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

by Robert L. O'Connell

  He ordered Hasdrubal, the head of the service corps, to collect a herd of two thousand oxen from the vast throng they had assembled and attach bunches of dry wood to their horns. He rested his troops until around three A.M., and then formed the heavy elements, cavalry, and baggage into a column and began ascending the pass. Meanwhile, he had his herdsmen, accompanied by Numidian skirmishers, light the bundles and drive the animals up toward the ridges on either side of the pass. Maddened by the fire, the beasts raced erratically ahead, drawing the attention of the Romans guarding the pass. They followed in pursuit of what they thought were the torches of the Carthaginian force, only to be greeted by scorched bovines and a hail of Numidian javelins. Fabius also observed the fires and, thinking it a trap, refused to budge from camp. Left unobserved, Hannibal and the main body cleared the now unoccupied pass without incident, sending some Spaniards back to rescue the Numidians on the ridges.53

  To Roman eyes at least, Fabius was made to look like a coward and an idiot, with Minucius becoming increasingly vocal and contemptuous in his criticism. Hannibal made a feint toward Rome, but the dictator held to his policy with apparent serenity, dogging Hannibal and keeping to the high ground. It was probably around this time, with the Carthaginian force meandering eastward toward Apulia, that the Punic commander sought to heap calumny atop his opponent’s already soiled reputation. Informed by deserters that the Carthaginians were passing an estate owned by Fabius, Hannibal had his troops meticulously destroy everything around it, leaving only the dictator’s property untouched. When news of this masterful psychological operation reached Rome, it had the intended effect of further undermining the dictator’s popularity.54 Sensitive to appearances, Fabius sent his son Quintus back to the city to sell the farm, the money from which he used to ransom Roman prisoners. Yet the damage had been done. Fabius was recalled, ostensibly to conduct certain religious rites, but more probably to explain his apparently dilatory conduct of the war. He left Minucius with strict instructions not to engage the enemy, but the master of horse had other ideas.

  Sometime in the early autumn of 217 the Punic army marched up to a small fortified place called Gerunium, sitting in the midst of a rich Apulian agricultural district. Immediately Hannibal settled on his winter quarters. But when he offered the population terms, they refused him—a serious mistake. His troops made short work of the defenses and slaughtered the survivors.55 Leaving the fort walls intact and preparing the houses inside to serve as granaries, he set about building a fortified camp for his forces around the outer circumference. Before long he was sending two thirds of the men out in foraging parties scampering about the countryside gathering grain for the months ahead like squirrels with swords.

  At least until Minucius and the Romans arrived looking for trouble. Hannibal called back a third of his foragers and marched out against the Romans, sending two thousand Numidians to take a hill between the two armies. The Romans responded by capturing the hill and building their camp on top. Hannibal kept his forces consolidated but after a few days resumed foraging. Minucius went after the marauders, and even began assaulting Hannibal’s forward camp—what amounted to Fabian tactics on speed. The normally belligerent Carthaginian seemed uncharacteristically passive; he retreated to Gerunium after considerable losses and was subsequently more circumspect with his raiding for rations.56 Minucius, it seemed, was the man of the hour.

  He certainly was in Rome. News of his success swept through the city. Romans were hungry for a victory—any victory—and this one was apt to have gained in perceived significance as its telling passed from mouth to mouth. Likewise, the repute of Fabius, who had yet to return to the field, suffered by comparison. So much so that one Metilius, the tribune of the plebes (the only office retaining its power subsequent to the appointment of a dictator), passed a law equalizing the master of horse’s imperium with that of Fabius. Prominent in recommending this measure, Livy (22.25.18–19) says, was a recent praetor, Caius Terentius Varro. The historian is plainly contemptuous of this politician, portraying him as the lowborn son of a butcher and as an utter demagogue. But Varro’s already elevated status and subsequent election to the consulship argue the contrary. It is a safe bet, however, that Varro objected strenuously to Fabius’s approach to fighting Hannibal, and that when he gained power, things would be different.

