Hannibal crosses the Alps

The story

The enemy who came from the Alps

Hannibal Barca was the son of Hamilcar, the Carthaginian general who had fought against the Romans in Sicily. According to a story handed down by the Greek historian Polybius, as a boy his father made him swear never to be a friend of Rome. Scholars today doubt that this really happened, but the story says a lot about how the ancients saw him: an enemy of Rome since childhood.

Carthage, after the First Punic War, had grown stronger in Spain. There Hannibal, still young, became a commander. In 219 BC he besieged Saguntum, a Spanish city allied with Rome. The siege lasted eight months and the city fell. Rome demanded that Hannibal be handed over, Carthage refused and the Second Punic War began.

The march towards Italy

Hannibal made a bold decision: instead of waiting for the Romans in Spain or attacking them by sea, where they were strong, he would cross Gaul and the Alps and come out in northern Italy, where nobody expected him. In the spring of 218 BC he set out from New Carthage (Nova Carthago), in southern Spain. The ancient sources give different and uncertain figures: they speak of 90,000 foot soldiers, 12,000 horsemen and 37 elephants, but along the way he left many to guard Spain and lost others on the marches.

He crossed the Pyrenees and the river Rhône, in France, using boats and rafts. The elephants were taken across on special rafts. At this point, according to Polybius, he had about 38,000 foot soldiers and 8,000 horsemen. A Roman army led by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio tried to stop him, but Hannibal continued along the river.

The Alps

The most famous moment came towards the end of September. Climbing the Alps with thousands of men, horses and elephants, in the cold, along narrow paths and early snow, was a very hard feat. Livy tells of nine days of climbing up to the pass. There was fighting too against the mountain peoples, who attacked the column from above. After about fifteen days of marching in the Alps, according to Polybius, Hannibal reached the Po Valley with about 20,000 foot soldiers and 6,000 horsemen: he had lost more than half of his soldiers since leaving the Rhône.

Which pass he used we do not know for certain. Scholars have been arguing for centuries, and there are many theories. A more recent reconstruction points to the Col d'Autaret, in the Lanzo Valleys in Piedmont, but the question remains open. There is no final proof, and that is fine: great deeds often have a mystery.

The victories in Italy

In Italy Hannibal won battle after battle. On the river Ticinus he defeated the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio; in December 218 BC he won at the Trebbia, near Piacenza; in 217 at Lake Trasimene he set an ambush in the fog and the consul Gaius Flaminius died in the battle. In Rome it was then decided to avoid direct clashes, with the waiting strategy of Quintus Fabius Maximus, known as the Delayer (Cunctator).

But the most famous victory was at Cannae, in Apulia, in 216 BC. The Romans fielded a much larger army, about 80,000 foot soldiers and 6,000 horsemen. Hannibal used a tactic of encirclement: he let the centre of his line fall back and then closed the Romans in a vice. According to ancient sources between 50,000 and 70,000 legionaries fell (the figures are uncertain), including the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus. It was the worst defeat in Roman history.

After Cannae one of his commanders, Maharbal, reproached him, according to Livy, for not knowing how to exploit the victory, that is, for not marching on Rome. Hannibal, however, did not think a direct attack on such a well-defended city was possible, and preferred to try to detach Rome's allied cities. A few cities in the south went over to his side, but most remained loyal to the Romans.

The end of the war

The Romans, meanwhile, took the war elsewhere. Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of the consul defeated at the Ticinus, won in Spain and then landed in Africa. In 203 BC Hannibal was recalled home and in 202 BC, at Zama, he was defeated: Scipio received the title “Africanus”. The peace, in 201, took away Carthage's possessions in Spain and left it without power in the western Mediterranean.

Hannibal governed his city for a few years, then had to flee. In 195 BC he took refuge with Antiochus III of Syria, and after Antiochus's defeat with King Prusias I of Bithynia. When the Romans demanded his surrender, he took his own life with poison, in a year between 183 and 181 BC, at Libyssa, in Bithynia.