and he forthwith displayed increased activity. The Romans, probably
after the outbreak of the Cisalpine war, had made a treaty with
Hasdrubal, not with the Carthaginian state, by which both parties with
regard to Spain fixed upon the Ebro as the boundary between their
respective possessions. Owing to the great gap which here occurs in
our history, we cannot make out at what time the Romans settled in
those parts; yet at the beginning of the second Punic war, they were
masters of Tarraco and of the coast of Catalonia. Livy adds, that the
Saguntines were to be left as a free state between both. Polybius,
notwithstanding his general excellence, is sometimes mistaken in
details. He had first edited his work down to the war of Perseus, a
second edition went as far as the taking of Corinth; yet it may clearly
be shown that he did not revise the first books in the second edition,
and it is plain that he had not at that time the least knowledge of
the geography of Spain: very likely he fancied, as Livy evidently did,
that Saguntum lay east of the Ebro. Moreover, he knows nothing of the
fact that Saguntum was to remain independent, and yet he had all the
documents before him. Were it not so, there would then indeed have
been a breach of faith on the side of Hannibal. Perhaps the Romans
did not mean at any rate to abandon the people of Saguntum, with
whom they were in alliance; and yet it may not have been expressedly
stipulated, that an attack on Saguntum would be a violation of the
peace. Now it is generally thought from the treaty between Rome and
Carthage, that the Carthaginians had then under their rule the whole
of Spain as far as the sources of the Ebro; but this is by no means
the case. Under Hamilcar, they seem to have acquired the whole of
Andalusia, and the greater part of Valencia; but beyond the Sierra
Morena, they in all likelihood only first spread under Hasdrubal:
their sway never extended further than New Castile and Estremadura;
Lusitania, Old Castile, and Leon, never belonged to them. The farthest
point to which Hannibal reached in the campaign against the Vaccæans,
described by Polybius, was Salamanca, where, however, he did not found
any lasting dominion: the tribes in the interior, and the Celtiberians,
seem never to have acknowledged the supremacy of Carthage. The other
peoples were under its protectorate: they retained their own form of
government, and though not bound to serve, were ready to enlist under
the banners of the Carthaginians, who gave good pay. Polybius himself
remarks very justly, that the Romans kept silent at the progress of
the Carthaginians, because they were greatly afraid of offending them
now that the Gauls had stirred. Had Hamilcar been alive, he would
perhaps have taken a share in that war. It is strange that once during
this period a Carthaginian fleet makes its appearance off the coast of
Etruria.
Hannibal carried on the war in Spain only as a preparatory one: his
real object was the war in Italy, which he now tried to kindle. The
Carthaginians stood in the same position to him, as the Romans did
to Cæsar; commanding as he did an army entirely devoted to him, in a
country subjected by him, he was not to be controlled by the senate.
Carthage, according to the natural march of development in republics,
was then already on the decline: the chief power had passed from the
senate to the popular assembly. Now, although the people might have
idolized Hannibal, yet the senate was hardly friendly towards him; and
notwithstanding the general hatred against the Romans, the majority at
that time were not perhaps of opinion, that a war would bring relief,
and they could not see in what way Rome was to be attacked. The higher
classes were also afraid of Hannibal at the head of a victorious army.
The siege of Saguntum is placed by Livy in the year 534; yet he sees
himself that it took place in 533. Polybius blames Hannibal for having
tried to kindle the war by all kinds of artifices, and for this he
has been reproached with having been too much the partisan of the
Romans; but even as he is to be acquitted of this charge, so must
Hannibal of his. Polybius would have had him at once demand Sardinia;
but that he could not do. Had Hannibal been a king, he would perhaps
have done it; but as it was, he was obliged to draw the Carthaginians
into the war by degrees, whether they liked it or not. With this view,
he intrigued in Saguntum, and got up a quarrel between the Saguntines
and the Turdetanians, (but very likely we ought to read, instead of
Turdetanians, _Edetanians_, who were inhabitants of Valencia, as
the former lived too far off). Saguntum may not have been a purely
Iberian town: it is said that colonists from Ardea had settled there,
in which case it would be Tyrrhenian; and this is not unlikely,
although afterwards perhaps the Iberian population outnumbered them.
