After Metaurus, Rome breathed a considerable sigh of relief, and the Senate decreed three days of grateful prayer. From a distance at Venusia, Claudius Nero had shown Hannibal some of his captured African soldiers now in chains. If the sight shocked him, Hannibal would not have given the Romans any satisfaction. Hannibal soon left for Bruttium, where no Roman armies went after him, but armies on several sides mostly penned him in. For the moment, Hannibal had only two small ports left: Croton in the west side of the Gulf of Taranto (he evacuated his garrison from Metapontum), on the “ball of the instep foot” of Italy; and Locri on the Ionian coast farther south across the mountains on the opposite side of Rhegium, practically at Italy’s “toe.” But Hannibal would lose Locri to Scipio with help from the city of Rhegium in 205, when Scipio crossed over from Sicily. So Hannibal’s territory and influence continued to wane as Roman fortunes waxed. As one scholar observes: “Ultimately the Romans prevailed on the battlefield because, however incompetent and divided the leadership was at times, military service formed a part of every aspiring citizen’s upbringing.”1
Around this time that Rome left Hannibal alone at the foot of Italy during 206–205, and he entered a lull without fighting anywhere—there were few territories and allies to defend anyway—he must have had enough time on his hands to be somewhat reflective. Since no armies came after him, maintaining their distance, did Hannibal wonder if Rome now chose to consider him little of a threat?
Apparently for the first time, Hannibal did something difficult to read as having any tactical or strategic value. He erected a bronze plaque in the Temple of Juno at Cape Lacinium, now long since gone along with most of this temple at what is now called Capo delle Colonna but witnessed by Polybius and others. As the earlier hybrid Phoenician-Etruscan gold tablets of Pyrgi indicate,2 Hannibal’s Phoenician ancestors had considered Juno (or Uni) to be an Italian version of their goddess Astarte—hence some of the myth symbolism of the Roman poet Virgil for the reciprocal relationship between Juno and Queen Dido in the Aeneid—so this was an apropos dedication from a Carthaginian in a Juno temple.3 The full bilingual Punic and Greek text of Hannibal’s plaque is unknown, but if Livy is right, it recorded some of Hannibal’s achievements as his self-reflexive res gestae, or “things accomplished.”4 Polybius, who saw it, has quoted only the numerical troop strengths listed there by Hannibal,5 including from his long march of 218.
Several have called the bronze tablet a memorial to a huge ambition6 that, in retrospect, went mostly unfulfilled. Others wisely noted Livy’s text deliberately culminating his book 28 about this bronze tablet as a literary bridge that “indicates the end of Hannibal’s successes in Italy, separating the past, which belonged to Hannibal, from the future, which will be Scipio’s.”7 Regardless of Livy’s rhetorical intent in his narrative, he must not be far off if Hannibal is now sufficiently contemplative about his Italian sojourn of fifteen years, wanting to leave some document of his impact in a mostly hostile land that would love to erase all traces. If this is an accurate assessment of Hannibal, he must have been pensive after Hasdrubal’s recent defeat and death and his own confinement to Bruttium, knowing that Carthage was unable and unlikely to send him any more significant help.
Spain remained a war theater into 206, as Carthage empowered Mago Barca, Hannibal’s youngest brother general, and Hasdrubal Gisco to fight on in the South, west of Cartagena. Near present-day Seville on the Guadalquivir River, about 275 miles due west of Cartagena in southern Spain and only sixty miles from the southern coast of Spain, lay the Roman town of Ilipa, showing how deeply Romans had penetrated into what was only recently the stronghold of a thoroughly Punic Spain.
Scipio set up camp only to be attacked by dual cavalry forces commanded by Mago and Massinissa the Numidian prince. Scipio had been prepared for this and had massed his own cavalry behind a hill from where they swooped in and put the Punic cavalry to flight. The Roman and Carthaginian armies—about 50,000 infantry and 4,500 cavalry for the Carthaginians, if Livy is right,8 nearly equal in infantry at 45,000 and equal in cavalry, according to Polybius9—soon gathered in force and lined up for battle without full engagement, only to do reconnaissance of each other with a few preliminary skirmishes of light infantry and cavalry for sensing strengths and weaknesses for several days. Hasdrubal Gisco commanded the Carthaginians, and Scipio observed his deployment tactics, including that the Carthaginians were slow to assemble for potential battle in the mornings. He had also observed that Hasdrubal placed his heavy Libyan infantry in the center of his battle formation, with his elephants on the two flanks. Scipio now put in place a devious plan that would have impressed even Hannibal.10
Scipio assembled his prebattle line mimicking the Carthaginians, arriving even later than Hasdrubal’s army to provide a cover illusion of indolence. He also placed his heavy Roman infantry in his center and his Spanish troops on the flanks. This went on for several days to establish in the enemy’s mind that this would be the order of battle.11 Scipio might have deduced from the deaths of his father and uncle, attributed to their Iberians abandoning them possibly after being bribed, that he should not put too much confidence in Iberians,12 but he did not yet want the Carthaginians to guess his true intentions.
