Alright, it’s time we finish this…
When we left off, Roman forces had just been annihilated at Cannae.
Rome’s allies began to defect and the Macedonians declared for Hannibal.
So what happened? How come, episode after episode,
we see Rome getting absolutely pummeled when, because of the languages we speak,
because of the legacy they left us, we know that they win this war?
Well the Romans had a saying that basically goes something like
“You aren’t defeated until you accept defeat”
and Hannibal didn’t seem to fully understand that.
And so here, in this moment, right after his greatest achievement,
Hannibal does the one thing which historians have debated for centuries,
the one thing for which he’s criticized: he doesn’t go for Rome.
Now, the criticisms may be a little unfair, Hannibal may have rightly assessed that
- even with his victories - he could not have overcome the walls of Rome,
but it’s one of those great “what ifs” of history, one of those great moments
where the fate of the world hinged on a single decision by a single man…
What if he had chosen the other side, what if he had marched on Rome?
But we’ll never know, because instead Hannibal offered the Romans terms.
He expected them, like any other civilization in the ancient world would,
to accept peace terms after such devastating losses
and such a disastrous reduction in men and material.
But the Romans refused to admit defeat.
In fact, they didn’t even accept an offer from Hannibal to ransom their hostages.
For Rome, the gates of Janus were open: there is nothing but war.
But this still doesn’t answer our question, how on earth do the Romans come back?
Well, while Rome was busy losing everything in Italy,
they were doing a bit better on other fronts of the war.
So let’s leave Italy for a while, and talk about the rest of the theaters.
First, what’s going on in Sicily?
Well at first glance, it looks pretty rough, it looks like the Carthaginians
are gonna have yet another great victory just fall into their lap.
You see, Heiro the Second, the king of Syracuse,
had become an unswerving ally of the Romans in the First Punic War,
but in 215 BC he died and his grandson took over…
and promptly decided to ally with the Carthaginians.
And I’ve got to keep this short
in order to cover everything we’re trying to get through in this episode, but
let’s just say this blessing turned into a curse.
This switch of allegiance got the Carthaginians to commit forces to Sicily
that perhaps could have been better used elsewhere,
and these forces ended up suffering from disease and from not being
commanded by Hannibal and so ended up just weakened and tied down.
Meanwhile Archimedes, who's the ancient world’s mad scientist super genius
and one of the things that makes the Second Punic War so awesome,
held the Romans in Sicily at bay for three years with super powered catapults,
cranes that would lift ships out of the sea and drop them back in again and,
if tales are to be believed,
a series of mirrors that formed a heat ray that could ignite ships sitting on the water.
Some of his insights into mathematics and engineering are still taught today,
and he’s totally a character worth looking up, but
alas for the world, despite orders not to harm him,
when the Romans finally captured the city, he was slain in the sack.
But in true intellectual-hero-of -the-ancient-world fashion,
when one of the roman soldiers approached him,
they found him working on a mathematical proof;
he turned towards the soldiers with their swords drawn and simply said to them;
“do not disturb my circles”, and then turned back to his work…
or at least so the story goes.
Ok, so Sicily, ultimately a win for the Romans. Now, let’s look to Spain.
You’ll remember, Spain was the home base for Hannibal
and the whole Barcid family, and Rome had initially sent an army there
under Publius Cornelius Scipio.
We haven’t heard from them in a while. Well it turns out this entire time,
Publius and his brother have been out in Spain fighting Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal.
They’ve been doing much better than the Romans facing Hannibal,
winning minor victories and otherwise stalling out the Carthaginians in their home turf,
but in 211 BC all that was about to change.
While Rome was entirely tied up with trying to replace its lost armies in Italy,
Carthage began to reinforce their armies in Spain.
Seeing that the newly arrived Carthaginian troops were split up
and actually formed three relatively small armies rather than a single large one,
the Scipiones decided to divide their own army and try to attack these pieces
of the Carthaginian force before they could become one united army too large to deal with.
Unfortunately for them, Hasdrubal had their number.
In one case where the Romans hoped to attack a small contingent
of Carthaginians unnoticed, their actions were spotted
and they ended up facing two of the smaller armies on different flanks
rather than just taking on one as intended, and they ended up being routed.