  In the interim, however, Minucius and Fabius were left to settle their differences. With the dictator’s return to the Apulian front, the question of who would command, now that they were equals, immediately arose. The master of horse initially favored unitary control assumed on alternate days, but Fabius succeeded in convincing his colleague to divide the force, each retaining the equivalent of a consular army. Fabius no doubt argued that the consular army was the most efficient and easily controlled fighting instrument. Minucius promptly took his half and set up a separate camp about a mile distant, possibly at the forward position the Carthaginians had been forced to abandon.57

  Hannibal had been biding his time, very much aware, by virtue of his superior intelligence, of the rift between the two Roman commanders. He also understood them. He had learned to respect Fabius for his caution, but Minucius could be tricked, and Hannibal had already set him up for a fall. Just as in the first battle, there was now a hill separating Hannibal and Minucius, a hill that Hannibal planned to occupy, banking on Minucius’s trying to recapture it in a repeat of his earlier success. Hannibal had also surveyed the surrounding terrain, and although it was treeless, it contained many depressions capable of concealing substantial numbers of troops, the same ploy as at Trebia. On the night before he planned to fight, Hannibal sent out about five hundred horsemen and five thousand light infantry to hide themselves in clumps of several hundred.

  At dawn Hannibal took the hill, so that Minucius, lacking a vantage point, had no idea he was not alone as he prepared for battle. Instead, the Roman commander concentrated on getting the Carthaginians off the high ground, first sending his light troops, then his cavalry, and finally the legionaries, all of whom Hannibal thwarted with reinforcements of his own. Next, Hannibal had his cavalry sweep down on the Romans, scattering their horse and sending the velites careening helter-skelter back into the main body of legionaries. This maneuver destabilized the maniples sufficiently so that when swarmed by the concealed Carthaginians, the army melted into a crowd.58 Once more disaster was at hand.

  But thanks to Fabius Maximus, it did not materialize. He had apparently anticipated such an outcome and had taken the precaution of marching out of camp and deploying nearby, providing a rallying point for the fleeing troops of Minucius. Having already sprung his trap and felled a considerable number of velites and legionaries, Hannibal chose not to press the issue. He had secured his base at Gerunium and would spend the winter there well supplied, resting his army, and probably further integrating its force components, while the Romans were held at bay.

  Both Polybius and Livy would have us believe that this incident effectively rehabilitated Fabius and his policies.59 Livy has Minucius returning to the dictator’s camp with his army and once again subordinating himself and his troops in the most abject sort of way. Polybius adds that back in Rome respect for the dictator’s cautious approach was miraculously restored. If so, it was short-lived. Sometime in December 217 the terms of Fabius and Minucius came to an end. Power returned to the original consul, Geminus, and to Flaminius’s replacement, M. Atilius Regulus, both of whom now took command of the army that was keeping an eye on Hannibal. The consuls were content to stay put, but the next consular elections would bring to the fore men with an agenda entirely different from that of Fabius Maximus.

  Hannibal had shown himself to be the most dangerous sort of opponent, but thus far his political success in Italy had been minimal, leaving him without a fixed base and obliged to wander the countryside in search of food. That was where Fabius wanted him, with his troops acting not as soldiers but as vulnerable scroungers. Another year of this might have starved and weakened this cu
nning invader out of existence.60 But Romans remained Romans. They retained a huge manpower advantage, and their every instinct beckoned them to battle. Unfortunately, the battle proved to be Cannae, and the hedgehog was left to watch from the sidelines as the fox had his way yet again.

  VI

  CANNAE

  [1]

  The winds of change echoed along the Tiber as the year 216 began, and though a skeptic might have heard the winds howling disaster, most Romans seemed confident they were blowing toward a quick and decisive victory.

