Did Hannibal Have Any War Aims – And If So What Were They?

I suspect most people know that Hannibal invaded Italy – but WHY?

Hannibal's lost opportunity
There is a story from Hannibal’s invasion of Italy which is very famous and, some would say, enlightening.  The scene is after Cannae.  The Roman army is destroyed and in flight.  Livy, typically excitingly, describes what happened:

In his moment of victory Hannibal was surrounded by his staff, crowding round to congratulate him and urge him after such a massive success to spend the remainder of the day and the following night resting himself, and giving his exhausted soldiers time to recover.
But Maharbal, his cavalry commander would have none of it, urging him not to waste a moment.  “I’ll tell you what this battle has really achieved,” he declared, “when in five days time you are feasting on the Capitol.  Follow up quickly. I’ll go ahead with the cavalry, and before they even realise we are coming, the Romans will discover we’ve arrived.”
For Hannibal it all seemed far too optimistic, an almost inconceivable possibility.  He commended Maharbal for his imaginative idea, but said he needed time to think it through.  Maharbal’s reply was short and to the point.  “The gods do not give all their gifts to any one man. You can win a battle, Hannibal. But you have no idea how to exploit it.”  (Livy, Book 21, Chapter 51).

According to Livy: ‘That single day’s delay, by common consent, proved the salvation of Rome and her empire’.  The great British Second World War Fieldmarshal Montgomery agreed.  At that moment, Hannibal spurned the opportunity, lost the initiative … and lost the war.
And, at that moment in the narrative, Livy invites reader to decide, with his Maharbal, that Hannibal had a vital quality of character missing – that he was not so great a commander after all. Which is, of course, exactly what Livy wanted you to decide.  Hannibal, Livy dramatically tells us as he describes Hannibal’s retreat from Italy in 203bc: ‘often looked back to the shores of Italy, accusing gods and men and even cursing himself for not having led his soldiers reeking with blood from the victorious field of Cannae straight to Rome’ (Book 30, Chapter 20).


In Hannibal’s defence
But WAS it such a stupid decision?  The French archaeologist Serge Lancel (1995) did not think so.  To lay siege to Rome was no easy matter.  Hannibal had no siege machinery.  A siege of Rome would take months, even years, and turn Hannibal’s war-of-movement into a protracted stalemate:

Moreover, Hannibal had other war aims, another plan… He was not waging a war of extermination, he told [the Roman captives he was ransoming]; he was fighting to maintain the dignitas of his own country and to ensure its imperium.  Hannibal thus expected Rome to sue for peace; what he wanted was a victory recognised by a treaty that would, to Carthage’s advantage, reverse the treaties of 241 and 237 (Lancel, Hannibal, p.109)

Lancel presents us with a Hannibal whose war-aim was, by invasion, to force the Romans to the negotiating table.  When they refused to do so, lacking alternative strategies, Hannibal just kept fighting and suffered ‘declining fortunes’, followed by ‘setbacks’, followed by inevitable defeat.

How realistic an appreciation of Hannibal’s war-strategy is this?  Let’s look and see if the primary sources give us any insight into Hannibal’s war-aims.  The problem here, of course, is that we possess NO primary Carthaginian record of Hannibal’s invasion which might show us what the Carthaginians thought about the invasion … which tells us their side of things.  So we are reliant mainly on Polybius and Livy.


Polybius
To be frank, Polybius is a disappointment in this respect.  We have come to expect dispassionate and informed analysis from Polybius … but of Hannibal’s war aims, almost nothing.  He records a few speeches Hannibal gave to his men ... which suggest nothing except that Hannibal continually motivated his men by promises of riches, land and status:

Your victory will make you at once masters of all Italy, and through this one battle you will be freed from your present toil, you will possess yourselves of all the vast wealth of Rome, and will be lords and masters of all men and all things (Book 3, Chapter 111).

And as to what Hannibal himself was about, there is disappointingly little.

One thing Polybius does tell us is that, as Hannibal was preparing his invasion:

He cherished high hopes of the Gauls … thinking that the only means of carrying the war against the Romans into Italy was … to reach the above country and employ the Celts as co-operators and confederates in his enterprise (Book 3, Chapter 34).

The idea that Hannibal was invading Italy because he was ‘taking the war to the enemy’ is very compelling.  Carthage had been defeated in the First Punic War because it had merely tried to defend what it had; perhaps Hannibal had resolved that he was not going to sit back and do that again? Any study of Hannibal’s battles, also, leads one to the conclusion that he was one of those people who believe that ‘the best form of defence is attack’.
A war fought on Roman soil, moreover, would prevent the situation that had developed in the First Punic War that, the longer the war went on, the more Carthage’s wealth and livelihood was ruined.  If there was to be a war, why not fight it on Roman soil, so that Rome was ruined, not Carthage?
And if Rome was ruined, would not Rome lose the wherewithal to fight?

If you are thinking that this is all a lot of conjecture, based upon a single phrase in Polybius, you are probably correct.

Beyond that, however, Polybius has precious little to say about Hannibal’s aims and intentions:

Hannibal, now fully assured of success, dismissed the idea of approaching Rome for the present, but began to ravage the country (Book 86, Chapter 8).

When he learnt that Fabius had arrived, Hannibal, wishing to strike such a blow as would effectually cow the enemy, led his forces out and drew them up in order of battle (Book 89, Chapter 1).

The Carthaginians, then, by quartering themselves in this plain made of it a kind of theatre, in which they were sure to create a deep impression on all by their unexpected appearance, giving a spectacular exhibition of the timidity of their enemy and themselves demonstrating indisputably that they were in command of the country (Book 91, Chapter 10).

Ravaging the country … cowing the enemy … demonstrating your superiority. These are all medium-term objectives rather than long-term aims.

Perhaps Hannibal simply did not have any long-term aims – to quote one historian: ‘Like the Germans in WWI he never made clear, to himself or anyone, what victory would look like’.

Or at least in Polybius he never made his overarching war-aims clear.


Livy
What about Livy, then – does Livy tell us any more?

As soon as we venture into Livy, one has to realise, of course, that we are into unreliable territory.  If Polybius was broadly pro-Roman, Livy was unashamedly so, and blatantly critical of Hannibal.
So maybe we will need to be a bit more careful of accepting unquestioningly Livy’s interpretation of Hannibal.

Anyway, what does Livy say about Hannibal’s war-aims?

For Livy, Hannibal’s war-aims were as clear as they were extreme – Hannibal wanted, no less, to capture Rome and destroy it: thus, when he addresses the soldiers on the eve of ascending the Alps, he says:

You crossed the Ebro, resolved to wipe out the very name of Rome and bring freedom to the whole wide world … [so] dare to look forward to your journey’s end, on the Campus Martius, which lies between the Tiber and the walls of Rome (Book 21, Chapter 30).

As the men’s spirits flagged crossing the Alps, he did not motivate them (as Polybius would have it) merely by promising wealth and glory, but by reminding them of the ultimate aim of their campaign:

He pointed out to them the view of Italy, declaring that they were even now not merely crossing the ramparts of Italy but scaling the very walls of Rome itself…   After one, or at worst a couple of battles, they would hold Rome’s citadel and the capital of Italy in their power and at their mercy (Book 21, Chapter 35).

And when he described how Sempronius hectored and bullied Scipio into the Battle of Trebia, Livy put these words into his mouth:

The Carthaginians were encamped in Italy and almost within sight of Rome. Their object was, not to get back Sicily and Sardinia, taken from them after their defeat, nor to cross the Ebro and occupy northern Spain, but to expel the Romans from the land of their fathers and from their native soil. (Book 21, Chapter 53).

Did Hannibal want to conquer Rome?
But should we believe this?  Being cynical, it suited Livy’s purposes to portray Hannibal as a man of unlimited ambitions who wanted to destroy Rome.  It was a propaganda parody designed to turn Hannibal into a hate-figure … and to make his defeat all the more wonderful and satisfying.  It was the outworking of virtus Romana – the demise of hubris at the hands of Fortune.

