Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (27 page)

Hannibal then moved his troops out into the plain and set up a camp near the Romans across the river from the town of Cannae (Polyb. 3.111.11).
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The following day he drew his troops up along the river with the ‘evident intention of giving battle’; however, Aemilius Paullus was ‘not pleased with the ground … and kept quiet’. Perhaps Paullus wanted to deny Hannibal the initiative and the right to choose the precise time and place of battle.
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Polybius, the best source for Cannae, portrays the tension and disagreement between the Roman consuls to the benefit of Aemilius Paullus. We have to
keep in mind that Polybius wrote his history under the patronage of a grandson of Aemilius Paullus, and as such the portrayal of Varro’s aggression and Paullus’ reticence may be greatly overstated to exonerate Paullus from blame for the disaster that was to follow.
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It is even possible that the record of command has been adjusted to absolve Aemilius Paullus of responsibility.
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The atmosphere was tense, full of ‘prolonged suspense’ and the men were jittery. Hannibal sent some cavalry out to ‘intercept the water-bearers’ from the smaller of the two Roman camps, a further provocation of the Roman soldiers who showed ‘great eagerness for battle’ (Polyb. 3.112.1–5). At last, at dawn on the next day, the two sides lined up to face each other in the field. The temperature was hot and a wind blew from the south. We are told that Varro was in command and moved his forces out of both Roman camps. He crossed the river with his troops from the larger camp and at once put them in battle order with the whole army facing south. ‘He stationed the Roman [citizen] cavalry close to the river on the right and the foot next to them in the same line … the allied horse he drew up on the left wing and in front of the whole force at some distance he placed his light-armed troops’ (Polyb. 3.113.3–5). The Roman infantry units (maniples) were placed closer together than was customary, deepening the centre. This may have been a result of the large number of soldiers in the field rather than for any specific tactical reason.
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This battle would be Hannibal’s greatest gamble yet and he sent his skirmishers, ‘slingers and pikemen, over the river and stationed them in front and leading the rest of his forces out of camp he crossed the stream in two places and drew them up opposite the enemy’. Hannibal set his army out after Varro and was able to adapt his forces to the enemy’s formation. On the left wing of his line ‘he placed his Iberian and Celtic horse facing the Roman cavalry’ and then his heavily armed Africans. ‘Next came the Iberian and Celtic infantry, and after them the other half of the Africans, and on his right wing, his Numidian horse’ (Polyb. 3.113.6–7). Hannibal had drawn his whole army up in a line with the centre positioned slightly forward and tapering back on either side to form a kind of ‘crescent shape’. Polybius expressly states that Hannibal’s ‘objective was to employ the Africans as a reserve force and to begin the action with the Iberians and Celts’ who formed a thin forward line at the top of the curve (3.113.9). The Celts and the Iberians are described as especially terrifying in the battle line, the bare torsos of the Celts and gleaming white tunics with purple fringes of the Iberians magnifying their ‘large physiques’ (Livy 22.46.5–6).

