641. Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Hannibal’s Nemesis (Part 2)

20:40Tom Holland:They do not want a second Barca brother. So Hannibal Barca, Hasdrubal Barca. They do not want Hasdrubal Barker turning up in Italy with yet another massive Carthaginian army, with his elephants and his Numidians and his Spaniards with their terrifying stabbing swords and so on. So essentially, the Scipio brothers are where they are in the northwest corner of Iberia by the Pyrenees, essentially to block off Hasdrubal's access route to southern Gaul so that he can't follow Hannibal into Italy. And their objective is not just to stop Hannibal, but to try and conquer and win over as many of the Iberian tribes as possible.

21:20Tom Holland:And ideally, you know, conquer them for Rome. But if they can't do that, then at the very least kind of foster anti-Carthaginian feeling so that Hasdrubal will have his hands full trying to kind of put out rebellions in Spain. And Hasdrubal's goal is obviously to raise an enormous army and march through Gaul into Italy. And for the Romans, the supreme moment of peril comes in the spring of 215, which is the year after Cannae. And Hasdrubal has raised an enormous task force. And he leaves New Carthage. And as Hannibal had done three years before, he advances northwards at the head of this vast force.

21:56Tom Holland:And his aim is to cross the Pyrenees, advance through Gaul, and join his brother in Italy. And if he's successful, then Hannibal's forces will be doubled. And it is hard to see in the wake of Cannae how the Romans then would have been able to carry on the fight. So this is really a crucial moment in the war.

22:15Dominic Sandbrook:So the two Scipios, they are basically standing in his way and they meet Hasdrubal just south of the river Ebro outside a town called Iberra. And this is actually one of the most significant battles in history, arguably, that nobody has ever heard of. Because as you say, if Hasdrubal manages to cross the Alps, join Hannibal in Italy, that looks really dicey for the Romans. But what happens, Tom, at the Battle of Ibera?

22:41Tom Holland:It's actually a Roman victory. It is. The Roman infantry, always their strongest arm, meet with the Carthaginian infantry and essentially wipe them out. Hasdrubal is able to withdraw with his cavalry. So it's not a total victory, but it is sufficient to abort Hasdrubal's onward march to Italy. So there is a case for saying that this is the decisive moment of the war. Absolutely a candidate perhaps for the title of the most decisive battle in history that no one has ever heard of. However, as we say, it doesn't finish Hasdrubal off because he has withdrawn with his cavalry. And towards the end of that year, 215, he is joined in Iberia by a very, very glamorous figure indeed.

23:21Tom Holland:And this is Hasdrubal and therefore Hannibal's youngest brother. And this is a guy called Mago. And we talked about Mago in our series about Hannibal's invasion. Mago had accompanied Hannibal into Italy and he had done very well. So at the Battle of Trebia, the first of Hannibal's great victories, people may remember the Carthaginian cavalry had hidden behind some bushes and then sprung out and attacked the Romans in the rear and Mago had led them. So, you know, absolutely crucial part in that victory. At Cannae, he had stood next to his brother in the most critical and vulnerable position in the Carthaginian line.

23:57Tom Holland:So he's incredibly brave. He had then been sent by Hannibal to Carthage to announce the news of the great victory at Cannae, which he had done very flamboyantly by bringing in an enormous sack full of the gold rings that had been taken from the slaughtered bigwigs in the Roman army. And he kind of empties the sack full of rings onto the floor of the Carthaginian Senate House. And everyone in the Senate is enormously impressed, even people who normally would be very hostile to the Barker brothers because they're kind of jealous and resentful of them. And the Carthaginian Senate decides, you know, we need to weigh in here.