The derivation from Zacynthus has probably originated only from its
name. Some years before, there had been troubles there; (several of
these Spanish towns were republics; one must not fancy that their
inhabitants were barbarians like the Celts;) and the Romans had
come forward as mediators, and the victorious party had wreaked its
vengeance upon the conquered. Hannibal took advantage of this, and
stirred up the latter: at the same time, he complained at Carthage that
the Saguntines, relying upon Rome, had been guilty of acts of violence
against Carthaginian subjects. This is certainly craftiness; but he
could hardly have behaved otherwise if he wanted to kindle the war.
The Romans were exceedingly afraid of a Carthaginian war: the manner
in which the city had risen again, could not but make an impression
upon them. They did not know how it was to be carried on. They could
only remove it to Africa by means of a fleet, of which the cost was
enormous, not to speak of the many disasters which they had already had
to suffer from it. To Spain also they had to transport the war by sea;
and in that country, they had no base for their operations, and only
insignificant allies. There, on the other hand, Carthage had at her
disposal the whole of a subjugated population, and all the troops which
were wanted in readiness; whilst Rome had to fight her battles with
her own men, and these she had to bring over at an immense expense.
The Romans therefore let Hannibal widen his rule, without themselves
undertaking anything; nay, even when he began the siege of Saguntum,
they merely negociated, and took no measures for sending assistance
thither; so that Hannibal besieged the town for eight months, whilst
they were engaged in the Illyrian war. The full description in Livy of
the siege of Saguntum is certainly from Cœlius Antipater: according
to him, the inhabitants themselves destroyed their town from despair;
this is a repetition of what is told of so many Spanish towns. Another
account is given by Polybius, which is really historical. Hannibal
besieged the town, which lay one mile from the sea-coast, on the last
ridges of the mountains which, rising from thence, separate Arragon
from Castile. At the end of eight months, it was taken, but by no means
destroyed: on the contrary, Hannibal found in the booty the means for
fresh undertakings, and for rich presents to Carthage; and thus he
was able to strengthen and encourage his own army. This is a complete
refutation of Livy’s story, which also betrays itself by its empty
prolixity. Hannibal himself had been wounded at this siege. So little
is it to be placed in the year 534, that Hannibal afterwards put his
army into winter-quarters, where he completed his preparations for his
great expedition. The Romans had sent an embassy to him in behalf of
their injured allies, but he referred them to Carthage: there they made
their complaints, and demanded the giving up of Hannibal, and of the
commissaries (σύνεδροι) who were with him, which throws some light on
the state of things at Carthage, which is otherwise so obscure. The
Carthaginians, instead of going into the complaint, tried to prove to
the Romans that Hannibal had done no wrong; that Carthage could not be
restricted by its treaties with Rome with regard to its acquisitions
in Spain. Polybius justly remarks, that they argued beside the point,
without entering into the question which was really before them. The
Roman ambassadors now made a _sinus_ of their toga, and declared to
the Carthaginians, that they might choose between peace and war; the
Carthaginians answered that they would follow the choice of the Romans;
and when these cried out “war,” a loud shout of joy was raised.
One would now have thought that the Romans had already made great
preparations; yet this was not the case. They had at that time only a
small fleet, which moreover we afterwards hear of but seldom, and even
then, little is said about it. The consuls, since the Ides of March,
were P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti. Sempronius Longus. The Romans had
the intention of sending the consul Scipio with two legions and ten
thousand allies to Spain, and Sempronius with the same number of troops
to Africa. The Carthaginians had no fleet of any importance; this was
the first fault committed by them in this war. It may be that the rich
who were in the government made niggardly retrenchments, that they
might cut down the expenses of the war as much as possible. The plan of
the Romans was not badly devised; only it is plain that they were quite
mistaken in their estimate of their antagonist. Had Scipio arrived in
Spain, before Hannibal had passed the Ebro, his army would have been
driven by Hannibal into the sea, or annihilated within the first weeks,
and the invasion of Italy would have become far more easy. And yet,
if Hannibal had not carried on the war with such very great speed, the
season of the year might have come on, in which he could no longer have
crossed the Alps. The Romans show themselves unskilful at the beginning
of every great war; their troops were not thoroughly trained, they had
no standing army like Hannibal, nor did it even occur to them that they
ought to place the very best of their generals in command. Hannibal
took the wisest precautions: he sent the chief men of the conquered
tribes over to Carthage, or kept them with him; and he despatched
besides some picked Spanish troops for the defence of Africa, and a
body of Libyans trained by himself, who were to garrison Carthage. Into
Spain, on the other hand, he drew over a great many Libyans.
