Hannibal

Rome's Greatest Enemy

Philip Freeman

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781643138725
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Telling the story of a man who stood against the overwhelming power of the mighty Roman empire, Hannibal is thebiography of a man who, against all odds, dared to change the course of history. Over two thousand years ago one of the greatest military leaders in history almost destroyed Rome. Hannibal, a daring African general from the city of Carthage, led an army of warriors and battle elephants over the snowy Alps to invade the very heart of Rome's growing empire. But what kind of person would dare to face the most relentless imperial power of the ancient world? How could Hannibal, consistently outnumbered and always deep in enemy territory, win battle after battle until he held the very fate of Rome within his grasp? Hannibal appeals to many as the ultimate underdog—a Carthaginian David against the Goliath of Rome—but it wasn't just his genius on the battlefield that set him apart. As a boy and then a man, his self-discipline and determination were legendary. As a military leader, like Alexander the Great before him and Julius Caesar after, he understood the hearts of men and had an uncanny ability to read the unseen weaknesses of his enemy. As a commander in war, Hannibal has few equals in history and has long been held as a model of strategic and tactical genius. But Hannibal was much more than just a great general. He was a practiced statesman, a skilled diplomat, and a man deeply devoted to his family and country. Roman historians—on whom we rely for almost all our information on Hannibal—portray him as a cruel barbarian, but how does the story change if we look at Hannibal from the Carthaginian point of view? Can we search beneath the accounts of Roman writers who were eager to portray Hannibal as a monster and find a more human figure? Can we use the life of Hannibal to look at the Romans themselves in an unfamiliar way— not as the noble and benign defenders of civilization but as ruthless conquerors motivated by greed and conquest?

1 CARTHAGE

Hannibal’s home was founded by a woman—on that everyone could agree.

But cities in the ancient world were never founded by women. Theseus united the villages of Attica to form Athens, King David defeated the Canaanites to establish Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish kingdom, and Romulus and his brother Remus built the first walls of Rome. The tale of a woman founding Carthage is so odd that it may actually be true, since it isn’t the sort of story anyone would invent.

Legend tells¹ how the beautiful queen Elissa fled the Phoenician city of Tyre after her wicked brother Pygmalion murdered her husband. She offered prayers to the god Melqart and sailed with a few followers first to Cyprus, where she rescued eighty virgins destined for prostitution who instead became the wives of her settlers in their new home. When the Tyrians finally arrived in Africa, the native king laughed at the idea of a woman as leader and smugly offered Elissa only as much land for her new city as she could cover with the hide of a single ox. But the clever queen cut an ox hide (Greek byrsa) into thin strips and laid them out in an enormous circle around an entire hillside near the coast, thus claiming the citadel—later known as the Byrsa—that would form the heart of her new city. The Phoenician colonists named the town Qart-Hadasht (“New City”), which the Greeks would call Carchedon and the Romans Carthago. Years later, when Elissa’s city was well established and a native Libyan king was pressing her to marry him, she died by suicide, throwing herself on a funeral pyre instead of entering into a marriage against her will. Readers of the Roman poet Virgil will recognize the same story, with a few minor changes, told in his Aeneid in which the Trojan hero Aeneas visits Carthage and falls in love with the founding queen, named Dido in his poem, who kills herself when he leaves her behind in Africa.

The ancestors of Hannibal² did indeed come from the distant shores of the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Greeks called them Phoinikes from their word for the valuable purple coloring they extracted from the glands of sea mollusks. This rare dye became the color of kings, but the stench from the factories in which it was made was so overpowering that they were always located on the far edge of town. When the Romans later encountered the Phoenicians, they called them the Poeni or Punici. They spoke a Semitic language closely related to that of their Hebrew neighbors and were among the first people to develop an alphabet.

