History - Hannibal Ad Portas !!!

“Hannibal ad portas” !! (Hannibal at the gates !!). The Roman Empire was arguably the most powerful empire in the Western world in the centuries before Christ. However, there was one man that made the Romans quake in their sandals. His name was Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca and the city of Carthage on the North African coast in what is modern-day Tunisia. Even centuries after his death, Hannibal’s name continued to inspire fear across the Roman Empire.

This piece is not so much about the Carthaginian Empire (which was a great power in the Mediterranean for several centuries before the birth of Christ) but about Hannibal, an enigmatic, quiet, intense man who many believe was the greatest military strategist of all time. Hannibal remains a mysterious figure in history. He had none of the flamboyance or megalomania of an Alexander, Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte (by the time he died of malaria in Babylon in 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-two, Alexander was convinced that he was a god.). He was also monogamous and faithful to his only love, the Spanish princess Imilce, daughter of an Iberian (Spanish) chieftain. This of course was rare among ancient monarchs and emperors. Both Alexander and Julius Caesar were pederasts (an unpleasant fact many history books prefer not to tell you about) and bisexual. You may remember the old ribald ditty the Roman legions sang about Julius Caesar when returning home from the conquest of Gaul:

“Home the bald whoremonger we bring,
Romans, lock your wives away”.

Hannibal did not have the gift of oratory that Alexander and Julius Caesar possessed. Julius Caesar’s ribald platform oratory on the eve of battle was legendary. Before the conquest of Gaul (France), Caesar stood on a tree stump with a half-eaten radish in his hand and addressed the Roman legions. Did he try to motivate them with tales of the glory and power of Rome? No, contrary to what historians such as Livy say, he did not. He made obscene gestures with the radish and told the legions about the riches of Gaul and the beauty of the Gaulish women, and how they were theirs for the taking. “Tell me that does not motivate you”, he told his troops as he threw the remains of the radish to the ground, “you damned fornicating dogs, you !!" How the legions roared their approval!!

But I digress. As far as personality went, Hannibal was much more like Cyrus the Great, the ancient founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire – a quiet, dignified, natural leader of men. He slept on the plain earth, ate hard soldier’s bread and drank brackish water with the lowest of his foot-soldiers. He treated them like his comrades and shared in their hardships, which made them love him even more. In battle, he put himself at the head of his infantry, where the danger to his own life was the greatest. A noteworthy feature of Hannibal’s army was that it was multi-cultural and multi-ethnic comprising of North Africans, Spaniards, Celts and indeed Italians. He commanded a group of mercenaries from across Southern Europe and North Africa, and they were loyal to him to the end.

Apart from being a military genius, Hannibal spoke several languages, including Greek and Latin, understood Roman culture, history and their gods, and most importantly, the Roman mind. He knew how the mind of the enemy worked and that was why he was so successful for so long. He was a scholar and a master of philosophical discourse. Late in life, during a philosophical discourse on the duties of a general by a Greek philosopher named Pharmio, Hannibal was asked his opinion. Hannibal stood up and said, "I have seen during my life many an old fool; but this one beats them all." But much about the man remains unknown. What is known is the fact that he crossed the Alps via North Africa and Spain in winter with an army that included African war elephants– surely the most audacious and inventive war strategy of all time.

Before we talk about Hannibal, we must understand where he came from. Hannibal Barca was born into a powerful family of nobles in Carthage (part of modern-day Tunisia). Carthage was the principal city of the Carthaginian or Punic Empire, on the shores of the Mediterranean in North Africa. “Punic” is derived from the word “Phoenician”. The word “Carthage” comes from the old Phoenician word “kard hadast” which meant “New City”. Carthage was founded by Phoenician seafarers sometime around 820 B.C. However, it became an important city sometime around 575 B.C., when the nearby Phoenician sea capital Tyre fell to Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar. The location of the city at the tip of North Africa on the shores of the Mediterranean along with its proximity to Sicily, Spain, the North African coast as well as the African continent meant that it was an important city.

Between 575 B.C. and 265 B.C, the city grew in power and importance, bringing it into inevitable conflict with a growing force across the Mediterranean – the nascent Roman Empire. Carthage’s growing power and influence especially in Sicily and Southern Europe meant rivalry with Rome. Carthage with its navy was a sea power, while Rome with its large disciplined infantry was a land power. Inevitably, Rome’s ambitions of expansion meant that it started eying Carthage’s provinces in Southern Europe – in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica in Spain. I will not bore you with dates, but there were three wars fought between Rome and Carthage, the three “Punic Wars”. The first one between 264 B.C and 241 B.C, the second (and this is the one we will focus on because it involves Hannibal the Great) between 218 B.C. and 201 B.C, and the third and final one between 149 B.C. and 146 B.C.

