The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic

by Robert L. O'Connell

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My books always begin with me far away and a friend from the past making contact. In this case it was Rob Cowley emailing me in Buenos Aires with the news that he was organizing a series on important battles for Random House, and asking me if I was interested in submitting a proposal on Cannae. Soon enough I was buried in the Second Punic War and wondering if the original email had been such a good thing. But now that it’s over there is no question it was. So thanks, Rob.

  Thanks also for giving me the opportunity to get to know Jonathan Jao, my editor. Good advice given well is a rare commodity, but it’s vital in publishing, especially now. So thanks for your steady hand with my “ghosts.”

  Thanks to my colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School: Michael Freeman, who read the emerging manuscript chapter by chapter and didn’t seem to fall asleep; John Arquilla, who first pointed me to the fate of Cannae’s survivors; and also Hy Rothstein who helped me learn to pronounce Cannae.

  Since I belong to a family of writers, all outpourings get filtered through the gene pool. Thanks especially to wife, Benjie, son-in-law Nick Taylor, and brother-in-law Jack MacKinnon for careful reads and excellent suggestions.

  Finally, thanks to my agent Carl Brandt, who has kept my erratic writing path more or less on track for upwards of two decades.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER I: TRACES OF WAR

  1. John Prevas, Hannibal Crosses the Alps: The Invasion of Italy and the Punic Wars (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1998), pp. 73–74, believes that enough physical evidence of the march existed to personally inspect the route Hannibal took. Similarly, Patrick Hunt of the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project believes that, unlike Livy, Polybius appears to have known the geography of where Hannibal crossed.

  2. Gregory Daly, Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 203–4.

  3. Mary Beard, cited by Jane Kramer, “Israel, Palestine, and a Tenure Battle,” The New Yorker, April 14, 2008, p. 50.

  4. The inscription first cited in F. Ribbezo, Il Carroctodel Sud, S. ii, vol. 4.2, February 1951.

  5. Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (London: Cassell & Co, 2000), p. 11.

  6. Serge Lancel, Hannibal, transl. Antonia Nevill (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998), p. 29; John Rich, “The Origins of the Second Punic War,” in The Second Punic War: A Reappraisal (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1996), pp. 4, 32.

  7. Cited in H. H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 14.

  8. Martin Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen, vol. 47 (1990), pp. 8–9.

  9. Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War, vol. 1, Warfare in Antiquity (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), p. 311.

  10. J. F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998)

  11. Daniel Mendelsohn, “What Was Herodotus Trying to Tell Us?” The New Yorker, April 28, 2008, p. 72.

  12. P. G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 110 ff., 138ff., and ix.

  13. Daly, Cannae, p. 24.

  14. Delbrück, Warfare in Antiquity, pp. 328–31.

  15. D. T. McGuire, “History Compressed: The Roman Names of Silius’ ‘Cannae Episode,’” Latomus, vol. 54, no. 1 (1995), p. 118.

  16. J. F. Lazenby, The First Punic War: A Military History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 1.

  17. Dating the origins of war will always be dependent upon the exact definition applied to war. Still, the proliferation of walled towns and other signs of warfare in the general region of the Neolithic Middle East around 5500 B.C. provide as good a reference point as is presently available for the first appearance of what would become more or less continuous organized violence. Robert L. O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 73–4.

  18. Glynn L. Isaac, “Traces of Pleistocene Hunters: An East African Example,” in R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1968), p. 259; L.S.B. Leakey, “The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man,” International Anthropological and Linguistic Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (1953), pp. 201–13.

  19. Dating these devices is difficult since they all are organic and degradable; however, it makes sense to place their origins around the time of Homo sapiens’ so-called great leap forward, around fifty thousand years ago.

  20. W. H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 131; see also W. H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  21. M. N. Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 93, 116.

  22. S. J. Mithen, Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chs. 7–8.

  23. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 242–3.

  24. I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Human Ethology (New York: Aldine De Gruyter: 1989), p. 405; Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), p. xxix.

  25. For a summary discussion of these characteristics, see O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman, pp. 36–7.

  26. The Stele of the Vultures from Telloh, Early Dynastic III, is presently located in the Louvre in Paris.

  27. “Gilgamesh and Agga,” in J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), lines 1–40.

  28. “Sargon of Agade,” in Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pp. v–vi, 5–52, 268.

  29. M. A. Edey, The Sea Traders (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1974), p. 61.

  30. D. Harden, The Phoenicians (London: Penguin, 1980), plate 51.

  31. P. Bartoloni, “Ships and Navigation,” in M. Andreose, ed., The Phoenicians (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), pp. 72–4.

