CHAPTER SIX

NEGOTIATIONS AT ROME

Hannibal, one of history's great failures, had been driven from Italy, defeated in Mrica, and his flight from his home city in 195 marked him also as a failed politician in Carthage after the peace. He had arrived in the city from Italy as a stranger, and his assumption of authority had not been a wholly popular move with those who believed such a position should be their own. There had always been a faction in the city which had been anti-Barkid, and which had thus at various times been anti-imperialist, anti-war, or pro-Roman. By 195, Hannibal had made himself sufficiently disliked to fear for his life, and he fled Mrica in a prepared ship, as he had fled Italy. 1 For a man such as Hannibal there was now only one place to go. The whole of the western Mediterranean, all of Greece, and Egypt were subject to, or friendly towards, Rome, and so were closed to him. Only the Seleukid empire could provide him with a refuge, and this was all the more suitable since Carthage's home city was Tyre, one of Antiochos III's recent conquests. He was the most famous Phoenician of his time; Tyre was a natural refuge for him, where he would be welcomed. Extradition thence, no matter what Antiochos' power or Rome's insistence, would be effectively impossible. It is important to note that Hannibal was not harried out of Carthage by Rome: he fled the city because he was in danger from his fellow-citizens. He had been in power in some way in Carthage ever since his return from Italy in 203, and at any time since the peace treaty Rome could have exerted such pressure on the city that he would have had to leave. Of course, the Senate kept a watch on

1 Livy 33.45.6-49.7, probably based on Polybios, whose account is lost; also dealt with in varied detail by Nepos, Hannibal, 7, App. ,Vr. 4, Justin 31.1.7-2.8, Zon. 9.18.11-12, Valerius Maximus 4.1.6; all books on Hannibal and Carthage deal with the episode, notably 0. Meltzer, Geschichte der Karthager, vol. 3 (by U. Kahrstedt), Berlin 1913, 584-588, E. Groag, Hannibal als Politiker, Vienna 1929, 119-123, B. H. Warmington, Carthage, London 1969, 224-225, G. Ch. and C. Picard, Carthage, New York 1968, 272-279. NEGOTIATIONS AT ROME 121 him and his city; it would have been astonishing if it had been other­ wise, given the history of relations between the two states. It was a contingency which will have been in Hannibal's mind constantly. So when the Senate was appealed to by his domestic enemies, and a senatorial commission came. to investigate, he assumed, not unrea­ sonably, that it was aimed at him. His getaway was so well planned that it is obvious that he was already prepared to leave, and that the commission's arrival was only the trigger for his flight. The reason for his leaving, however, was Carthaginian internal politics, not Roman pressure. The senatorial commission stated that its task was to mediate over the question of the boundary between Carthage and Masinissa's kingdom. 2 Apart from Hannibal's assumption that he was threatened, there is no evidence that this is not the case, though this is the interpretation of these events which Livy has relayed, appar­ ently out of Polybios. Livy, or Polybios, is also guilty of imposing his own interpretation on the meeting which took place between Hannibal and King Antiochos. From Tyre, Hannibal went by sea to Antioch (presum­ ably by way of Seleukeia-in-Pieria), where he met the younger Antiochos, the newly married eldest son of Antiochos III, joint king with his father, who was presiding at the games of Apollo in the sanctuary of Daphne.3 The speed of this move is not so great as Livy suggests. Hannibal spent 'a brief stay' at Tyre. During that time he will have made enquiries of Antiochos the Younger as to whether he would be welcome at the court. The younger king was obviously able to make that decision, but he at once sent Hannibal on to his father, the senior king, whom he found at Ephesos.4 This puts the meeting in the autumn of 195, after Antiochos' second campaign into Thrace, which will have occupied the campaigning season until September, and also after the victory of the Romans and their allies against Nabis. Livy is quite factual in his account as far as the meet­ ing at Ephesos, but then he inserts editorial comment, suggesting that Hannibal's arrival was the decisive event in pushing Antiochos into a decision to go to war with Rome.5 For this he produces no evidence, not does he explain why in that case the war did not occur

2 Livy 33.47.9. 3 This puts Hannibal's flight definitely in 195; cf. Briscoe, Comm. Livy 1.335. 4 Livy 33.49.5-8. 5 Livy 33.49.8.