24:33Tom Holland:And so they have voted to raise more troops, so infantry, cavalry, elephants, and to pay for it. And these have now sailed from Carthage to New Carthage. And Hasdrubal's forces have now been

24:48Dominic Sandbrook:swollen again so to um recap we now have a situation on the iberian peninsula in spain where we have two rival armies one roman one carthaginian led by two rival pairs of brothers so this really does feel like sort of frank herbert's gone mad exactly people haven't yet started turning into sandworms but it's very science fiction isn't it yeah i mean only in

25:09Tom Holland:a science fiction epic or the second punic war would you have a situation where you have two rival sets of brothers facing each other in a weird alien landscape. And basically, they're now pretty evenly matched. So Calvus and Publius, they succeed in blocking Hasdrubal from leading reinforcements to Italy. You know, they feel that they're doing their job. But Mago, who is by far the ablest commander in Spain, he succeeds in keeping the native Iberians loyal to Carthage and blocking every attempt the Romans make to expand beyond their northern enclave. And finally, in 211, the Scipio brothers think, oh, this is ridiculous.

25:48Tom Holland:We've got to break out. We've got to try and take the battle to the Carthaginians. And so they march southwards towards New Carthage, but it all goes horribly wrong. So first, Mago wipes out an army led by Publius, who was Scipio's father. And then a few days later, Hasdrubal crushes the second Roman force, which was being led by Calvus, Scipio's uncle, and both Publius and Calvus are killed. And two factors in particular lie behind these twin defeats. And the first is the, I mean, we could call it the little bighorn strategy that had been adopted by the two Roman commanders. They had essentially divided their forces, meaning that it then became easier for the Carthaginians to pick them off.

26:31Tom Holland:But also another factor was the presence in the Carthaginian ranks of a brilliant young cavalry commander. And this is a guy we have already met. This is Masinissa, the Numidian who was so besotted by the godlike appearance of the young Scipio. So at this point, he is barely 20, but he's already very, very seasoned. He'd already won a war on behalf of his father back in Africa against a rival Numidian king called Sifax, who we will be hearing about later. So he's seen off Sifax. He's kept his dad on his throne in Numidia. and now he's arrived in in spain at the head of three thousand horsemen um and he is there to serve against the romans and he and his cavalry had played the leading role in harrying the romans under the two scipio brothers to their doom and livy records the details day and night he would cut off parties of romans who were distant from their camp in search of wood or fodder Often Masinissa would ride right up to the camp itself and charge at the gallop through the outposts guarding it, causing the most terrible confusion.

27:45Dominic Sandbrook:So thanks to Hasdrubal and Mago, and particularly to this swashbuckling Numidian prince, Massinissa, it looks like the Carthaginian presence in Spain, of course, access to those crucial mines is secure. because you would think that if the Romans are fighting a life or death struggle with Hannibal in Italy on home territory they will not be able to spare or to muster new forces to prosecute the war in Spain and the question of course is even if they could who on earth would they have left to send as their commander well the answer is there surely in Masunisa as Alex Ferguson would tell you in 1996 sometimes you have to um reach for the kids and maybe this is what the romans have to do now isn't it tom because they are basically in this in the position of what are they called the fremen in arrakis in june tabby says nice in the chat yeah so um as you say the

28:48Tom Holland:the carthaginians have got their kind of dashing youth is it time that the romans summon up a dashing youth of their own um and if they're going to do that who could this dashing youth possibly be um where dominic can they find a dune messiah we'll be answering these questions after the break

29:05Dominic Sandbrook:we're leaving today and entering a world of mickey mouse waving princess meeting and greeting lightsaber clashing the twilight zone tower of terror dropping banshee flying space mountain launching galaxy rewinding galaxy rewinding fireworks igniting world of other worlds for whatever you love infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth walt disney world resort when you want your spring break to feel like and your kids pool day to feel like and your hotel bed to feel like ooh, and room service to feel like because at Hilton, hospitality feels like

29:55Tom Holland:your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this day. Hello, I'm Professor Hannah Fry. And I'm Michael Stevens. Together we host The Rest is Science, a brand new show from Goalhanger. Every week, we take a fresh look at the familiar. We're going to be exploring the forces, the theories, and the phenomena that shape how we live in, think about, and see the world. We're going to pull apart what we take for granted to reveal the unexpected patterns and hidden logic just beneath the surface. Because that's what moves science forward.

30:35Tom Holland:Not the polishing of answers, but the sharpening of questions. It's curiosity that sparks those, hey wait, how does that actually work, kind of a moment that changes the way we see the world? Yeah, I mean, science isn't a subject. It's a way of seeing. It's a way of noticing all of the extraordinary things that are hiding in plain sight and realizing that the familiar was never ordinary at all. Stick around until the end of this episode for a first listen. And if curiosity gets the better of you, join us every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of The Rest is Science.

