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

Hello everyone, I am here with some exceedingly exciting news. Now, as all our beloved club members will already know, one of the very best things of being a member of the Restless History Club is getting access to exclusive members-only mini-series. That's right, mini-series, not just individual episodes. So these are special episodes every other month, which only club members can listen to. No one else. And we've got a brand new one coming out this February. So that's going to be the very first one of 2026. And it is presented by me and the great art critic Laura Cumming. Four episodes. And it's about paintings that shed a particularly fascinating light on history. And it covers a broad range of times and places. So everything from Velázquez's Las Meninas, described by many critics as the greatest of all paintings, right the way up to Henry Rayburn's Skating Minister. What do these paintings tell us about the times in which they were painted? It's really, really fascinating stuff. And members will get a new one of those episodes every Wednesday. And it is starting this week on the 4th of February. so that's the Wednesday and if you are not watching it on YouTube or Spotify if you're just listening to it as a podcast don't worry because we will be sending all our members an email which will be going into greater written detail about the painting but also obviously giving you an image of the painting itself so you can have a quick look at that perhaps before you listen to the episode although I have to say that Laura's descriptions of each painting are so good that perhaps you don't even need to look at the painting so if you would like to sign up to that mini-series and to the other five mini-series that we will be doing this year which will be covering everything from history's greatest photographs the vietnam war to england's she wolves then you know where to go go to the rest is history.com if you are not already a club member and sign up there Massinissa had already heard a great deal about Scipio's prowess as a general and hugely admired him. The Numidian had formed a picture of the Roman in his mind's eye as a man of powerful and striking physique. But when at last he came face to face with Scipio, he was awestruck. for in deflesh the Roman general was even more impressive than he had been in Massinissa's imaginings. Naturally possessed of great dignity, Scipio also, thanks to his longer hair, got a most graceful figure. This, however, owed nothing to any effeminate fussing over fashion or personal grooming, but rather to an appearance and bearing that was virile in the extreme, for he was the very model of a warrior. Scipio was just at the age when his physical powers were at full strength and even though he had recently been ill he had quite recaptured his youthful bloom. Indeed he seemed more handsome than ever. So that was Rob Brydon describing one of history's more homoerotic summit meetings actually it was the italian-born roman historian livy so that was your roman accent was it that was uh the accent of an italian but actually it was as it went on it degenerated into the accent of an italian who had set up an ice cream parlor in swansea in the 1910s dominant you and welsh history you we just can't stop you doing it it's great to have some welsh history back on the show so that was the roman historian livy and he's describing this exciting meeting in 206 BC. We are on the Atlantic coast of Iberia, now Spain, and the participants are two extremely strapping, well-oiled and handsome warlords. One of them is Massinissa, who is a Berber prince from modern-day Algeria, Numidia, as it then was, and the other is Publius Cornelius Scipio, who is a Roman patrician, a young man whom we met in our previous episode and Scipio listeners may recall was the officer whom 10 years before this meeting had rallied the men of Rome in the wake of their shattering defeat at Cannae and he had made them swear never to desert our country nor to permit any other citizen of Rome to leave her in the lurch so 10 years on here he is meeting this oiled warlord Tom explain what's going on well I mean an extraordinary way of accents for starters but there are some other puzzles as well so first of all attentive listeners may be wondering what is a numidian doing meeting up with a roman because people who've listened to our previous episodes in this ongoing series will recall that the numidians are the allies not of rome but of carthage and in fact they are key allies because they are the best light cavalry in the world they um they ride bareback they don't bother with reins they have spears and all kinds of things and they are the horsemen who have provided Hannibal effectively with the cutting edge throughout his invasion of Italy and his occupation of Italy and the Romans have learned to dread the Nimidians possibly more than any other of the units in Hannibal's army so what is going on here and secondly what on earth is up with Scipio because Dominic you you read this um this kind of stern traditionalist statement of Roman pluck and determination yeah I mean Scipio is only 19 when he's saying that so he's very callow but it's very very old school I mean it's it's patriotic in exactly the way that Roman traditionalists expect young men to be patriotic but something has changed and something very very sinister if you recall the people who were paying attention to that reading and frankly who wasn't Scipio now has long hair the most un-roman thing imaginable so is he is he like you going to India on your gap year is that what's going on well I mean someone else who went to India of course is Alexander the Great and there's a definite hint of Alexander there and what is also a hint of Alexander is the fact that according to Pliny the Elder, admittedly writing centuries later, but I think we can rely on him, Scipio was the first Roman to shave daily. So up until that point, Romans had generally been bearded, but now Scipio has introduced this fashion for a clean chin. And that again, of course, is very, very Alexander. And when you think of that description, that passage that you read the sense of awe that masinissa feels at seeing this kind of divine god-like figure i mean it's quite homeric it's the way that that people are described in the iliad for instance seeing achilles so all in all scipio is cutting for roman traditionalists a disturbingly kind of greek dash because roman commanders are supposed to be old and craggy and bearded and all of that and they are not supposed to look like achilles they are not supposed to look like alexander the great so something odd is absolutely going on here so when livy is describing scipio there is a sense here isn't there that scipio is more than an ordinary roman general as you've described really this this business about alexander the great for example there is a sense isn't there in livy's description that scipio is his marketing himself as something actually quite old-fashioned as a greek style as indeed a homeric hero right somebody who has been appointed by the gods to lead the romans back from the abyss of cannae and lake trasamine and all the defeats that hannibal has inflicted