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

Sag mal, hast du bei der Steuer auch diesen Schulflashback? Einfach irgendwas raten und dann hoffen, dass es stimmt? Boah, nee, gar nicht.

Wieso Steuer ist so mein safe space?

Du meinst, damit ist alles sicher?

Ja, genau. Wieso Steuer ist so die Steuer-App, die dich einfach versteht. Egal ob Studium, Job oder Umzug. Stimmt, krass.

Fühlt sich gar nicht wie Steuern an. Steuern erledigt?

Safe. Mit Wieso Steuer. On the battlefield of Canai, 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 a 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. This has been reported two centuries later by the historian Livy. To give people a little bit of context, the battle in question was the Battle of Canai. It was fought on the second of August, 216 BC, and it resulted in the almost total annihilation of the largest army that the Roman Republic public had ever put into the field. Last year, Tom, in our episode on the Battle of Canai, episode 571, for people who are interested in that thing, you came up with some extraordinary facts to illustrate just how industrial the slaughter at Canai was. The Romans suffered more casualties at Canai, if the ancient historians had 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. If Canai 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. It's the apogée of Hannibal's career. It's also, in a sense, the apogée 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 not many decades later in the complete anihilation of Carthage, and we're going to be telling the story of how we go from Canai 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 mystery of the Western Mediterranean. By far, it's most formidable naval power. She has tremendous natural advantages. Great harbors, 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. And traditionally, her great enemies were not the Romans, but the Greeks who had planted a whole host of colonies in the island of Sicily. And 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 harbor, rocky heights and plateaus, very defensible. And again, like Carthage, a very commanding position on 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 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 football analogy, I guess it's as though, I don't know, Aberdeen were to taken over by the Saudis and pumped full of money, and then suddenly they start winning. Because in 264 BC, the Romans get imbriled in a minus squabble over treaty rights, and they massively escalate it into a full-blown war with Carthage. This is the war that the Romans call the Punic War, because punicus is the Latin for Carthaginian. Carthaginians originally came from Phenitia in what is now Lebanon. It's a derivation from Phenitian.

This war went on for 23 years, didn't it? It was the longest war in classical antiquity. It's the ultimate clash between a sea power and a land power. The Carthaginians, I suppose, if you're a betting man at the beginning, are the favorites. But astonishingly, the Romans forced them at the end of these 23 years to sue for terms. Remind us how the Romans did it.

Well, the Romans have immense reserves of manpower. They are the dominant power in Italy, and they have essentially constructed this framework of alliances. Defeated cities are offered various degrees of citizenship or associated status. 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 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 transformed themselves into a naval power. I mean, they do it in a slightly makeshift way. They find a galley and it's like a 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 swath of the island, about three quarters of it, comes under the authority, in Latin, the provincia, of a Roman governor.

This word provincia Eiria, is the word from which the English word province will ultimately derive. In effect, the three quarters of Sicily that the Romans have seized becomes Rome's first overseas province.

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. 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 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. Do you think this is true of Carthage as well, that basically the first punitive war means there's bound to be a second one?

I think so. I think there are 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 Carthage Indians 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. Syracuse is a natural ally for Rome, and she emerges pretty secure as a friend of the Rome 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 recognized as such by Rome. But it is clear that relative to Rome, Syracuse no longer ranks as a 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 Syracusians, their harbors are open to Roman gallies.

If the Romans are short of manpower or of grain or supplies or whatever, the Syracusians will go to great lengths to meet the needs of Rome.

To remind people, the Syracusians, they're Greek speakers.

They are Greeks.

This is a Greek foundation. Yes. So the Carthage Indians, 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 Carthage Indian 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's the greatest and the most glamorous of all the dynasties of Carthage. This is a family called the Barkids. Barker, it means lightning. It's a name that has been given to the city's greatest general, who's a man called Hamelkar. He's pretty much the only Cathergy in general to have emerged from the war with Rome with much credit. So he had fought a brilliant rear guard 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 Hamelkar, in the wake of Cathergy'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 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 Canai. The two other sons, Hasdribal and Mago, and they will also feature in the war that Hannibal launches against Rome. Because Hamelclad 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 war of vengeance.

