Telamon, the Battle for Northern Italy
“The Gaesatae had discarded these garments owing to their proud confidence in themselves, and stood naked, with nothing but their arms, in front of the whole army.”1
Polybius, Greek historian (ca. 203–120 BC)
Nearly fifty years after the Boii’s peace treaty with Rome in 282 BC, trouble stirred again among the Boii. A new generation of Gallic warriors had grown up, “full of unreflecting passion and absolutely without experience of suffering and peril”2 as Polybius put it. The Boii chiefs invited Gauls from Transalpina, meaning the region beyond the Alps, to aid in a new assault on Rome. A Roman army was hastily sent to intercept the invaders but the matter proved a false alarm. Quarrels between the suspicious Boii and the newcomers boiled over into a pitched battle in which the Transalpina Kings Atis and Galatus were killed.
Nevertheless, the Boii refused to let the matter rest. At the core of the problem was Roman expansion into the former territory of the Senones. To begin with the Roman colony of Sena Gallica had been founded along the coastal strip. And now the hinterland, which had finally recovered from the Roman ravages, was given to Roman citizens. The settling of such colonies was done in a military manner. Enlisted in Rome, the colonists marched beneath a vexillum (a standard) to their new home. A ritual bronze plow was used to delineate the colony borders: yet another custom adopted from the Etruscans.
Justly anxious that Rome would not stop until all of Gallia Cisalpina was hers, the Boii once more looked for allies against the Romans. The equally powerful Insubres shared the Boii’s concerns. To recruit yet more allies, the two tribes again sent messengers across the Alps, this time to the Gaesatae, a renowned mercenary tribe, who dwelt near the Rhône and Alps.
We can imagine how the Boii and Insubres ambassadors stood in the midst of the seated circle of the Gaesatae Kings, Concolitanus and Aneroestes, by whose sides sat their warrior champions and their druid advisors. With eloquent tongue, the ambassadors offered a large sum of gleaming gold, which was but a paltry amount compared to what could be looted from the rich and prosperous lands of the Romans. The Boii, Insubres and Gaesatae, proud allies, would honor the deeds of the Gauls who long ago crushed the legions at the River Allia and made themselves masters of Rome for seven months! The heroic tales roused the Gaesatae’s lust for war. “On no occasion has that district of Gaul sent out so large a force or one composed of men so distinguished or so warlike,” wrote Polybius.3
In 225 BC, the Gaesatae descended into the plain of the River Po to be welcomed by their Boii and Insubres allies. No doubt more feasts were held, alongside prayers and sacrifices to the gods, when a fourth tribe, the Taurisci, declared their alliance to the Boii, Insubres and Gaesatae coalition. The Taurisci were a tough mountain people from Slovenia’s Julian Alps.4 Not all Cisalpina tribes, however, declared themselves against Rome. The Veneti and the Gallic Cenomani wanted nothing to do with the coming war and even sent embassies of friendship to Rome. With these pro-Roman tribes on their borders, the Boii and Insubres were obliged to leave a sizeable part of their army at home. Even then the Gallic horde that poured into peninsular Italy was the largest Gallic invasion to date, boasting some 20,000 cavalry and chariots, and 50,000 foot men.5
Unlike nearly two centuries ago, when she was sacked by the Gauls, Rome was no longer merely a powerful city-state. Victorious in numerous wars, the Roman Republic had laid the foundation of an empire. After the dies ater, Rome consolidated its hold over Etruria, re-subdued the neighboring Latin tribes of central Italy and conquered the tribes of southern Italy, most notably the Samnites with whom there were no less than three wars. The Roman expansion unnerved the Greek cities of south Italy who called for the aid of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, the leading Greek soldier of his day. Pyrrhus twice defeated the Romans, but at Beneventum in 276 BC he suffered a devastating loss and withdrew to Epirus. By 264, through a complex process of alliances, conquest, colonization and the granting of citizenship, Rome had expanded her sway over all of peninsular Italy. Rome next turned her interest to Sicily and found herself dragged into the First Punic War (264–241), against the burgeoning Carthaginian Empire of North Africa and Southern Spain. Rome again was victorious and Sicily and the Carthaginian domains of Sardinia and Corsica passed under her control. Rome further extended her maritime presence when a military expedition was sent against the Illyrian pirate-queen Teuta.
