Ancient history

Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio

Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio

Already Hannibal was in Hadrumetum, he granted only a few days to his soldiers to recover from the fatigues of the crossing. The alarming news brought to him on the occupation of all the surroundings of Carthage by the enemy army decided him to move quickly towards Zama. This city is five days from Carthage. The scouts he sent from there to reconnoitre the country were taken by the Roman outposts and led to Scipio. The latter entrusted them to the tribunes of the soldiers, urged them to visit everything without fear, and made them walk in the camp wherever they wished. Then, after inquiring whether they had observed everything at their ease, he gave them an escort and escorted them back to Hannibal.

All the information the Carthaginian received was not calculated to reassure him; he had also just learned that Masinissa had arrived the same day with six thousand infantry and four thousand horses; the confidence of the enemy, which seemed to him only too well founded, struck him above all. Also, although he himself was the cause of this war, although his arrival had broken the truce and destroyed all hope of negotiating, he thought that in asking for peace, when his forces were still intact and he could not hadn't been defeated, he could get better terms. So he sent a messenger to Scipio, asking for an interview. I have no reason to say whether he did it on his own initiative, or whether he was ordered to do so by the magistrates of Carthage. Valerius Antias reports that, defeated by Scipio in a first battle, where he had twelve thousand men killed and one thousand seven hundred taken prisoner, he went as ambassador, with ten other personages, to the camp of Scipio. Besides, Scipio consented to the interview; and the two generals, in concert, brought their camps closer, in order to come together more easily. Scipio took a position around the town of Naraggara, which was advantageous, and which offered facilities for drawing water within the range of the line. Hannibal established himself four miles away on a height, equally safe and advantageous, except that it was far from the water. We choose between the two camps a place that can be seen from everywhere, in order to make any surprise impossible.

Hannibal's Speech

Each leaving their escort at the same distance, and keeping only their interpreter, the two generals entered into a conference. They were the first captains not only of their century, but also of all time; they could be compared to the greatest kings, the greatest generals of all nations. When they were in each other's presence, they remained for a moment as if taken aback by the mutual admiration which they inspired, and kept silence. Hannibal was the first to speak:

"Since the fates wanted that Hannibal, after having started hostilities against the Roman people, after having had victory so many times in his hands, decided to come and ask for peace, I congratulate myself on the chance that addresses me You too, among all your titles to glory, you can count as one of the main ones to have seen Hannibal, to whom the gods have given to vanquish so many Roman generals, fall back before you alone, and to have terminated this war marked by your defeats before being so by ours. Another of the most bizarre caprices of fortune! Your father was consul when I took up arms; he is the first Roman general with whom I have come to blows, and it is to his son that I come, disarmed, to ask for peace. empire of Italy, ours, of that of Africa, Sicily and Sardinia Are they worth to you all those fleets, all those armies, all those illustrious generals that they have cost you? But let's forget the past; we can blame it rather than do it again.

By dint of coveting the property of others, we have put our own possessions in danger, and we have had war, you, in Italy, us, in Africa:but you have seen, you, almost at your gates and on your ramparts, ensigns and arms of the enemies; we, we hear from Carthage the noise of the Roman camp. The object of our cruelest alarms, that of your most ardent desires, is reached:it is on your side that fortune is at the moment when peace is negotiated; and we who treat, we have the greatest interest in concluding it, and we are assured that all our acts will be ratified by our republics. We only need a mind calm enough not to reject peaceful dispositions. For me, returning old to this country which I left as a child, at my age, my successes, my reverses have taught me to prefer the calculations of reason to the inspirations of fortune. But your youth and the happiness that has never ceased to accompany you make me fear that you are too proud to adopt peaceful resolutions. One does not readily think of the inconstancy of fortune, when one has never been deceived by it. What I was in Trasimene, in Cannes, you are today. Raised to command when you were barely of service age, you began it all with rare audacity:fortune did not betray you for a single moment. In avenging the death of a father and an uncle, you have found, in the very disasters of your family, the opportunity to make your valor and filial piety shine brightly. Spain was lost:you reconquered it by driving four Carthaginian armies out of this province. Created consul at a time when all the discouraged Romans gave up defending Italy, you crossed into Africa:there you destroyed two armies, you took at the same time and burned two camps; you have taken prisoner Syphax, that mighty king; you have removed a number of towns from its domination and from our empire; finally, when after sixteen years I believed myself sure of the possession of Italy, you tore me from it. By taste, you may prefer victory to peace. I know those characters which are more to honor than to interest; and I too once had the same illusions. That if the gods, with good fortune, also gave us wisdom, we would think both of events that have happened and of possible events. You have in me, not to mention others, a striking example of human vicissitudes. You saw me not long ago encamped between the Anio and your city carrying my standards to the foot of the ramparts of Rome; today you see me, mourning the death of my two brothers, these warriors as intrepid as illustrious captains, arrested under the walls of my country almost besieged, conjuring you to spare my city the terror which I have brought into yours.
The higher fortune elevates you, the less you should rely on it. By giving us peace in the midst of your prosperity and when we have everything to fear, you show yourself generous, you honor yourself; we who ask for it, we undergo a necessity. A certain peace is better and surer than a hoped-for victory:one is in your hands, the other in the power of the gods. Do not surrender to the chances of an hour of combat the happiness of so many years. If you think of your strengths, do not forget either the power of fortune and the chances of war. On both sides there will be iron and arms; events are never less certain than in a battle. What a success would add in glory to that which you can now secure by granting peace is not worth what a reverse would take from you. The trophies you have conquered, the ones you hope for, can be knocked down by the chance of a moment. By making peace, you are master of your destiny, Publius Cornelius:otherwise you will have to accept the fate that the gods will give you. Marcus Atilius Regulus would have been cited as a very rare example of happiness and valor on this earth, if he had wanted, after the victory, to grant peace at the request of our fathers. He did not know how to set limits to his prosperity, nor to restrain the rise of his fortune, and the more glorious his elevation had been, the more humiliating his fall.

