640. Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Carthage at the Gates (Part 1)

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Shop up to 40% off site-wide, plus an extra 10% off every order and a free professional measure. happening right now at Blinds.com. On the battlefield of Cannae, the victorious Hannibal was surrounded by his officers. They were all congratulating him and urging him to take things easy for the rest of the day and the night and to allow his exhausted troops to do the same. But Mahabal, his captain of horse, had a very different take on the situation, for he was convinced that not a moment was to be lost. My lord, he declared, if you wish to understand properly what you have secured with this victory, then let me tell you that within five days you will be feasting in triumph on the capital in Rome. I will go ahead with my horsemen. The first the Romans will know of the fate about to overwhelm them will be the sight of our cavalry at the gates of their city. All you have to do is to follow where we lead. But to Hannibal, this seemed altogether too optimistic, too ambitious a plan. While I commend your spirit, he said to Mahabal, I need time to evaluate what you are suggesting, to which Mahabal retorted, gifts are never lavished by the gods in their entirety on single man You know Hannibal how to win a battle but you do not know how to use your victory So a very celebrated moment in ancient history This is the aftermath of the most notorious, the most shattering defeat ever suffered by a Roman army. And this is being reported two centuries later by the historian Livy. So to give people a little bit of context. The battle in question was the Battle of Cannae. It was fought on the 2nd of August 216 BC, and it resulted in the almost total annihilation of the largest army that the Roman Republic had ever put into the field. And last year, Tom, in our episode on the Battle of Cannae, episode 571, for people who are interested in that kind of thing, you came up with some extraordinary facts to illustrate just how industrial the slaughter at Cannae was. So the Romans suffered more casualties at Cannae, if the ancient historians are to be believed, than the British army had suffered on the first day of the Somme, or the Americans had suffered in the entire Vietnam War. The stakes in this war between Rome and Carthage are that high. Absolutely. And if Cannae is the worst defeat in Rome's history, it is the greatest victory ever won by their enemies. the Carthaginians led by their great general Hannibal, still only just 30 when he won that victory. And it's the apogee of Hannibal's career. It's also in a sense, the apogee of Carthaginian power, because from this point onwards, it's going to be downhill for Carthage and indeed for Hannibal. And it will culminate in 146 BC. So, you know, not many decades later in the complete annihilation of Carthage. And we're going to be telling the story of how we go from Cannae to the complete destruction of the city in the next four episodes. An amazingly dramatic story, one of the most exciting that we've ever done. But put us into a bit of context here. So the great city of Carthage. So Carthage for centuries has been the queen of the Western Mediterranean, hasn't it? The backstory essentially is that Carthage, for centuries, had ruled as the mistress of the Western Mediterranean. By far its most formidable naval power. She has tremendous natural advantages Great harbours a fertile hinterland She is on the tip of what is now Tunis so opposite Sicily and her position there enables her to dominate those crucial straits Traditionally her great enemies were not the Romans, but the Greeks who had planted a whole host of colonies in the island of Sicily. The most formidable of these colonies was a city that is still very much to be found in Sicily to this day, the city of Syracuse on the southeastern corner of the island. And exactly like Carthage, Syracuse boasted tremendous natural advantages. So again, a superb natural harbour, rocky heights and plateaus, very defensible. And again, like Carthage, a very commanding position on kind of the key shipping lanes that run throughout the Mediterranean, joining the western and eastern halves of the sea. So Carthage and Syracuse are very evenly matched, and they're always fighting each other. But these wars are not wars to the death. They actually remind me of the old firm, Rangers and Celtic, in the Scottish Premiership. One of them always wins, but they never established a kind of absolutely permanent commanding supremacy over the other. And that's basically the relationship between Carthage and Syracuse for centuries and centuries. But then in the third century BC, a new kid arrives on the block and this is the Roman Republic. I mean, to pursue the kind of the football analogy, I guess it's as though, I don't know, Aberdeen were to be taken over by the Saudis and pumped full of money, and then suddenly they start winning. Because in 264 BC, the Romans get embroiled in a kind of minor squabble over treaty rights, and they massively escalate it into a full-blown war with Carthage. And this is the war that the Romans call the Punic War, because Punicus is the Latin for Carthaginian. Carthaginians originally came from Phoenicia in what is now Lebanon. And so it's a kind of derivation from Phoenician. And this war went on for 23 years, didn't it? It was the longest war in classical antiquity. And it's the ultimate clash between a sea power and a land power. And the Carthaginians, I suppose, if you're a betting man at the beginning, are the favourites. But astonishingly the Romans forced them at the end of these 23 years to sue for terms And how have they remind us how the Romans did it well the romans have immense reserves of manpower so they are now the dominant power in italy and they have essentially constructed this framework of alliances defeated cities are offered various degrees of of citizenship or associated status and essentially loyalty on the part of defeated cities to Rome is very amply rewarded. They get given chunks of spoil or whatever. Also, the Romans have an incredibly dogged, in fact, implacable resolve never to accept defeat, never even to accept disrespect. It's almost a kind of mafia attitude. And the classic example of how far they are prepared to go in the search of victory is the fact that even though they are the elephant to Carthage's whale over the course of the first Punic war, as it comes to be called. They transform themselves into a naval power. I mean, they do it in a slightly makeshift way. They find a galley and it's like a kind of Ikea flat pack and this is how they build their fleet. But they just go on and on and on. And by the end of it, they've won. And the treaty that they force on Carthage in 241 BC essentially institutionalizes Roman control of Sicily. And this is a key moment in the emergence of what will become the Roman Empire, because a large swathe of the island, about three quarters of it, comes under the authority, in Latin, the provincia of a Roman governor. And this word provincia is the word from which the English word province will ultimately derived so in effect kind of the three quarters of Sicily that the Romans have seized becomes Rome's first overseas province