Review: Hannibal: Enemy of Rome by Ben Kane

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2014


It's been a busy summer but I finally finished the first book in bestselling author Ben Kane's series about the Hannibalic Wars entitled "Hannibal: Enemy of Rome".  As in his popular "The Forgotten Legion", Kane has used young men on the cusp of manhood as his primary characters.

We first meet Hanno, a young Carthaginian who hopes to become a soldier like his father, Malchus, once was.  Now, Malchus serves on the council in Carthage and, although Malchus drags Hanno to the council meetings so he may learn statecraft, Hanno finds the meetings a bore and prefers to skip out and go fishing with his best friend, Suniaton, the son of a high priest.

We also briefly meet Hanno's two older brothers, Sapho and Bostar who presently serve as officers in the Carthaginian army.  We discover that Sapho, the eldest, is jealous of Bostar because Bostar has been promoted above him because of Bostar's superior tactical acumen.  Sapho's jealousy also extends to a lesser degree to Hanno, who, as the youngest, has captured his father's heart after the death of Hanno's mother.

A painting of the intricate harbor and ancient city of Carthage.  Image
courtesy of the Carthage Archaeological Museum, Tunis, Tunisia.

Kane provides a vivid description of the capital of Carthage, still majestic even after suffering defeat at the hands of the Romans in the First Punic War.  But all is not well as Carthage and Rome have once more butted heads in Iberia where Carthage has conquered most of the peninsula and the town of Saguntum, fearful of the growing Carthaginian presence in the region, has appealed to Rome for help.

Malchus supports the Barca family and clearly expects Hannibal, the senior Barca commander, to exact "payback" from the Romans for their past offenses to Carthage.

Meanwhile, Hanno and Suniaton hear of a large run of tunny (tuna), and can't resist trying their luck so they can earn a little spending money.  They set off in a small boat that they soon fill with fish.  Suniaton has pilfered a bottle of wine from his father's wine cellar and they decide to celebrate their good luck.  Soon they fall asleep in the warm sun so do not see an approaching storm.  When the violence of the storm finally awakens them they find they have been swept far out to sea and cannot see the outline of Carthage in any direction.  As they were only on an afternoon outing they have no supplies and soon are famished from thirst and hunger.  Finally they see a ship on the horizon and think they are saved.  But the ship is manned by pirates who see the two boys as nothing more than slaves that can be sold for a profit.

To make matters worse, a patrol ship makes the pirate captain decide to avoid Sicily and steer to Italy instead.  When the ship arrives in Italy the two boys are marched off towards Capua where it is hoped they will be sold to a gladiator school.

But Hanno is purchased by a Roman equestrian family that runs a farm near Capua instead.  Then we meet Quintus and Aurelia, the son and daughter of Fabricius, once a Roman cavalry officer and now a landowner who raises grain and livestock.

A Roman villa rustica excavated near the ancient town of Boscoreale
north of Naples, Italy.  Photo by Mary Harrsch © 2007.

Now we find out what Roman life is like for this semi-retired military veteran and his family. I really like the way Kane gives us thorough backgrounds on all of these characters so we have a solid understanding of the similarities and differences that separate the two cultures.

Hanno and Quintus who are almost the same age become friends and as the plot unfolds, each saves the other's life, making their bond even stronger.

In the meantime, since Rome does not send assistance, Saguntum subsequently falls to Hannibal's forces. So talk of war with Carthage soon dominates the conversations at the villa.  Quintus begins cavalry training and Quintus' father, Fabricius is soon ordered to join Roman forces in southern Gaul marching towards Iberia where the Romans plan to confront Hannibal.

With Fabricius gone, the villa overseer, who lost his wife and children to Carthaginians on Sicily and harbors hatred for Hanno, attempts to drag Hanno away to Capua where he plans to sell the youth to the lanista at the gladiator school for an arranged fight to the death with Hanno's friend Suniaton.  But I don't want to give away much more of the plot so you'll have to read it for yourselves to find out what happens.

