Mago Barca: Hannibal's youngest brother

Mago was the youngest of the three sons of Hamilcar Barca, the "lion's brood" that Carthage sent against Rome. He crossed into Italy with Hannibal, spent most of the following decade fighting in Spain, and ended his career in northern Italy, at war with Rome for fifteen years, from 218 to 203 BC. He never had his eldest brother's genius, but he was trusted with some of the most delicate tasks of the war, from a night ambush to a report before the Carthaginian senate.²

Several Carthaginians were named Mago; this is Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal, not the earlier general or the famous writer on farming. See the whole family among the great commanders of Carthage.

The ambush at the Trebia

Mago made his name early. Around the winter solstice of 218 BC, on the river Trebia in northern Italy, Hannibal found a watercourse between the two camps with steep banks overgrown with reeds and brambles, a perfect hiding place. He consulted Mago and his staff, and that evening summoned his brother, "still quite young, but full of martial enthusiasm and trained from boyhood in the art of war," as Polybius puts it. Hannibal picked a hundred horsemen and a hundred foot soldiers, ordered each of them to choose ten of the bravest men in his unit, and sent the whole force, a thousand horse and a thousand foot, into the watercourse by night under Mago's command.³

At dawn Hannibal's Numidian horsemen rode up to the Roman camp and lured the consul Sempronius Longus out before his men had eaten. The Romans waded the icy river and formed up against the Carthaginian line. When the battle was fully joined, Mago's men burst from cover and fell on the rear of the Roman center, throwing the whole army into confusion. The Roman wings broke and were driven back on the river; only about 10,000 men of the center cut their way through and reached Placentia.⁴ › The Battle of the Trebia, 218 BC

Trasimene and Cannae

In the spring of 217 BC Hannibal led his army through the flooded marshes of the Arno toward Etruria. He put the hardened Spanish and African infantry in front, the Gauls behind them, and his cavalry at the rear under Mago, with orders to keep the Gauls moving if the misery of the march made them try to turn back. For three days and nights the army marched through water; the Gauls suffered worst, and most of the pack animals died in the mud. A few weeks later the Carthaginians destroyed a Roman army at Lake Trasimene.⁵ › The Battle of Lake Trasimene, 217 BC

At Cannae in 216 BC, Hasdrubal commanded the Carthaginian left, Hanno the right, and Hannibal himself with his brother Mago the center. It was the most dangerous post on the field. The center, made up of Gauls and Spaniards, was pushed forward in a crescent and then gave ground step by step before the Roman legions, drawing them deeper and deeper in until the African infantry on both wings turned inward on their flanks and the cavalry closed the rear. The Roman army was almost annihilated.⁶ › The Battle of Cannae, 216 BC

The gold rings of Carthage

After the victory Hannibal kept Mago in the south for some days, receiving the Bruttian towns that went over to Carthage, and then sent him home with the news. Before the Carthaginian senate Mago listed the battles won, the consuls and armies destroyed and the peoples who had changed sides. Then, as proof, he had a heap of gold rings taken from the dead poured out in the vestibule of the senate house. Livy says some writers claimed it filled three and a half modii, but that the account closer to the truth was no more than one. Only knights, Mago explained, and the highest of them, wore such rings.⁷

His purpose was to win reinforcements. The old opponent of the Barcids, Hanno, asked pointedly whether any Roman had yet spoken of peace, and Mago had to admit that none had. But the senate, carried away by the news, voted Hannibal 4,000 Numidians, 40 elephants and a sum in silver talents.⁸

A decade in Spain

The help never reached Hannibal in the form he needed. Mago gathered 12,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry, 20 elephants and 60 warships to take to Italy, but bad news from Spain, where the Scipio brothers were pressing his other brother Hasdrubal, diverted him there instead. In Spain the Barcid brothers fought on for years against the two Scipios. In 211 BC the Carthaginian armies, Mago's among them, defeated and killed both Roman generals, Publius and Gnaeus Scipio. It was the high point of Carthaginian power in Spain, but the three Carthaginian commanders were on bad terms and failed to exploit it.⁹

The son of the dead Publius changed everything. In 209 BC the young Publius Cornelius Scipio, the future Africanus, captured New Carthage, the Carthaginian capital in Spain, while the three Carthaginian armies stood far apart. In 208 BC Hasdrubal Barca slipped away from Spain to march on Italy, where he was destroyed at the Metaurus the following year, and Mago was left as the senior Barcid in Spain.¹⁰ › Hasdrubal Barca