Scipio now sprang his trap. On the day he calculated best for battle, he began before dawn, making sure his army rose early and had food. Then he sent his light infantry velites (light infantry and skirmishers) to harass Carthaginian positions and arrived ready for battle. This early start took the Carthaginians by surprise, rising without eating and hastily assembling for battle in some disarray, having been lulled by Scipio’s prior turgid pace that any battle would take place late in the day. But Scipio had disguised his line—mostly unobserved, as dawn had hidden his changes, and he reversed his first deployments—as Polybius says, in a “precisely opposite manner.”13 Polybius is a reliable source on Scipio’s tactics here because he was keenly interested in military strategy, having also apparently written a lost study on tactics.14 To the surprise of the Carthaginians, Scipio’s Iberians were now at the center instead of his heavy Roman infantry to face Hasdrubal’s core of African infantry, and there was nothing the Punic commander could do about it because Scipio had caught him off guard in the first place by being so early to battle, and he had no time to change his formations. When Scipio’s advancing army was only five hundred or so feet from the Punic force, not only did he place his best heavy Roman infantry on the flanks, with cavalry and velites behind them, but he also executed an unorthodox maneuver that required great discipline from his troops.
His next order was perfectly executed. Scipio’s line was suddenly very broad when the Roman heavy infantry spread out behind and around his Iberians, possibly almost doubling their original width, and certainly wider than the Punic line as they met. On a command that required perfect timing, both flanks of Roman infantry having quickly marched forward were ordered simultaneously to turn inward at 90 degrees. The left infantry rank, led by Scipio, turned right, and the right infantry rank, led by Junius Silanus and Marcus Septimus, turned left. The Carthaginians were thus caught in a pincer movement that echoed Cannae—although none of them had witnessed it—this time, however, initiated by the Romans.
Hasdrubal’s Iberians, who faced Rome’s disciplined legions on both flanks, were quickly overwhelmed in the double jaws of heavy Roman infantry and routed. Hasdrubal’s center was rendered mostly useless because Scipio’s Iberians blocked his experienced African infantry. These Iberian allies had nowhere to go and, more importantly, refused to fight, merely staying behind their shields.15 Their presence in the battle now seemed to be more window dressing to occupy the Carthaginian center. At the same time, this Carthaginian core began to face battle on its sides. The remaining exhausted Punic forces—including their commanders Hasdrubal and Mago, and possibly Massinissa—began to retreat slowly, but as entropy and collapse took over from every direction but behind them, their pace increased rapidly to remove them as much as possible from calamity.
The Battle of Ilipa would have been even more disastrous for Carthage had a violent storm not suddenly stopped the pursuing Romans. The surviving Punic Iberian allies pulled out when what was left of Hasdrubal’s army retreated into the hills above the Guadalquivir River. The Carthaginians fortified their new camp with rocks, but after their Iberian allies left during the night, Hasdrubal Gisco and Mago went separate ways south to the coast to Gades, the major port and one of the last Punic bases in Spain. Gisco and his fleet sailed off to Africa, while Mago remained. As one historian notes, Scipio had learned from observing Hannibal how deceptive appearances can be, and how to match not his strength to an enemy’s strength but his strength to an enemy’s weakness.16 Scipio went back to Tarraco slowly on a diplomatic junket of several months, visiting Iberian allies and showering them with gifts, as a way of ensuring a modicum of allegiance in easing the transition of power from Carthage to Rome.
The concentrated battle at Ilipa was the last major engagement between Rome and Carthage in Spain and proved Scipio as a formidable strategist. It is historically ironic that while Livy consistently castigates Hannibal for duplicity and deceit in employing strategy, he praises Scipio for brilliance using the same practices. But overall, Livy is cautious about stratagems, implying that they are somehow “un-Roman.” Romans are supposedly open and manly in their directness in war. Naturally, Livy’s positions mainly reflect his bias against Hannibal and almost all things Punic.
