Cannae Robert L. O'Connell. The Ghosts of Book Review

Cannae

Robert L. O'Connell. The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (Random House, 2010).

Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae is a narrative history for a general audience, based on ancient sources like the historians Polybius and Livy. It describes the invasion of Italy by the Carthaginian armies of Hannibal during the Second Punic War and the battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 BC in which the Roman armies were surrounded and annihilated. One of the bloodiest battles in history, nearly 50,000 Romans died that day and 20,000 were captured and sold into slavery, compared to Hannibal's losses of 6-8,000.[footnoteRef:1] Although the Romans were temporarily demoralized by this immense defeat, they rebounded and eventually pushed Hannibal out of Italy by using a guerilla warfare strategy under Fabius Maximus. In the end, Hannibal went down in history as the type of commander who "won all the battles but lost the war." [footnoteRef:2] Eventually, the Romans found a military genius in Publius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus) who defeated the Carthaginians at Zama in North Africa.Scipio Africanus became the prototype for all the military strongmen with their own private armies who followed, including Julius and Augustus Caesar. Ruthless, cunning and opportunistic, Scipio saved the Republic but was "also the very type of individual who would ultimately destroy it."[footnoteRef:3] In addition, the war devastated the small peasant farmers in southern Italy and led to a large influx of slaves who labored on large estates. Instead of citizen soldiers, Rome increasingly depended on legionaries paid by the own commanders, who regularly used these forces to install themselves in power as dictators. [1: Robert L. O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic (Random House, 2010), p. 163.] [2: O'Connell, p. 14.] [3: O'Connell, p. 261.]

Rome may never have become a great empire had Hannibal followed up his decisive victory at Cannae by a march on the city, as some of his commanders advised him to do. Even among….....