31:12Dominic Sandbrook:Welcome back to Frank Herbert's Dune. To the rest is history. It is 210 BC. We are in the city of Rome. And amid the marble halls of Hollywood's imagination, a young man called Scipio, Publius Cornelius Scipio, 25 years old. He's suspiciously clean shaven, even more suspiciously long haired. There's talk that he has been fathered by a snake. And this young man has just been elected by public vote to command of the roman armies in iberia in spain now tom i said elected by public vote this is unusual isn't it because isn't normally the senate that appoints

31:55Tom Holland:rather than the roman people yeah it's very unusual because as you say it the senate is very jealous of its prerogative it the senate has the right to appoint commanders what are the people doing, poking their noses into this important business. Because it is taken for granted that commanders should be elected magistrates. But Scipio is not an elected magistrate. He is a privatus, a private citizen. And it is also the Roman custom to put a premium on experience. They tend to regard youth not as something dashing, but as something potentially sinister, that a Roman commander who is under the age of 40 is generally assumed to be kind of impulsive and headstrong and rash.

32:40Tom Holland:So listeners may therefore be wondering, well, how on earth did the 25-year-old Scipio, you know, this private citizen, how on earth did he manage to get this command? I mean, it's undoubtedly the case that the people adore him. He's glamorous, he's dashing, He provides them with a touch of colour amid the kind of monochrome grind of the war against Hannibal. And although at the same time, although lots of people in the Senate are indeed suspicious of him, I think there are also lots of them that can recognise the advantages of sending him specifically to Spain. because remember, he is the son of one of the commanders who'd been in Spain, and he is the nephew of another of those commanders.

33:27Tom Holland:So the name of Scipio in Iberia has a real cachet. And I think that even in the Senate, there are people who feel, well, we would be mad not to capitalize on this. The issue for them is they don't want to be seen to be appointing a 25 year old that if they do it it would establish a sinister precedent and so that's where the you know the popular vote comes in they can get the people to vote for him and essentially they're kind of washing hands of the responsibility so Scipio he gets his command he leaves Rome he arrives in Spain and the situation that he finds waiting for him is a very very rocky one so So obviously the Romans have lost two major battles.

34:11Tom Holland:So their numbers in their kind of enclave in the northwest of Spain are badly depleted. The Iberian tribes, you know, they're busy cleaning their teeth with urine, sharpening their stabbing swords, all of that. These are people who only really respect success. And this in turn means that now the Romans have been so comprehensively defeated by the Carthaginians, they are much likelier to swing Carthaginian wise. And this obviously is brilliant for the Carthaginian commanders because their numbers have now swollen and they are able to put three armies in the field. So there is one under Hasdrubal, Hannibal's younger brother, which is stationed in central Spain near what would today be the city of Toledo.

34:54Tom Holland:There's another under Mago, who is Hannibal's youngest brother near the pillars of Hercules, what today is Gibraltar. and there is a third army by the mouth of the tagus so that is dominic your favorite city

35:07Dominic Sandbrook:lisbon i love lisbon so the carthaginians are not thinking about they don't think they're going to be having to fight a defensive war to maintain their their foothold in spain they actually are thinking about expanding their empire as it were they want to conquer northern spain they want to get more manpower they want to get more mines more natural resources and once they've done that They think, right, we'll finish with the Iberian Peninsula. And then Hasdrubal can lead a task force into, you know, through southern France, across the Alps, into Italy, as we have been hoping to do for so long.

35:41Dominic Sandbrook:That, as always, is their prime goal. Yeah. Yeah. So actually, that winter, the Carthaginians do not retire to their base at New Carthage, but they remain in their forward bases because they are on the front foot. It's they, they believe, who are prosecuting the war. Yes.

