Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Threat | Hannibal | Odyssey

[Music] i am about to tell the story of the most memorable war in history that namely which was fought by carthage under the leadership of hannibal against rome livy the history of rome [Music] ah [Music] hannibal the carthaginian was one of the greatest generals the world has seen no one before or after him could take on and defeat the roman legions with such contemptuous e i think hannibal's genius really had three main components first of all he was a wonderful tactician he knew how to handle different types of forces and maneuver them on the battlefield secondly he was very good at motivating his men even disparate forces from different countries and getting them to enjoy privations and to fight very well for him and third he had insight into the minds of his opponents he could think what they were trying to do he could exploit their blunders and use them against them [Music] [Applause] in a campaign that has become a legend hannibal marched his forces over the alps and turned italy into a battlefield [Music] roman armies sent against him were outmaneuvered out fought and cut to pieces hannibal was something really quite exceptional as far as they were concerned and i don't think they really expected to have to deal with a wizard in the way that they had to deal with hannibal but in the end the dead came back to haunt him in revenge for hannibal's triumphs the romans obliterated carthage and went on to rule their own mighty empire [Music] hannibal was the last of rome's enemies who stood any chance of defeating them undermining them of fragmenting roman power in italy after the defeat of hannibal rome was impregnable it swallowed up the rest of the mediterranean base in spain north africa greece syria egypt and the empire lasted for 400 years hannibal's war against rome was a personal obsession which ended only in death 33 years after he'd taken the romans to the brink of defeat he killed himself to avoid capture by his hated enemy it's a story which could have ended so differently [Music] at the start of the third century bc the political map of the mediterranean was still in formation in the west the contest for domination was between rome and carthage on the north african coast of the two carthage on the site which is now tunis was the more formidable it had become rich by dominating the trade routes of the mediterranean and controlled supplies of tin silver and gold [Music] in the third century bc carthage was one of the richest if not the richest mediterranean power and there were two bases of carthaginian wealth one was the trade commerce the other basis of carthaginian wealth was the fertile land of north africa and in the third century bc they were exporting wheat some carthaginian wheat reached athens for example and olive oil and also probably wine rome founded at roughly the same time as carthage around 800 bc was the upstart city its power was built not on trade but on its ruthless citizen army roma society passionately devoted to war at all levels among the aristocrats uh you could gain prestige only if you were a victorious general you could get a triumph only if 5 000 of the enemy were killed in a single battle and among the lower classes among the peasants somewhere between 15 and 50 percent of young men had to serve in the army anything from five to seven years everyone was concerned with killing with defending themselves with violence carthage by contrast was a sea power which maintained a massive fleet to protect its trade routes around the mediterranean these harbors are totally man-made and hidden behind the city walls 300 000 cubic meters of soil were dug out to make the two artificial harbors the outer rectangular harbour housed the merchant fleet this port protected the military harbor [Music] the only way into the circular port was through a narrow passage which in times of war could be blocked with chains [Music] these dry docks could accommodate 220 warships at one time and they enabled the carthaginians to maintain the fastest fleet in the mediterranean a british team of archaeologists discovered some of the foundations of this magnificent structure that is more than 2 000 years old i'm in one of the 30 ship sheds on the island and the ships were drawn up from the sea in the foreground up these ramps to stand on them and they the hulls of the ship slid on the timbers here laid at intervals down the ramp now this ramp is of course reconstructed but it's based exactly on the remains that were excavated here these timbers were found exactly where they were just a little bit lower as charred remains this is a slightly unusual ramp in that it has a special extra facility of these little chambers or pits this is in fact a careening ramp where workmen could get down once the hull of the ship was hauled up and careen the ship's hulls or scrape off the barnacles and other incrustations on the hulls the carthaginian merchant class were not predisposed to war traditionally they'd used their wealth to hire mercenaries in rome they faced an enemy with a quite different attitude to life [Music] the carthaginians were a commercial trading empire they thought very much in terms of profit and loss they used military forces for benefits when the costs exceeded the benefits they were willing to make peace the romans were much more a farmer people who took an all-or-nothing attitude when they got into wars they expected to win they would fight on even in adversity and when they prevailed as they almost always did they would expect the opponents to be utterly subdued by the time hannibal was born in 247 bc the two nations had already been at war rome had won and the carthaginian merchant class who controlled their assembly had settled for peace the treaty forced them to give up territories in sicily and corsica and they had to watch the empire shrink further as rome annexed sardinia but more significant still was that the first war had cost them control of the seas but the carthaginians were still a threat and not just militarily to romans they were an alien race from what we would call the middle east with strange gods and cruel ways of worship there were two very important and rather different elements in ancient religion one of which was to adore a deity and this was usually done by making a very precious and beautiful statue and putting it inside a beautiful and lavishly built building and this of course is very familiar to us in the form of greek and roman temples the other which was particularly favored by the carthaginians was to engage in a collective act of sacrifice we must imagine there was an altar on which animals and in some cases young human beings might have been sacrificed now we know that this temple in roman times was dedicated to saturn and