Hannibal

Carthaginian general

• Born: 247 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Probably Carthage, North Africa (now in Tunisia)
• Died: 182 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Libyssa, Bithynia, Asia Minor (now in Turkey)

During the Second Punic War, Hannibal led an army of mercenaries across the Alps into Italy, where, for fifteen years, he exhibited superior generalship, defeating the Romans in one battle after another.

Early Life

Hannibal (HAN-uh-buhl) was born in 247 b.c.e., probably in Carthage, of an aristocratic family that claimed descent from Dido, the legendary foundress of the city. Of his mother nothing is known, but his father, Hamilcar Barca, was for nearly twenty years the supreme military commander of the Carthaginian forces. Assuming this position in the year of Hannibal’s birth, Hamilcar guided his country through the last difficult years of the First Punic War and then began the construction of a new empire in Spain. After his death in 229, Hamilcar’s son-in-law, Hasdrubal, extended Carthaginian dominion northward to the Ebro River and founded New Carthage.

Little is known of Hannibal during these years. Livy, the principal source of information, notes that when Hannibal was nine years of age, he accompanied his father to Spain. Prior to their departure, Hamilcar invoked the blessings of the gods with a sacrifice at which Hannibal was compelled to swear that he would never be a friend to Rome. Such was the hostile atmosphere in which the youth was raised. Although little is known about the years of Hannibal’s apprenticeship under his father and later under Hasdrubal, there can be little doubt that Hannibal would benefit immeasurably from the rigors of frontier life. When Hasdrubal was assassinated in 221, Hannibal, age twenty-six, was ready to assume command. That he had already distinguished himself as a warrior and a leader is indicated by the alacrity with which the army proclaimed him commander.

Life’s Work

Hannibal was the epitome of a warrior. According to silver coins supposedly bearing his likeness, he had curly hair, a straight nose, a sloping forehead, a strong neck, and a look of determination in his eyes. A man with a mission, in his mid-twenties Hannibal was ready to carry his father’s dream to completion. All that was needed was an excuse. The opportunity presented itself in 219, when Rome violated a treaty with Carthage by intervening in the political affairs of the Spanish state of Saguntum. Hannibal dismissed a Roman commission sent to investigate the matter and then laid siege to the city, which fell eight months later. Rome’s failure to aid its client state probably encouraged Hannibal to extend Carthaginian dominion northward to the Pyrenees. When Carthage refused to surrender Hannibal, Rome declared war.

The Roman strategy was to end the war quickly. One army was dispatched under the leadership of the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio to confront Hannibal in Spain, while the other consul, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, was to attack Carthage. In this matter, however, the Romans greatly underestimated the military genius and determination of Hannibal. In the spring of 218, Hannibal gathered his army of Numidians and Spaniards—variously estimated at forty thousand to sixty thousand men—and, in one of the most celebrated marches in history, crossed the Pyrenees, the Rhone River, and finally the snow-laden Alps to reach the Po River valley. It was a perilous five-month journey fraught with dangers of all sorts—hostile tribes, bad weather, impenetrable geographical barriers, and a scarcity of provisions. Thousands of Hannibal’s soldiers and many of the elephants perished along the way. By journey’s end, Hannibal’s forces had been reduced to about twenty thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry, too few to undertake the conquest of Roman Italy. The success of the venture would depend on Hannibal’s ability to lure many of Rome’s disaffected allies to his side.

In the meantime, after hearing of Hannibal’s departure from Spain, the two consuls rushed northward to meet the threat. Scipio, in a move of future importance, sent his army on to Spain to prevent reinforcements from joining Hannibal. In December, the two consuls joined forces to stop Hannibal’s advance, but the Romans fell into an ambush in the frigid waters of the Trebia River. Approximately two-thirds of the Roman force was lost. Although Rome managed to conceal the defeat from its citizens, it was necessary to abandon the Po River valley to the Punic forces. Hannibal, to curry favor with the natives, released his Italian prisoners.

