The capture of Capua and Syracuse in 211 BC freed troops that enabled Rome to dispatch a force of 12,000 infantry and 1100 cavalry under the praetor 09Claudius Nero to check the advance of 05Hasdrubal Barca in Spain. Claudius was able to hold the position north of the Ebro, but the Senate thought that he was too cautious and replaced him the following year.
In 210 BC Publius 16Cornelius Scipio, son of Cornelius (15), the first privatus (i.e. a citizen who is not a public official or a member of the military) to be granted the imperium of a proconsul, sailed from Ostia with ships, reinforcements and supplies to Emporion in northeast Spain. His total force, including Iberian allies, was over thirty thousand; the fleet, consisting of about eighty ships, he put under the command of his friend Gaius Laelius (1) (fl.210-160 BC).
Scipio’s first target was New Carthage. This plan was possible because the Carthaginian generals were on bad terms and wintered apart: 05Hasdrubal Barca in central Spain, 08Hasdrubal Gisgo near the mouth of the Tagus, and 06Mago Barca near Gibraltar; each was ten days’ march from the city.
New Carthage was on a peninsula extending from the eastern side of a south-facing bay. North of the peninsula was a shallow lagoon, to the south was a harbour and the Mediterranean, and between the western side of the bay and western edge of the peninsula a narrow canal connected the lagoon to the harbour. The town thus had water on three sides.
In 209 BC Scipio’s troops marched south and sealed off the isthmus to the east, while Laelius’ ships sailed down the east coast and blockaded the harbour from the south. A sally by the garrison was beaten back, as was the first Roman assault on the walls. While part of the army renewed the assault from the east and other troops forded the lagoon to attack from the north, the ships came up to the city walls on the south which were then scaled by the marines.
After the fall of New Carthage, Rome concluded a treaty of alliance with the two Iberian chiefs Mandonius (fl.211-205 BC) and Indibilis (fl.211-205 BC). One of the highest Roman decorations of the time was the Corona Muralis (‘crown of walls’), awarded to the first man over enemy walls in a siege; Scipio awarded two of these after the battle.
Scipio left a garrison in New Carthage and took the rest of the army north to their previous base at Tarraco. In spring 208 BC the three Punic armies remained divided and Scipio was determined to fight them separately before they could unite. The closest was 05Hasdrubal Barca, who had spent the winter in Baecula (Bailen?) near the Guadalquivir River.
Learning of Scipio’s approach, Hasdrubal took up a strong position southeast of Baecula, atop a gradual hill broken halfway by a terrace. Although his army was a considerable force of more than twenty thousand men, he was nevertheless still greatly outnumbered. His plan appears to have been to try to delay Scipio until the other Carthaginian armies arrived.
Scipio sent his velites (javelinmen) against the enemy’s covering force on the terrace. When these forces gained the first ridge, he sent all his light troops to support the attack. Scipio then divided his main army into two groups; he on the right wing and Laelius on the left. They worked their way up the base of the hill on both sides and then charged the flanks of those on the shelf. To avoid being cut off in the rear, the Carthaginian troops began to withdraw. Although a great number of them were trapped between the two pincers, the majority of Hasdrubal’s army, perhaps as many as two-thirds escaped.
Hasdrubal’s orders were not to fight the Romans in Spain, but to reinforce Hannibal. He therefore crossed central Spain and the upper Ebro and ultimately slipped through the western passes of the Pyrenees on his way to Italy.
Early in 207 BC Hanno (11) brought ten thousand troops to replace 05Hasdrubal Barca’s army then on its way to Italy, and joined 06Mago Barca who was busy recruiting Celtiberians in central-northeast Spain. Meanwhile, 08Hasdrubal Gisco had advanced his army from Gades eastwards to challenge Scipio, thus presenting him with a double threat. If Scipio advanced with his full force against either of the opposing forces then the other would surely fall on his rear.
He therefore kept his position and sent his officer Marcus Silanus with ten thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry on a reconnaissance. Somewhere in the interior, Silanus came across Mago and Hanno with their troops assembled in two camps. One contained four thousand Carthaginian infantry and two hundred cavalry, and the other, some distance away, held nine thousand Celtiberian recruits. The Celtiberian camp, which was not properly guarded, was quickly overrun. Hanno was captured but Mago escaped with his cavalry and perhaps half of his infantry and joined Hasdrubal Gisco.
With the threat to his right flank removed, Scipio moved southwards towards the second army. But the Hasdrubal avoided a major by splitting his army among the various cities, inviting Scipio to expend energy besieging them during the winter. But Scipio chose not to, though he did send his brother Lucius 18Cornelius Scipio (fl.208-184 BC) to capture the important town of Orongis before retiring to Tarraco.
During the winter the Carthaginians gathered their strength for a final effort. Desperately needed resources for Hannibal were diverted to Spain, where Hasdrubal Gisco had recalled the garrisons he had posted in the towns the previous year and added to them recruits from the western edges of the country.
Scipio was aware that his army was now outnumbered and that he too would have to seek allies from the Iberian tribes. Although he had made treaties with some of them, he regarded them as untrustworthy and did not want to place himself in a position in which their aid would be pivotal.