saturn is the equivalent of the carthaginian god baal and baal was the most important god for giving sacrifices and it was to bale and his consort tonite that in carthage the babies were sacrificed in the sanctuary there legend has it that when hannibal was a boy he was taken by his father to the temple of one such god melkart and there made to swear undying hatred of rome his father hamilkar was from the aristocratic barker family soldiers who despised the merchant class for their appeasement policy [Music] the story of that crucial moment in his life makes no mention of human sacrifice but there is little question that it sometimes happened here in this sanctuary archaeologists have uncovered chilling evidence of the part it played in carthaginian life gravestones or steelies with inscriptions that actually record the name and age of the child sacrificed and in what cause they died whether or not hannibal's obsession with rome started like that it was reinforced by an extraordinary childhood as a boy in a soldier's world at the age of nine he was taken to spain where his father's army was stationed it would be nearly 40 years before he saw his homeland again the first war with rome had left carthage with a foothold in southern spain hamilkar wanted to consolidate their hold on it and lay the foundations of a new empire to make up for the lands the merchants back home and given away the mediterranean really consists of that time of power blocks there's egypt syria there's greece italy spain and north africa each has roughly the same population three six million and spain was particularly powerful it was politically fragmented but it had a huge resource silver mines silver mines to make money and money was the strength of it you could pay armies and we know the silver mines were active curiously because of a recent research in the greenland ice cap basically you drill through the ice cap and you can get roman levels and you can find lead pollution lead and silver mine together and you can estimate the volume of lead silver mining in spain in the third century they were very busy a lot of silver was mined it was a huge resource that carthage had captured throughout his teenage years hannibal lived a soldier's life at his father's side it was a masterclass in the skills of leading an army the immediate task for the carthaginian expeditionary force was to tighten their grip on the iberian peninsula but no one was in any doubt as to who the eventual target was rome in 229 when hannibal was just 18 his charismatic father hamilkar was killed in battle against iberian tribesmen on his death command of the army passed to his son-in-law hazrabal could see the military genius of his young kinsmen and put hannibal in charge of the cavalry vital experience for the years ahead eight years later hannibal took another step closer when hasrebel paid the penalty for punishing one of his subordinates by torture in that sword thrust hannibal's moment had come his government at home may have had their doubts but his soldiers had none the veterans who proclaimed hannibal commander in chief saw him as the reincarnation of his father he was just 26 years old is rather like alexander the great he has the advantage of having a warrior father who takes him on campaigns from an early age so he gets this experience and when he succeeds to power he has the respect of his men because of his lineage but also like alexander that's not enough in itself and there are plenty of carthaginian commanders who do not do as well as hannibal hannibal has the natural genius to exploit that situation and to go on to become a truly great general those 16 years in spain ended the first act of his extraordinary career ahead for his life's obsession taking the war to rome unlike athens or rome carthage has left few traces what has been excavated 2000 years later offers just a few glimpses of its greatness but at the time hannibal began his campaign carthage was probably the richest city in the mediterranean more beautiful than rome as refined as athens and although it's rome that is now famed for its engineering in those days carthage was streets ahead we're in this uh planned city block up on the besse hill at carthage and this is of interest because it dates pretty much from the time of hannibal towards the end of his life and it's a neatly planned rectilinear block designed for buildings in multiple occupation small traders and artisans and people who weren't the richest people but had some wealth i think we must imagine this building as being at least two stories high if not three stories high appian says that one of the writers about carthage says that there were buildings as much as six stories high in carthage beneath the floor of the room and beneath the floor of the courtyard where i am is the water storage facility and this is one of the most sophisticated features of these buildings here is the wellhead from which you could come down and draw out water with your bucket the carthaginian water storage system would not have been possible without waterproof cement which until recently was always regarded as a roman invention the other feature where in many ways carthage was at least the equal if not ahead of the romans at this stage is in the waterproof mortar which lines the side of the cistern this one is about seven meters deep i think and about four meters long which means its capacity would be about 30 cubic meters this sophisticated water collection system used in everyday life was the most highly developed in the world rome at that time was a city at the head of a confederacy of southern and central italian provinces it was growing fast but was still a long way from being the imperial power it later became the north had only recently been conquered and the gauls who lived there were still troublesome and rebellious back in spain hannibal knew the romans were the growing power in the region but he didn't believe they were invincible abiding his time he decided to test his command in the west far away from rome's sphere of influence hannibal took his army up to the rivertagus facing him was a much larger force of iberians legends report that crossing secretly at night he took the enemy by surprise and had victory in his pocket by lunchtime with few losses much of the damage was done by hannibal's elephants which charged and trampled the iberian infantry elephants with a carthaginian special weapon normally docile creatures all these were specially trained for war on the day of a battle they were fed a diet of figs this provoked a skin allergy similar to human eczema which made them bad tempered and hostile they were also given alcohol which encouraged them to charge into enemy ranks hannibal wins his first battlefield victory by using the terrain sheltering behind a river against this