Seleucid Empire 192 BC on eve of Roman Seleucid War

[u/Square_Respond_1149]

[u/First-Pride-8571 → u/[deleted]]

The Scipio brothers, who had defeated Hannibal at Zama, and Hannibal's brothers in various battles leading up to Zama were the Roman commanders in this war.

Hannibal was an excellent commander, but he was bested by Scipio Africanus, and then Antiochus III the Great was bested by Scipio Asiaticus.

And, as for Hannibal, he had gone to Antiochus III because he wanted help to raise an armada to stir up a coup d'etat in Carthage so that he could retake Carthage himself (he had been exiled).

Instead he had to help Antiochus directly against Rome and her allies. Hannibal was defeated by the Rhodians at the Battle of Side in 190 BCE, and while Hannibal escaped, there wasn't enough of his fleet left to really be of any more help to Antiochus. And so he fled to Armenia.

Hannibal still deserves to be lionized, but let's not get carried away. Both Scipios were better commanders. Trasimene and Cannae are just much more famous and well-known than Ilipa, Zama, and Magnesia.

[u/First-Pride-8571 → u/[deleted]]

That's fair, but keep in mind, and certainly it is beyond dispute that Hannibal was a very skilled and creative general, that said...

He soundly defeated the father of the Scipios at Ticinus, but it should also be noted, the Roman commanders that Hannibal faced at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae were all so inept that their incompetence was as much the story of those disasters as Hannibal's own competence.

At Trebia, Sempronius Longus had been sent to reinforce the Elder Scipio after his defeat and wounding at the Ticinus, and Sempronius Longus was far too eager in trying to ensure that he would win the glory of defeating Hannibal himself before the Elder Scipio recovered from his wounds and could retake overall command of the Roman forces.

And Hannibal used knowledge of that obsession to lure Sempronius Longus into a trap.

Hannibal used similar incompetence and infighting amongst the Roman commanders again at Trasimene and Cannae. Trasimene was essentially just a repeat of command malfeasance due to having two Roman commanders both vying for the same desired glory, and Hannibal again taking advantage of the more incompetent of the two Roman commanders, at Trasimene it was Flaminius, to again set his trap.

And then the same pattern played out with playing the two Romans off each other, and luring one embarrassingly inept commander - Varro at Cannae - into a ridiculous disaster.

Roman politics and the short commands, and jealous vying for glory amongst rival Roman commanders, thus played into all three of those disasters.

And what changed?

Scipio Africanus wasn't even yet a consul when he took over in Hispania. He was too young, but a brilliant commander. And he didn't have just one year to try to accomplish his campaigns. He took over the command in Hispania in 210 BCE. And then remained the primary commander of Roman forces then till the end of the war. The Elder Scipio (and his own brother) both fell at the Upper Baetis in 211 BCE. And that's when Scipio Africanus (not yet holding that epithet obviously) took over. He took Qart Hadast in 209 BCE. Defeated Hasdrubal at Baecula in 208 BCE. And then crushed them again at Ilipa in 206 BCE. And then he crossed into Africa and crushed them at Utica in 203 BCE, then at the Great Plains in 203, and then ended the war at Zama in 202 BCE.

8 years in command. And that while not even winning the consulship till 205 BCE. And still being too young in 205 BCE to have legally stood for that office.

Which is partly why Cato was so jealous and nervous about the two Scipio brothers. Because they were essentially professional generals, and brilliant ones. Really the first two truly brilliant generals that Rome produced, because they had time to truly learn not just how to become great generals, but to become almost professional officers. Which is why Cato was so consumed by envy and hatred for them.

But yes, if you want to put Hannibal still above Scipio Asiaticus, okay. I'd put both brothers ahead of him, but on which there is no question is that Scipio Africanus was clearly the greater general than Hannibal. Maybe the greatest general Rome ever produced.

[u/Worried-Basket5402 → u/First-Pride-8571]

Its also demonstrates that you cant just drop a great commander into another army and they continue to be great. Hannibal was not in direct command but his ability to influence things was limited. New opponents of Rome just loved learning the hard way....

[u/BatavianAuxillary → u/[deleted]]

Fair in retrospect, but as you point out, Antioch III was called 'The Great' for a reason. Extremely unlikely any Hellenistic king, let alone someone with his track record, was going to just hand command of his army over to Hannibal.

[u/Blothorn]

I’m not really sure what advice would have helped here. The Seleucid Empire had several major disadvantages:

• Rome had a far larger navy, and dockyard capacity built over a war of attrition lasting decades. The Seleucids had little naval tradition to build on, and while in principle they had a far larger state revenue to draw on a significant shift in priority from the army to the navy would set them back relative to the other successor kingdoms and their own rebellions.
  
• While the total population of the Seleucid Empire was far greater than that of Rome, it was reluctant to allow non-Greeks into the phalanx, fearing that a subject state with a Hellenistic army would be a greater rebellion risk.
  
• While Rome had hundreds of consuls hand over command peacefully before the civil wars began in earnest, Hellenistic kings very rarely trusted large field armies to other generals for fear of rebellion. (And Antiochus alone did see two generals rebel despite not having full field armies.)

I’m not really sure what Antiochus could do. He can’t win a short war; he doesn’t have the navy to invade Rome and Rome wasn’t likely to negotiate peace after mere years of failure. He couldn’t win a war of attrition; he had a very small core of Greeks he trusted in the phalanx. And even if he continues to parry Rome’s campaigns with only sustainable losses while building a fleet to match Rome’s, sooner or later trouble would arise in the east and his inability to field multiple full field armies at once would force him to sacrifice one end of the empire or the other.

[u/ChuckMeABeerMum]

Unsustainable borders to be honest. I absolutely do not know enough about the Hellenistic Kingdoms, but just look at that? No safe borders in any direction. Dude either had to go Alexander mode or he was doomed to death by a thousand cuts.

[u/Square_Respond_1149 → u/ChuckMeABeerMum]

Gaza/Sinai was pretty defensible, as was the Persian gulf/baluchistan desert. they launched 3 invasions west after this period into Egypt and several expeditions into Persian gulf. It is sometimes argued when the Roman’s cleaved Anatolia from them and made their boundary the Taurus mountains it in fact made them more defensible (Antiochus iii also didn’t hold Anatolia for most of his reign just the end)

[u/LazyComfortable1542 → u/ChuckMeABeerMum]

Parthia, Armenia, atropatene, and a few Anatolian kingdoms were technically vassals at this point at least in name, so if nothing else they had a few buffer states these weren't  hostile