Hannibal's victory at Cannae and the fall of the Roman Republic

Cannae

Robert L. O'Connell. The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (Random House, 2010).

Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae is a narrative history for a general audience, based on ancient sources like the historians Polybius and Livy. It describes the invasion of Italy by the Carthaginian armies of Hannibal during the Second Punic War and the battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 BC in which the Roman armies were surrounded and annihilated. One of the bloodiest battles in history, nearly 50,000 Romans died that day and 20,000 were captured and sold into slavery, compared to Hannibal's losses of 6-8,000.[footnoteRef:1] Although the Romans were temporarily demoralized by this immense defeat, they rebounded and eventually pushed Hannibal out of Italy by using a guerilla warfare strategy under Fabius Maximus. In the end, Hannibal went down in history as the type of commander who "won all the battles but lost the war." [footnoteRef:2] Eventually, the Romans found a military genius in Publius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus) who defeated the Carthaginians at Zama in North Africa. Scipio Africanus became the prototype for all the military strongmen with their own private armies who followed, including Julius and Augustus Caesar. Ruthless, cunning and opportunistic, Scipio saved the Republic but was "also the very type of individual who would ultimately destroy it."[footnoteRef:3] In addition, the war devastated the small peasant farmers in southern Italy and led to a large influx of slaves who labored on large estates. Instead of citizen soldiers, Rome increasingly depended on legionaries paid by the own commanders, who regularly used these forces to install themselves in power as dictators. [1: Robert L. O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (Random House, 2010), p. 163.] [2: O'Connell, p. 14.] [3: O'Connell, p. 261.]

Rome may never have become a great empire had Hannibal followed up his decisive victory at Cannae by a march on the city, as some of his commanders advised him to do. Even among present-day military historians and strategists, Cannae remains "the apotheosis of decisive victory," a kind of masterpiece of the military art which all great commanders have striven for at least once in their careers.[footnoteRef:4] It was also a classic example of hubris, overconfidence and underestimation of the enemy, since the Romans were expecting a great victory even though Hannibal's forces had them outnumbered two-to-one. Hannibal also deployed his Spanish and Gallic cavalry brilliantly, using them to circle behind the Roman armies and drive them forward into a trap. He then exterminated them "through systematic butchery almost until the sun set on this terrible day." [footnoteRef:5] This was one of the very rare occasions in history in which the morale of the Roman soldiers broke completely, as their armies were left surrounded and demoralized with no hope of reinforcements. According to O'Connell, some of the real ghosts of this battle were the few veterans who survived it, since the Senate proclaimed them to be disgraced and dishonored. They were exiled to Sicily and remained there for ten years, at least until Scipio Africanus gave them the opportunity to redeem themselves by volunteering for his army.