massive spanish tribesmen and also using combined arms his elephants and his cavalry to discomfort the enemy infantry both of these the use of terrain and the use of different forces are four tastes of what is to come later against the romans [Music] news of hannibal's victory traveled back to rome in response they strengthened an existing treaty with the city of sagunton [Music] unimpressed hannibal laid siege to saguntum knowing that the romans were too busy quelling a rebellion among the gauls in northern italy to come to help after eight months the city fell the inhabitants were raped and murdered the possessions looted the protection of rome and counted for nothing saguntum is important in several ways it's a key city which hannibal must take if he's not to have an enemy behind him where to move against italy it gives hannibal a taste of the problems of conducting a siege even against a relatively minor city it was too much for the romans they sent ambassadors to the carthaginian assembly and demanded that hannibal be handed over to them to face roman justice the merchant leaders of carthage were not looking for trouble this was a demand too far they said no and the two rivals were once again at war [Music] hannibal was about to spring his first surprise instead of waiting for a roman army to attack him either in spain or africa he was going to attack italy direct his object was to carry the war to rome itself and destroy them before they could destroy carthage the romans were overconfident they believed that they simply needed to invade spain and africa win a victory and the war would be won they had control of the sea since the first punic war they'd seized it from carthage that was the normal way to move such long distances therefore the idea that hannibal would take a large army through unconquered tribal territory over two great ranges of mountains to attack them in their home base of italy must have seemed unthinkable but thinking the unthinkable was hannibal's trademark his genius was to see that italy was rome's most vulnerable spot not only was their coalition of italian towns still loose but in the north the gauls who lived south of the alps had only recently been conquered and were ripe for revolt he set about planning a campaign which has gone down in the textbooks of military history hannibal takes exactly the actions that we would expect of a modern general to prepare for his expedition he gathers intelligence he attempts to make allies along the route and he also takes care to safeguard his own territories in spain and africa by leaving his subordinates and troops sufficient to defend them in great secrecy hannibal conferred with then voice from gaelic tribes in france if he could get them to join him he wouldn't have to fight his way to the alps he also met with gauls from the po valley in northern italy whom he hoped would rebel against rome and join his army his eventual plan was to get the whole italian coalition to defect to his side only in that very year 218 the romans had established two new colonies on the po and he wanted to know what sort of a welcome he would have if and when he arrived and it was when his agent sent to northern italy returned to his capital at cartagena in spain with a favorable report that he finally decided to move off in june [Music] and so hannibal left spain with about 90 000 troops and a strike force of 34 elephants [Music] the first stage of his march was through northern spain and over the pyrenees it wasn't long before he ran into trouble a marching army such as that of hannibal's is an immensely voracious entity it's like a moving town as it goes through territories especially backward territories it will eat up all the food take all the fodder all the firewood and leave the inhabitants destitute it's not surprising therefore that many of them try to fight to resist the passage of hannibal's forces quite by chance the romans might have intercepted him as he made his way towards what is now marseille but as usual his intelligence was better than theirs and he escaped roman dispositions at the beginning of the war show quite conclusively that they had no idea that hannibal was going to invade italy over the alps they sent one army to spain and one army to sicily with the idea of invading africa indeed it wasn't until the army destined for spain came to anchor near the mouth of the rome that they heard that hannibal was on his on his way and the first use they had was hannibal was crossing the pyrenees whereas in fact of course hannibal was crossing the road a few hundred miles north of where they were but he paid a price for eluding them the elephants were terrified of the fast-flowing roan which is between 200 and 500 metres wide at that point we do not know how many elephants were lost in the river but polybius tells us that many elephant drivers drowned when the animals fell off the rafts [Music] over five months had passed since he left spain and it was autumn when he began to climb into the mountains [Music] by then it was freezing particularly at night his soldiers most of them brought up in spain and africa suffered terribly on top of that they came under attack from local tribesmen most of the elephants died during that crossing of the alps animal experts believe that the hard climb would have given the elephants blisters demoralizing them to such an extent that they would have refused to move any further in the freezing elements their blood temperature would drop and they would have died of hypothermia [Music] i think it's amazing even now to think how an army could have crossed the alps and hannibal didn't just take the easy way along the coast road uh he went 300 kilometers from the uh marseille coast up to grenoble and through the alps in late autumn with his army with his elephants uh he had some allies but he also had hostile tribes to go through and suddenly arrive in north italy near turin wow the roads must have been just amazed i don't think they had any idea that this would happen but hannibal's army was in poor shape tens of thousands of men and thousands of horses had died on the journey to italy he now commanded about 20 000 half-starved soldiers 6 000 cavalrymen on bony horses and a few elephants hannibal's short-term objective after arriving in italy is to recover from the arduous march to enable his men to gain local allies and to beat the romans to show that he's able to win victories even in their backyard in the longer term he aims to build on that to continue to win victories to have more and more roman allies coming over to him to the point where the roman confederacy disintegrates the balance of power within italy is shifted and he hopes that rome itself will then be coerced into coming to terms to the south the romans and the allies were mustering an army they