Personally, I am inclined to reject the idea that Hannibal ever intended to capture Rome.  That would have required a full naval invasion, with siege weapons … and that, most certainly, Hannibal’s invasion was not.  In 16 years in Italy – apart from a feint to try to draw the Romans from Capua – Hannibal never ONCE tried to take Rome, and conspicuously neglected the opportunity even when it came.
One is bound to conclude – contrary to Livy-Maharbal’s criticism – that to take Rome was NOT Hannibal’s war-aim .
And that, even if he DID say those things, like Polybius-Hannibal’s promises of wealth and glory, they were just words to inspire his troops, and not serious statements of long-term strategy.


Did Hannibal want to free Italy?
I think we can also discount another idea we find in Livy, that Hannibal was in Italy to ‘bring freedom to the whole wide world’.
This is even more unrealistic, surely, than the idea of besieging Rome.

It is true that, after Trasimene, Hannibal:

handed over the Roman prisoners to his various regiments to be kept under guard, but released the allied troops without ransom and sent them all home declaring, as he had on previous occasions, that he had not come to make war on the Italians but to fight for their freedom against the Romans (Book 21, Chapter 85)

But I think we can discount this quickly.  Hannibal knew that he needed to detach the Gauls and other Italian peoples from their alliances to the Romans; he was ALWAYS going to pose as their liberator rather than their conqueror.
So I do not seriously entertain the idea of Hannibal as a kind of proto-Martin Luther King trying to set the Italian people free.


Did Hannibal want to set up a rival state in Italy?
Recently, historians have expanded on the idea of Hannibal garnering allies, and his talk of 'freeing' Italians, into the idea that Hannibal had a deliberate policy to create an 'Italian Alliance', which would be an anti-Roman League-of-state to rival and cancel out Roman influence on the Italian peninsula.  Hoyos (2003) accepts this idea, and Fronda (2010) outlines Hannibal's diplomacy in extensive detail.

However, looking at Fronda's dates, it is hard to see any evidence of this before Cannae.  The alliance with the Boii and other Gaulish tribes in the north of Italy (218-217bc) were military alliances, not political union, and Italian cities only started top come over to Hannibal after 215bc.  
What had happened in the meantime, of course, was that Hannibal's 'blitzkrieg' as it has been called had failed to reduce Rome to surrender, and that - even after Cannae - the Romans refused to accept peace terms.
So it might well be that, after 215bc, Hannibal accepted the need to re-think his strategy and hot upon the idea of an anti-Roman League.
(And, of course, by 203bc he had indeed set up a rival Carthaginian state in Italy - his own military enclave around Bruttium.)

But, before 215bc, I cannot see any evidence of Hannibal collecting a League of Allies.


So what WAS Hannibal about in Italy?
Is Livy, too, useless to tell us anything about Hannibal’s war-aims?

Well I do not think so, and I think there is an episode in Ab Urbe Condita, in which Livy – unwittingly – lets slip a clue as to what Hannibal’s campaign was REALLY about.
It is the episode of Hannibal’s Dream at Onusa:

From Gades Hannibal returned to New Carthage, to the winter quarters of his army. Setting out from thence, he marched along the coast, past the city of Onusa, to the Ebro. It was there, as they tell, that he saw in his sleep a youth of godlike aspect, who declared that he was sent by Jupiter to lead him into Italy: let him follow, therefore, nor anywhere turn his eyes away from his guide.  At first he was afraid and followed, neither looking to the right nor to the left, nor yet behind him; but presently wondering, with that curiosity to which all of us are prone, what it could be that he had been forbidden to look back upon, he was unable to command his eyes; then he saw behind him a serpent of monstrous size, that moved along with vast destruction of trees and underbrush, and a storm-cloud coming after, with loud claps of thunder; and, on his asking what this prodigious portent was, he was told that it was the devastation of Italy: he was therefore to go on, nor enquire further, but suffer fate to be wrapped in darkness (Book 21,Chapter 22).

Ancient writers (Polybius was atypical) did not objectively analyse the thoughts or motives of their subjects as a modern historian would do.  Instead, they presented them as declaratory statements in the first person in the form of a speech or dream – there are quite a few times in Livy where he has taken Polybius’s objective analyses and actually transformed them into a direct speech.  This was an accepted practice (Polybius hated it) and illustrates the close relationship between History, Rhetoric and Drama in those days – they were different facets of the same subject, rather than discrete subjects in themselves.

So, when Livy tells us about this dream, he is retailing a tradition which gives us an insight into Hannibal’s motives as he prepared to leave Spain.

Moreover, there are aspects of this dream that suggest it represents, not a Roman tradition about Hannibal’s aims, but a Carthaginian tradition.
Contrary to Livy’s claim, Hannibal was NOT guilty of impietas.  For a start, his name is theophoric, which you would have thought is a hefty clue.  Also, Polybius tells us how he offered a prayer to the gods before in crossed the Alps.  And examples of Hannibal’s pietas creep even into Livy – before he crossed the Ebro, Livy tells us, ‘he went to Gades and discharged his vows to Hercules, binding himself with fresh ones’.  (Hercules, you will remember from your studies of Alexander-the-Great at Tyre, was the Graeco-Roman equivalent of the Phoenician god Melqart.)
So if you read it again, you will see that Hannibal’s dream – ignoring its equivalency reference to Jupiter – includes details which link it directly to the Carthaginian pantheon, in which the storm-god Baal Hammon was the god of sky and vegetation, and his partner Tanit was a warrior-goddess.  This is a very old, clearly Carthaginian, story.

Moreover, the same dream is mentioned in Cicero’s book De Divinatione, in which, Cicero tells us ‘it is found in the history written in Greek by Silenus, whom Coelius follows, and who, by the way, was a very painstaking student of Hannibal's career’ (Book 1, Section 49).  So here we have, at last, a story going right back to the original Carthaginian – Livy has copied it from Coelius, who got it from Mr Reliable-Silenus, Hannibal’s historian.
It is, as they say, ‘from the horse’s mouth’.
Either Hannibal himself reported the dream, or he sanctioned it, as a statement of his inner motivation.


So what does the Dream at Onusa suggest about Hannibal’s war aims?
Well, firstly, I think, it suggests that we are wrong to try to define Hannibal’s war-aims in modern terms of rationally-prescribed strategies and objectives.  It is a reminder that in Ancient times people’s thought-processes were VERY different to our modern, scientific-method brains. 

If we are to interpret this dream as a statement of Hannibal’s aims, we have to say that Hannibal seems to have defined his aims, not in terms of military and political objectives, but in religious terms … as a CRUSADE.
It suggests that Hannibal saw himself as the wrath of the gods, charged to wreak destruction by marauding over Italy, writhing across the countryside like the coils of a snake, burning, looting and killing as he went.

And does it not also suggest REVENGE – the 'wrath of Hamilcar' and the hatred Hannibal had at the age of 9 promised to hold onto throughout his life – as he enacted the punishment of the gods on the Romans for the defeat and humiliation of Carthage in 241bc?


Conclusion
It seems to me, also, that the Dream at Onusa suggests that Polybius and Livy were light on Hannibal’s war strategies and objectives, not because they had failed to record them, but because (at least before 215bc) Hannibal did not really have any – his aim being, in fact, simply to take the war to Italy and do damage to Rome.

In 203bc, delegates from Carthage went to Bruttium to recall Hannibal to Africa:

It is said that he gnashed his teeth, groaned, and almost shed tears when he heard what the delegates had to say.  After they had delivered their instructions, he exclaimed, "The men who tried to drag me back by cutting off my supplies of men and money are now recalling me not by crooked means but plainly and openly.  So you see, it is not the Roman people who have been so often routed and cut to pieces that have vanquished Hannibal, but the Carthaginian senate by their detraction and envy (Book 30, Chapter 20).

By this time, Hannibal had been pushed back into the heel of Italy.  Both his brothers were dead.  There was no hope of help from Carthage.  His campaign was going nowhere.
Yet still: ‘seldom has any one left his native country to go into exile in such gloomy sorrow as Hannibal manifested when quitting the country of his foes’.
And why – because he could no longer ‘rout and cut to pieces’ the Roman people.

