Hello and welcome to A History Of – Hannibal and the
Punic Wars. Episode 71 – Scipio in Spain. “A word on the site of the site of
New Carthage: about half-way down the east coast of Spain there is a bay, open
to the south-west; it runs about two and a half miles inland and in breadth is
some three hundred yards less. At the mouth of the inlet a small island
protects the anchorage from all winds except the south-west. From the head of
the bag a peninsula runs out, high land, on which the town was built. Thus the
town has sea to the east and south of it, while on its western and part of its
northern sides it is surrounded by a lagoon in which the depth of water varies
with the ebb and flow of the tide. It is connected with the mainland by a ridge
about 250 yards wide. Fortification on this side would have involved little
labour, but Scipio none the less had no earthwork constructed, perhaps out of
ostentation, to show the enemy his confidence, perhaps to leave the way back
unobstructed every time he had need to approach the walls.” Livy, Book 26,
Chapter 42. I thought this quote would be the best way to kick start episode 71
as we left Scipio at the walls of New Carthage. That, and I would also like to
begin with a correction of sorts as I didn’t check my footnotes when writing
the end of last week. I said that Scipio and Laelius travelled from the Ebro to
New Carthage in 7 days, but as the footnotes of my translation make clear
Polybius writes that these two locations are 325 miles apart, which of course
makes the 7 day travel time found in Livy a bit incredulous to say the least.
As much as historians don’t like to admit it, an awful lot of the time the
sources give information which disagree completely, meaning that either one or
both sources is talking nonsense. For instance, Caesar writes in his
commentaries on the Gallic War that he conquered 400 tribes. Then Cassius Dio
writes that tribes varied size, with the largest having 200,000 fighting men
and the smallest having 50,000. If we take an average then, the average tribe
would have 125,000 fighting men. Now, to take into account women, children and those
in old age we can multiply this figure by 4, giving an average tribe size of
500,000. Now, there were 400 tribes in Gaul, which, so it logically follows,
means that when Caesar conquered Gaul there was a population of 200,000,000
people. 200 million people. 3 times the population of modern France. Just a
nice, happy reminder that we really don’t know that much about anything. Now, back to New Carthage.
Scipio prepared for the attack by stationing the fleet in
the harbour, and the army right by the city so the townspeople would know that
they were surrounded on all sides. We have lost the beginnings of the attack,
so the first thing we know to have happened was that Mago, the commander in the
town, but not one of the three Carthaginian generals in the peninsula, so began
to organise a defence, sending out some troops to combat the Romans. The Romans
drew back so that they would be nearer their reserves and could rapidly rotate
troops, something which gave then a huge advantage and they successfully pushed
the Carthaginians back. Scipio could see that now the walls were undefended,
and so he launched an attack with ladders from both land and sea. The Romans
launched the assault, but there was enough time for the Carthaginians to re-man
the walls and to gather missiles, but the most useful factor in the defence of
the city proved to be the walls. They were very high, and most of the Roman
ladders were unable to reach the top, and those that could were extremely
unstable. The first attack did not go particularly well, but as soon as it was
over Scipio prepared for a second assault.
