The Fall of Carthage (38 page)
The Roman foot were now almost completely surrounded. Such was their disorder that they could make little use of their numbers, which were still greater than the enemy's. In the milling mass of men there were no formed reserves to be sent forward to reinforce a combat. Everywhere they were steadily driven back, pressing the crowd more closely together and adding to the confusion. Still the Romans fought on, although admittedly for many of them flight was impossible. This phase of the battle is passed over briefly by our sources, and often by modern commentators as well, since it is not a story of tactical brilliance, but of prolonged butchery. It must have taken hours for the Carthaginians to massacre their enemy. The pauses between the brief minutes of furious hand-to-hand combat doubtless grew longer as the Punic soldiers had to overcome their exhaustion before renewing the killing. For hours they pressed on, their shields and the chests of their horses stained red with blood, the edges of their swords blunted by so much killing. Hannibal lost 4,000 Gauls, 1,500 Spaniards and Libyans and 200 cavalry, a total of about 11.5 per cent of his entire army, still more if these figures only included the dead and need to be increased to include wounded. This was a staggeringly high loss for a victorious army in the ancient world and a testament to the long and ghastly struggle fought to destroy the surrounded Roman host.
Our sources give various figures for the Roman casualties. The normally reliable Polybius is obviously confused at this point, because his figures for their losses produce a total higher than the one he gives for the entire army at the beginning of the battle. Livy says that 45,500 Roman and allied infantry and 2,700 cavalrymen were killed and in this case his version seems more plausible. Some 3,000 foot and 1,500 horse were captured immediately, but to these we must add the roughly 17,000 men who surrendered in both the Roman camps by the next day, since only a small proportion of the fugitives who had fled to these were willing or able to fight their way to safety. The losses amongst senior officers had been especially bad. Paullus was killed, allegedly after refusing the offer of his horse from the tribune Cnaeus Lentulus, who had found the wounded consul sitting on a rock in the midst of a mob of fugitives. Geminus was dead, as were Minucius Rufus, both of the consuls' quaestors, and twenty-nine out of forty-eight military tribunes. In addition Livy says that eighty odier senators, or men due to be enrolled in the body at the next census, had also fallen.
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These figures need to be put into perspective. On 1 July
AD
1916, the British army began its offensive on the Somme, suffering an appalling 60,000 casualties on this first day. It was a disaster which still haunts the national psyche, much as Cannae was to remain a powerful image to the Romans for the remainder of their history. In the popular mind the losses to the mostly volunteer army is often equated with 60,000 dead, but in fact out of the total of 61,816, there were 8,170 killed, 35,888 wounded and 17,758 listed as missing, 10,705 of whom were later found to have been killed. The French suffered even higher losses on the first day of Nivelle's offensive the following year. In each case these casualties were spread along a front many miles in length - on the Somme the British Expeditionary Force attacked along a 16-mile front.
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At Cannae, over 50,000 coipses lay heaped up in a few square miles of open plain. Livy's description of the appalling sights on the battlefield on the next day may owe much to his imagination, but does convey something of the horror. He speaks of
‘
so many thousands of Romans, infantry and cavalry mingled', bloodstained men rising from amidst the slain only to be cut down by the Punic soldiers, others unable to walk, begging to be put out of their misery, some who had scraped holes in the ground to bury their heads and smother themselves; and he tells the story of a Numidian, pulled alive from underneath the body of a Roman soldier who, in his death throes, had bitten into the man's nose and ears.
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AD
1916, the British army began its offensive on the Somme, suffering an appalling 60,000 casualties on this first day. It was a disaster which still haunts the national psyche, much as Cannae was to remain a powerful image to the Romans for the remainder of their history. In the popular mind the losses to the mostly volunteer army is often equated with 60,000 dead, but in fact out of the total of 61,816, there were 8,170 killed, 35,888 wounded and 17,758 listed as missing, 10,705 of whom were later found to have been killed. The French suffered even higher losses on the first day of Nivelle's offensive the following year. In each case these casualties were spread along a front many miles in length - on the Somme the British Expeditionary Force attacked along a 16-mile front.