So was that religious crusade of revenge and damage – we have to wonder – the be-all and end-all of his campaign?


PS  If you want to explore this topic further, I thought that there was a good discussion of Hannibal’s war aims on this forum.

The Saguntum Outrage and the Causes of the Second Punic War

You have learned five 'causes' of the Second Punic War – but whom do you BLAME?

Don’t mention the war!
There is an excruciatingly embarrassing episode of Fawtly Towers in which Basil (John Cleese) – finding he has some Germans staying at the hotel – is unable to stop himself making allusions to the Second World War … much to the distress of his German guests.
Eventually they ask him to stop.  The dialogue goes:

Basil Fawlty: Is there something wrong?
German Guest: Will you stop talking about the war?
Basil Fawlty: Me? You started it.
German Guest: We did not!
Basil Fawlty: Yes, you did. You invaded Poland.

At this point, if he had been alive, Polybius would have intervened and pointed out that – although the Nazi invasion of Poland may have been the beginning of the war, it most certainly was not its cause:

Some of those authors who have dealt with Hannibal and his times, wishing to indicate the causes that led to the above war between Rome and Carthage, allege as its first cause the siege of Saguntum by the Carthaginians and as its second their crossing, contrary to treaty, the river whose native name is the Iber.  I should agree in stating that these were the beginnings of the war, but I can by no means allow that they were its causes… These are pronouncements of men who are unable to see the great and essential distinction between a beginning and a cause, these being the first origin of all, and the beginning coming last… (Book 3, Chapter 6)

The 'Wrath of Hamilcar'
It is clear that – even in the time of Polybius – there was debate about the causes of the Second Punic War. 
Many people seem to have blamed, somewhat unfairly, the long-dead Hamilcar.  
And Polybius tells us of the Roman senator and annalist Fabius Pictor, who  – apart from the Saguntum Outrage (Greek word ἀδίκημα – adikema, meaning intentional wrong or error) – ascribed the war to Hasdrubal’s ‘ambition and love of power’. 

Polybius himself identified three causes – the Roman seizure of Sardinia, and the confidence which success in Spain gave the Carthaginians but, most of all, ‘the wrath of Hamilcar’ (Ἀμίλκου θυμόν – Amilcou thumon) after the first Punic War:

Unvanquished in spirit by the war for Sicily, since he felt that he had kept the army of Eryx under his command combative and resolute until the end, and had only agreed to peace after the defeat of the Carthaginians in the naval battle, he maintained his resolve and waited for an opportunity to strike (Book 3, Chapter 9).

Talk like that, said the British historian HH Scullard in the Cambridge Ancient History (Vol. VIII, 1930) ‘should be rejected as part of the anti-Barcid tradition’.  Similarly Professor Walbank regarded it as ‘a later invention, designed to establish a long-cherished Barcine plan of revenge’ (although, inconsistently, he did not question the authenticity of the anecdote about Hannibal being made to swear everlasting hatred of Rome at the age of nine, which is part of the same tradition).


Carthaginian Responsibility
There was clearly a tradition in Rome by the time of Livy that the Carthaginians caused the war – Livy is absolutely explicit that Hannibal was merely executing a war into Italy which Hamilcar had planned all along.  
In the (probably apocryphal) meeting between Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama, Scipio is made to say: ‘We did not start the war in Spain … it was the sack of Saguntum which drove us to take up arms in [a just and holy war].’   And Hannibal accepts the blame: ‘It was I who first began this war against the Roman people.’ 

After a war, it falls to the victors to write the history, and it is not rocket-science that the Romans were going to blame the Carthaginians.

Indeed, it would not be impossible, moreover, to build from all this a case which parallels the Second Punic War with post-Versailles Europe, with Carthage in the role of a former-day Germany – an army smarting from the politicians’ surrender when it had not in fact been defeated; a people angry with a peace treaty which imposed a huge indemnity and loss of land; above all, a nationalist element smarting from defeat and itching for revenge (part of which being a rapid GroßeKarthagisch expansion in Spain).  From the Treaty of Versailles to Hitler's invasion of Poland, 20 years; from the Treaty of Lutatius to Hannibal's crossing the Ebro, 22 years – in both cases just short of a generation to recover, regroup, and have ‘another go’, seeking the ‘right’ outcome second time around.


The Saguntum Problem
But what would the Carthaginians have said if they had won the war?

The sequence of events of the slide to war in 218bc is fairly clear:
1.  In 219bc, Hannibal besieged the Iberian town of Saguntum.
2.  The Saguntines now (perhaps even earlier) appealed to Rome for help.
3.  The Romans sent an embassy to Hannibal, demanding that he leave Saguntum alone, for it had placed itself under Rome’s protection; Hannibal sent them packing.
4.  The Roman ambassadors then went to Carthage, demanding that the siege be ended, and Hannibal handed over for imprisonment; despite a long speech by Hanno recommending appeasement, the Carthaginians refused to do so.
5.  Upon the fall of Saguntum, the Romans sent a final ultimatum to Carthage, which was also rebuffed, whereupon the Romans declared war:

The oldest member of the [Roman] embassy, pointing to the folds of his toga, told the [Carthaginians] that it held both war and peace for them: therefore he would let fall from it and leave with them whichever of the two they bade him.  The Carthaginian Suffete bade him let fall whichever the Romans chose, and when the envoy said he would let fall war, many of the Carthaginians cried out at once, "We accept it."

6.  Hearing this, Hannibal assembled his army and crossed the Ebro.


The Ebro Treaty and the alleged 'Alliance' with Saguntum
Now it seems that, in about 226bc, the Carthinginians had agreed a Treaty promise NOT to cross the Ebro.  As usual, it is Polybius who is clearest on this issue:

The Romans, seeing that Hasdrubal was in a fair way to create a larger and more formidable empire than Carthage formerly possessed, resolved to begin to occupy themselves with Spanish affairs.  Finding that they had hitherto been asleep and had allowed Carthage to build up a powerful dominion, they tried, as far as possible, to make up for lost time…  Accordingly, [they] sent envoys to Hasdrubal and made a treaty, in which no mention was made of the rest of Spain, but the Carthaginians engaged not to cross the Iber in arms (Book 2, Chapter 13).

All this talk about the River Ebro as the justification for war, however, raises a problem since – at the time of the Roman embassies and declaration of war in 219bc  – Hannibal had not yet crossed the Ebro!
The truth is that it was the siege and capture of Saguntum which caused the Romans to declare war, and the Roman declaration of war which caused Hannibal to cross the Ebro.

So why were the Romans trying to link the war to the crossing of the Ebro?

There have been various suggestions:

1. It is quite clear that some Roman historians (e.g. Appian) thought that Saguntum was north of the Ebro, and that by attacking the town, Hannibal was in fact crossing the Ebro.  This is wrong – even LIVY knew that Saguntum was south of the Ebro and therefore within the Punic sphere of influence.  In 1961 the historian Jerome Carcopino argued that the ‘Iber’ was not the Ebro at all, but the river Jucar (south of Saguntum); but no one really accepts this.

2.  Some historians have suggested that a Roman protectorate of Saguntum was explicitly included in the Ebro Treaty.  At one point, Polybius seems to suggest this:

The Romans protested against his attacking Saguntum, which they said was under their protection, or crossing the Ebro, contrary to the treaty engagements entered into in Hasdrubal's time (Book 3, Chapter 15)

3. However, the justification that Polybius eventually seizes upon is that ‘it is an acknowledged fact that the Saguntines, a good many years before the time of Hannibal, placed themselves under the protection of Rome’.  Although there is no evidence whatsoever for this apart from this single (very imprecise) sentence, by the time of Livy the Saguntines have become Rome’s ‘allies’.  And thereby the modern historian Serge Lancel (1995) feels able to describe Saguntum as a ‘the pro-Roman enclave .. a thorn in the flesh of Punic Spain’.