Remains of the amphitheater at Capua.  Image courtesy of
Flickr user Robert Ulrich.

Eventually, Hanno and Quintus both end up serving in their respective armies after Hannibal successfully crosses the Alps and the two armies end up camped across the Trebia River from each other.
Having studied the Second Punic War to some extent, I was wondering how Quintus and his father were going to escape the slaughter that I knew was about to befall them.  Kane does such a good job of characterization that at this point in the book I cared about both the Carthaginian family and the Roman family equally.

The climactic battle sequence was nothing short of breathtaking.  What I liked the most was Kane's description of the scenes and terror each character saw around them and felt as the epic struggle unfolded - Hanno and his father fighting with the Libyan spearmen near the center of the Carthaginian line while Quintus and his father struggled with the Roman cavalry on the flanks.

The Gauls, who had been previously allied with the Romans, joined Hannibal at the Battle of the Trebia River and were placed at the Carthaginian center.  Although fierce, the Gauls could not hold back the disciplined Roman legionaries who fought through the center then retreated back to Placentia (Modern day Piacenza).  Image courtesy of Total War: Rome II by Creative Assembly.

I appreciate the fact that Kane does not attempt to "take sides" on the historical controversy over whether Scipio tried to warn Sempronius Longus against the ill-fated attack or not.  Polybius claims he did but many scholars look askance at this report since Polybius and the Scipios were closely allied.  These scholars also point to the reported number of Roman troops involved in the engagement as problematic.  Livy records there were 18,000 Romans and 20,000 Italic allies involved.  Polybius claims there were 16,000 Romans and 20,000 Italic allies.

"The numbers stated to have fought the battle are problematic: a combined Roman army should have had 5 legions of 20,000 men and all 30,000 allies authorized by the Senate and yet if the armies were not combined Sempronius should have had only two legions of 8,000 men. One answer is that Scipio gave up two legions and kept one and 20,000 auxiliaries in his own camp as a reserve. Livy seems to think that Scipio's wound gave the entire authority to Sempronius, but immediately after the battle Scipio commanded an army marching from his camp to Placentia. If Scipio could command after the battle then he was not so incapacitated as to be removed from command before it. Both authors agreed that the two consuls had sharp differences of opinion and that Sempronius acted on his own." 

"It is possible that the authors doubled the number of Roman legions fighting the battle and that Sempronius had only 8,000 or 9,000 Roman infantry. The authors both relate, however, that a mass of 10,000 men broke out of the Carthaginian encirclement and fell back on Placentia. Tiberius apparently did have more than two legions. Scipio argues in the story that Sempronius' men needed the winter to train, suggesting that on the way to north Italy Sempronius may have raised two more legions of recruits, throwing them into battle under difficult physical circumstances against expert advice without training. There is no mention of any such events, however." 

"Yet another hypothesis for reconciling the numbers cited by Livy for combined strength of the two consular armies and the actual number of participants in the battle of the Trebia would be that Sempronius detached part of his allied contingents for garrison duty on Sicily and for naval service with Marcus Aemilius and Sextus Pomponius. Some allowance should also be made for non-combat losses. The strength of this hypothesis lies in the maximum use of ancient evidence." - The Battle of the Trebia, Wikipedia

Since this crucial bit of evidence relies on theory rather than certainty, Kane's decision to sidestep the issue was certainly reasonable.  He does, however, relay to us the impatience expressed by the troops themselves over Scipio's apparent hesitance to act while recuperating from his wounds.

A beautiful 17th century ivory rendering of Scipio fighting Hannibal by Ignaz Elhafen currently on display at the royal castle in Warsaw, Poland. This is probably a depiction of the Battle of Zama where Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal. Publius Cornelius Scipio (the elder) lost to Hannibal at the battle of the Ticinus River but that was primarily a cavalry engagement and war elephants were not involved.  This work has also been called Alexander's defeat of Porus.  Image courtesy of S.F. Burgerer via Wikimedia Commons.  Digitally enhanced by Mary Harrsch.