and this treaty so we're in 241 BC the Carthaginians this great naval power in the western Mediterranean have been defeated unexpectedly they've signed this treaty agreed this treaty with the Romans and this treaty you could liken it I suppose to the Treaty of Versailles or something because it's often said when people are talking about the origins of the Second World War, that they were kind of implicit in the way the First World War ended. Because the very punitive treaty that the Allies forced on the Germans meant that the Germans were bound to seek revenge or redress at some point. And do you think this is true of Carthage as well, that basically the First Punic War means there's bound to be a second one. This is true of Carthage as well, that basically the first Punic War means there's bound to be a second one. I think so. I think there are kind of certain parallels with the Versailles Treaty because Carthage loses a lot of territory. She's forced out of Sicily permanently. And Sicily had always been the place where she went for her sporting contest with Syracuse. This is no longer going to happen. And also there is a very, very punitive indemnity, which takes the Carthaginians a long time to pay and generates enormous resentment. But this settlement is actually quite bad news for Syracuse as well, because Syracuse had allied herself with Rome. But she ends the war rather like Britain ends the Second World War in relation to America. So Syracuse is a natural ally for Rome and she emerges pretty secure as a friend of the Roman Republic. So the reason that the Romans only occupy three quarters of Sicily is that that other quarter is territory that belongs to Syracuse and is recognised as such by Rome. But it is clear that relative to Rome, Syracuse no longer ranks as a great power. And that means that rather like Britain in the wake of the Second World War, Syracuse is obsessed with maintaining a special relationship with the new superpower. So the Syracusans, their harbors are open to Roman galleys. If the Romans are short of manpower or of grain or supplies or whatever, the Syracusans will go to great lengths to meet the needs of Rome. And to remind people, the Syracusans, they're Greek speakers. They are Greeks. This is a Greek foundation. Yes. So the Carthaginians, there is no possibility whatsoever of them pursuing a policy of accommodation with Rome. So there are obviously people who think, well, we don't want to poke the beast too soon. But by and large, would you say the mood in Carthage is one that we will rebuild, we'll take our time, but we will get our revenge? I think probably, yes. Certainly, Carthage, like Rome, has a senate, an assembly of its greatest and most influential men. And most of the people on this Carthaginian senate, as you say, are, I think, reluctant in the immediate aftermath of the war to return to open confrontation with Rome. But there is one family that is very keen to do this and it the greatest and the most glamorous of all the dynasties of carthage and this is a family called the bark kids and barker is it means lightning and it's a name that has been given to the city's greatest general who's a man called hamilcar and he's pretty much the only carthaginian general to have emerged from the war with rome with much credit so he had fought a brilliant rearguard action in sicily trying to keep the Romans at bay. The fact that he ultimately failed doesn't impair his reputation for what had been a pretty good war. And Hamilcar, in the wake of Carthage's defeat, decides that there is a need to find a replacement for Sicily, a new base for empire. And so he fixes on Spain and he builds a very substantial empire there. And he dies there fighting against Spanish Iberian warriors, But he has three sons to succeed him. And the eldest of these is Hannibal, the famous general who will win the Battle of Cannae. The two other sons, Hasdrubal and Mago, and they will also feature in the war that Hannibal launches against Rome. Because Hamilcar dies in battle in 229, and Hannibal proves a very, very worthy heir to his father. and by the 220s BC he's built on the foundations laid by his father and he has fashioned Spain into a very formidable launch pad for attacking Rome and for launching what he obviously sees as a kind of war of vengeance. Well he has a new Carthage doesn't he because they've got this dazzling new capital with harbours and city walls and fortifications and so on. He didn't build it himself but he's inherited it. Yes and so it's called Carthage but the Romans will call it new Carthage and I think it's easier for us to follow the Roman example. And as you say, it is modelled on the original Carthage and it is impressive in the way that the original Carthage is. And people may be wondering, well, how can this be afforded? Well, it can be afforded because Spain is massively rich in mineral wealth. There is gold, there is silver, there is copper, there is tin, there is lead. There's basically everything that you could possibly want. And the gold and silver in particular can be used to recruit mercenaries. So infantry from Spain, the Spaniards are very proficient fighters, infantry from Libya, cavalry from Numidia, which is basically now Algeria, which is by far the best light cavalry in the world. and Hannibal by 218 is ready to take the Romans on And very famously he does this by taking the land route from Spain to Italy complete with elephants and he crosses the Alps And this is probably the one thing that everyone knows about Hannibal. And he has with him his youngest brother, Mago. He leaves Hasdrubal, his younger brother, to garrison Spain. And he also takes with him someone we've met in the reading that you gave at the start of this program, Mahabal, who is probably Hannibal's nephew. And these are all very battle-hardened, seasoned, able men. And then the result of this, so he crosses the Alps, famously, elephants in tow, and he comes down into the plains of Italy. And he has a hat trick of extraordinary victories. I mean, these are the victories that enshrine Hannibal's reputation as one of the greatest generals of all time and mean that, you know, if you're going to West Point or something, you will study Hannibal's tactics at Trebia, at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, and above all, at the Battle of Cannae, which is regarded as his greatest, his magnum opus, his greatest achievement. his masterpiece, in a sense, perhaps the most perfect battle ever fought. And the reason for that is that although he's outnumbered pretty much two to one, he so outsmarts his Roman opponents that his much smaller army is able to envelop the much larger Roman army and essentially wipe it out. Hannibal annihilates some 50 to 60,000 men on that single day. And it's one of the bloodiest single days of combat in the whole of military history and it is this victory that is the backdrop to the famous confrontation between hannibal and mahabal that you read and so you have to think that while hannibal and mahabal are having this conversation on the battlefield of can i the stench of the mass slaughter that has been inflicted that day is lying very heavy in the heat of the August evening. So they've been sick, they've voided their bowels, there's blood everywhere. Absolutely. The