The Need to Justify the War
Do you believe any of it?  Even if you accept the existence of the Ebro Treaty (and the Carthaginian ‘Mighty Ones’ denied all knowledge of it), as Professor Walbank points out, a Roman alliance with Saguntum is absolutely irreconcilable with the spirit of the Treaty of Ebro.  The whole muddled, half-baked mess of different justifications has the feel simply of post-hoc special pleading.

The big problem is that, with the destruction of Carthage, so disappeared the Carthaginian point-of-view … which leaves us trying to piece together the Carthaginian side of things from hints in the universally-anti-Carthaginian Roman literature.


Who was to blame?
Even so, two millennia of undisputed propaganda are unable to disguise the culpability of ROME in the slide to war.

It is Livy which gives us the clearest insight into the war-hysteria in Rome prior to the declaration of war:

At almost the same time the ambassadors who had returned from Carthage brought back word to Rome that all was hostile in that quarter, and the fall of Saguntum was announced.  And so great was the grief of the senators, and their pity at the unmerited doom of their allies, and their shame at having failed to help them, and their wrath against the Carthaginians, and the fear for the safety of the commonwealth – as though the enemy were already at their gates... (Book 21, Chapter 16).

And thus it is hard to disguise the FACTS that it was the Romans, not the Carthaginians, who were making the running for war:

• It was the Romans who had taken advantage of the 'Truceless War' to annex Sardinia.
• It was the Romans who, alarmed by the growth of Carthaginian power in Spain, had extracted from Hasdrubal a promise that Carthage would not expand beyond the Ebro.
• It was the Romans who then grasped the opportunity offered by Saguntine appeals for help as a pretext to confront the growing Carthaginian power in Spain.
• It was the Romans who presented Carthage with an ultimatum and…
• It was the Romans who declared war.

Conclusion
We have come a long way from the interpretation of the Carthaginians as proto-Nazis, seeking to overturn the Treaty of Lutatius.

I suppose that, at base, the underlying cause of the Punic Wars was that they were an imperial, economic and cultural death-struggle between two competing empires.

But it is difficult to see the Second Punic War as other than a decision by a nervous Rome to ‘pick a fight’ with Hannibal.  Though he might well have been expecting and even hoping for it, Hannibal crossed the Ebro because war had been declared on him, not as a pre-emptive act of aggression.
It was the Romans who decided to take the Saguntum Outrage as an excuse for war … who ‘started it’.

... which left their apologists rather scratching around for justifications after the war.

What Was Hannibal's Route Over The Alps?

You cannot go far in studying Hannibal without coming across the BIG DEBATE – where did Hannibal cross the Alps?

The first person to complain about different accounts was Polybius, writing only 50 years after the events:

Some of the writers who have described this passage of the Alps … make both false statements and statements which contradict each other…  For they never took the trouble to learn that the Celts who live near the Rhone not on one or on two occasions but quite recently, had crossed the Alps with large armies … nor are they aware that there is a considerable population in the Alps themselves (Book 3, Chapter 47).

Livy, too, alludes to various and erroneous theories:

I am the more astonished at the difference of opinion in regard to his route over the Alps, and that it should be commonly held that he crossed by the Poenine Pass and that from this circumstance that ridge of the Alps derived its name [i.e. on the grounds that the name came from the Punic (Carthaginian) invasion] – or that Coelius should state that he crossed by the ridge of Cremo [i.e. the Little St Bernard Pass]  because both these passes would have brought him down, not amongst the Taurini tribesmen but through the Salassi Montani to the Libuan Gauls. Neither is it probable that these routes to Gaul were open at that time (Book 21, Chapter 38).

Since then, others have offered their suggestions:
Napoleon Bonaparte suggested the Col du Mont Cenis.  
In 1959, the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition, led by engineering student John Hoyte, tried to prove that Hannibal had used the Col de Clapier (slightly to the south) by walking the pass, and taking with them an elephant that they had borrowed from Turin Zoo; the route proved too dangerous and they ended up, instead, going via Mont Cenis Pass (but still thought the Clapier pass was the most likely). 

Another Clapier-Pass advocate, American archaeologist Patrick Hunt (who has directed the Alpine Archaeological Project since 1994), has crossed the Alps 20 times via a number of passes, breaking 30 bones along the way, trying to find a match between the archaeology in the ground, and the accounts in Polybius and Livy.
Meanwhile, Canadian geochemist Bill Mahaney has conducted geo-archaeological investigations (on the soil and rocks) and concluded that the Col de la Traversette in the south is a much better bet.  In 2010, the Wood brothers cycled three different routes for the BBC, before declaring for la Traversette.


A Fruitless Debate, but Fun
Ultimately, it is a fruitless debate, because it cannot ever be solved; indeed, my only original contribution to the debate will be a point which fairly much proves that, even when we think we have solved the PROBLEM, we have not solved THE problem.  

The ONLY truth can be that we will never know.

‘Few historical problems have produced more unprofitable discussion than that of Hannibal's pass over the Alps’, said the English historian Frank Walbank.  But it did not stop him writing extensively on the issue, and it does not stop it being quite FUN to sit in front of your computer, having never actually visited the Alps, and come up with your own theories. (Do it yourself – see if you can find the answer that has eluded the experts!)  Above all, I suspect that – if you are doing the Ancient History GCSE – you will want to have at least an overview of the issue.

The main problem, of course, is the paucity of our source information.  You will read books that tell you what Silenus, and Coelius, said about this and that – but they do not KNOW that, because those accounts are now lost.  Our sources, basically, boil down to Polybius and Livy and – however clever they are – anything anybody suggests beyond that is at best a guess based on references in Polybius and Livy.

Now your guess is NOT as good as Dr Hunt’s guess, of course … but best-guesses they are all when it comes down to it.


The Approach to the Alps

Let’s try and make sure that – even if we guess – our guess is at least a calculated guess.  And it makes sense, if we are to guess which pass Hannibal used, to at least try to gauge some idea about the general direction from which he approached the Alps.

This is harder than it might sound.  Neither Polybius nor Livy tell us the names of many places through which Hannibal passed.  Even where they do, those names have long since fallen into disuse.

So how did Hannibal approach the Alps?

Polybius tells us that he crossed the Rhone at a place about four days' march from the sea, and that he turned east towards the Alps at a place called ‘the Island’, at the confluence of the Rhone and the River Iskaras (in Livy, the ‘Sara’) a further four days' march up the Rhone.

How far did an ancient army march in a day?  Polybius (Book 3, Chapter 50) tells us that, marching (as Livy put it, ‘unhindered’) Hannibal’s army covered 800 stades (145 kilometres) in ten days – about 14 or 15 kilometres a day.  It doesn’t seem very much, but can you remember how – when Hanno took a detachment upstream to outflank the Gauls when Hannibal was crossing the Rhone – they went 200 stades in a night … but ‘were exhausted and needed a day to recover’.  Elephants in particular slowed Hannibal down – when the cricketer Ian Botham tried to take three elephants with him on a charity walk over the Alps in 1988, he had to abandon the idea because they could not keep up.

So traditional wisdom tells us that the 'Iskaras' is the Isère, and that ‘The Island’ is at Valence.  But Valence is 180km from the coast (= 22km a day) which is pushing it a lot.  Other suggestions have been the River Drome (160km = 20km a day, still a bit much) or the Aigues (85km = 10km a day, perhaps not enough – though this was the favoured solution of the British Museum Hannibal enthusiast Gavin de Beer).

The truth is that we will never know, but it is worthwhile noting that – for the more northerly passes (such as the Mont Cenis and the Col de Clapier) to ‘work’ – Hannibal would have needed to drive his army very, very hard up the Rhone before turning east to proceed at a much more leisurely pace eastwards along the River Iskaras.  A more realistic estimate of Hannibal’s progress would favour one of the more southerly passes (Montgenèvre or La Traversette) – and indeed Livy (admittedly after inexplicably saying that Hannibal ‘turned left’) actually states that Hannibal marched east along the Druentia (Durance) through the lands of the Tricastini.


