Hannibal

Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, a Carthaginian. If it is true — as no one doubts — that the Roman people surpassed all nations in valour, it must not be denied that Hannibal so far excelled other commanders in prudence as the Roman people goes before all nations in courage. For as often as he engaged with them in Italy, he always came off the superior. And had he not been weakened at home by the envy of his fellow-citizens, he seems to have been able to conquer the Romans. But the disparagement of many overcame the valour of one. Yet he so kept the hatred of his father toward the Romans, left to him as though by inheritance, that he laid down his life sooner than that hatred; he indeed, when he had been driven from his country and stood in need of others' resources, never ceased in his heart to make war upon the Romans.

For — to pass over Philip, whom in his absence he made an enemy to the Romans — of all the kings of those times the most powerful was Antiochus. Him he so inflamed with desire of warring that, even from the Red Sea, he attempted to carry his arms into Italy. When Roman envoys had come to him to sound his intentions, and were taking pains by secret intrigues to bring Hannibal into suspicion with the king, as though, bribed by them, he held other views than before, and had not done so in vain, and Hannibal had learned of it and saw himself excluded from the king's inner counsels, at a fitting time he came to the king, and, when he had recounted much concerning his own good faith and his hatred of the Romans, he added this: 'My father Hamilcar,' said he, 'when I was a little boy, no more than nine years old, as he was setting out as commander into Spain, sacrificed victims at Carthage to Jupiter, best and greatest. While this sacred rite was being performed, he asked me whether I wished to go with him into the camp. When I had gladly accepted and had begun to beg of him not to hesitate to take me, then he said: "I will do so, if you give me the pledge I ask." At the same time he led me to the altar at which he had begun to sacrifice, and, all others being removed, bade me, holding it, swear that I would never be in friendship with the Romans. That oath, given to my father, I have so kept down to this present age, that it ought to be doubtful to no one that for the rest of my life I shall be of the same mind. Wherefore, if you shall purpose anything friendly concerning the Romans, you will not act unwisely if you conceal it from me; but when you make ready war, you will cheat your own self, if you do not place me at the head of it.'

At this age, then, of which we have spoken, he set out with his father into Spain; after whose death, Hasdrubal having been appointed commander in his stead, he was put in charge of all the cavalry. When this man too had been slain, the army conferred upon him the supreme command. This, being reported to Carthage, was publicly approved. So Hannibal, less than twenty-five years old, having been made commander, in the next three years subdued in war all the peoples of Spain, took Saguntum, a confederate city, by storm, and got ready three very great armies. Of these he sent one into Africa, left another with his brother Hasdrubal in Spain, and led the third with him into Italy. When he had crossed the Pyrenean range, wherever he made his march, he fought with all the inhabitants: he let no one go save the conquered. When he came to the Alps, which divide Italy from Gaul, which no one with an army before him had ever crossed save the Greek Hercules (for which reason that pass is to this day called the Greek Pass), he cut down the Alpine tribes who tried to bar his passage, laid open the places, made roads, and brought it about that an elephant in full trappings could go where before scarcely a single unarmed man could creep. By this route he led his forces across and reached Italy.

He had fought near the Rhone with Publius Cornelius Scipio, the consul, and had driven him back. With this same man he decided the issue at Clastidium near the Po, and let him go wounded and routed from there. A third time the same Scipio, with his colleague Tiberius Longus, came against him at the Trebia. With these he joined battle and overthrew them both. Thence he crossed the Apennines through the Ligurians, making for Etruria. On this march he was afflicted with so grievous a disease of the eyes that afterwards he never had equally good use of his right eye. While he was still troubled with this ailment and being carried in a litter, he slew the consul Gaius Flaminius, with his army surrounded by an ambush, at Trasumennus, and not long after Gaius Centenius the praetor, with a chosen band, while he was holding the passes. Thence he came into Apulia. There two consuls came to meet him, Gaius Terentius and Lucius Aemilius. The armies of both he routed in a single battle, slew the consul Paulus and several men of consular rank besides, among them Gnaeus Servilius Geminus, who had been consul the year before.

This battle fought, he set out for Rome, and, with none resisting, lingered in the mountains near the city. When he had kept his camp there several days and was returning to Capua, Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman dictator, threw himself in his way in the Falernian country. Here, shut in by the narrows of the ground, he extricated himself by night without any loss to his army, and tricked Fabius, that most cunning commander. For, night having come on, he kindled faggots tied to the horns of oxen, and let loose a great number of cattle of that kind to scatter at large. By the sudden sight thus presented he struck such terror into the Roman army that no one dared to go out beyond the rampart. Not many days after this exploit he routed Marcus Minucius Rufus, master of the horse, who held command equal to the dictator's, having drawn him out into battle by a stratagem. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, twice consul, he destroyed in his absence among the Lucanians, having led him into an ambush. Marcus Claudius Marcellus, five times consul, he slew at Venusia in like manner. It would be long to enumerate all his battles. Wherefore this one thing will be enough to have said, from which it can be understood how great he was: as long as he was in Italy, no one withstood him in the line of battle, no one after the battle of Cannae pitched a camp against him in the open field.