Well, he has a new Carthage, doesn't he? Because they've got this dazzling new capital with harbors and city walls and fortifications and so on. He didn't build it himself, but he's inherited it.

Yes. It's called Carthage, but the Romans will call it New Carthage. I think it's easier for us to follow the Roman example. And as you say, it is modeled 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 Némiddia, which is basically now Algeria, which is by far the best light cavalry in the world. 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 Cazdribal, 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, Elephant in Toe, 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. I mean that 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 Canai, 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 It's 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. You have to think that while Hannibal and Mahabal are having this conversation on the battlefield of Canai, the stench of the mass slaughter that has been inflicted that day is lying very heavy in the heat of the august evening.

So if 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 Canai, so much blood has been evacuated that that dust is turning into a mud. So it is a pretty hideous scene.

So that conversation was reported by Libby 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 literary formula? Because this is the scene in which the Machabal is saying to Hannibal, You know how to win a battle, but you don't know how to win a 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 resonance that it 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 named Barker means lightning. So why doesn't he strike? And there are various suggestions that have been made as to why 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 about almost 300 miles away. Mahabal and his light Namedian cavalry, they could have probably got there in about five days, but it would have taken the infantry a fortnight. What if Hannibal turns up in front of the walls of Rome and the Romans refuse 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 that's an embarrassment, and it wipes out the moral and a psychological advantage that he's got from his victory at Canai, or he could put it under siege. But does he have enough men? Hannibal doesn't... 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 assumes in the way speak of the calamity that he's inflict on the Romans at Canai, that the Romans are now bound to capitulate.

And is this because basically this is ancient wars, there are expectations and conventions, just as with 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 both sides will rebuild for the next encounter in however many years time.

This is the norm, and this is what most sides do.

But of course, the Romans don't. We've already established that.

I mean, those are the rules of war that had governed the conflicts between Carthage and Syracuse, for instance.

You suffer a defeat, you do a deal, and then you start again in a few years time.

Yeah. I mean, Hannibal is not naive. I mean, he understands the metal of the Romans very, very well. But he does also have, I think, very immediate reasons for thinking that Roman Rural 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 Canai, there are plenty of straws in the wind suggesting that Roman is really, really on its uppers. So not everyone in the Roman Task Force that had been defeated at Canai had actually died. Some, a few had managed to break out through the Carthage Indian lines as they pressed in on the captured Romans. 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 Canai, some of them had sought refuge in the town of Canai 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 have 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 have taken refuge in the town of Canai and in this smaller fort. The fugitives in Canai 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, Don't stay there, you're going to be 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 get away from here. But the Romans fugitives are so demoralized that ultimately only about 600 make the attempt and managed 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. T And they cross the plain and they reach a wall town called Canuzium, 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 Canuzium is another indicator of this. Because even in the relative safety of Canuzium, 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 council, and the council is 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. They have despaired 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, 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 favor Carthage.

Yes. In the speech that he's 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 honor and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valor, 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 valor. 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. It seems cast in that light as very reasonable. 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 Cotharlo, who is in charge of the whole peace mission. Even as they are setting off from Canai 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 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 Canai reaches Rome, there understandably are massive displays of grief, but also of So you have women start to mourn the dead. And that's 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 snowball and it becomes impossible for haws in the Senate to continue the war.

However, the Chachillian role in this story is played by a guy called Fabius Maximus, who is known as the Delair. We talked about him in our previous series. Because the previous year, in the wake of the defeat of the Romans at Lake Trasimine, another brilliant victory for Hannibal, Fabius had been appointed the Supreme Commander of the Roman Forces just for a six-month term. He had pursued a policy of shadowing Hannibal and never actually engaging him in open battle. This had proved very effective and successful. Obviously, by sending eight legions to go fight Hannibal and then be wiped out at Canai, the Romans had turned their back on this policy. But now, with the news of Canai 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 foi, of cool and measured confidence, and it wins him the effective command of the city. What he does is to walk around Rome.

