War · Spring 218 BCE – spring 201 BCE
Second Punic War
After losing the First Punic War in 241 BCE, Carthage built a new power base in Iberia under the Barca family. In 219 BCE Hannibal besieged and sacked Saguntum, a city allied to Rome, and in spring 218 Rome declared war.
Hannibal marched from Iberia over the Alps into Italy and destroyed Roman armies at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae, and much of southern Italy, including Capua, went over to him. Philip V of Macedon and Syracuse also joined Carthage. But Rome refused to make peace, raised new legions and fought a long war of attrition. It retook Syracuse and Capua, while Publius Cornelius Scipio drove the Carthaginians out of Iberia and Hasdrubal's relief army was destroyed at the Metaurus. In 204 Scipio invaded Africa; Hannibal was recalled and defeated at Zama in 202. The peace of 201 stripped Carthage of its overseas lands, its fleet and its freedom to make war, leaving Rome dominant in the western Mediterranean.
- Dates
- Spring 218 BCE – spring 201 BCE
- Casualties
- No reliable total survives; by ancient figures more than 100,000 Roman and allied soldiers were killed or captured at the Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae alone in 218–216 BCE, with estimates for Cannae ranging from about 48,000 (Livy) to 70,000 (Polybius) killed.
The sides
Rome and allies
- Roman Republic 218–201 BCE
- Aetolian League 211–206 BCE
- Kingdom of Pergamon 209–208 BCE
Carthage and allies
- Carthage 218–201 BCE · part of Carthaginian Empire
- Antigonid Macedonia 215–205 BCE · part of Kingdom of Macedon and Empire of Alexander
Timeline of the Second Punic War
- Rome declares war on Carthage after the fall of Saguntum
Carthage had expanded across south-east Iberia after the First Punic War, and a treaty of 226 BCE set the Ebro as the limit of its sphere. Rome, however, had an understanding with Saguntum, well south of the Ebro. In 219 Hannibal besieged the city and took it after eight months. Rome sent an embassy led by Quintus Fabius Maximus to the Carthaginian senate with peremptory demands; when these were rejected, Rome declared war in spring 218 BCE.
- Hannibal leaves New Carthage and marches for Italy
Rome planned to fight in Iberia and Africa, but Hannibal struck first. He assembled his army at New Carthage (Cartagena) and led it north along the coast in May or June, then through southern Gaul by an inland route to avoid Rome's allies. He fought his way across the Rhône and evaded a Roman army that had landed at Massalia (Marseille) on its way to Iberia.
- Hannibal crosses the Alps into Italy
Reaching the foot of the Alps in late autumn, Hannibal's army crossed in fifteen days, battling cold, terrain and attacks by local tribes; the exact pass is still debated, so the pin here is approximate. He reached Cisalpine Gaul in November with about 20,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and the survivors of the 37 elephants he had set out with. His surprise arrival forced Rome to cancel its planned invasion of Africa.
- Carthaginian cavalry routs the Romans at the Ticinus
The consul Publius Scipio led his cavalry and light infantry against Hannibal's cavalry near the Ticinus river and was soundly beaten; Scipio himself was wounded. The Romans fell back to Placentia. The victory persuaded most of the Gallic tribes of northern Italy to side with Carthage, and Hannibal's army grew to more than 40,000 men. The Senate ordered the army in Sicily under the other consul, Sempronius Longus, to march north and join Scipio, abandoning the planned invasion of Africa.
- Romans land in north-east Iberia and win at Cissa
The Roman army Hannibal had evaded at Massalia sailed on and landed in north-east Iberia in the autumn of 218, winning support among local tribes. A Carthaginian attack late in the year was beaten off at Cissa, near Tarraco. The Roman foothold between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, which the Carthaginians never managed to remove, made it very hard to send reinforcements from Iberia to Hannibal.
