March of Hannibal

The first notable fact about Hannibal's march was that it was a march, and along an inland route. Hannibal thus rejected the alternatives of either a seaborne invasion or of a march along the coast with his seaward flank protected by a fleet that could also secure his communications and escort supply ships. A sea crossing would have had the enormous advantage of minimizing the wear on and attrition to his army; as will be discussed below, the costs of the march he actually undertook seem to have been enormous. Sea transport was just the means, indeed, that P. Cornelius Scipio the elder was using to move his consular army to Spain at the same time as Hannibal's march.

On the other hand, direct sea transport of Hannibal's very large army would have required a very large number of transport ships, perhaps far more than Hannibal could practically build from the maritime resources available in Spain. Even given that restriction,

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ivy aside for the moment, it may be useful to summarize the enumerations of army strength at various points as given by Polybius. Although he is usually considered the more reliable of our major ancient sources, confusion and contradictions set in before Hannibal's army reaches Gaul. No sooner has Polybius given his version of the "dismissal" than he has Hannibal passing through the Pyrenees with only 50,000 infantry--40,000 fewer than he started with, only half of whom Polybius accounts for by combined detachment and dismissal. Twenty thousand infantrymen have disappeared in the space of a few lines, without Polybius ever noticing their absence or his own discrepancy. By Polybius' accounting, a further 12,000 infantry and two thousand cavalry are lost in one way or another in the march from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, and then another 18,000 infantry and two thousand more cavalry between the Rhone and Italy. The losses in this portion of the march--nearly half of the infantry that had made it as far as the Rhone--are presumably to be accounted for by the rigors of the Alpine passage, an experience to which we will return below. The army reaches Italy thus reduced to 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry; since it fights at Tre
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