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At Cannae, over 50,000 coipses lay heaped up in a few square miles of open plain. Livy's description of the appalling sights on the battlefield on the next day may owe much to his imagination, but does convey something of the horror. He speaks of
‘
so many thousands of Romans, infantry and cavalry mingled', bloodstained men rising from amidst the slain only to be cut down by the Punic soldiers, others unable to walk, begging to be put out of their misery, some who had scraped holes in the ground to bury their heads and smother themselves; and he tells the story of a Numidian, pulled alive from underneath the body of a Roman soldier who, in his death throes, had bitten into the man's nose and ears.
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Polybius commented that the battle proved that it was better to fight a battle with half as many infantry as the enemy, but with a great superiority in cavalry than to fight with roughly equal numbers of both, but it must be emphasized that it was only through Hannibal's tactical skill that the victory had been possible.
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The Carthaginian general had exploited the diversity of his multiracial army to defeat the homogenous forces of his opponents. Thus his Numidians had kept the Latin cavalry occupied, whilst his heavier horse routed the Romans, and in the infantry centre his wild but ill-disciplined and poorly armoured tribesmen had engaged the enemy in a hard struggle, before they finally gave way and the Romans were lured forward in pursuit, exposing their flanks to the Libyan foot in reserve. It is probably a mistake to assume that the Gauls and Spanish were exposed in this way because they were expendable in comparison to his trained African phalanx. Only the Libyan infantry had the training necessary to wait quietly in reserve and then manoeuvre to trap the enemy. However, the eventual scale of the Punic victory should not conceal the many phases where the complex plan might have collapsed. The Spanish and Gallic cavalry might not have been able to defeat the Romans as quickly as they did, nor was it certain that Hasdrubal would be able to restrain them from pursuing first the Romans and then later the Latin cavalry. The warriors in the centre might not have held out for as long as they did in the face of the tremendous Roman pressure. If they had broken quickly, then the advancing legionaries may still have been in good enough order to face the massively outnumbered Libyans. Hannibal's decision to stay with his centre emphasizes the importance of this. He had had to rely on Hasdrubal's skill to keep his heavy cavalry well under control. Luck had favoured Hannibal, as it has most successful commanders.
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The Carthaginian general had exploited the diversity of his multiracial army to defeat the homogenous forces of his opponents. Thus his Numidians had kept the Latin cavalry occupied, whilst his heavier horse routed the Romans, and in the infantry centre his wild but ill-disciplined and poorly armoured tribesmen had engaged the enemy in a hard struggle, before they finally gave way and the Romans were lured forward in pursuit, exposing their flanks to the Libyan foot in reserve. It is probably a mistake to assume that the Gauls and Spanish were exposed in this way because they were expendable in comparison to his trained African phalanx. Only the Libyan infantry had the training necessary to wait quietly in reserve and then manoeuvre to trap the enemy. However, the eventual scale of the Punic victory should not conceal the many phases where the complex plan might have collapsed. The Spanish and Gallic cavalry might not have been able to defeat the Romans as quickly as they did, nor was it certain that Hasdrubal would be able to restrain them from pursuing first the Romans and then later the Latin cavalry. The warriors in the centre might not have held out for as long as they did in the face of the tremendous Roman pressure. If they had broken quickly, then the advancing legionaries may still have been in good enough order to face the massively outnumbered Libyans. Hannibal's decision to stay with his centre emphasizes the importance of this. He had had to rely on Hasdrubal's skill to keep his heavy cavalry well under control. Luck had favoured Hannibal, as it has most successful commanders.
