CHAPTER XVI.

BATTLE OF THE METAURUS.

(207 B.C.)

The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain-His messengers fail to find Hannibal-Importance of the crisis-Brilliant march of NeroRetreat of Hasdrubal-Description of the Metaurus-Battle of the Metaurus-Triumph and brutality of Nero.

It seemed to augur ill for Rome that the stress of the war had at length begun to tell on the spirit and the fidelity of the Latin colonies themselves. But, more ominous still, news reached the city in B.C. 208 that after the vicissitudes of the ten years' struggle in Spain, Hasdrubal had at length eluded Scipio, had entered Gaul by the passes of the Western Pyrenees, near to the Atlantic, while the Romans were looking out for him on the borders of the Mediterranean, had struck boldly out into the heart of the country, was raising fresh levies there, and early in the following summer might be expected in Italy. Rome had been in no such peril since the morrow of the battle of Cannæ; for the approach of Hasdrubal indicated that the great Spanish struggle, to support which Rome had sent out some of her best troops and generals, even when Hannibal was threatening her existence, had at last been played out, and had ended in favour of Carthage. It seemed, indeed, that Carthage by conquering in Spain had assured her victory in Italy also. For the last ten years one son of Hamilcar had been overrunning Italy from end to end, and had more

I Polyb. x. 38, 39; Livy, xxvii. 36; Appian, Hisp. 28.

APPROACH OF HASDRUBAL FROM SPAIN. 273

and

than once brought Rome to the brink of destruction; now with her resources diminished, her population halved, and her allies wavering, she had to face the onset of a second son of the same dreaded chieftain, who would sweep down with new swarms of Africans, Gauls, and Spaniards from the north, while his brother, for the last time, moved up with his veterans for her destruction from his retreat in Bruttium in the south. A bitter comment this on the brilliant victory which Scipio was reported to have just won, at Bæcula in Spain !1 For Hasdruba!, his defeated adversary, was not penned, as he should have been, within the walls of Gades, but was collecting allies at his leisure in the heart of Gaul. A few precious months of winter remained to prepare for the double danger which the spring would bring.. C. Claudius Nero, a man who had done fair service before Capua and in Spain, was one of the consuls selected for the year of peril. His plebeian colleague, M. Livius, was one of the few Romans then living who had enjoyed a triumph; but his temper had been soured by an unjust charge of peculation, and he was personally hostile to Nero. However in the face of public danger, he was brought to forget his grievances and to act in concert with his colleague for the public good.3 Livius, so the Senate arranged, was to await the approach of Hasdrubal near the frontiers of Hither Gaul,. while Nero was to impede, as best he could, the movements. of Hannibal in the south. Seventy thousand Romans and as many allies were put into the field for this, the supreme effort, as it seemed, of the republic.4

As soon as the weather permitted, Hasdrubal started from Auvergne. Everything was in his favour. The mountaineers. were friendly, the mountain passes were free from snow, his army gathered strength and bulk as it advanced, and was in a more effective condition when it entered the plains. of Italy than when it had crossed the Pyrenees. What a

1 Polyb. x. 39; Livy, xxvii. 18. See below p. 286.

2 Livy, xxvi. 17; Appian, Hisp. 17.

3 Livy, xxvii. 34, 35.

4 Livy, xxvii. 36 and 38.

contrast to his brother's advance ten years before ! Less prudent than his brother, however, Hasdrubal sat down to besiege Placentia when he had better have been pressing on towards his destination.1 When at last he moved forward, the Roman army retreated before him, till it reached the small town of Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia), a Roman colony fourteen miles to the south of the Metaurus. From this place, which has given to the decisive battle that was so soon to follow one of the names by which it is known in history, Hasdrubal sent off four Gallic horsemen and two Numidians on whom he knew he could rely for so delicate and difficult an enterprise. They were ordered to find Hannibal wherever he might be; to apprise him of Hasdrubal's arrival, and to beg him to come with such forces as he could muster to Narnia in Umbria, a place only thirty miles from Rome, that the two brothers might then advance at once together by the Flaminian road on the city.