corpse is already starting to turn putrid in the heat and the dust and everyone comments on the dust on the plane at Cannae. So much blood has been evacuated that that dust is turning into a kind of mud. So it is a pretty hideous scene. So that conversation was reported by Livy two centuries later And the obvious question and indeed the question with so much classical history is did this really happen or was Livy just following a kind of literary formula because this is the scene in which you know the Machabal is saying to Hannibal you know how to win but you don't know how to win a battle but you don't know how to win a war you don't know how to press home your advantage and whatnot and of course lots of people listening to this podcast will know how this story ends not least because we've talked about the fall of Carthage so is there a case that basically Livy has created a literary set piece here to explain for us why Hannibal doesn't win. It's interesting. I think a surprising number of historians seem to take it as possibly expressing an authentic tradition. And even if it doesn't, then the reason that it has the kind of resonance that it does, I mean, it's one of the iconic moments in ancient history, is because it does focus on this obvious question why didn't hannibal take advantage of his great victory to advance immediately on rome because we've said his family name barker means lightning so so why doesn't he why doesn't he strike and there are various suggestions that have been made as to why he he doesn't follow mahabal's suggestion so his men are obviously exhausted slaughtering large numbers of enemy is really tiring. I mean, your arms will just be exhausted. Many of his own men are badly wounded. It's been a pulverizing day. On top of that, Rome is almost 300 miles away. And so Mahabal and his light Numidian cavalry, they could probably have got there in about five days, but it would have taken the infantry a fortnight. And what if Hannibal turns up in front the walls of Rome and the Romans refused to capitulate. Hannibal does not have any siege equipment. So he'd have two options. He could either launch an assault, but if that fails, then it, you know, I mean, that's an embarrassment and it kind of, it, it, um, it wipes out the moral and psychological advantage that he's got from his victory at Cannae. Or he could put it under siege, but does he have enough men? Hannibal doesn't really, you know, he, he's a long, long way from home, will he have enough men, will he have enough materials to bring Rome to her knees by putting her under siege? So all these factors may have weighed on Hannibal's mind, but I think the simplest and likeliest explanation for Hannibal's decision not to immediately go herring off towards Rome is simply that he nation for Hannibal's decision not to immediately go herring off towards Rome is simply that he assumes in the wake of of the calamity that he's inflicted on the Romans at Cannae that the Romans are now bound to capitulate and is this because basically this is you know ancient wars there are expectations and conventions just as with you know modern wars or indeed sporting encounters or whatever and his expectation is when you've lost three battles in a row you will probably come to terms and then you know both sides will rebuild for the next encounter in however many years time and this is the norm and this is what yeah you know this is what most sides do but of course the romans don't we've already established that i mean those are the the rules of war that had governed the conflicts between carthage and syracuse for instance you you suffer a defeat you do a deal and then you start again in a few years time yeah i mean hannibal is not navy i I mean, he understands the mettle of the Romans very, very well. But he does also have, I think, very immediate reasons for thinking that Roman morale has finally been broken. Firstly, do the Romans have enough manpower now to carry on the fight? They've lost something like 100,000 men in under two years. I mean, that is a completely crippling loss. But on top of that, in the wake of Cannae, there are plenty of straws in the wind suggesting that Roman morale is really, really on its uppers. So not everyone in the Roman task force that had been defeated at Cannae had actually died. Some, a few, had managed to break out through the Carthaginian lines as they kind of pressed in on the captured Romans. And also there were something like 10,000 men who had been left as a reserve in the main Roman camp, which was on the other side of a river from the plain where the battle had been fought. and the fugitives from Cannae, some of them had sought refuge in the town of Cannae itself, near the battlefield, of course, and others had sought refuge in a second, smaller camp that had been built in the rear of the Roman battle lines. So people should imagine that there's the plain where the battle is fought. There's this smaller camp where the Roman generals and people had been based before the thing. Then there's a river. And on the other side, there is a massive Roman military camp. There are 10,000 men in the large camp. There are refugees in the smaller camp, they're separated by this river. So Hannibal in the morning turns his attentions to the Romans who taken refuge in the town of Cannae and in this smaller fort The fugitives in Cannae are very quickly taken prisoner Then Hannibal is preparing to move on this small Roman camp, which is of course fortified. I mean, the Romans there can hope to hold out. And officers in the main Roman camp, so on the other side of the river, they've been urging the fugitives to, you know, don't stay there. You're going to be, you know you're going to be wiped out if you do stay there cross the river come and join us you can add to our numbers and hopefully we can kind of get away from here but the romans fugitives are so demoralized that ultimately only about 600 make the attempt and managed to to get away across the river and so they and the 10 000 reserves had then managed to march out of the main camp to avoid being cornered by Hannibal's cavalry and they cross the plain and they reach a walled town called Canusium which is about six miles from the battlefield. So the fact that so few people had wanted to take the risk and escape from that smaller camp to join the large camp, I mean this to Hannibal is an indicator that Roman morale is broken but also what then happens in canusium is another indicator of this because even in the relative safety of canusium which is a walled town it's evident that morale is really really at rock bottom so one officer who is the son of a consul the consul is the kind of the you know the the leading magistrate in the republic he is reported by hannibal spies to have insisted publicly that all is lost to quote him the future has nothing to offer but misery and despair and there are other officers who again are men of very high birth high rank who are said to be planning to flee overseas you know they have despaired of the situation and so Hannibal when he sees all this when he hears reports of all this and he must have heard rumors and things um he must think well come on the Romans are broken now and they will do a deal. And so he sends, he gets the prisoners together and he