  32. S. P. Oakley, “Single Combat in the Roman Republic,” The Classical Quarterly, no. 35 (1985), p. 402.

  33. See, for example, The Iliad 8.174; 11.286; 13.5; 15.509–10.

  34. The Iliad, 2.385–87.

  35. Livy 1.43. “Servian” after the semi-mythical Servius Tullius. For all references to Livy, I have used Loeb Classical Library series (Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  36. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 44, makes this point about the wars between Rome and Carthage, but with rare exceptions, such as fights over key mountain passes and other choke points, the observation seems true of the whole strategic environment.

  37. Agathocles of Syracuse’s victorious troops, after they had defeated the Carthaginians in 310 B.C., found thousands of pairs of handcuffs in the enemy’s camp. Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History, transl. Antonia Nevill (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995), p. 278; see also Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 186.

  38. The Melian Dialogue. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (5.84–116).

  39. H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 142.

  CHAPTER II: ROME

  1. Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War: 100 BC–AD 200 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 127.

  2. Daly, Cannae, p. 29; Lancel, Hannibal, p. 104; Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, pp. 75–6.

  3. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, pp. 3–4, 75.

  4. Daly, Cannae, p. 57.

  5. Lazenby (Hannibal’s War, p. 17) states that this was the major difference between Rome and Carthage, which was a nation of traders. This is basically a correct statement but one in need of amplification.

  6. Arnold J. Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy: The Hannibalic War’s Effects on Roman Life (London: Oxf
ord University Press, 1965), vol. 2, chs. 1, 2, and 6.

  7. M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking Press, 1980), p. 81; Tim Cornell, “Hannibal’s Legacy: The Effects of the Hannibalic War on Italy,” in Cornell, Rankov, and Sabin, eds., The Second Punic War: A Reappraisal, p. 98.

  8. Cumulative estimates of ancient numbers are always difficult, but such figures seem reasonable in light of the fact that in 211 the population of Capua, the second-largest city in Italy, was enslaved and two years later the Romans sold thirty thousand Tarentines.

  9. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 257–8.

  10. Ibid.

  11. H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC, fourth edition (London: Routledge, 1980), chs. 3, 5; pp. 128–9.

  12. See for example Livy 21.63.2ff, in which he states that Flaminius was hated by the nobility, or 22.25.19 when he disparagingly calls Varro the son of a butcher.

  13. Scullard, Scipio Africanus, p. 162.

  14. Adrian Goldsworthy, Cannae (London: Cassell, 2004), p. 63; Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 42–3.

  15. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War, p. 4.

  16. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, p. 127.

  17. William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327–70 B.C. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979), chs. 1 and 2; John Rich, “The Origins of the Second Punic War,” in Cornell, Rankov, and Sabin, eds., The Second Punic War: A Reappraisal, pp. 18–9.

  18. Daly, Cannae, p. 57.

  19. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 40.

  20. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, p. 80.

  21. E. S. Staveley, Historia, vol. 5 (1956), p. 101ff.

  22. Theodore A. Dodge, Hannibal: A History of the Art of War Among the Carthaginians and Romans down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 BC, with a Detailed Account of the Second Punic War (London: Greenhill Books, 1994), p. 42.

  23. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 45.

  24. See for example Scullard, A History of the Roman World, pp. 365–6.

  25. Grossman, On Killing, pp. 120–3.

  26. James Grout, “Gladiators,” Encyclopaedia Romana (penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/

  gladiators.html).

  27. J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 176.

  28. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, pp. 146–9.

  29. B. W. Jones, “Rome’s Relationship with Carthage: A Study of Aggression,” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 9 (1972), p. 28.

  30. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, p. 109.

  31. E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae (254–70 B.C.) (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1958), pp. 6–7, 154.

  32. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, p. 363.

  33. Goldsworthy, Cannae, pp. 49–50.

  34. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 45.

  35. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” pp. 11, 23–4.

  36. Oakley, “Single Combat in the Roman Republic,” p. 403.

  37. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts, p. 177–8.

  38. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae (51.38); op. cit. Alexander Zhmodikov, “The Roman Heavy Infantrymen in Battle,” Historia, vol. 49, no. 1 (2000), pp. 72–4.

  39. Duncan Head, Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars: 359 to 146 BC (Goring-by-Sea, UK: Wargames Research Group, 1982), p. 157.

  40. M. C. Bishop and J. C. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (London: Batsford, 1993), p. 50.

  41. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 47.

  42. Livy 31.34.4–6 describes graphically the nature of such wounds inflicted during the Second Macedonian War: “When they had seen bodies chopped to pieces by the Spanish sword, arms torn away, shoulders and all, or heads separated from bodies … or vitals laid open … they realized in a general panic with what weapons, and what men they had to fight.”

  43. Flavius Vegetius Renatus, “The Military Institutions of the Romans,” in The Roots of Strategy (Harrisburg, Penn., 1940), pp. 85–6 (1.12).

  44. See Goldsworthy, Cannae, pp. 135–7.

  45. Peter Connolly, Greece and Rome at War (revised ed.) (London: Greenhill Books, 1998), p. 131; Bishop and Coulston, Roman Military Equipment, pp. 58–9.

