This is the fifth and last part of our series (I, II, III, IV, V) looking at how Carthaginian armies were raised and constituted. Over the last four parts, we’ve looked at the larger components of Carthaginian armies: the relatively small role of Carthaginian citizens, the more prominent role of North African conscripts, of Numidian and Iberian vassals, and of mercenaries and allies from Italy and Gaul. As we’ve noted, the place of many of these troops within Carthage’s armies changed over time, particularly in the third century as Carthage exercised a more direct presence in Spain, Gaul and Italy, thereby transforming mercenaries into vassals and allies.
To close off this week, I want to briefly discuss some of the ‘odds and ends’ of Carthaginian military forces that we haven’t gotten to yet, most notably the role of light infantry slingers from the Balearic islands and of war elephants. But I want to spend most of the time here discussing how these composite armies fight.
Now that, in and of itself, is a tricky proposition. For one, the composition of these armies quite evidently changed over time. Worse yet, for most of Carthaginian history, our sources provide us few battle accounts in which the dispositions and tactics are both detailed and reliable. We have a few early battle descriptions (mostly in Diodorus), but to put this effort at analysis on somewhat firmer ground, I propose to focus on the third century in particular.
But first, as always, raising large armies of mercenaries, subject conscripts, vassal warlords and allies is expensive! If you too want to help me invade Italy with a multi-ethnic army of diverse origins in a doomed effort to stop the Roman Republic, you can help by supporting this project over at Patreon. If you want updates whenever a new post appears or want to hear my more bite-sized musings on history, security affairs and current events, you can follow me on Bluesky (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social). I am also active on Threads (bretdevereaux) and maintain a de minimis presence on Twitter (@bretdevereaux).
Slings and Elephants
Before we get into the battles themselves though, we have a few more odds and ends to add to our armies, most notably Balearic slingers and war elephants. In both cases our sources don’t give us a ton of information to go on, but these were both regular parts of Carthaginian armies.
The residents of the Balearic islands had a well-earned reputation as exceptional slingers in antiquity; Phoenician settlement on the island of Ibiza in the seventh century steadily led the islands to drift into Carthaginian influence, making Balearic slingers available for Carthaginian armies, though as far as I know it remains very unclear how much actual governance Carthage exerted on the islands.
That said, while Balearic slingers are a recurring ‘specialist’ unit in Carthaginian armies, their numbers remain few. When we hear about their detachments, they’re really quite small. Hannibal, for instance, when disposing his forces in 218 sends 870 of his slingers to Africa and leaves 500 in Spain (Polyb. 3.33.8-16). While he is also taking some with him (so that is not a total count of his Balearic slingers) I think it is worth contrasting the scale of other troop movements in the dispositions: the force left in Spain is fifty-two warships, 450 African cavalry, 300 Spanish cavalry (Ilergetes), 1,800 Numidian cavalry, 11,850 Libyan infantry, and 21 elephants. 500 slingers seems a small detachment, in comparison. Likewise, the force heading to Africa was composed overall of 1,200 cavalry and 13,850 infantry alongside the 870 slingers. These are thus quite small detachments: small units of specialists rather than major contingents of an army.
That said our sources (Polybius, mainly) often keeps track of them, so they’re a distinctive unit. In addition to the 1,370 slingers left behind, Hannibal took some number with him when crossing the Alps, but we can’t really track how many because in Hannibal’s army they always appear brigaded together with his lonchophoroi (who as you will recall, are also light infantry skirmishers, using javelins), in a combined unit of 8,000. I suspect that, at least by the time Hannibal is in Italy, the Balearians represent a distinct minority in that formation too. In that 218 disposition above, Hannibal (advancing into Spain reportedly with 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry (Polyb. 3.35.1), a figure I suspect is inflated, but it is what we have), has essentially advanced on Italy with three-quarters of his force, splitting the remaining quarter to act as the core of armies to be formed up (if necessary) in Spain and Africa. That might imply something like 5,500 total Balearian slingers, of whom about 4,000 are with Hannibal. The problem, of course, is accounting for casualties: Hannibal loses half of his cavalry and three-quarters of his infantry getting to Italy (he drops into the Po River Valley with 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, Polyb. 3.56.4).
Even assuming a specialist unit like his slingers might have been spared the worst of the casualties, we might reasonably expect their numbers to at least be reduced by half, meaning that light infantry ‘brigade’ we see at Trebia might only have 2,000 (or even just 1,000) Balearians in it, with the rest made up of North African – and also perhaps Spanish or Gallic – javelin troops. Of course Hannibal’s army would subsequently expand back upwards with a fresh infusion of Gauls, such that by Cannae he had 50,000 troops (40,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry), of which as noted above, at most we might expect a couple thousand to have been Balearian slingers.
In terms of equipment and fighting style, Balearic slingers fought unarmored, using slings and carrying small round shields, with spears for close-combat – though given their lack of armor, that must have been something of a weapon of last resort.1 So these were very light troops: very mobile, but not able to really stand up to anything. Hannibal never puts this mixed brigade into his battle line (that we’re told) – instead it is deployed as a screening force (Polyb. 3.72) or in rough ground (Polyb. 3.83) and withdrawing them before the main clash of infantry lines. Slings are really effective weapons in skilled hands – sling bullets can arrive with a lot of punch and be quite accurate at relatively long range – so even a small force of slingers mixed into a larger force of skirmishers would certainly make their presence known.
As for Carthage’s war elephants, we actually discussed war elephants at length way back in 2019. We may add a few notes here on Carthage’s elephants in particular. First, Carthage used war elephants, fairly regularly. The size of Carthage’s elephant corps seems to have been primarily limited by logistics: elephants were hard to move overseas (though it could clearly be done and the Carthaginians do it) and hard to keep supplied. Carthage had “nearly a hundred” elephants at Bagradas (255), supposedly 200 in Spain in 228 under Hasdrubal the Fair (Diod. Sic. 25.12; I suspect this number is quite inflated), but Hannibal marches out of Spain with just 37 elephants (Polyb. 3.42), leaving – as noted above – only 21 elephants behind, suggesting he only had 58 to start with.
Carthaginian elephants, like Ptolemaic elephants, were drawn from the now-extinct North African elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaohensis), likely a relative of the smaller African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), not the bigger African Bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) you are likely more familiar with but which has never been domesticated. These North African elephants were smaller than the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), which was a problem for the Ptolemies (who regularly faced Indian elephants in Seleucid service) but not really for Carthage. It is possible Carthage may have at times obtained Indian elephants in small numbers: Hannibal’s personal elephant was named Surus, ‘the Syrian;’ if he was from Syria, that would mean he was an Indian elephant imported by the Seleucids, although it seems equally likely to me that someone might name an uncommonly big North African elephant ‘Syrian’ because in its large size it resembled the larger Asian elephant (which a Carthaginian might associate with Syria – where the Seleucid elephant program was – rather than with India, where the elephants were actually from).
Of course ‘smaller’ doesn’t mean ‘small:’ male African forest elephants ‘only’ get to be about 7ft tall at the shoulders (compared to 9ft for Asian elephants and 10ft for African bush elephants), which is still a mighty big animal. As we discussed back in the original series on war elephants, the logistics demands of keeping elephants were substantial: they cannot be effectively bred in captivity so they must be captured and tamed and once domesticated, you have to feed them and they eat a lot. Nevertheless, they could be a clear military asset.
Alas, we know very little about how the Carthaginian elephant corps was organized: it’s unclear who the mahouts (the skilled elephant drivers) would have been or how they fit into Carthage’s mobilization system. It was clearly an important component of Carthaginian power – Carthage mints coins with elephants on them, likely as a symbol and expression of Carthaginian power (especially in places where elephants were not native, so the only elephants around would be Carthaginian war elephants).
It’s striking to me that Punic coins with elephants on them seem more common in Spain and Sicily – where the elephants would have to have been imported – than in Africa itself, where they were native.
How a Carthaginian Army Fights
Unlike Roman, Macedonian or Greek armies, we don’t have any discussions of Carthaginian tactics from the Carthaginian point of view, or even artwork from Carthaginian contexts showing things like battles. The closest the sources come are some general comments by Polybius, which I think have to be treated with a great deal of caution. We’ve already seen that Polybius’ depiction of Carthage’s armies as wholly mercenary is at best deceptive. Likewise, his comment that Carthage “entirely neglects its infantry” and merely “pays some slight attention” to its cavalry (Polyb. 6.52.3) doesn’t stack up against the performance of Carthaginian arms in the third century: Carthaginian infantry appears, if less capable than the Romans, more capable than Greek or Macedonians, while Carthaginian cavalry appears flatly superior. So we have to be careful simply taking Polybius’ word for things when it comes to Carthage’s military ability.
That leaves us reliant on Carthage’s battles to understand how Carthaginian armies tend to fight. There are a few things to note here. First, in the third century, Carthage loses battles with Rome somewhat more often that it wins them – never nearly so lopsided as the Hellenistic record against Rome, mind you – even with Hannibal considered in the record. I want to note that out front because our sources tend to focus more on the occasions where Carthage wins against Rome (because it is to some degree surprising) and so that is when we tend to get something like a complete order of battle that lets us assess Carthaginian tactics. But I don’t want to give a distorted impression of effectiveness here: Carthaginian armies are a real threat that can beat Roman armies in the field, but the Romans win more than they lose.
