Translation:Lives of the Eminent Commanders/Hamilcar

I. Hamilcar, son of Hannibal, nicknamed Barca, the Karthaginian, in the first Punic War (but in its latest stages), while still a young man, began to command an army in Sicily. Although before his arrival things were going badly for the Karthaginians both on land and on sea, once he was present, he never gave way to the enemy nor gave them a chance to do harm. Often, on the contrary he attacked, when given an opportunity, and he always departed victorious. By this conduct, although the Phoenicians had lost almost everything in Sicily, he defended Eryx so well that the war did not seem to be happening there. In the meanwhile, the Karthaginians were defeated at sea near the Aegatean islands by C. Lutatius, a consul of the Romans, so they decided to put an end to the war and entrusted this matter to Hamilcar's discretion. Although he burnt with desire for making war, he realised that he must serve peace, because he understood that his fatherland had been exhausted by exactions and could not bear the disasters of war for too long, so he determined that, if things were repaired a little bit, it would be possible to renew the war and persue the Romans with weapons, until either they conquered through manly virtue or were conquered and surrendured. With this intention he procured peace, he who was so fierce that, when Catulus refused to settle the war unless he and his men who held Eryx abandoned their weapons and left Sicily, he said that he would rather his fatherland fall and he perish than to return home so shamefully, for it was not part of his manly virtue to betray weapons taken from the fatherland against enemies. To this obstinancy, Catulus gave way.

II. But when he returned to Karthage, he realised that the state's condition was very different from what he had expected. For after such a long period of external war, a civil war flared up - Karthage would never face a more serious danger until it was destroyed. First, the mercenary troops, who⟨m they had used⟩ against the Romans, revolted; they numbered twenty thousand. These mercenaries deprived them of the whole of Africa, besieged Karthage itself. The Phoenicians were so terrified by these enemies that they even requested military support from the Romans and they received this. But in the end, when they had almost given up hope, they made Hamilcar commander. He not only rebuffed the enemies from the walls of Karthage, when they were more than a hundred thousand soldiers, but herded them in such a way that they were shut in by the difficulty of the terrain and more died from hunger than from iron. All the lost towns, which included Utica and Hippo, the most valuable in all Africa, he restored to his fatherland. Nor was he satisfied with this, but he even extended the borders of the empire, returned all Africa to such peace that it seemed there had been no war there for many years.

III. After these things had been accomplished through his intelligence, he assumed an attitude which was confident and hostile to the Romans and, in order to more easily find a cause for war, he organised for himself to be sent to Hispania with an army as commander and he took his son Hannibal, who was nine years old, with him. There was also a brilliant, beautiful young man with him, Hasdrubal, whom not a few said was loved more dishonourably than was right by Hamilcar - for slanderers were not able to stay away from so great a man. As a result, Hasdrubal was forbidden to be with him by the prefect of traditional customs, so Hamilcar married his daughter to him, because it was not possible to keep a father-in-law from a son-in-law on the grounds of customs. We make mention of this man because, after Hamilcar was killed, he led the army and achieved great things and as leader he transgressed the most ancient customs of the Karthaginians in his corruption, and after his own death Hannibal received the command from the army.

IV. But after Hamilcar crossed the sea and entered Hispania, he accomplised great things with the support of fortune: He conquered the greatest and most warlike peoples, with horses, arms, men, money, he enriched all Africa. When he was considering bringing war to Italy, in the ninth year since he came to Hispania, he was killed fighting in battle against the Vettones. His eternal hatred for the Romans seems to have been the main cause of the second Punic war. For by his unremitting nagging, Hannibal was brought up so that he prefered to die than to leave the Romans untested.