Hannibal's Dilemma and the Aftermath of Cannae
Hannibal spent 3 August gathering booty and mopping up the survivors in the Roman camps, who capitulated without putting up much of a struggle, most of them still too stunned by the scale of the disaster. Once this was completed the Carthaginians buried their own dead, and are said also to have given a proper burial to Paullus, although the rest of the Romans were left: where they fell. In the towns round about, dazed remnants of the Roman army began to gather. Varro had only seventy horsemen still with him when he took refuge in Venusia. A much larger group numbering thousands had fled to Canusium, where four tribunes, including the 19-year-old Publius Scipio and the son of Fabius Maximus, took charge. Scipio is supposed to have drawn his sword and threatened to kill some young aristocrats who were speaking of fleeing abroad, forcing them to take an oath pledging never to abandon the State. Eventually nearly 10,000 men mustered in the small town and Varro arrived to resume command. The question was, what would Hannibal do now?
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Livy was in no doubt about what he should have done. He describes Hannibal's officers clustering around him and congratulating him on his victory, telling him that
' ... since he had concluded so great a war, he should allow himself and his weary soldiers to rest for the remainder of the day and the following night. Maharbal, the cavalry leader, reckoned that they ought not to delay. 'No,' he said, 'so that you will appreciate what this battle has achieved, in five days' time you will feast as a victor on the Capitol! Follow on! I shall go ahead with the cavalry, so that they will only hear of our approach after we have arrived.' This idea was too great and joyful for Hannibal to grasp immediately. And so he praised Maharbal's attitude; yet he needed time to consider his counsel. Then Maharbal said, 'Truly the gods do not give everything to the same man: you know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but you do not know how to use one.' This day's delay is widely believed to have saved the City and the empire.
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The scene is probably imaginary, and Polybius does not even mention Maharbal in his account of the battle, although it is possible that he was the unnamed commander of the Numidians. Whether or not Hannibal should have led his army on Rome immediately after Cannae became a commonplace of Roman oratory, and generations of schoolboys learned rhetoric by composing speeches on this theme. It is unfortunate that Polybius' continuous narrative ends with Cannae, and none of the surviving fragments from his later books deal with Hannibal's movements and intentions in the immediate aftermath of the battle. Modern commentators have continued to debate the matter and some, notably Field Marshal Montgomery, agreed with Maharbal's verdict. However, most now take the opposite view and argue that an advance on Rome was both impracticable and unlikely to succeed. In the first place Cannae is nearly 250 miles from Rome and it is questionable whether even a small body of cavalry could have covered this distance in five days. It is also argued that Rome was not entirely defenceless and an apparently impressive array of forces in or near the city have been listed, utterly insufficient to fight an open battle, but strong enough to defend fortifications. This, it is argued, would have made it extremely difficult for Hannibal to take the city by direct assault, and he could not afford a long siege, when it would be difficult to feed his army and he would have had to fight off relief attempts by Rome's still numerous armies. In addition to this the belief that Hannibal's strategy was to break Rome's power by causing her allies to defect suggests that it was wiser for the Punic army to stay in the south of Italy, where many communities were disaffected and would soon join him.
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It is probably correct that Hannibal would have been unable to capture Rome if its defenders had put up any sort of resistance. The crucial but unanswerable question is whether the Romans would indeed have fought, or felt forced to sue for peace with the invader who had arrived outside their walls in the wake of his massive triumph. Any other contemporary state would certainly have done so, as Carthage did with Regulus in 255 and would do again with Scipio in 204 and 202. Hannibal now posed a greater threat to the Roman Republic than any other foreign power would ever do throughout its entire history. That on other occasions the Romans endured great defeats without ever losing their belief in ultimate victory does not prove that they would have done so in 216. Nor does their solid defence against Hannibal's actual appearance outside the city in 211, since Rome's fortunes had been greatly revived by this time. Certainly, if any state could have coped with such pressure, then it was Rome, but it is impossible to know that they would have done so.
Hannibal did not attempt to march on the city in 216. Instead his army remained for some time near Cannae, resting and recovering from the exertions and their own heavy losses. Hannibal himself had been very active during the battle and was almost certainly physically and mentally exhausted in the days afterwards. His main concern was to organize the ransoming of the 8,000 or so Roman citizens taken prisoner. A price was agreed and ten representatives chosen from amongst the captives to go to Rome and arrange matters with the Senate. The delegation took oaths to return to the Punic camp regardless of the outcome. With them went one of Hannibal's officers, a certain Carthalo.
