the city, and rode with an escort of cavalry right up to the gates. But it was all in vain; the Senate had gathered levies amply sufficient to hold the walls, and after plundering the Roman lands Hannibal fell away again, like a sea-wave spent and broken on a rocky shore.
The last moment of extreme peril came five years later, in 207 B.C. The wise foresight of the Senate at the outset of the war had so far secured the Roman hold on Spain, and no reinforcements had reached Hannibal from that source. At last his loyal and able brother Hasdrubal eluded the Roman army there, and by taking a new route—that of Wellington in the Peninsular War—avoided all opposition from the Romans in northern Spain. Communications with Italy were now at last open, though not by sea, as they should have been had the government at Carthage thrown its whole strength into the work of building up its naval power afresh. Hasdrubal was forced to cross the Alps, and this he did with better knowledge and with less loss than his brother. He made his way through the Gallic territory and reached Ariminum (Rimini). Hannibal was in Apulia, where one consul was holding him in check and dealing with disaffected Italians; the other was waiting for the invader on the great coast road south of Ariminum. Hasdrubal sent dispatches to his brother informing him of his arrival and suggesting plans of co-operation; but there were Roman troops everywhere, and the messengers fell into the hands of the enemy. The consul in the south, Claudius Nero, discovering thus the danger, took a step, without orders from the Senate, which has made his name for ever famous. He left sufficient force to hold Hannibal, and slipped away with 7000 picked men, without being discovered even by the most wily of commanders. He marched into the camp of Livius, the other consul, by night, after a march of some 200 miles, all the loyal people of central Italy feeding and blessing his army as he went. Two days later the most decisive battle of the war was fought on the banks of the little river Metaurus, which runs into the sea from the Apennines a few miles south of Ariminum. The Romans were this time completely victorious; the invading army was utterly destroyed, and Hasdrubal was killed fighting hard to the last. Nero went swiftly southwards to his original station, and flung the head of Hasdrubal—so it was said—into his brother’s camp. For the first time during the long weary years of the war Rome was mad with joy; and almost for the first time in her history we note a genuine outburst of gratitude to the gods for this their inestimable blessing. Gratitude, whether to god or man, was not a conspicuous trait in the Roman character; but now, in a moment of real religious emotion, the first thought is one of thankfulness that “the peace of the gods” is fully restored. It was not only that the Senate ordered a public thanksgiving of three days, but that men and women alike took advantage of it to press in crowds to the temples, the mothers, in their finest robes, bringing their children with them.
The rest of the war-story is soon told. The man who had let Hasdrubal escape him in Spain was a young Scipio, son of a Scipio who had done good work and lost his life there earlier in the war. He himself was a young man of real ability, whose character has always been to some extent a mystery. He was a new type of Roman, one not wholly without imagination, and the long years that he spent in Spain without rivals to check him had perhaps made him cherish and develop his own individuality more than was possible for the staid Roman noble of the old type at home. He believed profoundly in himself, and had the gift of making others believe in him. Returning home the year after the Metaurus battle, he was elected consul, though not yet of the legal age, and had Sicily given him as his province, where after many vicissitudes the Romans were now supreme. He at once proposed to invade Africa, and so to force Hannibal to leave Italy; and the Senate, though they could not or would not risk a large force, gave him leave to make the attempt.
Scipio crossed to Africa in 204 B.C., and ere long the Carthaginian government recalled Hannibal. The great general obeyed, sadly and unwillingly, and in 202 met Scipio in battle at Zama and was beaten; the undisciplined levies given him by the government were no match for Roman veterans. He himself now advised his people to make peace, and conducted the negotiations, thus doing what he could to make up for the irreparable damage done her in the war by his own implacable hatred of her rival. Carthage was no longer to be a naval power—that was definitely secured by the terms accorded her. She surrendered Spain to the victors, and agreed to pay a large war indemnity by instalments during fifty successive years. Her foreign policy was to be guided by Rome: she could no longer be called an independent State.
So ended this great trial of Roman endurance. No people has ever gone through a harder test and survived. The sense of duty and discipline never once failed them; Romans and Italians alike were ready to face death at any moment in defence of their country. But war, always mischievous, when prolonged can sow the seeds of much evil in the future; and we must confess with regret that we are to see but little more of the heroic qualities that had carried Rome through this great struggle.