Hence, unconquered, recalled to defend his country, he waged war against Publius Scipio, the son of that Scipio whom he himself had routed first at the Rhone, again at the Po, and a third time at the Trebia. With this man, the resources of his country being now exhausted, he desired for the present to compose the war, that he might afterwards engage the stronger. He came to a parley; the terms did not agree. A few days after this, he engaged with the same man at Zama; routed (incredible to tell), in two days and two nights he reached Hadrumetum, which is about three hundred miles from Zama. In this flight the Numidians, who had withdrawn from the field together with him, laid an ambush for him, whom he not only escaped but even overpowered. At Hadrumetum he gathered the rest from their flight, and by new levies in a few days assembled many men.

While he was most keenly busied in making ready, the Carthaginians composed the war with the Romans. He none the less afterwards commanded the army and conducted affairs in Africa, and likewise his brother Mago, down to the consulship of Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Aurelius. For in their magistracy Carthaginian envoys came to Rome, to give thanks to the senate and people of Rome for having made peace with them, and on that account to present them with a golden crown, and at the same time to ask that their hostages be kept at Fregellae and their captives restored. To them by a decree of the senate this answer was given: their gift was welcome and accepted; the hostages should be where they asked; the captives they would not give back, because they still kept with the army, and with command, Hannibal — by whose doing the war had been undertaken, and the bitterest enemy to the Roman name — and likewise his brother Mago. On learning this answer, the Carthaginians recalled Hannibal and Mago home. When he had returned thither, he was made king, in the twenty-second year after he had been commander: for, as at Rome the consuls, so at Carthage two kings were created yearly each year. In that magistracy Hannibal showed himself of like diligence as he had been in war. For he brought it about, by new revenues, that there was not only money to be paid to the Romans by the treaty, but a surplus besides to be laid up in the treasury. Then, the year after his praetorship, in the consulship of Marcus Claudius and Lucius Furius, envoys came from Rome to Carthage. Hannibal, thinking these had been sent to demand his surrender, before the senate could be given them, embarked on a ship secretly and fled into Syria to Antiochus. When this became known, the Carthaginians sent two ships to seize him, if they could overtake him, confiscated his goods, demolished his house from the foundations, and declared him an exile.

But Hannibal, in the fourth year after he had fled from home, in the consulship of Lucius Cornelius and Quintus Minucius, with five ships made for Africa in the territory of the Cyrenaeans, to see whether he could induce the Carthaginians to war by the hope and confidence of Antiochus, whom he had already persuaded to set out with his armies into Italy. Thither he summoned his brother Mago. When the Carthaginians learned this, they visited Mago, in his absence, with the same penalty as his brother. They, despairing of their affairs, having cast off their moorings and set their sails to the winds, Hannibal came to Antiochus. Of Mago's death a twofold account has been handed down: for some have left it written that he perished by shipwreck, others that he was slain by his own slaves. As for Antiochus, had he been willing to obey Hannibal's counsels in the conduct of the war as in undertaking it, he would have contended for the supreme command nearer the Tiber than at Thermopylae. Although Hannibal saw him attempting many things foolishly, yet he deserted him in nothing. He commanded a few ships, which he had been ordered to lead from Syria into Asia, and with them engaged the fleet of the Rhodians in the Pamphylian sea. In this engagement, although his men were overborne by the multitude of their adversaries, he himself, on the wing where he fought, was the superior.

Antiochus being put to flight, fearing lest he be given up — which without doubt would have happened, had he given them the chance — he came to the Gortynians in Crete, to consider there whither he should betake himself. But that most cunning of all men saw that he would be in great peril, unless he provided against it, on account of the avarice of the Cretans: for he was carrying with him a great sum of money, of which he knew the report had gone abroad. And so he hits upon this device. He fills several jars with lead and covers their tops with gold and silver. These, in the presence of the chief men, he deposits in the temple of Diana, pretending that he is entrusting his fortunes to their good faith. Having led them into this error, he fills with all his money the bronze statues which he carried with him, and casts them aside in the open court of his house. The Gortynians guard the temple with great care, not so much against others as against Hannibal, lest he, without their knowledge, should remove his property and carry it off with him.