Crossing the Alps
Many surveys of this issue try to build tables, mapping the characteristics of the various passes against the various events in Polybius’s and Livy’s accounts of Hannibal’s route.  Very clever people have spent their lives doing this, and have done so wonderfully detailed and clever ways.

However, out of all of these, I think there are two facts which I personally think are more critical than all the others:

• A 'panoramic' view of Italy (such as Hannibal pointed out to his troops) is only found on the Clapier and Traversette Passes.

and

• The ONLY pass in the Alps which has a double-landslide such as that described by Polybius is the Traversette Pass.

This strikes me as final.  These are the critical identifiable events of the journey over the Alps and there is only one Pass (two at best) which fits the bill.  And if any of those very clever people suggest that you haven't studied the issue enough and that their Pass fits better, surely the simple question is: 'Does your Pass have a double-landslide?'  And if their answer is 'No' (which is surely must be), then surely the only response is: 'Well then it doesn't fit, does it?'

There are other issues which are less decisive.  A number of passes have a steep descent into Italy.  A number of passes are high enough to have standing snow onto which new snow falls.  A number of passes have ‘white rocks’ and areas large enough for an army to camp.  But having reduced our options to two, all we need to know is that the Clapier and Traversette Passes fulfill all of these criteria as well.

A number of historians have puzzled over the story – which obviously gained popular currency in Roman times – of Hannibal clearing rocks by lighting a fire under them and pouring on vinegar. Just where these rocks were, however, is more of a mystery.  Mahaney found some rocks which were fire-burned in the Clapier Pass ... but when he investigated them, he found the burn-marks were not extensive enough, and probably came from a lighting-strike rather than a quarrying fire.  So what are we to make of this story?  Polybius did not mention it at all, and to be honest it probably fell into his category of ‘false statements’ made in ignorance.

So we are left with the feeling that Clapier is a good fit, but that Mahaney’s Traversette theory has a trump card in the double landslide.  
And thus it is probably possible to say that the Col de la Traversette most exactly fits Polybius’s account of Hannibal’s route.


The Ever-elusive Answer
But does that mean we have found the route which Hannibal took?

To think about this, I want to go back to Livy’s account of the fire-and-vinegar cracking of the boulders, and those fire-burned rocks in the Col de Clapier.  If the incident didn’t happen, how did the story become so current?  

I am reminded about the legend of Napoleon carving his name on some rocks he had decided were ‘Hannibal’s Rocks’, and indeed of other famous landmarks associated in legend with famous historical figures (such as King Charles’s Oak near Worcester).  Usually these associations are apocryphal, and simply an attempt to establish a famous historical link to get a bit of fame-by-association.  Recently there was an attempt to call the road between Veynes and Gap in southern France ‘the Hannibal Route’; it is very scenic and no doubt would delight the tourists … but, as we have seen, nobody has a clue which road Hannibal took to the Alps.

So where did that story of burning the rocks come from?  Is it not eminently possible that, crossing the Col de Clapier, people saw the burned rocks, and associated them (erroneously) with Hannibal ... and the story grew from there - that the rocks created the story, rather than the event producing the rocks?

However, if this is possible, what does that mean for our appreciation of Polybius’s account?  

William Mahaney has conducted a geo-chemical investigation of the Traversette Pass and established to his satisfaction that it is the Traversette Pass which best matches the account in Polybius.  (Or, if you prefer it, Patrick Hunt has walked the Col de Clapier, Polybius in hand, and marshaled his archaeological knowledge to claim that it is the Clapier Pass which best fits Polybius.)

But, in the 2nd century bc, wasn’t that exactly what Polybius was doing as well?  
We know that Polybius himself visited the historical scenes he was describing, and that his geographical knowledge was very carefully researched.  So he was doing exactly what Mahaney and Hunt have been doing – taking anecdotes and events about Hannibal’s crossing from Silenus and Sosylus and the various eyewitnesses-he-interviewed, and matching them to the route he thought best-matched.  
So we are not to be surprised that Polybius’s account fits an actual Pass … OF COURSE it fits an actual pass, because it was an actual pass he was describing when he placed his story of Hannibal’s crossing in its setting.

So, when Mahaney and Hunt best-guess they have found Polybius’s Pass, they have only found the Pass that Polybius best-guessed Hannibal used.  

I accept that this is probably the best we will ever do.
But it was not necessarily the Pass that Hannibal DID use.

What DID Polybius mean by: πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας?

In your textbook a lot is made of the concept πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας (pragmatikes historias)  It is introduced with a fanfare as though it holds the key to Polybius’s method of history-writing.
 

Your textbook is not alone.  The English scholar FW Walbank devoted an entire chapter to it in his book on Polybius (1990), in which he associated it with the various aspects of Polybius’s historical technique – his world-view, his interviewing of eyewitnesses, his evocation of τύχη, his interrogation of sources, his integration of geography, art, science and moral issues, his focus on how and why, and his end – a history ‘intended to furnish both political and military lessons’.

The impression is that Polybius intentionally developed a ‘brand’ of History which he called πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας – and the temptation, given the fact that both words have derived-down into the English language, is to transliterate this as ‘Pragmatic History’.

But DOES πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας encompass all those ideas?  I do not pretend to be an expert on any of this, but I am fairly sure that such is NOT the actual case.


πραγμα and its relatives
The stem πραγμα- occurs 65 times in Book One.

The word πραγμα (pragma) means simply a concrete ‘deed’, ‘act’ or ‘event’, and mostly that is how it is used.
The derived word πραγματείας (pragmateias) occurs just four times in Book 1 – all in the first four chapters.  It is various translated as ‘events’, ‘my History’ and even as ‘systematic history’, but the Greek word is probably best translated as ‘the work’ (i.e. the book I have written).
Another derived word is πραγματευομέναι, which translates as ‘to be busy’.

The adjective πραγματικός (pragmatikos) is also derived from πραγμα, and means ‘fit for action’ or ‘effective’, although it can be used for ‘statesmanlike’ and ‘political’.
Once it is used in conjunction with the word οἰκονομίας (oikonomias) to mean ‘fit to be a statesman’.

It is perhaps worth noting that at NO point does it mean the same as our word ‘pragmatic’, which means: ‘Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations’.


ἱστορίας
While we are at it, it is worth also noting that the Greek word ἱστορίας (historias) does not mean the same as our word ‘history’.

The Greek word means properly ‘an inquiry’, although it can also be used for the results of that inquiry (and therefore ‘knowledge’).  Applied to historical events, it usually means simply ‘story’ – the narrative of events.


πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας
The fact that the phrase πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας occurs only TWICE in the whole of Book One might make us wonder whether the phrase had as much significance for Polybius as it does for historians.

It is worth, however, noticing the contexts in which the phrase occurs.

The first time the phrase πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας occurs is in Book 1, Chapter 2, in which Polybius is trying to convince the reader that ‘it must by now be obvious that my present subject matter is both remarkable to contemplate and extensive in its range’.  He concludes:

πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας will help readers to understand more clearly how [the Romans conquered their empire], while at the same time explaining the many great benefits which students can derive from a close study of the subject.

[On this occasion, WR Paton (1922) translated πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας as ‘the systematic treatment of history’; Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889) translated it as ‘my narrative’.]

The second time, in Book 1, Chapter 35, is when Polybius is discussing the lessons to be learned from Regulus’s defeat in Africa:

In these events there will be found by one who notes them aright much to contribute to the better conduct of human life. For the precept to distrust Fortune, and especially when we are enjoying success, was most clearly enforced on all by Regulus's misfortunes… Reflecting on this we should regard as the best discipline for actual life the experience that accrues from πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας.

[On this occasion, WR Paton (1922) translated πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας as ‘serious history’; Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889) translated it as ‘true history’.]


Moving towards a definition
So what does πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας actually mean, and is it the key to unlocking Polybius’s historical method?

