The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. Will Cuppy
poisoned by the eunuch Aspamithres. Eunuchs were widely employed as royal advisers, as they had more time to think.
14 Among the Persians, sixty or any multiple of sixty was regarded as lucky.
15 He was often extremely brutal to his captives, whom he sold into slavery, tortured to death, or forced to learn Greek.
16 He evened an old score by hanging the historian Callisthenes, a grand-nephew of Aristotle. Callisthenes refused to prostrate himself in the Persian fashion, then Alexander refused to kiss him, and things went from bad to worse.
17 Alexander did not conquer the world, by any means, since he had never been in Italy, Gaul, or Spain, to mention a few places. He might have spared the tears about that.
18 Alexander had always been kind to Bucephalus, after whom he named a city. He named another after his dog Peritas and seventeen after himself.
19 “From the weaknesses of the flesh, to which many great men have been subject, he was almost entirely immune.” – F.A. Wright.
20 There is probably no truth in that story about Alexander and Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons. Still, Thalestris usually got her own way.
21 He is said to have smelled like violets. I heard different.
22 But see F.A. Wright on Alexander’s work “above all as an apostle of world peace.”
HANNIBAL
ROME AND Carthage were the most important cities in the world around 300 B.C. Rome was where it always was and Carthage was on the northern coast of Africa. They had been neighbors for years without having a good fight, so it was only a question of time. They were spoiling for the First, Second, and Third Punic Wars. Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus, a baby who was suckled by a she-wolf and guarded by a black woodpecker. Carthage was founded about a hundred years earlier by Elissa, daughter of Mutton I, King of Tyre. Later on, she was identified with Dido, the lady who was so fond of Aeneas. It’s a strange world we live in.
The Romans and Carthaginians were very different in character and temperament. The Carthaginians had no ideals. All they wanted was money and helling around and having a big time. The Romans were stern and dignified, living hard, frugal lives and adhering to the traditional Latin virtues, gravitas, pietas, simplicitas, and adultery.1
The Romans were a nation of homebodies. When they bestirred themselves at all, it was only to go and kill some other Italians. They had finished off the Sabines and the Etruscans in the early days, and since then had conquered most of Italy.2 The Romans were ready for better things, especially in a financial way. Though they were too polite to say so, they thought it would be pleasant to own the Carthaginian part of Sicily, too.
Meanwhile the Carthaginians grew richer and richer by peddling linens, woolen goods, dyestuffs, glassware, porcelains, metalwork, household supplies, porch furniture, and novelties all along the Mediterranean. They used a system of barter to start with, but they soon found out that there’s nothing like money. They had learned most of their tricks from their parents, the Phoenicians, who were the most skillful traders of antiquity.3 Phoenician sailors were the first to establish intercourse with foreigners, an idea which soon proved its worth all over the world. Nobody had thought of it before.4
So pretty soon there was a war that went on for twenty-four years, from 265 B.C. to 241 B.C. It was called the First Punic War because the Latin adjective punicus is derived from the Latin noun Puni, or Pœni, or Phoenicians. When it was over the Romans had the Carthaginian part of Sicily and $4,000,000 damages. Later, they seized Sardinia and Corsica, just for the fun of it, and then there was lasting peace for twenty-two years.
This brings us to Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general who did so much to lose the First Punic War.5 He hated the Romans something awful, as they had marooned him on top of a mountain in Sicily for several years and made him look very silly. Back home in Carthage, he would gather his family around him and they would all hate the Romans until they almost burst. This was foolish of them, for hatred shows on your face and the people you hate remain just as horrid as ever. They don’t care one bit. They’re too mean to care.
Hamilcar had three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, and two daughters, one of whom married Hasdrubal Pulcher, or Hasdrubal the Handsome, no relation. There are eight generals named Hasdrubal in Carthaginian history. It was a poor Carthaginian who didn’t have at least one Hasdrubal in the family. They seemed to think this was a fine way to keep things straight. I don’t know what they would have done about naming Pullman cars.
When his son Hannibal was nine years old, Hamilcar took him into the temple of Baal and made him swear eternal hatred against the Romans, in addition to his homework.6 The boy already had two little wrinkles right between the eyes from hating the Romans. He finally became the most prominent hater in history and just one mass of wrinkles.
Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these animals to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn’t gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected.7 The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B.C., and even before that, in Alexander’s time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants.
Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war. Don’t ask me why Hamilcar did not see this. The Carthaginian elephants were trained to rush forward and trample the Romans, but only too frequently they would rush backward and trample the Carthaginians. If this happened to you, wouldn’t you notice it? And wouldn’t you do something about it?
Then Hamilcar went to Spain, where he spent eight years in perfecting his plans and was drowned in 228 B.C. while crossing a stream with a herd of elephants. Hasdrubal the Handsome, who took his place, was assassinated a few years later, leaving the command to Hannibal, now twenty-six and well versed in his father’s routine. Hannibal left Spain in 218 B.C. and crossed the Alps into Italy in fifteen days with a large army and thirty-seven elephants, thus establishing a record for crossing the Alps with elephants, and starting the Second Punic War. Taking elephants across the Alps is not as much fun as it sounds. The Alps are difficult enough when alone, and elephants are peculiarly fitted for not crossing them. If you must take something over the Alps, try chamois. They’re built for it.8
Believe it or not, all the elephants survived the journey, although about half of the soldiers perished. Historians state that Hannibal seemed insensible to fatigue throughout the ordeal.9 Nor did he ever give way to despair. Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided. It’s the little things that count.10
The number of Hannibal’s elephants, thirty-seven, is said by Polybius to have been inscribed by Hannibal’s own hand on a brazen plate in Italy. Polybius read it himself. Yet a modern historian has recently given the figure as forty, perhaps from a natural tendency to deal in round numbers. Elephants do not come in round numbers. You have one elephant, or three, or thirty-seven. Is that clear, Professor?
Hannibal expected to get more elephants that he had left in Spain with his brother Hasdrubal, but the Romans cut the supply line.11 During his fifteen years in Italy, Hannibal never had enough elephants to suit him. Most of the original group succumbed to the climate, and he was always begging Carthage for more, but the people at home were stingy. They would ask if he thought they were made of elephants and what had he done with the elephants they sent before.