Mago Barca tried to re-establish a Carthaginian toehold in Gades, but the Battle of Ilipa had convinced Gaditans that Carthage was finished in Spain. They told Mago it was time to go. A few resisting towns such as Castulo capitulated under siege, but it was denouement for Punic presence in Spain after hundreds of years of influence and outright dominance by Carthage. Scipio left lieutenants such as Silanus to hold key towns in Spain. There would be a few mutinies and rebellions in Spain,17 as well as a diplomatic side trip to Africa to cultivate his coming master plan for Africa. Scipio made increasingly promising plans to return to Rome in triumph.
Scipio’s clear vision was to take the war beyond Italy to Carthage, but he knew he had to tread carefully because of opposition, especially from the conservative Fabian Party in the Senate, whom he knew to be territorially myopic and Italocentric. At first, only the glimmers of Scipio’s grand scheme were revealed on the periphery because now with so many threats neutralized, Rome could afford to dabble more openly in North Africa. Rome had obviously penned up Hannibal in Bruttium, and no other Carthaginian army would dare march to Italy after Hasdrubal Barca at Metaurus. What’s more, Spain was now under control and getting stronger by the month.
Earlier, to prevent new allies coming to Hannibal from the east, Rome had succeeded in distracting Philip of Macedon with the Aetolians in Greece. Likewise in North Africa, they had stirred up a bit of trouble for Carthage using Syphax, king of the Massaseylian western Numidians, until Hasdrubal Barca had repelled Syphax. According to Livy, Scipio understood that the Numidians were unreliable, although it is more likely they had no real permanent investment in Carthage if their own interests did not intersect. With typical literary flair Livy writes almost sarcastically that Romans such as Scipio expected “barbarians” like the Numidians to be fickle: “expecting treaties have no more weight or sanctity than agreements ever do with barbarians.”18
Since Spain was no longer a war theater, if the expanding periphery was to exercise new Roman muscle across the Mediterranean in Africa and extend the war to that turf, it would have been suicidal unless Rome had serious allies on the Continent. Some Romans, like Scipio, thought that the Numidians were the best candidates for forging alliances that would help them secure a foothold in Africa and also undermine Carthage.
About this time, Syphax decided to test the water again in Numidia. He had bided his time after being chased out of eastern Numidia by Hasdrubal Barca. Plus, he was not alone in Numidian vacillation. Massinissa too saw the fate of Punic Spain after the Battle of Ilipa, and, seeing which way the wind was blowing in Spain, covertly decided to switch sides, setting up clandestine meetings with Scipio himself in 206 in Gades.19
Back in North Africa, Syphax had attracted attention again from Rome after a lull. Whether he made overtures to Roman ears or Rome took the initiative, it was Scipio who was now finely tuned to all things North African. Scipio first sent his friend Laelius to Syphax, who received him politely but with reserve. He was adamant that he would negotiate only with a commanding general—and rightly so, as he wanted to be honored as a king by being taken seriously.
So Scipio had to come almost by himself—the equivalent of a Roman spy—to North Africa in a quick but risky mission; an envoy to the land of the enemy without full diplomatic immunity. He was greatly outnumbered by hostiles or by hordes uncommitted to either side. No doubt with some trepidation mixed with excitement at his dangerous task, Scipio came with a very small and mostly invisible accompaniment of only two quinqueremes. They were soon swallowed up in the vast North African horizon en route to a harbor somewhere in present-day Algeria. Scipio’s thoughts and emotions seeing North Africa come into view for the first time must have been tumultuous—especially when to his and others’ surprise, the sails of a small Punic fleet was spotted right behind them. Scipio might have wondered if it had all been a ruse and a trap, as Hasdrubal Gisco arrived at nearly the same time, but despite the shouts and calls to arms, there was no engagement as they berthed. It turned out that Scipio and Gisco were not expecting each other, and both were coming to woo Syphax and his considerable Numidians. We can assume that at their meeting, Hasdrubal recalled past Numidian and Carthaginian camaraderie to Syphax, but Livy was not reluctant to natter about the expensive gifts Scipio brought that greatly pleased the Numidian king.
Scipio seemed to brilliantly pull off this tough diplomatic assignment on enemy turf. He was so compellingly charismatic at Syphax’s table that even Hasdrubal Gisco was disconcertingly charmed. This was the same Roman Scipio whose family Hasdrubal Barca had slaughtered in Spain and then the same stern but clever Roman who had bested him in battle at Ilipa. If Livy is not exaggerating, the archenemies who had decimated armies of Rome and Carthage between them now shared not only the same table but also perhaps even the same couch like bosom buddies.20 But Scipio’s own personal talents included personal warmth, natural courtesy, and tact with a pronounced ability to relax both his enemy and his host. Syphax was delighted, his Numidian royal pride massaged by having the commanders of two powerful nations vying for his allegiance at his table. Underscoring Scipio’s magnetism, Livy purportedly quotes Hasdrubal as saying of Scipio, “Carthage should not so much attempt to understand how we lost Spain but how we will now keep Africa.”21 Although he was too experienced a Punic leader to be naïve, Hasdrubal Gisco may have nonetheless left Syphax wishing Scipio was a better candidate for friendship than for war, but the Carthaginian probably had few illusions about this. On the other hand, Scipio may have thought that Syphax had been more flexible than reality soon showed. Syphax did not sever his old ties to Carthage.