The Roman army reforms initiated by Camillus after the Gallic sack of Rome were further tempered in battle with a myriad of nations. On land and on sea, in sieges and on the open field, through defeats and through victories, the Roman army grew bigger and better. At the end of the fourth century it had grown from a single legion to four legions, their symbols the wolf, the boar, the horse and the Minotaur. By the time of the great Gallic invasion of 225 BC, there were at least ten legions.
Having just secured her volatile relations with Carthage in a treaty, Rome was free to direct her whole martial might and that of her allies against the Gallic menace. Terrified of the Gallic invaders, all of peninsular Italy heeded Rome’s call to arms. Legions and allies were mustered, and huge supplies of grain were collected. Joining Rome’s legions were tens of thousands of Sabines, Samnites, Lucanians and Marsi6 and a host of other peoples until more than 150,000 infantry and cavalry stood ready to fight for Rome. This armed might was stationed in three armies: one in Etruria; another to the east on the coast of the Adriatic Sea (Mare Hadriaticum); and the third on Sardinia. In addition, an army of Cenomani and Veneti assembled to invade the territory of the Boii.
Seemingly oblivious of what awaited them, the Gauls crossed unopposed into Etruria by means of an unguarded pass in the western Apennines. They plundered at will and struck straight for the heart of their enemy, at Rome. To the Gauls, it looked as if history would repeat itself, and soon Rome would once again fall to the barbarians. They advanced all the way to Clusium, the Etruscan city over which Romans and Gauls first went to war nearly two hundred years before. The invaders were only three days march from Rome when their scouts reported that a large Roman force was at their heels. It was the Roman army stationed in Etruria, which the Gauls had managed to bypass earlier but which had now caught up with them. The Gauls had little choice but to confront their foe or risk being caught between the legions and the walls of Rome. At sunset both armies laagered for the night, within sight of each other’s campfires.
The Roman army must have been of fair size, for the Gauls decided to avoid an open battle, and came up with a clever ploy. The cavalry remained beside their campfires while, under cover of darkness, the infantry secretly retreated down the road to a town called Faesulae. In the wood and shrub-covered hillside near Faesulae, the Gallic infantry hid themselves in ambush.
At daybreak the Romans thought that the Gallic infantry had taken to flight. The Roman army advanced towards the remaining Gallic cavalry and, in a feint retreat, the Gallic horsemen took off towards Faesulae. The Romans came in hot pursuit. Polybius’ account is unclear, but it seems that the Gallic infantry unexpectedly set upon the Roman columns marching past them. At this point the Gallic cavalry would have turned and fallen on their pursuers.
Caught between the Gallic cavalry and infantry, the situation was desperate. Had the Romans still relied on the unwieldy phalanx system of the dies ater days, they probably would have met their doom there and then. However, by now the internal cohesion of their maniples was ingrained into the legions. The legionaries gathered around their straw bundle field ensign, the manipulis, and were able to retain some sort of order. Although the battle went against them, and more than 6,000 Romans were slain, the remainder retreated to an easily defendable nearby hill. Onward came the Gauls, but the exertion of their night’s march, compounded by the battle and now a fight up the slope, was beginning to show. The Romans stood their ground and inflicted heavy casualties before the Gauls wisely decided to retire and get some rest, stationing some cavalry around the hill to keep guard.
Unfortunately for the Gauls, time was not on their side. Consul Lucius Aemilius Papus, commander of the Roman Army on the Adriatic, had gotten word of the Gallic inroads and their proximity to Rome. Force-marching his men, he forthwith arrived on the scene and camped near the Gallic army. His campfires sparkled in the night, a welcome beacon to the besieged Romans on the hill. Under the cover of darkness and a nearby wood, one of the Romans on the hill sneaked through the Gallic lines and informed Papus of the plight of his countrymen on the hill.
The fires of the new Roman arrivals did not go unnoticed by the Gauls, who held council on what to do next. Aneroestes, one of the Gaesatae Kings, argued that they should retreat with their considerable booty, including an enormous number of slaves, cattle and other spoils, and avoid battle for now. Once the loot was safely brought back to their homelands, they could always return to deal with the Romans later. Aneroestes’ prudent idea was accepted and that very night the Gauls again gave the Romans the slip.