35:57Tom Holland:And it's clear as well that they regard Scipio with contempt. they haven't factored him into this at all they feel that the Romans have been beaten and their focus now is essentially as you say on conquering the remaining Iberian tribes but this is going to prove a very very serious mistake because the young Scipio has arrived to take up his command with a very very bold plan in his head indeed and so that spring, it's his first campaigning season in Spain he musters every last soldier that he has and it comes to about 20 ,000 infantry, 2 ,500 cavalry, and he heads south along the coast, as his father and uncle had done the previous year.

36:38Tom Holland:And as he goes, he is shadowed by the Roman fleet. And this is commanded by his closest friend, a guy called Gaius Lilius. And Lilius is the only other person in the task force who knows where they are heading. The only person that Scipio has entrusted with his brilliant plan. So southwards they march along the road on and on and on. And finally, a week after they've left, so on the seventh day, they arrive before their destination. And this destination, Dominic, is the great city of New Carthage. It's obviously an incredibly bold strategy. It's been fostered by the fact that Scipio knows that the Carthaginian armies are at least 10 days march away.

37:30Tom Holland:And that the garrison that has been left in New Carthage, it's basically only about a thousand strong. But even so, we said how it has these kind of bristling fortifications. It's a very, very strong city. I mean, it's a big, big ask to take it. And I think that Scipio's men, when they realise the job that their young general has set them, they feel a bit alarmed. They think, oh God, actually, everybody says about young commanders, it's true. They are rash. They are headstrong. They do come up with mad ideas. But Scipio summons his men and he addresses them and he appears sublimely self-confident.

38:08Tom Holland:And he tells them, it is the god Neptune who first suggested this plan to me. So he's now moved on from talking to jupiter he's talking to neptune the god of the sea he appeared to me in a dream and has promised to show his support for us by means of a spectacular sign well to be fair this is very you compared

38:27Dominic Sandbrook:with alexander the great this is certainly the kind of stuff that alexander the great would come out with and people would say hurrah yeah i completely believe this let's do it and actually

38:34Tom Holland:you know it's a good comparison what happens immediately is that lilius the naval commander you know he assembles his ships and they surround the harbor blocking off access and the main body of Scipio's men launch a massive frontal assault on the city walls. And the defenders are entirely focused on resisting this. Meanwhile, Scipio has recruited a crack squad of elite handpicked men, and he takes them on a secret mission. Because north of the city, there stretches a lagoon. And because the waters are normally so deep, and because every defender in New Carthage is required to stave off this kind of main Roman assault.

39:14Tom Holland:The walls that rise above the lagoon are unguarded because they assume that, well, no one will be able to cross the lagoon. So Scipio arrives with his crack squad of elite handpicked men on the shores of the lagoon. And they look out and there it is. And then beyond the lagoon are the northern walls of New Carthage. And as they gaze at the walls, there is a palpable miracle because a heron lands and stands in the water and this reveals to the romans that the waters are ebbing you say a miracle but isn't that pretty standard with waters that they ebb and flow it turns out that this is in fact a regular phenomenon that it happens every so often it does not happen every day it's not a regular tide but but every so often the tide does go out okay and scipio has been informed about this and he's worked out that this is the moment when he needs to be there but obviously he doesn't tell this to his men.

40:07Tom Holland:And they all assume that this is the sign from Neptune that Scipio had promised them. And so they wade in through the shallows, reach the base of the walls. They've brought ladders with them. They put them up against the walls. They climb over and there is no one to stop them. And now they can rush forward. They can open the gates of the city. The Romans who've been doing the full frontal assault can pile in as well. And there is unbelievable slaughter. And we know this because polybius this greek historian he goes on to interview lilius who is scipio's friend who'd been in command of the fleet and he revealed just how brutal the slaughter had been so to quote polybius the practice of the romans is to inspire terror and so when they capture a city you will often see not just the corpses of human beings but dogs cut in half and the dismembered limbs of other animals and lilius specifies to polybius that this is what was happening in new carthage after the romans had got in and so unsurprisingly the carthaginian commander seeing the horror realizing that he has no prospect of keeping the city he duly surrenders and so the slaughter stops and new carthage unbelievably is scipios he has seized the great nerve center of the carthaginian empire i mean an amazing coup so this is an extraordinary moment because what this has done

41:25Dominic Sandbrook:is it means that the Romans now have the wealth of New Carthage. They have the supplies. They have the resources. They have the harbor. So they have a wonderful link now with the sea. And Scipio immediately turns it into what Polybius calls a workshop of war, doesn't he? So he starts to recruit troops. He's drilling them. He's kind of endlessly schooling them in kind of the tactics they will need that he has learned from Hannibal. He's making weapons. And the PR, the propaganda effects of this, perhaps the most crucial element, because basically this is sending a message to the people of the Iberian Peninsula.