The Phoenicians were never a united empire, but instead a collection of independent city-states that included Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Often overrun by warring empires and having little in the way of natural resources aside from mollusks and cedar trees in the mountains of Lebanon rising above their cities, the Phoenicians turned to the sea and became the greatest sailors of the ancient world. By the tenth century B.C.E., they were establishing trading posts across the Mediterranean to bring the raw materials of the west to the hungry markets of the east. Cyprus and Sardinia, with their rich deposits of copper, lead, and iron, were among the first places where Tyre and other Phoenician cities established outposts. It wasn’t long before they had sailed all the way to Spain to tap the rich silver mines near the Iberian region of Tartessus on the Atlantic coast just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The Tyrians soon established their own colony at Gades (modern Cadiz) just south of Tartessus, over two thousand miles from their Phoenician homeland. As the Hebrew prophet Isaiah proclaimed:

Tyre, that bestower of crowns, whose merchants were princes, whose traders were the most renowned on earth.³

In their voyages, the Tyrians came as merchants and entrepreneurs, not conquerors, and established close and usually peaceful commercial ties with native peoples, including the Greeks, who adapted the Punic alphabet to write their own language.

The city that Elissa founded⁴ was in the perfect location. Ships sailing from Lebanon to Spain and back again had little choice but to pass close to their settlement through the narrowed passage between the bulge of Africa and the island of Sicily. It also lay on the busy north–south sea lanes linking Sardinia and the wealthy Etruscan cities of Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. The mountainous coastal lands near Carthage, unlike the Sahara Desert farther south, were well-watered by rivers that could support fields and orchards of barley, wheat, oats, olives, fruits, and grapes. The city itself was established on the spacious headland of a peninsula that provided natural protection from inland attacks, but also easy access to the sea and the lands beyond. Local tribes were amicable enough and eager for the imported goods from around the Mediterranean which the Carthaginians could offer. Native people and Carthaginians intermarried from the beginning to create a new and unique African culture combining the ways of the ancient lands to the south and the Mediterranean world to the north and east.

Archaeology cannot tell us for certain if Elissa and her band of settlers were real, but excavations have revealed that Carthage was thriving by the mid-eighth century B.C.E. Fine pottery from Greece and luxury goods from Etruscan Italy are found in the earliest layers of the city. A defensive wall of stone soon circled the settlement—for no city in the ancient world trusted wholly in the good will of its neighbors. Early cemeteries suggest a population of up to thirty thousand within a century of the city’s founding. The graves contained bodies buried with great care along with perfume flasks, lamps, and statuettes. Carthage not only imported goods from abroad, but soon made fine quality products of her own. Metalworking and pottery were mainstays for export via its growing merchant fleet, along with multicolored carpets and even purple dye from its local factories.

Carthage developed and nurtured its own trading ties with the people of Africa and around the Mediterranean from its beginning. Well-traveled merchant roads from Numidia to the west as well as Libya and Egypt to the east led to Carthage, as did caravan and trading routes stretching across the Sahara from the lands and kingdoms far to the south along the Senegal, Niger, and upper Nile rivers. In the Mediterranean, Carthaginian traders sailed regularly back to Tyre, but even more so to the west and north. Spain, Italy, and particularly Sardinia and Sicily were frequent stops for Carthaginian merchants who soon established permanent trading posts on these islands. When trade from Tyre declined after its conquest by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B.C.E., Carthage quickly stepped in to fill the commercial vacuum.

But Carthaginian maritime commerce and exploration were not confined to the Mediterranean. The merchants of the city had a keen interest in developing direct trade by sea with the more distant regions of Europe and Africa. Just after 500 B.C.E., two expeditions were launched⁵ whose stories still survive, though there were certainly many other voyages. The first was led by a single ship commanded by a Carthaginian named Himilco who sailed north beyond the Pillars of Hercules along the Spanish and Gaulish shores of the Atlantic until he reached the islands of the Oestrymnians, perhaps on the coast of Brittany or Cornwall, that were a rich source of tin. From there, Himilco may have sailed on to northern Britain and Ireland. The second expedition was much larger and consisted of a fleet of ships and colonist families led by a Carthaginian named Hanno. The records of this voyage were reportedly on display at the temple of Ba’al Hammon in Carthage during Hannibal’s own lifetime. Hanno captained his flotilla of ships into the stormy Atlantic and down the coast of Morocco, establishing new Carthaginian settlements along the way, including one at Cerne Island in present-day Mauritania, where a lively trade developed with the native people on the nearby mainland for lion skins and elephant ivory. After the last of the colonists were settled, Hanno continued south of the Sahara to what is probably the mouth of the Senegal River and farther yet, perhaps even to the Niger River delta and beyond. Along the way they were attacked by what they described as very hairy creatures they called gorillas, whose skins they took back to Carthage, then watched an erupting volcano called they called the Chariot of the Gods. A brief story told by the skeptical Greek historian Herodotus that certain Phoenician sailors about the seventh century B.C.E. circumnavigated all of Africa should not be dismissed and may be only one of many sea journeys that regularly connected Carthage with a vast trading network all the way to the southern tip of the continent. But however far Himilco, Hanno, and other Carthaginians sailed on their distant expeditions, their voyages show that the Carthaginians were hungry for new markets and trade goods, as well as possessing a powerful sense of curiosity and adventure.