All that said, I think there are some things we can say about how Carthaginian armies fight. These armies tend to be somewhat more cavalry heavy than Hellenistic or Roman armies, although they maintain a strong infantry ‘backbone.’ Tactically, because Carthaginian armies are so varied in composition (given the variable numbers of mercenaries, allies and vassals they may have), they tend to have much more varied dispositions than Roman or Macedonian armies (which both have a fairly ‘standard’ battle plan), but there is a preference towards envelopment using cavalry (as distinct, I’d argue, from Macedonian ‘breakthrough’ using cavalry). Finally, there is also a clear preference in placing mercenaries and auxiliaries in high-casualty positions that is remarkable, especially compared to Roman or Macedonian armies which tend to place their most reliably troops – who tend to be the highest status (citizen or Macedonian) troops in the center.
So let’s look at a few Carthaginian armies in action to see how this plays out.
The pitched battle from the First Punic War (264-241) we get the most details for is the Battle of Bagradas River (255), which is where Marcus Atilius Regulus’ (cos 267, 256) expedition to North Africa – which had been making gains – falls apart, necessitating a naval rescue mission to extract what is left of his army later that year. Polybius (1.33-34) is our best account of this battle and he doesn’t give us a ton of detail, but what he does give us, I think, is indicative of how Carthage expects to fight.2
The Carthaginian army, led in part by the Greek mercenary general Xanthippus, arrives with 12,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and nearly 100 elephants, which is a very cavalry (and elephant) heavy force, though it seems like nearly all of the infantry here is heavy African infantry (Libyans and perhaps also Carthaginian citizens). The Carthaginians draw up with the ‘phalanx of the Carthaginians’ in the center, with the elephants strung in a single line in front of them. Xanthippus puts his own mercenaries on the right wing – right where a Macedonian commander would have put his elite infantry in an Alexander-Battle formation – a but splits the remaining cavalry across both wings. The Romans seem to respond to the threat of the elephants by forming up unusually deep and thus also narrow (Polyb. 1.33.9-10), which turns out to have been the catastrophic mistake of the battle.
What ends up happening is that in the center, the Romans are able to push past the elephants, but have their lines disordered by it and as a result are thrown back by the Carthaginian heavy infantry. Meanwhile on the flanks, the numerically superior and more capable Carthaginian cavalry quickly routs the Roman cavalry and begins what we’ll see is a standard Carthaginian tactic – double-envelopment – wrapping around the Romans on the flanks. The one spot where the Romans perform well is, ironically, against Xanthippus’ mercenaries on his right (the Roman left), where the Romans are able to get around the elephants (and presumably inside the cavalry) to engage the Carthaginian right-wing and send it reeling back to camp (Polyb. 1.34.4). The envelopment proves fatal: no army can fight effectively if beset on all sides and the Romans are no exception (unless Julius Caesar is leading): repulsed in the center and then encircled, the Roman army falls apart, with the Carthaginians able to inflict heavy losses – all but 2,000 out of a force of 15,500 – in the rout.
What I think is most striking is that here already we see the Carthaginians doing what is going to become a standard approach in Hannibal’s battles, double-envelopment with cavalry. This is, I think, quite distinct from the Macedonian practice of ‘Alexander-battle’; somewhat ironically the Carthaginians essentially are doing the ‘Total War tactic’ that I spent some much time insisting the Macedonians do not do. Whereas the Macedonian approach is generally to try to ‘breakthrough’ with their cavalry often at the point where an army’s center joins one of its wings – and generally only on one flank, with the other flank merely buying time – the Carthaginians really are looking to ‘flank.’ Put another way, Macedonian cavalry goes through one side, but Carthaginian cavalry goes around both sides, aiming to disperse the enemy cavalry screen at the flanks and then loop around the flanks and rear of the enemy force rather than smashing through.
Vassals and Allies on the Battlefield
Moving forward chronologically, we can look at some of the dispositions of the Second Punic War to see some of the same patterns as at Bagradas, but also – because our sources (mostly Polybius, now with some Livy) provide more detail – some additional details.
After a major skirmish at Ticinus, Hannibal’s first major pitched battle in Italy is the Battle of the Trebia (218; Polyb. 3.71-4; Livy 21.54-56). Hannibal’s plan here is clearly another envelopment battle, similar in conception to Bagradas. Hannibal sets up a single line of ‘line infantry’ (both his African ‘heavies’ and his Spanish and Gallic ‘mediums’) in the center and his cavalry on the flanks. But he then does two things to reinforce his flanks: he deploys his elephants there, rather than along the center, and he has his skirmishers – initially deployed in front of his army as a screening force – retreat to the flanks once they had bested the Roman velites. The result is that Hannibal ends up stacking up his cavalry and elephants and skirmishers against the Roman cavalry on the flanks. That must have left his main infantry line somewhat thin: he has less ‘line infantry’ than the Roman force (probably around 25,000 Roman and socii heavies against c. 21,000 Carthaginian heavies and mediums, when you subtract out the velites and Carthaginian ‘lights’ (Balearians and lonchophoroi) and what he has is meaningfully lighter, but he has to match the same width.
But we get another interesting note here that, as we’ll see, is a trend. Polybius reports of Hannibal’s losses, “for they all were very glad about the battle, [thinking it] as a great accomplishment, for it happened that the losses of the Iberians and Libyans were few, most of the losses being of the Celts” (Polyb. 3.74.10). Now given what Polybius has told us – that the Gauls, Iberians and Africans are all in one line – it’s not quite clear how that outcome happens (the Iberians, at least, are no more heavily armored than the Gauls!), but as we’re going to see, it is something of a pattern.
Hannibal’s next major battle is at Lake Trasimene (217) but this is something of a rarity: an actual ambush at battle-scale rather than a pitched battle. While ambushes are common in small actions, it is actually quite rare for one field army to ambush another: field armies are so big they are quite hard to hide and tend to have a lot of scouting. That makes this kind of ‘true’ large-scale ambush quite rare, but it also means the dispositions and tactics aren’t really applicable to the more common pitched battles. There is, however, one detail that is worth noting, which were the casualties among the Carthaginians, of which Polybius says (Polyb. 3.85.5), “He [Hannibal] now rested his own [troops] and honored the dead of the highest ranks, thirty in number; the overall losses were fifteen hundred, of which most were Celts.”
Which gets us to Cannae (216), which I have analyzed elsewhere and so needn’t do in detail here. The plan is once again double-envelopment using cavalry deployed on the flanks and a relatively weak center, with Hannibal’s innovation here coming in two parts: first the center is arced forward to invite the Romans to attack it and second Hannibal pulls his North African troops – his heaviest and most reliable – into two formations that sit on the flanks of the combined Spanish and Gallic ‘medium’ infantry main line. The result, famously, is that the Romans, when they push back the Gallic-and-Iberian center, will put the Africans around their flanks, while Hannibal’s cavalry first disperses the Roman cavalry and then completes the encirclement by striking the advancing Roman infantry force in the rear.
Now there are solid tactical reasons to arrange the army this way – Hannibal does, after all, win the battle – but it is hard not to see another consideration at work: almost all of the heavy losses are guaranteed to be sustained by the Iberian and Gallic troops. By contrast, the North African troops, who are by this point every bit as heavy as Roman troops (Polyb. 3.114.1; Livy 22.46.4) are not placed into the thick of things but held off onto the side, where they mostly avoid the brunt of the Roman assault. The Numidian cavalry seems to have been given orders to skirmish, to ‘tie up’ Rome’s socii cavalry, while it is the Iberian and Gallic cavalry that has to punch through and attack to create the encirclement.
There is a consistent pattern here of risking Iberian and Gallic troops in order to preserve Carthaginian, African and Numidian troops. And the result is predictable. Polybius (3.117.6) gives Hannibal’s losses at Cannae as, “of Hannibal, the Celts lost 4,000, the Iberians and Africans 1,500 and the cavalry 200.” One wonders, given that division of losses, if – when Polybius says that the Gauls and Iberians are in the center – Hannibal has in fact put the Gauls in the absolute center (furthest forward), with the Iberians on their wings and the Africans on the Iberian’s wings, essentially creating a ‘spectrum of peril,’ with the Gauls in the most dangerous spot and the North Africans in the safest.
Hannibal’s deployment at Zama (Polyb. 15.11; Livy 30.33) echoes this concern: he puts the elephants out in front (like Xanthippus at Bagradas fifty years prior) and then in his first line he puts Ligurians, Gauls, Balearians and Mauritanians: his skirmish specialists (the Balearians) and then all of his expendable auxiliaries. He may have intended these fellows to retreat to the flanks like at Trebia, but in any case he made no preparations for them to withdraw down the center – when they did so they were cut down by the next line (Polyb. 15.13.3-10). Then behind that line he places his North African and Carthaginian citizen troops – fresh levies from North Africa; the Romans would have put these greenest troops in the front, but Hannibal shelters them in his second line. Finally, perhaps having learned something from the value of the Roman triarii, Hannibal puts his own veterans in a third, final line in the rear.
Had Hannibal won at Zama, rather than lost, we’d presumably have had another line of Polybius about how the great majority of his losses were taken by the Gauls and Ligurians (and Mauritanians) that he threw forward at the outset of the battle.