At dawn Papus’ military tribunes (legion officers) marshaled the infantry, while he himself rode with the cavalry to the hill. Although the Gauls were gone, the tracks of thousands of soldiers and horses could obviously not be concealed. The combined Roman armies followed in the Gauls’ wake. With the Romans blocking their way north, and impassable wooded hills to their east and west, the Gauls at first back-tracked south. When the terrain opened up at Lake Bolsena, the Gallic army struck west for the Etrurian coast and from there turned north.
Near Cape Telamon, foraging Gauls ahead of the main army suddenly stumbled upon Roman soldiers coming the other way. Both sides were almost certainly mounted, but it was the Gauls who yielded in the encounter and were taken prisoner. Together they rode back to the Romans’ camp. The captured Gauls were alarmed to behold that their captor’s camp lay not behind them but ahead of them! It could only mean even more Roman reinforcements. The Gallic foragers had been captured by the third Roman army from Sardinia. The latter had landed at Pisae (Pisa) to the north and was on its way to Rome.
The prisoners were brought before consul Gaius Atilius Regulus and described all that occurred, including the position of their army. Regulus hailed from a distinguished family, whose members had served as consuls for four generations. His warmongering father, Marcus A. Regulus, had become a Roman hero after he was captured and allegedly brutally executed by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. Ready to win renown for himself, Gaius A. Regulus gloated; the Gauls would be squeezed and annihilated between his and Papus’ army. He ordered his tribunes to march in fighting order as far as the terrain permitted.
Ahead of his army, Regulus noticed that the Aquilone hill was right beside the road on which the Gauls were coming to meet his forces. Regulus was eager to gain the hill before the Gauls and to initiate a battle that would surely be a Roman victory. He bolted towards the hill with his cavalry. When the Gauls saw some Roman cavalry gallop up to a hill in front of them, they naturally assumed that it was Papus’ cavalry, which had somehow outflanked them at night. The Gallic cavalry and light skirmishers rode out to contest the hill. In the process the Gauls took some prisoners who told them that the Roman cavalry belonged to yet another Roman army.
For the Gauls the situation looked grim. This time there was no escape from the Roman vice. They were in for the fight of their lives. The Boii and the Taurisci formed up to meet the army of Regulus. Behind them, the Gaesatae and Insubres faced in the opposite direction to engage Papus’ approaching army. The Gauls stationed their chariots and wagons on their flanks while a body of guards stood guard over the booty in the neighboring hills.
The cavalry melee on the hill went on with wild abandon and was gazed upon by both the Roman and Gallic infantry. Regulus fought alongside his men until he succumbed to a Gallic blade. His body was beheaded and the grim trophy of his head was carried back to the Gallic kings. The fight for the hill continued nonetheless and was still in progress when Papus’ army arrived on the scene. Although he already knew of Regulus’ landing at Pisae, Papus had not imagined that Regulus was in such close proximity. Drawing up his legions to advance on the Gauls, Papus sent forth his cavalry to aid in the hill battle. The Gallic horse was at last bested and the hill in Roman possession.
Now it was the time for the infantry. Although encouraged by having trapped their foe, the Romans were intimidated by the barbarian horde as Polybius relates:
“They were terrified by the fine order of the Celtic host and the dreadful din, for there were innumerable horn-blowers and trumpeters, and, as the whole army were shouting their war-cries at the same time, there was such a tumult of sound that it seemed that not only the trumpets and the soldiers but all the country round had got a voice and caught up the cry.”7
The tall Gallic warriors, outnumbered and surrounded, built up their confidence with cries and gestures of valor. From beneath bronze helmets swept tawny and fiery red manes and flickered savage eyes. Horns, plumes, or small stylized wheels, the Celtic symbols of war, adorned their helmets and fantastic curvilinear patterns graced their oval or hexagonal shields. Most of the Gauls wore their typical multi-colored checkered trousers and cloaks. Not so the Gaesatae who, in what was perhaps a deep spiritual reverence to nature, went into battle stark naked. The Gauls wielded large thrusting spears, javelins, slings and great swords. Since the days of the Allia, the Gallic sword had become a pure slashing weapon, a yard long and rounded at the end as opposed to pointed. Overall sword quality remained high, a few being more akin to steel than iron. Armored in corselets of mail and bedecked in torcs, armlets and bracelets of precious metals, the chiefs and their champions inspirationally formed the front ranks.
