The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (26 page)

In time there would be a huge manpower pool available, but in just two years Hannibal had killed at least a hundred thousand of Rome’s soldiers, and the recruiters on the Tiber behaved as if they were more than a little shorthanded. Just one thousand new cavalry could be raised, a number reflecting Hannibal’s prodigious attrition of the equestrians. To levy more foot soldiers for two new
legiones urbanae
, the draft age was lowered and boys of seventeen or even younger were called up, along with reinforcements from the Latin allies.
82
Yet more telling was the enlistment of six thousand criminals and debtors, who had to be equipped with the Gallic arms taken by Flaminius for his triumph in 223. Finally, and most significant, the city’s slaves of fighting age were promised freedom upon discharge if they were willing to join the war effort, a call that was answered by eight thousand of them, who were subsequently known as
volones
, or volunteers. Their owners were compensated with state funds, the cost of which, Livy (22.57.11–12) notes ominously, exceeded the amount that would have been required to ransom the prisoners held by Hannibal.

Back in Apulia, the Carthaginian was in an avuncular mood. As he had after Trebia and Trasimene, he let the allies he held go free, yet again professing his goodwill. He then turned to the Roman captives and sought to explain himself, which was something new. He was not pursuing a war to the death with Rome, he explained; he was fighting “for honor and empire.” Just as his Carthaginian predecessors had yielded to the success of Roman arms, now it was time for Rome to accept defeat in the face of his own skill and good fortune.
83
It was a speech that might have been given by Pyrrhus or any other Hellenistic monarch, a perfectly reasonable speech. The rules of war as he saw them dictated that, after such a string of beatings, the vanquished, presuming they were in their right minds, admit defeat. That was the way the “great game” of the Mediterranean basin was played; it was time Rome got used to it. He was prepared to be generous. The captives were to be ransomed for a reasonable price; ten of their own number would be sent to Rome to work out the details. Carthalo, a Carthaginian cavalry officer, would accompany them to present Punic peace terms. It’s impossible to know if Hannibal really expected his initiative to work, but it seems unlikely that he anticipated the reception that the delegation actually got.

As the group approached the city, the senate had the dictator, Pera, send a lictor to meet them and inform Carthalo that he would not be received and that he had to leave Roman territory by nightfall. So much for a negotiated peace. There was some sympathy for the captives, but not enough. In the speech the leader of the prisoners gave to the senate, Livy (22.59) has him argue that ransoming their number would be cheaper than purchasing the previously mentioned volunteer slaves, and comparing themselves favorably with those who took refuge at Venusia and Canusium, “men who left their swords on the field and fled.”

These pleas fell on deaf ears, especially those of T. Manlius Torquatus. He delivered a savage rebuttal. Although he did concede that the troops at Canusium were better judges of courage and cowardice than the captives, he revealed little regard for either group. The negligence of the captives was twofold: first, “they fled to the camp when it was their duty to stand firm and fight,” and second, they surrendered the camp.
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It was left unsaid but still implied that all those who had left the battlefield, captives and escapees alike, had violated the oath administered before the battle never to break rank except in the pursuit of duty.

The point, for the moment at least, was that the captives were not to be ransomed. The senate even went so far as to forbid their families to raise money privately to free them. This plainly went against precedent; just the year before, Fabius had paid prisoners’ ransoms with the proceeds from the farm Hannibal had left untouched. The Roman leadership wanted to send a message not just to its own soldiers, but to Hannibal, to shock him with the degree of their determination.
85
Whatever he might think, in their eyes this was a fight to the finish.

When the delegation reluctantly returned with the bad news, Hannibal’s mood—though not necessarily his strategy—hardened. Appian (Han.28) maintains that Hannibal had those of senatorial rank fight as gladiators for the amusement of the Africans; some were slaughtered; the rest were sold into slavery. The last, at least, we know was true. Polybius in a fragment (6.58.13) reports that Hannibal lost his joy over the victory at Cannae; he now knew he was in for a long fight.

But as hardheaded and hard-hearted as was the image presented along the Tiber, the Roman leadership still had to work within its means. After Cannae much of southern Italy was leaning toward Hannibal, and Rome needed a presence to fend off the momentum toward the Punic side. The new
legiones urbanae
and the scratch force of slaves and criminals were not yet trained. The only trained men were the
Cannenses
.

