HANNIBAL 



tin- pi-iils of the journey, hod to be driven 

 forward by Mago's horsemen, mid tin- gi-neral 

 lost an eye. Quitting Fii-sulir, Hannibal wasted 

 Ktruria with lire and Hword, and inarched towards 

 Hum', leaving Itehind him two consular armies of 

 tm.iMMi in. .. He awaited the consul Flarainitu by 

 tin- Lake Trasimene, where the hills, retiring in a 

 semicircle from the shore, enclose a plain entered 

 l-y two narrow passes. Concealing the main Ixxly 

 oi' his army amid the hills, he placed liis Xumidiaiis 

 in ambush at the pass by which the Roman* must 

 enter ; while he stationed part of his infantry in a 

 conspicuous position near the other defile. The 

 Humans pushed into the valley; the pass in their 

 was secured by the Carthaginians who had lain 

 in ambtish ; Hannibal's men charged from the 

 heights, and the army of Flaminius was annihilated. 

 si\ thousand infantry cut their way through the 

 farther pass, but these were overtaken by the horse 

 nmler Maherbal and forced to yield on the following 

 day. 



After recruiting his men in the champaign country 

 of Picenum, where the Numidian horses, we are 

 told, were groomed with old Italian wine, Hanni- 

 bal marched through Apulia and ravaged Campania, 

 dogged by the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus, 

 whom he vainly endeavoured to entice into an 

 engagement. He wintered at Gerontium, and in 

 the spring took up a position at Cannae on the 

 Aufldus. A Roman army of 80,000 men, under the 

 consuls L. -flCmilius Paulus and P. Terentius Varro, 

 marched against him. Hannibal flung his troops 

 (he had but 30,000) into a space enclosed on the 

 rear and wings by a loop of the river. He placed 

 his Spanish infantry in the centre, with the Afiican 

 foot on either flank. His Numidian horse, now 

 reduced to 2000 men, he posted on the right wing; 

 while Hasdrubal, with 8000 heavy cavalry, was 

 opposed to the Roman cavalry on the left. The 

 legionaries pressed into the loop, and Hannibal 

 drew back his centre before them. Hasdrubal on 

 the left broke the Roman cavalry, swept round to 

 the left wing of the Romans, drove the second 

 detachment of Roman horse into flight, and then 

 came thundering in the rear of the legionaries. The 

 Libyans, who had by the general's orders fallen 

 back as the Romans pressed after the retiring 

 Spanish infantry, now closed on the enemy's flanks. 

 Packed together so closely that they could not use 

 their weapons, assailed in front, flank, and rear, 

 the legionaries were hewn down through eight 

 hours of carnage till 50,000 lay dead on the field. 

 The battle became a butchery. Nearly 20,000 men 

 were taken prisoners. The consul Paulus, the pro- 

 consul Servflius, the master of the horse Minucius, 

 21 military tribunes, and 60 senators lay amid the 

 slain. On his side Hannibal lost but 5700 men. 

 Send me on with the horse, general,' said Maher- 

 bal, ' and in five days thou shalt sup in the Capitol.' 



But the general was wiser than the fiery captain 

 of the horse. It has been common to censure 

 Hannibal for neglecting to march on Rome after 

 the battle of Canna. But his dazzling triumph did 

 not for a moment unsettle his clear judgment. He 

 knew that his forces were unequal to the task of 

 storming a walled city garrisoned by a population 

 of fighting men. An attack which he had made on 

 Spoletium had proved the inadequacy of the small 

 Carthaginian army to carry a strongly fortilie.1 

 town. Had he followed the advice of Maherbal, he 

 would, in all likelihood, have dashed liis army to 

 pieces against the walls of Rome. His aim was to v 

 destroy the common oppressor by raising the Italian 

 allies against her ; ana the hone was partly justified 

 by the revolt of Lucania ana Bruttium, Samnimn 

 and Apulia. The soundness of judgment, the 



Eatience and self-control which he evinced in this 

 our of intoxicating success are hardly less mar- 

 243 



velloiiH than the genius by which the Kuccewi had 

 IH-I-II won. After the battle of ( 'ann;e tin- character 

 of the war changes. Hitherto Hannibal had swept 

 everything bei'oi-e him. Rivers and mountain** and 

 nun a.sseH had been powerless to thwart his progress. 

