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Makers of History
Hannibal
BY JACOB ABBOTT
WITH ENGRAVINGS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1901
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and forty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.
Copyright, 1876, by JACOB ABBOTT.
PREFACE
The author of this series has made it his special object to confine
himself very strictly, even in the most minute details which he
records, to historic truth. The narratives are not tales founded upon
history, but history itself, without any embellishment or any
deviations from the strict truth, so far as it can now be discovered
by an attentive examination of the annals written at the time when the
events themselves occurred. In writing the narratives, the author has
endeavored to avail himself of the best sources of information which
this country affords; and though, of course, there must be in these
volumes, as in all historical narratives, more or less of imperfection
and error, there is no intentional embellishment. Nothing is stated,
not even the most minute and apparently imaginary details, without
what was deemed good historical authority. The readers, therefore, may
rely upon the record as the truth, and nothing but the truth, so far
as an honest purpose and a careful examination have been effectual in
ascertaining it.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 13
II. HANNIBAL AT SAGUNTUM 33
III. OPENING OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 52
IV. THE PASSAGE OF THE RHONE 69
V. HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS 90
VI. HANNIBAL IN THE NORTH OF ITALY 126
VII. THE APENNINES 144
VIII. THE DICTATOR FABIUS 163
IX. THE BATTLE OF CANNAE 185
X. SCIPIO 205
XI. HANNIBAL A FUGITIVE AND AN EXILE 235
XII. THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE 262
ENGRAVINGS.
Page
MAP _Frontispiece._
THE BATTLE IN THE RIVER 42
THE ELEPHANTS CROSSING THE RHONE 87
HANNIBAL ON THE ALPS 111
CROSSING THE MARSHES 161
HASDRUBAL'S HEAD 227
THE BURNING OF THE CARTHAGINIAN FLEET 242
[Illustration: MAP]
HANNIBAL.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.
B.C. 280-249
Hannibal.--Rome and Carthage.--Tyre.--Founding of Carthage.--Its
commercial spirit.--Gold and silver mines.--New Carthage.--Ships
and army.--Numidia.--Balearic Isles.--The sling.--The government
of Carthage.--The aristocracy.--Geographical relations of the
Carthaginian empire.--Rome and the Romans.--Their character.--Progress
of Carthage and Rome.--Origin of the first Punic war.--Rhegium and
Messina.--A perplexing question.--The Romans determine to build a
fleet.--Preparations.--Training the oarsmen.--The Roman fleet puts to
sea.--Grappling irons.--Courage and resolution of the Romans.--Success
of the Romans.--The rostral column.--Government of Rome.--The
consuls.--Story of Regulus.--He is made consul.--Regulus marches against
Carthage.--His difficulties.--Successes of Regulus.--Arrival of
Greeks.--The Romans put to flight.--Regulus a prisoner.--Regulus before
the Roman senate.--Result of his mission.--Death of Regulus.--Conclusion
of the war.
Hannibal was a Carthaginian general. He acquired his great distinction
as a warrior by his desperate contests with the Romans. Rome and
Carthage grew up together on opposite sides of the Mediterranean Sea.
For about a hundred years they waged against each other most dreadful
wars. There were three of these wars. Rome was successful in the end,
and Carthage was entirely destroyed.
There was no real cause for any disagreement between these two
nations. Their hostility to each other was mere rivalry and
spontaneous hate. They spoke a different language; they had a
different origin; and they lived on opposite sides of the same sea. So
they hated and devoured each other.
Those who have read the history of Alexander the Great, in this
series, will recollect the difficulty he experienced in besieging and
subduing Tyre, a great maritime city, situated about two miles from
the shore, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage was
originally founded by a colony from this city of Tyre, and it soon
became a great commercial and maritime power like its mother. The
Carthaginians built ships, and with them explored all parts of the
Mediterranean Sea. They visited all the nations on these coasts,
purchased the commodities they had to sell, carried them to other
nations, and sold them at great advances. They soon began to grow rich
and powerful. They hired soldiers to fight their battles, and began to
take possession of the islands of the Mediterranean, and, in some
instances, of points on the main land. For example, in Spain: some of
their ships, going there, found that the natives had silver and gold,
which they obtained from veins of ore near the surface of the ground.
At first the Carthaginians obtained this gold and silver by selling
the natives commodities of various kinds, which they had procured in
other countries; paying, of course, to the producers only a very small
price compared with what they required the Spaniards to pay them.
