Second Punic War (218-201 BC): Hannibal Against Rome

The Second Punic War (218–201 BC) was the second and greatest of the three wars between Rome and Carthage. It is famous above all for Hannibal, who led an army from Spain across the Alps into Italy and destroyed several Roman armies, most spectacularly at Cannae in 216 BC. Yet Rome refused to make peace, rebuilt its forces, conquered Carthaginian Spain and finally defeated Hannibal in Africa. The war left Rome the unchallenged master of the western Mediterranean.

Background and causes

Carthage lost Sicily to Rome in the First Punic War (264–241 BC), and soon after Rome also seized Sardinia and Corsica while Carthage was fighting a mercenary revolt. In 237 BC Hamilcar Barca crossed to Spain and, with his son-in-law Hasdrubal, built a rich new Carthaginian domain there, funded by silver mines and defended by a large army.

In 226 BC Rome and Hasdrubal agreed that Carthaginian forces would not cross the river Ebro. When Hasdrubal was murdered in 221 BC, command passed to Hamilcar’s son Hannibal, then about 26. Polybius tells that Hamilcar had made the nine-year-old boy swear never to be a friend of Rome. In 219 BC Hannibal besieged and took Saguntum, a city south of the Ebro that Rome counted as an ally. After the Siege of Saguntum, a Roman embassy declared war at Carthage in 218 BC.

Hannibal’s march to Italy

Rome planned to fight on enemy ground, sending the consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus towards Africa and Publius Cornelius Scipio to Spain. Hannibal moved first. In late spring 218 BC he left New Carthage (Cartagena) and marched north, crossed the Pyrenees and then the Rhône, avoiding Scipio’s army.

In the autumn he made his famous crossing of the Alps, whose exact route is still debated. Polybius says Hannibal reached the Po valley with only 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, figures taken from an inscription Hannibal himself set up in southern Italy. He had lost a large part of his army to the mountains, the cold and attacks by Alpine tribes, but Gallic tribes of northern Italy soon joined him.

Hannibal’s great victories, 218–216 BC

In November or December 218 BC Hannibal’s cavalry beat Scipio’s at the Ticinus, where Scipio was wounded and saved, by tradition, by his 17-year-old son. Weeks later, at the Trebia, Hannibal lured Sempronius into crossing an icy river and ambushed his army; perhaps two-thirds of the Romans were killed or captured.

In 217 BC Hannibal crossed the Apennines and the marshes of the Arno and trapped the consul Gaius Flaminius beside Lake Trasimene in an ambush in the morning mist. Flaminius and about 15,000 Romans died. Rome appointed Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator. He avoided pitched battle and shadowed Hannibal, earning the nickname Cunctator (“the Delayer”), but his strategy was unpopular.

In 216 BC Rome put an army of about 80,000 men into the field under the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. On 2 August, at the Battle of Cannae in Apulia, Hannibal let his centre fall back while his African infantry and cavalry closed around the Roman flanks and rear. Ancient estimates of Roman dead range from about 48,000 (Livy) to 70,000 (Polybius); Paullus was among them. Cannae remains one of the most studied battles in history.

A war on many fronts, 215–207 BC

After Cannae, Capua, the second city of Italy, and many communities in the south went over to Hannibal. In 215 BC Philip V of Macedon allied with Carthage, starting the First Macedonian War, and in 214 BC Syracuse broke with Rome after the death of its old ally Hiero II. Yet most of central Italy, the Latin colonies and the Roman citizen body stayed loyal, and Rome kept raising new legions.

Rome’s response was patient and widespread. Marcus Claudius Marcellus besieged Syracuse, defended by the engineering of Archimedes, and took it in 212 BC. In 211 BC Hannibal marched to within sight of Rome to draw the Romans away from Capua, but they held their ground and Capua fell, suffering harsh punishment. Hannibal took Tarentum in 212 BC, but the Romans recovered it in 209 BC.

The cost to Rome was enormous. At the height of the war, around 212–211 BC, it kept perhaps 20 to 25 legions under arms in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and Greece, an extraordinary share of its citizen manpower. The state borrowed from contractors, raised special taxes and debased its bronze coinage, and around 211 BC it introduced the silver denarius, which became the standard Roman coin for centuries. In 209 BC twelve of the thirty Latin colonies declared they could provide no more soldiers or money, but the other eighteen stood firm.