had an estimated three-quarters of a million men to choose from outnumbering the invader 30 to 1. [Music] but hannibal's forces were growing as the rebellious goals flocked to his side five thousand cavalry and ten thousand on foot the historians who told hannibal's story saw it from the roman point of view he is crafty deceitful and cruel but even they acknowledge his extraordinary genius for motivating men livi tells the story of how he converted this exhausted crew of mercenaries regulars new recruits and hangars on into a fighting force with so many languages under his command plain words were useless instead he set up some unmistakable theater livy describes how prisoners of war taken in the alps were given an option fight for freedom will be slaves for life [Music] those who chose to fight were matched in single combat the winner would be given weapons armor a horse and freedom to go their way the losers would have freedom of a different sort in death the message to his army was clear hannibal was telling his army that if they fought and triumphed the riches of rome would be theirs if they died in battle they would be spared further ignominy but if they did nothing only the misery of slavery awaited them [Applause] back in rome they were preparing to smash this upstart invading each year the people elected two consuls with equal powers their office gave them the right to raise and lead an army it was a chance to make their name immortal every roman general needs a victory and if you win it's the glory for you and for your family forever and if you lose well that's tough one of that year's consoles was tiberius and pronus an inexperienced commander animal prepared for battle near the trebia river while centronius was rushing north with an army of forty thousand men his younger brother maego was put in charge of two thousand men and told to hide in an overgrown riverbed the plan was for them to spring out when the battle was on and take the romans from behind for that to work the romans had to be drawn into the fight exactly where hannibal wanted he ordered his troops to breakfast early the light cavalry was sent to harass the romans on the other side of the river and then feigned defeat hannibal was banking on the romans chasing them as they retreated and the plan worked by the time the romans had crossed the icy alpine river and formed up on the other side they were already at a disadvantage hannibal's well-fed and rested force marched forward infantry in the middle with elephants and cavalry in each flank hannibal uses the freezing river to put the romans in most serious difficulty he managed to manipulate the consuls and the roman army so that they crossed the river just after dawn the men were so cold that they could hardly hold their weapons and then they had to face hannibal's troops who were warm and well prepared the knockout blow was delivered by mago [Music] at the crucial moment his troops charged out the roman legions were surrounded in their fate sealed [Music] ah [Applause] [Music] hannibal's few remaining elephants caused chaos in roman cavalry ranks the smell of the elephants made the roman horses panic and bolt in fact the battle of trevia was the last time elephants played any significant role in hannibal's italian campaign but the little they did was enough to enhance the message that went back to rome 20 000 romans died that cold winter's day hannibal wins the battle of the trebia by a combination of tactics which are characteristic of his generalship he makes sure that the romans are fighting on an empty stomach he has ambushers who come out behind the romans at the critical moment and he uses his cavalry and his elephants to encircle the roman army and orbit annihilate it the effect of this on the romans is that they are shocked of course to see that their main army has been defeated but they have plenty more forces and it does not initially dent their resolve to confront hannibal and beat him the next time [Music] but they should have learned their lesson there was an enemy at their gate that had come to do serious business and just how serious would soon become clear [Music] hannibal had signaled his arrival in terms the romans should have understood but they still underestimated him as the romans saw it they were sending a well-trained and committed citizen army against a motley crew of foreigners one of the greatest measures of hannibal's generalship is that he wins his victories not with an army that's followed him for many many years that's composed exclusively of veteran troops but one that's made up of many different nationalities many of whom have been with him for only a short time who don't speak the same language and he welds them very quickly into a partnership that can achieve victories against the much more cohesive better equipped roman forces key to hannibal's success was his cavalry consisting of two main units the heavy brigade and the light brigade the heavy brigade comprised of spaniards and gauls riding powerful horses they were armed with a short lance that could double as a javelin and a two-edged sword suitable for both cutting and thrusting the new median horsemen from north africa formed the light brigade this elite core was the best cavalry of their age they had very light and basic weapons consisting of a few javelins a dagger and a short sword the sword was terrifyingly effective in the hands of these horsemen [Applause] when the numidian cavalry attacked fleeing infantry they would often slash the hamstrings of the unfortunate enemy immobilizing them and taking them out of the battle the helpless men were left to die a slow agonizing death or were finished off later [Applause] the romans feared these men known as the slingers they hurled stones and led bullets at their enemies with deadly accuracy they would open fire in the early stages of any conflict withdrawing to join the light infantry before the major engagement took place the main body of the infantry was drawn from north africa libya spain and gore the africans were heavily armed in the greek fashion with large shields breastplates helmets greaves cutting swords for close work and long spears for the first encounter the spanish troops used a short double-edged sword equally useful for cut and thrust some of the men also carried a curved saber the libyan light infantry were famed for their sobriety and a remarkable resistance to fatigue and privation they carried the bare minimum of weapons a few javelins a dagger and a small shield called a cetric the goals were fierce fighters hannibal used them as shock troops for the front line for his infantry and they suffered the heaviest casualties many of hannibal's men now trained with roman swords at trebia hannibal had seen how good they were for hand-to-hand fighting he wasted no time in