Finally, they took possession of that part of Spain where the mines
were situated, and worked the mines themselves. They dug deeper; they
employed skillful engineers to make pumps to raise the water, which
always accumulates in mines, and prevents their being worked to any
great depth unless the miners have a considerable degree of scientific
and mechanical skill. They founded a city here, which they called New
Carthage--_Nova Carthago_. They fortified and garrisoned this city,
and made it the center of their operations in Spain. This city is
called Carthagena to this day.
Thus the Carthaginians did every thing by power of money. They
extended their operations in every direction, each new extension
bringing in new treasures, and increasing their means of extending
them more. They had, besides the merchant vessels which belonged to
private individuals, great ships of war belonging to the state. These
vessels were called galleys, and were rowed by oarsmen, tier above
tier, there being sometimes four and five banks of oars. They had
armies, too, drawn from different countries, in various troops,
according as different nations excelled in the different modes of
warfare. For instance, the Numidians, whose country extended in the
neighborhood of Carthage, on the African coast, were famous for their
horsemen. There were great plains in Numidia, and good grazing, and it
was, consequently, one of those countries in which horses and horsemen
naturally thrive. On the other hand, the natives of the Balearic
Isles, now called Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, were famous for their
skill as slingers. So the Carthaginians, in making up their forces,
would hire bodies of cavalry in Numidia, and of slingers in the
Balearic Isles; and, for reasons analogous, they got excellent
infantry in Spain.
The tendency of the various nations to adopt and cultivate different
modes of warfare was far greater, in those ancient times, than now.
The Balearic Isles, in fact, received their name from the Greek word
_ballein_, which means to throw with a sling. The youth there were
trained to perfection in the use of this weapon from a very early age.
It is said that mothers used to practice the plan of putting the bread
for their boys' breakfast on the branches of trees, high above their
heads, and not allow them to have their food to eat until they could
bring it down with a stone thrown from a sling.
Thus the Carthaginian power became greatly extended. The whole
government, however, was exercised by a small body of wealthy and
aristocratic families at home. It was very much such a government as
that of England is at the present day, only the aristocracy of England
is based on ancient birth and landed property, whereas in Carthage it
depended on commercial greatness, combined, it is true, with
hereditary family distinction. The aristocracy of Carthage controlled
and governed every thing. None but its own sons could ordinarily
obtain office or power. The great mass of inhabitants were kept in a
state of servitude and vassalage. This state of things operated then,
as it does now in England, very unjustly and hardly for those who were
thus debased; but the result was--and in this respect the analogy with
England still holds good--that a very efficient and energetic
government was created. The government of an oligarchy makes sometimes
a very rich and powerful state, but a discontented and unhappy people.
Let the reader now turn to the map and find the place of Carthage upon
it. Let him imagine a great and rich city there, with piers, and
docks, and extensive warehouses for the commerce, and temples, and
public edifices of splendid architecture, for the religious and civil
service of the state, and elegant mansions and palaces for the
wealthy aristocracy, and walls and towers for the defense of the
whole. Let him then imagine a back country, extending for some hundred
miles into the interior of Africa, fertile and highly cultivated,
producing great stores of corn, and wine, and rich fruits of every
description. Let him then look at the islands of Sicily, of Corsica,
and Sardinia, and the Baleares, and conceive of them as rich and
prosperous countries, and all under the Carthaginian rule. Look, also,
at the coast of Spain; see, in imagination, the city of Carthagena,
with its fortifications, and its army, and the gold and silver mines,
with thousands and thousands of slaves toiling in them. Imagine fleets
of ships going continually along the shores of the Mediterranean, from
country to country, cruising back and forth to Tyre, to Cyprus, to
Egypt, to Sicily, to Spain, carrying corn, and flax, and purple dyes,
and spices, and perfumes, and precious stones, and ropes and sails for
ships, and gold and silver, and then periodically returning to
Carthage, to add the profits they had made to the vast treasures of
wealth already accumulated there. Let the reader imagine all this with
the map before him, so as to have a distinct conception of the
geographical relations of the localities, and he will have a pretty
correct idea of the Carthaginian power at the time it commenced its
dreadful conflicts with Rome.
Rome itself was very differently situated. Rome had been built by some
wanderers from Troy, and it grew, for a long time, silently and
slowly, by a sort of internal principle of life and energy. One region
after another of the Italian peninsula was merged in the Roman state.