says to the prisoners, 10 of you should go to Rome and you will carry my message. I'm asking for a ransom. And then when I've had the ransom, we can have talks about a long-term peace treaty, which will obviously favour Carthage Yes And in the speech that he recorded as giving I think it expresses what were almost certainly his real sentiments So Hannibal is made to say by Livy I am not waging a war of extermination against the Romans I am merely contending for honour and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valour. So in the first Punic war. Now, in the second Punic war, it is the turn of the Romans to yield to my good fortune and to my valour. And that, I think, is clearly what he thinks will happen. Why wouldn't the Romans choose to negotiate? He doesn't want to wipe them out. He doesn't want to destroy them. He just wants to do to the Romans what the Romans had done to his own city. And so it seems, cast in that light, as very reasonable. And for the Romans, this is a fateful turning point, because it is, in effect, their Lord Halifax moment. Was there any possibility the Romans would accept this deal? Well, the truth is that even as those emissaries, so the 10 Roman prisoners who are going to ask the Romans to ransom them, and also a Carthaginian officer called Catharlo, who is kind of in charge of the whole peace mission, even as they are setting off from Cannae to Rome, I think Hannibal has already missed the bus. But I think things could have been very different. But I think it is possible that just as you could imagine Lord Halifax rather than Churchill coming to power, you know, in the darkest moment for Britain of the Second World War, and perhaps opening negotiations, which would in turn have led to Britain probably suing for terms. I think it is possible to imagine a situation in which the Romans would have done the same. Because when the news of Cannae reaches Rome, there understandably are massive displays of grief, but also of dread. So you have women start to mourn the dead. And that's, you know, in any city is an eerie and unearthly sound. And you also start to get impromptu public meetings of Roman citizens gathering together in the forum or other meeting places to discuss what should be done. And you could see a situation I think in which these circumstances kind of snowball and it becomes impossible for hawks in the Senate to continue the war However the Churchillian role in this story is played by a guy called Fabius Maximus who is known as the Delayer We talked about him in our previous series because the previous year in the wake of the defeat of the Romans at Lake Trasimene, another brilliant victory for Hannibal, Fabius had been appointed the supreme commander of the Roman forces just for a six-month term. and he had pursued a policy of shadowing Hannibal and never actually engaging him in open battle. And this had proved very effective and successful. Obviously, by sending eight legions to go fight Hannibal and then be wiped out at Cannae, the Romans had turned their back on this policy. But now, with the news of Cannae brought to Rome, it's evident that Fabius's strategy had been the correct one. And so he has a tremendous moral force and he takes full advantage of it. He doesn't have an official position, but people look up to him as the guy who has been proved right. And so what he does is to give an incredible display of sans-froid, of kind of cool and measured confidence, and it wins him the effective command of the city. So what he does is to walk around Rome. He kind of greets people in a totally measured state of mind, as though nothing particularly awful has happened, as though it's just a normal day. He stops the women from staging their displays of mourning. He forbids all these public meetings in which people are kind of venting their fear and distress. And he puts guards on the city walls and particularly on the city gates. And they are not really to guard against Hannibal, but to stop anyone attempting to flee. and what he also does and the senate does is to consult the sibylline books and the sibylline books are very ancient collections of greek writings you consult them when rome is in particularly terrible straits um it's a kind of an awful moment of of ritual when this is done they consult the books and the books say you must entomb alive a gaul and a greek and this is a terrible news for the Romans because the Romans do not engage in human sacrifice and it's one of the things that marks them out as a civilized people but they're not going to disobey the Sibylline books and so This is what they do they take them to the the cattle market the forum Boarium and they wall these that you know this Greek and this go all up and This is an them to the cattle market, the Forum Boarium, and they wall this this is what they do. They take them to the cattle market, the Forum Boarium, and they wall this Greek and this Gaul up. And this is an indicator to the Romans, to everyone in Italy, and to the Carthaginians that they are going to carry on the fight. So the Romans have taken these very drastic measures. Hannibal doesn't turn up at the gates because he's not going to prosecute his advantage. He's not going to press it home. And actually, as the days pass, Roman morale starts to recover a little bit doesn't it people start to think okay you know he's not coming that the apocalyptic disaster that we feared is not going to materialize yeah so fabius has obviously sent scouts out along the roads and they say no nobody's coming from can i this kind of potential mutiny and canusium with all the officers who are kind of panicking and wanting to go abroad this is put down by a young officer no more than 19 years old at this point and he is called publius cornelius scipio and he's the son of the consul who had confronted Hannibal in the year of his invasion of Italy. And he had drawn his sword, pointed it at his jittery fellow officers and made them swear an oath, and I quote, never to desert our country nor permit any other citizen of Rome to leave her in the lurch. So, you know, morale is restored in Canusium. And even the arrival in Rome of one of the two consuls who had been defeated at Cannae, which you might think would just plunge people into despondency. Actually, it serves to boost spirits in the city. And this consul who arrives is a guy called Terentius Varro. And he, unlike his colleague who had fallen in the battle, he'd managed to escape the slaughter. And he ends up going to Canusium, taking charge of the soldiers there. He works hard to get them into fighting order. And then he hands them over to the command of the man who has been sent by the Senate to replace him. And for Varro, the prospect of going back to Rome is obviously a terrible one. I mean, he's presided over the worst defeat in Rome's history, but he does go back and he's braced to accept whatever punishment the Senate might decree. But the Senate is impressed by his courage in returning to face the music. And so instead it gives him a vote of thanks. And the reason for this vote of thanks, he had not despaired of the Republic. And so this notion that to despair is the worst of crimes is absolutely enshrined This is the great message that the Romans are proclaiming to the world And not only that but