Treachery Worse Than Punic: Livy’s

Landscape and Hannibal’s Invasion of Italy

Scot Mcphee
University Of Queensland
scot.mcphee@gmail.com
October 13, 2012

Livy’s history of the city operates at a discrete annalistic pace. As shown by

Luce, Miles, Jaeger and Kraus,1 his cyclic structures produce a ‘polyrhythmic’
set of discrete tempos starting from the annalistic year which begins with the
consuls’ election, ascension to office and assumption of military command. The
geographic pattern of the history also follows this same cyclic tempo. Each year
starts at Rome with the consul’s inauguration to command, then proceeds into
the fields outside Rome where enemies are confronted and defeated, and finally
returns into the city to elect the next year’s consuls. The annual oscillation be-
tween centre and periphery reinforces the centrality of the city in Livy’s history.2
At a larger scale, as Rome’s power grows throughout the history, the geographic
cycle centering on Rome exhibits a pattern of ever-greater expansion, further and
further away from Rome, as Rome’s power increases.

While many of the authors previously mentioned concentrate their efforts on

using this pattern to explain the centrality of Rome in the history and to draw
the parallel between the object of the history and its text,3 my thesis examines the
1
Luce 1971, 1977; Miles 1986, 1988, 1995; Jaeger 1993, 1997; Kraus 1994
2
Jaeger 1997: 4–5
3
Kraus 1994: 268; Miles 1995; Edwards 1996: 6–7; Jaeger 1997: 7–8; see also Nicolet 1991 and
Feldherr 1998

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turning point in that cycle: the pivot in the fields (and nations) outside of Rome.
In order to fully understand the centrality of Rome, its relations to the periphery
must also be understood; without the edge there can be no centre.
» Slide #2 - map of locations
To achieve this, in part, this paper examines the representation of landscape
in books 21 and 22 of Livy’s history. It shows how the representation of the
landscape acts neither as a simple ‘receptacle’ for the display of exempla, nor as
an ‘inert backdrop’ around which the narrative unfolds, but rather in the same
way that Mary Jaeger found Livy’s city worked — to ‘reinforce actively his inter-
pretation of events’.4 This paper will also show that Livy’s representation of the
landscape, is linked to the way that Hannibal is represented. In Livy’s literary rep-
resentation, the Roman defeats at the start of the Second Punic War came about
not so much through the military genius of Hannibal, but by a correspondence
between the general, on one hand, and the landscape, on the other.
» Slide #3 - quote » Handout #1 - description of Hannibal

These great qualities of the man were equalled by his unnatural vices:
his inhuman barbarity, his treachery far worse than Punic, he had
nothing of truth, nothing of sanctity, he lacked in fear of the gods,
had no lawful oaths, and no religious feeling. (21.4.9)

In Livy’s text, for the Romans, any absence of fear of the divine nearly always
resulted in utter devastation. So why was Hannibal, a man lacking all proper
feeling, successful in the early stages of the war when Romans of similar vices
were not? We discover that at 21.21, Hannibal makes vows to Hercules at Gades.
» Slide #4 - dream » Handout #2 and 3
Having established a divine connection, at 21.22.6–9 he is granted a dream-
vision of a divine youth who tells Hannibal to follow him into Italy but not to
look about. When Hannibal of course looks about, he sees a monstrous serpent
4
Jaeger 1993: 350

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destroying the landscape, specifically trees and bushes. On inquiring its meaning
he is told that this represented ‘the wasteland of Italy’, but his own fate would
have to be unknown.
» Slide #5 - devastation
Thus allied to the divine, having become its agent, or at least aided by it, he
would be able, for a time at least, to inflict great damage on his Roman opponents.
I want to highlight that in the vision as Livy presented it to us. In the vision, the
monster was destroying the trees and bushes, that is, the landscape of Italy; not a
people (i.e. Romans, Italians), nor a political power (the Roman republic).
» Slide #6 - monstrous » Handout #4
While crossing the Alps Hannibal’s enemy was simultaneously nature and bar-
barian men more monstrous than human:

Yet from the approach, a vision — of mountain heights and snows

near merged with sky, shapeless huts clinging to the rocks, flocks
and beasts of burden parched from the cold, unshaven and uncultured
men, all animate and inanimate things stiffened with frost, in other
respects more repugnant to see than to speak of — renewed their ter-
ror. (21.32.7)