Nonetheless, Carthage was always mindful of commercial opportunities closer to home, especially across the narrow sea in Italy. Trade with the Etruscan cities in particular had long been important to Carthage, but in 509 B.C.E. the Carthaginians signed a treaty with a small town in central Italy⁶ on the banks of the Tiber River. This seemingly unimportant settlement on seven hills had just thrown off the yoke of their last oppressive king. No one else at the time gave a second thought to this struggling state, poor as it was and threatened on all sides by hostile neighbors, but the Carthaginians saw promise for its future and made a pact of friendship with the new republic of Rome.

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The Greek philosopher Aristotle praised Carthage⁷ for having one of the best political systems in the Mediterranean. The city was not ruled by kings like Alexander’s Macedonia nor by a democratic assembly like Athens, but jointly by three different branches of government—elected magistrates, an aristocratic senate, and an assembly of the people—a system that provided a balance of power and offered checks on any would-be tyrant.

The two chief magistrates of Carthage were called suffetes by the Romans and shophetim by the Carthaginians—the same term found in the Hebrew Bible for the judges of Israel such as Samson and Deborah. Like the consuls of Rome, the suffetes were men of wealth and status chosen annually to serve as the chief executive officers of the Carthaginian state. The second branch of government was the adirim, or senate, of Carthage, made up of the richest and most powerful men of the land. Most of the senators were wealthy landowners and many were deeply involved in the merchant life of the city, which they vigorously protected. Finally the assembly of free citizens represented the concerns of the common people. As with almost everywhere else in the ancient world, women had no official voice in any part of government.

One thing that set Carthage apart from other ancient cities was its dependence on mercenary soldiers to provide its defense and fight wars. Most cities would hire a few foreign soldiers from time to time to supplement their citizen militias, but Carthage relied heavily on buying protection. This had the advantage of avoiding the expense of a large standing army, but it had the disadvantage that sometimes the mercenaries grew violent when unhappy with their pay or treatment—a situation which would in time cause enormous trouble for the city and particularly Hannibal’s father. These mercenary armies were led by prominent citizens of Carthage, but woe to the Carthaginian general who failed to win battles, for he would promptly be crucified.

The streets of Carthage, laid out on a neat grid, were bustling and full of activity from before dawn till long after dark. Fishermen hauled their catch ashore, vendors grilled meat for a quick meal along the busy lanes, and bakers sold hot bread topped with honey and herbs. Housing for the common people was in crowded but pleasant enough apartment buildings up to six stories tall. Most wealthy families had spacious homes north of the Byrsa Hill in the elite Megara neighborhood, a place Greek writers praised as full of lush gardens and fruit trees. All the houses had underground cisterns to collect and store rainwater for drinking and washing. Carrying the water upstairs was the job of slaves, who labored both in the city and on surrounding farms. Slaves were ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean world, whether at Carthage, Rome, or Athens, and were of no particular race. Most were prisoners from the losing side of the endless wars waged by other nations in lands far from Carthage, but some were captured in pirate raids or born into a life of slavery. It was always a life of abuse and degradation, especially for women, but with hard work over time most could buy their way out of enslavement. In times of need, young male slaves could serve in the Carthaginian army in exchange for their freedom.