They formed a population which was, in the main, stationary and
agricultural. They tilled the fields; they hunted the wild beasts;
they raised great flocks and herds. They seem to have been a race--a
sort of variety of the human species--possessed of a very refined and
superior organization, which, in its development, gave rise to a
character of firmness, energy, and force, both of body and mind, which
has justly excited the admiration of mankind. The Carthaginians had
sagacity--the Romans called it cunning--and activity, enterprise and
wealth. Their rivals, on the other hand, were characterized by genius,
courage, and strength, giving rise to a certain calm and indomitable
resolution and energy, which has since, in every age, been strongly
associated, in the minds of men, with the very word Roman.
The progress of nations was much more slow in ancient days than now,
and these two rival empires continued their gradual growth and
extension, each on its own side of the great sea which divided them,
for _five hundred years_, before they came into collision. At last,
however, the collision came. It originated in the following way:
By looking at the map, the reader will see that the island of Sicily
is separated from the main land by a narrow strait called the Strait
of Messina. This strait derives its name from the town of Messina,
which is situated upon it, on the Sicilian side. Opposite Messina, on
the Italian side, there was a town named Rhegium. Now it happened that
both these towns had been taken possession of by lawless bodies of
soldiery. The Romans came and delivered Rhegium, and punished the
soldiers who had seized it very severely. The Sicilian authorities
advanced to the deliverance of Messina. The troops there, finding
themselves thus threatened, sent to the Romans to say that if they,
the Romans, would come and protect them, they would deliver Messina
into their hands.
The question, what answer to give to this application, was brought
before the Roman senate, and caused them great perplexity. It seemed
very inconsistent to take sides with the rebels of Messina, when they
had punished so severely those of Rhegium. Still the Romans had been,
for a long time, becoming very jealous of the growth and extension of
the Carthaginian power. Here was an opportunity of meeting and
resisting it. The Sicilian authorities were about calling for direct
aid from Carthage to recover the city, and the affair would probably
result in establishing a large body of Carthaginian troops within
sight of the Italian shore, and at a point where it would be easy for
them to make hostile incursions into the Roman territories. In a word,
it was a case of what is called political necessity; that is to say, a
case in which the _interests_ of one of the parties in a contest were
so strong that all considerations of justice, consistency, and honor
are to be sacrificed to the promotion of them. Instances of this kind
of political necessity occur very frequently in the management of
public affairs in all ages of the world.
The contest for Messina was, after all, however, considered by the
Romans merely as a pretext, or rather as an occasion, for commencing
the struggle which they had long been desirous of entering upon. They
evinced their characteristic energy and greatness in the plan which
they adopted at the outset. They knew very well that the power of
Carthage rested mainly on her command of the seas, and that they could
not hope successfully to cope with her till they could meet and
conquer her on her own element. In the mean time, however, they had
not a single ship and not a single sailor, while the Mediterranean was
covered with Carthaginian ships and seamen. Not at all daunted by this
prodigious inequality, the Romans resolved to begin at once the work
of creating for themselves a naval power.
The preparations consumed some time; for the Romans had not only to
build the ships, they had first to learn how to build them. They took
their first lesson from a Carthaginian galley which was cast away in a
storm upon the coast of Italy. They seized this galley, collected
their carpenters to examine it, and set woodmen at work to fell trees
and collect materials for imitating it. The carpenters studied their
model very carefully, measured the dimensions of every part, and
observed the manner in which the various parts were connected and
secured together. The heavy shocks which vessels are exposed to from
the waves makes it necessary to secure great strength in the
construction of them; and, though the ships of the ancients were very
small and imperfect compared with the men-of-war of the present day,
still it is surprising that the Romans could succeed at all in such a
sudden and hasty attempt at building them.
They did, however, succeed. While the ships were building, officers
appointed for the purpose were training men, on shore, to the art of
rowing them. Benches, like the seats which the oarsman would occupy in
the ships, were arranged on the ground, and the intended seamen were
drilled every day in the movements and action of rowers. The result
was, that in a few months after the building of the ships was
commenced, the Romans had a fleet of one hundred galleys of five banks
of oars ready. They remained in harbor with them for some time, to
give the oarsmen the opportunity to see whether they could row on the
water as well as on the land, and then boldly put to sea to meet the
Carthaginians.
