Hamilcar

Hamilcar, son of Hannibal, surnamed Barca, a Carthaginian, in the first Punic War, but at its very close, while still quite a young man, began to command an army in Sicily. Whereas before his coming the affairs of the Carthaginians had gone badly both by sea and by land, he himself, once he was present, never yielded to the enemy nor gave them an opening to do harm, and often, on the contrary, when occasion was given, harassed them, and always came off the superior. By this deed, when the Carthaginians had lost almost all in Sicily, he so defended Eryx that no war seemed to be waged in that place. Meanwhile the Carthaginians, defeated in a naval battle off the Aegates Islands by Gaius Lutatius, the Roman consul, resolved to make an end of the war, and entrusted the matter to the discretion of Hamilcar. He, although he burned with eagerness for war, yet thought he must submit to peace, because he understood that his country, exhausted by expenses, could no longer bear the calamities of war; but so that he straightway turned over in his mind that, if only their affairs were a little restored, he would renew the war and pursue the Romans in arms, until either by valour they had conquered or, conquered, had surrendered. With this design he negotiated the peace, in which he showed such fierceness that, when Catulus declared that he would not compose the war unless Hamilcar with his men who held Eryx should leave their arms behind and quit Sicily, he said that, though his country was sinking, he himself would rather perish than return home with so great disgrace: for it was not of his valour to hand over to the enemy the arms received from his country against its foes. To this stubbornness Catulus yielded.

But when he came to Carthage, he found the commonwealth in a far other state than he had hoped. For by the long duration of the foreign evil so great an intestine war had blazed up that Carthage was never in like peril save when it was destroyed. First the mercenary soldiers, whom they had used against the Romans, revolted, whose number was twenty thousand. These turned all Africa against Carthage, and assailed Carthage itself. By these evils the Carthaginians were so terrified that they even sought aid from the Romans, and obtained it. But at the last, when they had now nearly come to despair, they made Hamilcar commander. He not only removed the enemy from the walls of Carthage, when more than a hundred thousand armed men had been raised, but even forced them into such straits of ground that more perished by hunger than by the sword. All the towns that had fallen away, among them Utica and Hippo, the strongest in all Africa, he restored to his country. Nor was he content with this, but he even extended the bounds of the empire, and gave to all Africa such peace that for many years no war seemed to have been in it.

These matters being accomplished according to his wish, with confident and resolute spirit and hostile to the Romans, in order the more easily to find a pretext for war, he brought it about that he should be sent as commander with an army into Spain, and he took thither with him his son Hannibal, nine years old. There was besides with him an illustrious youth, handsome, Hasdrubal, whom some said was loved by Hamilcar more basely than was fitting (for slanderers could not fail to attend so great a man). Hence it came about that by the censor of morals Hasdrubal was forbidden to be with him. To this man he gave his daughter in marriage, because by their customs a father-in-law could not be debarred from a son-in-law. We have made mention of him for this reason, that, Hamilcar being slain, he commanded the army and accomplished great things, and was the first by largesse to overturn the old morals of the Carthaginians; and after his death Hannibal received the command from the army.

But Hamilcar, after he had crossed the sea and come into Spain, performed great deeds with fortunate success: he subdued the greatest and most warlike peoples, and enriched all Africa with horses, arms, men, and money. When he was planning to carry the war into Italy, in the ninth year after he had come into Spain, fighting in a battle against the Vettones, he was slain. His unceasing hatred toward the Romans seems above all to have stirred up the second Punic War. For Hannibal, his son, by the unremitting adjurations of his father was brought to such a point that he preferred to perish rather than not make trial of the Romans.