It could, of course, mean something as simple as ‘the story of events’ or 'general history' but, taking the dictionary definitions at face value, I would be more inclined to go with something along the lines of:
‘a fit-for-action inquiry’.

This would make sense in the contexts in which the phrase appears. 

Polybius (as we saw when he studied his use of the word τύχη) believed that πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας (i.e. a 'fit-for-action inquiry’) – if it did not help you avoid the misfortunes of τύχη – at least helped you to be ready for it, and to cope with it when it happened.

‘Fit-for-WHAT-action?’ you ask, and the answer is that it is fit for the purpose of preparing you to cope with τύχη … or so it seems from the context of the two passages in which the phrase occurs in Book 1.


Thus, whilst I would doubt that it is valid to label Polybius's historical method with the title: πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας (Polybius's references to it are too casual and too remote), nevertheless I would suggest that it IS true that Polybius believed that History allowed his readers to ready themselves for the ups-and-down of life, and that he used the specific phrase πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας (i.e. a 'fit-for-action inquiry’) to describe his work in this respect.

Polybius, τύχη and παράδοξον

Central to the Histories is Polybius’s concept of τύχη (Tyche); the word occurs seventeen times in Book One.  Closely related to it is the word παράδοξον (paradoxon); this word occurs twenty-two times in Book One.  
To understand Polybius’s understanding of history, you need to understand the concepts of τύχη and παράδοξον.

It is difficult for us today to understand the concept of τύχη, which meant something for the Greeks which we need many different words and ideas to convey today.

A spectrum of meanings

Sometimes, you will find the word τύχη translated ‘chance’.  Thus in 1.1.2 your set text talks about ‘the changes and chances of our mortal life’ … but the Greek word Polybius uses for ‘chances’ is τύχη.

In another passage (Book 29), he discusses the impact of τύχη on men’s lives, and ascribes to it what we would today call ‘acts of god’:

For my part I, Polybius, say that, in finding fault with those who ascribe public events and incidents to τύχη and fate, I now wish to state my opinion on this subject as far as it is admissible to do so in a strictly historical work. Now indeed as regards things the causes of which it is impossible or difficult for a mere man to understand, we may perhaps be justified in getting out of the difficulty by setting them down to the action of a god or of τύχη, I mean such things as exceptionally heavy and continuous rain or snow, or on the other hand the destruction of crops by severe drought or frost, or a persistent outbreak of plague or other similar things of which it is not easy to detect the cause.

The importance of παράδοξον   

Polybius was aware that, as Robert Burns said, ‘The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men gang aft agley’.  Closely connected with his idea of τύχη, therefore was the word παράδοξον   Like τύχη, this is a word which can be translated by a variety of words in English.  Your set texts translate it once merely as ‘remarkable’, and another time as ‘unpredictable’.  In the Greek dictionary you will find it as ‘contrary to expectation’.  It has given us our word ‘paradox’, and the word carries the idea that sometimes, however much you plan and prepare, things simply do not turn out how you expected.  Sometimes these 'acts of god' are just – such as the fall which comes after pride, or the criminal who gets his ‘just desserts’ – at other times they are desperately unfair.

The goddess of Destiny

In Greek mythology, Tyche was the goddess who determined fortunes and destiny; she was capricious – sometimes benevolent, sometimes just, sometimes downright vindictive.  In Book 29, Polybius quotes approvingly the Athenian orator and statesman Demetrius of Phalerum, who wrote about ‘the cruelty of τύχη … whose influence on our life is incalculable, who displays her power by surprises’ and who, based on this, predicted the fall of Macedon 150 years before it happened.

Generally, said Polybius, it is wrong to jump to the conclusion that all disasters are sent by the gods – usually they can be ascribed to human causes.  But there are certain things which simply defy explanation, ‘So that in pronouncing on [the Macedonian War] and similar phenomena we may well say that the thing was a heaven-sent infatuation, and that all the Macedonians were visited by the wrath of God’.

When he is speaking, therefore, of the unstoppable forces of history – matters such as the rise of the Roman Empire – Polybius seems to invest τύχη with a (divine) persona, and to envisage her as the driving force behind history.  Thus in Chapter Four of Book One, the translator of your set texts gives:

In the period under consideration, Destiny seems to have directed all the affairs of the inhabited world towards one single end and driven them to focus on one specific objective.

… where the word he translates as ‘Destiny’ is τύχη.  WR Paton’s Loeb translation (1922) uses the word ‘Fortune’, but the capital letter shows that the idea is much the same – that there was a force and a meaning behind events, driving them in a certain way.  Today, we might use the word ‘Fate’.

Was Polybius contradicting himself?

Usually in his Histories, Polybius is very rational; he stands out from other ancient writers in that he genuinely sought non-divine causes for events: e.g. ‘how and under what sort of constitution Rome came to conquer the world’.  So it has not been lost on historians that this concept of τύχη stand at odds with that rationalism:

• The Austrian historian Otto Cuntz (1902) suggested that Polybius started off believing in the τύχη of Demetrius of Phalerum ... but gradually became a rationalist.
• The German-Jewish philologist Richard Laqueur (1913) tried to prove the opposite – that Polybius started off a rationalist but slowly came to realise the influence of τύχη.
• The German scholar Walter Siegfried (1928) simply declared that Polybius had ‘two souls’ and that he switched from one to the other – perhaps in the way that a modern minister of religion will plan his sermon down to the last semi-colon, but still pray to God that his words might affect his congregation.
• The English historian Frank Walbank (1957) suggested that Polybius himself was muddled about the concept.  According to Walbank, Polybius was a rationalist who used τύχη as a ‘rhetorical flourish’, according to the ideas of the time, ‘which habitually spoke of Tyche as a goddess’.

The inevitable flow of history ... and our response

The ideas of Cuntz and Laqueur are long discredited.  And I do not for a moment believe that Polybius was muddled about the concept that underlay the whole of his Histories.  

Anybody who watches the news can see that events develop a momentum of their own, and that nothing even the most powerful nations on earth might try to do seems to be able to stop them.  Similarly, on a personal level, we all plan for the future knowing that a letter can plop through the door tomorrow which changes everything.  Whether you ascribe these forces to ‘chance’ or ‘God’, we are often powerless against forces beyond our control; and I do not find it incomprehensible that Polybius personified these forces and called them τύχη.

At the very end of his Histories, as Polybius watched the destruction of Carthage with his friend Scipio Aemilianus, and the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal fell on his knees begging for mercy, Polybius records that Scipio turned to those about him and said: ‘See what τύχη is, gentlemen!’ … but later, he grasped Polybius’s hand and shared the fear that the same would one day happen to Rome.

This impressed Polybius:

Because, in the midst of supreme success for one's self and of disaster for the enemy, to take thought of one's own position and of the possible reverse which may come, and in a word to keep well in mind in the midst of prosperity the mutability of τύχη, is the characteristic of a great man, a man free from weaknesses and worthy to be remembered.

And thus Polybius ended his Histories as he started them.  The mark of a REALLY great man is that he has learned the lesson of History, which is:

the clearest, if not the only, guide to how best we may endure the changes and τύχη of our mortal life.

What Really Happened At the Battle Of Gaugamela?

Real answer?  We will never know, but this is my best stab.
 

Most accounts of the battle – such as Arrian’s, but also modern ones like those by Lane Fox and the Wikipedia author – try to compile an account of the battle by synthesising/conglomerating all the different accounts.  It strikes me that an essential element to compiling an account of the battle is, rather, to decide what we might leave out – i.e. we need to take account of the reliability of the sources as we build our putative narrative of the battle.

The result will be, not a ‘this-is-what-happened’ account, but an account which suggests that some events seem very likely to have happened, and that other things may have happened, and consigns other stories to a list of myths-that-grew-up which may or may not have happened (we will never know).


How strong was Darius’s army?
All our four main sources – Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus and Curtius – are in agreement that the Persian army was huge (they more-or-less agree on a figure of circa a million).

