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by Strauss, Barry

  Parmenio, meanwhile, sent a message to Alexander asking for help, but the message probably never reached him. The battlefield was chaos, and in all likelihood, Alexander had already taken off in pursuit of Darius. Darius’s flight filled “the air . . . with the groans of the fallen, the hoofbeats of the horses, and the constant noise of the whips,” according to one source. It also raised a thick cloud of dust that hampered the Macedonians’ pursuit. Alexander turned back toward his left wing.

  If Alexander had gambled on Parmenio muddling through, he was correct. The old man had a history of hanging on in a tough fight, and his Thessalians were intrepid. Meanwhile, instead of helping Mazaeus against the Macedonian left, the Persian and Indian horsemen plundered Alexander’s camp far behind the lines. They wasted their opportunity to aid Mazaeus, only to be driven back by Macedonian infantry in the rear.

  In any case, once the Persian cavalry learned about Darius’s flight from the field, they halted the struggle. Not that they were broken: as they rode off, they ran smack into Alexander’s Companion Cavalry, who were finally heading toward Parmenio. The result was the most hard-fought cavalry encounter of the day. There was none of the usual spear throwing or turning movements that were the rule in cavalry fights. This was a brawl, with every man trying to break through and save his life. Sixty of Alexander’s Companions fell, and three senior officers were wounded, including Hephaestion, Alexander’s closest friend.

  It did nothing to change the outcome of the battle. Alexander had delivered Darius a decisive defeat. The Persian did not fail from want of trying. He maneuvered the enemy onto his chosen battlefield, where he forced him to face an overwhelming array of power on horseback. But the Macedonians brought the most versatile army in the ancient world to the field, at the height of its self-confidence and experience. They had outstanding commanders: Parmenio, for example, was an unsung hero for absorbing the enemy’s battering and holding the Macedonian left together. They had a marked advantage in infrastructure.

  But the main difference between the two armies—the decisive advantage—was Alexander’s superiority as a general. Both in preparation for the battle and in the heat of combat, Alexander showed himself to be Darius’s master. Displaying strategic intuition, he scrutinized the enemy’s battle order with an expert eye and rearranged his tactics handily. He kept his cool in the heat of battle and aimed the decisive blow at the right place and time. True, not everything went according to plan: Darius escaped, the Macedonian line was broken, and casualties were not small. But the result crowned Alexander’s achievements. Darius was a good general but Alexander was a military genius.

  There are no accurate casualty figures for the battle. The sources probably minimize Alexander’s losses and inflate Darius’s: their estimates range from 100 to 500 Macedonian dead, and from a sky-high 40,000 to a silly 300,000 Persian dead. Although Gaugamela saw ferocious fighting, many Persians escaped, some of them in units that maintained good order. Persian casualties were not light but they were not huge either.

  Gaugamela was Alexander’s greatest battlefield victory. It marked the end of pitched battle against the Persian empire. Mesopotamia and, for that matter, Iran too now lay at his feet.

  Darius fled first to the nearest city, Arbela (modern Irbil), about sixty miles to the southeast. He then headed into the mountains of western Iran, with the remnants of his royal guard and his mercenaries, as well as Bessus’s cavalry, which had survived in good order. Mazaeus and his surviving men fled to Babylon.

  Alexander too went to Arbela after the battle. There, his men acclaimed him as “king of Asia.” Alexander had first claimed that title in a letter to Darius after the battle of Issus. Now, it seemed no mere claim: it was real. At Arbela he also took the diadem—a ceremonial cloth headband—as his royal insignia. Three weeks later, after hammering out a settlement with Mazaeus, Alexander entered Babylon, where he was again acclaimed as king, this time officially.

  But the war was not over. Darius still controlled Iran and Central Asia. Not only did Alexander have to catch him, he had to win his surrender to Alexander’s new royal title as king of Asia. And he wanted to get Darius to bring the remaining Persian elite along with him. Otherwise, Alexander would have to conquer another million square miles of territory the hard way, hill and valley by bloody hill and valley. Either that, or he would have to accept that the “king of Asia” did not control eastern Iran or the provinces beyond it.