That said, we get quite a different approach at the Battle of Metaurus (207). The sources for this battle are, I should note, something of a mess (with Polyb. 11.1-3 and Livy 27.48 not quite agreeing), but a mess that is untangled quite capably by J.F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War: A Military History (1998), 189-90. Hasdrubal’s army is a mix of Iberians, Gauls and Ligurians, with thirty elephants. Hasdrubal’s problem is that his army is quite outmatched and he knows it, fighting the battle because he has no other choice, having not yet had time to fortify a camp. The battlefield had hilly terrain on Hasdrubal’s left, so he seems to have settled on a gambit of trying to concentrate all of his combat power on the right so as to smash the Roman left.
What is striking then is that Hasdrubal stacks his right – the ‘hammer’ arm – with his elephants and his Iberians, places his Ligurians in the center (where they need to hold) and then puts his Gallic troops up on the hill on his left. It suggests that he doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in those Gauls, because in the event the hill is sufficiently steep that the Romans can’t even really approach their position (Polyb. 11.1.5). In the event, the Romans win when C. Claudius Nero, commanding the Roman right (making no headway up that hill and realizing it), detaches part of his force to extend the Roman left (while leaving a pinning force), wrapping around the flank of Hasdrubal’s right-flank-hammer. But what I think is notable is that where Hannibal – confident and expecting victory – exposes his Gallic troops to let them take the brunt of the losses, Hasdrubal – panicked and merely trying to avoid defeat – puts his Gauls where they can do the least harm.
Both sentiments seem to suggest that the Barcids, at least, held their Gallic allies in relatively low esteem: expending them when convenient but avoiding relying on them whenever possible.
Conclusions
Carthaginian armies were complex creatures – far more so than something like a typical polis army. What I find perhaps most interesting is that for the most part, expansive Carthaginian recruiting was more about broadening Carthage’s base of military resources than it was about acquiring specific capabilities. Carthaginian generals do not seem to use Gallic, Ligurian, Iberian, Greek or Italian troops in dramatically different roles than their own North African troops. Indeed, Gallic and Iberian ‘mediums’ are deployed as line infantry the same as Carthaginian citizen or North African ‘heavies.’ We do not get, for instance, the fairly clear contrast in positioning and usage between ‘heavies’ and ‘mediums’ that we see in Hellenistic armies, though of course they have a pike-phalanx to consider. Instead, when Carthage recruits in Gaul and Spain, they seem to want more troops rather than different troops. After all, they already have capable javelin light-infantry (North African lonchophoroi) and heavy line infantry, they just want more of those roles.
The exceptions are clear: Balearic slingers and Numidian cavalry. These are specialist troops that supply new capabilities – longer-range skirmishing (a factor, for instance, at Trebia, where they outrange and outshoot the Roman velites) from the slingers and highly capable, fast-moving skirmish cavalry from the Numidians. Carthage’s heavy cavalry in turn, is a mix of Carthaginian citizen cavalry, North African cavalry, and Iberian or Gallic cavalry – depending on what is available given the time period and location.
The result was not necessarily a more tactically complex army – Carthaginian armies seem to have had fewer moving parts than Roman ones – but the challenge of leading such a polyglot, multicultural army must have been considerable, as Polybius himself alludes to (Polyb. 1.67.4-9), especially when the very recruiting principles of these troops were different: some citizens, some conscripts, some mercenaries raised with money, some allies raised with promises, some vassals raised through very particular personal relationships with the generals themselves. That complexity may serve to explain to some degree why Carthage preferred long-serving generals over a regular rotation: the relationships generals established and their personal knowledge of their armies would have been difficult to pass on. By contrast, Roman armies, while more tactically complex, where organizationally much more ‘plug-and-play,’ each army working more or less like the next.
There is a frustrating tendency in the scholarship to denigrate Carthaginian war-making and I suspect the rather ‘motley’ nature of these armies – which do not look very much like the western ‘ideal’ of an army (uniform and almost mechanical in its function, a ‘war machine’) – contributes quite a lot to this. But Carthage was a military over-performer, especially in the third century: Carthage withstood Pyrrhus and was able to go two full rounds (and one more) with Rome, albeit losing in the end.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the contrast with the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East is so striking: Carthage spends a combined forty-years at war with Rome in the third century, peaking at more than 160,000 men in the field, matching Rome on land and at sea,3 matching the Roman capability of fighting in multiple theaters simultaneously and not-infrequently defeating Roman armies. By contrast, in the second century, the Seleucids and Antigonids manage to fight Rome for just fourteen years combined (including the Fourth Macedonian War, which isn’t even an Antigonid war!), lose every major battle and never manage to put more than 80,000 soldiers or so in the field at any one time (the Antigonids don’t even get close to that).
In short, if we understand the complex Carthaginian mobilization system as an effort to reach more broadly for military resources, we ought to understand it as a success. Carthage, from 254 to 201, deploys massively more military resources than comparable large (larger in the case of the Seleucids) Hellenistic states.
That said, the system was not without flaws. The largest was that it was quite obviously more fragile than its Roman equivalent. Hannibal, despite stunning victories, struggles to get a critical mass of Rome’s socii to revolt. By contrast, Carthaginian control in both North Africa and Spain was relatively more easily disrupted, as shown by the Mercenary War (241-237), the collapse of the Barcid system in Spain after the Fall of Carthago Nova (209) – although Carthage continued to maintain large armies in the area for another five years – and the ability of Rome to draw the Numidians away from Roman service through Masinissa’s defection in 203.
It is also worth noting that while Carthage’s strategy of recruiting non-state warriors from Spain and Gaul enabled it to field a lot of raw manpower, the warriors they got in the bargain were not as heavily or expensively equipped as either the Romans or Carthage’s own North African troops. The Carthaginian system was thus one that, by the Second Punic War, if not earlier, was forced to seek quantity over quality in order to match the staggering effectiveness with which the Romans had turned Italy into a machine for the generation of military power.
I also suspect, had the Carthaginians not been defeated by Rome, that their system of long-serving generals setting up veritable fiefdoms abroad would have eventually spelled disaster for the Carthaginian Republic. In a sense, we watch this same development play out in the Late Roman Republic, but the Barcid private empire in Spain was if anything even more of a private fiefdom than anything enjoyed by the Late Republic’s ‘rogue generals.’ One imagines, had Carthage continued with an empire that other Carthaginian figures would feel compelled (as rival Roman dynasts felt so compelled in the first century) to establish their own bases of power, leading to predictable results.
All of that said, Carthage’s military system deserves better than to simply be treated as a failure or – even more inaccurately – as the product of an ‘unwarlike’ people. Certainly, the Carthaginians were not able to overcome the Roman Republic – but no one else, not the ‘warlike’ Gauls or the ostensibly more ‘western’ (despite being more eastern) Hellenistic kingdoms – no one else was able to either.
Carthage got the closest, by far, for which the Romans would never forgive them. Ironically, had the Carthaginians been worse at war, Carthage might well have lasted longer.4
- On ancient slingers, see L. Keppie, Slingers and Sling Bullets in the Roman Civil Wars of the Late Republic, 90-31 BC (2023).
- Polybius, of course, stresses the role of the Greek mercenary general Xanthippus. Doubtless his role was considerable, but remember that Polybius is here – as with Raphia – at pains to stress the contributions of Greek mercenary leadership to these sorts of victories and is willing to bend the truth to make that point.
- Yes! Naval warfare! We’ll come to it, I hope, in a later series.
- And for those of you already hastening to ask how losing to Rome doesn’t make Carthage simply ‘bad at war,’ – the answer in my mind is that Carthage’s wars with Rome were never quite wars of choice. Carthage and Rome stumble into the First Punic War, neither intending initially to fight the other, while Rome, I’d argue, forces the Second Punic War on Carthage. And of course the Third Punic War was wholly manufactured by Rome. In that context, Carthage’s stubborn resistance against Rome is impressive, although I think we should be clear that both Rome and Carthage were aggressive, expansionist, imperialistic powers. Two wolves, fighting over who would have the sheep.
Very much enjoyed this series, and looking forward to the naval warfare one, if you ever get around to it.
So…this confirms Carthage is the new Athenian Empire?
Minor point of clarification, no elephant has ever been domesticated by humans. There’s a fringe theory that they self domesticated, but self domestication as a theory is not wildly accepted; regardless there’s certainly no difference between any elephant population in terms of domestication.
Elephants have been tamed. They’re still wild, just conditioned to humans and optionally trained.
To go on an aside, they’re a weird tamed animal because they behave much more variable to captivity as individuals, with some being very docile and others being ungovernable (even ignoring provocation, Musth, and drugs), whereas most wild animals are consistently violent until tamed. This probably speaks to them being broadly socially intelligent, and a lot of other highly intelligent species (orcas) display a similar behavior where aggression is rarer and different. Biologists use the term proactive versus reactive aggression, a wolf trying to bite you because it’s threatened is reactive, a wolf stalking you to eat you is proactive. Elephants, Bonobos, Dolphins/inc. Orcas, and humans tend to be proactively aggressive. It takes high stress or pharmaceutical conditions or drugs to incite reactive violence, most individuals default to conflict avoidance. This behavior is likely a product of high emotional intelligence and lower innate adrenaline production.
In other words you can make a case that Elephants are *enslaved*, rather than tamed, as they are capable of enough reason to choose violence and by inclination don’t . Regardless they are not *domesticated*. But that’s a bigger discussion.
