Memoria Hannibalis: constructing memories of Punic War violence from the second century BCE through the fifth century CE (original) (raw)

The Second Punic War: Hannibal's summer campaign in 213 BC in southern Apulia.

David Feeney, 2019

In 213 BC the struggle between Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War reached a new intensity. By this point the war spanned the entire western and central Mediterranean. In Spain the rival Roman and Carthaginian forces had fought themselves to a stalemate. Despite remarkable successes, Hannibal made little headway against Rome in Italy in 214, and there too stalemate loomed. The protagonists now searched for new vulnerabilities in their enemy; Philip V of Macedon made alliance with Carthage and attacked the Roman position in Illyris (the First Macedonian War), while Rome encouraged King Syphax of the Masaesyles to move against Carthage in North Africa. Most importantly, in 213 the contest for Sicily reached a crescendo, with Roman forces commencing the siege of the city of Syracuse. Yet, inexplicably, in this crucial year, Hannibal seems uncharacteristically inactive and almost irrelevant. Hannibal’s summer campaign in 213 in the Salento is given only the briefest mention by Livy (25.1.1). Livy only reports that Hannibal “spent the summer in the territory of the Sallentini” and that “some insignificant cities of the Sallentini went over to him”. Clearly, Livy regarded it as being of little significance. Hannibal was the architect of Carthaginian grand strategy, Carthage’s most proven general, general of the war’s most successful, veteran army. Why then did Hannibal apparently accomplish so little in the summer of 213? Thanks to the extensive efforts of archaeology and field surveys (especially the Brindisino project of the Free University of Amsterdam) the economic and political changes in the Salento from the pre-Roman to post-Roman eras are perceptible, and able to be examined. Together with careful study of the ancient sources, I propose a more complete picture of the political, economic and demographic landscape of south-eastern Italy in 213. This, in turn, provides us with greater insight into Hannibal’s goals and accomplishments in his summer campaign that year.