- Hannibal traps and destroys a Roman army at the Trebia
The army from Sicily under the consul Sempronius Longus joined Scipio's near Placentia. On a cold, snowy morning Hannibal's Numidian cavalry provoked the Romans into crossing the Trebia river to fight on ground of his choosing, while 2,000 men hidden overnight in a watercourse under his brother Mago struck their rear. The Romans were encircled and only about 10,000 of some 40,000 fought their way to safety.
- Roman army ambushed and destroyed at Lake Trasimene
In early spring 217 BCE Hannibal crossed the Apennines by an unguarded route and ravaged Etruria to lure the consul Gaius Flaminius into a hasty pursuit. On a misty morning Flaminius's army marched along the narrow north shore of Lake Trasimene into an ambush laid in the hills above. About 15,000 Romans, including Flaminius, were killed and 10,000 captured. Hannibal treated captured Roman citizens harshly but freed many of Rome's Latin allies, hoping to turn Rome's allies against it.
- Fabius Maximus made dictator; adopts a strategy of delay
In the panic after Trasimene the Roman Assembly elected Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator. He adopted what became known as the Fabian strategy: avoiding pitched battle and using low-level harassment to wear the invader down until Rome could rebuild its strength. His army shadowed Hannibal and attacked his foragers while the Carthaginians ravaged some of Italy's richest land. The strategy was unpopular, and Romans mocked Fabius as Cunctator, 'the Delayer'; for 216 BCE they elected new consuls who sought a decisive battle.
- Hannibal annihilates the largest Roman army yet at Cannae
The consuls Paullus and Varro led some 86,000 men against Hannibal on the open plain near Cannae in Apulia. The Roman infantry pushed into Hannibal's deliberately weak centre, African infantry on the wings closed in on their flanks, and Carthaginian cavalry, having routed the Roman horse, attacked from behind. Surrounded, the Roman army was slaughtered; at least 67,500 were killed or captured. It remains a classic example of a double envelopment.
- Capua and much of southern Italy defect to Hannibal
After Cannae, Capua, the second-largest city in Italy, made an alliance with Hannibal when his army marched into Campania. Other southern city-states and two of the major Samnite tribes also joined him; so did the major port of Tarentum. By 214 BCE most of southern Italy had turned against Rome, but most of its allies in central Italy stayed loyal, and Hannibal had to defend his new friends from Roman retribution.
- Philip V of Macedon allies with Hannibal
Hearing of Cannae, Philip V sent ambassadors to Hannibal's camp in Italy, and in summer 215 BCE they agreed a treaty of mutual support. The envoys were captured on their way home by a Roman fleet, which revealed the alliance. Rome reinforced its Adriatic fleet and sent a legion to guard against a Macedonian landing in Italy, beginning the First Macedonian War, which never produced a decisive battle.
- Romans defeat Hasdrubal in Iberia at Dertosa
Ordered to take his army from Iberia to join Hannibal in Italy, Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal first attacked the Romans near the Ebro. At Dertosa he tried to envelop the Roman centre with his infantry while his cavalry cleared their flanks, but the Romans broke through his centre and then beat each wing in turn. After this defeat Hasdrubal could not reinforce Hannibal for years.
- Rome takes Syracuse after a long siege; Archimedes killed
After the death of Hiero II, Rome's long-standing ally, in 215, Syracuse's new rulers went over to Carthage. A Roman army under Claudius Marcellus besieged the city from 213, delayed by war machines devised by Archimedes. In spring 212 the Romans stormed part of the city in a night attack, plague crippled a Carthaginian relief army, and the rest of Syracuse fell in the autumn. Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier.
- Rome allies with the Aetolian League against Macedon
To keep Philip V busy in Greece, the Roman commander Laevinus offered an alliance to the Aetolian League, which had fought Macedon before. Under the treaty of 211 BCE the Aetolians fought on land and the Romans at sea; Pergamon, Elis, Messenia and Sparta later joined. The Aetolians made a separate peace with Philip in 206, and Rome ended the war in 205.