I think Elephants also simply has a thing where they really have no real natural predators, and any violence they do is likely to be against other elephants. And they’re so big there’s not even much need for conflict avoidance.
I mean yeah, elephant training is basically abusing a baby elephant into believing its helpless. It no longer thinks it can get any help since you beat every attempt and it still thinks so as it gets old due to the trauma. Though I am unsure if they were getting younger elephants for war elephants.
There are depictions of a mother and calf being used as war elephants above. About the only point of contention there is that it’s an artistic depiction so if these are actually “war” elephants versus “parade” elephants is a valid point of contention, but to be frank it’s basically immaterial to this discussion. They obviously captured young elephants and “trained” them from near infancy.
I mean yeah, the way most elephants get trained for labor was taking them young and then “breaking” them into a sense of learned helplessness by beating it everytime it cries out. I am unsure if those methods would have been used in Carthage too but they were(and unfortunately are) pretty common in India as a old traditional method.
Far as I am aware the some of the same proccess was done for learned helplessness for older elephants post capture. Plenty of framing to at least note its pretty categorically abuse in method.
Hot Take: The tension between the Barcids and Carthage is rather overstated. In fact Carthage bet everything it had on the Barcids. Bret calculated the numbers for 215. My rough estimate for 219 is Carthage had in Spain 57,000 Africans and Numidians including 8,000 cavalry, and 60,000 Iberians including 6,000 cavalry. The 20,000 Iberians and Metagonians Hannibal sent to Iberia were part of a manpower swap. I think there are several clear takeaways:
1) That is a *lot* of guys, far more than could plausibly be needed to defend Spain. It is hard to believe the Carthaginian Senate didn’t have a general idea of Hannibal’s plans. Polybius is almost certainly right to cast shade on the idea warmonger Hannibal dragged peaceable Carthage to war.
2) Carthage was not worried about a Barcid coup. They gave Hannibal most of their African manpower and let the home front be garrisoned by soldiers recruited by Hannibal.
3) Given 1), Carthage could easily have said “Hey Hannibal, you dragged us into this war, defend Iberia with the guys you have while we do operations in the central Mediterranean” but they didn’t.
Carthage does not do much until after Cannae. They then throw the kitchen sink at Rome. In three years they raise over 50,000 additional Africans and Numidians. 11,000 infantry and 5,500 cavalry are earmarked for Hannibal. 31,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry are thrown at Sicily and Sardinia. Hasdrubal is ordered to march on Italy which would leave Iberia almost devoid of African troops. If everything had gone to plan they would have had something like 150,000 men deployed on Roman territory by 214. However, everything doesn’t go to plan, most importantly Hasdrubal is defeated at Ibera.
African manpower is left exhausted after that. Iberia gets small packets of troops. While Carthage takes advantage of that to insert a non-Barcid commander in Iberia, Mago and Hasdrubal’s armies continue to get reinforcements also. Sicily and Hannibal are left to slowly attrition away. I suspect Carthage de-facto accepted they were at this point just fighting for the status quo (its worth noting Mago and Hasdrubal also don’t go to Hannibal’s support until their Iberian commands are trashed).
Finally in the late war comes Carthage’s third major mobilization. They raise at least 30,000 men in Africa. Mago Barca gets 7,000 reinforcements in 204 for his campaign to pressure Rome in Transalpine Gaul.
Like it is clear there was some Carthage-Barcid tension, but really they got along astonishingly well given just how overmighty the Barcids were. They controlled an outright *majority* of Carthage’s manpower for almost the entirety of the Second Punic War and for much of it controlled a majority of Carthage’s *African* manpower.
Incidentally, this makes me question Bret’s idea of what happens if Carthage wins. The Barcids were already absurdly game-breakingly powerful in a way not really matched in Rome before Julius Ceaser. Realistically, it is hard to see how a non-Barcid general can carve out a territory large enough to match them. Given the Barcids controlled a majority of Carthage’s military power and there was a large pro-Barcid party (it is worth noting Hannibal is successfully elected sufet in violation of Carthaginian norms after losing the Barcid powerbase as well as the war he started), it is hard to see how they could even lose a civil war with the Carthaginian Senate absent seriously screwing up.
For the math on my numbers for 219, lets start with my assumptions: 1) Hanno’s army is similar in composition to Hasdrubal’s (likely, we know it was mostly African) 2) half the losses in the Catalonia campaign are just Iberians slipping off 3) half the cavalry and a third the infantry lost in the march to Italy are African/Numidian.
Hasdrubal leaves 2,250 African/Numidian cavalry and 300 Iberian. Hannibal crosses the Ebro River with 12,000 cavalry (roughly half African/Numidian) and the Pyrenees with 9,000. 1,000 were left with Hanno, I assume 1,000 were the proportionate share of the Iberians Hannibal sent home, 1,000 actual losses. 3,000 are then lost in the march to the Alps. Leaving him with 6,000 cavalry, half African/Numidian.
11,580 African infantry are left with Hasdrubal. Hannibal marches forth with 90,000 infantry. Only 50,000 cross the Pyrenees. 10,000 (almost all Africans) are left with Hanno. 10,000 Iberian infantry are sent home. Of the 20,000 losses, I am assuming half are just desertions, half actual losses. Polybius says Hannibal crosses the Alps with 20,000 infantry, but it is pretty clear this is *heavy* infantry based on the Cannae numbers (I suspect Polybius is doing his fudging without lying thing with all these numbers to make Hannibal’s march seem even more dramatic than it was). Hannibal has 8,000 light troops at Cannae (I assume 5k are African lonchophoroi) and clearly those lonchophoroi and slingers didn’t just teleport to Italy. So 28,000 infantry descend into Italy (maybe 17,000 African?). So 22,000 infantry lost in the march. So 11.5k+10k+17k+10.67k (1/3rd of Catalonia/march losses) = 49,000 African infantry.
Ah, but if Carthage becomes a Barcid led monarchy, it’s *lost* some of the elements that let it be effective. Macedonian style kingship led to a conquering dynast ravaging the world, but on his death civil war *annihilated* his empire. The successors never managed to marshal the kind of power Carthage did, in part because every time they trusted any subordinate they created a rival who could and did rebel. Plus while Macedonian rulers keep their nation ethnically stratified, the choice was a product of their style of rule and likely an adaptation to try to prevent rebellion; when Ptolomy armed his Egyptians as a phalanx they rebelled. And we can take lessons from Archaemenid Persia; they had regional ethnic satraps, and their Greek one famously rebelled triggering the sequence ending in their defeat. Satrap rebellions weren’t new and while wise kings took steps to appoint satraps who weren’t obviously more loyal to their satrapy, hereditary nobility and wealth meant that they seem prone to go native regardless.
In other words, the state of the hellenic world was a product of Hellenic monarchy. It wasn’t incidental.
And, of course, Roman decent into an imperial rule ultimately destroyed them. It took centuries but the fall of Rome was directly tied to the incredibly violent and destructive civil wars which were in turn caused by the breakdown of succession, as hereditary monarchy and military advancement both determined rulership. Rome fell into civil war consistently with basically every succession and often just because a general was successful, culminating in *consistent* four to five sided civil wars involving the entire empire, for decades.
And Rome had no rivals and it’s institutions, customs, and demographics all worked to delay the slide into despotism. Carthage was much more fragile.
My point is that the danger isn’t just that the Barcids lead Carthage into a civil war that ends with them dead and Carthage splintered.
The danger is that the Barcids win and become kings, then speed run every step of Roman or Macedonian empire collapse in a century or two.
Yeah a Barcid monarchy is not necessarily maximizing in the long run. But on the Alexander note Hannibal had access to enormous manpower (117,000 men in Iberia in 219!) and was a military genius. We talk about how Rome was an unstoppable juggernut that only Carthage posed a real challenge to. But conversely, what besides Rome could have had a hope of standing against Hannibal?
“Rome fell into civil war consistently with basically every succession and often just because a general was successful, culminating in *consistent* four to five sided civil wars involving the entire empire, for decades.”
Not really the case, honestly. Rome has a lot of palace coups, and plenty of civil wars too, but the civil wars tends to be “clustered”: IE: There’s a discontinuity, you get a series of a couple of short lived emperors, then someone stable gets in power again.
The Julio-Claudians has plenty of murders but no real civil wars until Nero dies, that see quick succession of several short lived emperors until the Flavians take over and last another couple of generations without civil war. Then we get the Nerva-Antonines which, another brief period of chaos with multiple civil wars after Commodus death, then the Severans who start to get a bit more unstable.
Then we get the Crisis of the Third Century and that’s when things really start heating up.
The notion that the roman empire was constantly fighting civil wars is honestly a bit overstated: Murders seem to have been a lot more common.
A but overstated for effect, but compared to the early and middle Republic where you go centuries without civil wars the late Republic and empire are absolutely riddled with them.
To be frank I think the onset mostly has to do with simple time. It took a bit for would be usurpers to really institutionalize the formula of revolt, prior to that we hear about assassination nipping problems in the bud more often than it progresses to revolt, but as time went on it became normal for generals to pretty immediately declare themselves emperor.
I view it all as an inevitable progression. It’s not like other monarchical systems are more stable; this is a problem in all monarchies until liberal democracy becomes a legitimizing and limiting mechanism, or replaces them. Rome just had a big version of the problem because it was big.
