From the Archives - Scipio Africanus Benefits from Divine Guidance

Very early in the war the Romans decided that the best way to defeat Hannibal was to carry the war to his base, in Hispania.  Their initial efforts to do so failed, but after Hannibal proved unbeatable on the battlefield, they renewed their effort.  The war in Spain proved difficult.  An expedition under Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio ended disastrously in 211 BC when both were killed in battle against a Celtiberian tribe allied to the Carthaginians.   In 210 BC Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of the deceased proconsul of 211, although at 25 legally ineligible to hold imperium, was given an extraordinary command over Roman forces in Spain.   

Arriving in his province, the younger Scipio, who had repeatedly distinguished himself since the beginning of the war, found that he had a poorly trained, dispirited army, and promptly initiated a tough training regimen.   He also worked to build good relations with the numerous Spanish tribes, rather than dissipate his strength in fighting them.  In 209 BC, with his army ready, Scipio went right for the jugular, attacking the principal Carthaginian base in Spain, Carthago Nova (Cartagena). 

Carthago Nova had several vulnerabilities of which Scipio had become aware.  Although well fortified and almost completely surrounded by water, on one side there was only a shallow lagoon subject to extreme tides, a phenomenon largely unknown in most of the Mediterranean.  In addition, the city was but lightly garrisoned, with about 3,000 defenders.  Scipio decided to take all these factors into account, as he arrived before the city with an army of over 25,000 men and a fleet offshore. 

Scipio briefed his troops on his plans, ending “by promising crowns of gold to those who first mounted the walls, and the usual rewards to those who displayed conspicuous gallantry.  And he declared that ‘The god of the sea, Neptune himself, has appeared to me in my sleep, and suggested this plan to me, promising to give me such signal aid in the actual hour of battle that the god’s assistance should be made manifest to all.’”

As his fleet stood off the seaward side of the town, firing arrows into it, Scipio staged an attack across the isthmus that linked the city with the mainland.  This drew out the defenders, who made a sortie hoping to break the attack.  Scipio threw in his reserves, and the Carthaginians were cut to pieces, the survivors fleeing back toward the city.  The Romans followed close behind and, although the gates were hastily closed against then, began putting scaling ladders to the walls. Fierce fighting broke out as the Romans attempted to scale the walls, while the Carthaginians resisted stoutly.  And then Neptune delivered, which is best told in this lightly edited version of the events as recounted by the later Greek historian Polybius (c. 200-118 BC), who spent several decades in Rome and was a close friend to Scipio’s grandson.

The ebb of the tide began.  The water began gradually to leave the edges of the lagoon, and the current ran with such violence, and in such a mass through its channel into the adjoining sea, that to those who were unprepared for the sight it appeared incredible.  Being provided with guides, Scipio at once ordered troops who had been stationed ready for this service to step in and to fear nothing.  His was a nature especially fitted to inspire courage and sympathy with his own feelings.  So now the men at once obeyed him.  When the troops fighting at the walls saw them racing each other across the marsh, they could not but suppose that the movement was a kind of heaven-sent inspiration.  This reminded them of the reference Scipio had made to Neptune and the promises contained in his harangue.  Their enthusiasm rose to such a height that they locked their shields above their heads, and, charging up to the gate, they began trying to hew their way through the panels of the doors with their axes and hatchets.

 Meanwhile the party which had crossed the marsh had approached the lagoonside wall.  They found the battlements unguarded, and therefore, not only fixed their ladders against the wall, but actually mounted and took it without striking a blow, for the attention of the garrison was distracted to other points, especially to the isthmus and the gate leading to it, and they never expected that the enemy were likely to attack on the side of the lagoon.

Thus fell Carthago Nova, as Scipio cleverly concealed his knowledge of the local tidal conditions from his troops, to make it seem as though he had divine guidance.

Over the next three years Scipio finished off the Carthaginian empire in Spain.  Elected consul in 205 BC, Scipio shortly took an army to Africa to attack Carthage directly, and after Hannibal was recalled to defend the home city, defeated him in the Battle of Zama (October 19, 202 BC).

BookNotes: The best account of the Second Punic War remains J.F. Lazenby’s 1998 Hannibal's War: A Military History of the Second Punic War.  Richard Gabriel’s recent Hannibal: The Military Biography of Rome's Greatest Enemy is an excellent look at the great captain’s military career.  Both Robert L. O’Connell’s The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic and Gregory Day’s Cannae have good accounts of  the military institutions of both sides in the war, as well as a discussion of the battle (which remains the most devastating one day’s loss by a Western army) and its implications.