On the field that day was the cream of the Carthaginian and Roman military command. The ‘Roman right wing was under the command of Aemilius
Paullus, the left under that of Terentius Varro, and the centre under the consuls of the previous year, Atilius [Regulus] and Servilius’. On the Carthaginian side ‘Hasdrubal commanded the left, Hanno the right [Livy 22.46.7 claims it was Maharbal on the right] whilst Hannibal himself with his brother Mago held the centre’ (Polyb. 3.114.6–8).
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Hannibal’s forces were significantly outnumbered, especially in foot soldiers, and once the infantry lines engaged the Roman forces began to push the Celtic and Iberian troops back. This was Hannibal’s plan: to use the weakness in the centre of his line that he had already noted at the battle of Trebia to draw the Romans into the middle. Once the superior Roman centre had pushed forward he would let the heavier infantry and cavalry on the flanks surround them. Despite Hannibal’s previous victories, the Roman forces must have had some confidence in their vastly superior numbers and been eager to push forward. As the Roman troops pressed further into the Carthaginian centre, the heavily armed Libyan units, using Roman weapons from Trasimeno, turned inwards and attacked the Romans from the sides. Meanwhile, the Carthaginian cavalry under Hasdrubal had beaten the Roman citizen cavalry and were able to come around behind the Roman infantry and attack the Roman allied cavalry on the other flank. Under pressure from the front and back, the Roman allied cavalry fled the field. The result was that the Roman infantry was completely encircled by the Carthaginians. They were cut down and destroyed (Polyb. 3.115–116).
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Livy sums up as follows: ‘so went the battle of Cannae … the fleeing consul [Varro] had with him barely fifty men and almost the entire army shared the fate of the other consul who died there’ (22.50.1–3). The actual number of Romans killed or captured on the field of Cannae is unclear. Polybius and Livy supply different details about the death toll. ‘Roman casualties are reported to have been 45,500 infantry and 2,700 cavalry, with the number of citizens and allies roughly the same.’ Livy continues to list the illustrious dead, who included the consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus as well as ‘both quaestors of the consuls … as well as twenty-nine military tribunes, some of whom were former consuls, praetors and aediles’. These included the consul Servilius of the previous year, the Master of the Horse Minucius and ‘eighty senators or men who had held offices that qualified them for selection for the Senate’. The surviving consul Varro escaped with the men mentioned above to nearby Venusia. The number of captured soldiers was 3,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry (Livy 22.49.15–18).

Polybius’ account of the Roman losses differs from Livy’s; he claims that ‘seventy escaped to Venusia with Terentius [Varro] and about 300 of the allied
horse reached different cities … Of the infantry about 10,000 were captured fighting but not in the actual battle, while perhaps 3,000 escaped from the field to neighbouring towns … all the rest, numbering about 70,000, died bravely’ (3.117.3). Polybius’ total number of casualties is inconsistent with his total number of Roman troops at the battle and has been shown to contain errors, thus Livy’s numbers are generally preferred.
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The exact figures for Roman dead at Cannae can never be precisely known but surely numbered many tens of thousands. The impact of the defeat was devastating – the almost total obliteration of an army of eight legions.

Hannibal’s great victory had also come at a heavy price for his army. The total dead numbered close to 8,000 and, Livy added, they were Hannibal’s ‘finest soldiers’ (22.52.6). The majority of the casualties were the Celts, according to estimates in Polybius, who calculated the number of dead at 5,700 from Hannibal’s army (3.117.6). For Hannibal, although his casualties were relatively few in number, they formed a significant percentage of his troops and he could ill afford to lose so many men. The loss of even the lower number of fighting men, considering that replacements were limited, may have restricted his options for future operations.
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At dawn the next day ‘the Carthaginians proceeded to gather the spoils and inspect the slaughter, which was a shocking sight’ even to the victors (Livy 22.51.5–9). The style of warfare – close-fought combat and cavalry attacks with swords and spears – left injuries that could take some time to cause death. The Carthaginians had been outnumbered and had set out to disable as many of the Romans as possible as quickly as they could. Livy records the gory details of severed thighs and knee-tendons, with half-dead men rising up from the carnage still alive to be cut down again, others begging to be put out of their misery. The bodies were sorted and ‘Hannibal had his men gathered for burial … and some sources have it that the Roman consul was also sought out and accorded burial’. There was an enormous amount of loot: ‘apart from the horses, prisoners, and whatever silver there was … everything else was parcelled out as plunder for the army’ (Livy 22.51.5–52.4).

With this inspired victory, Hannibal cemented his reputation as one of the great military commanders of all time. His was a dazzling combination of personal charisma and man management together with strategic and military brilliance. The army that he had gathered to fight at Cannae was an exceptional force devoted to their brilliant commander. All aspects of the battle have been celebrated: the strategy, the precision of execution and the brilliance of Hannibal’s lieutenants in carrying the action through to
completion. The victory at Cannae has always been viewed as a ‘masterpiece’ and studied since antiquity by military strategists.
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In the immediate aftermath of battle, Maharbal, one of Hannibal’s lieutenants, pressed his commander to march on Rome. ‘Follow behind me. I shall go ahead with the cavalry – so the Romans will know of our arrival before they are aware of our coming!’ he urged.
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But Hannibal did not see the point of marching to Rome at that very moment. The enthusiastic Maharbal then uttered one of the most famous lines of the war, ‘You know how to win a battle, Hannibal, but you do not know how to use the victory!’ (Livy 22.51.2–4). Was Hannibal right to refuse or did Maharbal have a point?
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In hindsight, perhaps Maharbal was correct but with Rome 400 kilometres away, it would have required an exhausted army to march for almost three weeks. An advance on Rome would have been followed by a long siege of a well-fortified city.