42:04Dominic Sandbrook:The Romans are back and they're here in a big way and they are the winners now.

42:08Tom Holland:Yeah. And the Iberians love a winner. So by the spring of 208, Hasdrubal knows he's got a massive crisis on his hands because he's lost his capital. But he is now increasingly losing the loyalty of all these kind of various Iberian warlords who are thinking, well, Scipio is a winner. Let's back him. And a whole posse of warlords by the spring of 208 have decided that they are actively going to back the Romans. And so again, to quote Polybius, they all prostrated themselves before Scipio and hailed him as king. And of course, the word king is a very dirty word to the Romans. They are a republic.

42:47Tom Holland:They don't like kings. But Scipio accepts that the name has a kind of glamour that will help his cause and so he you know he he accepts it which in the in the long run won't go down well in rome but you know needs must so the issue now for hasdrubal his rival

43:05Dominic Sandbrook:hasdrubal knows that basically the entire war hinges on this right because carthage really really needs spain to continue being at there as well the top table of um international kind of

43:17Tom Holland:superpower rivalry well and more than that if they lose spain then there's no way that hannibal can win in Italy. Because if supplies and troops from Spain cannot reach Italy, then in the long run, Hannibal will lose.

43:28Dominic Sandbrook:So do you think Hasdrubal at this point is thinking, right, well, I need to really force the issue. Let's get this over and done with now, because having lost New Carthage, I can't hang around. So this is why he basically rolls the dice and says, right, we'll go for Italy right now. We will march there with the expeditionary force to give my brother the reinforcements he needs. And let's finish this.

43:45Tom Holland:Yes. And so it is obvious to both sides that this is the great fulcrum point of the whole war. This is the moment of supreme crisis. Everything hangs on what happens next. So obviously, the Romans are desperate to stop Hasdrubal. The best way for them to stop Hasdrubal joining up with Hannibal is to prevent him leaving Iberia at all. So early that summer, Scipio advances into the depths of Iberia. He attacks Hasdrubal's base, and he manages to inflict serious casualties. But he can't prevent Hasdrubal from doing a withdrawal from his base. And nor, over the next few months, can he prevent Hasdrubal from rebuilding his army.

44:32Tom Holland:And by the winter of 2008, Hasdrubal has advanced through Spain, over the Pyrenees, and has arrived in southern Gaul where he is wintering. And wintering in southern Gaul gives him the opportunity to recruit lots of warriors from Gaul. The Gauls hate the Romans. This is what Hannibal had done when he'd gone. So his army is now really substantial. And come spring the next year, so the campaigning season, he leads his army complete with 10 elephants over the Alps. and people may be wondering well we hear all about Hannibal crossing the Alps we never hear about Hasdrubal crossing the Alps what's going on I mean the reason is that he you know he does it expertly he does it with incredible competence and I think essentially the reason that we remember Hannibal's crossing is that he doesn't do it nearly as competently as Hasdrubal did anyway so Hasdrubal descends from the Alps he arrives in northern Italy and the Romans worst nightmare has happened there are now two huge armies each one led by a Barker brother in their backyard

45:35Dominic Sandbrook:There are two consuls in Rome who have the job of stopping these two brothers. And one is in the north. He has six legions and he's got to stop Hasdrubal. And then there's one in the south with seven legions who's meant to be bottling up Hannibal. So the guy in charge of the northern legions, I read in your notes, Tom, he is called Marcus Livius Salonitor. And he is, and I quote from your notes, a gloomy eccentric with terrible personal hygiene. I assume that all eccentrics have bad personal hygiene. How does his poor personal hygiene manifest itself, would you say?