on them and do you think this is a conscious thing and do you think livy is is genuinely reporting scipio's pr strategy as it were this is how livy puts it he absolutely says it's a pr strategy so to quote livy from scipio's earliest days he used to present his policies and actions as inspired by dreams or by warnings from heaven. And this is very ostentatiously performative. So Livy tells us that Scipio, before he takes any course of action, he will go up to the capital, very obviously, and sit in the temple of Jupiter as though he is communing with the god. And this in turn fosters what Livy describes as a very empty and foolish story once told of alexander the great that scipio had been born from the embraces of a giant serpent a monster that had often visited his mother in her bedroom but had always glided away and vanished the moment someone came in i mean skeptics may say well there's no evidence for this at all but clearly what what scipio is doing is trying to imply that the serpent might have been jupiter because of course dominic you will remember that very similar stories were told of alexander that jupiter had come in the form of a snake to alexander's mother so scipio doesn't um obviously doesn't deny these stories does he why would he uh as livy says in his um account um whether he was truly so superstitious as to believe this nonsense or whether he fostered reports of it said that people would obey him the more is unclear so scipio just lets the stories kind of build and build now i guess scipio knows that what the romans are craving is well at first what they were craving was a figure of reassurance right a conservative figure a memory of roman virtues past but he's changing isn't he and he's developing a new strategy to sort of impress his personality on the roman um masses and he's becoming i dare i mean tom you have compared him in your notes to a rock star he's turning himself into a figure of kind of rock star glamour and charisma he's very he's very good looking he's very suave and he's kind of promoting himself as possibly as the son of a god and of course he is in a republic and republics don't tend to look favorably on kind of rock stars posing as the son of a god so there must be some people who think this guy's a terrible person i mean this is that he's showy and brash and i mean this is actually a complaint that people will level at lots of roman figures to come isn't it yes but scipio is is establishing a brand that as you say many romans to come will copy well into the period when the republic has actually collapsed and been replaced by an empire but Scipio is blazing the path for you know these kind of younger showboating emperors who will appear but Scipio is going to end up so a lot of people listening to this may already know Scipio is going to end up as the great antagonist of Hannibal the two of them are kind of linked in the imagination for people who study the classical world and their encounter their duel will become the great turning point in the punic wars and scipio gives the romans the one thing they've craved all this time which is their own figure with the glamour the charisma and the effectiveness the military effectiveness of hannibal now actually hannibal is relatively well born isn't he in carthaginian terms and scipio is also extremely well born i mean he is positively posh he went to um harrow christ church maybe christ church or did he go to durham no he went to christ church because he I mean, he's the poshest of the posh and he's very smart. He's very charismatic. I mean, he's got it all because he is a patrician. So he is from one of the ancient aristocratic dynasties of Rome. But having said that, actually, the Scipios have only recently come into political prominence. And basically, the Punic Wars has been the making of the Scipios and their reputation. So back in the first Punic War, two of them had done well enough to be awarded triumphs. triumphs. Scipio's uncle is called Calvus. He's nicknamed Calvus, which means baldy. He had been consul in 222 and was a great man for having a crack at the Gauls. The Romans always liked people who could defeat the Gauls. And Calvus's brother, Scipio's father, Publius, people may remember, had been consul in 218, which was the year that Hannibal had invaded Italy. And admittedly, he hadn't exactly covered himself in glory in that campaign. He tried to stop Hannibal from invading Italy and failed, and he'd been injured before the Battle of Trebia. But he hadn't totally screwed things up, and compared to the record of other consuls who had taken on Hannibal, I mean, that's not bad. And it suggested, I think, to the Roman people, to the Roman government, that Publius, he had a kind of a basic competence, and that, in the scale of the crisis that Rome was facing was considered to be enough and so by 217 both the scipio brothers calvus who is the young scipio's uncle and publius his father they have been sent to iberia to to spain and to clarify so spain later on it's obviously an integral part of the roman empire hadrian comes from spain doesn't he but at the time so you know with 200 years before the birth of christ spain is a very alien and exotic and terrifying place for the romans it's like something out of a science fiction epic it's like being sent to a hostile planet because it is teeming with hostile barbarians who clean their teeth with their own urine i mean completely shocking um and they are are masters of a lethal weapon and this is a short stabbing sword which works by eviscerating an opponent You plunge it in and you slice it up and all the guts spill out. And the Romans call this weapon a gladius, which is a word that later Roman scholars will derive from the Latin word clades, which means slaughter. They're kind of synonymous with butchering your enemies. And the Romans have already experienced the gladius because Hannibal has brought lots of Iberians with him to Italy. And unsurprisingly, because the Romans are very, very adaptive, particularly when it comes to kind of military matters, They have begun to use the gladius for themselves and are starting to master it But obviously it unsettling to be up against a whole peninsula full of warriors who were born basically to use it And so I think that the prime duty of the Scipio brothers when they arrive, and there's a kind of Roman outpost in the northwest of Iberia, basically what's now Catalonia, their prime responsibility is not to be wiped out. and this is a huge challenge because they have been sent as the news back in Italy is going from bad to worst so Hannibal has been inflicting you know these incredible defeats on the Romans that we did in the previous series Lake Trasimene has just been fought you know an entire army has been wiped out a consul killed and all of that and this means that the senate can't really send many men or many you know supplies or indeed cash to bribe the local tribes to spain and so effectively the two scipio brothers are are penned into let's call it catalonia anachronistically it's dangerous for them to venture out of that so if you think of spain perhaps as being a little bit like arrakis dune in the frank herbert novels you know they are hemmed in and they feel that