Hannibal wintered in northern Italy. During that time, his army grew, with the addition of Celtic recruits, to about fifty thousand in number. In the spring of 217, Hannibal moved southward into the peninsula. The Romans sent the consul Gaius Flaminius with orders to hold Hannibal at the Apennines. Hannibal, wily as ever, slipped around the Roman commander by sloshing through the marshes of the Arno River into Etruria. Along the way, Hannibal contracted malaria and lost the sight of one eye. Flaminius regained his composure and eventually caught up with Hannibal’s forces, only to suffer a crushing defeat at Lake Trasimene. Flaminius and virtually all of his soldiers perished in the battle.

A second major defeat was more than Rome could endure. In desperation, Rome resurrected an old emergency procedure and appointed a dictator, Quintus Fabius Maximus, to handle the crisis. Nicknamed “the Delayer,” Fabius refused to meet Hannibal in open battle, preferring hit-and-run tactics. He also used a scorched-earth policy to prevent Hannibal from living off the land. Although the strategy worked and restored Roman morale, public opinion favored more aggressive action. In 216, Rome felt strong enough to send the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro with an army of about sixty thousand men to engage Hannibal in open battle at Cannae in northern Apulia. Although numerically superior, the Romans fell prey once again to Hannibal’s genius. While the Romans drove hard through the middle of the Carthaginian line, they were gradually encircled and destroyed. Only a fraction of the Roman force managed to escape. Hannibal’s double-envelopment maneuver has since been copied many times by other generals.

The news of defeat threw Rome into chaos. Hannibal, contrary to the advice of his generals, refused to march on the panic-stricken city. The reasons for his cautious behavior are not clear, though he probably understood that Rome was strongly fortified, and he may have continued to hope that Rome’s allies would now defect. The major rebellion for which he had hoped never occurred. There were, however, encouraging signs. Much of southern Italy, including Capua, second only to Rome in importance, went over to Hannibal’s side. He also gained the support of Macedonia’s King Philip V, who hoped to involve Rome in a war in the east.

Hannibal was supreme for the moment, but he had not broken the indomitable Roman spirit. There were also some encouraging signs for Rome. Many of Rome’s allies, especially in central Italy, had remained faithful. Property qualifications for military service were lowered, and new armies were raised that returned to Fabius’s successful tactics of the past. Furthermore, the decision to remain in Spain, coupled with Rome’s continued mastery of the sea, made it difficult for Hannibal to receive reinforcements. While Hannibal moved his diminished, bedraggled army from one encampment to another without benefit of open battle, the Romans began to reconquer the lost cities and provinces. In 211, both Capua and Syracuse were retaken. Compounding Hannibal’s problems was the fact that the alliance with Philip V had proved ineffectual.

In the meantime, Rome had gained the advantage in Spain through the efforts of the brilliant young general Publius Cornelius Scipio. In 209, New Carthage, the major city of Hannibal’s Iberian empire, was captured by Scipio’s forces, along with vast quantities of supplies. He could not prevent Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, from crossing the Pyrenees in an attempt to reach Hannibal in Italy, but the relief expedition was intercepted and defeated at the Metaurus River in 207. Nevertheless, Hannibal and his diminished army remained a threat. In 211, he appeared before the walls of Rome, though he took no action. He defeated and killed the consuls Gnaeus Fulvius and Marcus Claudius Marcellus in other battles. It was becoming increasingly obvious, however, that Hannibal could not win the war.

In 205, Scipio returned triumphantly from Spain to assume the consulship. Under his leadership, Rome was ready to take the offensive. In the following year, Scipio invaded Africa and after a brief campaign forced Carthage to capitulate. Hannibal and his army were recalled from Italy, ostensibly as a part of the peace agreement. Once he and his fifteen thousand veterans were on African soil, however, the Carthaginians broke off the negotiations and renewed the war. In 202, Scipio and Hannibal met at Zama in a titanic battle. Using tactics he had learned from Hannibal, Scipio was victorious.