46:08Tom Holland:He's feeling very hard done by. And so as a protest, he has refused to wash or cut his hair. And so he's notorious for his body odour.

46:16Dominic Sandbrook:That's no way to inspire your men. And what about the guy in the South? So the guy in the South is a member of the Claudian dynasty, one of the oldest and most prestigious dynasties. So he's called Gaius Claudius Nero, and he's beautifully groomed, is he? Yeah, not a hint of body odour.

46:30Tom Holland:These two blokes, perhaps because of their dispute about grooming, despise each other. They absolutely loathe each other. And so this is obviously a potential worry. I mean, will they be able to team up? But in the event, the contacts that exist between these two consoles turn out to be much more secure than the communication links between Hasdrubal and Hannibal. so Hasdrubal obviously is desperate to rendezvous with his elder brother and find a point where they can kind of meet up and combine their forces and so he inevitably you know who you're going to turn to when you want to deliver a message obviously in Numidians so he gets a bunch of Numidians supplements them with a few Gauls writes out a message and this message is meet in Umbria and he sends the the Numidians and Gauls off and why Umbria well this was the region where Hannibal had won at Lake Trasimene.

47:22Tom Holland:It's in northern Italy. It's on the way from the foothills of the Alps towards Rome. And this suggests that the Carthaginian plan was for the two brothers, once they had met up, to march directly on the capital and force the Romans to face them in battle. Because up to this point, the Romans, of course, had been avoiding meeting Hannibal in battle. And I think that, you know, the aim is we will stake everything on a single throw. But obviously for this to happen, Hasdrubal's message has to reach Hannibal. And the problem is that it doesn't because it falls into the hands of Nero, the beautifully groomed Claudian consul whose job it is to bottle up Hannibal in the south.

48:09Tom Holland:And when he gets this message and reads it, he reacts as Hannibal would have done in his sandals with boldness and with an incredible display of initiative. So what Nero does is to trick Hannibal into thinking that he is still with his legions. He does this while he is simultaneously siphoning off a very substantial body of infantry. And he then marches with this body of infantry at incredible speed northwards towards where Salinator is refusing to have a wash. And as he marches, he is joined along the way by enthusiastic volunteers, so that by the time he reaches Salinator's camp on the 22nd of June, he is bringing a very, very large body of men to join the six legions under Salinator's camp.

49:01Tom Holland:And Hasdrubal has no idea at all that Nero has arrived until he hears in the morning not the one blast of the trumpet that signals the presence of a consul, but two. And this indicates to him that there are two consuls with their armies facing him. And you can imagine, I mean, his heart must have turned to ice. And so he thinks, oh God, this is terrible. I can't, you know, I'm going to be annihilated if I meet them. And so he tries to withdraw, but he has a problem because his line of retreat is blocked by a river called the Metaurus. And so he leads his men, they're kind of stumbling through the marshy banks of the Metaurus, trying to find a fording place.

49:48Tom Holland:And as they're doing this, they're set upon by the Romans. and the battle is lost almost before it had begun. Now, it's true that the defeat was actually, I mean, it wasn't total. Had Hasdrubal survived, had he been able to lead his men and cross the Mataros and withdraw to the foothills of the Alps, I mean, he would entirely have been able to carry on the fight. But Hasdrubal dies in the thick of the fighting. I mean, he's very brave, but I think he's a bit stupid to have done that. Polybius says that he displayed in his death a fortitude and an ability of spirit worthy of his family name. But I don't think he displayed the shrewdness that Hannibal would have done in his situation, because his plunging into the thick of the melee essentially dooms his army, and therefore, in the long run, as we will see, dooms Hannibal.

50:39Tom Holland:Now, when Hannibal had defeated the Romans at Cannae, they had killed one of the commanders, a guy called Aemilius Paulus. And Hannibal had shown the corpse of Paulus great respect. You know, he had not desecrated it. Nero and Salinator, when they find the body of Hasdrubal, do not show it a matching respect. They cut off its head and they put Hasdrubal's head into a sack and then they give it to a horseman. And this horseman gallops southwards, reaches the outposts that surround Hannibal's camp gallops up to one of these outposts, hurls the sack at the feet of Hannibal's guards in this outpost, turns, wheels and gallops away.