There was one part of the arrangements made by the Romans in preparing
their fleets which was strikingly characteristic of the determined
resolution which marked all their conduct. They constructed machines
containing grappling irons, which they mounted on the prows of their
vessels. These engines were so contrived, that the moment one of the
ships containing them should encounter a vessel of the enemy, the
grappling irons would fall upon the deck of the latter, and hold the
two firmly together, so as to prevent the possibility of either
escaping from the other. The idea that they themselves should have any
wish to withdraw from the encounter seemed entirely out of the
question. Their only fear was that the Carthaginian seamen would
employ their superior skill and experience in naval maneuvers in
making their escape. Mankind have always regarded the action of the
Romans, in this case, as one of the most striking examples of military
courage and resolution which the history of war has ever recorded. An
army of landsmen come down to the sea-shore, and, without scarcely
having ever seen a ship, undertake to build a fleet, and go out to
attack a power whose navies covered the sea, and made her the sole and
acknowledged mistress of it. They seize a wrecked galley of their
enemies for their model; they build a hundred vessels like it; they
practice maneuvers for a short time in port; and then go forth to
meet the fleets of their powerful enemy, with grappling machines to
hold them, fearing nothing but the possibility of their escape.
The result was as might have been expected. The Romans captured, sunk,
destroyed, or dispersed the Carthaginian fleet which was brought to
oppose them. They took the prows of the ships which they captured and
conveyed them to Rome, and built what is called a _rostral pillar_ of
them. A rostral pillar is a column ornamented with such beaks or
prows, which were, in the Roman language, called _rostra_. This column
was nearly destroyed by lightning about fifty years afterward, but it
was repaired and rebuilt again, and it stood then for many centuries,
a very striking and appropriate monument of this extraordinary naval
victory. The Roman commander in this case was the consul Duilius. The
rostral column was erected in honor of him. In digging among the ruins
of Rome, there was found what was supposed to be the remains of this
column, about three hundred years ago.
The Romans now prepared to carry the war into Africa itself. Of course
it was easy, after their victory over the Carthaginian fleet, to
transport troops across the sea to the Carthaginian shore. The Roman
commonwealth was governed at this time by a senate, who made the laws,
and by two supreme executive officers, called consuls. They thought it
was safer to have two chief magistrates than one, as each of the two
would naturally be a check upon the other. The result was, however,
that mutual jealousy involved them often in disputes and quarrels. It
is thought better, in modern times, to have but one chief magistrate
in the state, and to provide other modes to put a check upon any
disposition he might evince to abuse his powers.
The Roman consuls, in time of war, took command of the armies. The
name of the consul upon whom it devolved to carry on the war with the
Carthaginians, after this first great victory, was Regulus, and his
name has been celebrated in every age, on account of his extraordinary
adventures in this campaign, and his untimely fate. How far the story
is strictly true it is now impossible to ascertain, but the following
is the story, as the Roman historians relate it:
At the time when Regulus was elected consul he was a plain man, living
simply on his farm, maintaining himself by his own industry, and
evincing no ambition or pride. His fellow citizens, however, observed
those qualities of mind in him which they were accustomed to admire,
and made him consul. He left the city and took command of the army. He
enlarged the fleet to more than three hundred vessels. He put one
hundred and forty thousand men on board, and sailed for Africa. One or
two years had been spent in making these preparations, which time the
Carthaginians had improved in building new ships; so that, when the
Romans set sail, and were moving along the coast of Sicily, they soon
came in sight of a larger Carthaginian fleet assembled to oppose them.
Regulus advanced to the contest. The Carthaginian fleet was beaten as
before. The ships which were not captured or destroyed made their
escape in all directions, and Regulus went on, without further
opposition, and landed his forces on the Carthaginian shore. He
encamped as soon as he landed, and sent back word to the Roman senate
asking what was next to be done.
The senate, considering that the great difficulty and danger, viz.,
that of repulsing the Carthaginian fleet, was now past, ordered
Regulus to send home nearly all the ships and a very large part of the
army, and with the rest to commence his march toward Carthage.
Regulus obeyed: he sent home the troops which had been ordered home,
and with the rest began to advance upon the city.
