The Brilliance of Hannibal
The Greek historian Polybius described the First Punic War as the longest and most bitter war in all of history up to that point. It spanned from 264-241 BC, and was primarily a struggle between Rome and Carthage for control of Sicily and the highly-coveted shipping lanes of the Western Mediterranean.
After a Carthaginian fleet failed to break through the Roman blockade of Sicily at the Battle of the Aegates, the Carthaginian Senate decided to surrender. After the signing of the Treaty of Lutatius, which required Carthage to relinquish their territorial holdings in Sicily, the twenty-three-year war for supremacy in the Western Mediterranean finally came to an end.
But the Carthaginians’ commanding general in Sicily, Hamilcar Barca, adamantly opposed the decision to surrender. He defied the Senate’s order to negotiate a peace with the Romans and left the task to his subordinates.
Hamilcar sought to avenge Carthage. He eventually brought a newly-formed army to Spain to establish a strategic power base for a future war against Rome. But, as Professor Calvert explains in “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic,” before his voyage, Hamilcar had his son, Hannibal, take an oath. Livy recounts the story:
It is said moreover that when Hannibal, then about nine years old, was childishly teasing his father Hamilcar to take him with him into Spain, his father, who had finished the African War and was sacrificing, before crossing over with his army, led the boy up to the altar and made him touch the offerings and bind himself with an oath that so soon as he should be able he would be the declared enemy of the Roman people.
In time, Hannibal would take control of his father’s military forces in Spain. He marched them through Gaul and crossed the Alps, encountering a Roman military force for the first time at the Battle of Trebia River in 218 BC. The result: a decisive victory for Hannibal and over 10,000 casualties for the Romans. The Second Punic War was underway.
Not one year later, in 217 BC, Hannibal tasted victory again. He ambushed the Romans at the Battle of Lake Trasimene with devastating results. Nearly all of Gaius Flaminius’s 25,000-man army was killed or captured in the battle, and the Roman people had become genuinely terrified of what Hannibal might do next. As Professor Calvert notes,
Rome is in great panic. Allies are beginning to fall away. There is a sense that this could be the end of Rome.
In a strategic move that reflected the fear that Hannibal had struck in the hearts of the Romans, Quintus Fabius—the new leader of the Roman war effort—vowed never to fight Hannibal in the open field. Instead, the Romans would focus their efforts on attacking his supply lines.
But Hannibal would get the chance to add to his impressive military resume in 216 BC. In what would become his crowning achievement as a military commander, Hannibal annihilated a huge Roman army at the Battle of Cannae in what Dr. Calvert considers “his most brilliant battle:”
He is able to draw the Romans into what is an enveloping structure, coming around both the right and left flanks of the Romans. He has used his Numidian cavalry to drive off the Roman cavalry. And those Numidian cavalry come back and sealed off the rear of the Romans. About 10,000 Romans are able to get out before the Numidian cavalry arrive. But the rest of the Romans are surrounded, and something like 50,000 Romans are killed that day. It is one of the most brilliant moves on the part of Hannibal and one that military men will try to repeat over and over again through history and one of the greatest and most devastating defeats for the Romans.
Hannibal’s victory at Cannae marked the pinnacle of his military career; he would be brought to defeat by the Romans at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. But the boy who promised to become the eternal enemy of the Roman people not only honored his oath to his father, he would be remembered as the greatest general that the Romans ever had to contend with on the battlefield.
