Spring to June 207 BC
Hasdrubal marches on Italy
Hasdrubal Barca winters in Gaul and crosses the Alps in spring 207 BC, faster than Hannibal had a decade earlier, in part on the tracks his brother’s army had made. The Gauls let him pass and many join him, and he brings war elephants raised in Iberia. He besieges Placentia without success and then moves down the Adriatic coast.
The Metauro, the ancient Metaurus, at Sant’Angelo in Vado in its upper courseWikimedia Commons, Adri08, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Metauro à San Angelo in Vado.jpg)
Of the two consuls of 207 BC, Gaius Claudius Nero faces Hannibal in the south, and Marcus Livius Salinator falls back before Hasdrubal as far as Sena, where the praetor Lucius Porcius Licinus joins him with two legions. Hasdrubal sends messengers to arrange a meeting with Hannibal in southern Umbria, but they are captured and his letter is brought to Nero.
Nero leaves most of his army facing Hannibal under his legate Quintus Catius and marches north with 7,000 picked men, 1,000 of them cavalry. Riders go ahead to have food set out along the road, and volunteers join on the way. He enters Livius’s camp at Sena by night, unseen by the Carthaginians camped about 700 m away.
Sources
- Polybius, Histories, book 11, 1 to 3.
- Livy, History of Rome, book 27, 39 to 51.
- Dexter Hoyos, Hannibal’s Dynasty (2003).
Prev: Baecula, and Hasdrubal leaves IberiaNext: The second trumpet