the Romans so when these prisoners arrive so these prisoners who've been sent by Hannibal, basically to ask for a ransom and to start the process of negotiations, when they turn up outside the city, the Romans don't even let them in, do they? I mean, that's a very, very bold statement of intent. We're not even going to consider talking to you because we're so determined that we fight on. It's a massively hardcore decision because what it means is that the Romans are losing fit men of military age that they might have ransomed. And they're very short of fit military men. Individual senators, of course, they would have relatives. They might have sons or brothers or whatever. And sure enough, when the news comes back to Hannibal, he's furious. And so he sells all the Roman prisoners as slaves. The decision of the Senate not to negotiate also dooms the countryside of Italy, all the villages, the estates, the crops, to what will prove terrible devastation year after year after year. And the reason for this is because the Romans are now absolutely pledged again to the strategy that Fabius had adopted, which is basically avoid meeting Hannibal in battle. Only ever shadow him. In the immediate wake of Cannae, they lack the manpower to actually to do anything more than that. But I think also it reflects an entirely understandable sense that this man is a genius. You know, you meet him in battle, he will destroy you. And the consequence of this is that Hannibal is able to do what he likes to the orchards, to the vineyards, to the estates that cover Italy. And a quick question. So while Hannibal's doing this, so Hannibal is plundering and burning and all of this kind of thing. Why doesn't Rome become completely isolated? Why don't all the other cities of Italy go over to Hannibal? Or actually, do they? Why don't they defect now? Because he's going to win. Quite a lot do. Quite a lot think, as you say, they're backing a winner. They see Hannibal as a winner. And so in the wake of Cannae, you start to see an Italian league of the kind that the Romans had been at the head of start to emerge that is pledged to support not the Romans any longer, but Hannibal and to supply Hannibal with what he so desperately needs because He's a long way from home, namely, you know, troops to reinforce his army, supplies, accommodation. And yet, that said, the Romans do still have some advantages, don't they? So if you're a betting man, you're looking at this. The Romans are still on home turf Hannibal is a long way I mean you said he didn have siege equipment So you know he a long way from Carthage He not going to get lots of supplies coming in all the time from Carthage And if you did abandon the Romans, you're an Italian city, you're taking a hell of a risk, right? Because if the Romans do win, they will destroy you. And so although there are defections, although Hannibal does manage to set up a kind of Punic league, most of the cities, certainly a majority, stay loyal to Rome because the Italians have experience with the Romans. I mean, you know, they're like cockroaches. They just keep coming back. And so as the years pass, Rome starts to recapture its energy, to replenish its manpower, start flexing its muscles, to start to go on the offensive. And by 211, so that's five years after Cannae. So he's been hanging around in the fields for five years. Well, he hasn't been hanging around in fields because he now has cities that will support him. And the most famous, the most richest, the most prosperous of cities that supports him is a place called Capua, which is the kind of the leading city in the Bay of Naples. So, you know, a brilliant catch for Hannibal. It effectively becomes his capital in Italy. but by 211 the Romans feel that they are ready to advance on Capua and to try and take it back and they start the siege at a time when Hannibal is distant besieging another city in the south of Italy and the news comes to him that the Romans are besieging Capua and so rather than march directly to the rescue of Capua he decides instead that he's going to adopt a diversionary tactic you know five years on from the battle of Cannae he decides at last I am going to march on Rome and hope that this will so alarm the Romans that they will pull their troops back from Capua and pull them back to their home city. And so he arrives in front of the walls of Rome. And of course, it throws the inhabitants of the city into complete disarray. There is widespread panic. There is this famous cry, Hannibal ad portas, Hannibal at the gates, which becomes one of the most famous phrases in Roman life and culture. But the Senate, unlike the mass of the populace refuse to panic because they know the situation. As you said, Hannibal doesn't have siege equipment. There's no prospect that he'll be able to storm the walls. And what is more, by great good fortune, it so happens that two legions are present in Rome at the time when Hannibal appears before the walls and that about 10 men So there is actually in the upper echelons of the Roman elite they not panicking And in fact there is a famous story which regrettably is very late. And so therefore it's probably made up, but it's a good one anyway, that even as Hannibal is camped out on the estates and lands beyond Rome, the Senate are auctioning off the land on which he's camped and that there are lots of buyers for it. So a nice statement of Roman pluck. And their sang-froid is entirely justified because in due course, Hannibal abandons his camp. He leaves Rome. He's off roaming across Italy again. The city has survived. And what is more, his diversionary tactic doesn't prove successful because shortly after he's marched on Rome, Capua submits and he loses essentially what had been his capital. Now, this doesn't really bring Rome any closer to ultimate success because Hannibal is still undefeated. The Romans are still reluctant to meet him in battle. And lots of other cities, lots of other peoples and regions do remain loyal to Hannibal. And so the problem essentially for both sides now, Hannibal and the Romans, is that neither side really seems to have a route to defeating the other. But I guess for the Romans I mean bearing in mind the scale of the disaster they had suffered at Cannae I mean a stalemate is a kind of victory for Rome yeah but the stalemate will not last because both sides are determined to break it certainly the Romans are and after the break we will find out how this extraordinary war this duel between Hannibal and Rome takes another twist we're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting, lightsaber clashing, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror dropping, Banshee flying, Space Mountain launching, galaxy rewinding, what's the point of a galaxy rewinding? Fireworks igniting, world of other worlds. For whatever you love, infinite worlds await at the most magical place on Earth, Walt Disney World Resort. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move. Another smart move, having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor? State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Rince knows that greatness takes time. But so does laundry. So Rince will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rince. It's time to be great. Welcome back to The Rest is History. The great war between Hannibal and the Romans has degenerated into a stalemate. Hannibal's won his battle at Cannae, but he hasn't pressed home his advantage. He hasn't captured Rome. On the other hand, the Romans don't want to face him in battle because they know that he is a formidable opponent. So the question is, how are the Romans, or indeed the Carthaginians, going to break the stalemate? And the answer lies not in Rome specifically, but in Italy, doesn't it? It's the mastery of Italy that is now the bone of contention. I mean, that's the obvious way for one or other of the competence to win. Because if Hannibal can set himself at the head of an Italian league of cities and peoples and regions and so on that freezes out Rome, then, of course, ultimately the Romans will be forced to negotiate. but conversely if the Romans can deprive Hannibal of Italian backing then it will deprive him of the bases and the supplies and above all the recruits that he will need to sustain his campaign in Italy so Italy remains the focus of their combat but there is an additional option as well and that is to expand the war beyond Italy so obviously Hannibal is sustained in his war against the Romans by the fact that Carthage has this empire in Spain with all its reserves of manpower all its gold and silver and so on So the Romans are thinking well what if we grab that I mean that an obvious field for them But for the Carthaginians they can start to look at an overseas possession of the Romans and think, well, what if we took that? And that, of course, is Sicily, with which the Carthaginians are very familiar because they don't possess large swathes of it. They've been fighting endlessly in it. And if they can get Sicily, then that massively weighs the advantage in favor of Hannibal. So the key to Sicily is the city of Syracuse that we mentioned in the first half. It's an ally of Rome, a very loyal ally. The Carthaginians therefore have to think, well, how can we suborn the Syracusans or seduce them or whatever to come over to our side. And if they can do that, then potentially it means that the whole of Sicily can kind of fall into their lap. And Hannibal of all men needs no reminding of how strategically significant Sicily is. That's where his father, Hamilcar, had made his name. The occupation of Sicily by the Romans had been the kind of, you know, the Versailles treaty type humiliation, the worst of all the humiliations that Carthage had suffered when the Romans defeated them in the previous war. So in a sense, it's the Alsace-Lorraine of the Punic Wars. It's very rich, it's strategically vital, and I guess it's doomed to be a bone of contention between Rome and Carthage for as long as both of them are great powers. So the key to this is Syracuse, previously a rival of Carthage, now Rome's junior partner. And Syracuse, I asked you, Greek colony, Greek speaking, very rich, very beautiful and strategically massively important, isn't it? I mean, Syracuse is basically the key, not just to Sicily, but to control of that part of the Mediterranean. Completely. And it's hard to overestimate its wealth and its splendor in this period. So there was a Roman poet, Silius Italicus, who wrote about the Punic Wars some three centuries later. and his comment on Syracuse in this period was that in all the earth round which the sun drives his chariot no city at that time could rival her and you know he's not exaggerating because Syracuse in the decades before Hannibal war had been given this massive makeover and it was so spectacular and so exquisite in its consequences that the city which is very old by this point so unlike Alexandria its obvious rival for the title of the most beautiful city in the Greek world. But in a way, Syracuse has been given such an incredible makeover that it seems even more modern than Alexandria does. So it has this kind of ancient stone theatre, which has been rebuilt, extended. It's got new temples. It's got gymnasia. It's got incredible marketplaces and shopping centres all over the place. It has the world's largest altar, so massive that 450 oxen could be slaughtered on it simultaneously, and which would have provided half a million people, it's been estimated, with a very decent sized stake. Wow. So sort of like an Argentine restaurant. Yes, huge gaucho restaurant. It has double harbours. It has shipyards. And again, all of these have been comprehensively renovated and refurbished. It has impregnable walls, which stretch 17 miles. And a lot of these walls are snaking up and over mountainous heights. So essentially, it's almost impossible for a besieger to invest the city. It has an enormous fortress, the Euryalus, which is set on the highest point of the city walls and dominates the land approaches to Syracuse. And even the very oldest part of the city, which is an island called Ortigia, so just off the mainland. This is where the first colonists from Corinth had settled, who founded Carthage. This now boasts a really sumptuous, magnificent palace, a palace that can rival the palace in Alexandria. And the bloke who has paid for all this or has commissioned it, the bloke who's been running Syracuse for the last few decades, is this guy who used to be, he's a hard man, isn't he? He's an ex-captain of mercenaries called Hieron. And he's incredibly old, especially by classical standards. He's almost 90. Well yes So by the time that Hannibal launches his invasion of Italy Hieron is in his late 80s and he has been in charge of the city since the 270s So I mean that is a very very long period of office And it reflects the fact that he is a very very wily astute man who is able to capitalize on two tremendous advantages and the first of these is the alliance with Rome It Hieron who kind of says we are sticking to Rome through thick and thin Although he was a mercenary and although it kind of, you know, for centuries been the national sport of the Greeks in Sicily to fight each other, Hieron actually isn't a great man for war. He's a man of peace. And the Roman alliance enables him to enjoy decades of peace. And so the money that previous leaders of Syracuse would have squandered on pointless wars, you know, with Carthage or with other Greek cities or whatever, Heron is able to spend this wealth on beautifying Syracuse and on growing the economy. So, you know, by expanding the harbours or whatever, he makes Syracuse richer and more productive. And even the defeats of Rome at first late Trasimene and then Cannae cannot persuade him to budge in his loyalty to Rome. So in the wake of Cannae, he sends the Romans grain, he sends them troops, he sends them financial subsidies. The special relationship holds rock solid. So that's the first advantage that Heron feels he has. There is another advantage, and that is the fact that he has in Syracuse one of the great geniuses of history. And this is a man called Archimedes. And Dominic, I know you love, you love a mathematician and an engineer, don't you? And Archimedes is, I mean, he's kind of hailed by Leonardo, by Galileo, by Newton as the greatest, the goat. And he's famous above all for being in his bath, suddenly realizing about the displacement of water or some such very boring scientific principle and shouting Eureka and running through the streets. I'm going to guess