We next hear of Marcellus in the autumn of 216, first at Casilinum, then at Nola, parrying Hannibal’s thrusts at the latter town with his army of survivors. Livy conflates what was probably a series of desultory skirmishes into a tactical victory featuring a surprise sortie out of the city gates, but even he questions the number of losses inflicted on the Punic force.
86
It was not much in the way of revenge. Still, the
Cannenses
, now divided into two legions, showed themselves to be once again an effective fighting force and one ready to take the field against its nemesis. If nothing else, the men had amply demonstrated their loyalty to the state. Yet they were not forgiven, even in the face of further disaster.

As the terrible year 216 came to an end, Rome settled down for a change of leadership. But no sooner had L. Postumius Albinus—who had been sent in the spring to Cisalpine Gaul with two legions plus allies to break the rebellious Celts—been elected in absentia to his third consulship than news filtered into the city that he and his entire army had been ambushed and annihilated. To add insult to injury, the victorious Boii beheaded the fallen consul-elect, hollowed out his skull, and subsequently used it as a drinking cup. But more to the point, Rome was down another twenty-five thousand troops.
87
It did not matter; by December of 216, the new
legiones urbanae
were ready and were given to Marcellus.

No longer needed, the
Cannenses
would now get what they deserved, at least in the eyes of the senate. Taxes had been doubled so that all soldiers could be paid in cash immediately, except for those who’d fought at Cannae. They got nothing.
88
But this was secondary compared to being shipped to Sicily. Here they would stay until 204, removed from their families and their livelihood, effectively banished. It was a terrible punishment, inflicted upon them because they were seen as having broken an oath never before required, which had made them, technically at least, deserters.
89
Rome had lost a great battle and needed a scapegoat. Rather than blame the strategists and commanders who had planned it, the powers that be turned on the survivors. The logic, the same as for decimation
(“pour encourager les autres”)
, might have made sense at the time. But these ghosts of Cannae would live to haunt the republic. For one day, legionaries would look to their generals and not Rome for a future, and that perspective would spell civil war and absolute rule. This more than anything else was the battle’s legacy.

VII

AFTERSHOCKS

[1]

I
t didn’t take long for the seismic reverberations from Cannae to start tilting the playing field in Hannibal’s direction … or so it seemed. Almost immediately a number of the nearby Apulian communities—Aecae, Arpi, Herdonea, and Salapia—threw in with the Barcid, and as he moved west into the hill country of Rome’s old enemies the Samnites, most of them went over to him also.
1
Grabbing momentum by the horns, he split his force for the first time, ordering his brother Mago south to pick up as much support as he could muster among the Oscans, Lucanians, Bruttians, and the Greeks in cities on the coast. Mago would then continue his journey alone back to Carthage, where he would deliver Cannae’s good tidings and press for reinforcements, which he could then lead back to Italy. Mago would return to Italy, but not before becoming sidetracked for upward of a decade, and without ever reuniting with his elder sibling.

Hannibal, meanwhile, soldiered west into fertile Campania for the second time, looking for more new friends. His first target, the seaport of Neapolis (modern Naples), rebuffed him, but there was something far better in the offing—Capua, the second city in the Roman confederation and a place notorious for its wealth and luxury, symbolized by its perfume market, the fabled Seplasia. But Capua was far more than a fleshpot; its leadership class was deeply intertwined with Rome’s through marriage and economic ties. It was a vital and valued Roman ally.
2
Yet, despite every inhabitant holding Roman citizenship, the lower classes since the Battle of Trasimene had been restive and increasingly inclined toward secession. In the wake of Cannae and Hannibal’s approach, the pressure in this direction increased dramatically, until the only thing holding back the flood was the hesitance of the local nobility.

In particular, three hundred young cavalrymen from the city’s best families were serving alongside the Romans in Sicily, a position that would leave them hostages if Capua changed sides. Their parents, amidst the political turmoil, managed to have a delegation sent to the surviving consul, Terentius Varro, for an assessment of the military prospects. Seen through Livy’s eyes (23.5.4–15) Varro proved no better diplomat than general. “Legions, cavalry, arms, standards, horses and men, money, and supplies have vanished either in the battle or in the loss of two camps the next day. And so you, Campanians, have not to help us in war, but almost to undertake it in our stead.” In other words, you’re on your own.