That honestly depends on your definition (and our sources tends to get murky anyway) there is about a century + a bit where we can confidently say “no civil wars”, and that’s a good run, but hardly insurmountable even among monarchies (consider that Sweden’s last actual civil war was in 1597, and Denmarks was in 1534, and danish absolutism didn’t end until 1848, so we’re talking 300+ years)
Even France didn’t really have any civil wars between the Fronde in the 1600’s and the Revolution. Though again, that depends a bit how you count, just like with Rome.
I think that hot take is looking at the matter the wrong way. Bret’s argument is less about present tension but rather about it being a systemic fracture point. During the war, both the Barcids and the adirim wanted the same thing, to defeat Rome, so of course they pool resources and work together. Especially given it’s a defensive war, so it makes sense to bet heavily because the stakes of losing are so high.
But without that defensive war ensuring everyone agrees on what to use military resources for, the systemic fracture point becomes visible: What if the adirim propose an offensive war the Barcids don’t agree with? Or vice versa, if the Barcids start the conquest of a region that the adirim would rather they didn’t? Given that at this point the Barcids hold something like ten times the military manpower under their personal command than the city of Carthage has under its direct control, they very much have the longer lever for any arising power contest, even if it doesn’t go all the way into a civil war.
You’re right that there’s different possible trajectories for history from that point forward, besides the one followed by Rome. There might be no civil war at all as Carthage just rolls over and lets itself be controlled from afar by the Barcids, or there might be a Portugal-Brazil situation where the war is limited to the Barcids “cleaning house” of any Carthage-loyal troops as they become an independent empire. Or the question of what to do with Carthage never comes up as different branches of the Barcid dynasty have a falling out before that and start their own civil war about who gets Spain and who gets Italy.
For comparison, at his peak (near the end of the Gallic campaign) Caesar had something like 11 out of 25-28 total deployed legions, meaning he nominally was in charge of ~40% of Rome’s total manpower. And that was fighting against the Gallic coalition, which wasn’t a peer enemy and didn’t pose a significant threat outside of Gaul, and also despite many senators being very suspicious of Caesar.
In short, I think you make a strong argument that Carthage was betting long on the Barcids winning the Second Punic War for them. But I don’t think you can conclude from this that there wasn’t significant political disagreement back in Carthage.
One, they (like the Macedonian/Successor kingdoms) prefer to rely on maneuver rather than simple forward pushing (as Rome and the Greek poleis do). I can’t describe why, but a maneuver-doctrine (so to speak) seems more “complex” in some sense. Two, they may have a lower number of building blocks, but those blocks are of a larger number of different types — a Roman consular army can put legio I to the left and legio II to the right, or the other way around, but this is a difference only on paper. Thus I’d say Carthaginian armies are also more enthropic.
The building blocks are simpler, but they do a lot of tactically complex things; Caesar gets them to fight an envelopment by wheeling the third line, they can form square, they can dynamically break off by cohorts or by centuries even to engage in complex maneuver with local junior officer initiative. So while they have simple building blocks, there’s still tactical complexity, with small maneuver events.
Carthage seems to have largely ethnographic units, which limits that. Not completely or anything, Carthage is still tactically dynamic and good generals like Hannibal took the time to curate trusted junior officers in their ethnic detachments, but it wasn’t doctrine. Roman doctrine had more maneuver units.
It just looks less entropic because they were almost always maneuvering in one direction.
“Hannibal loses half of his cavalry and three-quarters of his infantry getting to Italy”
Is there any historical parallel where an army suffers such high casualties *on its way to fight its main enemy*, and morale doesn’t collapse. I’m kind of astounded that Hannibal managed to hold his army together through all that.
Mao’s long march. Nearly 100000 became around 8000. Numbers subject to contention, but 10% of his force making it as a cohesive unit is probably accurate.
It certainly helped Hannibal that his army could have, at best, mutinied to earn the privilege of crossing the Pyrenees again. It’s a lot easier to keep an army together when there’s no real opportunity to turn back.
Also, the losses weren’t actually quite that large if you break out the numbers. Hannibal starts with 102,000 men. 22,000 are sent home or left with Hanno, 22,000 more lost in Catalonia campaign (I suspect a lot of these are just Iberian desertions).
59,000 men cross the Pyrenees. The 26,000 who descend into Italy only seems to be counting the heavy infantry and cavalry, ignoring Hannibal’s 8,000 lights. So total losses are 25,000. So ‘only’ ~40%! That being said, Hannibal is clearly very good at holding an army together.
And also clearly very good at adding Gauls into the army to refill losses, which is also why he’s putting said Gauls into the most lethal bits of the battlefield. On the one hand they’re equipment-equivalent to the Roman velites & hastati who similarly take the brunt on the Roman side, and on the other hand replacement Gauls are much more readily available than replacement Africans or Iberians (in Italy).
Napoleons army in Russia? European armies in the tropics?
From basic figures that I can find, the Grande Armee lost something more like a sixth of its forces between entering Russian territory and the first major engagement.
It’s not a new insight that the military reflects society, but it works well here.
Macedon, a relatively hierarchical ethnically stratified monarchy, aims to use its elite to break through the enemy and rout or kill their leader, while it’s ethnic core holds and it’s oppressed populations screen.
Carthage, an ethnically diverse relatively oligarchical imperialist Republic, aims to use its more disposable troops to engage the enemy while its elite troops envelope them.
Rome, an assimilatory, relatively egalitarian imperialist citizen Republic, aims to crush the enemy center with its heavy infantry core while using its elites and disposable troops to screen them.
Carthage can field more high quality troops than Macedonian armies, but still has lots of cavalry. Rome can field more heavier troops, but has less cavalry, quite possibly as a result of its demographic strategy.
It’s pretty clear that, of these, Carthage and Rome have the most robust plans. When Carthage armies win against Rome they win big, bigger than anyone except maybe Parthia. But Rome can persist longer and has very few fracture points to its overall social stricture, plus when the roman army is well led it routinely does things that are nearly impossible for the others, acting with incredible improvisation.
I think Macedonian tactics would work better against Carthage than Rome, incidentally. I can imagine their general being charged might actually rout a Carthage army. Carthage still almost certainly won those fights more often, but Alexander battle at least has an understandable win condition against a Carthagean style general with a personal relationships to his component units. Romes system seems almost completely immune to the same theory of victory. Even if you find and kill the consul there’s a clear chain of command and even if they’re somehow *all* dead, new leadership can just be elected and nothing changes about the armies foundation.
I don’t think Macedonian armies would have done well against Carthage. It is worth noting that Macedonian track record for winning the cavalry part of the battle against Rome is decidedly mixed. Which is bad given it is a major component of Macedonian theory of victory and isn’t for Rome. Carthage’s armies have better and proportionately more cavalry than Rome’s. Carthage should be able to do their favored double envelopment tactic just fine against the Macedonians. The problem doing that against Rome is that Rome has a major heavy infantry advantage and often breaks through the center as at Ibera or the Trebia. But if we are talking about the Selucids they have an awful lot of light and medium infantry, if anything a higher proportion than Carthage’s armies.
Basically my impression is successor cavalry were substantially less effective than Alexander’s. Like Eumenes at Magnesia manages to roll up the Selucid left wing despite having 3,000 cavalry versus the 7,000 Selucid. Meanwhile the 5,200 cavalry on the Seleucid right manage to initially drive in the Roman flank, is stalled in front of the Roman camp, and then panics and routs when Eumenes brother shows up with 200 cavalry. Frankly everything about Magnesia is a farce. Two Roman legions and some local allies curbstomp the main field army of the third-most-populous empire on Earth.
To clarify, the Macedonian theory of victory is that your cavalry finds their leadership, infiltrates their formation on a weak point, and routs them starting with their leader.
Roman armies had no real weak points and routing or killing their leaders very often didn’t do anything. The army just kept fighting.
Carthage meanwhile had weaker units, a better chance if fractures between ethnic components, and was held together by a leader who personally commanded. That seems much more vulnerable to a cohesion shock after the general dies.
It’s not that Macedonian armies had a stronger cavalry arm than Carthage, it’s that their way of using it to achieve victory might have *worked* against Carthage if it *was* stronger, where it seems inherently inapplicable to Rome.
Thanks for the section on the Balearic sliggers!
I assume they kept doing their thing well into the Roman period.
The stereotype of unwarlike Carthaginians has more than a whiff of Victorian antisemitism, I might guess.
More like plain old orientalism; Carthaginians were AFAIU not Jewish-coded in Victorian thought, and the “decadent unwarlike Easterner” was a fairly common trope.
Sort of. Victorians did tend to describe Jewish people as ‘Asiatics’ and ascribed the then-current Continental living situation of Jewish populations as the result of their (Oriental) racial nature rather than being any kind of imposed second-class citizenship. The Khazar Origin theory dates to (and dominates scholarship in) the Nineteenth Century.
It was stupid of a group of people in the past I wish to claim superiority to, to make generalisations about a group of people in the past.
So if I disagree with them, I assume it must have been because they made stupid assumptions about people in the past.
While I think other stereotypes certainly reinforced the “unwarlike Carthaginians” notion, it seems very likely that it didn’t originate there. As pointed out earlier in the series, the Carthaginian armies we see in the sources are almost entirely devoid of actual Carthaginians (besides the generals).