Hannibal’s father Hamilcar Barca was a Carthaginian general in the first Punic War. Carthage lost that hard fought war, had to cede Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica to Rome, pay large sums of money to Rome as war reparations and sue for a humiliating peace. As a young boy, Hannibal learnt the stories of the first Punic War at his father’s knee. He swore that someday, he would help Carthage regain the empire it had lost to the Romans.

And here our story of Hannibal begins. Hannibal became Commander-In-Chief of the Carthaginian armed forces in 221 B.C. at the age of twenty-six, a few years after his father Hamilcar Barca died. He spent the next three years of his life consolidating Carthage’s possessions in Iberia (Spain), much to the alarm of the Romans. Hannibal realized that if Carthage was to be safe, he would have to take the war to Rome. Attack was the best form of defense. He also knew that the Roman navy had blockaded Carthage and that he would have to find another way to fight the Romans. He also knew that the Roman infantry was formidable, but their cavalry was weak. For three years, he trained his Iberian (Spanish) infantry and elite Numidian (North African) cavalry.

Then he did the unthinkable – he crossed the Alps via Northern Spain and entered Italy. The Carthaginian army crossed the Alps in 218 B.C. For a long time, the Romans did not believe that this was possible, and dismissed it as a rumor. But it was not. Hannibal began his crossing of the Alps with 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 37 African war elephants, through unexplored routes. Along the way, he had to contend with war-like mountain tribes. He offered them two choices – join him or fight him. The ones that fought him lost. The ones that joined him became his allies in his battle against Rome. He had to face innumerable hardships on this epic journey. He was struck by snow-blindness and lost an eye. His North African and Iberian allies were not used to the cold in the Alps and many of them died. Of the 37 war elephants that started the journey, only 12 survived the crossing of the Alps.

But cross them he did, landing in what is now the city of Turin in modern-day Italy. The Romans did not know what to make of this, and sent out several armies to battle Hannibal. Without going into too much detail about the battles fought, it is enough to know that with a much smaller force at his disposal than the Romans had, Hannibal won every time. At Trebea, Trasimene and many other places in Italy, Hannibal overwhelmingly defeated much larger Roman armies.

One battle in particular, deserves mention – the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C, where the elite of the Roman army was comprehensively destroyed. Hannibal was camped with his army of about 40,000 men on the banks of the Aufidus River in southern Italy. He had his back to the river with no apparent means of escape. Here he was challenged in battle by the Roman generals Varro and Lucius Paullus and a huge Roman army numbering more than 100,000 men. On the face of it, Hannibal’s position was indefensible – a much larger army in front of him and a fast-flowing river behind him. However, Hannibal’s military genius came to the fore again. As he faced off with the confident Romans, he placed his weakest, light-armed infantry in the centre in a crescent formation, with his formidable Numidian cavalry out on the flanks. As the Romans charged, the disciplined Roman legions broke through the weak Carthaginian center – just as he had planned. The Romans broke through the Carthaginian center and found themselves in the Aufidus River. In the meanwhile, the powerful Numidian cavalry circled around the back of the Roman legions and caught them in the rear. It was a masterstroke. The Roman legions were either driven into the river and drowned, or fell like ninepins in the face of the charge of the heavily armored Numidian horse. By the end of the day, 70,000 Romans were killed or captured. It was the single greatest loss the Romans had ever faced. The strongest Roman army ever fielded lay dead or wounded on the banks of the Aufidus River.

And here, at his most triumphant, is where Hannibal made probably made his only mistake. The Roman armies were destroyed, the Roman Empire in a state of panic. He was viewed as invincible. Hannibal marched up to the gates of Rome after Cannae, but he did not enter the city. Why? One reason could have been because he did not have the necessary siege engines and towers that he would have needed to besiege the city. Nobody knows for sure. Whatever the reason, Hannibal lost his one chance to occupy and conquer Rome. As time went by, the Romans got an opportunity to regroup and train new armies. The size of Hannibal’s army remained the same, and though he was victorious, he lost men in his battles with the Romans, and he was unable to replenish his supply of soldiers. Though he continued beating the Romans on the battlefield (when they agreed to give battle and not retreat) and captured the Italian cities of Capua, Sagentum and Tarentum, the tide was turning against Hannibal. His pleas for more troops from his parent city Carthage fell on deaf ears. Politicians and members of the ruling oligarchy in Carthage were resentful and jealous of his success and refused to send him the aid and resources he needed to deliver the killer blow.