The Roman consuls opened the infantry clash by sending forth their light troops, who by the thousand streamed through the gaps between the maniples. Skins of wolfs, badgers and other beasts adorned their helmets. Inside their round shields they carried handfuls of javelins which they hurled, volley after volley, down upon the Gallic front ranks. Although the Gauls’ large body shields offered some protection, all too many of the Roman javelins found their mark. The Gauls lacked sufficient missile weapons of equal range to harm their foes.
The naked Gaesatae, who formed the front ranks of the Gauls facing Papus, suffered most of all. In rage at their impotence, the bravest Gaesatae stormed forward only to be impaled by javelin shafts before they had a chance to exchange blows with the Romans. Other Gauls of fainter hearts pressed backward, throwing their own ranks into disorder.
Trumpets blared and the ground shook beneath the tramp of tens of thousands of legionaries. With standards raised, the maniples advanced upon the Gallic horde. From the first maniple line, the hastati, another barrage of heavy javelins (pila) rained upon the Gallic shield wall. The iron javelin heads were barbed and remained embedded when penetrating a shield, making it cumbersome to use. Roman short swords slid from thousands of scabbards, as the hastati charged.
In close combat the Romans again held the tactical advantage. Swinging his longsword in great arcs, the Gallic warrior found it vexingly difficult to avoid the short Roman thrusting blades, to bypass the Roman guard and to inflict a decisive blow. Unlike the Gauls’ own shield, the oblong Roman scutum bent backward to enclose part of the bearer’s body. Above the upper shield rim, all the Gaul could see was a slit of his foe’s eyes beneath a bronze helmet. Even below the shield, the forward legionary’s leg was protected by a bronze greave. When the legionary let down his shield he was further protected by body armor. The hastati wore a pectoral shield, while the legionaries of the second and third Roman lines, the principes and triarii, wore mail hauberks. The Gallic warrior made up for his disadvantages with skill, brute force and raw courage. His mighty sword splintered Roman shields and a direct hit bit through the bronze of the Roman helmet, and split the skull beneath!
The Gauls fought on and for a time it looked like the battle could go either way. On the Aquilone hill, the victorious Roman horsemen reined in their steeds. Now was not the time to pursue the fleeing Gallic horsemen. It was time to come to the aid of the legions. Down the hill the Roman cavalry thundered, into the flank of the Gallic infantry. Roman cavalry spears struck wildly into the panicked mob. The unexpected cavalry charge broke the spirit of the Gauls who were cut to pieces. When it all was over, 40,000 Gauls lay dead and another 10,000 marched into captivity and slavery, among them King Concolitanus. King Aneroestes escaped the slaughter with a few of his followers but overcome by grief over the disaster, took his own life.
Papus collected the Gallic booty and sent it to Rome, from where it was returned to its owners. Vengeance in his heart, Papus pushed onward with his legions toward the lands of the Boii. His legions brought flame, murder and rape. Lucius Aemilius Papus returned to Rome in a triumphal march, with his loot and captives, through streets adorned with Gallic standards and precious torcs.
The battle of Telamon marked the rapid decline of Gallic fortunes in northern Italy. In the following three years, a series of Roman campaigns broke the back of Gallic independence in the Po valley of northern Italy. The last of these in 222 BC, at Clastidium, saw the personal duel between the Roman general M. Claudius Marcellus and Virdomarus, the Insubres chieftain, in front of the assembled Gaul and Roman armies. Virdomarus bellowed that he had been born from the waters of the Rhine and would make quick work of the Roman invader. Both leaders hurled their spears and both missed. Blades in hand, they fell at each other to the exuberant cheers of their countrymen but it was Marcellus’ sword which slit Virdomarus’ throat. Without their leader the Gauls crumbled before the advance of the legions.
Among the Insubres fought a group of Germanic tribesmen.8 Their presence was indicative of the poorly understood tribal interactions that occurred beyond the Roman-Celtic frontiers during the 3rd century BC. While Rome fought the Gauls in Gallia Cisalpina, Germanic and Celtic tribes continued to absorb or replace each other north of the Alps. In the Saarland, for example, the earlier Celtic culture that had thrived in and around the imposing fortress on the Dollberg Mountain for over 300 years came to end around 250 BC. It was replaced by the Celtic Treveri, a tribe which prided itself on its Germanic origin.
