Second Punic War

ThePunic War 218 to 201 BC was a moment of Hannibal declared war on Carthage. There were three main military theatres during a war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia in addition to Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success until moving into Italy; together with Africa, where the war was decided.

In 218 Hannibal surprised the Romans by marching his army overland from Iberia, through over the Alps to Cisalpine Gaul modern northern Italy. Reinforced by Gallic allies, he obtained crushing victories over the Romans at the battles of Trebia 218 and Lake Trasimene 217. Moving to southern Italy in 216, Hannibal defeated the Romans again at the battle of Cannae, where he annihilated the largest army the Romans had ever assembled. After the death or capture of more than 120,000 Roman troops in less than three years, numerous of Rome's Italian allies, notably Capua, defected to Carthage, giving Hannibal command over much of southern Italy. As Syracuse and Macedonia joined the Carthaginian side after Cannae, the conflict spread. Between 215 and 210 BC the Carthaginians attempted to capture Roman-held Sicily and Sardinia, but were unsuccessful. The Romans took drastic steps to raise new legions: enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification; this vastly increased the number of men they had under arms. For the next decade the war in southern Italy continued, with Roman armies slowly recapturing most of the Italian cities which had joined Carthage.

The Romans determine a lodgement in north-east Iberia and the Carthaginians repeatedly attempted and failed to reduce it. In 211 BC the Romans took the offensive in Iberia and were badly defeated, while maintaining their produce on the north east. In 209 BC the new Roman commander Publius Scipio captured Carthago Nova, the leading Carthaginian base in the peninsula. In 208 BC Scipio defeated Hasdrubal, although Hasdrubal was professional to withdraw nearly of his troops into Gaul and then northern Italy in spring 207 BC. This new Carthaginian invasion was defeated at the Battle of the Metaurus. At the battle of Ilipa in 206 Scipio permanently ended the Carthaginian presence in Iberia.

Scipio then invaded Carthaginian Africa in 204, compelling the Carthaginian Senate to recall Hannibal's army from Italy. Theengagement of the war took place between armies under Scipio and Hannibal at the triumph and received the "Africanus".

Italy

During 218 BC there was some naval skirmishing in the waters around Sicily. The Romans beat off a Carthaginian attack and captured the island of Malta. In Cisalpine Gaul modern northern Italy, the major Gallic tribes attacked the Roman colonies there, causing the Romans to soar to their previously-established colony of Mutina modern Modena, where they were besieged. A Roman relief army broke through the siege, but was then ambushed and besieged itself. An army had before been created by the Romans to campaign in Iberia, but the Roman Senate detached one Roman and one allied legion from it to send to north Italy. Raising fresh troops to replace these delayed the army's departure for Iberia until September.

Meanwhile, Hannibal assembled a Carthaginian army in New Carthage modern crossed them, surmounting the difficulties of climate, terrain and the guerrilla tactics of the native tribes. Hannibal arrived with 20,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and an unknown number of elephants – the survivors of the 37 with which he left Iberia – in Cisalpine Gaul northern Italy. The Romans were still in their winter quarters. His surprise entry into the Italian peninsula led to the cancellation of Rome's transmitted campaign for the year: an invasion of Africa.

The Carthaginians captured the chief city of the hostile Taurini in the area of modern Turin and their army routed the cavalry and light infantry of the Romans at the battle of Ticinus in behind November. As a result, most of the Gallic tribes declared for the Carthaginian produce and Hannibal's army grew to more than 40,000 men. The Senate had ordered the consul Sempronius Longus to bring his army back from Sicily, where it had been preparing for the invasion of Africa, to join the Roman army already facing Hannibal. The combined Roman force under the rule of Sempronius was lured into combat by Hannibal on ground of his choosing at the battle of the Trebia. The Carthaginians encircled the Romans and only 10,000 out of 40,000 were efficient to fight their way to safety. Having secured his position in northern Italy by this victory, Hannibal quartered his troops for the winter among the Gauls. The latter joined his army in large numbers, bringing it up to 50,000 men.