Religion was a crucial part of Carthaginian life. The many gods brought from their Phoenician homeland were worshipped with great care and devotion, often influenced by native African religious traditions. Temples to Eshmoun, Reshef, Astarte, and many other gods were found throughout the city, including shrines to Melqart, who died and was resurrected each year. But the greatest of the gods of Carthage was Ba’al Hammon, often represented by his symbol of the crescent moon. He was accompanied by his female consort Tanit, who as divine patroness of the city was portrayed on art and monuments with outstretched arms raised to heaven.

The most striking and controversial feature of Carthaginian religion—at least to outside observers—was the molk, or sacrifice, of newborn children⁸ in the blazing fires of the god Ba’al Hammon. The Jews wrote in horror in their scriptures of similar holocausts among the Canaanite cousins of the Carthaginians. Greek and especially Roman writers competed with each other in their grotesque descriptions of the rite to portray the Carthaginians as cruel barbarians. The truth of what the Carthaginians actually did during the molk and how often they may have performed such sacrifices is difficult to say, but it seems likely that at least in times of extraordinary danger they did sacrifice children to Ba’al Hammon as an act of religious devotion, even during the lifetime of Hannibal and later. But then again, the Romans themselves routinely practiced wholesale infanticide of unwanted babies, especially girls, and performed public human sacrifices of adults to their gods as late as the time of Julius Caesar⁹—a fact the Romans rarely mentioned in their histories.

2 SICILY

As Carthage grew in both wealth and power, its neighbors around the Mediterranean began to cast an envious eye on the city. The Carthaginian colonies in Sicily in particular seemed like ripe fruit ready to be plucked. They began to wonder if even Carthage itself could be conquered by a leader daring enough to invade Africa. Everyone knew that the Carthaginians were by nature merchants, not warriors, who relied on hired soldiers to defend them. Whoever could conquer Carthage, or at least its colonies, could become rich indeed.

The thriving Greek city of Syracuse in eastern Sicily under its tyrant Gelon was the first to pick a fight with Carthage in 483 B.C.E. when a rival Greek ruler Terillus from the town of Himera¹ in northern Sicily was driven from power by an opposing faction and appealed to Carthage for help. The Carthaginian clan known as the Magonids, who had long dominated politics in Carthage and held valuable trading connections with Himera, encouraged a reluctant Carthaginian Senate to hire mercenaries to help Terillus retake his city. This was just the excuse Syracuse needed to proclaim the Carthaginians—barbarians who pierced their ears, distained to eat pork, and even circumcised their sons!—were invading the Greek lands of Sicily and must be stopped. The Syracusans tried unsuccessfully to rally Greek allies, but Syracuse was still able to crush the Magonid general sent to Sicily along with his army. The terrified Carthaginian Senate sent envoys to Gelon and gave Syracuse everything it wanted in exchange for peace.

But easy victory and peace bought with gold only serves to make an enemy more bold. In 397 B.C.E. the new tyrant of Syracuse,² a young man of modest origins named Dionysius, roused the Greek cities of Sicily against Carthage with a new call to throw off the alleged yoke of Punic oppression and to share in the easy wealth to be gained. Ethnic warfare began as Greeks across ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Prologue: The Vow
• Timeline
• Glossary of Names
• Chapter 1: Carthage
• Chapter 2: Sicily
• Chapter 3: Spain
• Chapter 4: New Carthage
• Chapter 5: Saguntum
• Chapter 6: Gaul
• Chapter 7: The Alps
• Chapter 8: The Ticinus River
• Chapter 9: Trebia
• Chapter 10: The Arno Marshes
• Chapter 11: Lake Trasimene
• Chapter 12: Campania
• Chapter 13: Geronium
• Chapter 14: Cannae
• Chapter 15: Rome
• Chapter 16: Capua
• Chapter 17: Metaurus
• Chapter 18: Zama
• Chapter 19: Exile
• Chapter 20: Legacy
• Epilogue: What If Hannibal Had Won?
• Ancient Sources
• Modern Sources
• About the Author
• Endnotes
• Index
• Copyright