Thus, all his goods preserved and the Cretans cheated, the Carthaginian came to Prusias in Pontus. With him he was of the same mind toward Italy, and did nothing else than arm the king and whet him against the Romans. And since he saw that he was less strong in his own resources, he sought to win over the other kings and to attach warlike nations. From him the Pergamene king Eumenes, a great friend of the Romans, was estranged, and war was waged between them by sea and land; but in both Eumenes was the stronger on account of his alliance with the Romans. The more, therefore, did Hannibal desire to crush him, since he thought that, if he removed him, the rest would be easier for him. To kill him he entered upon this plan. They were within a few days to decide the issue with their fleets. He was outmatched in the number of ships: he must fight by stratagem, since he was no match in arms. He ordered as many venomous serpents as possible to be collected alive and cast into earthen jars. When he had made up a great number of these, on the very day on which he was about to fight the naval battle, he summoned the marines and charged them all to rush together upon the single ship of King Eumenes, and against the rest to be content merely to defend themselves: this they would easily accomplish by means of the multitude of serpents. As for the ship in which the king sailed, he would see to it that they should know which it was: if they either took him or killed him, he promised it would be to their great reward.

Such exhortation of the soldiers being made, the fleet was led out to battle by both sides. When their line was drawn up, before the signal for battle was given, Hannibal, that he might make plain to his men where Eumenes was, sent a herald in a skiff with a caduceus. When he reached the enemy's ships and, showing a letter, declared that he was seeking the king, he was at once conducted to Eumenes, because no one doubted that something concerning peace was written. The herald, the leader's ship having been pointed out to his men, returned to the place from which he had set out. But Eumenes, the letter being opened, found nothing in it save what tended to mock him. Although he wondered at the cause of this and could not find it, yet he did not hesitate to join battle at once. In their clash the Bithynians, by Hannibal's command, all together attacked the ship of Eumenes. When the king could not withstand their force, he sought safety in flight, which he would not have gained, had he not retreated within his own outposts, which were stationed on the nearest shore. The remaining Pergamene ships, when they were pressing their adversaries too keenly, suddenly the earthen jars, of which we made mention above, began to be cast upon them. These, when thrown, at first roused laughter in the fighters, nor could it be understood why this was done. But after they saw their ships filled with serpents, terrified by the strange thing, when they did not see what they should chiefly avoid, they turned their sterns and withdrew to their naval camp. So Hannibal by stratagem overcame the arms of the Pergamenes; nor then only, but often at other times he routed his adversaries by land forces with like prudence.

While these things were going on in Asia, it happened by chance that the envoys of Prusias were dining at Rome with Titus Quintius Flamininus, the ex-consul, and there, mention being made of Hannibal, one of them said that he was in the kingdom of Prusias. This Flamininus on the next day reported to the senate. The conscript fathers, who, while Hannibal lived, thought they would never be free from plots, sent envoys into Bithynia, among them Flamininus, to ask of the king that he not keep his bitterest enemy with him but hand him over to them. To these Prusias did not dare to say no; this only he refused, that they should ask him to do what was against the law of hospitality: let them, if they could, seize him themselves; they would easily find the place where he was. For Hannibal kept himself in one place, in a stronghold which had been given him by the king as a gift, and which he had so built that it had outlets in all parts of the building, fearing, of course, lest there come to pass what did come to pass. When the Roman envoys had come thither and had surrounded his house with a multitude, a boy looking out from the gate told Hannibal that more armed men than usual were appearing. He ordered him to go round all the doors of the building and report quickly to him whether he was beset in the same way on every side. When the boy had quickly reported what he had seen and shown that all the outlets were occupied, Hannibal perceived that this had not happened by chance, but that he was the object, and that his life was no longer to be kept. Lest he lose it at another's will, mindful of his former virtues, he took the poison which he had always been wont to carry with him.

Thus that most brave man, after enduring many and various toils, found rest in his seventieth year. In what consulship he died is not agreed. For Atticus has left it written in his Annals that he died in the consulship of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Quintus Fabius Labeo; but Polybius, in that of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Gnaeus Baebius Tamphilus; and Sulpicius Blitho, in that of Publius Cornelius Cethegus and Marcus Baebius Tamphilus. And this great man, distracted by such great wars, devoted some portion of his time to letters. For there are several books of his, composed in the Greek tongue, among them one to the Rhodians on the deeds of Gnaeus Manlius Volso in Asia. The deeds of this war many have recorded for memory, but of them two, who were with him in the camp and lived with him as long as fortune permitted, Silenus and Sosylus the Lacedaemonian. And it was this Sosylus whom Hannibal employed as his teacher of Greek letters. But it is time for us to make an end of this book and to set forth the commanders of the Romans, that, the deeds of both being compared, it may the more easily be judged which men are to be preferred.