In Spain the brothers Publius and Gnaeus Scipio fought with success for years but were both killed in 211 BC. Their place was taken by Publius’s son, also Publius Cornelius Scipio, aged about 25. In 209 BC he captured New Carthage in a daring assault, and in 208 BC he defeated Hasdrubal Barca at Baecula. Hasdrubal escaped and led an army over the Alps to reinforce his brother, but in 207 BC he was defeated and killed at the Metaurus in northern Italy before Hannibal knew he had arrived.

Scipio in Spain and Africa, 206–202 BC

In 206 BC Scipio’s victory at Ilipa, near Seville, ended Carthaginian power in Spain. Elected consul for 205 BC, he prepared in Sicily to invade Africa, overcoming opposition from Fabius and others in the Senate. He landed near Utica in 204 BC.

In 203 BC Scipio burned the camps of the Carthaginian and Numidian armies in a night attack and won the Battle of the Great Plains. His ally Masinissa captured the Numidian king Syphax, Carthage’s partner. Carthage recalled Hannibal, who left Italy in the autumn of 203 BC after some fifteen years there, and his brother Mago, who had been campaigning in Liguria.

In 202 BC, probably in October, Hannibal and Scipio met at the Battle of Zama, south-west of Carthage. Scipio opened lanes in his infantry to let Hannibal’s 80 elephants pass harmlessly through, and the Roman and Numidian cavalry under Laelius and Masinissa returned in time to strike Hannibal’s line from behind. Hannibal’s army was destroyed and he advised Carthage to make peace.

The contrast between the two commanders fascinated ancient writers. Hannibal had won his great battles with cavalry superiority and by using the ground; at Zama it was Scipio who had the stronger cavalry, thanks to Masinissa, and who had learned from Hannibal’s methods. Livy and Appian tell of a meeting between the two generals before the battle, though what was said, if it happened, cannot be known.

The peace of 201 BC

The treaty forced Carthage to give up all its territory outside Africa, surrender its war elephants and all but ten warships, and pay 10,000 talents of silver over 50 years. It could not make war outside Africa at all, nor inside Africa without Rome’s permission. Masinissa was recognised as king of an enlarged Numidia on Carthage’s border. Scipio celebrated a triumph and took the name Africanus.

Key people

• Hannibal (247–c. 183 BC): Carthaginian general, son of Hamilcar Barca, regarded as one of the greatest commanders in history.
• Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator: Roman dictator in 217 BC, architect of the strategy of attrition.
• Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236–183 BC): conqueror of Carthaginian Spain and victor at Zama.
• Hasdrubal Barca: Hannibal’s brother, commander in Spain, killed at the Metaurus in 207 BC.
• Marcus Claudius Marcellus: five times consul, captor of Syracuse, killed in an ambush in 208 BC.
• Masinissa: Numidian prince who changed sides to Rome and became a powerful king.

Consequences

Rome emerged as the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. It organised two provinces in Spain in 197 BC and turned east, fighting Philip V and the Seleucid king Antiochus III within a few years. Hannibal led a revival of Carthage’s finances as chief magistrate in 196 BC, but Roman pressure forced him into exile; he died by poison in Bithynia around 183 BC rather than be handed to Rome.

Carthage recovered economically, which alarmed some Romans, and growing conflict with Masinissa led to the Third Punic War and the city’s destruction in 146 BC. In Italy, the long war damaged many communities in the south, though historians debate how far it caused the later spread of large slave-run estates.

The war also left a long military legacy. Hannibal’s double envelopment at Cannae became a model studied in military academies, influencing nineteenth- and twentieth-century planners such as the German chief of staff Alfred von Schlieffen. Fabius’s strategy of avoiding battle while wearing down a stronger enemy gave its name to the term “Fabian strategy”.

Timeline

• 219 BC: Hannibal besieges and captures Saguntum.
• 218 BC: Hannibal crosses the Alps; Roman defeats at the Ticinus and the Trebia.
• 217 BC, June: Roman army destroyed at Lake Trasimene; Fabius made dictator.
• 216 BC, 2 August: Hannibal’s victory at Cannae.
• 212 BC: Marcellus captures Syracuse; Hannibal takes Tarentum.
• 211 BC: Hannibal marches on Rome; Capua falls; the elder Scipios die in Spain.
• 209 BC: Scipio captures New Carthage.
• 207 BC: Hasdrubal defeated and killed at the Metaurus.
• 204 BC: Scipio lands in Africa.
• 202 BC: Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama; peace concluded in 201 BC.

Why it matters

The Second Punic War decided whether Rome or Carthage would dominate the western Mediterranean, and by extension shaped the later history of Europe and North Africa. It showed both the genius of Hannibal’s generalship and the resilience of Rome’s alliance system, which survived defeats that would have broken most ancient states.