Hannibal

The Carthaginian who crossed the Alps and nearly broke Rome

Hannibal Barca was the Carthaginian general who carried the Second Punic War into Italy and came closer than anyone to destroying Rome. Sworn as a boy to enmity with Rome, he took command in Spain at twenty-six, led an army with elephants over the Alps in 218 BC, and won three battles in three years, the last, at Cannae, the bloodiest defeat Rome ever suffered. For fifteen years he stayed in Italy undefeated in the field, but Rome would not treat, its allies held, and Scipio beat him at Zama in 202 BC. Exiled by his own city, he ended his life by poison rather than fall into Roman hands. Rome's later empire was built by the state that survived him.

Timeline

247 BC

Born — At Carthage, eldest son of Hamilcar Barca; the year is inferred from Livy

237 BC

The oath — Goes to Spain with his father, having sworn at nine never to be a friend of Rome

221 BC

Takes command — Chosen by the army in Spain after Hasdrubal's murder, aged 26

218 BC

Crosses the Alps — Fifteen days through the first snows; wins on the Ticinus and the Trebia

217 BC

Trasimene — Ambushes and destroys a consular army on the lake shore

2 Aug 216 BC

Cannae — Encircles and kills the largest army Rome had ever raised

202 BC

Zama — Recalled to Africa, beaten by Scipio; Carthage makes peace

195 BC

Exile — Flees a Roman commission to the court of Antiochus III

183 BC

Death — Takes poison at Libyssa in Bithynia rather than be handed to Rome

Family

photo Hamilcar Barca commander in Sicily and Spain · died 228 BC

photo Hannibal 247 BC–183 BC

photo Imilce of Castulo in Spain · named only by Silius Italicus

His mother is unknown. Livy mentions a wife from Castulo; the poet Silius Italicus names her Imilce and gives them a son. His brothers Hasdrubal and Mago commanded in Spain and Italy: Hasdrubal was killed at the Metaurus in 207 BC, Mago died of a wound at sea in 203.

The oath

Hannibal was born in 247 BC, the eldest son of Hamilcar Barca, the Carthaginian general who had held out in Sicily until Carthage lost the First Punic War. In 237 Hamilcar went to build a new empire in Spain and took the boy with him; Polybius reports that first he made him swear at the altar never to be a friend of Rome. Hamilcar died on campaign in 228, his son-in-law Hasdrubal was murdered in 221, and the army chose Hannibal, aged twenty-six, to command.

In 219 he besieged and took Saguntum, a town south of the Ebro that had put itself under Roman protection. Rome demanded his surrender; Carthage refused. The Second Punic War began, and Hannibal chose not to wait for it in Spain.

Over the Alps

He left New Carthage in spring 218 with, Polybius says, 90,000 foot, 12,000 horse and 37 elephants, marched through Gaul, crossed the Rhône ahead of a Roman army sent to stop him, and went over the Alps in fifteen days in the first snows. He came down into Italy with 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse and almost no elephants. It was enough. He beat the Romans on the Ticinus and the Trebia before the year was out, ambushed and destroyed an entire consular army on the shore of Lake Trasimene in June 217, and on 2 August 216, at Cannae, allowed the largest army Rome had ever raised to push into the centre of his line, closed his African infantry and his cavalry around it, and killed, by Livy's count, some 48,000 men in an afternoon.

“You know how to win a victory, Hannibal; you do not know how to use one.”

— Maharbal, his cavalry commander, in Livy 22.51, when Hannibal declined to march on Rome after Cannae

The long war

Cannae brought Capua and much of the south over to him, but not Rome's Latin allies and not Rome, which refused even to ransom its prisoners. Fabius's strategy of shadowing and starving him became policy. For thirteen more years Hannibal marched up and down the peninsula, never beaten in a pitched battle and never able to force the end; in 211 he rode up to the walls of Rome to draw the Romans off Capua, and they did not come. His brother Hasdrubal brought a second army over the Alps in 207 and lost it, and his head, at the Metaurus. Scipio took Spain, then landed in Africa, and in 203 Carthage called Hannibal home. At Zama in 202 Scipio's Numidian cavalry did to him what his own had done at Cannae. Carthage sued for peace.

Exile

Elected sufet in 196, Hannibal reformed the finances and the courts and found that the old oligarchs would sooner denounce him to Rome than pay. When a Roman commission arrived in 195 he fled, first to Antiochus III of Syria, whom he advised to carry the war into Italy, then, after Antiochus's defeat, to Prusias of Bithynia. In 183 BC, or a year or two later, a Roman envoy demanded his surrender, and he took poison at Libyssa rather than be led through Rome in a triumph. He was about sixty-four.

“Hannibal ad portas” — Hannibal at the gates — stayed a Roman cry of alarm; Cicero was still using it in 44 BC. Cannae is still taught as the model of a battle of encirclement. Rome learnt from him how to fight and how to outlast, and the state that survived Hannibal went on to take the Mediterranean.