  The strategy seemed sound; pressure would be applied in all the appropriate directions. Marcellus, the reliable and hyperbelligerent spolia opima winner, was sent to keep an eye on Sicily, the fleet there having been augmented for a potential invasion of Africa.1 More on target, in late 217, Publius Scipio, now recovered from his wound, had joined his brother Cnaeus and his two legions in Spain with eight thousand fresh troops and a small fleet. Both Scipios had been given the proconsular imperium to tear up Barca land and rob Hannibal of his base. Nor was Hannibal’s Gallic connection overlooked. Twice-consul L. Postumius Albinus was given two legions and dispatched north to break the rebellion in Cisalpine Gaul and seal off any further support from that quarter. But the central objective, the overwhelming priority, was to directly confront Hannibal and crush him beneath the weight of Rome’s key advantage, military manpower. Everything points to a corporate decision to stage a great battle and obliterate the invader once and for all. Fabius was out, the bludgeon was in.

  Viewed from the comfortable perspective of subsequent events, the reasoning that led to Cannae is easy to dismiss. But it was far from implausible. Arguably, there was a fundamental Hannibal problem: if you didn’t beat him, you couldn’t get rid of him. On the other hand, if the Punic force were to lose even one significant battle, it was too far from any secure base to survive. Just one Roman triumph, a single day’s victorious fighting, would put an end to the invasion.2 The string of previous defeats could be convincingly attributed to impulsive commanders, impiety, bad weather, bad luck, bad timing … The excuses were endless. Meanwhile, Romans still had good reason to believe in their military system—after all, its fundamentals would provide security for nearly another half millennium. They had merely to supersize it and leave nothing to chance.

  Of course they were wrong, and Fabius Maximus had been right. Lacking a secure base, Hannibal probably could have been attrited out of existence. But the victory at Cannae would allow him to sink his claws deep into Italian soil, and then he would prove far harder to uproot. So the battle proved to be much more than a human tragedy and a tactical debacle; it was the strategic basis of fifteen more years of Hannibal, what must have seemed at times like perpetual Hannibal. About the only things the Romans could salvage from Cannae were Scipio Africanus and perhaps ten thousand disgraced survivors, and one day they would avenge themselves and Rome by drawing the Carthaginian away and then defeating him nearly as badly as he had defeated them. But that day was still far in the future.

  [2]

  Deciphering any political environment is difficult, more so an environment twenty-two hundred years old and littered with deceptive contradictions, patronage relationships, and family alliances. Although modern historical scholarship has clarified the climate of opinion and motivation to some degree, we will never know exactly what Romans were thinking in 216. Therefore, while it is possible to say that as the year began, attitudes had hardened and grown more overtly aggressive, certain issues remain veiled in obscurity.

  For example, Livy (22.33) tells us that a Carthaginian spy, who had gone unnoticed for two years, was caught right around this time. His hands were cut off, and then he was let go. In the same breath Livy adds that twenty-five slaves were crucified for forming a conspiracy in the campus Martius, the field where Roman troops customarily drilled. The two events seem related. Why else would they be mentioned together? Also, from this point Hannibal’s intelligence advantage begins to diminish, or at least it appears to, on the basis of available narratives. Was this spy the Punic mole, and were these slaves his spy ring? It can be inferred as such, but not with certainty. It may be that the Romans avoided saying too much about what could have been considered an embarrassment and a vulnerability.

  Other deceptions are more apparent. Both Livy and Plutarch would have us believe that the consular elections of that year, which determined the commanders at Cannae, were basically contests between the impulsive “people,” whose choice was the lowborn knave and demagogue C. Terentius Varro, and the prudent patriciate, who managed to secure the elevation of the wise and experienced Lucius Aemilius Paullus as a brake on his hotheaded and foolish colleague. The historians even stage a tête-à-tête during which Fabius and Paullus agree that the former’s strategy of avoiding battle is the best approach and that the impulsiveness of Varro is virtually as dangerous to Rome as Hannibal.3 Livy even insinuates that on the day of the battle, Varro issued his orders to fight without bothering to inform Paullus.4 Polybius, while less hyperbolic in his denunciation of Varro, is nevertheless plainly sympathetic to Paullus and largely absolves him from blame. But all of this becomes more difficult to swallow in light of the fact that after Cannae the apparently incompetent Varro was given a number of other important commissions and even military commands—although this also may have been a means of shifting the blame. Meanwhile, Polybius’s exculpatory portrayal of Paullus fades somewhat when it is realized that Paullus was the grandfather of the historian’s patron, Scipio Aemilianus.5