it is perilous to leave that and i think that if people have a sense of of this whole story that we're doing today as something that could very easily provide the plot of a kind of one of those epic science fiction novels set on distant planets they will not be far wrong the clash of mighty galactic empires that kind of thing okay so to remind people exactly where we are we are back at the point when hannibal is kind of cutting his way through italy we're with the two scipio brothers who are our Scipio so the long-haired boke it's his um father and uncle and so we've we've sort of gone back in time so we're in Spain and the problem for them is that they are now facing not just you know one Carthaginian general and not just the Iberians with these fancy swords but the entire Carthaginian empire now controls the whole of the southern part of the Iberian peninsula doesn't it and the guy in charge of the carthaginians at this point in this part of the world is hannibal's younger brother hasdrabil and he has with him a pretty mighty force 13 000 infantrymen 3 000 cavalry he has 21 war elephants he's got all these mines that are the key really to spain's wealth is what makes spain so attractive to outsiders so gold silver copper and he has a city that we talked about last time they've called it carthage the romans call it new carthage and this is the sort of center the base of the carthaginian empire in spain and this city is on four hills overlooking a fantastic harbor it's to this day one of spain's um carthagena is one of spain's key naval bases you know like so many cities across the mediterranean world it's got these amazing fortifications and it has a direct road link with the mines that makes it extremely rich And basically, if Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian, can keep hold of this, then the Scipio brothers, basically, they can do what they like, but they're not going to dislodge him from the Iberian Peninsula. So the Greek historian Polybius, who is our best source for the Punic Wars, I mean, he describes it as the chief ornament and the centre of the Carthaginian Empire in Spain. Because not only is it linked to the mines in the hinterland, but it is also, of course, open to the sea. So it's what enables New Carthage to communicate with Carthage and, of course, with Italy. And what this means is that Hasdrubal and the powers in Carthage can coordinate to try and raise reinforcements that can then be sent onwards to Italy. And this is absolutely, goes without saying, the last thing that the Romans want. They do not want a second Barca brother. So Hannibal Barca, Hasdrubal Barca, they do not want Hasdrubal Barca 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. 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 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 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 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 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 his cavalry and towards the end of that year 215 he is joined in iberia by a very very glamorous figure indeed and this is hasdrubal and therefore hannibal's youngest brother and this is guy called mago and we talked about mago in um 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 a can i he had stood next to his brother um in the most critical and vulnerable position in the Carthaginian line. 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 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 swollen again so to recap we now have a situation on the iberian peninsula in spain where we have two rival armies one roman moncarthaginian 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 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 this is ridiculous we've got to break out we've got to try and you know 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 big horn 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 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 massinissa 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 syphax who we will be hearing about later so he's seen off syphax he's kept his his dad on the on his throne in numidia and now he's arrived in in spain at the head of 3 000 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 massinissa would ride right up to the camp itself and charge at the gallop through the outposts guarding it causing the most terrible confusion so thanks to uh hasdrabil and mago and particularly to this swashbuckling numidian prince massinissa it looks like the carthaginian presence in spain of course access to those crucial minds 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 massinissa 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. Tabby loves a bit of June. Yeah. So as you say, the Carthaginians have got their kind of dashing youth. Is it time that the Romans summon up a dashing youth of their own? And if they're going to do that, who could this dashing youth possibly be? Where, Dominic, can they find a Dune Messiah? We'll be answering these questions after the break. 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. 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. 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 commanders 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 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 undoubtedly the case that the people adore him He glamorous he 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 recognize 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. 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 obviously the romans have lost two major battles so their numbers um 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's what would today be the city of toledo there's another under mago who is hannibal's youngest brother near the pillars of hercules what what today is gibraltar and there is a third army by the mouth of the tagus so that is dominic your favorite city 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 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 basis because they are on the front foot it's they they believe who are prosecuting the war yes 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 this is you know 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, his first, you know, it's his first campaigning season in Spain. He musters every last soldier that he has. And it comes to about 20,000 infantry, two and a half thousand cavalry. And he heads south along the coast as his father and uncle had done the previous year. 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 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 you know 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. 