He 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 venting their fear and distress. He puts guards on the city walls and particularly on the city gates. They are there not really to guard against Hannibal, but to stop anyone attempting to flee. What he also does, and the Senate does, is to consult the Sibiline books. The Sibiline books are very ancient collections of Greek writings. You consult them when Rome is in particularly terrible straits. It's an awful moment of ritual when this is done. They consult the books and the books say, You must entomb alive a Gaul and a Greek. 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 Sibiline books. This is what they do. They take them to the cattle market, the Forum Boarium, and they wore this Greek and this Gaul up.

This is an indicator to the Romans, to everyone in Italy, and to the Carthaginians that they are going to carry on the fight.

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. Actually, as the days pass, Roman morale starts to recover a little bit, doesn't it? People start to think, Okay, he's not coming. The apocalyptic disaster that we fear is not going to materialize.

Yeah. So Fabius has obviously sent scouts out along the roads. They say, No, nobody's coming from Canai. This potential mutiny in Canuzium with all the officers who are 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 council who had confronted Hannibal in the year of his invasion of Italy. 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. Moral is restored in Canuzzi, Caunusium. Even the arrival in Rome of one of the two consuls who had been defeated at Canai, which you might think would just plunge people into despondency. Actually, it serves to boost spirits in the city. This consul who arrived, this guy torrencius Faro. He, unlike his colleague who had fallen in the battle, he'd managed to escape the slaughter. And he ends up going to Caunusium, taking charge of the soldiers there. He works hard to get them into fighting order.

Then he hands them over to the command of the man who has been sent by the Senate to replace him. For Varo, 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. Instead, it gives him a vote of thanks. The reason for this vote of thanks, he had not despaired of the Republic. 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 hard core decision because what it means is that the Romans are losing fit men of military age that they might have ranmed, and they're very fit military men. Individual senators, of course, they would have relatives. They might have sons or brothers or whatever. 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. 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 can I, they lack the manpower actually to do anything more than that. But I think also it reflects an entirely understandable sense that this man is a genius. 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 orchids, to the vineyards, to the estates that cover Italy.

A quick question. While Hannibal is doing this, so Hannibal is plundering and burning and all of this 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. In the wake of Canai, 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 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't have siege equipment. So he's a long way from Carthage. He's not going to get lots of suppliers coming in all the time from Carthage. And if you did abandon the Romans, your 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 Punic League, most of the cities, certainly a majority, stay loyal to Rome because the Italians have experience with the Romans. I mean, 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 Canai.

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 leading city in the Bay of Naples. So 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. They start the siege at a time when Hannibal is distant, besieging another city in the south of Italy. The news comes to him that the Romans are besieging Capua. Rather than march directly to the rescue of Capua, he decides instead that he's going to adopt a diversionary tactic. Five years on from the Battle of Canai, 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. He arrives in front of the walls of Rome. 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. 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. That's about 10,000 men. There is actually in the upper echelons of the Roman elite, they're not panicking. 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 plug. Their sonfoir 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 this This is 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. The problem, essentially for both sides now, Hannibal and the Romans, is that neither side really seems to have a route to defeat meeting the other. But I guess for the Romans, bearing in mind the scale of the disaster they had suffered at Canai, a stalemate is a victory.

For Rome, yeah. But the stalemate will not last because both sides are determined to break it. Certainly, the Romans are. After the break, we will find out how this extraordinary war, this duel between Hannibal and Rome, takes another twist. 11: 48 50. Mittagspause. Dein Magen knoert lauter als der Bürohund. Und dann ploppt der Chat auf. Kantine? Wie immer? Wenig später blickst du auf die wie immer mickrige Portion und denkst dir nur: Wir hätten zu Mac es gehen sollen. Für den Big McDonalds-Hunger, probier den neuen Big Gouda und den Big Tasty Red Steakhouse mit 100% Rindfleisch aus Deutschland. Solange der Vorrat reicht, nicht zu unseren Frühstückszeiten. Welcome back to The Rest is History. The great war between Hannibal and the Romans has degenerated into a stalemate. Hannibal has won his battle at Canai, 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 isn't 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's 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 the largest swathes of it.