collecting them up and issuing them to his infantry such was the army that hannibal led across the apennine mountains in the spring of 217 bc there were two possible routes through the mountains the roman consuls for that year flaminius and geminus each took an army to meet him their plan was to maneuver hannibal into a position where both the armies could engage him at once flaminius allowed hannibal through the pass then set off in pursuit hoping to drive him towards geminus's army but hannibal could see the trap and was determined to keep the two armies apart to force flaminius's hand hannibal set about pillaging the fertile chianti region [Music] as soon as hannibal saw lake trazamine he knew it was the perfect location for an ambush two thousand years ago the water level was higher than it is today this path called by locals malpasso bad step was almost at the water's edge malpasso was the only way through a small valley surrounded by steep hills on one side and the lake on the other hannibal positioned his troops in the woods around the small valley he then ordered a party of his men to make camp on the furthest hill and as night fell to light as many fires as they could the trap was sprung as soon as the romans saw the fires in the distance they assumed that hannibal's army was trying to escape in the case of tressamine this was an area which as livy says was born was naturally made for ambushes the trick here was that no general really expects to be ambushed when he's in command of something like 25 000 men as flaminius was indeed he probably thought if anything that hannibal was walking into a trap rather than himself it was an ambush on a gigantic scale and one finds it difficult to think of a parallel in military history for one on such a scale at dawn flaminius set off in hot pursuit of the lights he'd seen the night before twenty thousand men and five thousand horses marched two by two down the narrow path into the valley what happens at the traci mean is a classic ambush flaminius with a sizable army is pursuing hannibal who he thinks is fleeing flaminius is hurrying along the shore of the lake to catch up and force a battle and hopefully win unfortunately for him hannibal has hidden his men very cleverly along the lake shore using the terrain [Music] incredibly animal's army of 35 000 men waited silently as 25 000 romans filed past just meters away among them were gauls whose families have been massacred two years before by an army under flaminius's command they were itching for revenge the carthaginian cavalry sealed the trap by blocking the end of the path when hannibal was ready he gave the order to attack the roman army had no time to get into battle formation most men were slaughtered before they knew what was happening livy in his history of rome tells how a gaul named acharyas recognized the armor of the commander who would lane waste his homeland he made his way through the battle and killed consul flaminius with islam neither his corpse nor armor was ever found [Music] news of the ambush reached geminis too late he sent four thousand men to help but they were cut off and destroyed the remnants of flaminius's army were driven back by africans spaniards and gauls to the shores of the lake unable to retreat any further they were massacred in the water or drowned under the weight of their armor [Music] more than 16 000 roman soldiers died at trashy mean hannibal's great achievement at tressamine is the scale of the ambush which he pulls off ambushes are common in warfare between forces of a few dozen men what hannibal does is to conceal an army of several tens of thousands on a hillside and to enforce such discipline that they do not give their presence away by noise by a premature attack despite the nerves they must have felt it's a great tribute to his own eye for ground and to the discipline which he can encourage in such an army the other thing hannibal wanted to encourage was the disintegration of rome's federation of italian cities because it wasn't happening as fast as he expected he gave orders that prisoners of war should be treated leniently as long as they weren't roman we are told that he released his italian and latin allies telling them to go home and tell their fellow countrymen that he had not come to italy to fight them he'd come to fight rome on their behalf and this suggests that the linchpin of his strategy was to try to win over rome's allies to his side in effect to fight rome with her own strength archaeology has revealed what may be another interesting insight into this strategy trasimine is on etruscan land there are signs that after the battle the carthaginians went to great lengths to make the site safe for local people in the 1950s a series of ditches cut into the landscape were discovered this one has been restored to its original condition archaeologists believe these ovens were part of a system that hannibal devised for burning the thousands of corpses which would have caused epidemics if left to rot these are some of the cremation ovens they're of a truncated cone or ovoid shape five or six meters deep with a diameter of four or five meters according to the archaeologist cecini they were used for burning the bodies of soldiers who'd fallen in battle the carthaginians used the simple method they would lay tree trunks and branches across the top and put the corpses over them then fires would be lit in the pits underneath the heat and the flames would consume the bodies and then the ash would collapse into the bottom then the whole process was repeated again and again for rome itself there was no comfort news of so many deaths and yet another defeat caused utter chaos the population fell into a state of abject depression livy says that when the stragglers returned mothers and wives dropped dead on the spot at the sight of their kinsmen whom they'd given up for dead they did not know there was worse to come [Music] hannibal's main problem by now was feeding his army there were farms to raid and crops to steel but despite his victories rome's allies were not all defecting to his side and he now faced an unexpected [Music] development enemy that was scorching its own earth it was the strategy of quintus fabius maximus who was now in charge of the roman war effort his plan was to fight a guerrilla war hurrying hannibal without engaging him in a large battle by burning the countryside and leaving no crops for hannibal to steal fabius wanted to starve the carthaginians into giving up the strategy worked but for the romans it was success of the wrong kind roman honour and glory depended upon fighting upon winning battles fabia's tactic of delaying of destroying land so that hannibal didn't have food to live off of holding back shadowing him rather than fighting him must have appeared extraordinary strange as