Following Zama, a harsh treaty, termed a “Carthaginian Peace” ever since, was imposed on the defeated Carthage. Hannibal remained in the city for five years and worked hard to build a more unified and democratic state. His enemies would give him no rest, however, and in 196 he fled first to Syria and then to Bithynia, where he served briefly as commander of the army in a war with the Romans. In 182, Hannibal committed suicide rather than surrender to his enemies.

Significance

The Second Punic War was, in large part, the biography of Hannibal of Carthage. Perhaps no other man in history has so thoroughly dominated a conflict. The historian Polybius observed that Hannibal was the architect of all things, good and bad, which came to the Romans and Carthaginians. His feats, although recorded by reliable ancient historians, are almost legendary. After inheriting his father’s struggle with Rome, he crossed the Alps into Italy, where for fifteen years he moved about the countryside at will. He never lost a major battle, scoring decisive victories at the Trebia River, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Hannibal’s impact was so great that the Romans were driven at times to desperate measures—the appointment of dictators, human sacrifice to appease the gods, and what today is known as guerrilla warfare.

Roman historians, through whose eyes the conflict must be viewed, were not subdued in their praise. Livy recounts with amazement the fact that Hannibal was able to hold his army of various nationalities and beliefs together for so long a time in hostile territory. That he succeeded was the result, in large part, of his courage, an element of recklessness, and an excellent rapport with his men. Yet, Livy continues, he was capable of great cruelty and had little respect for either gods or men. According to Polybius, on the other hand, while Hannibal might have been guilty of these things, he was forced by circumstances and the influence of friends to behave in this paradoxical manner.

Hannibal was, in the eyes of both his contemporaries and modern scholars, the perfect general. Yet, like Pyrrhus before him, he was fighting an unwinnable war. Rome had the advantages of terrain, command of the sea, and inexhaustible reserves of men. In the end, he lost, and Rome, from which much of Western civilization is derived, remained in the ascendant for the next six centuries. Nevertheless, Hannibal remains one of the most fascinating figures in the annals of military history.

Bibliography

Bradford, Ernle. Hannibal: The General from Carthage. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. One of the most recent studies, derived in large part from the accounts of Livy and Polybius. Provides excellent descriptions of the major battles at the Trebia River, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. The author attempts to put Hannibal’s career in better perspective through the use of modern examples.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Punic Wars. London: Cassell, 2000. The first section of this three-part work elaborates the complex of military, naval, geographic, and historic details of the three Punic Wars.

Lancel, Serge. Carthage: A History. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. Detailed study of Carthage from its founding and rise in the early centuries of the first millennium to its defeat and Roman absorption by the end of the period.

Lancel, Serge. Hannibal. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998. Well-documented and detailed life of Hannibal.

Livy. The Rise of Rome. Translated by T. J. Luce. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Includes introduction, notes, bibliography, and index.

Livy. The War with Hannibal. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965. Written by a patriotic Roman historian who greatly admired Hannibal’s military genius. Along with Polybius’s work, it is the best source of information on the Punic Wars. Useful for the more knowledgeable reader. The Penguin edition has been taken from Livy’s overall history of Rome.

Polybius. The Histories of Polybius. Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. 2 vols. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. A history of Rome from the onset of the First Punic War in 264 b.c.e. to the destruction of Carthage in 146 b.c.e. One of the best sources of information about Hannibal.

Sinnigen, William G., and Arthur E. A. Boak. A History of Rome to A.D. 565. 6th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1977. One of the better surveys of Roman history. Includes a valuable chapter on the conflict with Carthage in which the chief events of Hannibal’s career are mentioned. Useful for scholars and students alike.

Toynbee, Arnold. Hannibal’s Legacy. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. The beginning student will find it ponderous, but it is a valuable study that goes far beyond Hannibal.