His last opportunity came in 207 B.C. when the ruling Carthaginian oligarchy finally consented to send an army from Iberia (Spain) commanded by Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, a very good cavalry commander in his own right. The Romans were terrified at the prospect of another Carthaginian army in Italy. However, by this time, the Romans had a war hero of their own – the great Scipio Africanus, a young general who grew up studying Hannibal’s war strategies and applying them on the battlefield himself. Scipio had the highest regard and admiration for Hannibal.

When Hasdrubal rode out of Spain and met Scipio Africanus in battle at Metaurus, he was defeated by the Romans who used the same “enveloping” tactics employed so successfully by Hannibal at Cannae and elsewhere. Hasdrubal knew all was lost and made one final charge. He died in glory, but was defeated and beheaded by the Romans. It was the beginning of the end for Hannibal.

Hannibal’s attempts at defeating the Romans in battle were successful, but his goal of destroying the Roman Empire remained unfulfilled. He was recalled to Africa by the Carthaginian oligarchy, and fought his final battle at Zama in North Africa in 203 B.C. Most of his veterans of the Italian war were dead. He was left with an inexperienced army, and this time he was facing a rejuvenated Roman army that had a much stronger cavalry contingent, marshaled by the one man who had studied and understood his own battle tactics – Scipio Africanus. The battle was hard-fought and at one point, it looked like Hannibal would prevail yet again. But luck favored the Romans and Scipio. Hannibal lost.

And thus the second Punic War ended, with Rome as the victor. Many expected Scipio Africanus to raze Carthage to the ground, but he did not. Instead, he laid down reasonable surrender and war reparation terms. Hannibal returned to Carthage and began rebuilding the city. He was so effective that fourteen years after Carthage’s surrender in the second Punic War, Carthage was becoming a power to be reckoned with once again. The Romans were getting nervous again. Carthage was pressured into exiling Hannibal. He spent the last few years of his life traveling from court to court across West Asia. He debated the finer points of philosophy in Syria and helped Antiochus build an army to fight the Romans. He helped King Artaxes I of Armenia design and build a new capital city. He became a man without a country. But the Romans kept pursuing him relentlessly. The end came in 183 B.C. at Libyssa on the shores of the Sea of Marmarra in modern-day Turkey.

History has it that the young Roman centurion and soldiers who were ordered to capture Hannibal alive and send him to Rome in chains were in complete awe of their legendary foe and could not bring themselves to arrest him. The centurion responsible for his arrest was struck speechless in the presence of this sturdy, battle-scarred old oak of a man who in his youth had brought the mighty Roman Empire to its knees and almost destroyed it. In the end, it did not matter. Hannibal was not one to be taken prisoner. He consumed poison and so for one last time, eluded his arch-enemy. He was sixty four years old. Ironically, his nemesis Scipio Africanus died in the same year.

What would have happened if after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal had stormed the gates of Rome? Should he have done it? Why didn’t he? Would he have won? The fate of the Western world was changed because of that one decision.

Hannibal’s death brought about the end of Carthage’s dominance. The vengeance exacted by the Romans within fifty years of Hannibal’s death was terrible. The Romans tricked Carthage into a Third Punic War, attacked the enfeebled city and put it to the sword. Of Carthage’s 700,000 inhabitants, only 50,000 were left alive and even they were enslaved. It was the largest massacre of civilians until the Second World War. Interestingly, the one man who had consistently opposed the destruction of Carthage was Scipio Africanus – the only Roman to ever defeat Hannibal in the field.

But the Romans never forgot the one man who defied them for sixteen years and almost accomplished the unthinkable – the destruction of the Roman Empire. Hannibal came close, very close, and like most lovers of ancient history, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if after the battle of Cannae, the victorious Hannibal had taken the high road to Rome at the head of his Numidian cavalry and Iberian infantry. The history of the known world may have been changed forever.

The ruins of Carthage still stand at the northern tip of Tunisia. Today, it is a pleasant suburb of the city of Tunis. But this unremarkable suburb was once the first capital and Queen of the Mediterranean. On a clear day, you can still see the Sicilian coastline in the distance, the gateway to the Roman Empire, where as a young boy standing beside his father, Hannibal must have looked out across the purple waters of the Mediterranean and dreamt of conquest and revenge. “Hannibal ad portas!!”