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Exchanges of prisoners had been occurring since the beginning of the war and this regular communication between the opposing armies is too often forgotten. Quickly they had revived the conventions of the First War, when the side which had more prisoners to return was paid per head for them and when more than one Roman consul seems to have undergone a period of captivity. Lucius Cincius Alimentus seems to have been captured in the early stages and ransomed, going on to hold the praetorship in 210. According to Livy he cited conversations with Hannibal as the source for some of his statements in his subsequent history of the war. When discontent was at its highest with Fabius Maximus' cautious strategy in 217, his opponents in the Senate denied him money to pay for the ransom of prisoners after he had agreed the details of the exchange with Hannibal. The dictator sent his son back to Rome to sell one of his rural estates, and used this money to redeem the captives. This incident seems to imply that ransoms were normally provided by the State, but it is possible that the old obligation for a man's clients to aid his family in providing the necessary money was still sometimes employed.
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In August 216 the situation was different. The Romans had few, if any, Punic prisoners to exchange, whilst Hannibal had thousands of captives, many of high rank. An important feature of all peace treaties ending conflicts between the great states and kingdoms of the third century
BC
dealt with the terms by which each side's prisoners would be returned. The amount paid to redeem captives was as much a gauge of victory and defeat as the forfeiture of territory or the payment of an indemnity. The addition of Carthalo to the delegation of prisoners suggests that Hannibal expected to begin peace negotiations with the Roman Senate, for by the standards of the day he had very clearly won the war. In the last two years he had incited rebellion on Rome's northern frontier, and won three major bat-ties. He was free to roam at will through the territory of the city and her allies, laying them waste and destroying whatever forces had been sent against him, including now the largest army Rome had ever fielded. In the two years of war, the Romans and their allies had suffered at least 100,000 casualties, over 10 per cent of the population eligible for military service. Casualties amongst Rome's political elite had been especially severe. In the first two years of this war at least one third of the Roman Senate had been killed in battle, and many of those left had lost family members. The catastrophes at sea in the First Punic War had never in this way struck at the heart of Rome's elite. Hannibal repeatedly stressed that he was not fighting to destroy Rome, but for 'honour and power', desiring to remove the limitations imposed on Carthage after the First War and reassert her dominance in the western Mediterranean. He had by this time proved his military superiority and made it clear that if the Romans refused to accept defeat and seek terms, he could continue to inflict real damage on their population and their property. The Romans were beaten and ought to have the sense to realize it.
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BC
dealt with the terms by which each side's prisoners would be returned. The amount paid to redeem captives was as much a gauge of victory and defeat as the forfeiture of territory or the payment of an indemnity. The addition of Carthalo to the delegation of prisoners suggests that Hannibal expected to begin peace negotiations with the Roman Senate, for by the standards of the day he had very clearly won the war. In the last two years he had incited rebellion on Rome's northern frontier, and won three major bat-ties. He was free to roam at will through the territory of the city and her allies, laying them waste and destroying whatever forces had been sent against him, including now the largest army Rome had ever fielded. In the two years of war, the Romans and their allies had suffered at least 100,000 casualties, over 10 per cent of the population eligible for military service. Casualties amongst Rome's political elite had been especially severe. In the first two years of this war at least one third of the Roman Senate had been killed in battle, and many of those left had lost family members. The catastrophes at sea in the First Punic War had never in this way struck at the heart of Rome's elite. Hannibal repeatedly stressed that he was not fighting to destroy Rome, but for 'honour and power', desiring to remove the limitations imposed on Carthage after the First War and reassert her dominance in the western Mediterranean. He had by this time proved his military superiority and made it clear that if the Romans refused to accept defeat and seek terms, he could continue to inflict real damage on their population and their property. The Romans were beaten and ought to have the sense to realize it.
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