  Nor could Alexander count on the support of his army. As far as many of his commanders and men were concerned, the war was all but over—only the capture of Persia’s royal capital was left. They had no interest in the remote east. They wanted only as much of Persia’s former empire as they could govern from Macedon.

  Alexander would have to solve these problems if he was to enjoy the fruits of his victory at Gaugamela.

  CANNAE

  The “table land,” or Tavoliere, is a sweeping plain, rich in farmland, and stretching across twelve hundred square miles in Apulia (Puglia) in southeastern Italy. Once, in prehistoric times, it was part of the ocean, but the land was dry as dust when, on a summer day in 216, Hannibal and the Romans met on the region’s southern edge, at Cannae.

  The Greatest Land Battle

  August 2, 216 B.C., the day of the battle of Cannae, was one of the most terrible days in human history. Nearly as many men died on that August day at Cannae as on an August day in Hiroshima, two thousand years later—and without gunpowder, let alone an atomic bomb. (Hiroshima’s casualties rose much higher over time because of radiation sickness.) Swords, spears, sling stones, horses’ hoofs, the weight of thousands of marching feet on the fallen, heatstroke, exhaustion, terror, and even despair: these were death’s tools at Cannae.

  Cannae was to Hannibal what the lever was to Archimedes. The Romans outnumbered Hannibal at Cannae by nearly two to one and they got to fight the battle when and where they wanted. And yet Hannibal annihilated them.

  Hannibal, the victor, killed about 48,000 Romans and took about 20,000 prisoners; only about 15,000 Romans escaped. The Romans killed between 6,000 and 8,000 of Hannibal’s approximately 50,000 men. The Romans lost about 75 percent of their army: a little more than half of the Roman army was killed and another fourth was captured. The Carthaginians lost about 10 to 15 percent of their army. It was one of the most lopsided victories of all time.

  Skeptics then and now have downplayed Hannibal’s genius. They argue that he didn’t win the battle, but rather, the Romans lost it. There is some truth in this. Without Roman errors, Cannae would have been a Roman defeat but not a disaster. Yet without Hannibal’s brilliance, Cannae might have been a Roman victory.

  How did this explosive battle come about? Both the Romans and Hannibal wanted it. Hannibal was confident of his ability to win yet again, as he had done at the Ticinus, the Trebia, and Lake Trasimene. Incited by Hannibal’s provocation, the Romans threw out Fabius’s policy of avoiding battle. In 217 B.C. Hannibal teased like a wily matador, and his tricks drove an angry Roman bull to the point where it could no longer resist battle.

  The new consuls of 216 B.C., Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, broke with Fabius’s policy; they would fight. And they would do so with a massive, sledgehammer force, the largest army the Romans had ever raised, and the first one to be commanded by both consuls; usually, they led separate armies. Although they were inexperienced, they expected to win through sheer force of numbers. They wanted a war-winning move.

  But that was in August. Earlier that spring and summer, another, smaller Roman army had shadowed Hannibal.

  He made the Romans chase him. He drew them down from the hills around Luceria (modern Lucera), in northern Apulia, to the plain near the sea at Cannae. Ironically, the greatest land battle in the ancient world took place practically at the edge of the sea. Cannae lies about five miles, as the crow flies, from the modern coastline. From the hill of Cannae, Hannibal would have been able to see the blue Adriatic clearly. He could hav
e felt the sea breeze or watched the swallows diving gracefully in the sky.

  He might also have thought about the blow that he had already struck by seizing the citadel of Cannae. Rome had established a supply dump there, and its grain and other provisions now belonged to the Carthaginians. More important, Cannae had a strategic location.

  Apulia is cavalry country, and so was perfect for Hannibal. About ten miles away from Cannae lay the important Roman ally of Canusium, the fields of which city Hannibal’s men now raided.

  Cannae sits in the valley of the Aufidus (modern Ofanto) River, which flows from the far side of the Apennine all the way to the Adriatic Sea. The Aufidus Valley offers access across the Italian peninsula to the strategically important Bay of Naples, on Italy’s west coast. By seizing Cannae, Hannibal endangered one Roman ally (Canusium) and threatened to open the road against others. Rome had to respond. And so, Varro and Paullus brought their troops to Cannae. After joining up with the smaller Roman army already in Apulia, the Romans had about 86,000 fighting men. Hannibal had approximately 50,000.

