I was recently reminded by an old friend of the tendency of certain geographic locations on this wide world of ours to repeatedly serve host to armies and conflict. You look at places like Thermopylae, for instance, and everyone remembers the stand of the 300 Spartans and their allies against the Persians in 480 BC. But the hot gates of that narrow mountain pass served as the topographical context for battles in 353 BC, 279, 191, 267 AD, 997, and 1821. The plain of Megiddo in Israel, the Ardennes Forest in Europe, Cheorwan in South Korea, these places all have seen repeated conflict over many generations, with humans fighting and dying over the same ground again and again.
So too, it would seem, the unassuming Italian town of Nola. Currently the urban sprawl of nearby Naples has made it into a virtual suburb of the larger port city. Yet once upon a time, armed conflict at the walled town—lying at the convergence of multiple mountain roads leading to Capua in the north and Naples to the west—changed the fate of not one, but two nation-states. I’ll return to that in a minute.
It’s funny, I think, how even when we read and think about things that happened so long ago—2,235 years ago to be exact—we can be drawn into a kind of tunnel vision. We have a preconceived idea of something and our eyes seem to naturally skip over bits of information that contradict our beliefs. Happens every day to some extent and modern purveyors of information have learned to take advantage of what seems to be a basic human tendency to reinforce existing opinion. How does that phenomenon relate to Nola?
Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps in 218 was a colossal undertaking, striking real fear into the hearts of every Roman citizen, and forcing an immediate change of plans for fighting what came to be called the 2nd Punic War. His subsequent victory at the River Trebia in 218 resulted in some 30,000 Roman casualties. The incredible ambush at Lake Trasimene in 217 left 15,000 Romans dead or wounded, with another 4,000 Roman cavalry killed three days later. The 216 catastrophe at Cannae accounted for 89,000 Roman casualties and meant there were no longer any legions standing between the invader and Rome.
Everyone—to include members of Hannibal’s senior staff—expected the victorious Carthaginian army to march on the capital, but it never happened and Rome went on to win the long, brutal war. They accomplished that in spite of having lost an astounding 138,000 soldiers over the course of just three years fighting one relatively small Carthaginian army … on Roman turf. This represented one of the more phenomenal reversals in the fortunes of war in all of military history and came to characterize the Roman Republic’s resiliency and determination.
Over the years I must have read depictions of Hannibal’s 218-203 BC campaign in Italy a hundred times and yet still held the misperception that the great general was undefeated on the Italian Peninsula. That he’d maintained a perfect record right up until he lost the one that counted back home in modern Tunisia on the plain of Zama. People (and websites) make this assertion to the degree that it’s just generally considered a truism. No doubt real experts in the field always knew better, but the inability to convey that to mass readers of history has, I think, created an odd misperception.
For me, despite being familiar with Hannibal’s campaign, it wasn’t till I was researching Q.Fulvius that I realized I’d missed something. Not only had Hannibal been defeated on the field of battle, in Italy, but it had happened three times … at the exact same spot! Where is this magical place that history seems to have all but forgotten? The once scenic, yet incredibly strategic, town of Nola.
This small metropolis is situated just northeast of infamous Mount Vesuvius, where the roads over the Southern Appenine Mountains converge before once again cutting north and west to Rome and Naples. Hannibal, following his capstone victory over the Romans at Cannae, felt Nola was so important that he attacked the town in 216, 215, and 214 BC, failing each time. Without securing that route over the mountains, Hannibal couldn’t really threaten Naples. Nor could he easily make effective use of newly-won ally Capua. Securing Nola was the key to Hannibal’s continued success in Italy, and the legendary general just couldn’t see it through.
He didn’t fail in this task all by himself, of course, he had “help” from his Roman adversaries. The first Roman commander to see Nola for what it was appears to have been the Praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus. This is the unsung hero of Cannae for the Romans, the one who pulled it all together after it looked like everything was lost. The veteran aristocrat who, while serving in Sicily, understood the catastrophe at Cannae for what it was, rushed to the scene with the troops he had at hand, and began consolidating what was left of the Roman forces in the area. Marcellus took the fugitive survivors of that horrific day and turned them, once again, into a military force with which Hannibal had to contend.
I call Marcellus “unsung” because few people have heard of him. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, who would later defeat Hannibal at Zama, is famous amongst those who read ancient Roman history, due in no small part to the connection between historian Polybius and the Scipio family. Nearly as famous, it seems, is Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, called Fabius “the delayer” for his successful policy of avoiding pitched combat with Hannibal. But Marcellus, the guy who defeated Hannibal THREE TIMES at Nola when the Carthaginian leader seemed utterly unbeatable, seems to have faded from view and general historical awareness. Much like Nola itself, it would seem, the importance of Marcellus’s contribution to preserving the Roman Republic disappeared in the more widely-publicized stories of Fabius’s avoidance campaign and Scipio’s work in Spain and North Africa.
And yet, when all seemed lost, it was Nola—and Marcellus—that changed the fortunes of Hannibal in Italy. The victories there brought Rome back—militarily and psychologically—from what appeared to be imminent collapse after three straight years of defeat after catastrophic defeat.
Marcellus, serving his 5th Consulship, would die in a Carthaginian cavalry ambush in 208, long after he’d stabilized the Italian front and frustrated Hannibal’s intent to conduct war on Roman territory. His great adversary, hearing of Marcellus’s death, held the Consul in such high esteem that he traveled to the scene of the ambush, conducted a proper funeral, and had the ashes sent to Marcellus’s son in a silver urn surrounded by a golden wreath. Thus ended a life the historian Plutarch considered to be one of Rome’s greatest leaders.
But what of Nola? What became of this critical defensive lynchpin of Republican Rome? Nola’s strategic position meant it was doomed to face many more battles, sieges, and bloodshed over the coming centuries. The Samnites would take Nola by treason during the Social War in 89 BC. The slave/gladiator army of Spartacus would do what Hannibal had failed, successfully storming the walls in 73 BC. Nola would be sacked by Alaric’s Visigoths in 410 AD, then again by Vandals in 453. It would be raided by Muslim forces in 904 and captured by Manfred of Sicily in the 13th Century. Nola’s final appearance on the stage of martial conflict took place in 1460, yielding a serious loss for the King of Naples. Afterward a series of earthquakes all but destroyed the long-standing metropolis, significantly reducing its military significance.
You can still visit Nola today. It stands, proud of its heritage, on the hilly eastern outskirts of Naples. The people there remain cognizant of the role their ancestors and their town played across the entire span of Italian history. In a very real sense, the rise of the Roman Empire—which succeeded the Republic—owed at least some debt to this historic community. So too, then, the ultimate eclipse and demise of the Carthaginian Empire.
Few visitors will grasp the significance as they walk the modern streets, view the old churches, and stroll the halls of its museums. And yet, once, a very long time ago, Nola was a very, VERY important place.
M.G. Haynes