But not for long. The Capuans’ next move was to send the same delegation to Hannibal. Needless to say, he was entirely more accommodating, agreeing that in return for their allegiance the Capuans would continue to rule themselves, would be under no obligation to supply him with soldiers, and were to be given three hundred Roman prisoners to exchange for their horsemen in Sicily (an unlikely prospect, as we have seen).
3
To seal the deal Hannibal sent the Capuans a defensive garrison, and then entered the city in triumph, telling their senate that Capua would soon be “the capital of all Italy.”
4
Intoxicated by the moment, his new allies responded by burning their remaining bridges to the Tiber, arresting the Romans in the city and shutting them up in a bathhouse, where they suffocated. Capuans would live to regret their enthusiasm, but in the shadow of Cannae the alliance must have seemed an obvious recognition of a new political reality. The Campanian city would take its place at the head of a realigned southern Italy, and Hannibal had a cornerstone upon which to begin constructing a stable edifice of control. Even more alluring, at least for the moment, he had a destination.

The Carthaginian army’s winter sojourn in Capua is the stuff of ancient legend. As French archaeologist and historian Serge Lancel explains, those three proverbial symbols of dissipation in classical antiquity—wine, women, and warm water—(not to mention soap and perfume) turned Hannibal’s fine-tuned instrument of destruction into a bunch of skulking hedonists, at least according to Livy in his famous passage on their epic sleepover.
5
He even has Marcellus, no slouch as a luxury lover, let on that “Capua was Hannibal’s Cannae.”
6

None of this should be taken literally. For one thing, only a small portion of the army could have been quartered there without fatally alienating the population. Besides, this was a force destined to fight successfully in Italy for more than a decade longer.
7

Yet Livy’s point should not be dismissed. Every alliance comes with a price tag. By succumbing to the allure of having stable friendships—bases, a steady source of supplies, political allegiance—Hannibal took on the burden of protecting them. It would prove a heavy load for a military vagabond. Life on the road had been hard and uncertain, but it had afforded Hannibal the strategic advantage of being able to show up anywhere, a maddening possibility if you were Rome. With assets to defend, he was now tied down—cut off, for instance, from the Gauls far to the north and their supplies of fresh king-size fighters.

Not only was the fox forced to guard the henhouse, but the hens themselves had considerable strategic limitations, having been politically contaminated by their former hegemon. As mentioned earlier, Rome’s system of treaties tied allies directly to it and not to one another. Removing this dependency left no common bond, no basis for larger amalgams, and this condition was only compounded by the fierce internal factionalism of the south, especially among the Greeks.
8

With this came an equivalent reluctance to contribute troops, especially for duty outside of home territory. This left Hannibal reliant on his own field army to fend off a succession of Roman forces drawn from their own very deep manpower base. Over time some numbers of Italians were successfully integrated into the Punic force structure, but the structure’s core remained Libyan, Numidian, Spanish, and Gallic. As the Carthaginian traveling force was gradually eroded by casualties, by the need for garrison troops, and eventually even by age, what Hannibal needed was reinforcements.

That was to have been Mago’s job, the point of his triumphant return to Carthage. To set the stage, Hannibal’s youngest brother ordered that the baskets full of golden rings pried off the fingers of senators and equestrians at Cannae be poured out in the vestibule of the meeting hall of the elders. Addressing the elders, he spoke glowingly of victories achieved, consuls humiliated, casualties inflicted, captives held, allies won over, of Italy in revolt, and above all, as victory grew near, he spoke of aiding Hannibal with all the resources at the state’s disposal—more troops, but also money for pay, and food for the soldiers who had already served so well in Carthage’s name.
9

The speech evidently went over well; it’s hard to be pessimistic in the face of such good news. Nevertheless, Hanno, by now undoubtedly aged, and still apparently at the head of the anti-Barcid faction, found reason for doubt. He wondered aloud why, if Hannibal had killed so many Romans, he needed more soldiers. Why, if he had accumulated so much booty, did he need more money and provisions? Why, if Italy was in revolt, had no Latins come over to the Carthaginian side? Still more pointedly, Hanno asked Mago if the Romans had sent any ambassadors to treat for peace. When Hanno received no satisfactory answers, he concluded, “We have on our hands, then, a war as entire as we had on the day Hannibal crossed into Italy.”
10

