Appendix by the Translator
The accusation against Hannibal that he put to death those of his Italian soldiers who refused to follow him to Africa is referred to by Livy (xxx. 2o) in these words:
Many of Italian birth who refused to follow him to Africa and withdrew to the shrine of Juno Lacinia, hitherto inviolate, were foully slain in the temple itself. The tale is generally discredited by modern historians as an impossible crime and as inconsistent with the relations that existed between Hannibal and his soldiers as related by Livy himself (xxviii. 12), viz.: —
No battle was fought with Hannibal that year, for neither did he take the offensive after the recent public and private wound [at the Metaurus], nor did the Romans disturb his quiet, so great a power resided in him, although everything else around him was going to ruin. And I know not whether he was not more wonderful in adversity than in prosperity, because, although he waged war in a hostile country thirteen years, far from home, with varying fortune, not with an army composed of his own citizens but of the mingled riff-raff of all nations, who had no law, custom, or language in common, but were different in character, dress, arms, religious belief and ceremony, and I had almost said in their gods, he held them together by such a bond that no disturbance ever broke out, either among themselves or against their commander, although, in the territory of enemies, he was often in want of money to pay them and of supplies to feed them, the lack of which in the former Punic war had been the cause of many dreadful scenes between the commanders and the soldiers. After the army of Hasdrubal and its chief, in whom all hope of victory had been reposed, had perished, and he had yielded the rest of Italy by retiring to the corner of Bruttium, to whom does it not seem wonderful that no commotion took place in his camp? For, to other things, this also was added, that there was no hope of feeding his soldiers except from the Bruttian territory, which, even if it were all cultivated, would be very scant for supporting so great an army, whereas the war absorbed a large part of the young men, who were drawn away from the tillage of the fields, and a custom ingrafted on a depraved people prevailed of carrying on military operations by robbery. Nor was anything sent to him from home, where they were solicitous about retaining their hold on Spain, as though all their affairs were flourishing in Italy.
The foregoing is in part copied from a passage in Polybius, viz.:
Who can fail to be struck with admiration for the generalship, the courage, the ability of this man in the field, when we think of the length of time the war lasted; when we look at it as a whole, and at the particular battles, sieges, and revolts of cities, and at the turns of fortune; when we contemplate the totality of the design and execution in the course of which Hannibal waged continuous war against the Romans in Italy for sixteen years and never once dismissed his forces from field service, but held them like a good pilot in subjection to himself, and restrained such a multitude from mutiny and from strife with each other, although the forces he made use of were not all of one nation or even of the same race? They were composed of Africans, Spaniards, Ligurians, Gauls, Phoenicians, Italians, and Greeks, who had neither law, custom, speech, nor anything else naturally in common. Yet such was the skill of the general that, notwithstanding these great diversities, he made them all attentive to one command and obedient to one will, although circumstances were not always propitious but varied; although fortune did not always come in favoring but sometimes in adverse gales. In view of these facts one may well be astonished at his commanding ability in military affairs, and may confidently affirm that if he had begun with other parts of the earth and had attacked the Romans last, he would not have failed of any part of his designs. But now, as he began with those who should have been the last, he made both the beginning and the end of his exploits among them. (
Fragment xi. 19.) Vol. 1 — L
Hannibalic War. Appian of Alexandria. Horace White (Translator). New York. 1899.
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