51:24Tom Holland:And the sack is brought to Hannibal and Hannibal opens it and he pulls out the severed head of his brother. And we are told that he mourns his brother, but that staring into his dead brother's features, he also mourns his city. And he cries out, we are told, now at last, I see the doom of Carthage Plain. This is the moment, I think, when Hannibal knows that probably the game is up.

51:54Dominic Sandbrook:But not quite up, because, okay, he's not going to be getting reinforcements from Iberia, but the Romans are still they're so wary of his enormous military reputation they don't confront him in open battle so he actually now heads even further south doesn't he away from Rome into the heel of Italy into what's called Brutium and that's the area that he can hold most easily if the Romans are coming after him he also of course does have a brother left he has Mago back in Spain. And if you're Hannibal, you are probably thinking, well, if Mago can defeat Scipio in Spain, if he can win back the loyalty of the Iberians who've gone over to the Romans, who knows, maybe Mago can recapture New Carthage, maybe he can raise a new army, maybe he can send reinforcements to Italy.

52:47Dominic Sandbrook:So quite a lot of ifs. Yeah, there's a lot of ifs in any war. Unfortunately, not all of these ifs work out to Hannibal's advantage, do they?

52:55Tom Holland:I mean, we said Mago is a very good general. He's very, very dashing and very competent. I mean, his problem is, for the first time, he is facing a Roman general who essentially is as able and inventive as Hannibal himself. And Scipio essentially is going to crush all Hannibal's hopes because he is going to demolish the Carthaginian Empire in Spain. So in the spring of 206, he has cornered Mago at a place called Ilippa, which is north of what's now Seville. And they meet in battle. And alongside Mago is Masanissa, who's no longer a prince by this point, but a king, because his father died a few months before.

53:39Tom Holland:And so he is now the leader of this kind of federation of Numidian tribes called the Mycelians. So he is, you know, I mean, he's now a very, very big player for the Carthaginians, not just a great commander, but an allied king. And so Mago and Massinissa, I mean, they must have been hopeful that they would be able to defeat Scipio. Mago would back himself. He knows that the Romans have always been kind of powerless against the Numidians, but no, doesn't turn out at all. Actually, they find the battle that Scipio now forces on them. I mean, put it mildly, a very, very bruising experience. So first, Massonissa's Numidian horsemen, you know, these great, great cavalrymen, they're swatted aside by Scipio's cavalry.

54:24Tom Holland:So people will remember that when Scipio captured New Carthage, he'd insisted on lots of drill, lots of practice. And this is now paying off because essentially he has transformed his cavalry into the best horseman that Rome has ever had. And they just, you know, they swat Masinista and his horsemen aside. There's then a stalemate, but one day passes, another day passes, another day passes. Mago's concentration drops. And this is the moment when Scipio attacks. And Mago, who we said had been, you know, he's a veteran of Cannae, he'd stood in the lines alongside Hannibal. He now finds that he is the one who is being outflanked and enveloped by a smaller army and Scipio has the winning of the battle.

55:11Tom Holland:And although both Mago and Masinissa are able to escape the slaughter, Mago's army, which was the last effective force left him in Iberia, is wiped out. I mean, to give Mago credit, he still doesn't give up. So first of all, he tries to do a Scipio and launch an attack on New Carthage. In his case, it doesn't work. He gets beaten off. He then sails away. He founds a new naval base on the island of Majorca. in the Balearics, which to this day bears his name, Mahon. And this apparently is where mayonnaise was invented. So in a way, mayonnaise is named after Mago. I think it's the only popular condiment.

55:51Tom Holland:It's a condiment, really? I was just thinking, is it a condiment? Well, if it's not a condiment, I don't know what it is. It's not a sauce, is it? It can be used as both, but I think mayonnaise is more than, it contains multitudes. It's something you'd have in your fridge. And it's probably the only thing you'd have in a fridge that's named after a Carthaginian general. So it's kind of interesting detail. Anyway, so he's still on the scene. And then in 205, he launches a very ambitious invasion of northern Italy. You know, he takes ships, he takes men, he captures Genoa. So that's quite a feat.