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 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 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 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 hand-picked 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 a regular phenomenon that it happens every so often does not happen every day it's not a regular tide but but every so often the tide does go out okay 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 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 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 is it means that um 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 begin immediately turns it into what polybius calls workshop of war doesn't he so he starts to um recruit troops he's drilling them he's kind of endlessly schooling them in kind of the the tactics they will need that he has learned from hannibal um 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 the romans are back and they're here in a big way and they are winners now yeah and the iberians love a winner by the spring of 208 hasribal 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 were thinking well scipio is a winner let's let's let's back him um 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 of course the word king is a very dirty word to the romans they are republic they don't like kings but scipio accepts that you know 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 hasdrubal knows that basically the entire war hinges on this right because carthage really really needs spain to continue being at the as well the top table of um international kind of 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 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'll march there with the expeditionary force to give my brother the reinforcements he needs and let's finish this 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. And by the winter of 208, 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 hasdrabul 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 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 hasdrabul and then there's one in the south with seven legions he's meant to be bottling up uh hannibal so the guy in charge of the northern legions i read in your notes tom he is called marcus livius salinator 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 he's feeling very hard done by and so as a protest he has refused to wash or cut his hair um and so he's notorious for his his body odor 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 is he's beautifully groomed is he yeah not not a hint of body odor these two blokes perhaps because of their dispute about grooming um 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 two consoles turn out to be much more secure than the communication links between hasdrubal and Hannibal so Hasdrabil 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 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 have 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 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. 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 Salinators camp on the 22nd of June, he is bringing a very, very large body of men to join the six legions under Salinators camp. camp 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 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 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 metaurus 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. 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. 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 plane this is the moment i think when hannibal knows that probably the game is up 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 um 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 if who knows maybe mago can recapture new carthage maybe he can raise a new army maybe he can send reinforcements to italy so quite a lot of ifs yeah Yeah, there's a lot of ifs in any war. Unfortunately, not all of these ifs work out to Hannibal's advantage, do they? 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 Ilippo 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 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 Masinissa, 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, it doesn't turn out at all. Actually, they find the battle that Scipio now forces on them. I mean, to put it mildly, a very, very bruising experience. So first, Masanissa's Numidian horsemen, you know, these great, great cavalrymen, they're swatted aside by Scipio's cavalry. 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 Massinista 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 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 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 um a new naval base on the island of majorca um in the balearics which to this day bears his name uh mahon um and this apparently is where mayonnaise was invented so um so in a way mayonnaise is named after mago i think it's the only um popular condiment 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 source is it it can be used as both but it's i think mayonnaise is more than it's it contains multitudes it's something you'd have in your fridge um 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 um and then in 205 he launches a very um ambitious invasion of northern italy you know he takes ships he takes men he captures genoa so that's quite a feat 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 and 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 and it's very clear to him by this point that the Carthaginians have no future whatsoever in Iberia and so he you know 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 ciphax 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 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 yeah even though he's only 30 and legally you have to be 40 to become a consul 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 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 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 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 of science i will 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 an inorganic material that is solid and has a definite crystal structure, which ice does. Water is important for life, but it's inorganic, actually. It would exist here 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. 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. I mean, when lava gets spurted out of a volcano, it uses the way that it moves and behaves is exactly the same. 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. To some, he is the revolutionary hero who restored China to its rightful place on the global stage. To others, he's a brutal despot, accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than either Stalin or Hitler. Mao Zedong has one of the most recognisable faces in the world, yet he started life in a muddy provincial village. A rebel son who hated his father survived a 6,000-mile walk across China and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions. From Empire, the goal-hanger world history show, I'm Anita Arnon. And I'm William Durrenpil. In this six-part series, we're joined by world-renowned expert Rana Mitter to explore the life of the father of communist China, Mao Zedong. We'll track his rise from a bookstore owner to a guerrilla commander and we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power and we'll descend into the dark experiment of the Cultural Revolution, a time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their parents and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred relic. Subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.