Current scholarship suggests ordinary Carthaginians WERE fighting, but mostly in Africa and thus not in our sources… but without that research, your mind doesn’t have to be poisoned by antisemitism or Orientalism to look at those sources, which are full of Carthaginian armies with almost no Carthaginians fighting in them, and conclude that the Carthaginians must have disliked fighting and loved getting somebody else to do it.
yeah, being Second place is nothing to be ashamed about frankly, although the whole structural problems of them when the Barcas are doing so much of the heavy lifting themselves…
that late Roman Republic is a good reminder of dynamics. State failing while a very capable leader is right there building parallel institutions that are far more personable… well.
God im forgetting someone but why do I want to say that Hanno II to Hannibal was Cato the younger to Caesar… Am I getting that right or? Was some other guy I could have sworn…
Still the left hand fighting with the right is always a bad sign.
anyway.
hell, even Xanthippus being in charge of the fighting in North Africa feels a touch that because Hamilcar Barca was fighting in Sicily they did not have one of their better generals on hand.
I remember that one paradox gaming system where you were talking about Hegemon creation as well as break out wars and wars of containment and that unlike in far later Europe with crusader kings there were not as easy defensive alliances if someone moves too fast too soon. Folks were not as on the ball to be wary of potential Hegemons, While everyone in far later times have the shadow and memory of Rome as a reminder and Warning.
to mix match the metaphors for the gaming systems with the history.
but with this, Rome beating the Carthagenians, then Samites, and then Fighting the Barcas in the second round really solidified them. No peers but more importantly no contemporaries that could reach their vulnerabilities, cause like hell any Greek king could attempt something on Sicily, or Italy or even Spain.
Ignoring the Cambrian War even if I love those loonies, but then the hilarity of the Divas Sulla and Marius.
all the greek kingdoms had the massive issue of all the other greek kingdoms, most folks talk about what if Alexander fought Rome mostly wonder about Alexander Empire that actually is fully formed fighting a fully formed Rome type of deal. But that thing is so fucking Fragile, the Empire of the Greeks was already just newly formed via Phillip II, but then Alexander decided to absurdly expand it before the paint was even Dry.
but the fragmented Balkanization of the Greeks while fighting the Romans WHILE being the Overlords of former Persian territories… Or even other Greeks that are not that keen to be ruled by that other Greek.. yeah fucking no.
Anyway Carthage should be remembered as Second place during the time period, and Silver place is not bad for posterity.
My knowledge about Hannibal‘s tactics is mostly pop history rather than academic history, but based on that, I would like to add my impression of some elements in Hannibal‘s style of bettle that repeat themselves. In some ways this is pushing a bit against some points of this post.
1. The Gauls aren’t really expendable in Hannibal’s plans, because they need to hold where the Roman attack is strongest until the battle is won elsewhere. At Trebia the Gauls break but the Romans who push through recognize that the battle is not in their favor and manage to retreat in some way despite the Carthaginian envelopment. At Cannae the Gauls get pushed back leading to the Romans in a way outflanking themselves. Here Hannibal himself participated in the combat at the center, with the Gauls. So while Hannibal is willing to let the Gauls suffer heavy casualties, he also relies on them being able to sustain these casualties without breaking immediately. That might or might not have been because of some (ethnic stereotype of) Gallic bravery.
2. Even in the more classical battles Hannibal uses some concealment. At Trebia he hides a detachment of cavalry under the command of Mago in a dry river bed to deliver a morale shock by charging the Romans from behind at a critical point of the battle. At Cannae the fact that his wings were deeper than his center may have been hidden from the enemy (not just by the troops in front of them, but also by a wind blowing dust towards the Romans). And while Lake Trasimene was the only successful ambush of an army, he tried luring the Romans into one at at least one other occasion. So looking for ways to ambush his enemies seems to have been part of his personal style.
I am not sure if either of these was part of the standard Carthaginian doctrine, or just Hannibal‘s personal genius.
He can’t replenish his north African troops and has a harder time replenishing his Hispanic ones too. There are good reasons to try to keep units intact without adding recruits who speak different languages or Amalgamating units which are depleted, mostly to do with preserving horizontal and vertical bonds between men. You can much more easily add new troops to existing units than either, plus this lets you bring new men up to speed much faster.
Hence i suspect Hannibal might not just by cynically spending his less valuable troops, but spending the ones he can more easily replace. Of course this theory doesn’t work at Zama, so…
This excellent series has made me curious about two areas I’d love to see you write about.
The first is the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, it’s obviously something many people have talked about, but I think your focus on operations and logistics would be a good area to have more popular facing takes on, and also, I do think a lot of that history (popular especially but even some academic) essentially starts from a position of Caesar’s background, maybe Sulla, but doesn’t talk about things from the long view of the older Republican history. Thinking about things like the way you have stressed the unique difference of the last two uses of dictatorship as an example, but also general things with elections and the position of the Consuls in Italy.
Secondly, would love to hear you talk more about slingers, especially in comparison to your writings on archer lethality, comparing the two and discussing why slings fell by the wayside in comparison.
Agreed. My assumption is that becoming a good slinger required a lot more training time and practice than for an archer. It just seems a harder weapon to master. But maybe this is incorrect?
No, it’s very much correct. No matter how much of an amateur the bow wielder is, it’s impossible for the arrow to end up going backwards when shot from a bow. With a sling, this is a possibility.
Also, it’s harder to aim with a sling because you can’t line things up visually, so unless you’ve trained a lot and know your range intuitively, it’s likely your shot will fall short or go wide.
I’m pretty sure this is the reason why we so rarely see slings in movies. You can hand a bunch of extras bows and expect that their arrows will all go in roughly the same direction. If you try that with slings, there’s a nontrivial chance one of them will hit the cameraman.
It is also hard to master a pre-modern bow, and probably requires even more childhood practice than mastering a sling does. The difference is that a sling is almost immediately deadly, even in the hands of a child, to anyone near the student slinger in every direction; whereas accidental shot from a bow still only arcs into the student archer’s field of vision.
The Baleares’ defensive isolation allowed for lower population density and the environment required lower population density, so a kid screwing around with a sling there was just a lot less likely to cause a problem. Other places where slings become cultural expectations tend to be hill-herding systems where it is common for individuals to spend a lot of time alone watching animals.
My understanding is that on some level you didn’t train archers (or slingers for that matter) as in, you didn’t take raw recruits and have them practice archery and then put them in the army (like you did with gunpowder)
Rather you recruited archers (and slingers) from populations that were *already doing those things*. Either because they were military aristocrats, shepherds, hunters, or you had a culture of regular archery/slinging contests. “Trying to get more archers” is more about shaping long-term culture than putting people through boot camp.
Yes, armies did not train people to be archers or slingers, but that just means someone else had to do the training. Family and neighbours have to teach youngsters, and the would-be archers or slingers have to make time and find space for practice.
It’s still much easier for non-military archers to find space to practice, because they can shoot side by side with novices without worrying about being injured or hitting other people. There’s a 16th C picture “The Fair at Hoboken” by Bruegel showing archers shooting in remarkably close proximity to a whole lot of other people, although I hope that’s just artistic license.
As already pointed out, for one novice slinger the necessary space is an entire large field with no-one else within hundreds of metres. As they get better they can be closer, but still not as close as archers can: at the local archery club we regularly shoot within arms length of neighbours without problems. Slingers would concuss each other.
Ideal culture for slingers is pastoral. David was a shepherd, meaning he spent many hours standing in a open space by himself and could sling rocks as often as he felt like. (Sheep are low profile, already have thick textile body armour, and rams at least have reinforced skulls.) But pastoral cultures don’t support the same population densities as agricultural, so many fewer slingers around than archers.
@scifihughf,
The Incas seem to have made heavy use of slingers as well. I always kind of assumed that was because their metallurgical technology wasn’t as advanced as in Eurasia (they appear not to have smelted iron and produced steel, although they did use some “raw” iron ores), but maybe there are other factors?
> There’s a 16th C picture “The Fair at Hoboken” by Bruegel showing archers shooting in remarkably close proximity to a whole lot of other people, although I hope that’s just artistic license.
Shooting competitions in the low countries tend to be major guild affairs, often taking over the town square for extended periods, and regularly feature legal immunity for the archers from damages (and even deaths) which might inadvertently occur. What he’s showing here is exactly in line with the textual sources.
“David was a shepherd, meaning he spent many hours standing in a open space by himself and could sling rocks as often as he felt like.”
Presumably, if slings are useful against lightly protected humans, they are also useful against wildlife after the shepherd’s sheep. So David might have time, opportunity, and motive to practice with a sling.
Well there are apparently a few Ming military manuals on training archers, but A. That’s quite late, and B. I don’t read Chinese nor have a translation.
I bring it up because my impression of Chinese military history is that they accomplished quite a bit through drill, which fits with the frankly ludicrous amount of state power secure Chinese dynasties could marshall compared to almost any competition; if any state could brute force the problem of turning urbanized populations into archers it’s going to be China.
Recall the line ascribed to Edward I: “If you want to train an archer, start with his grandfather.” Probably archers and slingers both came from cultures in which such activities were as deeply embedded among the young (men) as are football and baseball among Americans.
Yes, please! Great idea to a series on the end of the Republic and the Civil Wars focused on logistics and operations (as well as the Professor’s customary insights into the cultures and mores of pre-modern leaders and cultures).