Here then was the very crisis of the war. Everything turned or seemed to turn on the fidelity and the address, the courage and the luck of these six horsemen. For a time, fortune helped those who were so ready to help themselves. They traversed half the length of Italy amidst half a dozen Roman armies undiscovered and unmolested, and at length neared the spot in Apulia where Hannibal ought to be. But Hannibal was not there, and following his footsteps once more southward, they fell into the hands of some Roman foragers, and their despatches were interpreted and read, not by the Carthaginian but by the Roman general. It is not difficult to imagine the terrible suspense, the sudden relief, and then the renewed anxiety with which the Roman consul must have listened to the plans of his redoubtable antagonist; must have felt how, but for a happy accident, those plans must have succeeded, and how, with the help of just such another accident, they might succeed

even now.

I Livy, xxvii. 39.

2 Cic. Brutus, 18, "Senense prælium."

3 Livy, xxvii. 43: Appian, Hann. 52.

MARCH OF NERO.

275

Since the beginning of the campaign Hannibal had been rapidly shifting his quarters backwards and forwards between Bruttium and Apulia amidst a network of Roman fortresses and armies, always followed and never opposed by his vastly more numerous foe. The victories attributed by Livy and others to Nero during this period are purely fictitious, and are explicitly contradicted by Polybius himself.1 Hannibal, as fate would have it, must have gone southwards just before his brother's messengers were despatched to find him. Had it been otherwise, they must have reached him in safety; and in that case we can hardly doubt that the brilliant march northward would have been not Nero's, but Hannibal's, and that the Metaurus would have seen the collapse of the fortunes not of Carthage, but of Rome.

Nero formed a bold resolution-one almost without precedent at this period of Roman history-to desert the province and even a portion of the troops confided to his keeping by the Senate; with the remainder to march rapidly northward, a distance of two hundred miles, to join Livius, to crush Hasdrubal by a combined assault, and then to return again before Hannibal should have discovered his absence. It was a bold step, but hardly bolder than the extremity of the danger required; above all, it was justified by the event. Nero took care not to inform the Senate of what he proposed to do till he was already doing it, thus putting it in their power to co-operate with his later movements, but not giving them the chance of impeding the decisive blow. He had already sent messengers to the friendly cities near his line of march bidding them help, as best they could, the progress of their deliverers. The six thousand infantry and the one thousand cavalry selected for the enterprise started, like the ten thousand Greeks before them, in total ignorance of their destination. They believed that they were about to surprise some petty Carthaginian garrison near at home in Lucania; and their enthusiasm when the momentous secret was communicated to them, was only

I Polyb. x. 33. 1, 2, and xv. II 7-12; Livy, xxvii. 42.

equalled by that of the Italian provincials who thronged the roadside with provisions, vehicles, and beasts of burden, and accompanied the army with their blessings and their prayers. The soldiers declined everything that was not necessary for their immediate support; and pausing, we are told, neither to eat nor to drink, hardly even to sleep, in a few days they neared the army of the other consul.1

Nero entered the camp of Livius at night and distributed his wearied troops among the tents which were already occupied, so as to avoid exciting the suspicions of Hasdrubal till he should meet them in the field. But, next morning, the quick ear of the Carthaginian noticed that the trumpet sounded twice instead of once within the enemies' camp, and when the Romans offered battle his quick eye rested with suspicion on the travel-stained troops, and the draggled horses of a portion of the army. Concluding that the other consul had arrived and that his brother's army must have been dispersed or annihilated, he remained within his camp throughout that day, and at nightfall began to retreat towards the friendly Gaul. He reached the Metaurus, fourteen miles distant, in safety, but here his guides played him false and instead of crossing at once by the ford he wandered hither and thither on the nearer side, vainly searching for it in the darkness.2

The Metaurus is a torrent-like stream forty miles long, which, rising in the Eastern Apennines, makes its way through a comparatively level country to the Adriatic. Subject like other mountain torrents to extraordinary alternations in the volume of its waters, it has hollowed out for itself in the rich alluvial soil a wide and deep depression which is not visible from the surrounding plain till the traveller finds himself close upon it. This depression resembles, on a small scale, that which the Bagradas has scooped out for itself through the Carthaginian domain in Africa, or again, the remarkable valley (el Ghor) through which the Jordan makes its way from the Lebanon to the 1 Livy, xxvii. 45. 2 Livy, xxvii. 46, 47.