Hannibal (247-183/2 bc) was the son of Hamilcar and inherited command of Carthaginian forces in Spain. Whether or not he also inherited a vendetta with Rome is disputed, but certainly, when faced with an ultimatum not to attack Rome's ally Saguntum (Sagunto) at the end of 220, he did not hesitate, claiming that the Saguntans had been guilty of aggression against allies of Carthage. After taking the town in 219, he began to prepare for war with Rome. Probably in the late spring of 218 he marched an army from Spain to Italy, crossing the Alps to bypass Roman preparations, and went on to devastating victories at Trebbia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae.
After all three he released his non-Roman prisoners, proclaiming that he had not come to fight them, but Rome on their behalf. After Cannae, this propaganda began to bear fruit. Most of southern Italy came over to him, including Capua in 216 and Tarentum (Taranto) in 212. Meanwhile, in 215, he concluded an alliance with Philip V of Macedonia, and in 214 Syracuse also joined him. But he could never break Rome's hold on the centre and north of the peninsula, and gradually her overwhelming manpower took effect. Syracuse fell in 212 and Capua in 211, despite Hannibal's march on Rome itself to divert the besiegers. However, he remained supremely dangerous in the field, and attrition worked both ways. As late as 209, 12 of the 30 Latin colonies at the heart of Rome's alliance refused any longer to supply men for the Roman army. The crisis came in 207 when his brother Hasdrubal reached Italy overland with a new army. But Hasdrubal was defeated and killed at the Metaurus before he could join Hannibal, and thereafter the latter was increasingly confined to the toe of Italy. In the end, when Scipio ‘Africanus’ invaded Africa in 204 and defeated Carthage's principal ally Syphax in 203, Hannibal was recalled, and at Zama not all his skill could save a now greatly inferior army from defeat.
It was now that he showed that he was not just a great soldier. Insisting that Carthage make peace, he busied himself with domestic affairs, and as chief magistrate for 196 was responsible for a number of reforms. But his enemies played upon Roman fears against him, and in 196 he fled to Antiochus III of Syria, whom he accompanied to Greece in 192 in the hope that he would give him an army to invade Italy. Instead he found himself commanding a fleet in his last battle and was defeated. Antiochus' peace with Rome forced him to flee again, this time to Bithynia, and it was there that he finally committed suicide, in 183 or 182, rather than be surrendered to Rome.
Hannibal was undoubtedly one of the world's greatest generals. He probably inherited from his father his professionalism and ability to keep superior forces at bay; possibly he also inherited the plan for attacking Italy, for his father had once raided Bruttium. His strategy has been criticized for failing to comprehend the nature of the Roman alliance and to ensure that adequate reinforcements came either by sea from Africa or by land from Spain. But Hannibal himself could not be everywhere, and there is no doubt that this was the only way that Carthage could ever have defeated Rome. The audacity of the march to Italy remains breathtaking, and one should not underestimate how near it came to success. At one point the three largest cities in Italy and Sicily, after Rome, were on Carthage's side, and possibly some 40 per cent of Rome's allies. His genius as a battlefield commander has seldom been questioned. It rested on a mixture of bluff and double bluff, and ability to use all types of troops to their best advantage. Cannae remains an ideal to which generations of subsequent generals have aspired.
Bibliography
- Lazenby, J. F., Hannibal's War (Warminster, 1978)
— John Lazenby
