emerged from his camp at first light, but on this occasion his Spaniards were in the center and the Roman infantry on the wings (with cavalry on the far wings). Obviously, he had in mind an outflanking movement with his more disciplined, well-drilled, and experienced troops.
The Punic general (confusingly, yet another Hasdrubal) deployed as usual, and didn’t notice Scipio’s new dispositions until it was too late for him to make any changes. The Roman commander now forced a battle: his cavalry and legions wheeled quickly to the left and right in column of route curving away from and then toward the Carthaginian wings. The cavalry drove off its opponents and the legions maneuvered back from column into line and attacked the Punic Spaniards on their flanks, who broke and fled. They proceeded to cut into the flanks of the Punic center, which also had to fight off a frontal attack by Scipio’s Spanish infantry. What had been an army became a rabble in headlong flight.
Spain now belonged to Rome. His task completed, Scipio set sail for home. His performance at Ilipa showed that he possessed the triple qualities of a great field commander: a daring conception, meticulous preparation, and commitment to intensive training. At last, Rome had produced a match for Hannibal.
HASDRUBAL MADE GOOD progress to Italy, where he arrived in 207. He recruited Gauls in the Po Valley, raising his total numbers to about thirty thousand. He sent six horsemen to ride south with a letter to his brother specifying that their two armies should meet in Umbria. They lost their way and were picked up by a Roman foraging party outside Tarentum. Having read the letter, the consul, who was keeping an eye on Hannibal, detached part of his army without the Carthaginian commander’s noticing. He marched north to join his colleague, who was facing Hasdrubal at the river Metaurus (today’s Metauro, in the Marche). He arrived at night unobserved, but the following day Hasdrubal sensed that something was wrong. According to Livy:
Hasdrubal’s army was already drawn up in front of his camp. Fighting may have begun sooner but for the fact that Hasdrubal, riding forward with a small cavalry escort, noticed some old shields he had not seen before in the enemy’s ranks, and some horses that looked unusually stringy. Their numbers too seemed larger than usual. This led him to suspect the truth, so he hurriedly had the retreat sounded.
Hasdrubal confirmed his fears by checking how many ceremonial consular trumpet calls had sounded that morning in the enemy camp; when he was told that, surprisingly, two had been heard, he realized that both consuls were now present. He presumed, correctly, that one had arrived secretly with his army from the south. He was tortured by the fear that his brother had suffered defeat and might be dead.
Now heavily outnumbered, the Carthaginian commander had no choice but to extricate himself as best he could. He withdrew after nightfall, having ordered his men to pack their gear in silence. His guides ran off and the army strayed from the correct route. The Romans soon caught up, and in the ensuing battle routed the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal acted with great gallantry and, according to Livy, refused to survive the destruction of his army. He set spurs to his horse and galloped straight into the middle of an enemy cohort. Polybius paid him a generous tribute:
When Fortune had deprived him of all hope for the future and driven him to the last extremity, then, while he used every resource which might bring him victory both in his preparations for the battle and on the field itself, he gave equal thought as to how in the event of total defeat he should face that eventuality and suffer nothing unworthy of his past career.
Hasdrubal’s head was mummified and taken south. It was flung down in front of one of Hannibal’s outposts. Two Punic prisoners of war were released and sent to Hannibal to tell him all that had happened. The story is that he groaned, “Now, at last, I see plainly the fate of Carthage.”
In Hannibal’s final stronghold, in Bruttium, stood a famous shrine to Juno, Rome’s old foe and so, as we have seen, a favorite of the Punic publicity machine. Livy reports that “it had an enclosure surrounded by dense woodland, with lofty firs, and, in the center, rich grassland where cattle of all kinds, sacred to the goddess, grazed without any shepherd to attend them.” Here in 205 the Punic general, assiduous self-promoter that he was, erected an altar on which he inscribed at some length, in Greek as well as Carthaginian, his achievements, his res gestae. Perhaps this was less a brag than an epitaph for lost hopes.
If we can believe Cicero, he nearly committed an act of divine lese-majeste. Inside the temple there was a golden column. Hannibal was curious to find out if it was merely plate, and bored a hole in it. Finding it to be solid gold, he decided to take it away. The enraged goddess appeared to the Carthaginian commander in a dream and warned him that unless he left her column alone she would make him lose the sight in his good eye. He complied. With the gold shavings from his drilling, he had a little heifer made which he apologetically affixed to the top of the column.
What are we to make of this story? It comes from a pro-Carthaginian original source. In one sense, it redounds to Hannibal’s credit; he behaved well and gave way to Juno’s wishes. But, with the defeat of Carthage looming, the anecdote also reflects a coolness between them.
The Romans knew it was in their interest to be equally energetic champions of Juno. Two years previously, her famous temple on the Aventine Hill was struck by lightning. To propitiate the goddess, an elaborate ceremony was staged: a couple of white cows led a procession in which two ancient statues of Juno were carried through the streets and twenty-seven virgins sang a hymn in her praise. The cows were sacrificed. The goddess accepted the best offer still on the table, and finally set aside her anger with the descendants of Troy. The bad-tempered consequences of the Judgment of Paris and of Aeneas’s betrayal of Queen Dido had finally arrived at a harmonious conclusion.
For, in truth, Hannibal was right to be pessimistic. Continuing attempts to reinforce his army failed. He no longer held the initiative and was condemned to enforced inactivity. The once all-conquering general had played his last card.
At the time, Cannae appeared to mark a turning point in world history, but it is the battle at the Metaurus that deserves the accolade. It was now obvious to all, including the Queen of Heaven, that Carthage was entering a bleak endgame.
THE END OF the saga is swiftly told. Back in Rome, the
Scipio completely disagreed, for once the Punic army had left, a war-weary people would surely press for a quick peace, leaving Carthage more or less where it had been at the end of the First Punic War—still a substantial and independent power. Scipio envisaged Rome as master of the Western Mediterranean, and that meant demoting Carthage to the status of a permanent dependent. This would be accomplished only by a decisive victory in Africa.
In the spring of 204, Scipio landed an army of thirty-five thousand men in the Punic heartland and laid siege to the important town of Utica. In these early days, his weakness was cavalry, although a new ally, the young Numidian chieftain Masinissa, supplied some horsemen, and little progress was made until the following year. Peace discussions were held, inconclusively, but they had a surprising by-product. Roman officers were able to visit the two enemy camps and learned about their construction (timber and reeds) and layout. One night, in a remarkable commando operation, Roman troops set fire to them and caused heavy casualties. Many victims did not even realize that the conflagration had been arson, rather than misadventure. If Hannibal had engaged in such a stratagem, it would have been denounced as typical underhand Punic treachery.
Later in the year, Scipio won a full-dress battle. Although he had fewer troops, he pushed back the enemy’s wings and encircled the infantry in the center, in fine Hannibalic style. Peace terms were agreed to end the war. Carthage was to surrender all prisoners, evacuate Italy and Gaul, abandon Spain and all islands between Italy and Carthage, hand over its entire navy (bar twenty ships), and pay a large indemnity of five thousand talents. However, the Council of Elders crossed its collective fingers behind its back and sent word to Hannibal, recalling him and his