Here was a combination of fantastic nature, towering mountains, freezing cold,

sky and earth undifferentiated, and the unspeakably revolting monster-men that
inhabit such a world: animals, men and nature all integrated to paint a picture of
ghastly terror. Here, his enemy is the monstrous brutality of nature at its most
raw. By conquering nature, Livy painted Hannibal as entering into an alliance
with it, and he perhaps becomes more of a monster because it yields to his will.
» Slide #7 - picture
Through these struggles, Hannibal might be understood to battle and defeat
nature as much as the Romans. Alternatively it can be argued that the way he was
depicted by Livy made Hannibal out as a force of nature itself: when the two met

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in ‘battle’, a symbiotic relationship was forged which imbued him with a unique
identity. In order to ‘become’ nature, to make it his ally in the war with Rome,
Hannibal must first overcome and subdue it, much like capturing an enemy city
and claiming its resources.
» Slide #8 - J.M.W. Turner ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his army
crossing the Alps’, 1812. Tate Gallery, London
This identification with nature explains his capacity for cruelty and capricious-
ness, a characteristic found in nature itself, and perhaps arising from qualities that
could be read as similar to those found in the concepts of fortuna and fatum. Han-
nibal is an agent of fatum, and these supernatural elements are mediated through
the natural order.
The Alpine crossing was not the occasion on which Hannibal battled against
the Italian landscape. In a sort of minor repeat of the Alpine crossing, to reach
Lake Trasimene, Hannibal force-marched his army through an Arno swamp,
showing as little respect to it as he does to the Romans, as his men were swal-
lowed by the bottomless quagmire. Thus in Livy’s books 21 and 22, there is a
topos in which Hannibal suffers, battles and overcomes the natural world. In the
battles to come, especially at the battle of Lake Trasimene but also at the Trebia,
the landscape was also the means of Roman destruction. In Livy’s reckoning,
Hannibal was as ruthless as nature itself, and having conquered it in the Alps and
the Arno swamp, his representation of the Romans’ battle is that it was as much
with nature as with Hannibal. Thus Hannibal and landscape operate in tandem,
as the mechanism which fate shall use to destroy unworthy Romans and allow
other, more excellent and worthy Romans to shine forth.

» Slide #9 - consul ferox » Handout #7

Now, to turn our attention to the Romans. For the purposes of this paper
most of the attention will be on the battle of Lake Trasimene. In terms of the
Roman commanders, C. Flaminius stands alone in book 22 as a shining beacon
of unrestrained tempestuousness that led straight to the black gates of doom at
Lake Trasimene. Livy’s narration worked relentlessly to show Flaminius as an

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impious and unworthy individual who was not fit to lead the Roman forces.
Recklessness being his watchword, Flaminius threw off the advice of his senior
officers, and plunged straight into action, having been easily provoked by Han-
nibal, and in the process resolutely ignored an entire series of omens that should
have prevented his marching from the camp.5 This includes the omen of the Earth
holding the standards firm in the place, unable to be pulled up until Flaminius or-
dered them dug out. The Romans not only rushed blindly into the trap, but their
commander seemed to have openly clamoured to do so. Hannibal, by contrast,
is presented as the natural master of the battlefield, at one with the terrain, read-
ing it easily and skilfully. Flaminius made no reconnaissance, and led his army
straight into the trap.
» Slide #10 - nebulous » Handout #8
It’s not just a simple trap set by Hannibal that Livy gives us as responsible for
the forcoming Roman destruction. At this critical moment there was a fog — a
weather effect, that settled on the landscape: ‘having arisen from the lake, a fog
had settled more densely on the field than the mountains’ — orta ex lacu nebula
campo quam montibus densior sederat. This sealed the doom of Flaminius and his
army, but for Livy it does not seem to have hindered the Carthaginians, even after
they charged from the mountains to the field to engage the Romans.
» Slide #11 - numbed » Handout #6
Here nature has numbed the Romans’ minds, or more specifically, their percep-
tion. Earlier, at the battle of the Trebia, it numbed the Romans’ bodies.6 These
blunders were not just simple tactical mistakes by Roman commanders (although
of course that was probably the underlying reality of what happened), these inci-
dents were the very landscape of Italy devastating the Roman armies on behalf of
its conquerer, Hannibal.
5
22.3.7–13. Clearly Livy made Flaminius seem desperate to rush headlong to his doom. For
elaboration, see Levene 1993 : 41 — ‘The forms that they take make them manifestly the gods’ last
warning to Flaminius; they both are things that should physically prevent one marching, unless
one were perversely determined to do so.’
6
Levene 2010: 269–70