Ilipa and the end in Spain

Mago raised new troops in Spain, Africa and the Balearics and joined Hasdrubal, son of Gisco. In 206 BC their combined army, more than 50,000 men, met Scipio near Ilipa, close to modern Seville. For several days the armies formed up and withdrew. Then Scipio fed and armed his men before dawn, sent his cavalry and light troops against the Carthaginian outposts, and forced the enemy to rush out hungry, using against them Hannibal's own trick from the Trebia. He had also reversed his formation, putting his Roman veterans on the wings against the Carthaginians' Spanish troops, while his weaker Spanish allies held back in the center. The Carthaginian wings collapsed, and of the more than 50,000 men engaged only about 6,000 escaped. Mago and Hasdrubal were among them, but Carthaginian power in Spain was finished.¹¹

Gades, the Balearics and Mahón

Mago gathered what was left at Gades, modern Cádiz. Hopes raised by a mutiny in the Roman camp and a revolt of Spanish chiefs faded, and in the autumn of 206 BC the Carthaginian senate ordered him to take his fleet to Italy, raise the Gauls and Ligurians and join Hannibal. He stripped Gades of money, even the temples, and tried a night attack on New Carthage on the way, which failed. Returning, he found the gates of Gades shut against him. He invited the city's chief magistrates and treasurer to a parley, and had them flogged and crucified.¹²

He sailed on to Ibiza, where the Phoenician inhabitants welcomed him, and then to the Balearics. On Majorca the islanders, famous slingers, met his fleet with such a hail of stones that it did not dare enter the harbor, so he wintered on the smaller island, Minorca, and raised troops there. Its harbor town, Mahón, bears his name.¹³

The Ligurian gamble

In the summer of 205 BC Mago sailed from Minorca with 12,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, about thirty warships and many transports. The coast was unguarded, and he took Genua by surprise. He stored his plunder at Savo, allied himself with the Ingauni, a Ligurian people, and sent most of his ships home to guard Africa against Scipio's expected invasion.¹⁴

Carthage sent him 25 warships, 6,000 infantry, 800 cavalry, seven elephants and money to hire mercenaries, so that he could move nearer Rome and join Hannibal. He called a council of Gallic and Ligurian chiefs and told them he had come to free them. The Ligurians agreed to arm, but the Gauls, with one Roman army on their land and another in nearby Etruria, would help only in secret. Some Etruscan towns were also ready to side with him, but he could not support them. The gamble had come years too late; Rome now had armies to spare.¹⁵

Wounds and death

In 203 BC the praetor Publius Quintilius Varus and the proconsul Marcus Cornelius brought Mago to battle in the land of the Insubres, in Cisalpine Gaul. The Carthaginians held firm until the Romans let loose their cavalry, and Mago answered by sending in his elephants, whose trumpeting and smell terrified the horses. The Roman twelfth legion was badly cut up, and only the thirteenth, brought up from reserve, restored the line. Then the elephants were driven back onto their own ranks. As long as Mago stood in front, his men retreated in good order, but when he fell, badly wounded, and was carried almost fainting from the field, they fled. Livy gives the Carthaginian losses as 5,000 men and the Roman as 2,300, and says the battle would have lasted longer but for Mago's wound.¹⁶

He withdrew to the coast of the Ingauni, where envoys from Carthage were waiting: he must sail for Africa at once, as Hannibal had also been ordered to do. Scipio had landed in Africa and Carthage needed every man. Mago hoped a sea voyage would be easier on his wound than the jolting march, but, Livy writes, he died of it before his fleet had passed Sardinia. Another tradition, noted by modern historians, has him ignore the recall and fight on in Liguria until after Zama, surviving the war.¹⁷ › The Battle of Zama, 202 BC

Mago in memory

Of the three sons of Hamilcar, Mago is the least remembered. Hannibal became the great captain of antiquity and Hasdrubal the tragic brother of the Metaurus. Yet Mago was in the thick of the war from its first battle to its last years: the ambush at the Trebia, the center at Cannae, a decade of Spanish campaigns, and a last stubborn front in the north that kept two Roman armies busy. His name survives in an unexpected place, the port of Mahón on Minorca.¹⁸

Follow his brother Hasdrubal through the same war, read the life of Hannibal and of their father Hamilcar Barca, meet their nemesis Scipio Africanus, explore the ancient world, or test yourself on Cannae and Zama in the Roman battles quiz.