I am definitely looking forward to the next book in this exciting trilogy.  The only criticism I would have is that the title makes it sound like the book is about Hannibal himself.  Although the key events in the latter part of the book are the result of Hannibal's orders, Hannibal himself appears only infrequently in the narrative.  It perhaps would have been somewhat more accurate to name the series "The Hannibalic Wars" with the subtitle "Enemy of Rome" (Book One).  But I can certainly understand the choice of title from a marketing perspective since some people may not actually make the connection between "Hannibalic Wars" and Hannibal.

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On Scipio's Villa

Image courtesy of  Wikipedia

Scipio Africanus the Elder

Today I was listening to one of Professor Steven Tuck's lectures in his series "Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City" and  I was intrigued to learn that Dr. Tuck ascribes the introduction of Roman villa architecture to none other than Scipio Africanus.  Not only did Scipio come back from conquering Carthage with a boatload
of money, but he subsequently ran afoul of other members of the senate, particularly Cato the Elder, so eventually chose self exile to free himself of the political bickering.

According to Seneca he cried “It is my wish,” said he, “not to infringe in the least upon our laws, or upon our customs, let all Roman citizens have equal rights. O my country, make the most of the good that I have done, but without me. I have been the cause of your freedom, and I shall also be its proof; I go into exile, if it is true that I have grown beyond what is to your advantage!”

So, Scipio took his hard earned wealth and moved to the seaside town of  Liternum.  There, he constructed a personal residence of significant proportions that would be emulated and embellished by Rome's later elite.


Two hundred years after Scipio's death, Seneca visited the villa and we are fortunate to have an extant copy of his observations.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca in Cordoba Spain.  Image courtesy of  Wikipedia

"I have inspected the house, which is constructed of hewn stone; the wall which encloses a forest; the towers also, buttressed out on both sides for the purpose of defending the house; the well, concealed among buildings and shrubbery, large enough to keep a whole army supplied; and the small bath, buried in darkness according to the old style, for our ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath except in darkness. It was therefore a great pleasure to me to contrast Scipio’s ways with our own. Think, in this tiny recess the “terror of Carthage,” to whom Rome should offer thanks because she was not captured more than once, used to bathe a body wearied with work in the fields! For he was accustomed to keep himself busy and to cultivate the soil with his own hands, as the good old Romans were wont to do. Beneath this dingy roof he stood; and this floor, mean as it is, bore his weight." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Scipio's Villa

I assume the forest (sometimes translated as "park") enclosed by the villa's walls represents the first vestiges of what would later become the peristyle garden.  Although the structure was probably palatial for the time period, Seneca, tutor to the emperor Nero in the 1st century CE and well acquainted with the lavish accommodations of the imperial court, is obviously appalled by the modest nature of Scipio's bathing facility.

"But who in these days could bear to bathe in such a fashion? We think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent with large and costly mirrors; if our marbles from Alexandria are not set off by mosaics of Numidian stone, if their borders are not faced over on all sides with difficult patterns, arranged in many colors like paintings; if our vaulted ceilings are not buried in glass; if our swimming-pools are not lined with Thasian marble, once a rare and wonderful sight in any temple-pools into which we let down our bodies after they have been drained weak by abundant perspiration; and finally, if the water has not poured from silver spigots." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Scipio's Villa

Seneca goes on to point out that Scipio probably only washed his soiled limbs on a daily basis and did not fully bathe but once a week since he toiled at honest work and had no need to rid himself of perfumed oils like later members of elite Roman society.  I found this interesting because I often think about how our own society has been influenced by the Romans and wonder if my parents view of weekly bathing back in the 1950s and 60s was ultimately a European adoption of a ritual handed down from conservative merchant-class Romans who also did not use perfumed oils excessively.