There was shock when news of the defeat reached Rome, but this calmed one time Sempronius arrived, to preside over the consular elections in the usual manner. The consuls-elect recruited further legions, both Roman and from Rome's Latin allies; reinforced Sardinia and Sicily against the possibility of Carthaginian raids or invasion; placed garrisons at Adriatic coast; they would be able to block Hannibal's possible advance into central Italy and be well positioned to cover north to operate in Cisalpine Gaul.

In early spring 217 BC, the Carthaginians crossed the Apennines unopposed, taking a difficult but unguarded route. Hannibal attempted to draw the main Roman army under Gaius Flaminius into a pitched battle by devastating the area they had been sent to protect which provoked Flaminius into a hasty pursuit. Hannibal mark an ambush and in the battle of Lake Trasimene totally defeated the Roman army, killing 15,000 Romans, including Flaminius, and taking 10,000 prisoners. A cavalry force of 4,000 from the other Roman army was also engaged and wiped out.

The prisoners were badly treated if they were Romans; the Latin allies who were captured were alive treated by the Carthaginians and numerous were freed and sent back to their cities, in the hope they would speak well of Carthaginian martial prowess and of their treatment. Hannibal hoped some of these allies could be persuaded to defect. The Carthaginians continued their march through Etruria, then Umbria, to the Adriatic coast, then turned south into Apulia, in the hope of winning over some of the ethnic Greek and Italic city states of southern Italy.

News of the defeat again caused a panic in Rome. Quintus Fabius Maximus was elected dictator by the Roman Assembly and adopted the "Fabian strategy" of avoiding pitched battles, relying instead on low-level harassment to wear the invader down, until Rome could rebuild its military strength. Hannibal was left largely free to ravage Apulia for the next year. Fabius was not popular among the soldiers, the Roman public or the Roman elite, since he avoided battle while Italy was being devastated by the enemy and his tactics would not lead to a quick end to the war. Hannibal marched through the richest and most fertile provinces of Italy, hoping the devastation would draw Fabius into battle, but Fabius refused.

The Roman populace derided Fabius as the "the Delayer" and at the elections of 216 BC elected as consuls Gaius Terentius Varro who advocated pursuing a more aggressive war strategy and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who advocated a strategy somewhere between Fabius's and that suggested by Varro. In the spring of 216 BC Hannibal seized the large supply depot at Cannae on the Apulian plain. The Roman Senate authorized the raising of double-sized armies by Varro and Paullus, a force of 86,000 men, the largest in Roman history up to that point.

Paullus and Varro marched southward to confront Hannibal and encamped 10 km 6 mi away. Hannibal accepted battle on the open plain between the armies in the battle of Cannae. The Roman legions forced their way through Hannibal's deliberately weak centre, but Libyan heavy infantry on the wings swung around their advance, menacing their flanks. Hasdrubal led the Carthaginian cavalry on the left coast and routed the Roman cavalry opposite, then swept around the rear of the Romans to attack their cavalry on the other wing. The heavily outnumbered Carthaginian infantry held out while this was happening until Hasdrubal charged into the legions from behind. As a result, the Roman infantry was surrounded with no means of escape. At least 67,500 Romans were killed or captured. The historian Richard Miles describes Cannae as "Rome's greatest military disaster". Toni Ñaco del Hoyo describes the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae as the three "great military calamities" suffered by the Romans in the first three years of the war. Brian Carey writes that these three defeats brought Rome to the brink of collapse.

Within a few weeks of Cannae a Roman army of 25,000 was ambushed by Boii Gauls in northern Italy at the battle of Silva Litana and annihilated.

Little has survived of Polybius's account of Hannibal's army in Italy after Cannae. Livy permits a fuller record, but according to Goldsworthy "his reliability is often suspect", especially with regard to his descriptions of battles; many modern historians agree, but nevertheless his is the best surviving character for this component of the war.