 Army after army, vastly superior in numljent and 

 composed of the best fighting men the ancient 

 world ever saw, had come against him to be broken, 

 scattered, and destroyed. II ih career through Italy 

 had l>een, in the words of Horace, as the rush of 

 the flames through a forest of pines. But after 

 Cannn? the tide turned. His niggardly, short-sighted 

 countrymen denied him the support without which 

 success was impossible. As his veterans were lost 

 to him he had no means of filling their places, while 

 the Romans could put army after army into the 

 field. But through the long years during which he 

 maintained a hopeless struggle in Italy he was never 

 defeated. Nor did one of bib veterans desert him ; 

 never was there a murmur of disaffection in his 

 camp. It has been well said that his victories over 

 his motley followers were hardly less wonderful 

 than his victories over nature and over Rome. 



Hannibal spent the winter of 216-215 B.c. at 

 Capua, where his men are said to have been 

 demoralised by luxurious living. When he again 

 took the field the Romans wisely avoided a pitched 

 battle, though the Carthaginians overran Italy, 

 capturing Locri, Thnrii, Metapontum, Tarentum, 

 and other towns. In 211 B.C. he marched on 

 Rome, rode up to the Colline gate, and, it is 

 said, flung his spear over the walls. But the fall 

 of Capua smote the Italian allies with dismay, 

 and ruined his hopes of recruiting his ever- 

 diminishing forces from their ranks. In 210 

 B.C. he overcame the praetor Fulvius at Herdonea, 

 and in the following year gained two battles 

 in Apulia. Thereafter, he fell upon the consuls 

 Crispinus and Marcellus, both of whom were 

 slain and their forces routed, while he almost 

 annihilated the Roman army which was besieging 

 Locri. In 207 B.C. his brother Hasdrubal marched 

 from Spain to his aid, but was surprised, defeated, 

 and slain at the Metaums by the consul Nero. 

 By the barbarous commands or Nero, Hasdrubal's 

 head was flung into the camp of Hannibal, who 

 had been till then in ignorance of his brother's 

 doom. The battle of the Metaurus sealed the 

 fate of ' the lion's brood ' of the great house of 

 Hamilcar. But for four years Hannibal stood at 

 bay in the hill-country of Bruttium, defying with 

 his thinned army every general who was sent 

 against him, till in 202 B.C., after an absence of 

 fifteen years, he was recalled to Africa to repel 

 the Roman invasion. In the same year he met 

 Scipio at Zama ; his raw levies fled, and in part 

 went over to the enemy ; his veterans were cut 

 to pieces where they stood, and Carthage was at 

 the mercy of Rome. So ended the Second Punic 

 war the war, as Arnold so truly said, of a man 

 with a nation, and the war which is perhaps the 

 most wonderful in all history. Three hundred 

 thousand Italians had fallen, and three hundred 

 towns had been destroyed in the struggle. 



Peace being made, Hannibal turned his genius 

 to political toils. He amended the constitution, 

 cut down the power of the ignoble oligarchy, 

 checked corruption, and placed the city's finances 

 on a sounder footing. The enemies whom he made 

 by his reforms denounced him to the Romans, and 

 the Romans demanded that he should be sur- 

 rendered into their hands. Setting out as a volun- 

 tary exile, Hannibal visited Tyre, the mother-city 

 of Carthage, and then betook himself to the court 

 of Antiocnus at Ephesus. He was well received 

 by the king, who nevertheless rejected his advice 

 to carry the war with Rome into Italy. On the 

 conclusion of peace, to avoid being given up to the 