Yeah, for as much as our host talk about Rome, he very rarely talk about the civil wars (in comparison) except that one Gracchi series then again it’s not about the war aspect.
Something another commentator raised before, do we have any good idea of what a Carthaginian general is doing in battle? Do they lead the shock cavalry, Successor style? Stay with one of their heavy infantry formations, Roman style? Something else?
We know at least of Hannibal at Cannae that he personally supervised the center of his army to make sure its slow retreat against the Romans wouldn’t turn into a rout; it’s possible this was exceptional, or that it signifies that the Carthaginian generals understood themselves as “battle managers” similar to the Romans, and did not subscribe to the Hellenistic notion of heroic generalship.
Excellent series as always! Tragic that this one has no subparts (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, etc.); given the scarcity of sources, one shouldn’t be surprised I guess. Thank you as always!
I want to note that Xanthippus was a Spartan — not one of the “peers” but from one of the “inferior” classes of that time (which we don’t know a lot about, and this is a generation before the Spartan reformer kings Agis IV and Cleomenes III) — and whatever course his life had taken before he enters the scene, he could not have learned much about cavalry tactics or ELEPHANTS in Sparta. He must have been a remarkable commander.
Perhaps Hannibal and Hasdrubal in Italy felt they could make up losses from the Celts easier than replace North Africans? The recruiting grounds of Cisalpine Gaul, after all, were a lot closer at hand than Carthage or Numidia or Spain.
Really enjoyed the series and really proud of Bret for planning a 5 part series that only had 5 parts. Been a while since that happened.
The elephant on the plate is probably not Carthatginian, because it is of the wrong species. It depicts an Asian elephant, while the Carthaginians supposedly used a now extinct species or subspecies of African elephants.
If it is female, and has tusks, it is African or pre-Alexander Levantine. I tend to doubt the claim that is intended to depict a mother as the war-elephant using cultures are not known to have bred elephants in the first place, but if it is a mother it is from the African genus.
Look at the shape of the animal, the fallng back and the size of its ears. It’s clearly an Asian elephant. Compare the coin later in the article to see what an African elephant looks like.
Both the elephant on the plate and the elephant on the coin have the same back shape. This is an extinct subspecies that has not yet been DNA sequenced and has at various points been assigned to different species and even different genera.
No they don’t. Also check the ears and shape of the head. The animal on the plate is clearly an Asian elephant (Elephas), the one on the coin an African elephant (Loxodonta).
“the ability of Rome to draw the Numidians away from Roman service through Masinissa’s defection in 203.” – I think this should say “from Carthagian service”?
Carthaginian elephants, like Ptolemaic elephants, were drawn from the now-extinct North African elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaohensis), likely a relative of the smaller African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), not the bigger African Bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) you are likely more familiar with but which has never been domesticated
If they were a subspecies of L. africana then by definition they were more related to the Bush Elephant than to the Forest Elephant. They might have been more similar to forest elephants in size, or maybe even temperament, but that’s a separate issue.
Until we get conclusive evidence from ancient DNA it still seems to be up in the air exactly what the North African elephant was. As far as I know, Forest Elephants haven’t been tamed either.
The thing is, we know they were smaller because our sources tell us that over and over again and I believe remains of a Ptolemaic elephant have been recovered and it was smaller.
@Bret,
I’m not disputing that, just pointing out that size, external appearance, and even properties like temperament aren’t necessarily the same thing as relatedness and ancestry.
whatever its size, the exact taxonomy of the extinct North African elephant seems to be under debate. And considering their ecological niche, it would surprise me if they actually were descended from forest elephants, although I guess it’s possible (forest elephants in some parts of West Africa do appear to live in savannah areas as well, in spite of their name).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_forest_elephant#/media/File:LoxodontaCyclotisIUCN.svg
So, you say the Numidians were used to “hold” and implies this was because he valued them more and didn’t want to lose them but…. isn’t that just how you’d use that kind of light cavalry?
(OTOH we do sometimes hear the numidian cavalry outright defeating heavier cavalry, so maybe it’s more complicated than that)
Calculated from https://paperlined.org/dev/oss/high_energy_slings
E / (L * DW) produces a very consistent ratio of K:
K = .222/mm or 1/4.5045 mm or 1/4504.5 m.
Thus, E(Input) * Sling Length * K = E(Output).
That is, Input Energy * Sling Length (mm from top of hand to pouch mid-point) * 0.222/mm = Output Energy
Assume slingers throw at approximately 70% of Max Energy in order to sling repeatedly (1 Hour or more).
From E(Output) you can calculate speed at projectile weight E = 1/2*m*v^2 -> v = sqrt(E * 2 / m)
At 170J (Pro Athlete level), a 20 gram lead slug on a 76.2cm sling travels at 169.7m/s with a range of 255.3 m, assuming 5 deg tilt at 2m above ground. That’s 1.5 seconds of flight (and hitting the target’s foot). At 127m the slug takes .75 seconds and hits the target’s chest.
This is pretty good. I’ll add that a modern person can get some sense of the motion of a sling using a cue ball and a knee-length athletic sock, but should only do so when they are at least a 100 yards from anything anyone might care about.
If you swing the sock vertically, you can at least limit the danger zone to in front of you and behind you. As far as I can tell, the vertical swinging is also more historically common, compared to the horizontal orbiting above the head.
Vertical swing has excellent horizontal accuracy, but limits sling length. The longer the sling, the more energy it can store, and the greater the output energy. If the sling length falls below 45 cm, the user would be better off simply throwing the projectile.
Speculation here, but might we suggest that the Carthagenian preference for envelopment compared to the Macedonian preference for line breaking charges might be related to Carthage’s best cavalry being Numidians who are light fast horsemen that skirmish, while the Macedonians tended to use heavier shock cavalry?
Seems sensible to exploit your strengths. And worrying, if your greatest strength belongs to your allies, rather than to you.
“I also suspect, had the Carthaginians not been defeated by Rome, that their system of long-serving generals setting up veritable fiefdoms abroad would have eventually spelled disaster for the Carthaginian Republic.”
All these republics seem not to have scaled up very well. Either it builds up its power and is subverted by its generals, or it doesn’t and is conquered by a much larger monarchy.
Two different questions –
1. On the Carthaginian cavalry envelopment – what did the cavalry do once they’d achieved their envelopment?
In the “Total War tactic”, once your cavalry has flanked, you then decisively charge into the rear of the engaged enemy infantry, causing heavy damage and hopefully a rout.
But it doesn’t sound like most of Carthage’s cavalry is really equipped for a decisive charge into a densely packed formation of heavy infantry, followed by extended fighting in melee. They’re mostly lightly armored and I assume riding fairly small horses compared to true “heavy cavalry” of the Persian cultural sphere or medieval Europe.
2. On putting Gauls in positions to sustain high casualties – it sounds unlikely that we have any sources on the topic, but given your knowledge of Gallic culture, how would you speculate they felt about this? I wonder if this was a case where everyone’s values conveniently aligned: by being in the thickest combat, individual Gauls were well positioned to improve their own social status by demonstrating bravery and performing martial deeds in the presence of their peers and superiors.
That is the standard end of the “Total War tactic” but in most of the games there is an intermediary phase where you micro your cavalry behind the enemy to force them to constantly rotate away from your infantry advance and then position your cavalry to fire into the back of the engaged infantry (because TW does a very bad job of modeling fires into melee and you can only usefully do so from behind the enemy line), sometimes using up all of the cavalry ammunition before charging to rout.
Here’s an observation (that may well already be considered). Considering that Polybius is writing a generation or two after the wars against Carthage, and right about the time that Rome has enveloped/is enveloping the Cisalpine Gauls, the Ligurians and a good chunk of the Iberians into its own imperial project, do we have to be careful of bias in terms of him claiming that those dastardly Carthaginians kept unfairly placing them in situations where they’d be killed rather than risking their core troops?
I suppose if it’s occurred to me it’s no doubt occurred to actual experts, but it certainly struck me reading through it.
Polybius is a Greek writing about Rome, though.
Certainly he seems to have a lot more favour for Rome than any of their competitors, but the objective in writing that Rome > Carthage would likely be more along the lines of justifying to his fellow Greeks why Rome is cooler*, rather than writing to the Gauls/Iberians about Rome’s superiority in treatment of them. And while he had a following of Roman readers, the justification of “You’re going to be better to them than those evil Carthiginians” doesn’t sound like something that would resound in Roman philosophy/politics for why they’re conquering those lands, especially since he’s writing after Carthage has been removed from the region.
*see also: the previous article about how Polybius was misrepresenting “mercenaries” in order to emphasize to his fellow Greeks how awesome it is to have massive citizen armies, like Rome.
“Polybius is a Greek writing about Rome, though.”
Duh. Must have been having a slow day that day. You’re dead right. I’d got his potential motivations (and thus biases) completely wrong.
When it comes to gaming, my impression is that your preference is computer games rather than board wargames. Anyway, I wonder if you have any opinions on the late Richard Berg’s three game series by GMT – just published in a deluxe edition including all three games.
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1055-thunderbolt-deluxe-edition.aspx
Out of curiosity, why DON’T we have any Carthaginian writings? They’re Phoenicians – they literally invented the writing system used by most of the world. I wouldn’t have expected 100% of their writing have been destroyed when Carthage fell.
The Romans deliberately destroyed almost all Carthaginian writing after the third Punic War. That said you would expect survivals here and there.