In spring 206 BC Hasdrubal advanced with an army of 50,000 infantry, 4500 cavalry and 32 elephants to a city called Ilipa, north of Seville. When Scipio arrived, for several days both armies adopted similar formations with the best infantry in the centre, flanked by allies and with cavalry on the wings as usual. Early one day, having ordered his army to be fed and armed before daylight, Scipio positioned his allies in the centre and his legions on the flanks. He then sent his cavalry and his light troops against the enemy outposts, while he advanced with his main force behind.
Surprised by these early attacks Hasdrubal hurried his men out into their usual formation. By the time he realised that the Roman order had changed, the opposing army was too close for him to adjust. Scipio advanced his centre slowly, declining battle, while the skirmishers filtered back through the battle line and got themselves behind the faster moving legionaries. Scipio’s battle line was thus concave, reverse to Cannae.
With his wings extended and still holding back his centre, Scipio’s legions, light troops and cavalry attacked the half-trained Iberians on the Carthaginian wings from front, flank and rear respectively. Aware of the imminent destruction of its wings, the Carthaginian centre being trampled by their own elephants driven towards them by the Roman cavalry attacking the flanks, when Scipio ordered his Iberian centre into battle the Carthaginians were forced to retreat.
A sudden downpour ended the fighting and the Carthaginians sought refuge in their camp. Overnight the Turdetani and the rest of the Iberians defected to Scipio. Hasdrubal ordered a retreat and the Romans pursued with vigour. Of the original Carthaginian force of fifty thousand only six thousand survived and escaped to a nearby hill, which the Romans could not assail due to the steepness of its slopes. Mago (6) and Hasdrubal (8) withdrew to Gades, from where the latter sailed off to Africa. Scipio left Silanus with a force to cover the men on the hill, while he himself returned to Tarraco with the rest of the army. When the force on the hill began to dissipate, the Numidian prince Masinissa switched his allegiance to Rome and promised to support Scipio’s campaign in Africa.
During the time Masinissa was in Spain, his father Gala in Numidia died (c.208 BC) and was succeeded by his brother Oezalcea, who died soon after and the kingship passed to the elder of his two sons, Capussa. Mazaetullus, a rival in the royal lineage, then led a rebellion in which Capussa was killed and Mazaetullus made himself regent for Lacumazes, Capussa’s younger brother. When Masinissa arrived in Africa he defeated Lacumazes and Mazaetullus, but Syphax, who had made an alliance with Mazaetullus, expelled Masinissa (who fled eastwards to the Lesser Syrtis), annexed his kingdom and (probably) established a new capital at Cirta.
From Tarraco, Scipio now went to New Carthage and then sailed to Numidia, where he apparently concluded a formal agreement with Syphax. In the event, however, it was Hasdrubal Gisco who eventually gained Syphax’s support by giving him his daughter Sophonisba in marriage.
Scipio returned and proceeded to punish Spanish cities still opposed to Rome. At Ilorci the people had killed the Romans soldiers seeking protection in their town after the battle in 211 BC: Scipio captured the town and ordered it to be destroyed and its people put to death. The people of Astapa, fearing that they would be slaughtered in a similar fashion, killed themselves and burnt the city and all its treasures. Himilco (6), the garrison commander at Castulo, surrendered without a fight.
Around this time Scipio fell seriously ill and on a rumour of his death the Ilergetean chieftains Indibilis and Mandonius started a rebellion against the Romans in Spain. The rumour also fostered a mutiny of some eight thousand soldiers at the military camp at the Sucro River. When Scipio recovered he quashed the mutiny and had thirty-five ringleaders of the revolt beheaded. He then went after Indibilis and Mandonius, slaughtered their army but released the two chieftains to their territories and gave them favourable terms.
With Mago and his troops confined to Gades, Scipio sent his forces westwards: 05Marcius Septimius (fl.211-206 BC) down the right (southern) bank of the Guadalquivir towards the city; and Laelius (1) with a small fleet along the southern coast to the port of Carteia southeast of Gades.
Near the mouth of the river, Marcius encountered Mago Barca’s officer Hanno (12) recruiting mercenaries from the local tribes. Marcius attacked and defeated the considerable force that Hanno had assembled, but Hanno himself escaped with a small body of troops back to Gades.
Meanwhile, Laelius had reached Carteia and was taking his ships out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic when he met a fleet led by Adherbal (2). Livy’s description of the battle is not very clear but it seems that the weather and the tide made fighting very difficult.
Adherbal escaped to Africa and Laelius, the victor, returned to Carteia. The Carthaginian senate ordered Mago to take the fleet he had in Gades over to Italy. While sailing along the coast of Spain he attacked New Carthage by landing troops on the shore by night and attacking the city wall in the same place as the Romans had breached it. The Romans came out and Carthaginians escaped to their ships. Mago sailed the Balearic Islands, where he spent the winter.
Gades surrendered shortly after Mago’s departure, thus making the Roman control of Spain complete. Scipio founded Italica (northwest of modern Seville) as a place to settle for the Roman soldiers wounded in the Battle of Ilipa. Having successfully driven the Carthaginians out of Spain, Scipio returned to Rome having won complete control of the eastern and southern coastal areas of Spain.
Leave a Reply