though suddenly we were to say no we won't enter this world cup our team will be better in four years time it will be unheard of we must go and fight and so it wasn't just the aristocrats in rome it was that everyone must have carped and sneered and said you are coward you must fight that's the roman tradition so they nicknamed fabius the delayer and let hannibal off the hook the romans are their own worst enemies they are very uncomfortable with this fabian strategy of delay especially because it means their own farmlands being ruined by hannibal while they stand back and do nothing therefore after a few months new consuls come into power who decide that the best way to tackle hannibal is through traditional roman means amassing a vast army in an open field and crushing him early in the summer of 216 bc the food situation was getting desperate for the carthaginians animal solution was to come here to a roman army grain store at kanye in the far south of italy hannibal captured this fortified town restocked his supplies and prepared to meet his enemy face to face on the open battlefield on learning that the carthaginians had captured the kanye supply depot the newly elected roman consuls led two massive armies to annihilate hannibal once and for all their force consisted of eighty-six thousand men hannibal had fifty thousand but the romans still didn't understand what they were up against the roman army was still fighting in a very archaic way relying on the strength of the group while hannibal who came from a very different background had alexander the great as his role model hannibal fought using a combined force of cavalry and infantry the romans were confident that in the open battlefield they would prevail by sheer weight of numbers but once again hannibal used the terrain to help him he set up his camp with his back towards the wind known today as the label so that the romans would receive its dust laden gusts full in the face he then put his master plan into action perhaps the most amazing part of hannibal's achievement at kanai is that his encirclement occurs not with a larger army than the romans had but with an army only about half their size it's a battle that has gone down in the animals of military history still studied by budding generals today kanye was hannibal's masterpiece as the two armies lined up the roman plan was simple to use their superior infantry numbers to punch through the much weaker carthaginian line but hannibal had cleverly placed a screen of slingers and javelin throwers in front of his infantry and they won the first blood of the day when the roman consul amelia's powerless was severely wounded by a missile hurled from a slinger the skirmishing had another function to obscure the layout of hannibal's forces from the romans it put his tough gallic foot soldiers in the center to take the brunt of the attack but held his crack african infantry slightly further back on each flank near the hills were his numidian cavalry up against a more or less equal force of roman light cavalry [Music] near the river were his heavy cavalry of spaniards and gauls they outnumbered the roman heavy cavalry three to one hannibal's plan was to draw the roman attack towards the shallow crescent of gauls at the center of his line so as the armies closed the african infantry on each flank held back slightly [Music] it worked the brunt of the roman advance was taken by the gauls in the center just where hannibal wanted it over near the hills it was stalemate the light cavalry squadrons were evenly matched but down by the river the roman cavalry was in desperate straits it was a bitter fight but the numbers opposing them were simply too great they were pushed back along the riverbank and finally they turned and were routed at this point came the most convincing evidence of hannibal's uncanny ability to exert iron discipline in the heat of battle rather than pursuing the fleeing roman cavalry the carthaginian cavalry turned across the battlefield towards the other flank [Applause] in the main infantry battle the romans in the center appeared to be winning hannibal's crescent formation flattened out as more and more romans were drawn towards the weak spot in his front line but on the flank nearest the hills the roman light cavalry saw the carthaginian heavy cavalry coming across towards them fearing that they would be trapped they turned and fled the new midians followed them to make sure there was no rally [Applause] but hannibal's plan was working [Music] as more and more romans drove towards where they thought the breakthrough would come the field cleared in front of the carthaginian heavy infantry on the flanks suddenly the romans were being encircled they found themselves being assailed from three sides at once bunched together with no room to swing their swords not only that but hannibal's heavy cavalry now turned and attacked the rear of the roman infantry the romans were now being attacked from all sides they were still numerically stronger but they were caught in advice and the battle became a massacre 55 000 romans were slaughtered with men dying faster than in the battle of the song [Applause] the ancient historian polybius describes in graphic detail the fate of the roman army as the outer ranks continued to fall the rest were gradually huddled in and surrounded they finally all were killed where they stood while this murderous combat was going on the numidians following up the fleeing cavalry killed most of them and unseated the rest polybius the histories on that day around 60 000 romans perished both consoles died as did all the officers and so it was an entire generation fell on the battlefield at kenny this small memorial is all that commemorates one of the greatest battles of all time no generals killed as many of the enemy in one day as hannibal did at kenny 55 000 romans were slain and nineteen thousand were taken prisoner hannibal lost five thousand seven hundred four thousand of whom were gauls [Music] this could have been one of the great turning points in history the flower of the roman army lay dead hannibal's cavalry commander mahabhel pleaded with him to give the order to take rome but hannibal said no believing his soldiers needed time to recoup their strength mahabhel was disgusted according to livy he said to his leader you know how to win a fight hannibal but you do not know how to use your victory [Music] with some irony he exclaimed that it was proof that the gods were wise they gave you many gifts not all one of the greatest questions of the second punic war is what would have happened had hannibal marched on rome straight after cannae to exploit the victory it's rather like saying what if the germans had invaded britain straight after their unexpected triumph over france in 1940 as in that case it's primarily a