Seneca also makes much of the fact that Scipio bathed almost in the dark as his bathing chamber featured only "tiny chinks-you cannot call them windows-cut out of the stone wall in such a way as to admit light without weakening the fortifications..."  I think Seneca should have, instead, marveled at how much safer the Italian countryside was in his time as opposed to the early 2nd century CE.  After all, Scipio had just defeated Hannibal a few years before Scipio retired to Liternum and Hannibal had ravaged much of the surrounding Campanian countryside during the Second Punic War.  It's hardly surprising, then, that Scipio would have been careful to preserve the strength of his walls rather than carelessly focus on aesthetics.

Old fisherman or Dying Seneca 2nd century
CE Roman copy of Hellenistic original.
Photographed at The Louvre by Mary Harrsch

Seneca also should have pondered Scipio's reputed mystic nature.  Perhaps Scipio found that bathing in a relatively dark chamber encouraged the visitations of prophetic dreams.  Most of what I had read about Scipio up until now described his military strategies and his political activities so I was not aware that some ancient sources, including Livy, reported that Scipio was prescient.  Polybius, on the other hand, attributed Scipio's successes to good planning, rational thinking and intelligence, which he perceived as a better indication of divine favor than prophetic dreams.

"His [Livy's] account is more literary than historical, more dramatic and careless. He was not very critical of sources. In his effort to promote Roman patriotism he reduces Roman strength and increases that of the enemy. As for his attitude toward Scipio, he did not assume the mystical religion bit was purely 'a cloak and tool'..."
"The closest we can come to Scipio is the writing of Polybius, the eminent Greek general and historian, who composed his history of Rome some 60 years after Scipio's active career...He was, however, a Stoic. This philosophy insisted on the rationality of the universe and the existence of natural causes for historical events. This philosophy certainly helped him in comparison with the more mystic ideas held by others, but in Scipio's case it caused Polybius trouble."
"Polybius' sources besides the Scipio family and Laelius, were Greeks, on both the Roman and Carthaginian side. These Greeks followed the school of thought of Alexander the Great - that of a mystic leader. They were perhaps the original "image makers". They liked to surround the idea of the leader with a divine glow. If they could not explain something, they said it was due to divine intervention. Hence they developed the Legend of Scipio. Polybius was anxious to refute this legend. [However,] He admired Scipio as his Stoic HERO, so made him a supremely rational genius. The result was a kind of caricature, a cunning individual who purposely plays on the superstition of his followers and uses religion for his own ends. Polybius makes it seem Scipio spread these ideas of his divinity himself, while disbelieving them." - John Sloan, Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius, (The Elder) (237 - 183 BC), son of Publius Cornelius Scipio

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

A rather sour-faced Cato the Elder

Sloan also mentions that some scholars point to Scipio's Etruscan origins and the widespread acknowledgment of Etruscan mystical gifts as the source of belief in his prophecy.  Whatever the reason behind this legendary aspect of his nature, I find it quite intriguing.


I noticed another interesting tidbit about Scipio in my research, too.  He supposedly wore his toga in the Greek fashion, resembling the dress of Greek poets and artists.  He was well known to be an avid Graekophile but this overt demonstration of his embrace of Greek culture did not endear him to many of the staunch Roman traditionalists, particularly Cato the Elder.  Yet, Scipio also introduced the practice of being clean shaven, perhaps emulating images of Alexander the Great, but not typical of Greek philosophers and poets of the time.  Definitely, a man of unusual contradictions.  Perhaps what frustrated Cato the Elder so much was that he couldn't pigeon-hole Scipio into any particular category making it difficult for Cato to mount an all out political attack on the man.


Cato did ultimately succeed in driving him away, though.  Apparently, Scipio took his resulting bitterness to his grave, reportedly ordering a tomb inscription that read:  "Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis"—ungrateful fatherland, you will not even have my bones!" (although we don't really know where Scipio was ultimately buried and have never recovered any funerary monument with these words.)  


