The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (20 page)

His term actually began with a focus on what was perceived to be the immediate danger to the city. First he sought to explain Flaminius’s defeat in a way the people could understand—that is, Flaminius’s failure to perform the appropriate religious rites, and his ignoring obvious omens of the gods’ displeasure. Fabius had the senate consult the prophetic Sibylline Books and then charge a praetor with performing the prescribed rites to assuage the gods.

Fabius did have a deputy, Marcus Minucius Rufus, his master of horse. (The dictator himself had to get special permission to serve mounted.
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) Together they looked to the defenses of the city, and it may be that Minucius was ordered to assemble the
legiones urbanae
by a certain date.
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It also seems that two additional legions were raised to replace those lost by Flaminius, and that these set out with Fabius up the Tiber valley to meet those of Geminus, who had been ordered to proceed down the Via Flaminia toward Rome. To make it absolutely clear who was in charge, when the consul’s army was spotted, a message was sent that Geminus should come into the dictator’s presence without lictors and as a private citizen. Rome now had a clear leader and a covering force, but by this time it must have been apparent that Hannibal had gone elsewhere.

Given the quality of his intelligence, the Punic commander may well have been aware that nothing stood between him and Rome after Trasimene; but he also would have known that his army was badly rundown and in no shape to besiege what was one of the most heavily fortified population centers in the Mediterranean world. So instead he headed east, crossing the Apennines again on a ten-day march to the rich Picenum district along the Adriatic coast. During this march, he allowed his men to plunder and abuse the local populations to their hearts’ content. They must have been a motley crew at this point, the men exhibiting symptoms of scurvy and the horses afflicted by mange—both the result of vitamin deficiencies.
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So Hannibal let the soldiers gorge themselves on the fresh produce of the area, and bathed the horses with sour wine until both man and beast gradually regained their health and vitality.

But with Hannibal, R & R seldom meant repose. Polybius (3.87.3) tells us that, while in Picenum, he rearmed his African troops with “select weapons” captured in very large quantities. This process, which the historian says began after Hannibal won the “first battle” with the Romans,
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raises some interesting questions. Were they being given the
pilum
and
gladius?
If so, this implies their transformation primarily into swordsmen,
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which seems to be contradicted by Plutarch, who says (Marcellus, 12.2) the Libyans “were not javelineers, but used short spears in hand-to-hand fighting.” This description likely eliminates the
pilum
as an add-on. Whether the Africans adopted the short sword is still at issue, but given the short sword’s lethality and compactness, the addition remains plausible, at least as a sidearm. It is fairly certain they did not carry long pikes and therefore fight as a phalanx. The only evidence that they did carry long pikes is an apparent mistranslation of the Greek word for “spear.”
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Livy (22.46.4) does say that the Libyans at Cannae could have been mistaken for Romans, since they were equipped with Romans’ captured gear. Probably he is referring to their defensive accoutrements, which is what an observer would have noticed. Since a lot of equipment had been captured, it stands to reason that the Africans, who were Hannibal’s key maneuver force, would have gotten the best of it—an oval
scutum
(a shield heavy enough to preclude using the long two-handed pike of the Macedonian phalanx), the best Montefortino helmet, a full set of greaves, and, most important, a ring-mail cuirass rather than simply a
pectorale
heart protector. These articles left them as a group considerably better protected than most of the Romans. They were now true heavy infantry, and this equipment upgrade serves to explain their impact at Cannae; when they closed the trap on the Romans, it could not be pried open.

Before leaving Picenum, Hannibal also belatedly reestablished contact with Carthage, informing the city by seaborne messengers of what had transpired since he’d left Spain. Polybius notes that this is the first time Hannibal had touched the coast since reaching Italy, but still he had left the city without word for more than a year. Had he really wanted or needed instructions from Punic central, it seems he would have made a more concerted effort to contact them earlier. Instead, he waited until he had good news, especially for the Barcid faction at home. And apparently it elicited the responses he wanted—rejoicing and promises to support in every possible way the two campaigns in Spain and Italy. Perhaps as public relations, it worked, but in the case of the latter theater the results proved negligible.
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[5]

Refreshed, rearmed, and likely remembering his dream of the serpent tearing up the Italian countryside, Hannibal headed south to begin the next more overtly political phase of his campaign. He applied the sinuous column of his army—in hopes of weaning away his enemy’s allies, of provoking further Roman action in their defense, or of simply demonstrating that the Romans could not protect their allies. Advancing down the Adriatic coastal plain into Apulia, foraging as he went, he turned southwest about two thirds of the way down the Italian boot and headed toward Aecae,
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probably on intelligence that Romans were in the vicinity. He found Fabius Maximus camped nearby with an army of forty thousand—four legions and their allied equivalents—having reached this spot after an extremely cautious journey guided by constant reconnoitering. Hannibal immediately marched up, deployed, and offered battle. But Fabius would have none of it, leaving the Punic commander to withdraw and lecture his troops on the newfound timidity of Romans.
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There ensued a cat-and-mouse, or rather a fox-and-hedgehog game—with Hannibal employing all manner of artifice to incite his opponent, and Fabius clinging to his one big thing, avoiding a showdown. The Punic force was like a shark, to survive it had to keep moving, sending out between one half and two thirds of its numbers to forage.
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To make this more difficult, Fabius had earlier tried to impose a “scorched earth” policy, ordering all those in the Carthaginian path to take shelter in fortified places, but only after destroying all structures and supplies. Given the amount of booty the Carthaginians managed to cart off, this policy was probably honored more in the breach than in the observance, but even partial implementation must have had the effect of dispersing the foragers and leaving them more vulnerable to attack. This was Fabius’s opening. Keeping his own men concentrated and fed from local supply dumps, he sent out hunter-killer teams to prey on isolated Carthaginians, and in the process he rebuilt the confidence of what must have been a demoralized and inexperienced force.

Almost from the outset it seems Minucius, Fabius’s master of horse, objected to the inevitable rural destruction, calling it craven, and champing at the bit for a more aggressive approach. It must have been hard for any Roman to take, especially since, as Minucius noted, the dictator’s habit of camping on high ground created “beautiful theaters for their spectacle of Italy laid waste with fire and sword.”
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Keeping the pressure on, Hannibal pillaged his way west across the Apennines into Samnium, heading toward Campania and the most fertile agricultural district in Italy, the fabled plain of Capua or
ager Falernus
. On unfamiliar ground, he apparently had some trouble reaching his destination; here is where he crucified one or perhaps several guides when they misunderstood his badly pronounced Latin and took him in the wrong direction.
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Meanwhile, Fabius, following Hannibal’s eventual path down the Volturnus River valley, a day or two’s march behind, realized that the steep narrow pass at the valley’s head was the only viable entrance and exit from the plain. All he had to do was occupy this defile—which he did with four thousand men, stationing the rest of his army in a camp high on a nearby hill—and he had the Carthaginian trapped. Hannibal could plunder to his heart’s content, but the odds were on his returning only to find his path blocked, which is exactly what happened. Laden with loot he would need for the coming months, and faced with the necessity of establishing his winter quarters in a more defensible locality, Hannibal was left to consider his options.

The fox is most unpredictable after dark, and so was the Carthaginian. Appian (Han.14) claims it was here that a desperate Hannibal had his Roman captives slaughtered, but this seems unlikely, since at this point prisoners were still being ransomed and Hannibal needed the money. Besides, he had other beings to sacrifice.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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