Just at this time, however, news came out to him that the farmer who
had had the care of his land at home had died, and that his little
farm, on which rested his sole reliance for the support of his family,
was going to ruin. Regulus accordingly sent to the senate, asking them
to place some one else in command of the army, and to allow him to
resign his office, that he might go home and take care of his wife and
children. The senate sent back orders that he should go on with his
campaign, and promised to provide support for his family, and to see
that some one was appointed to take care of his land. This story is
thought to illustrate the extreme simplicity and plainness of all the
habits of life among the Romans in those days. It certainly does so,
if it is true. It is, however, very extraordinary, that a man who was
intrusted by such a commonwealth, with the command of a fleet of a
hundred and thirty vessels, and an army of a hundred and forty
thousand men, should have a family at home dependent for subsistence
on the hired cultivation of seven acres of land. Still, such is the
story.
Regulus advanced toward Carthage, conquering as he came. The
Carthaginians were beaten in one field after another, and were
reduced, in fact, to the last extremity, when an occurrence took place
which turned the scale. This occurrence was the arrival of a large
body of troops from Greece, with a Grecian general at their head.
These were troops which the Carthaginians had hired to fight for them,
as was the case with the rest of their army. But these were _Greeks_,
and the Greeks were of the same race, and possessed the same
qualities, as the Romans. The newly-arrived Grecian general evinced at
once such military superiority, that the Carthaginians gave him the
supreme command. He marshaled the army, accordingly, for battle. He
had a hundred elephants in the van. They were trained to rush forward
and trample down the enemy. He had the Greek phalanx in the center,
which was a close, compact body of many thousand troops, bristling
with long, iron-pointed spears, with which the men pressed forward,
bearing every thing before them. Regulus was, in a word, ready to meet
Carthaginians, but he was not prepared to encounter Greeks. His army
was put to flight, and he was taken prisoner. Nothing could exceed
the excitement and exultation in the city when they saw Regulus and
five hundred other Roman soldiers, brought captive in. A few days
before, they had been in consternation at the imminent danger of his
coming in as a ruthless and vindictive conqueror.
The Roman senate were not discouraged by this disaster. They fitted
out new armies, and the war went on, Regulus being kept all the time
at Carthage as a close prisoner. At last the Carthaginians authorized
him to go to Rome as a sort of commissioner, to propose to the Romans
to exchange prisoners and to make peace. They exacted from him a
solemn promise that if he was unsuccessful he would return. The Romans
had taken many of the Carthaginians prisoners in their naval combats,
and held them captive at Rome. It is customary, in such cases, for the
belligerent nations to make an exchange, and restore the captives on
both sides to their friends and home. It was such an exchange of
prisoners as this which Regulus was to propose.
When Regulus reached Rome he refused to enter the city, but he
appeared before the senate without the walls, in a very humble garb
and with the most subdued and unassuming demeanor. He was no longer,
he said, a Roman officer, or even citizen, but a Carthaginian
prisoner, and he disavowed all right to direct, or even to counsel,
the Roman authorities in respect to the proper course to be pursued.
His opinion was, however, he said, that the Romans ought not to make
peace or to exchange prisoners. He himself and the other Roman
prisoners were old and infirm, and not worth the exchange; and,
moreover, they had no claim whatever on their country, as they could
only have been made prisoners in consequence of want of courage or
patriotism to die in their country's cause. He said that the
Carthaginians were tired of the war, and that their resources were
exhausted, and that the Romans ought to press forward in it with
renewed vigor, and leave himself and the other prisoners to their
fate.
The senate came very slowly and reluctantly to the conclusion to
follow this advice. They, however, all earnestly joined in attempting
to persuade Regulus that he was under no obligation to return to
Carthage. His promise, they said, was extorted by the circumstances of
the case, and was not binding. Regulus, however, insisted on keeping
his faith with his enemies. He sternly refused to see his family,
and, bidding the senate farewell, he returned to Carthage. The
Carthaginians, exasperated at his having himself interposed to prevent
the success of his mission, tortured him for some time in the most
cruel manner, and finally put him to death. One would think that he
ought to have counseled peace and an exchange of prisoners, and he
ought not to have refused to see his unhappy wife and children; but it
was certainly very noble in him to refuse to break his word.
The war continued for some time after this, until, at length, both
nations became weary of the contest, and peace was made. The following
is the treaty which was signed. It shows that the advantage, on the
whole, in this first Punic war, was on the part of the Romans:
"There shall be peace between Rome and Carthage. The
Carthaginians shall evacuate all Sicily. They shall not make
war upon any allies of the Romans. They shall restore to the
Romans, without ransom, all the prisoners which they have
taken from them, and pay them within ten years three
thousand two hundred talents of silver."
The war had continued twenty-four years.