We can be fairly certain that, if he had been caught out-manoeuvred at Issus, Darius had prepared much more carefully this time.  He appears (by a selective scorched earth strategy) to have manoeuvred Alexander into fighting at a place of his own choosing.  Modern archaeology has determined that this was a wide, flat plain where he could make best advantage of his superior numbers and scythe-bearing chariots.  Darius seems to have moved his army to Gaugamela and waited there some time for Alexander to attack him – Diodorus includes a long section describing how Darius had prepared for the battle, flattening the ground to make the way easier for his chariots, and training his troops so that they would retain battle-discipline.  Curtius even includes a story that he had seeded with spikes the most likely route of attack of Alexander’s cavalry.

Do you believe it?  There was certainly a propaganda motive for our four sources to exaggerate the strength of the Persian army – the stronger the opponent, the more glorious the victory.  Modern writers are dubious that was correct, and suggest that it was logistically impossible for an army at that time to number more than 100,000 … one historian puts it as low as 50,000.

Having said that, however, it seems clear to me that the Persian army was at least much more numerous than the Macedonians.

For a start, why would Alexander draw up his line in an outward-facing horseshoe if he was not facing a numerically-superior army.  The horseshoe shape was designed on the premise that the Persians would automatically envelop the Macedonian army, and to prevent them being outflanked, and would have been unnecessary if the Persian line had not been much longer than Alexander’s.  Equally, Arrian’s account includes a description of how Alexander’s cavalry initially drifted rightwards, which would be natural if they faced a Persian cavalry which stretched far to the right of their position.

Most convincing, however, are the stories which show that the appearance of the Persian army terrified the Macedonians.  Individually, one might consign each of these stories to myth but, taken together, they make it clear that the sheer size of the Persian army reduced the battle-hardened Macedonians to a funk:

• However you might interpret the stories, it is clear that there was a significant and violent disagreement about tactics in the Macedonian command.  All four accounts record an attempt by Parmenio to persuade Alexander to make a night attack.
• All four sources record that Alexander thought it necessary on this occasion to give a speech urging his men to courage.
• The story that Alexander slept in on the morning of the battle is recorded by Plutarch, Curtius and Diodorus.  However – although Plutarch interprets it as a sign of Alexander’s confidence – both Curtius and Diodorus say it was because he had lain awake all night worrying about the coming battle.
• Arrian records that Alexander tried a night attack, but abandoned it when he saw the size of the Persian army.
• Plutarch describes how Alexander spent the night with his seer Aristander, making offerings to the god Phobos (Fear) – though Curtius has this as Jupiter Minerva (the god of Victory).
• One story in Curtius describes how the mere sound of the Persian army, and the flashes of light from its armour behind a hill, reduced the Macedonians to panic.
• Curtius’s account openly states that Alexander himself was ‘anxious’, ‘in doubt’, ‘began to have second thoughts’ and ‘never more alarmed’.

Having said that, greater numbers does not necessarily imply a better army.  Alexander’s men were battle-hardened professionals … Darius’s were conscripts, pulled from all over his empire, and were much less-reliable – remember Diodorus’s account of how Darius had spent time drilling them, and trying to overcome the problems caused by the difference in languages.  Curtius, also, includes an interesting comment in Alexander’s motivational speech before the battle, in which he has Alexander say: ‘Look at the disorganised army of the Persians – some armed only with a javelin, other with stones in slings, only a few with regular weapons.’


Verdict: common sense, and the run of events, might cause us to agree with Curtius: ‘There were more men standing on the Persian side, but more were going to be fighting on the Macedonian.’


Did Alexander try a night attack?
Arrian’s account in your set sources includes the story that Alexander left his baggage about 6 miles from Gaugamela, and set off on a night march to try to surprise the Persian army at dawn.  Upon seeing the Persian army, however – on Parmenio’s advice – he paused and waited for a battle the next day.

Do you believe it?  Arrian is the only one of our four sources to record the story and, if nothing else, a story which records Alexander following Parmenio’s advice needs treating with caution!  Most of all, it makes Arrian’s story of Alexander’s rough reaction to his officers’ later advice to try a night attack incomprehensible and internally inconsistent.  It also makes the accounts of Mazaeus’s attack on the Macedonian baggage problematical, if Alexander’s baggage train was six miles from the battle.

Additionally, the similarity of this story to the battle of the Granicus is suspicious, and my personal guess would be that it is a story which has in one of Arrian’s sources become misplaced, and incorrectly assigned to Gaugamela … and that Arrian has tried nevertheless to synthesise it into his account.


Verdict: didn’t happen.


What happened on the Macedonian Left? 
Your set sources (Arrian and Plutarch) are particularly poor on the events of the battle on the Macedonian left.

Partly this might be because of the inadequacy of their sources – Ptolemy was in Alexander’s personal bodyguard, so he experienced only what happened on the right; and neither Callisthenes nor Aristobulus fought in the battle, and picked up their knowledge second-hand … presumably from the court favourites/ Cavalry Companions who surrounded (and had surrounded) Alexander.  Meanwhile, the Left had been commanded by the disgraced Parmenio, and both Arrian and Plutarch had every motive to minimise his contribution.

Arrian’s account, therefore, concentrates almost wholly on the course of the battle on the Macedonian Right.  Plutarch’s account, meanwhile, we can fairly much reject as an authentic account of the battle – dismissed by Tarn as a ‘farrago of nonsense’, as far as the actual battle is concerned, all that happens is that Alexander puts on his (designer) armour, charges, and wins.  For both authors, the evens on the Left appear merely as ‘noises off’ which distract Alexander from the real battle, and serve only to demonstrate the incompetence of Parmenio and (to a lesser extent) Ptolemy’s enemy Simmias.

For what happened on the Left, therefore, we have to take from Curtius and Diodorus, who seem to have drawn from a different tradition (Cleitarchus?).  And, from them, it is clear that events on the Left were much more important – and happened very differently – to the account offered by Arrian and Plutarch.

According to Curtius and Diodorus, it was the Macedonian Left which Darius attacked first.  Mazaeus and the Persian cavalry, and also the scythe-bearing chariots, are recorded as leading the first attack.  Diodorus records that Mazaeus ‘killed not a few of his opponents’ (in light of the notorious Greek tendency to manipulate numbers, a remarkable admission), and then attacked the Macedonian baggage train.

It was perhaps at this point – with his forces hard-pressed and outflanked – that Parmenio contacted Alexander.  Plutarch records this story, portraying it as an example of Parmenio’s incompetence, which Alexander rudely rebuffs by saying that Parmenio had ‘lost his senses’.  Interestingly, Curtius includes a similar story, but merely ‘to advise the king [that the baggage train was under attack] and ask for his orders’.

Personally, I would regard Curtius’s account as the more reliable, just from common sense.  Parmenio was not a coward, he knew that his task was to hold the Persian cavalry attack, and he would have know that it was impossible for Alexander to leave the right wing and go to his aid. (leaving the right wing exposed or depleted).  I find it highly unlikely that he would have panicked and sent for help.  Arrian and Diodorus, moreover, do not mention this early message at all; rather, Diodorus records (and Curtius agrees) that, seeing the success of the Persians on his left wing, ‘Alexander saw that it was time for him to offset the discomfiture of his forces by his own intervention’.  (There is room to criticise Alexander in this – did he delay too long and endanger the battle – which is probably why it gets no mention in Arrian or Plutarch.)


Verdict: again, Diodorus and Curtius offer a more convincing account than Plutarch, at least as to events on the Macedonian Left.


What happened to the Macedonian baggage train?
As we have seen, Diodorus and Curtius suggests that the Persians first attacked the Macedonian Left – during which they successfully sacked the Macedonian baggage train, freeing Sisyngambris, Darius’s mother, who had been captured at the Issus.  Arrian also mentions an attack on the Macedonian baggage, but he puts it late in the battle, after Darius had fled.

What do you reckon to this story?  It certainly comes from the ‘Vulgate’ tradition, which is more critical of Alexander, and gives more prominence to events on the Macedonian Left, and the fact that Arrian mentions it – albeit in a garbled form – shows that he too was aware of such a tradition.

