Thursday 30 August 2012

Hannibal’s Ghost


I’m off on a trip to Tunisia at the beginning of October, my first to the North African country.  There are various reasons I want to go, among the uppermost is to stand among the stones of Carthage

Of course this is Roman Carthage, not the Punic city.  That was completely obliterated in 146BC in one of the most complete acts of vindictive retribution in all of history.  Carthego delenda estCarthage must be destroyed – Cato the Elder was in the habit of saying to the point of absurdity; and it was, completely.  It was re-founded a hundred years later, a ghost of the past.

Speaking of ghosts, if you want to know why the Romans behaved with such malice you could do no better than turn to The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic by Robert L O’Connell, an American military historian. 

That’s it in a word or, rather, in a name – Hannibal, one of the greatest generals and tacticians in history, the nemesis of Rome, a name fearful enough to send the city’s children scurrying to their beds, least he come.  He came alright; he came in the summer of 216 to the battlefield of Cannae in southern Italy, there inflicting in a single day a defeat and a human tragedy unmatched in all of military history. 

Perhaps you think that an exaggeration, just a flight of hyperbole?  Then I would just ask you to consider this sombre fact.  Fifty thousand Romans died on that day in August, twice as many as the British soldiers killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, during the height of a mechanised war. 

Although O’Connell rightly refuses to dwell on what he refers to as the “pornography of violence” there are enough hints to give one a picture of that terrible day, “If it is possible to conceive of hell on earth, this human abattoir at Cannae must have been equal of any hell that history in all of its perversity has managed to concoct.”  The thing about Cannae is that it was the kind of encounter that victorious generals dream of – a battle of total encirclement.  Neither able to advance nor retreat, the Romans could only stand and die.

The Ghosts of Cannae is about much more than this seminal battle which acts as a centrepiece.  More broadly it paints a picture of the entire course of the Second Punic War, part two of a three round bout, when the two giants of the ancient world slugged it out for dominance in the Western Mediterranean.  It tells the story of some commanding personalities, not just of Hannibal, the most commanding of all, but of Publius Cornelius Scipio, eventually to be honoured with the name of Africanus, his nemesis. 

As I said above, the author is a military historian, and as military history The Ghosts of Cannae excels in so many regards.  But he is not narrowly focused in the way that makes so much of this field hopelessly one-dimensional.  Cannae and the events of the Second Punic War are given a far greater political significance in the evolution of the Roman Republic.  It’s the beginning of the eclipse of the Senate and the system of Consular authority.  In times to come Roman armies would look to their commanders to protect their interests, not the institutions of the Republic.

Scipio, I was fascinated to discover, was the first man in Roman history to take the title of ‘imperator’, less politically loaded than ‘king’ with which his Spanish allies wished to honour him.  In the end it might very well be said that Hannibal did succeed in his aim of destroying the Roman Republic.  Scipio, you see, is the beginning of a succession, one that works through Sulla on through Caesar and maturing with Augustus.  In the end Imperator was a far more potent title than mere King.

Although the Second Punic War is really Hannibal’s War, although he transformed what was essentially a naval into a land-based power, and although he won some startling victories, culminating in the masterpiece of Cannae, for me the real hero of The Ghosts of Cannae is Scipio.  In the end he proved himself to be the better tactician and the better soldier.  But most important of all he proved himself to be the better strategist and the better politician.

The paradox is that for Hannibal Cannae, his great battle of annihilation, was little better than a defeat, at least in practical terms.  He failed to exploit his victory; he failed to march on Rome.  For years after he was to move impotently in ever decreasing circles in southern Italy, while Scipio took the war to Spain and eventually to AfricaHannibal’s was the greatest triumph and the greatest missed opportunity in all of history.

It’s gripping history grippingly told, in prose that is racy and exciting but delivered without loss of proper academic focus.  That’s the thing; history does not need to be dry; history is the most exciting and rewarding area of study, even if one is only looking for simple entertainment.  The author uses the available sources, particularly Polybius and Livy, to great effect in a study that I found largely commendable.

