The campaigns of Hannibal Barca during the Third Century BCE are among the most famous in military history. Leading his forces over the Alps into Italy, he maintained his army in the peninsula for sixteen years. However, after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal’s campaign lost momentum, and it turned into a long war of attrition where Fabian strategy played a crucial part in containing him in southern Italy. Combined with a lack of reinforcements and insufficient allies in Italy, the Romans were able to gain the initiative and launch a counterattack against Carthage, taking the war directly to Spain and North Africa. This essay will outline the main stages of Hannibal’s campaign in Italy and the reasons why he ultimately lost the war with Rome.
Hannibal’s campaign began in 219 BCE when he captured the Spanish city of Saguntum, knowing full well that doing so would provoke a war with Rome. After the city fell, the Romans declared war on Carthage the following year, and Hannibal made his plans for the invasion of Italy. Being a brilliant military commander, Hannibal decided to take the land route to Italy because the Romans controlled the sea, and no one expected an invasion by land. Hannibal left Spain in mid-218 BCE and set out by land for Italy with an army consisting of 59,000 infantry and cavalry and 37 war elephants (Polyb. 3.35.7 & 3.42.11).
Hannibal’s Italian campaign can be divided into three stages. In the first stage, lasting from 218 to 216 BCE, Hannibal entered Italy from across the Alps and defeated the Romans in three significant battles at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae. In the second stage, 216 to 207 BCE, Hannibal and his allies fought a war of attrition with the Romans who employed the Fabian strategy of scorched earth policies. Finally, in the third stage between 207 and 203 BCE, Hannibal remained confined to southern Italy after the defeat of his brother Hasdrubal Barca at the Battle of the Metaurus, before being recalled from Italy to defend Carthage from Publius Cornelius Scipio. Hannibal’s subsequent defeat at Zama in 202 BCE effectively ended the Second Punic War and saw the beginning of Roman dominance in the western Mediterranean.
Many historians have expressed surprise that Hannibal chose not to march on Rome after his victory at Cannae. Livy recounts how Marhabal, Hannibal’s second-in-command, told him in the immediate aftermath of the battle that “you know how to gain a victory, Hannibal: you know not how to use one” (Liv. 22.51.4). There were several reasons for Hannibal’s hesitancy to march on Rome. First, his army needed time to rest after winning a great victory in which they had suffered nearly 6,000 casualties [According to Polybius 3.117, the Carthaginians suffered approximately 5,700 casualties during the Battle of Cannae. In contrast, the Romans suffered over 70,000 casualties - BB.]. Second, Hannibal lacked sufficient siege equipment and did not want to conduct a siege in winter. Third, Hannibal needed reinforcements with which to continue his campaign in Italy. And fourth, Hannibal’s strategy was not to directly destroy Rome, but rather to detach its Italian allies and thus deprive Rome of its human resources and reduce it to a third-rate power.
Hannibal’s strategy of detaching Roman allies was only partly successful. Although several cities in southern Italy, notably Capua and Tarentum, joined him, the towns of northern Italy remained loyal to Rome. One of the main reasons for Hannibal’s inability to gain allies was the reputation the Carthaginians had for being harsh overlords and the use of Gallic mercenaries, which alienated the Italians who had suffered from Gallic invasions in the past. Because of this, many Italian cities chose to keep their alliances with Rome rather than make new agreements with Carthage.
Hannibal was influenced by Hellenistic policies on the conduct of warfare, which emphasised fighting battles in an enemy’s territory until the enemy realised there was nothing further to be gained. Both sides would then open diplomacy involving settlements of a commercial and geographic nature. In stark contrast, the Roman conduct of warfare emphasised fighting wars until they were decisively won and the enemy regime was destroyed. What Hannibal failed to realise was that, in the words of Richard A. Gabriel, “battles are the means to a strategic end, not ends in themselves” (Gabriel, 2020).
Ultimately, Rome achieved victory over Hannibal due to three reasons: superior human resources, Fabian strategy and the skilful generalship of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Even when most of southern Italy allied with Hannibal after Cannae, Rome could still field superior numbers of troops in battle, drawing on its vast human resources from its northern allies. In the words of Nigel Rodgers, “Hannibal could train his disparate troops…into a unified force, but he needed reinforcements, which never came. Meanwhile, Roman reserves of manpower – sources say over 700,000 – were readily available” (Rodgers, 2007, p.183). Although Carthage did send some reinforcements after his victory at Cannae in the form of Numidian cavalry and war elephants, these were not enough for Hannibal to successfully continue his campaign in Italy.
In addition to a lack of reinforcements, Hannibal also had to deal with the Roman strategy of avoiding battle while conducting scorched earth policies, which denied the Carthaginians the ability to live off the land. Known today as Fabian Strategy, it was named after Quintus Fabius Maximus, Rome’s emergency dictator after the defeat at Lake Trasimene in 217 BCE. Although Fabius was initially derided for his policy and nicknamed ‘Cunctator’ or Delayer, the wisdom of his policy shone through after Rome’s crushing defeat at Cannae, and the Roman army refused to engage Hannibal in battle again. According to Plutarch, Hannibal feared both Roman manpower and its Fabian strategy, stating that “By his frequent encounters with Marcellus…Hannibal saw his forces shaken and swept away; while by Fabius…they were imperceptibly worn away and consumed” (Plut. Fab. 19.4).
Finally, the major factor that sealed Hannibal’s defeat was the military genius of Publius Cornelius Scipio, who had served in the Roman armies that had fought against Hannibal. Scipio had studied Hannibal’s tactics and employed them to good effect during his campaigns in Spain and North Africa. At the Battle of Ilipa in 206 BCE, for example, Scipio executed a perfect double envelopment, like the one used by Hannibal at Cannae, against a Carthaginian army under Hasdrubal Gisco. Realising that Hasdrubal’s best troops were positioned in the centre, Scipio placed his legionaries and cavalry on the wings while refusing his centre, which consisted of Iberian infantry. The advancing legionaries and cavalry then made a 90-degree turn against Hasdrubal’s weaker flanks, which quickly buckled and routed. Scipio ended up achieving all the things that Hannibal could not, and when the two finally met in battle at Zama, the student proved superior to the master.
Hannibal Barca’s campaigns against Rome were a significant development in the ancient world. His sixteen years in Italy brought the Romans to the brink of defeat. Still, even after three brilliant victories, he was unable to secure the allies he needed to conclude his campaign successfully. After Cannae, a lethal combination of a lack of reinforcements and Fabian strategy confined Hannibal to southern Italy, while giving the Romans sufficient space to launch a counterattack against Carthage in Spain and North Africa. Scipio’s victory over Hannibal would ensure that Rome, not Carthage, would dominate the Mediterranean world for the next several hundred years.
Bibliography
Gabriel, Richard A. “Why Hannibal Lost.” History Net. Accessed May 22, 2020. www.historynet.com/why-hannibal-lost.htm
Garner, Tom. “Could Hannibal Have Taken Rome?” History of War. September 2019.
Hunt, Patrick N. Hannibal. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2018.
Livy. The History of Rome, Book 22. Translated by Benjamin Oliver Foster. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1929.
Plutarch. Life of Fabius Maximus. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, Loeb Classical Library, 1916.
Polybius. The Histories. Translated by William Roger Paton. Cambridge, Loeb Classical Library, 1922.
Potter, David. Rome in the Ancient World: From Romulus to Justinian. London, Thomas & Hudson, 2014.
Rodgers, Nigel. The History and Conquests of Ancient Rome. London, Hermes House, 2007.