The disaster shattered Rome’s hegemony in southern Italy. Samnites, Bruttians, Lucanians, Metapontum, Thurii, Crotona, Locri, and Capua joined Cisalpine Gaul in attaching themselves to Hannibal; only Umbria, Latium, and Etruria remained firm. Hiero of Syracuse was loyal to the death, but his successors declared for Carthage. Philip V of Macedon, fearful of Roman expansion through Illyria into the east, allied himself with Hannibal and declared war upon Rome. Carthage herself became interested and sent Hannibal meager reinforcements and supplies. Some of the young Roman nobles among the survivors at Canusium thought the situation hopeless and meditated flight to Greece, but Scipio shamed them into courage. Rome was for a month hysterical with terror; only a small garrison remained to protect it against Hannibal. Matrons of high family ran weeping to the temples and cleansed with their hair the statues of the gods; some whose husbands and sons had fallen in battle cohabited with foreigners and slaves lest their strain should die. To regain the favor of obviously offended deities the Senate again sanctioned human sacrifice and buried alive two Gauls and two Greeks.26
But the Romans, says Polybius, “were most to be feared when they stood in real danger. . . . Though they were now so overwhelmingly defeated, and their military reputation had been destroyed, yet, by the peculiar virtues of their constitution, and by wise counsel, they not only recovered their supremacy in Italy . . . but in a few years made themselves masters of the world.”27 The class war ceased, and all groups rushed to the rescue of the state. Taxes had already risen apparently beyond tolerance; but now the citizens, even widows and children, voluntarily brought their secret savings to the Treasury. Every male who could bear arms was called to the colors; slaves were accepted in the levies and were promised freedom in the event of victory. Not a single soldier would consent to receive pay. Rome prepared to contest every inch of ground against the new lion of Carthage.
But Hannibal did not come. His 40,000 men were too small a force, he thought, to besiege a city to whose defense many armies would converge from still loyal states; and if he took it, how could he hold it? His Italian allies, instead of strengthening, weakened him; Rome and her friends were raising forces to attack them, and without his help they would succumb. His aides reproached his caution, and one of them remarked, sadly, “The gods have not given all their gifts to one man. You know how to win victory, Hannibal, but you do not know how to use it.”28 Hannibal decided to wait till Carthage, Macedon, and Syracuse could unite with him in a multiple offensive that would retake Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Illyria, and compel Rome to confine her power to Italy. He released all captives except Romans, and offered these to Rome for a small ransom. When the Senate refused this he sent most of them to Carthage as slaves, and forced the rest, in Roman style, to amuse his men by gladiatorial combats, even to the death. He besieged and took several towns and then led his army to winter in Capua.
It was the most pleasant and dangerous place that he could have chosen. For this second city of Italy—some twelve miles north of Naples—had learned from the Etruscans and the Greeks the vices as well as the graces of civilization; and Hannibal’s troops felt entitled to indulge for a season the flesh that had borne so many hardships and wounds. They were never again the invincible soldiers who had through many campaigns been formed in their master’s Spartan image. In the next five years Hannibal led them to some minor successes; but while they were so engaged the Romans laid siege to Capua. Hannibal sought to relieve it by marching to within a few miles of Rome; the Romans raised twenty-five new legions—200,000 men—and Hannibal, still limited to 40,000, retired to the south. In 211 Capua fell; its leaders, who had let loose a massacre of Romans in the city, were beheaded or committed suicide; and the population, which had strongly supported Hannibal, was dispersed throughout Italy. A year before, Marcellus had taken Syracuse; and a year later Agrigentum yielded to Rome.
Meanwhile a Roman army under the two older Scipios had been sent to Spain to keep Hasdrubal occupied. They defeated him at the Ebro (215); but both of them were soon afterward killed in battle, and their gains were being lost when their son and nephew, Scipio Africanus, was dispatched to the Spanish command. He was but twenty-four, far below the legal age for so responsible a position; but the Senate was willing to stretch the constitution to save the state, and the Assembly was by this time voluntarily subordinating itself to the Senate. The people admired him not only because he was handsome and eloquent, intelligent and brave, but pious, courteous, and just. It was his custom, before undertaking an enterprise, to commune with the gods in the temples on the Capitol, and, after his victories, to reward them with hecatombs. He believed—or represented—himself to be a favorite of Heaven; his successes spread the belief and filled his followers with confidence. He soon restored discipline among the troops, captured Nova Carthago after a long siege, and scrupulously turned over to the Treasury the precious metal and stones that there fell into his hands. Most of the Spanish cities surrendered to him, and by 205 Spain had become a Roman province.