The Roman consul Sempronius went with a hundred and sixty quinqueremes
to Africa, and already dreamed of a siege of Carthage; but before
he reached it, events of quite a different kind had come to pass.
Hannibal, who had rested himself during the winter, now crossed the
Ebro with ninety thousand infantry and twelve thousand horse (according
to Polybius, who took it from the tablet of Hannibal,--a number which
the writer certainly meant to be correct; yet one ought perhaps to
suppose it to be a slip of the pen, so as to read seventy thousand
instead of ninety). The tribes beyond the Ebro were allies of the
Romans, though not subject to them, and were therefore hostile to the
Carthaginians: they made a stout resistance; but Hannibal quickly
hastened on and took their strongholds, at the cost, however, of many
men’s lives. He in all likelihood set out in May, as from Polybius
it is pretty certain that he reached Italy in the middle of October.
There is no doubt but that, if he could have started a month sooner,
his expedition would have been far from being as dangerous as it was;
yet the obstacles which had given rise to this delay, must have been
insurmountable. He was leagued with those Gauls in Lombardy, who four
years before had been subjected and cruelly treated by the Romans: they
had promised him to put the whole of their force at his disposal. The
Romans, however, had now seen through his plan. A year before, they
had begun to build Placentia and Cremona; colonists were sent thither
in great haste, and the fortifications completed before the beginning
of the campaign; so that neither Hannibal nor the Gauls were able to
take these places. Polybius rebukes the writers of his day, who spoke
of Hannibal’s undertaking as of a thing that had never happened before,
but had sprung from a desire of doing some thing which was unheard
of, and never could be carried through without the co-operation of
unearthly powers. The story that a demon had showed Hannibal the way,
is in Livy changed into a dream of surpassing beauty, as if a being
more than human were directing Hannibal not to look backward, but only
forward; but the writers of those times gave it as an actual part of
their narrative.
Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees with fifty thousand infantry and nine
thousand horse, numbers which Polybius has likewise evidently taken
from the monumental tablet of Hannibal. The passage was effected near
Figueras and Rosas towards Roussillon, where it is easiest. He had
previously sent envoys to the Gallic tribes from the Pyrenees to the
Rhone, to ask them for a free passage through their countries, and had
tried to move them to peace by presents of money; so that he reached
the Rhone without meeting with any hostility worth mentioning. After
the passage over the Pyrenees, signs of a dangerous mutiny began
to show themselves; three thousand Carpetanians returned home, and
Hannibal also of his own accord sent back other Spaniards whom he
suspected. His army seems to have suffered from desertion besides:
otherwise it could not have lessened so much as Polybius states. He
advanced with the utmost speed. From Carthagena to the Po, Polybius
reckons two hundred German miles, which is indeed somewhat exaggerated;
but, even then, what difficulties were to be overcome! Until Hannibal
came to Cisalpine Gaul, he had to pass through nothing but tribes
to whom his march was as a curse. Having gone through the beautiful
province of Lower Languedoc, he came to the Rhone in the neighbourhood
of Pont St. Esprit. As for the inhabitants of Languedoc, they had been
obliged to send their women and children into the Cevennes; but things
were now quite different. The Gauls of the Dauphiné, Provence, and
those parts, had the rapid river in front of them, and could therefore
more readily venture upon resistance; perhaps they had heard moreover
that a Roman army was already in Catalonia, nay, even, on the Gallic
coast. However much they at other times had scorned the Romans, they
now looked to them with eager confidence. P. Scipio had on his voyage
to Spain put in at Marseilles, as he had learned that Hannibal, whom he
supposed still at the Ebro, was already near the Rhone. He could not
but have found it hazardous to take the field against an army of such
superior numbers; but in conjunction with the Gauls on the left bank of
the Rhone, he could have hindered the enemy’s passage over the river.