I was curious whether any effort had been made to find Scipio's villa and learned that an initial excavation of Liternum was begun in 1923 and continued until 1937 but apparently no evidence of the villa was unearthed.  A UNESCO volunteer excavation was launched in the 1970s but it, too, did not reveal the site of Scipio's last days. Then in 1988 a more extensive excavation was launched.

"The remains as they stand today date mostly from the the early imperial period. The standing monuments consist of a temple, a basilica and a small theatre, positioned on the west side of the forum with a large open area in front. These are contained within a surrounding wall onto which are abutted a number of small rectangular buildings that are thought to be shops.
"The temple is in a typical Roman style set on a high podium of locally quarried tufa, with the emphasis of approach from the front of the building, the facade of which would have dominated the space in front of the temple. One complete and one partial column are all that remain of the temple facade.." 
"To the left of the temple lie the scant remains of the basilica. The brickwork in opus reticulatum suggests a date for the building between the second half of the first century BC and the first century AD, although the existing structure would almost certainly have been built to replace an earlier building on the site. The remains of the basilica today are unimpressive, but the vestiges of the marble that originally decorated the building, visible in one or two places where modern 'quarriers' haven't yet found it, give some indication of a rather grander past for the building."
"The other main structure on the site, to the right of the temple, is a small theatre of the imperial period. The remains show that the theatre follows a typical Roman plan. After removal of dense vegetation the scaena or stage building, and the cavea or seating area where clearly visible. The upper part of the cavea had collapsed, creating the impression that the theatre was much smaller than it actually had been. Although very small, the theatre would have been quite adequate for a town of this size. It might be surmised that the population had grown from the three hundred families of the original foundation, but probably not by much." - Jim Devine, University of Glasgow, Liternum: A Campanian Coastal Town

So, it seems that Scipio remains as elusive as ever.  As for Scipio being credited with the development of one of the first villas, though, it seems the jury is still out on that one too.  Helsinki scholar Eeva Maria Viitanen points out that the "Auditorium Villa", excavated in the 1990s, indicates there was a luxurious residential complex constructed as early as the 6th century BCE.

The Villae Regina, a villae rusticae unearthed at Boscoreale near Naples, Italy

was one of 30 small holdings situated  on the lower slopes of Vesuvius and
 on the adjacent plain of Sarno.  These small- and medium-sized properties
 were family-run or employed a few slaves.  Photographed by Mary Harrsch.

"The building has a very long history, starting from the Archaic period, and its earlier phases are also fairly well perserved.  What is special about this site is the rebuilding of the early small farm as a large and luxurious complex with what are probably separate living quarter and productive parts towards the end of the 6th century BCE.  In comparison with other sites of the period, the built area is enormous and it remains very large among its peers until the 1st century BCE, when the villa becomes quite normal in size among the many other large country houses.  It has been suggested that the Auditorium Villa was in fact a country residence for the head of a Roman elite family, who thus asserted his right over the landscape inhabited by members of his clan.  Such residences would have been relatively rare which is why they probably have not been found before.  The other farms were small in size and there would not have been intermediary forms between the very large and the small.  The possible model for these large residences might have been the slightly earlier Etruscan elite palaces, such as Murlo.  It is also claimed that there were no Catonian small or medium-sized villae rusticae in the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.  The development into the 1st century BCE villa would have been faster and the changes would have happened closer to this boom period than suggested before.  The economic explanation echoes the common model of war booty invested in land, as external funds were needed to establish the new large villas and that the owners would have represented a much more heterogeneous group of persons than before." - Eeva Maria Viitanen, Locus Bonus: The Relationship of the Roman Villa to its Environment in the Vicinity of Rome

But whether Scipio inspired the widespread development of Roman villa architecture or not, he certainly was a passionate and gifted individual that I plan to study further.  I hope that by giving up those "triumphs with their withering laurels" he found those "lasting rewards that keep forever fresh and green" Cicero described so eloquently in Scipio's Dream.

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