Largely?  Yes, I do have a few criticisms.  I think the maps let the book down badly.  With this kind of thing one really needs more detail.  The Cannae maps were fair enough, if basic, though those dealing with the Spanish theatre served merely as a outline.  And why, oh why was there no map of the Battle of Zama, where Hannibal and Scipio met face to face? 

The bigger problem for me comes with the lacunae in the sources, gaps which the author fills with speculative ‘musts’: there must have been he must have thought and on and on.  No, no, no.  How that sort of thing drives me mad.  If one has no evidence, please, must me no musts! 

I was a little surprised that the epilogue, dealing with the significance of Cannae in military thinking and history, made no mention of Stalingrad, the most significant battle of encirclement and annihilation in the modern age.  It did not escape the attention of German officers caught in the Russian trap that their commander was called Paulus, just as one of the joint commanders killed at Cannae was Lucius Aemilius Paullus.  It’s little coincidences like these that give the story an added piquancy. 

If this book has a lesson, and it assuredly does, it’s one that soldiers would do well to take heed.  It’s this: war really is politics by other means.  Hannibal, for all his brilliance as a commander, never understood that fundamental truth.  Tactics, quite simply, is never enough. If that needs to be driven home then we only have to think of Afghanistan.  

22 comments:

  1. How many empires have sealed their doom in victory? Too many to dismiss the idea that ambition tempts fate. After Cannae stripped so many families of their heirs, the Romans began to seek less costly alternatives that led to legions filled with mercenaries and the sons of remote provinces. It sounds so very contemporary.

    I'm fascinated by the mysteries of Carthage, and I have fantasized about the discovery of a lost library in some deep Saharan outpost. Have a wonderful vacation.

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    1. Thanks, Calvin. Have you read Flaubert's novel Salammbo?

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    2. Ana, you read my mind--in response to Calvin's post I was about to ask you both the same question? One of my favourites! I forgot to mention that I bought HANNIBAL's GHOST for my second son, currently a first year student at Melbourne Uni, when it came out . . .

      By the way, on a different topic, have you seen this? It's worthy of you: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/9513687/We-should-tune-in-to-the-Romney-and-Ryan-show.html

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    3. Now I have! Look out for my "Obama, the Little President Who Wasn't There", just submitted for publication on BrooWaha. It's my personal assessment of Clint Eastwood's performance at Tampa. :-)

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    4. I'm sure it'll make my day . . . ;)

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    5. I had not heard of it, Ana. Thanks, I shall look for it, when I have finished 'Letters from My Windmill.'

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    6. It's sensational stuff, Calvin, set at the end of the First Punic War, a particularly bleak period in Carthaginian history.

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  2. Hannibal would have, could have, should have, but such is life.

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  3. It is quite a scary thought to read 55000 dead in one day. In Australia, there was this news of 5 soldiers that die in Afghan today and the whole country is grieving the loss of these lives. This reminds me of the phrase: to kill one makes a murderer; to kill a million makes a hero.

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  4. The greatest Roman military defeat in terms of casualties was the battle of Arusio 6 Oct 105BC in the Cimeric wars, 80,000 Romans and 40,000 auxiliary allies were killed by an alliance of Germanic tribes.

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    1. Thanks, Anthony, but the only source we have for that is Livy, who was prone to exaggeration. We know for a certainty that Arusio did not impact on Roman consciousness in the same way as Cannae. It almost certainly would if the casualties had been so enormous.

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    2. Valerius Antias, Granius licinianus, Mommsen Theodor, Canon Rawlinson, Gilman Arthur, Etc.

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    3. The greatest lost opportunity in military history was when Hitler hesitated at Dunkirk.

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    4. Anthony, I'm impressed. I'll sift through the early sources at some point. If the accepted view is wrong I will certainly make it clear that it is wrong.

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    5. From a German point of view that's possibly true, though there is still no guarantee that if Hitler had won in the West he would also have won in the East. In 1945 all of Europe might have been overrun by communism, not just the eastern part.

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    6. With more time German Technology would have made the difference, especially if there were no bases to bomb the factories and no western aid for the Bolsheviks, also with a decisive German victory over England many more countries would have allied themselves with the Reich. There would be no civil crime, graffiti or undesirables today.

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    7. Anthony, there is no Utopia; there never will be, only the hell of pursuit.

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