5
 Both experiences of the Romans in these two battles had clear parallels in the
representation that Livy gave to the prior experiences of Hannibal’s army crossing
the Alps. The Romans were earlier frozen with cold and hunger just as Hannibal’s
men were in the snowy peaks of the Alps.
» Slide #12 - clamour » Handout #8 (2nd half) and 9 cf. 5
At Trasimene, trapped in the fog of sensory deprivation, the Romans perceived
the battle mostly through the irrational, terrifying sense of hearing, rather than
through the rational clarity of sight. Trapped in the fog, the Romans found them-
selves in a field of sound, surrounded at every side by an unseen, but not unheard
enemy. Their experience perhaps mirrored the experience of Hannibal’s army
with the ‘discordant yells’ of the Alpine tribes.7
» Slide #13 - earthquake » Handout #10
Nature had conspired with Hannibal to deny the Romans the use of all their
fighting faculties: the mountains and the lake hemmed them in, and the fog pre-
vented them from perceiving the threat correctly and acting accordingly. The
fog was indeed, so sense-dulling, that even when the landscape itself shook in the
middle of the battle, from a devastating earthquake, no-one could perceive it.

. . . and such was the passion of their spirits, and so intent were they
on the battle, that an earthquake which overthrew large portions of
many towns of Italy, turned the course of rapid-flowing streams, car-
ried the sea into rivers, and pulled down mountains in mighty land-
slides, was not felt by any of the fighters. (22.5.8)

The earth was unable to make the insolent commander perceive his fate through
the production of omens like the holding fast of the standards. It then com-
pounded this arrogant display of wilful ignorance on the of Flaminius by shroud-
ing the battlefield in mist and destroyed the Roman’s ability to clearly see their
situation. Finally then, once Hannibal’s trap was sprung, it violently shuddered
7
21.33.6 clamoribus dissonis

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in shock, overturning Italy in the process, perhaps in fulfillment of the vision
granted to Hannibal in his dream.
» Slide #14 - Death of Flaminius, Sylvestres, 1882
But the Romans are not, at this point of the battle, completely defeated. In the
midst of this battle of imperception, where the visibility was blanketed by the fog,
the hearing of orders was overwhelmed by noise, and even an earthquake isn’t felt
by the combatants, the unseen and unheard Flaminius is suddenly, miraculously
visible.8 Up to this point Flaminius has been ‘invisible and inaudible’ to most of
the soldiers.9 Now he is spotted by a Gaul, who recognises Flaminius, and then
kills him.10
It is only at this point — once the the consul had been made visible and killed
— that the rout of the Romans really began, and nature no longer obstructs the
Romans as they rush to their doom. The landscape itself is represented by Livy
as an extension of the enemy, the fog at first blotting out the Roman’s ability to
detect the Carthaginians, then once the impious commander was visibly sacrified
on the battlefield, finally the landscape actively worked to destroy the Romans,
swallowing them up in the lake and in small canyons:

» Slide #15 nec lacus nec montes » Handout #11

The greater part thence first began to flee; and now neither lake nor
mountains was obstructing the panic; gorges and precipices were all
alike in blind escape, and arms and men were being hurled down head-
long on top of each other. (22.6.4)

The supernatural elements of Livy’s account of the early part of Hannibal’s war
in Italy, make sense as a unified whole, rather than the collection of confusing
and contradictory parts as it is often considered. Once Hannibal was given a
divine vision of ‘the destruction of Italy’, Livy’s literary depiction worked to
8
Levene 2010: 269
9
Levene 2010: 269, 283
10
22.6.1–4

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create identification between himself and nature as he defeated his main enemy
in the Alps, which is to say he subdued nature itself and caused it, in a literary
sense, to be allied to him. When he starts to fight the Romans in Italy they are
then defeated through the effects of the natural world. Cold, hunger, rain, wind,
and fog combined with rivers, mountains, valleys and lakes, in alliance with the
Carthaginian general, devastated a series of Roman armies and their commanders.

» Slide #16 - not Flaminius, but a bronze of a Flavian general’s

torso in the Getty Villa
After Trasimene, especially once the corrective religious action was taken at
Rome, the focus of Livy’s narrative returns to the political manoeuvering and the
effect this has on the Roman victory: the defeat at Cannae is represented through
the lens of politics, not natural or divine influence. The supernatural element of
Livy’s narrative is greatly reduced after this point: the dictatorship of Fabius Max-
imus, apart from the early correction of Flaminius’ religious errors, is devoid of
supernatural elements. The landscape for Fabius is a mirror of the political strug-
gle over strategy between himself and Minucius Rufus. It is as if Flaminius was a
sacrifice to divinities of nature and once this occurred, and along with the earth-
quake which appeared to fulfil the divine promise to Hannibal of Italy’s destruc-
tion, then Livy’s narrative returns to its more familiar cycle of political conflict
and warfare.
» Slide #17 - end