Macedonian–Carthaginian Treaty Links Hannibal and Philip V

War opens doors for distant allies. Two years into Hannibal’s Italian campaign, with Roman armies shattered at Trasimene and soon to be at Cannae, envoys moved across the Adriatic. Philip V, the young king of Macedon, saw a chance to check Roman expansion in Illyria and Greece. Hannibal saw a way to draw Roman fleets and legions eastward. In 215 BCE, the two sides drafted a treaty [8]. The text survives in outline: “Let us be friends, close allies, and brethren.” Its provisions imagined mutual support and mutual recognition of gains, with the Adriatic and Ionian littorals as the contact zone [8]. The sound behind those words was the lap of waves at Apollonia and the creak of oarlocks at Corcyra—ports where Roman and Macedonian ambitions had already met. This was not Carthage’s Senate speaking but Hannibal’s army, a reminder of how far the Barcids had personalized their war. From his base near Capua and along the Volturnus, Hannibal sought to stitch a coalition: Samnite remnants in Italy, Syracuse in Sicily, and Macedon across the sea. Philip’s interest waxed and waned with Roman pressure and his own Greek rivals, but the alignment mattered [8]. In Rome, news of the pact registered as a warning. The Senate’s eyes widened from the Tiber to the Gulf of Corinth. Garrisons at Brundisium and Tarentum gained urgency. A war that had begun over Saguntum and the Ebro now touched Epirus and Achaea. The treaty did not produce a decisive Macedonian landing in Italy. It did force Rome to guard the eastern approaches and contributed to a First Macedonian War—another theater, another drain of attention and ships.