In the other battle, Hasdrubal paid the mercenaries on the Roman side to desert
and so the Romans went from a numerical advantage to an overwhelming deficit
and, despite a heroic last stand behind saddles and camp equipment, they were wiped out.
“Ok, wait” I hear some of you saying
“I thought we were gonna hear about Rome winning”.
Well the situation in Hispania gets better.
You remember Scipio,
who led that original Roman force out to attack Hannibal in Spain.
Well here is where his son Scipio Africanus really comes into our story.
Now mind you he hasn’t actually earned the title “Africanus” yet,
but we’re just gonna call him that because like his father,
he’s also named Publius Cornelius Scipio because of COURSE he is.
So, Scipio Africanus pleads with the Romans for command in Spain.
He asks to be able to avenge his father and uncle and to bring glory to Rome.
And, despite his youth, the Romans elect him to go.
Livy tells us though that it’s not because they had any special confidence in this 25 year old
or because of the honor they gave to his desire to avenge his father,
but rather because everyone else considered a command in Spain suicide
and he was the only one who volunteered to take it on.
But it turns out they chose the right man for the job.
Without telling anyone except Gaius Laelius,
his close friend and the commander of the fleet that was to accompany him,
Scipio did the unthinkable and - with his inferior force -
raced for the Carthaginian capital in Spain: Carthago Nova.
Because the action was unthinkable and he hadn’t told anyone his plan
(not even the sub commanders in his army),
he was able to reach Carthago Nova completely by surprise.
He rapidly began to assail the city,
with his first attack he tried to lure the defenders out of the city
and almost succeeded in forcing his way in, but was beaten back.
Later that day, he attacked again, this time with a trick up his sleeve.
He ordered his men to attack from all sides,
including an assault from the harbor which Gaius Laelius and his marines had taken.
He then ordered a contingent of 500 of his men
to wait near a lagoon that abutted the wall of the city.
And then a squall came in, just as Scipio expected.
His men hadn’t expected it, so to them it looked like magic
as the winds drained the lagoon and allowed them to easily cross.
They assaulted the section of the wall that no one had thought to defend
because the lagoon made it unassailable.
With all the defenders tied up with the other assaults,
these five hundred men opened the city and the Romans made short work of the garrison,
brutally slaughtering anyone they found until the commander of the garrison surrendered.
With the fall of Carthago Nova, Scipio gained the much needed supplies,
valuables and allies that would fuel the rest of his campaign in Spain.
After this, he defeated Hasdrubal’s army in the field and Hasdrubal
made the fateful decision to abandon Spain and cross the Alps to join his brother in Italy.
With Hasdrubal and his forces off to Italy,
the remaining Carthaginian commanders in Spain
decided to make one more attempt to retake that Iberian Peninsula from the Romans
and met them for battle at a place called Ilipa.
The Carthaginians had more men than the Romans but,
neither side wanting to make the first move,
both forces assembled for battle each day and then just sat there,
looking at one another, before retiring for the night.
But Scipio, clever guy that he was, decided to use this to his advantage.
Each day he would assemble his troops in the same fashion,
with his strong troops in the center and his lighter troops on the flanks.
Until one day, before dawn, he order his troops to eat and arm themselves
and drew up his line incredibly close to the enemy camp.
Then he sent out his cavalry to attack the Carthaginians, drawing them out to battle.
And in their haste to respond, the Carthaginian commander didn’t notice
that - on this day - Scipio had arrayed his men differently,
his strong troops on his wings, his weaker troops in the center.
Scipio then ordered his center to slowly fall back,
refusing to do battle with the strong Carthaginian troops that had been placed,
as usual, in the center.
At the same time, the Roman legions on the wings crushed the weaker troops
that the Carthaginians had placed there and then wheeled in on their center.
He had pulled a Hannibal. It was utter destruction.
It was a loss for the Carthaginians nearly as bad as the Roman loss at Cannae.
Never again would they hold sway on the Iberian Peninsula.
Meanwhile, getting back to Italy, things had turned into a big game of Reversi:
Hannibal would flip some towns
and then the Romans would follow after and flip them back,
sticking to the Fabian strategy of never directly engaging him…
but Hasdrubal crossing the Alps changed the rules.