56:21Tom Holland:And he manages to hold out there against the Romans for three years. There's an indecisive battle. He gets wounded. The Carthaginians summon him back to his home city. And on the trip, he dies. So an energetic end. but that's the end of mago and what about masinissa well for him the days of fighting the romans are now over because this is the moment in the wake of scipio's great victory at illipa that he makes contact with the roman victor and the result is the meeting described by livy the homoerotic summit with which we began this episode because masinissa is basically like the Iberians. I mean, he has no interest in fighting for a losing side.

57:04Tom Holland:And it's very clear to him by this point that the Carthaginians have no future whatsoever in Iberia. And so he contacts Scipio, they get on tremendously well. And with Scipio's blessing, he returns to Africa there to secure his rule as king, because this other rival king, Sifax, is still on the scene. So he needs to sort that out and Scipio by sending Masinissa now a Roman ally to Africa is obviously looking ahead because the only way that the war ultimately can be ended is if the Romans can take the war

57:40Dominic Sandbrook:to Carthage itself and in late 206 Scipio returns to Rome doesn't he and he is now a real star He's had tremendous achievements in the battlefield. He's glamorous. He's charismatic. He's got his exciting long hair. And he is determined to win the prize that will confirm all this, which is the consulship.

58:04Tom Holland:Yeah, even though he's only 30 and legally you have to be 40 to become a consul.

58:10Dominic Sandbrook:So he gets the consulship and he has allocated province, a very rich, strategically important province that will be his once he has finished his consulship and that is sicily and the command in sicily comes not just with boots on the ground i.e the legions but it comes with a fleet of 30

58:29Tom Holland:warships so this is what he needs and on top of that dominic crucially he is given permission by the senate and i quote to cross to africa if he judged it to be in the interests of the republic But the big question, will Scipio judge it to be in the interests of the Republic to cross the sea, to invade Africa and to attack the Carthaginians in their very backyard?

58:57Dominic Sandbrook:There is only one way to find out. So if you're a member of the Rest is History Club and you want to find out whether Scipio will indeed cross to Africa and launch the final assault on the Carthaginians, you can find out right now. Because if you're a member of that club, you can hear episode three and indeed episode four of this series instantaneously. If you're not a member of the club, you'll have to wait, gnawing at your nails like Gordon Brown in the aftermath of the financial crisis. but either way the punic wars will continue and they will reach a devastating heart-stopping climax tom thank you very much goodbye everybody bye-bye

59:42Tom Holland:okay so here's a glimpse of what's to come if it sparks something unexplainable then you can join us every tuesday and thursday for new episodes of the rest is science and we'll figure it out together. You mentioned earlier that a cup of water is like a rock smoothie, right? Because you've got rocks dissolved in it, magnesium and calcium. I would go a step further though and say that a glass of water is actually just a glass of lava. Because I've talked about this before and I bring it up whenever I can. Ice is a rock. Sure. Because, well, hold on. Ice is a mineral because a mineral is just a inorganic material that is solid and has a definite crystal structure, which ice does.

1:00:30Tom Holland:Water is important for life, but it's inorganic actually. It would exist here or whether there was life or not. And what that then means is that a cube of ice is made of a mineral. So it's a monomineralic rock. So melted ice is molten rock. lava. So water is lava. I'm here for this. And this is not a joke. Ice won the mineral cup back in 2015, I believe. Like some geologists all voted on their favorite mineral and ice finally got the recognition it deserves. Got the prize. Yeah. I mean, sure. I'm happy with that classification. If the rock people say it so, then I'm happy with it. They also move the same way.

1:01:12Tom Holland:I mean, when lava gets spurted out of a volcano, it It uses the way that it moves and behaves is exactly the same. What, like the fluid dynamics of lava? The fluid dynamics of lava is the same as water at that stage, yeah. A bit later on when it cools down, then it changes. Is it more like ice? More like ice. There's a transition phase where it's more like toothpaste, where it needs a certain amount of sheer forces in order for it to flow. But that would be analogous to like slush maybe? Maybe, yeah.

1:01:40Dominic Sandbrook:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rince will take your laundry and hand-deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rince. It's time to be great.