  In its last stretch, in the area around Cannae, the Aufidus River sweeps between two ranges of hills and then, northeast of the citadel of Cannae, the hills drop away, the valley opens up, and there is a broad, slightly sloping plain that would have served well for the battle. Most historians locate the battlefield there, although a case can also be made for a site in the hollow between the hills.

  Before the day of battle, the two sides maneuvered. When they reached the vicinity of Cannae, the Romans probably camped on the left bank (north side) of the river Aufidus. Hannibal was camped on the right bank, at the foot of the citadel of Cannae. The Romans threatened Hannibal with a small camp on his side of the river, and then Hannibal responded by moving his camp across the river to the Roman side on the left bank. On August 1, Hannibal challenged the Romans to fight but they refused. Then, the next day, the Romans crossed the river again and took up Hannibal’s challenge.

  What explains this elaborate game of chicken? One possible explanation is the Roman system of command, by which the two consuls alternated the supreme command daily. The ancient sources say that Paullus, who commanded on August 1, had decided not to risk a pitched battle against Hannibal, but Varro took command on August 2—and took the plunge. More likely, the Romans wanted to fight on the right bank, where the terrain was slightly less favorable to cavalry. Parts of it lay on a gentle gradient and parts offered less room to maneuver than on the left bank.

  In either case, shortly before dawn on August 2—that is, shortly before 4:30 A.M. (daylight time)—Varro raised the red flag outside his tent, the traditional Roman signal for battle. Despite claims of tension in the sources, the other consul, Paullus, is likely to have cooperated fully. Rome had sent out its legions and they had found the enemy. The day of glory had arrived. Immediately after sunrise—6:00 A.M. (daylight time), Varro began leading the men out of both camps. He led the troops from the main camp across the River Aufidus to the right bank, where the troops from the smaller Roman camp joined them. Hannibal climbed a low hill and watched the Romans arrange for battle, as his own forces prepared.

  The Romans left ten thousand men behind to garrison the main Roman camp and to threaten the Carthaginian camp, thereby forcing Hannibal to subtract guard troops from his already smaller numbers. So 76,000 troops took the field for Rome: 70,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Of those 70,000, an estimated 50,000 were heavy infantry while 20,000 were light armed. Of the cavalry, an estimated 2,400 were Roman citizens and 3,600 Italian allies of Rome.

  To turn to the other side, Hannibal brought 50,000 fighting men to Cannae: 40,000 infantrymen and 10,000 cavalrymen. The estimated breakdown of those numbers is as follows: the 10,000 cavalrymen consisted of 2,000 Spaniards, 4,000 Celts, and 4,000 Numidians. The 40,000 infantry consisted of 32,000 heavy armed and 8,000 light armed troops. The heavy infantry comprised 8,000 Libyans, 4,000 to 6,000 Spaniards, and 18,000 to 20,000 Celts.

  Each side had been at Cannae long enough to reconnoiter the ground and make its plans for battle. Each side fought according to its way of war. Brutal simplicity marked the Roman plan. Hannibal’s army moved with the cunning of a wrestler who, with a feigned glance or a misleading hand movement, tricks his opponent into mistaking the true direction of his attack.

  The Romans drew up their infantry in a conventional parallel formation. The Roman army faced south, with the Roman heavy cavalry anchored next to the river, on the right wing; allied heavy cavalry held the left wing. The infantry was placed in the center, drawn up in a conventional parallel formation, but with one important and unusual detail. The Romans grouped the companies (maniples) tightly together, to make an infantry formation that was especially deep and narrow. The result was to create a virtual human battering ram, aimed at the center of Hannibal’s line.

  The condensed order of the troops also spoke to the Roman soldiers’ inexperience. Because the Romans had raised such a huge army, much of it consisted of raw recruits. Perhaps the only way to keep order on the battlefield was to bunch them close together. The more experienced men were grouped in the center, providing a solid core, while the less experienced soldiers stood on the wings. The consul Varro commanded the left wing while the other consul, Paullus, commanded the right; the two ex-consuls of the previous year commanded the center.