They've been fighting endlessly in it. 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 Syracusians 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 fall into their lap. And Hannibal, of all men, needs no reminding of how strategically significant Sicily is. That's where his father, Hamelkar, had made his name. The occupation of Sicily by the Romans had been the Versailles Treaty type humiliation, the worst of all the humiliations that Carthage had suffered when the Romans defeated them in the previous war. 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.

The key to this is Syracuse, previously a rival of Carthage, now Rome's junior partner. Syracuse, I asked you, Greek colony, Greek-speaking, very rich, very beautiful, and strategically, massively important, isn't it? Syracuse is basically the key, not just to Sicily, but to control of that part of the Mediterranean.

Completely. It's hard to overestimate its wealth and its splendor in this period. There was a Roman poet, Silius Italicus, who wrote about the Punic Wars some three centuries later. His comment on Syracuse in this period was in all the Earth round which the sun drives his chariot, no city at that time could rival her. He's not exaggerating. Because Syracuse, in the decades before Hannibal's war, had been given this massive makeover. It was so spectacular and so exquisite in its consequences that the city, which is very old by this point, unlike Alexandria, it's 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 ancient stone theater, which has been rebuilt, extended. It's got new temples, it's got gymnasia, it's got incredible marketplaces and shopping centers 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 steak.

Wow. So it's like an Argentine restaurant.

Yes. Huge gaucho restaurant. It has double harbors. 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 Euryalis, 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 Ortegia, so just off the mainland. This is where the first colonists from Corinthians had settled who founded Carthage. This now boasts a really sumptuous magnificent palace, a palace that can rival the palace in Alexandria.

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 Hyron. 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, Hyron is in his late '80s. He has been in charge of the city since the '2 '70s. 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's Hieron who says, We are sticking to Rome through thick and thin. Although he was a mercenary, and although it's for centuries been the national sport of the Greeks in Sicily to fight each other, Hieron actually isn't a He's a great man for war. He's a man of peace. The Roman Alliance enables him to enjoy decades of peace. The money that previous leaders of Syracuse would have squandered on pointless wars, with Carthage or with other Greek cities or whatever, hereon is able to spend this wealth on beautifying Syracuse and on growing the economy. By expanding the harbors or whatever, he makes Syracuse richer and more productive. Even the defeats of Rome at first late Trasimene and then Canai cannot persuade him to budge in his loyalty to Rome.

In the wake of Canai, he sends the Romans grain, he sends them troops, he sends them financial subsidies. The special relationship holds rock solid. That's the first advantage that Hieron 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 a man called Archimides. Dominic, I know you love a mathematician and an engineer, don't you? Archimides is hailed by Leonardo, by Galileo, by Newton, as the greatest, the goat.

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 going 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 an apple hitting Newton on the head. And it does actually feature here on the ruler of Syracuse, who, according to a much later writer, was actually a kinsman of Archimedes. So that would suggest a closeness between them. So the story goes, and I know that I can see the excitement on your face. That's the prospect of a- Yeah, give me a scientific lecture. Yeah. So hereon has commissioned a golden wreath as an offering to the gods. And this wreath is delivered by the craftsman, and it weighs exactly what it's supposed to weigh. But here on, very steep man, he suspects that he's being ripped off and that what seems to be pure gold might actually contain quite a lot of silver, that it's been debased. And so he gets our comedians on the case, obvious person to turn to. And And Archimedes retires to his bathtub to ponder the problem. And to quote Nicolas Nicastro in his fantastic book on Archimedes, just come out, Archimedes' Forecome 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 that Archimedes takes a bar of gold and a bar of silver, and each one is equal exactly in 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 the gold had been mixed with silver. I understand that vaguely, and I gather from Nicolas Nicastro that there are various improbabilities about this. I don't entirely understand, but maybe they can tackle it on the rest of the science. I don't know. Anyway, so that's the story.

But Archimedius isn't just messing around with reeds and gold, is he? I mean, he's designing military stuff, right? Like a galley that ends up being given to Tolemy III.

Yeah. And Ducastro says, I mean, this is like the Titanic, that it was longer and heavier than HMS victory.

Crikey.