Doubtless it is up to him who gives peace, and not to him who asks for it, to regulate its conditions; but perhaps we are not unworthy to pronounce ourselves on our punishment. We do not refuse that all the countries which were the cause of the war remain under your domination, that is to say Sicily, Sardinia and all the islands of the sea which separate Africa from Italy. We Carthaginians will confine ourselves within the limits of Africa; we will see you, since such is the will of the gods, governing on land and sea the very countries still independent of your laws.

I admit that the lack of sincerity that we have shown in asking or waiting for peace must make you suspect the Punic faith. But the name of those who ask for peace, Scipio, must be a guarantee of the faithful observance of the treaty. Your senate itself, as I have heard, had no other reason for refusing it to us than the lack of dignity of our embassy. Today it's Hannibal, I'm the one asking for it; I would not ask for it if I did not think it useful, and I will maintain it for the same reasons of interest which make me ask for it. After starting this war, I neglected nothing so that no one would regret it, at least until the gods withdrew their protection from me. Well ! I will make every effort so that the peace I have procured will leave no one regretful either".

Scipio's answer

To this speech the general replied approximately in these terms:

"I was not unaware, Hannibal, that the hope of seeing you arrive had alone prompted the Carthaginians to break both the truce they had sworn and the peace which was being prepared. You yourself do not seek to hide it, when from the conditions previously established for peace you cut off everything, except what has long been in our power. Besides, as much as you have at heart to make your fellow citizens feel how much your arrival relieves them, so I must see to it that the suppression of the articles which they previously agreed to does not become today the price of their perfidy. You simply do not deserve them, these first conditions; and you would still like to take advantage of your bad faith! It is not for the Sicily that our fathers made the first war, nor for Spain that we made the second. Then it was the peril of the Mamertines our allies; today it is the ruin of Saguntum; it is always a cause just and sacred who puts them to us arms in hand. You were the aggressors, you admit it, Hannibal, and the gods are my witnesses, the gods who, in the first war, made good law and justice triumph, as they do and will still make them triumph. this time. As far as I am concerned, I know the weakness of man, I think of the power of fortune, and I know that all our actions are subordinated to a thousand different chances.
Besides, I could have admitted myself guilty of presumption and violence, if, before crossing into Africa, seeing you voluntarily leaving Italy and coming to me, your troops already embarked to ask for peace, I would have rejected your offers; but today that the battle is already almost engaged, that, in spite of your resistances and your tergiversations, I attracted you in Africa, I owe you no consideration.
So then, if to the conventions which seemed to serve as a basis for peace you add a suitable reparation for the attack on our vessels and our convoys, and for the outrage committed on our deputies in the middle of a truce, I could refer it to the council. If you find even these first clauses too onerous, prepare for war, since you could not endure peace."

Peace was not made; the conference was broken off, and the two generals returned to their escort, announcing that the parley had had no result; that it was necessary to decide the quarrel by arms, and await its fate by the will of the gods.