  46. Daly, Cannae, p. 68; Polybius (6.23.13).

  47. Daly, Cannae, pp. 64–70.

  48. Philip Sabin, “The Mechanics of Battle in the Second Punic War,” in Cornell, Rankov, and Sabin, eds., The Second Punic War: A Reappraisal, p. 74.

  49. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” p. 15.

  50. Delbrück, Warfare in Antiquity, pp. 274–5.

  51. Carl von Clausewitz put it at twenty minutes, while J.F.C. Fuller reduced it to fifteen. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, p. 224.

  52. F. E. Adcock, The Roman Art of War Under the Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), pp. 8–12; Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 53–4.

  53. See for example Daly, Cannae, p. 62, fig. 2.

  54. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 51–2.

  55. Ibid., p. 49; Daly, Cannae, p. 78. Polybius in particular has nothing to say on this matter.

  56. Emilio Gabba, Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies, transl. P. J. Cuff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 5–6; Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” p. 12; Lawrence Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire (London: Batsford, 1998), p. 33.

  57. Daly, Cannae, p. 73; Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 48.

  58. Livy, 22.37.7–9.

  59. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” p. 13.

  60. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 48.

  61. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, p. 125.

  62. Goldsworthy, Cannae, p. 49.

  63. Ann Hyland, Equus: The Horse in the Roman World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 88–9.

  64. Dodge, Hannibal, pp. 63–4.

  65. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, p. 110.

  66. See Polybius 6, 27–35; Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 55.

  67. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, p. 113.

  68. Ibid., p. 112.

  69. Polybius 6.35.4; Daly, Cannae, pp. 133–4.

  70. This reconstruction largely taken from Goldsworthy, Cannae, p. 82; Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 56–7; Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” p. 15. See also Polybius, 3.72, 113, 6.31; Livy 34.46, 44.36.

  CHAPTER III: CARTHAGE

  1. Daly, Cannae, p. 132.

  2. F. N. Pryce, in H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC, fourth edition (London: Routledge, 1980), pp. 163–4.

  3. Gilbert and Colette Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage at the Time of Hannibal, transl. A. E. Foster (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 154–5.

  4. Lancel, Carthage, p. 111.

  5. Ibid., p. 205.

  6. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 27.

  7. Lancel, Carthage, p. 43.

  8. C. R. Whittaker, “Carthaginian Imperialism in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries,” in P.D.A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, eds. Imperialism in the Ancient World: The Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 59.

  9. Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage, p. 60.

  10. Whittaker, “Carthaginian Imperialism in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries,” p. 68.

  11. See for example Charles-Picard, pp. 83–4; B. D. Hoyos, “Hannibal’s War: Illusions and Ironies,” Ancient History, vol. 19 (1989), p. 88; see B. D. Hoyos, “Barcid Proconsuls and Punic Politics, 237–218 BC,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, vol. 137 (1994), pp. 265–6 for a summary of the second line of argumentation.

  12. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 29.

  13. Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage, pp. 111, 116; Hoyos, “Barcid Proconsuls and Punic Politics,” p. 267.

  14. Ricardo first articulated comparative advant
age in his book On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in AD 1817.

  15. Lancel, Carthage, pp. 404–6.

  16. Ibid., p. 140. The mendacious Cato may have picked the fig from his own trees.

  17. See Appian, Libyca, 95, for a description.

  18. Scullard, Scipio Africanus, p. 117.

  19. Diodorus Siculus, 14.77.3.

  20. Whittaker, “Carthaginian Imperialism in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries,” pp. 89–90.

  21. Lazenby, The First Punic War, p. 25. There is evidence that Liby-Phoenicians were liable for military service abroad, but this does not seem to have generally been true across the empire.

  22. For a differing interpretation of the relationships see Lazenby, The First Punic War, p. 21; Lancel, Carthage, p. 116; and Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, p. 30.

  23. Colette and Gilbert Charles-Picard, Vie et Mort de Carthage (Paris: Hachette, 1970), p. 307.

  24. Polybius, 1.82.12.

  25. B. H. Warmington, Carthage (New York: Praeger, 1960), p. 124, estimates that the total population including slaves, women, and children was probably never higher than four hundred thousand. On this basis, it seems reasonable that somewhat more than one in four would be capable of military service.

  26. Polybius 1.75.1–2.

  27. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” p. 20.

  28. Daly, Cannae, p. 125.

  29. Lancel, Hannibal, pp. 176–7; Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage, p. 98.

  30. Head, Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars, p. 49.

  31. Lazenby, The First Punic War, p. 27.

  32. Modern sources are somewhat divided on the subject, but in the absence of more evidence, many assume citizens and allied Liby-Phoenicians rowed in the fleet. See for example B. D. Hoyos, “Hannibal: What Kind of Genius,” Greece and Rome, vol. 30, no. 2 (October 1983), p. 172; Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, pp. 31–2.