  Modern historians have come to understand that a more likely explanation is that Varro, the first member of his family to rise to the consulship, and largely without illustrious descendants, was tagged by later generations as Cannae’s designated scapegoat, while Paullus’s reputation was rescued by the later propagandizing of his powerful family.6 Actually, Varro may have served under Paullus during his first consulship three years before, when they’d been campaigning in Illyria, and both were probably now on the same side of the debate over how to fight Hannibal.7

  This amalgam of confrontationists was likely built around the powerful families of Aemilii and Cornelii, particularly the Scipionic branch, and included Minucius and Metilius, the tribune who’d worked to elevate Minucius to equality with Fabius Maximus. Probably they were opposed by the Fabii and the older, more conservative members of the senate, who could be assumed to have stood on the side of patience and the gradual attrition of the invader. Yet the policy of patience was plainly in eclipse, perhaps even among some of its adherents. After all, they were every one of them Romans, and the Roman default position was to fight. A measure of this enthusiasm was that as many as a third of the senate joined the army at Cannae, and most of the other senate members had close relatives among the ranks.8 This showdown with Hannibal was intended to be the magna mater of all battles, and an analysis of those selected for magistracies in 216, especially as military tribunes, shows them to be considerably more experienced in military matters than was usually the case.9 Plainly much of the leadership was ready to stake their future and the future of their respective gene pools on this gigantic roll of the dice.

  So were the rest of Rome and Rome’s allies. The contemplated instrument of destruction was to be an army roughly twice the size of any previously assembled by the Romans to operate as a unit.10 Varro and Paullus would each command double armies of four legions plus equivalent allied units, but the whole mass was expected to fight together—eight legions and eight alae, in effect a quadruple consular army. Given that a Roman army operated best as a maneuver unit when it was composed of two legions and two alae, there was reason to suspect that this monster might prove inherently unwieldy—a lumbering Frankenstein of a force at best, and at worst a paralytic, a quadriplegic consular army. And this raises the question of who actually would be in charge overall. Meanwhile, to compound the effect, each of the legions, and presumably the alae, was increased from forty-two hundred to fully five thousand, which adde
d up to a grand total of eighty thousand infantry.11 As we shall see, quantity had a quality all its own … but not the one the Romans expected.

  The sole area where the force seems somewhat shorthanded was cavalry—six thousand, two thirds of it allied, when the normal legionary and alae component might have been expected to yield almost ten thousand.12 Apparently recent losses, especially those of Centenius, had taken their toll, and this too would prove telling at Cannae.

  More specifically, the army that would confront Hannibal had two basic components. The first was the force left to keep an eye on him at Gerunium, an experienced element with a history of heart-stopping ups and downs—mostly the latter. Its core was built around the two legions that Publius Scipio had managed to salvage from the defeat at Trebia, soldiers who earlier had been repeatedly ambushed by Gauls. The legions had later been taken over by Geminus, then transferred to Fabius Maximus to chase and lose Hannibal, and then they’d nearly been destroyed under Minucius. To make up for casualties and other attrition, they were bound to have been reinforced on multiple occasions, but at least the veterans had served together and under the same officers for a period of years.

  The second element was essentially virginal, the Roman portion consisting of four new legions all recruited around the beginning of the year. While these troops as individuals appear to have received the rudiments of military training as part of their upbringing, the process of integrating them into maniples and teaching them to fight as units not only took time—presumably the spring and early summer—but would have resulted in only a thin behavioral veneer of mutual trust and confidence, which, without the experience of actually fighting together, could be ripped away fairly easily in an emergency to reveal a substrate of panic and helplessness.13 Next to nothing is known about the allied components, but if this was a newly recruited force, it’s hard to imagine they were any more tested than the Romans, nor would they have been used to their officers, who were also Romans.