Hasdrubal Gisco was not done either, however, as he soon played a card that Scipio would be unable to trump easily. Knowing Syphax’s interest was already building, Hasdrubal fanned the smoldering embers by offering his nubile and accomplished daughter, Sophonisba, to the king for continuing loyalty in keeping his people’s old faith with Carthage. Sophonisba was hardly a pawn but a beautiful woman with intellectual energy and reasons of her own, playing Syphax for all she could muster—and not necessarily just for gods and country but also for her new queenship. With Sophonisba at stake, Hasdrubal compelled Syphax to warn Scipio against coming to Africa. Whether or not Carthage had been behind the whole scheme from the start, it also perceived it was a good alliance for Sophonisba to marry a friendly king who would rule a large tribe on their borders. The Sophonisba story would take another turn, however, as Massinissa later reentered the picture to claim Sophonisba with the help of Rome. Massinissa’s father, King Gala, had died and having left Spain to assume his kingship, his rule was postponed a bit while he waited for Roman help because Syphax had attacked his country on behalf of Carthage. For now, old king Syphax had a young trophy wife to fan both his ardor and his Punic alliance.
Scipio’s long planning for this day was paying off, and if he was impatient to leave Spain, he seemed not to show it. All Rome was abuzz about his accomplishments in Spain, and he knew it because he had made sure it was well publicized. Carthage had been beaten and its armies chased out, many forced to go home or wherever else they could find a base of operations. After Carthage conceded Spain, Mago Barca was ordered to go to Hannibal’s aid in Italy. He left Gades for the island of Minorca and then sailed to the Ligurians of Genoa, where he tried to raise new troops for several years.
When Scipio finally left Tarraco in late 206 with a fleet of ten ships to return to Rome, he brought with him a staggering sum of silver treasure from Spain, mainly confiscated from Punic treasures such as Cartagena’s, or from abandoned army camps, or from Spanish mining operations now under Roman control.
The Senate met with Scipio outside the walls of Rome, near the Field of Mars at the Temple of Bellona, because, as stated earlier, a commanding general was not allowed into the city with arms or soldiers and had to relinquish imperium.22 The Senate gave Scipio an august audience to personally recount all of his Spanish campaign successes over his five years whittling away at Carthage’s power until it was reduced to nothing. According to Livy, Scipio reminded the Senate that when he’d arrived in Spain, he faced four successful Carthaginian commanders and four victorious Carthaginian armies, but he left not a single Carthaginian soldier there.23 His service record was nothing short of magnificent—better than any Roman general had accomplished in several generations—and the Senate could not fault or deny anything Scipio related. Scipio probably spoke firmly but humbly as possible to mitigate envy or fears that he was reaching beyond his station. He could hope but not ask to march triumphantly through the streets of Rome with his booty, yet he would have to hide any disappointment.
Because he was a commanding general but not a consul, no triumph would be allowed by custom. Leaving his horse outside the walls, Scipio walked through the streets of Rome. Before him rolled his open slow carts, bringing to the public treasury his enormous gift that he deposited as the spoils of war from Spain: 14,342 pounds of silver ingots and a great quantity of silver coins, as Livy relates. This is estimated to be the equivalent of almost 1 million denarii (around 58 million dollars).24 How do we know the exact amount? If Scipio looked on at the counting, he was making sure that not an ounce was untallied, because this would not only be important to have on record but also to be talked about through Rome. Although this deposit was by no means a bribe in exchange for public adulation, and Scipio tried to make it look altruistic, no one would be naïve enough to assume there was no underlying motive for such public largesse. Polybius had already noted his earlier megalodoros—munificence—as programmatic while in Spain.25 While there were no stated strings attached, Scipio knew what he was doing and expected something in return, as Livy describes what quickly followed officially after the roar of unofficial public approval from the people of Rome.