psychological rather than a physical question psychologically it might have encouraged the romans to make peace physically there were tremendous obstacles they still had forces within rome they still had very strong walls around rome and hannibal's army would have taken a long time to get there a week two weeks perhaps by that time the romans would have been able to organize resistance and hannibal's forces were never very good at taking fortified cities there are other possible answers to the riddle of why he held his army back perhaps he did not want to destroy rome at all just to make it sign a new peace treaty between them maybe he expected the confederation of italian towns at last to defect now that he had defeated the romans so conclusively but the simplest is that he knew his limitations it must have been enormously tempting after hannibal had won the battle at candy he was victorious but he had only 26 000 30 000 men and how could he possibly march against a city like rome 150 000 people fortified all the all the citizens were defended there was no way in which he could possibly take a town as large as that [Music] a siege may have been unproductive but hannibal had other plans according to livy he ordered his troops to take all the rings they found and the fingers of dead romans and put them in a sack the sack was given to mago hannibal's youngest brother deliver them to the carthaginian senate said hannibal with a message from me [Applause] [Music] from the autumn of 216 bc may go marched into the carthaginian senate [Music] [Applause] the proclaim to the jubilant crowd hannibal has just destroyed the roman army send us reinforcements and hannibal will finish rome for good [Applause] to prove his point he poured the thousands of signet rings that had been hacked from the fingers of dead roman soldiers onto the senate floor but the senate divot and prevaricated and it [Music] by the time any supplies arrived they were too late rome's worst moment of crisis had passed and those cautious leaders had unknowingly sounded their own death now [Music] before long the romans would wipe carthage off the face of the land their revenge was so absolute that scarcely a trace of their civilization remain [Music] more than two thousand years later archaeology has dug some clues out of the ground but above ground just one building outside the city is all that's left to give a sense of what the world has lost this is the only building in north africa which has stood from hannibal's time to the present day and this is the tomb of a local chieftain a guy called ataban he was alive almost exactly at the same time as hannibal so this is a monument that hannibal himself would have been very familiar with it's very interesting as a piece of architecture because it shows exactly the mix of cultures that the phoenicians the carthaginians took in their architecture it looks quite greek i mean once one can see the fluted columns on the second story of it ionic columns there lifted directly from greece and the whole masonry of it the rather finely cut stone blocks and particularly the alternation between the very tall courses of stones and the rather squat thin ones this is greek but then there are also other elements here which are egyptian and in particular on the ground floor here there are these capitals in the corner which have a little volute and just above instead of a normal cornice there's a hollowed-out um cornice which is very much a feature of egyptian architecture as found on egyptian temples and at the very top of the whole thing is a lion on top of the pyramid symbolizing the sky [Music] [Applause] so ironically hannibal's victory became the beginning of the end for carthage he was 30 when he stood on the battlefield at kami and still had half his life to live it would all be spent fighting the enemy he had sworn to hate [Music] the time would come when he would look back on his life and realize that for all his brilliance he had failed [Applause] after the disaster at kanye the romans first decision was to put quintus fabius back in command [Music] now everyone realized that the tactics of delay and harry were the only means to confront a tactical genius like hannibal took them more than a decade but eventually the romans fought their way back through a long and arduous guerrilla war how on earth did hannibal manage to hang on in italy for 13 years after the battle of kanye he must have been desperate miserable unable to fight a real battle the romans refusing to face up to him in in in a large battle in italy and the romans having the sense to open a second front to attack spain which was the only place from which he could be reinforced hannibal must have known that his dream was ending even then his power base in spain was under threat while rome's among the towns of italy was holding firm the lack of commitment from carthage itself was fatal even those who had witnessed his triumphs knew now that time was on rome's side hannibal's greatest strategic failure was that he did not encourage the scale of defections which he had hoped for among the roman allies i think his miscalculation was for two reasons first that he perhaps expected the roman confederation to be as weak as the carthaginian alliances proved to be when the romans invaded spain and africa and second that it was his only hope that was the only strategy that offered any chance of beating the romans seven years after kanye the roman army in spain took hannibal's power base at cartagena in doing so they cut off what had become the carthaginian's main source of wealth and hannibal's only source of reinforcements the troops stationed in spain did manage to escape not back home but across the alps to italy they were commanded by hannibal's other brother hazdrabal and their plan was to meet up with hannibal near rome it didn't work out the romans got wind of the plan and intercepted them in northern italy according to polybius hannibal learned the outcome of that meeting in the cruelest way possible a lone horseman galloped up to his camp south of rome and tossed a bundle onto the ground in it was his brother's head [Applause] hannibal now knew that he was on his own worse was that he was facing an enemy which had learned from its mistakes hannibal changed the way that the romans fought their battles never again after kanye were the romans so foolish as to alternate generals commands day by day and in order to beat hannibal they had to entrust generals with power which ran on for years and the romans could never have conquered the mediterranean basin if they'd gone only for annual commands so all the great roman generals had commands julius caesar pompey had commands which lasted for years the first of those great roman generals on which the empire was built was scipio the younger having mopped up