Still, if not exactly a voice in the wilderness, Hanno was plainly in the minority. Most were apparently inclined to believe that at least moderate exertions could bring the war to a speedy conclusion. The elders voted for a small force of four thousand Numidians to be sent to Hannibal, along with more money and that Punic panacea, forty elephants. Yet Livy (23.14.1) points out that these resources were raised in a dilatory fashion. Nor would Mago be joining them. Instead, he was sent to Spain to recruit a larger force, but by the time he was ready to depart for Italy, the situation in Iberia had deteriorated and he was needed there to fight. Meanwhile, sometime in the summer of 214 the admiral Bomilcar finally delivered the Numidians and elephants at Locri on the coast of Bruttium.
11
It was to be the only time during the entire war that the city of Carthage would send Hannibal reinforcements in Italy. The elders showed entirely more interest in Spain, Sardinia, and especially Sicily.

This did not amount to a ringing endorsement for Hannibal’s great adventure. Most modern authorities seem to see this lack of enthusiasm as largely a matter of circumstance and not reticence. Still, the reluctance of Hanno appears to represent more than just Hanno. We have already seen that Carthage had been badly hurt by the First Punic War and the subsequent revolt of Hamilcar’s mercenaries. Many of Carthage’s citizens must have recognized that in terms of demographics Carthage was no match for Rome, especially in a land war. No matter how impressive Hannibal’s initial successes might have seemed, some in the Carthaginian power structure—particularly the remaining old ones who had seen Rome’s staying power in the first war—would have continued to view Hannibal’s invasion as reckless and futile. These men seem to have convinced the others to pursue the war by concentrating on areas outside of Italy, particularly those of traditional Carthaginian interest. In Spain the motives of the Barcids and the skeptics at home coincided, less so in Sicily and Sardinia. But ultimately, Hannibal was left high and dry in Italy, and was finally forced to look only to his two brothers for reinforcement. And that would cost both their lives.

[2]

Back in Rome it remains an open question whether any of this was fully understood. What must have been overwhelmingly clear was that Rome’s strategy of trying to end the invasion with one knockout blow had not worked. Never again would the Romans leverage their massive manpower resources into one huge host. Armies would be raised (and frequently lost), but in the future, bets were to be hedged. It followed that, after Cannae, pitched battles became less frequent, and were fought less to destroy the adversary’s maneuver units than to defend or threaten population centers, now the key pieces on the field of play. Rome had an advantage here, because Hannibal could not allow himself the luxury of becoming stationary for a long siege. Raids and skirmishes became the most typical form of combat, in part because most of the campaigning transpired along the rugged spine of central Italy, the Apennines, terrain where it was nearly impossible to force a set-piece battle on an unwilling foe.
12

All of this calls to mind the strategy of Fabius Maximus, and in the shadow of Cannae, Romans had little alternative. The consular elections of 215 marked the beginning of a three-year period when Fabius, his son, and his family (“Beanmen” all) dominated politics. Their strategy of delay was given free rein, and one, not coincidentally, when Hannibal’s Thunderbolt accomplished relatively little.
13

Yet the approach had changed, had altered with circumstances, amounting to Fabian II. Fabian I had simply consisted of dogging Hannibal—avoiding battle while seeking to starve him by weakening his foragers. The updated version was more positional. Battle was still avoided and foragers attacked, but more attention was paid to geography and local politics. After Cannae and the defection of Capua, a military front was developed along the line of the Volturnus River and extended across Italy through northern Apulia between Luceria and Arpi; if at all possible Hannibal would not be allowed to stray farther north. Within this band Fabius attempted to reinstitute his “scorched earth” policy, threatening to pillage the area himself if this was not done.
14
This was likely to have been more bluster than substance with regard to those who remained loyal, but Fabius and the Romans were deadly serious with regard to the less steadfast.

Defectors would be punished. Siege craft among the Romans had not reached the level of technical sophistication it was to achieve later, but Hannibal had to be wary of trying to relieve an invested ally, since the process was inherently casualty producing, and his manpower was precious. Besides, it could leave him pinned down and tactically vulnerable. His problem would only grow worse if more than two targets were under assault simultaneously and he was faced with the prospect of splitting his force. So the manpower-rich Romans had an inherent edge in this form of warfare. Targeted allies who strayed learned to their regret that Hannibal could not protect them, while the terrible price they paid kept the others in line. On the other hand, Fabius remained careful not to give confederates reason to revolt by pressing them too hard for men and money, or by overreacting to rumors of contemplated desertion.
15