  The Roman infantry at Cannae was drawn up to a depth of between fifty and seventy-five ranks. The width of the infantry was about one to one and one-fourth miles, with the cavalry covering about another half mile, for a total of about one and one-half to one and three-fourths miles. Hannibal had far fewer men, but he had to cover the same frontage or risk having the enemy attack his flanks.

  The Roman generals were still thinking about the previous battle instead of focusing on new conditions, as they should have. They knew what had worked at the Trebia and they wanted to try it again but to do it better. That is, they had broken through the Carthaginian center with their infantry at the Trebia, so they decided to stake everything at Cannae on breaking through the center with their infantry again. Against an ordinary opponent, that might have worked.

  But Hannibal had not let his understanding of tactics stand still. Unlike the Romans, he had learned something from history. At the Trebia, Hannibal had been willing to sacrifice his center in order to win on the wings. At Cannae, he would also sacrifice his center but not to win on the wings. Instead, he held his wings in reserve and then had them turn inward to strike the advancing Romans on their flanks. It was a complicated and risky maneuver that only a professional army with veteran soldiers and a solid network of subordinate officers could carry out.

  Unlike the Romans, Hannibal worked almost entirely with veterans. No new Africans or Spaniards had joined his army since the start of the war; only the Celts could have provided new recruits, as they probably did.

  At Cannae, Hannibal came up with a brilliant variation of past tactics. He organized his center in a crescent, billowing out toward the enemy. He manned the center with infantrymen, Spaniards and the Celts. They made, Polybius says, “a strange and terrifying appearance,” brandishing great swords and drawn up in alternate companies, the Celts bare-chested and the Spaniards wearing short, purple-bordered linen tunics. But they were not Hannibal’s best troops—that honor went to the Libyans, who stood on the two wings. Experienced, loyal, and hard as stone, the Libyans also had the advantage of bearing state-of-the-art arms and armor, selected from among the loot from the fifty thousand Roman troops killed or captured since Hannibal had crossed the Alps.

  The cavalry played a crucial role in Hannibal’s plan. His heavy cavalry, who were Spaniards and Celts, stood on his left flank, near the river and opposite the Roman cavalry. His light cavalry, the Numidians, held his right flank. Hannibal and his brother Mago commanded the infantry center. Hasdrubal (not Hannibal’s brother) commanded the heavy cavalry on the left, while Hanno led the light cavalry on the right. Maharbal commanded a reserve force of ca
valry. Hannibal’s army faced north.

  Bloody Morning

  Probably around 9:00 or 10:00 A.M., the battle began. Ancient battles usually started with skirmishing by the light troops, and Cannae was no exception. The experienced Carthaginian slingers and javelin-men got the better of the Romans. Then, the survivors on either side withdrew into the ranks of the infantrymen, leaving a stunning sight: about 100,000 men on foot or horseback, poised to fight to the death. The most massive army of citizen-soldiers that the world had ever seen was about to march into one of antiquity’s two or three best professional armies. In the summer, the Apulian plain is hot and dry, and the marching of the men no doubt stirred up an enormous cloud of dust.

  The cavalry clashed first. Hasdrubal’s heavy cavalry on the Carthaginian left wing charged the Roman cavalry. Cavalry battles in this period usually consisted of a series of charges and pursuits, with reserves pouring in to allow each side to re-form and charge again, until finally the loser turned and fled. Not Cannae. Hemmed into a narrow space beside the river, the Roman cavalry tried to hold its ground, but the Carthaginians were more numerous, more experienced, better trained, and more confident. Many of the Roman horsemen dismounted and tried to fight on foot. It was a desperate move, leading Hannibal to comment that they might as well have handed themselves over to his men in chains. What was left of the Roman cavalry fled.

  On the Carthaginian right, the light cavalry under Hanno held its own against the Roman-allied heavy cavalry. Suddenly, Hasdrubal’s heavy cavalry appeared to help them. It seems that, after defeating the Roman heavy cavalry, they actually rode around the rear of the Roman army until they reached their comrades on the opposite wing. It was a prodigy of coordination and command. The Roman-allied cavalry broke and fled. The Roman army no longer had any cavalry. For them, Cannae was now entirely an infantry battle—and it was well under way.