Notes on Livy 30.3

Index	Introduction			People
Chapter 3 Chapter 3 notes Chapter 4 Chapter 4 notes Chapter 5 Chapter 5 notes	Chapter 6 Chapter 6 notes Chapter 12 Chapter 12 notes Chapter 13 Chapter 13 notes	Chapter 14 Chapter 14 notes Chapter 15 Chapter 15 notes Chapter 30 Chapter 30 notes	Chapter 31 Chapter 31 notes Chapter 32 Chapter 32 notes Chapter 33 Chapter 33 notes	Scipio Laelius Syphax Masinissa Sophonisba

A good account of the three wars between Rome and Carthage, the Punic Wars, can be found here. Livy Book 30 is concerned with the Second Punic War.

You may or may not find this interactive map helpful. You need to left-click on the map and hold the mouse button down while you select stage 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the Second Punic War. It is probably simpler to find the four separate maps here.

A web site on Hannibal may be of interest - lots of pictures, and it includes those same maps.

his transactis: I.e. when these sacrifices had been completed.

sortitis: (agreeing with omnibus) At the end of his year of office in Rome as consul or proconsul, each magistrate served a year as governor of a province. These provinces were allocated by casting lots, so that (theoretically) any magistrate might go to any province appropriate to his rank. Clearly, a magistrate would be very interested in the province he was allotted; Livy tells us that the province of Africa at that time was so important to Rome that everyone was as much interested in it as in his own province.

Africae: The Romans applied the word 'Africa' to the area around Carthage, not to the whole continent (which they called Libya). After the defeat of Carthage the Romans formed the province of Africa which comprised parts of modern Tunis and Libya.

seu ... seu (alternative form of sive ... sive, whether ...or) Livy gives two possible reasons for their interest: because events in Africa were crucial to Rome, or because they wanted to curry favour with Scipio, the most popular man in Rome. By writing this Livy underlines the importance of the events he is about to narrate, and builds up Scipio as the great hero of this part of his history.

It is a fact that the war between Carthage and Rome was crucial. Either power might have won, and if Carthage, under Hannibal who was a general of genius, had won, we might never have heard of Rome. It might have vanished from history as completely as Carthage did.

sicut ante dictum est: In chapter 2 Livy told how extra troops were sent to Sicily, because the best troops from Sicily had been sent to Africa, and how more ships and troops were allotted to Sardinia. Each provincial governor functioned independently, and the fact that troops were sent from Sicily and Sardinia to a different province is a sign of the importance of the war in Africa.

nec Scipio ullo tempore hiemis belli opera remiserat: In the ancient world, wars were normally carried on from March (Martius, the month of the war-god Mars) onwards, and the soldiers, who served in the army when they were not cultivating their land, needed to be home in time for harvest. It was very unusual for wars to be fought in winter. In the time of Julius Caesar his troops habitually retired to winter quarters.

Uticam obsidebat: Utica is not far from Carthage. This part of Livy's history describes the later stages of the Second Punic War, in the year before the final decisive Battle of Zama. "According to tradition, Utica was one of the oldest Phoenician settlements on the African coast, founded three centuries before Carthage. It soon acquired importance as a commercial centre, and was only partially eclipsed by Carthage itself, of which it was always jealous, though it had to submit to its authority."

Hasdrubalis: This Hasdrubal was not Hannibal's brother, who had been killed previously, but another Carthaginian commander, the son of Gisgo.

deduxerant naues : had launched their ships. Ancient ships were normally hauled up on land overnight and whenever they were not in use. At the beginning of the Punic Wars the Carthaginians had the strongest navy in the Mediterranean.

Syphacis: Syphax was "Numidian king of the Masaesyles of western Numidia. He was first allied with the Romans against Carthage then, under the influence of his wife Sophonisbe he changed camp. Syphax was defeated and captured at the Battle of the Great Plains near Utica, in what is now Tunisia (203), by the Roman commander Gaius Laelius in Scipio Africanus' campaign of the Second Punic War. Syphax had earlier (c. 206) expelled his rival Masinissa, who subsequently ruled much of North Africa with Roman support. He was defeated and taken prisoner by Scipio and died in Rome 203 or 202 BC." (Quoted from www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/syphax.htm.)

reconciliandi:Syphax had already changed sides once.

satias amoris in uxore: In Book 29 chapter 23 Livy tells how Syphax married Sophoniba (or Sophonisba) daughter of Hasdrubal son of Gisgo, and writes: "Hasdrubal ... seeing that the king was aflame with desire - the Numidians surpass all other barbarian peoples in the violence of their appetites - he sent to Carthage for the young woman and hurried on the wedding." Scipio hoped that the first flush of passion had worn off.

ut Antias Valerius prodit: Antias Valerius was a historian, or 'annalist' who wrote 'annals', dividing up the history of Rome into years, as Livy himself does. Livy mentions him eight times in Books 25 to 30.

On Livy's use of historical sources, Betty Radice in her introduction to the Penguin translation of this part of Livy writes:

"For his account of the war with Hannibal, Livy could have used good first-hand sources. There were the records of senatorial decrees, kept in the Treasury, and the annales maximi, the annual records of state elections, ceremonies, festivals, portents, visits of ambassadors, and the like, gathered into 80 books by Publius Mucius Scaevola in 115 B.C. from the lists put up each year by the pontifex maximus. There is, however, no evidence that Livy ever consulted them. He preferred to follow the later annalists... "

Livy's chief source for this period was the Greek historian Polybius, who was born about 203 B.C. and probably spoke to people who took part in the war. The part of Polybius' history dealing with the end of the war still exists, and we can see how much Livy relies on it, although he does not mention Polybius' name.

Livy has been called 'an armchair historian' because he did not research primary sources, but rewrote the histories of others, comparing one historian with another, as here. He aimed to tell a good story, in a good style. (One scholar, Walter Summers, wrote that "Polybius cannot be said to possess a style at all.")

causa probabilis: Scipio, according to Livy, was playing a devious game, pretending to engage in serious negotiations while really simply creating a pretext for spying on the enemy camp.

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hibernacula: See the note above on winter quarters.

materia: This is ablative, with congesta agreeing with it. materia normally means timber, rather than 'materials' in general.

Numidiae: Numidia is to the west of Carthage and its surrounding area ('Africa').

passim nullo ordine: The Carthaginian camp was in complete contrast to the Roman idea of what a camp should be like. We are familiar from excavated Roman camps in Britain with the regular 'playing-card' shape of a camp, and the orderly lines of barrack blocks or tents, the headquarters, commander's quarters, kitchens, lavatories etc all in their appointed places. This Carthaginian camp must have struck the Romans as 'barbarian'. It also made the whole camp vulnerable to fire.

fossam ... vallumque: At least the Carthaginian camp had a perimeter defended by ditch and rampart, the defensive ditch being dug and the earth removed being piled up into a bank, making the combined defensive construction twice as high to scale. Roman troops would never have spent the night outside their defenses.