If Hannibal could just join forces with Hasdrubal,
he would finally have an army large enough to take Rome.
The Romans could not allow this.
Unfortunately, the Roman armies were divided,
one was in the North, trying to blunt Hasdrubal’s movements,
another was in the south having just fought a small skirmish with Hannibal.
Neither army was able to face Hasdrubal alone, so they decide on a desperate gamble.
Gaius Claudius Nero, the consul in the south would take a contingent of his army,
slip out of his camp and link up with his co-consul Marcus Livius Salinator in the north.
If Hannibal ever realized what they were attempting, they’d be screwed.
If Hasdrubal decided to engage before Nero got there, they’d be screwed.
If either of the Carthaginian armies moved, they’d be screwed.
But they decided to try it anyway.
Nero’s men slip out of the camp.
With the rest of his army manning around the clock watches
and posting double guards to convince Hannibal that nothing has changed,
they forced march more than 300 miles in seven days
and successfully arrive unnoticed in Livius Salinator’s camp at night.
The next day, when the battle lines are drawn up,
Hasdrubal recognizes the difference in army sizes and tries to withdraw
but he’s betrayed by his guide and ends up forced to fight with his back to a river.
His army is utterly destroyed. It's said that when he realized that all was lost
he charged out into the middle of the Roman army,
deciding to fight to the last rather than be captured.
With Hasdrubal dead,
the Roman senate finally okayed Scipio’s grand plan for an invasion of Africa.
They were finally going to take the war to the Carthaginians.
Scipio began massing an army in Sicily
and sent his friend Laelius with a few thousand men to assess the situation in Africa.
As Laelius would soon see, the political situation there was in upheaval.
Specifically, he found a conflict between two of the Numidian princes,
and one of them, Masinissa, was loyal to the Romans.
Laelius conveyed to Scipio the need for haste and Scipio set sail
to bring their combined forces to assist the exiled prince Masinissa.
Now you’ll remember from earlier episodes how it was the Numidian cavalry
that time and again bested the Romans and turned the tide of battle.
Well now, with Masinissa on their side, Rome had their own Numidian cavalry,
and the Carthaginians would soon be the ones without.
Soon Scipio and the Carthaginians found themselves in a stalemate in Africa,
each feigning diplomacy while preparing for a preemptive strike.
But Scipio got in the first blow, marching his army to the enemy camp in the dead of night
and sending his troops in to set fires all over the camp,
while Laelius and Masinissa’s cavalry finished off any troops that tried to escape.
Soon after, the Carthaginians suffered ANOTHER defeat to the Romans,
leaving them without an army in the field.
They were as defenseless as Rome after Cannae.
So, at last, with no options remaining, they recalled Hannibal.
Imagine what it must have been like to be Hannibal at this moment.
His entire life for nothing. All those years, all those sacrifices,
the loss of his brother, the loss of his eye, made worthless in a moment.
Knowing, in your heart of hearts that the one thing you strove for,
the one thing you dedicated yourself to, that you swore to do in your oath,
would never come to pass.
That is the Hannibal that boarded those ships to return his army home.
And the irony of it all, when he was recalled,
he was the one who argued not to fight the Romans,
not to field the raw recruits Carthage had, to at least delay.
But he was ordered to take the field by the Carthaginian senate, and so he did.
In the end, all that brilliance, all those years of work,
came down to very typical ancient battle, a brawl in the desert heat.
It was close, Hannibal’s veterans held strong against the Roman legions, but
then Laelius and Masinissa’s cavalry drove the now weaker Carthaginian cavalry
from the field and wheeled into the back of Hannibal’s troops.
And just like that, it was done. Carthage surrendered.
Fifty years later, the adopted grandson of Scipio would come back
and reduce Carthage to nothing but myth, history and some dry stones in the desert sand,
but that’s a tale for another time…
Once again, we want to give a big thank you to the folks at Creative Assembly
for making this possible.
We hope you all learned something
or at least found something in this retelling of history that you could enjoy
And if these events interested you, we hope you decide to do some more research on them,
because we have barely touched the surface here.
Our time talking Roman history with you has been all too short,
but as they say: “Ave atque vale”. So long!
Subtitled by: Louis Lenders (louislenders@hotmail.com)