Arrian’s account, of course, might records a second attack on the Macedonian baggage, but surely this is unlikely.  Arrian’s account is internally inconsistent and muddled.  How could the Persians attack the Macedonian baggage when it was at most 6 miles, at best 3 miles, from the battle?

Also, Arrian records it first as an attack which broke through the unit of (Ptolemy’s enemy) Simmias, and the point of weakness between the Macedonian infantry in the centre, and their cavalry on the Left.  This would indeed be feasible, but is a bit suspect, given that Arrian has just described Alexander doing exactly the same thing to the Persians.  Moreover, this interpretation directly contradicts what Arrian says later in the same paragraph, that ‘[the Persians] had outflanked Alexander’s left wing’ (i.e. gone round the outside of the Macedonian army).  Meanwhile, in order to explain such an attack so late in the battle, Arrian has to portray it as a desperate ‘dash’, saying that ‘[the Persians] had not yet realised that Darius had fled’.


Verdict: personally, I would suggest that Arrian was aware of the (Vulgate) tradition of an attack on the baggage train, but that he was unaware of (or chose to suppress) how it fitted in with the primary Persian attack on the Macedonian Left, and that he therefore synthesised it in as a ‘side-affair’ at a point where it would interfere as little as possible with his account of Alexander’s victory (which he saw as a wholly Right-wing matter).  As an adherent of the ‘good’ tradition, he would have found it a step too far to credit the Macedonian victory to Parmenio’s successful resistance against massive odds.


What happened on the Macedonian Right?
Here, we are on slightly easier ground, because all our four sources can be reconciled.

Arrian agrees with Curtius and Diodorus that battle was joined first on the Macedonian Left, and only later on the Right.  All three also agree that Darius attacked first on Alexander’s right wing, and that Alexander’s attack was a counter-attack; even Curtius salutes Alexander’s courage, and has him rallying his ‘terrified’ soldiers and leading the attack on the enemy.  All four of our sources agree that Alexander made a direct attack on Darius, and that the two came face-to-face in battle.  This might be a conceit – a fiction that all the writers conspired in to make the accounts more exciting – but you cannot deny that they all agree that it happened.

Arrian has a very interesting variant of the story.  According to him, Alexander steadily moved his cavalry further and further to the right.  Arrian tells us that this was to force Darius to attack, and also to open up a gap in the Persian line through which he could charge.  It is not repeated in any of the other sources, but it seems a likely tactic and – if it is true – is a mark of Alexander’s military genius.

Also, only Arrian has Darius deserting his men and fleeing the battle.  Plutarch, with Curtius and Diodorus, having him fighting on bravely, and only leaving the battle when it was clear that the battle was lost.  Plutarch suggests that he fled when he saw his forces driven back towards his chariot – whereupon he mounted a mare and left the battle.  According to Curtius and Diodorus, Darius withdrew from the battle only when his men began to desert after the king’s charioteer was killed by a javelin, because they thought that Darius himself was killed.

The sources do not agree on everything.  Arrian has Aretas and Menidas resolutely holding off the Persian cavalry, and thus allowing Alexander to break through and attack Darius; however, he gets into the most awful muddle about who commanded the Paeonians, Ariston or Aretas.  Curtius has Menander disobeying orders and going to defend the baggage (unsuccessfully), and then Aretas (again without an order) leaving the Macedonian right to do so more successfully; however, he also gets into the most terrible muddle because, although he explicitly states that the attack on the baggage came from Mazaeus’s attack on the Macedonian Left, all his description of the actual fighting (between Menidas, Aretas, Scythians and Bactrians) involves units we know were on the Macedonian Right.  Who is right?  Possibly neither, but certainly not both, so take your pick – as an incident on the Right, my guess would be with Arrian, but not enough to risk my money on it.

Verdict: despite contradictions, it is possible to work out the general gist of what was happening on the Macedonian Right: Alexander at first delayed; he may have used a clever tactic to stretch the Persian left wing and open up a gap – so when the Persian cavalry, under Bessus, attacked the Macedonian Right, Alexander drove through the gap directly at Darius.  Darius ran away, allegedly before, probably as, his army turned and fled.


Did Parmenio lose Alexander total victory?
According to Plutarch, Curtius and Arrian, yes!

Plutarch is the most outspoken:

It is believed that [Darius] would not have escaped if some of the cavalrymen of Parmenio had not come to Alexander, asking him to bring help, as there was still a considerable force of the enemy in the field where they were, and they were not yet surrendering. Many have blamed Parmenio for being sluggish and ineffectual in this battle, either because old age had already undermined his bravery or, as Callisthenes says, he was depressed and envious of the authority and self-importance of Alexander’s power. At this point, the king, although he was annoyed by the summons, did not tell his soldiers the truth, but recalled his forces, on the grounds that it was dark and he wanted to stop the slaughtering.

Unusually, the story is almost exactly the same in Curtius, who reports Alexander as ‘furious that victory was being snatched away’.

Do we believe this?

There is an element of doubt.  According to Diodorus, Darius escaped because he was a clever strategist and did not flee the same way as the rest of his army, and because the huge amounts of dust prevented Alexander seeing where he had gone (a factor mentioned also by Curtius).  And how, if Alexander was in full gallop after Darius, did Parmenio’s messengers catch Alexander to tell him – Diodorus says that they set off, but failed.

Most of all, do you not see in Plutarch – in Alexander’s supposed pretence that he had been turned back by night – a hint that such in fact may have been really the case?

King and General had started to clash even before Gaugamela.  When (after Tyre) Parmenio had commented that he would accept Darius’s offer of the western empire, Alexander had commented witheringly: ‘So would I, if I were Parmenio’.  Our sources on Gaugamela support an interpretation that, in the row about tactics before the battle, Parmenio had declared as ‘childish and empty-headed’ Alexander’s statement that he would not ‘steal victory’ – hence Arrian’s attempt to justify Alexander’s ‘arrogance’, and Callisthenes’s suggestion that Parmenio was jealous of Alexander’s ‘authority and arrogance’.  Indeed, not much more than a year later, Parmenio would be executed, and would become for Alexander’s eulogists the butt of criticism.  


Verdict: it is entirely possible that – as in other accounts Alexander’s battles – the chroniclers covered up Alexander’s failure (in this case, to catch Darius) by blaming Parmenio.
On the other hand, the story was obviously so current that you may decide that there must be some truth in it, even if you do not accept it in Plutarch’s libellous form.


So what happened in the battle?
So, to summarise:

1. The battle took place, certainly, at Gaugamela, probably in October 331bc. 
2. Darius had the initial advantage – he had chosen and prepared the ground, and Alexander’s army was greatly inferior numerically (although perhaps not in fighting strength). 
3. Arrian’s story of a night attack is highly improbable. 
4. The Macedonians were VERY frightened; Alexander, also, was undisguisably anxious – there seems to have been a furious argument about tactics, notably between Alexander and Parmenio. 
5. The battle opened when Darius released his scythe-bearing chariots; depending on who you believe, they did extensive (Curtius) or limited (Arrian) damage. 
6. At the same time, the cavalry on the Persian left wing, under Mazaeus, attacked the Macedonian Left under Parmenio – although they failed to break the Macedonian cavalry, they outflanked them. It is most likely that at this time they sacked the Macedonian baggage train; Parmenio may have sent a message to Alexander, but even if he did, we cannot be sure what it said. 
7. On the Macedonian Right, Alexander at first delayed; he may have used a clever tactic to stretch the Persian left wing and open up a gap – so when the Persian cavalry, under Bessus, attacked the Macedonian Right, Alexander drove through the gap directly at Darius. 
8. Darius ran away, allegedly before, probably as, his army turned and fled. 
9. Alexander was unable to capture Darius; there is a strong tradition that Parmenio’s request for help forced Alexander to abandon the chase … though one suspects that the clouds of dust and nightfall had required this already, and that Parmenio was a convenient excuse. 
10. The recorded losses on both sides are hopelessly exaggerated, although it is possible that the Persian flight turned into a massacre.