Who won the Battle of the Metaurus?
Rome won a decisive victory at the Metaurus in 207 BC, intercepting and destroying the army of Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal before it could reinforce him in Italy. It is often called the real turning point of the Second Punic War, the battle that beat Hannibal without beating Hannibal.1
For years Hannibal roamed Italy without suffering a decisive defeat, waiting for the reinforcements that would let him finish Rome. In 207 BC his brother Hasdrubal crossed the Alps to bring them. Rome intercepted him first, at the river Metaurus, and destroyed his army before the brothers could ever join hands. It is often called the real turning point of the Second Punic War, the battle that beat Hannibal without beating Hannibal.2
Hannibal's long wait
After crushing Rome at Cannae in 216 BC, Hannibal could not take the city or force a surrender, and Rome mostly avoided pitched battle with him while wearing him down. By 207 BC he had been in Italy for more than ten years, pushed back into the south and holding on in Bruttium, the toe of the peninsula. His one hope was reinforcement from Spain. When his brother Hasdrubal finally marched an army over the Alps into Italy, the two Barca brothers were poised to combine and overwhelm Rome at last.3 › Battle of the Trebia, 218 BC
Hasdrubal crosses the Alps
Hasdrubal had fought the Romans in Spain for years, and Roman successes there were dealing Carthage severe blows. In 208 BC he detached a force from the main Carthaginian army and set out for Italy, wintered beyond the Alps and came down into Italy early in 207 BC. Livy says the crossing was far quicker and easier than his brother's had been: the Arverni and other Gallic and Alpine peoples received him as a friend, and many joined him, along with some 8,000 Ligurians raised to meet him. Polybius agrees that his arrival was much easier and more rapid than Hannibal's.4
Rome was terrified. Livy describes the city facing "two Hannibals in Italy," and the consuls of 207 BC were sent out early to keep the two Carthaginian armies apart: Marcus Livius Salinator to the north against Hasdrubal, Gaius Claudius Nero to the south against Hannibal. Then Hasdrubal lost time besieging the Roman colony of Placentia in the Po valley, and the delay gave Rome its chance.5
In the south, Nero had already shown he could hold Hannibal. At Grumentum in Lucania he caught the Carthaginians pouring out of their camp in disorder and sent hidden cohorts down a bare hillside into their rear; Livy claims more than 8,000 of Hannibal's men killed. Hannibal slipped away by night, leaving campfires burning and a few Numidians on the rampart to fool the Romans, and moved north to Canusium in Apulia, with Nero shadowing every step. That was where the two armies stood when the letter was found.6
The intercepted message
The campaign turned on intelligence. Hasdrubal sent four Gallic and two Numidian horsemen with a letter telling Hannibal to meet him in Umbria. They rode almost the length of Italy, took a wrong road near Tarentum and were caught by Roman foragers. Under threat of torture they confessed, and the sealed letter was brought to Nero.7
The consul made a daring decision. He sent the letter to the Senate and, without waiting for permission, picked 6,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry from his army, announced a raid on a town in Lucania, and marched north instead, leaving the rest of his army in its camp facing Hannibal. Messengers ran ahead to have food, horses and carts waiting at the roadside, and townsfolk lined the road with supplies. Veterans and young volunteers joined along the way. Nero's men marched day and night, joining Livius near Sena on the Adriatic coast before Hannibal knew he had gone.8
The Romans hid the reinforcement with care. Nero's men entered Livius's camp at night and were taken in, tribune by tribune and soldier by soldier, so that the camp did not grow. But Hasdrubal, riding out before his lines, noticed battered shields and leaner horses than before. His scouts reported that the trumpet sounded once in the praetor's camp and twice in the consul's, the sign of two consuls. Guessing the truth, he refused battle and slipped away by night.9
The battle at the river
The retreat went wrong. In the dark Hasdrubal's guides deserted, one hiding and the other swimming the Metaurus, and his tired army straggled along the winding river looking for a ford, the banks growing steeper the farther it went from the sea. Many Gauls fell asleep in the fields. By morning the Romans had caught up: first Nero with all the cavalry, then the light infantry, then Livius with the legions in battle order.10
Hasdrubal had to fight where he stood. According to Livy, he put his ten elephants in front, his Ligurians in the center, his unreliable Gauls on the left behind a hill, and himself on the right with his Spanish veterans against Livius; Polybius places him in the center, behind the elephants. There the fighting was fierce, and the elephants, maddened by the noise, rampaged between the lines and hurt both sides. On the Roman right, Nero could not get at the Gauls across the hill. So he pulled cohorts out of his idle wing, led them behind the Roman line and fell on Hasdrubal's flank and rear. Attacked from front, flank and rear, the Spaniards and Ligurians were cut down, and the slaughter spread to the exhausted Gauls.11
Hasdrubal, seeing the day was lost, rode into a Roman cohort and died fighting. Polybius, who praises him at length, says he fell in the thick of the fight; Livy calls his death worthy of the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal. Polybius counts no fewer than 10,000 Carthaginians and Gauls killed against 2,000 Romans; Livy gives 56,000 killed and 5,400 captured, with about 8,000 Romans and allies dead, and adds that more than 4,000 Roman prisoners were freed. Polybius adds that six elephants were killed and four captured.12
The head in the camp
At Rome the senators had not left the Senate house, nor the people the Forum, since Nero marched. When the news came the city at first could not believe it, then filled the temples with thanksgiving; the Senate decreed three days of public prayer. Nero marched back south even faster than he had come and reached his camp on the sixth day. He had Hasdrubal's severed head thrown before Hannibal's outposts and sent two African prisoners to tell him what had happened. Seeing it, Hannibal is said to have recognized the fate of Carthage.13
Hannibal never received his reinforcements. He drew back into Bruttium, the most remote corner of Italy, and was slowly penned in there, and the initiative passed for good to Rome, which would win the war at Zama five years later. Britannica calls the battle a decisive turning point of the Second Punic War.14 › Battle of Zama, 202 BC
Scipio in Spain
While Hannibal waited in vain in the south of Italy, the war was being decided elsewhere. In Spain the young Publius Cornelius Scipio had taken Carthago Nova in 209 BC, and in 206 BC he destroyed the remaining Carthaginian armies at Ilipa, driving Carthage out of the peninsula and cutting off the source of men and silver that had fed Hannibal's war. With Spain lost and Hasdrubal dead, Scipio carried the war to Africa, forcing Carthage to recall Hannibal for the final battle at Zama.15 › Scipio Africanus
Legacy and the battlefield today
In 1851 the English historian Edward Creasy counted the Metaurus among his fifteen decisive battles of the world, because it settled whether Hannibal would ever fight in Italy with a second army behind him. Its hero was not a famous general but a consul who broke the rules: Nero left his own province, marched an army across Italy without waiting for the Senate's approval and won in a few days, a gamble Livy says Rome could not decide whether to praise or blame until it succeeded.16 › Battle of Cannae, 216 BC
The Metauro, the ancient Metaurus, rises in the Apennines and flows about 109 km (68 miles) east-northeast into the Adriatic just south of Fano, in the Marche region of central Italy. Britannica places the battle in its lower valley. Livy's account of Hasdrubal following the river upstream in search of a ford suggests the fighting took place some way inland, but the exact site is not known.17