Hannibal, even without this, had already immense difficulties in his
way: the building of a bridge of boats was no easy task. He therefore
bought from the people who lived along the bank on which he was, every
kind of boat that he could get, and he had canoes made of trees; then
he ordered a division to make a night-march higher up the river, so as
to cross over on rafts at a spot which was some way off, and threaten
the Gauls in the rear. This plan succeeded; yet one cannot understand
how the Gauls were not up to it. When the detachment had made its
appearance, Hannibal embarked all his forces in the boats, and crossed
the stream whilst this division attacked the Gauls. Thus, after
inflicting great loss upon the Gauls, he landed on the other side: he
got the elephants over with a great deal of trouble. His victory over
Nature, which seemed here herself to have set bounds to his advance,
made a decisive impression on the neighbouring tribes. Had he delayed
eight days longer, Scipio would have barred his way, and hindered him
from crossing. He had only thirty-eight thousand infantry, and eight
thousand cavalry left; the latter were most of them Numidians, and on
the whole were only good for foraging and skirmishing, but not for
regular fighting: he had still nearly all his elephants. He now sent
some Numidians on to the road to Marseilles, and these fell in with
some of the Roman horse: on both sides they were astonished at the
meeting. Scipio, who had but just heard of Hannibal’s passing over
the Pyrenees, could not have thought that he had already crossed the
Rhone. An insignificant skirmish took place, in which the Romans had
the advantage. Hannibal, however, did not mind the Roman general, but
continued his march.
Here we begin to have most discrepant accounts of Hannibal’s
expedition. Had he gone in the direction which Livy makes him take,--up
the valley of the Durance by Briançon, Mont Genèvre, and Susa, and
coming out near Turin,--he could not have done a better service to
the Romans; Scipio would have fallen upon his rear, and on the other
side, from the mountains, the Gauls would have laid wait for him, with
barricades of felled trees, and the like. There was even among the
ancients already some uncertainty as to the road by which Hannibal
crossed the Alps; Polybius says nothing about it, because in his
time it may have been a thing generally known. Some thought that he
had gone over the Little, others, over the Great St. Bernard; others
again were even for the Simplon: in times of old, there was no road
over Mont Cenis. In these days, opinions are also divided. And yet,
after General Melville’s masterly researches, edited by the younger
De Luc,[19] which are based on a more accurate survey of the places
themselves, there can be no more doubt on the subject: that Letronne,
who truly deserves to be spoken of with respect, does not see this, is
passing strange. No other road can be meant, but that over the little
St. Bernard. In the beginning of October, Hannibal was on the last
mountains. The little St. Bernard has no glaciers at all, nor is it
much higher than the Brenner; in summer it is even a green Alp, and
though indeed for a pretty long time it is covered with snow, this
always melts away; at the very top, the soil is still so fertile that
rye grows there: on the great St. Bernard, on the contrary, there
is everlasting snow. On the mountain over which Hannibal went, was
a frequented road, and there he found new-fallen snow. Particularly
decisive, however, is the following circumstance: before Hannibal
reached the top of the mountain, he had a sharp fight with the Alpine
tribes, on which, as Polybius says, he stationed himself with his
reserve near a white rock. Now, there is in the whole of that part of
the country only one rock of gypsum, which lies near the old road in
the Tarantaise; the inhabitants still call it _la roche blanche_: De
Luc remarks that whoever has once passed that way, must needs remember
the cliff for ever. The Alps in Polybius mean the whole mountain range
from Savoy and Aosta; there are several ridges of them, running one
behind the other, to be crossed.