the carthaginians left in spain he turned his attention to beating the man he most admired hannibal has essentially run into a stalemate in italy but in order for carthage to lose the war the romans need to break the carthaginian monopoly on good generalship they do this through the advent of scipio the younger scipio africanus is used to become who has learned through bitter experience at firsthand what good generalship can do to roman armies having been present at some of hannibal's victories and in spain and then later in africa he uses his own genius to do the same to the carthaginians as hannibal had earlier done to the romans scipio decided to ignore hannibal's base in southern italy and take the war to africa he knew this would eventually force hannibal to abandon his long campaign and return home to defend carthage on the eve of the decisive battle the two generals agreed to meet livy records when hannibal met scipio he had met the greatest generals not only of their own times but of any to be found in the records of preceding ages scipio held the trump card he'd done a deal with hannibal's numidian cavalry for the right money that agreed to change sides and scipio needed time for them to arrive from libya it was a coup worthy of hannibal himself and a mortal blow to the carthaginians when the two sides met in battle at zama not even hannibal's genius could save him from defeat the year was 202 bc the second punic war had lasted 16 years zama is the waterloo of the second punic war hannibal loses it for two reasons first he faces for the first time a general as good as him just as napoleon faced wellington at waterloo hannibal faces scipio at zama secondly the quality of the armies has shifted the roman army is still dominant in heavy infantry but these are very experienced troops who've been through 20 years of war and now they have cavalry allies which give them cavalry superiority similar to that which hannibal had enjoyed at can i and it's that cavalry superiority in the end which enables scipio to prevail the carthaginian peace party quickly settled with rome and for good measure exiled hannibal from the city when he tried to challenge for political power himself during the shaky peace that followed the war the immediate reason for hannibal's exile from carthage was a combination of his involvement in politics and trying to stamp out corruption thereby making enemies and roman pressure on carthage because of course they wanted to make sure there was no resurgence of carthaginian power under a great leader like hannibal rome for its part went from strength to strength it was hannibal's tragedy that his long feud with rome would end in his own city's humiliation and the greater glory of rome rome's war with hannibal marks a watershed in the evolution of the roman empire basically before the war with hannibal rome wasn't a power in italy afterwards it had spain it had a subservient north africa doubled its revenues from the taxes that the carthaginians defeated carthaginians paid to rome and because hannibal had tried to make an alliance with north greece rome immediately to defeated carthage turn its attack on on greece so this was the beginning of rome's domination of the whole of the mediterranean but even in exile hannibal never gave up as rome expanded its power into the eastern mediterranean he offered his services to whoever would take the romans on they for their part pursued him relentlessly hannibal was still capable of general ship and he was actually able to advise the opponents of rome in the eastern mediterranean long after the second punic war so it's not surprising that the memories of the events of the second punic war would predispose them to want to put an end to this great opponent one place in which he fetched up was bithynia which was fighting a war with the roman client state of pergamum even then in the last years of his life he could still demonstrate the brilliant inventive mind that had terrified the romans [Music] the battle was to be at sea it occurred to hannibal that in ships where oarsmen were naked and that even the marines had little clothing nothing could be more fearsome than the explosion on board of bombs of poisonous snakes [Music] so simple when the two fleets engaged and the pots exploded onto the decks there was panic and the bithynians secured their victory [Music] romans did not ignore warning signs like that on hearing of hannibal's involvement in the battle they sent an army to capture him eventually he was cornered in the bithnian village of labissa hannibal was 63. the soldiers of the enemy he'd fought all his life were taking up positions around his village he knew their plan was to take him prisoner and take him back to italy as the centerpiece of a roman triumph was a humiliation he could do without [Music] his final victory over them was to deprive them of that revenge [Music] according to polybius hannibal's last words were let us relieve the roman people of their long anxiety since they find it tedious to wait for the death of an old man in retrospect of course you can see that hannibal failed but my god what a glorious failure he took an army from spain marched through the south of france went across the alps into italy won three glorious battles and his name survives you know this was a this was a great general okay he didn't conquer rome but he tried hannibal's death wasn't the end of the matter for rome i may have seen carthage's continuing ability to trade as a challenge to their supremacy but that was no reason to destroy it what they couldn't live with was the memory of their humiliation at hannibal's hands the only way to exercise it was to obliterate it completely romans are a destructive conquering nation they conquered the whole of the mediterranean by violence by killing people by war and uh the conquest of carthage was one step on the way of making themselves the supreme power of the mediterranean they had nothing really to fear but destroying towns was part of their imperial business [Music] 35 years after hannibal's death the romans laid siege to carthage it took them three years to finish the job they entered the city murdered 450 000 people and then burned it to the ground the ruins were plowed over to express the final destruction a curse was invoked with great solemnities upon anyone who might attempt to rebuild it of all that befell the romans and carthaginians good or bad the cause was one man and one mind hannibal

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 274,258

Keywords: classical history, ancient history, ancient rome, hannibal, hannibal of carthage, roman history, the man who hated rome, battle of cannae, crossing the alps, fall of rome, enemy of rome

Id: Mvx12c6TkKw

Length: 74min 53sec (4493 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021