The World

The unbeaten Hamilcar was ordered to negotiate peace and was obliged to agree to the unthinkable: the loss of Sicily and payment of an indemnity. Resigning his command, Hamilcar sailed home, accusing a rival faction of a stab in the back. His unpaid Celtic mercenaries mutinied and threatened to destroy the city: he took command of a small army, backed by African cavalry under a Numidian prince to whom he married his daughter, and over three years of gruesome warfare (in which the besieged mutineers were forced to cannibalize their slaves) saved Carthage. But Hamilcar, glamorous war hero, aristocratic adventurer, popular favourite, was in danger.

The aristocrats criticized him, but he appealed to the people of Carthage, who were now asserting themselves. While they were fighting for survival, the Romans had broken the treaty by grabbing Sardinia as well. Playing the demagogue before the assembly, Hamilcar proposed a solution – a small expedition to raise cash by looting and conquering Spain, where the Carthaginians had a colony at Cadiz: its silver mines would fund the Roman war. While his ally Handsome Hasdrubal won backing among the elite, Hamilcar won over the people.

In 237, Hamilcar sacrificed a cow’s head to his god Melqart–Hercules and when the entrails were auspicious he turned to his nine-year-old son Hannibal and asked if he would like to join the adventure. The boy eagerly agreed, at which the father made him promise ‘never to show goodwill to the Romans’. Then with a small army, including his Numidian son-in-law with his cavalry and African elephants, he marched around Africa towards the Straits while Handsome, now also his son-in-law, led the fleet along the coast and ferried the Barcas to Cadiz.

Hamilcar conquered most of Spain, securing the silver mines and sending back cash to Carthage. Hannibal was tutored in history and Greek by a Spartan philosopher, but learned war in the field with his father. When Numidian tribes rebelled in Africa, Hamilcar sent Handsome Hasdrubal home to suppress them. But in 228, campaigning near Toledo accompanied by sons Hannibal and Hasdrubal, Hamilcar was betrayed by a tribal ally. As his sons galloped away, their father, at the age of forty-seven, drowned in a river.

The army elected Handsome, Barca’s son-in-law, as commander with Hannibal, now eighteen, as cavalry general. Handsome founded New Carthage (Cartagena) and it was he who had the idea of attacking Rome in Italy itself. But before they could depart, he was assassinated and Hannibal inherited the command. Before long Hannibal had captured a Spanish city allied to Rome; Rome seized Malta, consolidated Sardinia, planned a raid on Africa and sent an army to take Spain. Although Hannibal was attacked in the Council of the Mighty by rivals who believed Carthage was flourishing without a new war, he argued that Rome would never respect Carthage. The people backed House Barca. It was war.

Sending home a Spanish corps to defend Carthage, Hannibal imported 12,600 Berbers and thirty-seven elephants. He sacrificed at the island temple of Melqart–Hercules at Gades, then marched 120,000 men across the Rhône towards the Alps, just as the Roman consul, Publius Cornelius Scipio, was sailing from Pisa to attack Hannibal in Spain.

No family would equal the laurels of the Scipiones in the fight against the Barcas – and no family so represented the martial aristocracy of the Roman Republic that in many ways resembled Carthage.

In 753 BC, sixty-one years after Carthage, Rome was founded – though archaeology proves there were already settlements on the site.^* Ruled initially by kings, by war-band chieftains and then by colonels, probably patrician oligarchs, Rome, like Carthage, developed around 420 BC into a democratic republic, dominated by aristocratic clans of whom the Scipiones were typical.^* Rich and ancient landowners, enthused with the martial spirit of Rome, the Scipiones would provide sixteen of Rome’s ruling consuls, some serving more than once. Starting as one of many Italian city states, surrounded by rivals, the Sabines and Etruscans who had provided some of its early kings, Rome conquered all of its Italian neighbours. But its rise was neither smooth nor inevitable: it was on several occasions threatened by invasions of Gauls who, in 387, actually sacked the city – and in 280, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, cousin of Alexander the Great and aspiring empire-builder, invaded Italy and won a series of costly (Pyrrhic) victories.