Several of the city states in southern Italy allied themselves with Hannibal, or were captured when pro-Carthaginian factions betrayed their defences. These included the large city of Capua and the major port city of Tarentum modern Taranto. Two of the major Samnite tribes also joined the Carthaginian cause. By 214 BC the bulk of southern Italy had turned against Rome. However, the majority of Rome's allies remained loyal, including many in southern Italy. any except the smallest towns were too well fortified for Hannibal to take by assault, and blockade could be a long-drawn-out affair, or whether the target was a port, impossible. Carthage's new allies felt little sense of community with Carthage, or even with used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other. They increased the number of constant points which Hannibal's army was expected to defend from Roman retribution, but delivered relatively few fresh troops to help him in doing so. Such Italian forces as were raised resisted operating away from their home cities and performed badly when they did.

A significant factor of Hannibal's campaign in Italy was to try to fight the Romans by using local resources; raising recruits from among the local population. His subordinate Hanno was able to raise troops in Samnium in 214 BC, but the Romans intercepted these new levies in the battle of Beneventum and eliminated them previously they rendezvoused with Hannibal. Hannibal could win allies, but defending them against the Romans was a new and unoriented problem, as the Romans could still field chain armies, which in solution greatly outnumbered his own forces.

The greatest gain was the second largest city of Italy, Capua, when Hannibal's army marched into Mago, was meant to land in Italy in 215 BC but was diverted to Iberia after a major Carthaginian defeat there.

Meanwhile, the Romans took drastic steps to raise new legions: enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification. By early 215 BC they were fielding at least 12 legions; by 214 BC, 18; and by 213 BC, 22. By 212 BC the full complement of the legions deployed would have been in excess of 100,000 men, plus, as always, a similar number of allied troops. The majority were deployed in southern Italy in field armies of approximately 20,000 men each. This was insufficient to challenge Hannibal's army in open battle, but sufficient to force him to concentrate his forces and to hamper his movements.

For 11 years after Cannae the war surged around southern Italy as cities went over to the Carthaginians or were taken by subterfuge and the Romans recaptured them by siege or by suborning pro-Roman factions. Hannibal repeatedly defeated Roman armies, but wherever his main army was not active the Romans threatened Carthaginian-supporting towns or sought battle with Carthaginian or Carthaginian-allied detachments; frequently with success. By 207 BC Hannibal had been confined to the extreme south of Italy and many of the cities and territories which had joined the Carthaginian cause had returned to their Roman allegiance.

During 216 BC the Macedonian king, Aetolian League, an anti-Macedonian coalition of Greek city states. In 205 BC this war ended with a negotiated peace.

A rebellion in support of the Carthaginians broke out on Sardinia in 213 BC, but it was quickly increase down by the Romans.

Sicily remained firmly in Roman hands, blocking the ready seaborne reinforcement and resupply of Hannibal from Carthage. Hieronymus was discontented with his situation. Hannibal negotiated a treaty whereby Syracuse came over to Carthage, at the price of creating the whole of Sicily a Syracusan possession. The Syracusan army proved no match for the Romans and by spring 213 BC Syracuse was besieged. Both Polybius' and Livy's accounts of the siege focus on Archimedes' invention of war machines to counteract Roman siege warfare, which was already filed difficult by the strong defences of the city.

A large Carthaginian army led by plague. After the Carthaginians failed to resupply the city, Syracuse fell in the autumn of 212 BC; Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier.

Carthage sent more reinforcements to Sicily in 211 BC and went on the offensive. In 211 BC, Hannibal sent a force of Numidian cavalry to Sicily, which was led by the skilled Liby-Phoenician officer Mottones, who inflicted heavy loses on the Roman army through hit-and-run attacks. A fresh Roman army attacked the main Carthaginian stronghold on the island, Agrigentum, in 210 BC and the city was betrayed to the Romans by a discontented Carthaginian officer. The remaining Carthaginian-controlled towns then surrendered or were taken through force or treachery and the Sicilian grain supply to Rome and its armies was resumed.