Poor Clau-Clau-Claudius did his best, you know, it’s not his fault future generations didn’t preserve the Emperor’s writings on the Etruscans and the Punics.
Unless, of course, he just wasn’t as good a writer as the late Robert Graves.
Because nobody thought it worth copying. The Latin literary tradition survives to us because the Romans of later centuries thought that it was worth making a new copy of Polybius, Livy or Cicero when the old one was getting worn out, because they thought it had some timeless quality worth preserving, the same way we do for example with Shakespeare now. Same with Greek literature in the Roman east.
But writing from a culture vilified by those timeless classics, in a language that isn’t spoken that much any more, about a political system that was utterly destroyed and whose monuments were torn down? Very few people would think that worth preserving.
Well, some writing, specifically stone inscriptions and papyri stored in warm dry climates, survives without having been recopied. I guess nothing of that nature exists from Carthage?
Some writing survived that way, but it’s not enough to give us a coherent picture. Bret on Tides of History once put it as “Imagine if you have to reconstruct the US constitution from fragments of half a dozen Supreme Court cases.”
The other barrier is that a lot of non-Latin source material is lying around in archives untranslated, because there’s not enough people able to read the languages, because language departments are underfunded.
We do have some inscriptions and such, but very little on perishable materials becuase they well… mostly perished.
There is at least one example of Carthaginian literature that is known to have survived the city’s destruction and been translated for a Greco-Roman audience, because there are references to it in other examples of Roman literature (such as Pliny the Elder).
That being the agricultural manual of one Mago. Apparently, Carthaginian insight into cultivation in their otherwise less than accommodating environment was considered worth referencing.
>Hannibal loses half of his cavalry and three-quarters of his infantry
Why’d they follow him all the way though. Was he that charismatic?
Ehh, it is only if you believe Polybius.
He had to work on sources. What sources did he have for Hannibal starting army? My guess is not that good ones. Pictor had likely access to intelligence reports on current Hannibal force once in Italy so we can trust those numbers in Polybius, but the army in Iberia could have been easily overestimated or miscalculated. Or it was the total number of Barcid troops.
That being said Hannibal was clearly a very good manager, given that we hear of no revolts in his army during the 15 years in Italy.
Polybius actually tells us what his sources are for Hannibal’s dispositions: he reports finding an inscription near Lacinium in Southern Italy, in which Hannibal evidently recorded out the lists of his dispositions (Polyb. 3.33.17-18).
It’s not an insane thing for Hannibal to have set up (perhaps as he was leaving Italy, at the sanctuary) as a commemoration of the forces who had fought for him and when Polybius says he ‘found’ it, he almost certainly means it remained on public display there. Which is also perfectly plausible for such a document inscribed and set up in a sanctuary. And of course Polybius would know, when writing, that someone else could go and check to see if the inscription existed. So I think it is more probable than not that his source existed (obviously lost to us now) – it would be fascinating to know precisely what it recorded and in what form when he read it.
Because they couldn’t very well go home. Deserting the army (all of your food is in the baggage train remember?) in the middle of a mountain range is probably a non-starter. Even without that, the North African infantry would have to cross the Mediterranean. The Iberians would have to march all the way back through the Alps and over the Pyrenees.
This is the same theory the Spanish used with the Army of Flanders. Sure, the foreign units are stupidly difficult to replenish compared to just recruiting locals, but they won’t desert because they’re 700 miles away from home among a hostile population.
Hannibal also didn’t seize any ports on the way over, mostly because they were Roman allies with well defended walls and doing so would have slowed him down. But to the point here, his troops had absolutely no way to get to a port to go home without fighting the Romans anyway or crossing the Pyrenees. None of them did, except any Gauls.
He almost certainly could have taken one if the smaller cities, Massilia had several colonies, but didn’t. Likely the supplies weren’t worth the delay or the risk of desertion if he secured a port, although surprise was probably the bigger factor, but we don’t know his reasoning.
Notably Scipio would use the cities Hannibal bypasses to leapfrog to Iberia, so it was a non trivial strategic choice to push through them. Plus if he had taken the coastal route he’d likely have actually ended up with more surviving troops due to his high rate of attrition.
Mr Devereaux, my compliments on having completed yet another series of Must-Reads!
Out of curiosity, might one please ask if you have ever considered a series (or at least an article) examining the Parthians? (The Parthian Empire being, for much of it’s history, the only Peer competitor left standing after a serious go-around with the Roman Empire).
It doesn’t seem to me that Carthaginian infantry can be said to be superior to Macedonian infantry on any kind of qualitative basis. That seems like quite a stretch.
Obviously post-Pyrrhus we don’t see Carthage fight Hellenistic states so cannot do a direct comparison. But they fare *far* better against the Romans in battle than the Macedonians (I’ll ignore Hannibal given he’s obviously a genius). Carthage and its allies wipe out Roman armies at Bagradas River, Silva Litana, and Upper Baetis.
Bret notes in his Pyrrhus post that even in defeat “every Roman army draws blood.” The same is often true for Carthage. We often don’t get casualty figures for the Romans when they win, but the ones we do include some *staggeringly* high loses for a battle victor. Livy reports 8,000 dead at Metaurus, 2,300 dead just in the 12th legion at Insubria, Scipio Africanus suffers 2,000 dead and 3,000 wounded defeating Iberian chief Indibilis’s revolt.
By comparison, probably the bloodiest battle for the Romans against the Successor States, Callinicus, sees just 1,600 Roman dead.
I think that’s using casualty figures fairly simplistically, and also is eliding some crucial context.
Macedonian infantry used the sarissa, a long pike. The Roman legionaries were armed with short weapons, the pilum and gladius. Their Carthaginian opponents were armed similarly with short weapons: Spears, javelins, and swords.
Pike troops, by the nature of the pike, can hold enemies armed with shorter weapons at bay. In a well-ordered square, pikemen can present a hedge of points that is near-impenetrable by an enemy. When such a square advances, enemies with shorter weapons are obliged to give ground to avoid being skewered. This is why pike infantry are uniquely good at taking space and forcing opposing infantry back.
In all likelihood, the majority of the legionaries stood off out of reach of the pikes. The principes and triarii of a Polybian style army are already meant to wait in reserve, and the hastati could not penetrate the pike hedge frontally. There were few Roman casualties in these battles, because few Romans came within actual striking distance of the pikes at all. They couldn’t do so.
The Romans and the Carthaginian armies, by contrast, are both armed with similar short weapons. When they fight, they are much more likely to come to actual close combat with each other. That means a far greater risk of injuries or death, even for the victors.
An analogy: Macedonian infantry against the Romans is like a man with a long rapier trying to cautiously fence at his distance against a man with a short sword. Romans against Carthaginians is more like two men with daggers in a vicious brawl. In a knife fight, most commonly both parties get cut and stabbed and the “winner” is who got cut or stabbed less.
The casualty figures I don’t think really tell us anything about the qualitative characteristics of the Carthaginian infantry: Their training, organization and social structure, discipline, weapons, armour, or capabilities. I don’t think you can fairly argue they were more capable than the Macedonians, merely because their battles were bloodier. Killing is part of war, but war is more than just killing.
“Killing is part of war, but war is more than just killing.”
In this you’re correct. However, considering the relative balance of Carthaginian and Hellenistic victories against the Romans, it seems that Carthaginian armies were decidedly better at the non-killing aspects of war as well…
Don’t get me wrong. I think Hellenistic armies broadly didn’t get a ‘fair shake’ against the Romans, some in ways that aren’t a fair comparison, but others in ways that are structurally baked in. Where we do see Romans engaging dead on with phalangites they tend to get beaten up pretty badly, but that doesn’t seem to happen as frequently as something going a bit sideways (either with the phalanx itself or with the rest of the army).
At bare minimum it can be said that the African infantry appear to be more tactically flexible than Hellenistic phalangites in a way that appears to have cost the Greeks a number of victories, all the while maintaining the ability to do their part in the battle sufficiently well to defeat Roman field armies.
Does your analysis account for Roman shields?
I don’t know if Carthaginians ever went up against Ptolemaic Egypt, but from what Our Host and everyone here says, it sounds like they would have been able to take them apart just as the Romans did. So . . . why didn’t they? Alexandria’s a lot closer to Carthage than it is to Rome.
Carthage doesn’t exactly have the spare time. From 289-264 they largely overrun Greek Sicily, Pyrrhus liberates it, they largely overrun it again. 264-41 is First Punic War, then Mercenary War until 237. Conquest of Iberia follows and then the Second Punic War runs 218-202. Before and after the 289-202 period Carthage was not as powerful.
Egypt is a major power. 75,000 men at Raphia and pretty large navy. The only time Carthage was really strategically free was between the Punic Wars, but it started the period in rough shape. Hamilcar enters Spain with 20,000 men. Egypt would require far more. Plus significant naval logistical support as the coast between Egypt and Libya is rather desolate. And Carthage is broke. Also hindsight is 20-20, we can see how Rome did fighting Carthage versus the Successors, but Carthage can’t, they certainly can’t assume they are superior!
Now if the Second Punic War had ended in a draw or Carthaginian victory, Antiochus IV might well have gotten to encounter them. Egypt is broken as a military power in 200 BC at the Battle of Panium and Antiochus comes rather close to uniting Alexander’s empire. I could see Rome and Carthage even allying against him before they realize he is not in their weight class.