- Hannibal marches on Rome but fails to save Capua
The Romans had besieged Capua, Hannibal's most important ally in Italy, since 212. Hannibal attacked their siege lines without success, then marched toward Rome itself, hoping to draw the besiegers away. The besieging armies stayed in place, and Capua surrendered soon afterwards. It lost its self-government and was put under Roman officials, a warning to other cities that had defected.
- Roman armies in Iberia destroyed at the Upper Baetis
Strengthened by 20,000 Celtiberian mercenaries, the Romans in Iberia split their forces to attack three separate Carthaginian armies. Hasdrubal bribed the mercenaries to desert, and in two battles, known together as the battle of the Upper Baetis, both Roman armies were completely defeated. The survivors fell back to their coastal base north of the Ebro, which the Carthaginians again failed to take.
- Scipio storms New Carthage, the Carthaginian capital in Iberia
Publius Cornelius Scipio, sent to Iberia in 210 BCE, struck at the centre of Carthaginian power rather than at its armies. In early 209 his troops attacked New Carthage by land and from the harbour and took the lightly defended city, seizing a vast booty of gold, silver and siege engines. He freed the Iberian hostages held there to win the loyalty of their tribes.
- Hasdrubal's relief army destroyed at the Metaurus
Hasdrubal crossed the Alps with about 35,000 men in 207 BCE to join his brother, but Hannibal did not learn he was coming. The consul Claudius Nero secretly marched north from facing Hannibal to join his colleague Livius Salinator. At the Metaurus river the combined Romans outflanked and routed the Carthaginians, killing Hasdrubal. Hannibal, left without reinforcements, withdrew into Bruttium, the toe of Italy.
- Scipio's victory at Ilipa ends Carthaginian rule in Iberia
Near Ilipa, north of modern Seville, Scipio with about 48,000 men, half Italian and half Iberian, faced a Carthaginian army of some 54,500 and 32 elephants. A surprise change in his battle order, often called a reverse Cannae, won a crushing victory. Gades, the last Carthaginian city in Iberia, soon went over to Rome, and Carthage lost the silver and recruits Iberia had provided.
- Peace of Phoenice ends the war with Macedon
After the Aetolians made a separate peace with Philip V in 206, Rome, with no more allies fighting in Greece, was ready to end the First Macedonian War. The treaty drawn up at Phoenice in Epirus in 205 BCE ended it without a decisive result. Rome had achieved its main aim: Philip had been kept from sending help to Hannibal in Italy.
- Scipio invades Africa and besieges Utica
Made consul in 205 BCE, Scipio trained an army in Sicily, partly of volunteers, for an invasion of Africa. In 204 he landed near the Carthaginian port of Utica with four legions and besieged it. The Numidian prince Masinissa, who had lost his kingdom to the Carthaginian-backed king Syphax, joined him with cavalry, while Syphax and the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal Gisco camped nearby.
- Victory at the Great Plains forces Carthage to recall Hannibal
After burning the enemy camps outside Utica, Scipio defeated the Carthaginian and Numidian armies of Hasdrubal Gisco and Syphax at the Great Plains. Syphax was pursued and captured by Masinissa, who took most of his kingdom with Roman help. Carthage opened peace talks and recalled Hannibal and Mago from Italy; Hannibal landed with 15,000–20,000 veterans, and Carthage repudiated the draft treaty.
- Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama
For once the Romans, helped by Masinissa's Numidians, were stronger in cavalry, and Hannibal relied on his infantry and 80 war elephants. The elephants were turned back through his own lines, and the Roman and Numidian cavalry drove the Carthaginian horse from the field, then returned to strike the rear of the Carthaginian infantry, which collapsed. Hannibal escaped, and Carthage sued for peace. The exact battlefield is uncertain, so the pin is approximate.
- Carthage accepts Rome's peace terms
The treaty stripped Carthage of all its overseas territories and some of its African lands, imposed an indemnity of 10,000 silver talents over fifty years, limited its fleet to ten warships, banned war elephants and forbade it to make war without Rome's permission. Hannibal urged acceptance, and the treaty was agreed in spring 201 BCE. Scipio took the name Africanus, and Rome was now the leading power of the western Mediterranean.