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The people suddenly seized the Prefects of the Allies and other Roman
citizens, some of them employed in a military duty, some engaged in
private business, and with the pretence of guarding them ordered them
all to be confined in the baths, that there they might die a terrible death
being suffocated by the extreme heat.
Moore, 1951, 21.
Baths have strong associations with immorality and pleasure as hot water was thought,
among other things, to undermine a man‟s strength and weaken the body. 339 Hence both
the imagery of the location as well as the unmanly and unsoldierly method of killing
them represents moral degeneracy on the part of the Capuans.
Murdering people through suffocation in baths is used by Dio and Appian to
illustrate unmanliness in Hannibal and the Carthaginians. When Hannibal obtains the
surrender of the Nucerians after besieging their town, he allows the common people to
leave with one garment each, but has the senators suffocated in the baths (Dio, fr. 57.30;
Zonaras, 9.2; cf. Appian who adds that as the common people were leaving the town,
the Carthaginians shot them with arrows, Pun. 8.63). As Pomeroy points out, the
Carthaginians are depicted not only attacking Romans and Italians but attacking fides
itself. 340 Another similarly far-fetched story depicting Hannibal‟s immorality in
Appian‟s text is his method of repairing a bridge with the bodies of slaughtered
prisoners (Appian, Lib. 63.281); though this not to say that atrocities were not carried
out by either side during the war.
Hannibal’s Punica fides and Hannibal the tyrant
There is a tradition that a treaty was agreed between the Capuans and Hannibal prior to
Hannibal entering the town. Considering that the treaty follows Hannibal‟s stunning
victory at Cannae, Livy‟s summary of the terms agreed is extraordinarily favourable to
the Capuans, and indicate to Livy‟s audience the extent of Capuan ambition and
delusion:
Legati ad Hannibalem venerunt pacemque cum eo his condicionibus
fecerunt, ne quis imperator magistratusve Poenorum ius ullum in
civem Campanum haberet, neve civis Campanus invitus militaret
munusve faceret; ut suae leges, sui magistratus Capuae essent; ut
339 Toner, 1995, 55. Heurgon, 1942, 126 notes that the baths at Capua date to early second century and
may have been in existence at the time of the Second Punic War. Cf. Nielsen, 1985, 81: „the earliest
hypocaust system known is dated to 90-80.‟ Others said to be suffocated in a hot bath include: Marius‟
enemy, Catalus, in 87; Nero‟s wife, Octavia, in AD 64 and Constantine‟s wife, Fausta, in AD 326.
340 Pomeroy, 1989b, 163.
142