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So long as he was in Italy no one was a match for him in the field, and
after the battle of Cannae no one encamped face to face with him on
open ground.
Then undefeated he was recalled to defend his native land; there he
carried on war against against Publius Scipio, the son of that Scipio
whom he had put to flight first at the Rhone, then at the Po, and a third
time at the Trebia.
157
Rolfe, 1984, 267.
On the face of it, these two sentences, and particularly the second one, seem to
contradict Plutarch‟s remark about Nepos allowing for sundry defeats of Hannibal, but
the picture changes if the first sentence is interpreted to allow for certain types of victory
against Hannibal (such a quibble may seem trivial today, but for ancient Roman society
in which family honour and social ranking were so important, every detail counts). Such
victories may include the successful defence of townships attacked by Hannibal (e.g.
Nola or Neapolis); retaking townships that had previously defected or surrendered to
Hannibal; skirmishes, or other forms of action that did not compare to Cannae or Zama
in terms of being a formal battle on open ground. It is unfortunate that the editor‟s
chapter division separates sentence 5.4 from sentence 6.1 because this removes an
important context for understanding the second sentence in relation to Plutarch‟s
comment. The sensational claim in 6.1 that Hannibal was undefeated in Italy should, I
believe, be qualified by the preceding sentence that no-one faced him in an open-field
style battle. Evaluating these two sentences together correlates more closely with
Plutarch‟s assessment of Nepos‟ text (assuming, I think reasonably, that Plutarch‟s
remarks encompassed the Hannibal biography).
Plutarch‟s comments may also be compared to the relevant sections of Livy‟s text,
and Livy is much less ambiguous than Cornelius Nepos‟ Hannibal. Livy records a
number of Roman claims for successes over Hannibal in Italy which contradict the idea
that Hannibal was undefeated in Italy, and not only by Marcellus. P. Licinius and P.
Sempronius reported that they defeated Hannibal with their combined armies in
Bruttium; Gnaeus Servilius claimed that he drove Hannibal out of Italy (Livy, 29.36;
30.6; 30.24.1). Unfortunately, there are no further details in support of these reports, and
it is Livy‟s portrayal of Marcellus that offers the strongest counter to the claim.
Livy includes three victories over Hannibal by Marcellus, of which the first was
particularly important for lifting Roman morale and demonstrating that Hannibal was
neither invincible nor divinely protected (Livy, 23.45; 24.17; 27.13). In literary terms,