this never happened or he didn't do anything like this. Is that correct? I mean, it is absolutely one of the most famous stories in science up there with, you know, an apple hitting Newton on the head. And it does actually feature Heron, the ruler of Syracuse, who, according to a much later writer, was actually a kinsman of Archimedes. So, you know, that would suggest a kind of closeness between them. So the story goes, and I know that I can see the excitement on your face, the prospect of a... Yeah, give me a scientific lecture. Yeah. So here on has commissioned a golden wreath as an offering to the gods. And this wreath is, is delivered by the craftsman and it weighs exactly as an offering to the gods and this wreath is is delivered by the craftsman and it weighs exactly what it's supposed to weigh but here on very street man he suspects that he's being ripped off and that what seems to be pure gold might actually contain quite a lot of of silver that it's been debased and so he gets Archimedes on the case obvious person to turn to and Archimedes retires to his bathtub to ponder the problem and to quote nicholas nicastro in his fantastic book on archimedes just come out archimedes fulcrum of science as archimedes sank into his tub he perceived that the water he displaced was equal to the volume of his body he had submerged not his weight so to the degree that i understand it what then happens is archimedes takes a bar of gold and a of silver and each one is equal exactly in weight to the wreath and he puts them both in his bathtub and he then puts the wreath in the bathtub and the wreath displaces more water than the gold had done but less than the silver and therefore this shows that the wreath was indeed made of adulterated gold that it had the gold had been mixed with silver i kind of understand that vaguely and i gather from nicholas nicastro that there are various improbabilities about this i don't entirely understand but but maybe they can tackle it on the rest of science i don't know anyway so that's the story but archimedes isn't just messing around with wreaths and gold is he i mean he's designing military stuff right like a galley that ends up being given to ptolemy the third yeah and the castro says that i mean this is how this is kind of like the titanic but it was longer and heavier than hms victory crikey it's huge um it's archimedes who's built the city walls and done so with such brilliance that they're effectively impregnable. But most excitingly of all, he's designed a massive array of kind of futuristic war machines. So massive catapults, missile launchers called scorpions. So, you know, the sting in the tail that you can fire through very narrow slits, giant mechanical claws, which can reach out from the walls and pick up ships. and even it is said a death ray and we'll come in due course to whether this death ray actually existed and Heron loves them I mean he can get enough of these kind of war machines he a man of peace so he you know he doesn actually want to use them but he hoping that they will prove a deterrence And so for decades and decades they do prove a deterrence which is kind of sad for Archimedes because I guess he'd like to see whether they'd actually work. But fortunately for Archimedes, unfortunately for Heron, in 215, everything changes because Heron dies. And by this point, he is 92 years old. and he's succeeded by his grandson who's a guy called Hieronymus and he is still only a teenager he's very headstrong he's very inexperienced and he fatally is persuaded by an anti-Roman faction in the city that Rome is doomed and that he should open negotiations with Carthage. Oh that's a big twist. It's in the wake of Cannae you can see why they would do it but the pro-Roman faction, which is very strong in Syracuse, they immediately have Hieronymus assassinated and there's a low-level civil war. A republic is proclaimed. The pro-Carthage faction triumphs and it opens negotiations with Hannibal and it starts to launch raids on Roman-held territory in Sicily. And this, Dominic, proves to be, for Syracuse, an absolutely calamitous mistake. here on had been right you know it is the worst policy imaginable to take on the romans even as they are kind of battered by all the uh the losses of manpower that they've been suffering at the hands of hannibal not least because the roman that the top roman in sicily who's called claudius marcellus he is a very formidable person isn't he he had killed a king of the gauls in single combat and had won the spolia what's that the spolia apima which is the greatest prize that any roman could hope to have um so you you you kill your your enemy general in combat and you strip him of his armor uh and it's just tremendous glory and this is what marcellus has done he's been consul for you know for five times he's quite a cultured man you know he's lover of of greek culture he will prove to be a great admirer of Archimedes but he's absolutely not someone to mess with so he's described in a later biography as a man of war with a body hewn from granite and a sword arm of devastating power and this is the guy in the spring of 213 who appears before the walls of Syracuse at the head of a large army of Romans many of whom are veterans of Cannae so those 10 who had survived can i and who are therefore desperate for revenge they camp out be before the walls of uh of syracuse and on the seaside marcellus gets on board his galley and leads a battle fleet into the harbors of the city so it's a kind of pincer movement and the syracusans understandably are terrified but this is the moment when Archimedes and his war machines come into their own. Bring out the scorpions. Bring out the scorpions. Bring out the catapults. And the scorpions and the catapults are incredibly effective, right? They absolutely bombard the Roman besiegers. And isn't the story that basically, you know, they were so terrifying that soon afterwards, if you're a Roman infantryman and you saw a little bit of rope being waved behind the walls or a bit of wood, you would run away in terror because you thought it might be the scorpion again yeah or some fresh hellish contraption that Archimedes has come up with and at the same time the Roman fleet too is getting absolutely battered so we mentioned how there are these giant mechanical claws a later historian describes how these mechanical claws operated a ship would be seized by its prow lifted up into the air then dropped into the depths or spun round and round and smashed into the steep cliffs that jutted out beneath the wall of the city and sometimes we're told the ships would be shaken up and down until its crew had been thrown out and hurled in all directions and there is also according to a guy called anthemius of tralles a unanimous tradition that archimedes used mirrors to direct the sun's rays at the enemy fleet and incinerate it so this is the death ray and do people think that these these death ray machines genuinely existed and worked or not? Sadly not. So Anthemius was writing about 600 years after the siege. And I think the feeling among historians of science is that the stories of this kind of, you know, the mirrors being used to generate death rays was probably inspired by a treatise that Archimedes had written about mirrors in which he did