Nevertheless, Hasdrubal’s main force had escaped and now crossed Gaul and the Alps into Italy. The young leader’s message to Hannibal was intercepted, and his plan of campaign was revealed to Rome. A Roman army met his modest force at the Metaurus River (207) and defeated him despite his excellent generalship. Seeing the battle lost and all hope of reaching his brother gone, Hasdrubal leaped into the midst of the legions and took death in his stride. The Roman historians, perhaps romancing, tell us that the victor cut off the youth’s head and sent it through Apulia to be cast over the ramparts into Hannibal’s camp. Broken in spirit by the fate of a brother whom he had dearly loved, Hannibal withdrew his thinned-out forces to Bruttium. “No action was fought with him this year,” says Livy, “nor did the Romans care to disturb him, so great was the reputation of his powers even while his cause was everywhere round him crumbling into ruin.”29 Carthage sent him a hundred ships laden with men and food, but a gale drove the vessels to Sardinia, where a Roman fleet sank or captured eighty of them; the rest fled home.
In 205 young Scipio, fresh from his victories in Spain, was chosen consul, raised a new army, and sailed for Africa. The Carthaginian government appealed to Hannibal to come to the help of the city that had so long refused to support him. How shall we imagine the feelings of the half-blind warrior, driven into a corner of Italy by an endless stream of enemies, seeing all his toil and hardships of fifteen years brought to nothing, and all his triumphs summing up to futility and flight? Half of his troops refused to embark with him for Carthage; according to hostile historians he had 20,000 of them killed for disobedience and for fear that Rome might add them to her legions.30 Touching his native soil after an absence of thirty-six years, he hastily formed a new army and went out to face Scipio at Zama, fifty miles south of Carthage (202). The two generals met in a courteous interview, found agreement impossible, and joined battle. For the first time in his life Hannibal was defeated; the Carthaginians, mostly mercenaries, gave ground before the Roman infantry and the reckless cavalry of Masinissa, the Numidian king; 20,000 Carthaginians were left dead on the field. Hannibal, now forty-five, fought with the energy of youth, attacked Scipio in personal combat and wounded him, attacked Masinissa, re-formed his disordered forces again and again, and led them in desperate countercharges. When all hope fled he eluded capture, rode to Carthage, announced that he had lost not only a battle but the war, and advised the Senate to sue for peace. Scipio was generous. He allowed Carthage to retain her African empire but demanded the surrender of all her war vessels except ten triremes; she was not to make war outside of Africa or within it without Rome’s consent; and she was to pay Rome 200 talents ($720,000) every year for fifty years. Hannibal pronounced the terms just and persuaded his government to accept them.
The Second Punic War changed the face of the western Mediterranean. It gave Spain and all its wealth to Rome, providing the funds for the Roman conquest of Greece. It reunited Italy under Rome’s unquestioned mastery and threw open all routes and markets to Roman ships and goods. But it was the most costly of all ancient wars. It ravaged or injured half the farms of Italy, destroyed 400 towns, killed 300,000 men;31 southern Italy has never quite recovered from it to this day. It weakened democracy by showing that a popular assembly cannot wisely choose generals or direct a war. It began the transformation of Roman life and morals by hurting agriculture and helping trade; by taking men from the countryside and teaching them the violence of battle and the promiscuity of the camp; by bringing the precious metals of Spain to finance new luxuries and imperialistic expansion; and by enabling Italy to live on the extorted wheat of Spain, Sicily, and Africa. It was a pivotal event for almost every phase of Roman history.
To Carthage it was the beginning of the end. With much of its commerce and empire left to it, it might have solved the problems of regeneration. But the oligarchical government was so corrupt that it threw upon the lower classes the burden of raising the annual indemnity for Rome and embezzled part of it to boot. The popular party called upon Hannibal to come out of his retirement and save the nation. In 196 he was elected suffete. He shocked the oligarchs by proposing that the judges of the Court of 104 should be elected for one year and should be ineligible for a second term until after a year’s interval. When the Senate rejected the measure he brought it before the Assembly, and carried it; by this law and this procedure he established at one stroke a degree of democracy equal to Rome’s. He punished and checked venality and pursued it to its source. He relieved the citizens of the extra taxes that had been laid upon them, and yet so managed the finances that by 188 Carthage was able to pay off the Roman indemnity in full.
To get rid of him the oligarchy secretly sent word to Rome that Hannibal was plotting to renew the war. Scipio used all his influence to protect his rival, but was overruled; the Senate accommodated the rich Carthaginians by demanding the surrender of Hannibal. The old warrior fled by night, rode 150 miles to Thapsus, and there took ship to Antioch (195). He found Antiochus III hesitating between war and peace with Rome; he advised war and became one of the King’s staff. When the Romans defeated Antiochus at Magnesia (189) they made it a condition of peace that Hannibal should be turned over to them. He escaped first to Crete, then to Bithynia. The Romans hunted him out and surrounded his hiding place with soldiers. Hannibal preferred death to capture. “Let us,” he said, “relieve the Romans from the anxiety they have so long experienced, since they think it tries their patience too much to wait for an old man’s death.”32 He drank the poison that he carried with him, and died, aged sixty-seven, in the year 184 B.C. A few months later his conqueror and admirer, Scipio, followed him to peace.