In reality Hannibal may have assumed that marching on Rome was an unnecessary option. By the conventions of third-century warfare a defeat of the magnitude of Cannae demanded that the losing side sue for peace, terms be agreed and the victors impose their conditions on the defeated. The decisions Hannibal made after his great victory at Cannae suggest that he believed the Romans would sue for peace, although Carthaginian experience in the First Punic War might have told him otherwise.
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Yet the scale of the defeat Rome had suffered was unprecedented. Warfare in the Hellenistic period seldom aimed at the total destruction of a whole state or city. The later Roman destruction of Carthage in 146
BCE
is a notable exception to the general rule. An army victorious in war would have managed to seize a city or two, destroy fields and crops, win a few set battles and perhaps a decisive one, so exhausting the enemy that they capitulated. Subsequently the victorious side would expect to receive an advantageous peace.
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The question of Hannibal’s reaction to his victory at Cannae has been debated for millennia. The Roman satirist Juvenal (second century
CE
) parodied the debate when he described the poor students of rhetoric endlessly discussing whether ‘to march from Cannae to Rome’ (
Satires
7.160–4). Hannibal’s immediate reaction to victory at Cannae was to send envoys to Rome to negotiate a peace. He gathered all the prisoners together and as usual ‘separated them into groups … and had kind words for the allies, whom he once again released without ransom’. Then he brought the Roman prisoners together and addressed them, something he had not done before. He told them that ‘his war with the Romans was not a fight to the death but a struggle for honour and power … As his ancestors had capitulated before the valour of Rome, so his goal now was to see others in turn capitulating before his
success and valour’ (Livy 22.58.2–3). The prisoners were then granted the opportunity to ransom themselves and it was decided that ten spokesmen would be chosen by them to go to the Senate in Rome. These ten were allowed to depart, leaving only their word that they would return. Along with the prisoners Hannibal sent a Carthaginian nobleman named Carthalo whose role was to offer terms, ‘if the Romans inclined towards a peace’ (Livy 22.58.7).

Meanwhile in Rome a state of panic took hold. The praetors summoned the Senate while ‘ears were ringing with the noisy lamentations of women’. Inside the city, laws were made to forbid women from appearing in public and restrictions were placed on family mourning. Guards were situated at the gates of the city to stop people from fleeing (Livy 22.55.1–8; Plutarch,
Fab
. 18.1). The true magnitude of the defeat was known when a letter arrived from Canusium where the surviving consul Terentius Varro was holed up with about ten thousand men. The impact on the city is evident from the reaction of the people and the government. The annual rites of the goddess Ceres (the Greek Demeter) were cancelled. Traditionally, married women carried out the worship of the goddess of grain and fertility, and a woman in mourning was prohibited from participating in the rites. In Rome after Cannae there ‘was no married woman left untouched by bereavement’ so the festival of this important goddess could not be celebrated (Livy 22.56.4–5).
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The death toll at Cannae reached every family in Rome.

Livy provides graphic details of the omens and prodigies in the city, where an atmosphere of hysteria reigned. Especially troubling was ‘the conviction that year of two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia, on charges of sexual misconduct’. If Vestal Virgins, keepers of the sacred hearth of the city, allowed the fire in the temple’s hearth to be extinguished or lost their virginity, the city was thought to be in peril. One of the Vestals was buried alive and the other committed suicide. The man guilty of misconduct with one of the women was flogged until ‘he expired under the lash’ (22.57.2–3). The Senate sent Fabius Pictor (the same author used as a source by Polybius and Livy) to Delphi in 216
BCE
to seek advice from the Oracle of Apollo and the Sibylline Books were consulted on how to appease the gods (Livy 22.57.5).
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