Hamilcar

Hamilcar, next to Hannibal the greatest of the Carthaginians and one of the greatest generals of antiquity. He was surnamed Barea (the Hebrew Barak) or 'Lightning.' When a young man he came into prominence in the sixteenth year of the First Punic War (247 B.C.), when all Sicily, save the fortresses of Drepanum and Lilybæum, had been wrested from Carthage by the Romans. After ravaging the Italian coast, he landed in Sicily, near Panormus, and seized the stronghold of Erete, a hill of 2000 feet high rising sheer from the sea. Here, with a small band of mercenaries, though he received no aid from his unworthy countrymen, he waged almost daily war with the Romans for three years, and defied every effort to dislodge him. By the spell of his genius he preserved discipline among his unpaid followers, whom he taught to banish their old dread of the Roman veterans, while with his few ships he harassed the Italian shores. In 244 B.C. he occupied Mount Eryx, a hill 2 miles from the coast and a less strong position than Erete, but one which lay nearer to the besieged cities of Drepanum and Lilybæum. For two years he stood at bay with his handful of men against a Roman army, 'fighting,' says Polybius, 'like a royal eagle, which, grappling with another eagle as noble as himself, stops only to take breath from sheer exhaustion, or to gather fresh strength for the next attack.' The battle of the Ægatian Isles in 241 B.C. ended the First Punic War, and Sicily was yielded to Rome. But Hamilcar marched out from Eryx with all the honours of war. Scarcely had peace been concluded when the Carthaginian mercenaries revolted and were joined by the subject Libyans. Hanno, a personal enemy of Hamilcar, was sent against them. He failed, and the task of saving the state was assigned to Hamilcar, who crushed out the rebellion after a terrible struggle of three years in 238 B.C. In the same year the Romans, in defiance of treaty engagements, seized on the Carthaginian possessions in Corsica. Despite the antagonism of the peace party, headed by the incompetent Hanno, the patriotic or Barcine party, though a minority, obtained the command of an army for Hamilcar, with which he resolved to carry out his master-conception. He proposed to throw Spain into the balance to redress the loss of Sicily. Spain was not only rich in mineral and other wealth; she would form an admirable recruiting-ground. The main defect in the Carthaginian armies hitherto had been the want of an infantry capable of coping on at all equal terms with the legionaries. Such a force Hamilcar determined to create in Spain, whence it could be marched or carried over sea to Italy; in future the war would be waged on Roman soil. In 237 B.C. the general entered Spain, and in nine years built up a new dominion by his military genius, his policy, and the magic of his personality. In 228 B.C. he fell fighting against the tribe of the Vettones. The conceptions of the great Hamilcar were carried out by his mightier son. Unfortunately only a dim light is cast on Hamilcar's marvellous career. What is incontestable is that he was a military genius of the highest order; a statesman as lofty in his conceptions as he was adroit in carrying them out; a patriot whom neither obloquy, ingratitude, nor treachery could alienate from the ignoble state he strove so hard to save. Two men only, it has been truly said, in the whole course of Roman history, seem to have struck the Romans with real terror. These were Hamilcar and his greater son. See Bosworth Smith's Carthage and the Carthaginians (1879).