He soon received a different kind of triumph, won in the overall public adulation that had not only welcomed Scipio as a hero but also visible in now thousands of people lining the streets of Rome clamoring to glimpse this man whom the gods had earlier chosen when he was elected consul for 205. He sacrificed a hundred oxen to Jupiter, as he had promised in Spain, and throngs massed to see him. Scipio could not have asked for a better public relations campaign in advance of going as consul to Sicily, his stepping stone to Africa, although he still had formidable opposition from the Senate and the party of Fabius Maximus, who may have been envious and suspicious of Scipio. Perhaps Rome didn’t permit electoral bribery (ambitus), but is the related word ambitio (ambition) applicable?26 No doubt the Senate and Fabius in particular wondered if Scipio would try to circumvent their power by appealing directly to the people, as he seemed to threaten. If so, they would have to preempt him by giving him carte blanche for Africa in order to make it look like they were in control. Scipio was now justly renowned, and the powers of Rome knew it.
While in general Livy loves to relate a litany of omens, other than to comment that 204 BCE was a year of raining stones more often than usual and that a wave of superstition swept over Rome, he is fairly restrained about the omens and readings from the consulted prophetic Sibylline Books that called for hauling the Eastern cult of the goddess Cybele from her shrine at Anatolian Pessinus near the ancient Greek kingdom of Pergamum to Rome.27 The Sibylline Books said Cybele’s presence was necessary in order to drive out an unspecified enemy foreign invader from Italy, but obviously it was interpreted as referring to Hannibal.28
Livy is also strangely tight-lipped about all this being so superficially un-Roman, although in reality it was uber-Roman. Partly because she was worshipped in Asia as the Great Idaean Mother of the Gods, the Magna Mater (or Mater Deum Magna Idaea), the event is almost a foil to Hannibal’s plaque event dedicated at the temple of Juno in Lacinium. More important, Cybele also antedated history in Rome’s mythical Trojan origins. After stopping in Delphi, where the oracle also predicted success, the envoy accompanied by five quinqueremes found the Attalids in Pergamum were friendly to Rome. According to Livy, the royal party of the client king of Pergamum, Attalus, even accompanied them to Pessinus, where they obtained Cybele’s sacred stone that was possibly meteoric, being “from heaven.” The sacred stone was to be received in Rome by the worthiest Roman citizen, the optimus vir.
The Sibylline-Cybele story is famous from multiple sources, including Ovid and Appian,29 alongside Livy. Livy also states the Senate chose the son of Gnaeus Scipio (Calvo) who died in Spain, and Juvenal confirms him as the worthiest Roman who received the statue in Ostia, her “unimpeachable host.” This was the cousin of Scipio30 and it was a great Scipio family honor. Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna tells the story in his grisaille painting gem from 1505–1506, The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele into Rome, with the patrician matron Claudia leading the entourage, because in Appian’s version, she was a virtuous woman, who almost single-handedly pulled the boat carrying the cult statue with her girdle tied to it when the boat was stuck in the mud.
What is also telling in the majority of historical and literary narratives about the 204 introduction of Cybele is that Scipio’s family was chosen as the most worthy for Rome to receive and revive the Cybele’s Idaean Mother Goddess link to Troy. In concert with his carefully cultivated public image of religious devotion and connections to the gods, Scipio himself would not have denied his family to be perceived as connected to a divine agent of salvation in Cybele’s cult coming to Rome. This divine association would enlarge his own persona to undertake bringing the war to Africa, which he could work into being part of prophetic fulfillment to rid Italy of Hannibal.
Like Hannibal, whom he seemed to emulate more and more, Scipio’s ability to read people was unusually adept from youth onward. But while Hannibal brooded in Bruttium with no battles to fight, his influence waned in the war by much the same degree as Scipio’s waxed. Even if details are tailored slightly by Polybius—and considerably by Livy—after the fact, only a few glimpses of Scipio’s tactical genius at Cartagena and the Battle of Ilipa and his diplomatic ease with old allies of Carthage such as Massinissa in Spain and Syphax in North Africa are enough to warrant respect for his constructed persona. Whether he cleverly manipulated his own people’s perceptions and superstitions is immaterial; his intellectual probity to plan for years ahead through complicated maneuvers, where the external circumstances were often beyond his control, evidences great intelligence and unusually deep confidence combined with the subtlest political shrewdness. As one military historian suggests, each time Scipio had a different opponent, “Scipio’s military motto would seem to have been, ‘every time a new stratagem’ ” as an artist of war,31 although many of his precedents were from Hannibal as a master teacher. Scipio had his focus fixed on Carthage and would not be turned away from Africa for long. He had the strongest conviction that the surest way to rid Italy of Hannibal was to take the war to Carthage. Hannibal may have been a caged lion, safe only from a distance, but he was still a lion.