It's huge. It's Archimedius 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 futuristic war machines. So massive catapults, missile launches called scorpions, so 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 Hieron loves them. I mean, he can't get enough of these war machines. He's a man of peace, so he doesn't actually want to use them, but he's hoping that they will prove a deterrence. And so for decades and decades, they do prove a deterrence, which is sad for Archimides, because I guess he'd like to see whether they'd actually work. But fortunately for Archimides, unfortunately for Hieron, in 215, everything changes because Hieron 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. He fatally is persuaded by an anti-Roman faction in the city that Rome is doomed and that he should open negotiations with Carthage.

That's a big twist.

It's in the wake of Canai. 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 claimed. The pro-Carthage faction triumphs, and it opens negotiations with Hannibal, and it starts to launch raids on Roman-held territory in Sicily. This Dominic proves Mr. B, for Syracuse, an absolutely calamitous mistake. Hereon had been right. It is the worst policy imaginable to take on the Romans, even as they are battered by all the losses of man power that they've been suffering at the hands of Hannibal.

Not least because the Roman, 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 apaima, which is the greatest prize that any Roman could hope to have. You kill your enemy general in combat and you strip him of his armor. It's just tremendous in this glory, and this is what Marcellus has done. He's been console for five times. He's quite a cultured man. He's a lover of Greek culture. He will prove to be a great admirer of Archimedes, but he's absolutely not someone to mess with. He's ascribed in a later biography as a man of war with a body hewn from granite and a sword arm of devastating power. This is the guy in the spring of 2: 13 who appears before the walls of Syracuse at the head of a large army of Romans, many of whom are veterans of Canai, so those 10,000 who had survived Canai and who are therefore desperate for revenge. They camp out before the walls 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 pincer movement. And the Syracusians 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.

The scorpions and the catapult are incredibly effective. They absolutely bombard the Roman besiegers. Isn't the story that basically 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 our community has come up with. At the same time, the Roman fleet, too, is getting absolutely battered. 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 proud, 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. Sometimes we're told the ships would be shaken up and down until its crew had been thrown out and hurled in all directions. There is also, according to a guy called Anthemius of Trales, a unanimous tradition that Archimedies used mirrors to direct the Sun's rays at the enemy fleet and incinerate it.

This is the death ray. And do people think that these death ray machines genuinely existed and worked or not?

Sadly not. Anthemius was writing about 600 years after the siege. And I think the feeling among historians of science is that the stories of this, the mirrors being used to generate death rays, was probably inspired by a treatise that Archimedius had written about mirrors in which he did talk about using them to channel the rays of the sun to start fires. Then it attains its canonical form many, many hundreds of years later in the Bezantine era. This is a period from the walls of Constantinople, they're using Greek fire. You can see how perhaps this story story by process of endless elabor comes to take on the form it does. I think, sadly, that's probably not true. But I think the essentials are true. Archimedies did devise these innovative, terrifying war machines. They did keep the Romans at bay. Marcellus himself, he's 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 Archimedes and these war machines, so we're going to have to starve Syracuse. But this is a massive problem because, 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. It's only eight months after that that the Romans finally succeed in capturing the whole city. 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. The only thing I want is I want Archimides 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 Archimides 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 with a ruler. A 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 head that lesson? Rishy 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 clearly, Rishy Sunak didn't learn this at Winchester, Certainly.

For Marcellus, it's quite a bitter sweet moment. He's got Syracuse, but he's lost Archimides. 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's weeping for joy. I mean, 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, dead toast now.

All right. 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. Com and joining our own battle scarred 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 we'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 We write, So these are T-shirts that have been designed by one of our beloved Athel stands, 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. So it's exclusive merch for our members. And the very first iteration is this amazing T-shirt. It really is a wonderful design. It's showing Hannibal as Hercules crossing the Alps on an elephant. It's beautifully imagined, I have to say, and I would wear it with enormous pride myself.

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 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 or wear multiple T-shirts, get several. If you can, and you 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're an apple member, you will need to join our members mailing list to get access. Just send an email to therestishistory@goalhanger. Com 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 the rest is history@goalhanger. Com with Apple member in the subject line. Now, what if you're not a member of the show, or not yet a member of the show, I should 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 therestishistory. Com. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.