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...
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