talk about using them to channel the rays of the sun to start fires. And then it attains its kind of canonical form many, many hundreds of years later in the Byzantine era. And this is a period from the walls of Constantinople. They're using Greek fire. And so you can see how perhaps this story by process of endless elaboration comes to take on the form it does So I think sadly that probably not true But I think the essentials are true Archimedes did devise these kind of innovative terrifying war machines They did keep the Romans at bay And Marcellus himself I mean he annoyed that they're being kept at bay by these war machines, but he's also incredibly impressed and becomes a great admirer of Archimedes. And so Marcellus decides, well, we can't defeat at Archimedes and these war machines. So we're going to have to starve Syracuse. But this is a massive problem because, you know, Archimedes has built these huge walls that go on for 17 miles. So that doesn't really prove possible. So instead, the Romans just wait, camped out in front of Syracuse, waiting for an opportunity. And it arrives eight months before the walls of Syracuse because there is a festival. The Romans notice that the guards are distracted. They bring up ladders they climb up they pour over the outer walls and into the outer reaches of the city but there are still more walls within these are still protected they're massive they've got war machines and scorpions and whatnot so it's only eight months after that that the romans finally succeed in capturing the whole city so it's taken them essentially a year and a half and marcellus has said yeah you can loot the city do what you want with it um the only thing i want is i want Archimedes captured because, and to quote a biographer of Marcellus, he reckoned that to save such a great man would redound as much to his glory as would the capture of Syracuse. But they don't capture him, do they? They don't. So Archimedes is among the dead. And I think the story that is told of how he came to perish is a salutary warning to anyone doing maths that it can be very, very dangerous. So the story goes that Archimedes is busy doing a geometrical puzzle. He's doing it in the sand, you know with a ruler soldier comes up to him Archimedes tells him to go away the soldier is infuriated draws his sword and hacks Archimedes to death do you know who should heed that lesson Rishi Sunak he wanted everybody to do maths to the age of about 30 or something didn't he you see this is the benefit of classical education if he'd had that he would have learned that was very foolish they didn't they clearly Rishi Sunak didn't learn this at Winchester sadly so for Marcellus it's quite a bittersweet moment you know he's got Syracuse but he's lost Archimedes and we're told by Livy when he stood on the heights above the city and looked down at Syracuse in those days the most beautiful perhaps in all the world he is said to have wept partly for joy that he had succeeded in pulling off such a feat partly in mourning for the city's ancient glory but I think probably there's not much doubt really he is said to have wept partly for joy that he had succeeded in pulling off such a feat he is said to have wept partly for joy that he had succeeded in pulling off such a feat partly in mourning for the city's ancient glory but i think probably there's not much doubt really he's weeping for joy i mean you know he's he's really thrilled because syracuse is by far the richest city that a roman army has ever captured the whole of sicily is now securely under roman rule and the hopes that hannibal had had of seizing it back from rome they're toast now All right, so you might think this is the beginning of the end for Carthage, but no, it's not even the end of the beginning, is it? Because one year on from the fall of Syracuse, Hannibal will launch his march on Rome. And in Spain, the Roman attempt to intervene there and change the course of the war is not going to end well at all, with two Roman armies wiped out in succession. So it's still all to play for. The outcome of the war very much in the balance. who is going to win Hannibal or the Romans and how are they going to do it There is only one way you can find out because we will be telling the story in the next three epic episodes of The Rest Is History You can hear those episodes right away by going to therestishistory and joining our own battle band of mercenaries, The Rest Is History Club. Tom, thank you so much for that. I can't wait for the next episode and find out what happens next. Who can say? Yeah, who can say? Goodbye. Bye-bye. tom we have some absolutely unbelievable news to share with our listeners probably the most exciting news you've ever shared no oh i mean no dispute this is the most exciting news of all time right so we are announcing the launch of some brand new rest is history merchandise and the important thing about this is that it is exclusively for you the members nobody else will be able to get this that's absolutely right so these are t-shirts that have been designed by one of our beloved Athelstan's Graham Johnson. And what he's done is to do designs for six of the biggest series that we have coming up over the next few months. Yes it exclusive merch for our members And the very first iteration is this amazing t It really is a wonderful design it showing Hannibal as Hercules crossing the Alps on an elephant it beautifully imagined I have to say and I would wear it with enormous pride myself and it's so good that it has a Roman Hydra with lots of different heads Hannibal's chopped off some of them but there are others with Roman helmets on I mean it could not be more epic epic is the word now if you want to show your epic status as a member of the rest is history club i think it's important for you to wear one of these t-shirts so when you're going out around town when you see people if you want to impress your husband or wife wear this t-shirt and or wear multiple t-shirts get several if you can and you'll want to know how to get hold of it the way you get to get hold of it is this you go to the new exciting rest is history website log in and go to the members merch section and tom what about if you're an Apple member, because I want to get this absolutely right, I'm going to read out what I have been given. If you an Apple member you will need to join our members mailing list to get access Just send an email to the rest is history at goalhanger with apple member in the subject line and a screenshot of your membership and we will add you in and honestly that couldn't be easier could it dominic no so that's the rest is history at goalhanger.com with apple member in the subject line now what if you're not a member of the show not yet a member of the show i should say well this is a wonderful opportunity for you to put that right and to get involved with the show. So not only will you be able to get your hands on this unique and uniquely cool example of merch, but you'll also get all the great benefits, early access to series, bonus episodes, exclusive new mini series, and so much more. I mean, those are just sensational benefits. Not only do you get to wear a Hannibal themed t-shirt, but there is so much else so don't hang around sign up head to the rest is history.com bye bye