Another event of future consequence for Clastidium was the Roman capture of the Insubres town of Mediolanum, the future Milan, which would come to replace Rome as the seat of the Emperor. Such events, however, were many centuries away. For now, Rome was on a meteoric rise. Only two years after Clastidium, most of the Gallic tribes of the Po valley submitted to the Romans who further solidified their gains with the establishment of Latin colonies at Placentia and Cremona. But the final conquest of Gallia Cisalpina would have to wait as Rome was faced with the rebirth of a bitter enemy, Carthage.
In 219 BC the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca besieged Saguntum, one of the Greek towns along Spain’s Mediterranean shore, which enjoyed the protection of Rome. The incident escalated into the Second Punic War (218–201). The advent of Hannibal was a godsend for the Cisalpina Gauls but in typical Gallic character, their support for Hannibal was erratic at best. During the entire war a force of two legions sufficed to hold all of Gallia Cisalpina in check. According to Livy, Hannibal thought “that there was more smoke than fire to Gallic resistance.”9
Even before Hannibal and his elephants crossed the Pyrenees on his way to Italy, 10,000 of his Celtiberians (a mixture of Spanish Celts and Iberians) deserted his cause and some even became scouts for the Romans. On his march from Saguntum to Italy some tribes became allies, others proved indifferent or even hostile. The Boii flocked to his cause but the Ceutrones, who at first supplied Hannibal with provisions, later ambushed the Punic army in a narrow mountain pass. At the battle of the Trebia in 218 BC, the Gauls holding Hannibal’s center deserted their lines while a snowstorm blew over the area. In contrast, at Cannae in 216, his 8,000 Spanish and Gallic heavy cavalry drove the Roman cavalry from the field and smashed into the rear of the legions, clinching Hannibal’s resounding victory in what, in terms of casualties, was the greatest Roman defeat to date.
Although a master of maneuver, Hannibal was increasingly outnumbered and was unable to obtain a decisive victory in Italy. When the brilliant Roman general Scipio Africanus took the war to Africa, Hannibal was forced to come to the rescue of his threatened homeland. Only a smattering of Hannibal’s Gaul and Celtiberian cavalry accompanied him back to Africa. Their absence contributed to his final defeat at Zama in 202 BC, where Hannibal was confronted by a Roman army reinforced by mounted troops from Numidia.
Only after Hannibal’s defeat, when it was too late, did the Gauls wholeheartedly stir into action. United by a Carthaginian general named Hamilcar, who had remained in Italy after the close of the Second Punic War, in 200 BC, the Insubres, the Cenomani, the Boii and Ligurian tribes (see chapter VI) assaulted the river fortresses of Placentia and Cremona and destroyed the former. Thereafter the Gauls held at bay inadequate Roman forces for two years. That they did so was largely due to continuing Roman commitments against yet another foe, Philip of Macedon. Awestruck by Cannae, Philip of Macedon entered into an alliance with Hannibal and drew Rome into the First (214–205) and Second (200–197) Macedonian Wars during which Rome played on the political divisions within the Greek world and ostensibly acted as the savior of Greece against Macedonian expansionism. The war reached its turning point with Philip’s defeat at Cynoscephalae in 197.
Freed from its commitments in Greece, Rome was able to press the war against the Gauls. In 197 BC two Roman armies were sent against the Cenomani and Insubres who were defeated on the banks of the Mincio River near Mantua. This was followed by another victory in 196 near Lake Como. Both Gallic tribes sued for peace. The stalwart Boii did not stop fighting until 191 when they were defeated by consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica. Forced to surrender half their lands, the dispossessed Boii refused to live under the Roman yoke. They drifted away to the east, where in the Danube regions they met with others of their tribe who had settled there earlier and gave their name to the region of Bohemia. Roman roads and Roman colonies spread across northern Italy, an area nearly as large as peninsular Italy. When Polybius wandered across the land nearly half a century later, he remarked that the roadside lands were already Italianized. Like the ancient Etruscans, the Gallic realms of Northern Italy were absorbed into the Roman world.