Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
Why didn't Hanibal attack Rome?
This discussion has been closed.
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Hi - I've finally got around to watchting the Â鶹ԼÅÄ programme on Hanibal (complete with military historian from Time Commanders!) and one thing really bugged me - no one explained why H just wandered around Italy for years, without attacking Rome itself. WHY not? What was stopping him?
The programme made the point that you can't win a war till the other side concedes defeat (something Hitler and Napoleon might have learnt, both in respect of GB and Russia!)(and which the Iraqui 'insurgents' are teaching the US daily, sadly). BUT it never explained why Hanibal didn't do to Rome what Rome then went on to do to Carthage. Delenda est!?
Thanks for any explanations -
Eliza
PS - for bonus points, what's the current view on whether the Carthaginians did or did not humanly sacrifice their first borns?! -
Message 2
Posted by ElistanOnVacation (U3933150) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Something to do with not being able to maintain discipline in his multinational force during a protracted siege, I believe
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Message 3
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
PS - for bonus points, what's the current view on whether the Carthaginians did or did not humanly sacrifice their first borns?!
Ìý
Bayonets hadn't been invented yet so the Roman propaganda failed to mention them. -
Message 4
Posted by jonsparta (U3871420) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Carthage did not support Hannibal with supplies or the much need siege equipment to take Rome. they were unwilling or unable?? to give their full support. this meant that even if Hannibal was able to get the right equipment and engineers Rome would still be able to use the seas to keep itself going. Carthage had steadily lost its command of the seas, which left Hannibal fighting a losing battle with Rome.
As for him losing control of his army in a protracted siege. i doubt it, because he was able to hold it together through years of campaigning in Italy! -
Message 5
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Jonsparta,
that was exactly what I learned in a Roman-Catholic College in Belgium during my Latin-Greek Humaniora.
Have to leave in a hurry. Have to accompany my wife on a visit to let apply a visit treatment and foot care. In the black. (damned: that difficult English. If it comes to common language. I mean on the black market, without mentioning it to the fisc. Although we can afford it, it is always nice to do the black circuit...)
See you tomorrow and kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 6
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
This is one of the great questions of history which is why the TV programmes rarely address it in detail, because nobody knows for sure. There are a few theories.. I apologise for th elength of this response, but it's not easy to summarise.
The simplest theory is that his army, although victorious, was too exhausted to go anywhere, although that seems unlikely given their other achievements. A couple of days; rest should have had them moving again.
One theory is that Hannibal did not have siege equipment so approaching Rome would achieve nothing as he could not storm the place. There is some merit in this theory as Hannibal was not a great siege general. His attack on Saguntum in Spain took weeks (months? Going from memory here) before the city fell. I think he only managed to take one small city by storm in Italy, although he got into others by subterfuge or inhabitants helping him.
The other thing that supports this view is that, according to some stories he did actually go to Rome some years later in an attempt to try to draw Rome's legions back to protect the city. According to legend, he actually walked up to the gates and threw a spear into them. The Romans simply sat inside and ignored him. Allegedly the very piece of land he was camped on was sold by one Roman to another without the price being affected by Hannibal's presence. I have to say, this sounds a good story, but as it was told by the Romans, it has to be treated with a great deal of scepticism.
The big flaw in this theory is that someone of Hannibal's drive and experience could surely have built siege equipment. He was in Italy for 18 years, for goodness' sake. Enough time to chop down several forests and built loads of siege engines. The counter argument is that Rome's walls ran for several miles and he did not have enough men to surround it. This may well be true, but I would counter that he did not have to surround it and starve it out, he had to storm it, and could surely have done so, even at considerable cost by concentrating his forces at one part of the wall, or using some of his famous deception and subterfuge tactics.
The other theory which has some weight is that Hannibal underestimated the political power of Rome. By any normal convention, he won the war after Cannae. Every other nation (I use the word loosely) would simply have acknowledged defeat. Rome was very different. Their view was that a war was only finished when the enemy was utterly destroyed or had utterly submitted. The ignominy of having paid the Gauls off years before still rankled with Rome. They would not surrender again.
Combined with this refusal to accept defeat, Hannibal believed that Rome's Italian allies would come over to him when they saw how he had won the battle. In this he was badly mistaken. Rome's allies knew Rome,. They benefited from their alliance and the people strived for Roman citizenship. Hannibal knew this which is why he often released allied prisoners without ransom, trying to show he was anti-Roman, not anti-Italian. However, Rome's allies also knew that, if Rome was not utterly destroyed, she would still be there and they knew how Rome treated her enemies. What could Hannibal offer in return? Freedom from Rome? We do OK being Rome's ally, thank you very much. Carthage is a long way away and how do we know she will be able to protect us?
Sad as it is after such a great victory, I'm afraid my view is that he simply made a mistake. He expected the Italian alliance to crumble and for Rome to seek terms. He expected Carthage to support him by sending more troops. None of these things happened. Rome was able to rebuild her armies quickly and, by refusing to fight Hannibal, but keeping him confined to the south of Italy, where he was effectively abandoned by Carthage as his political enemies were in the ascendancy, he was effectively neutralised. To leave was to admit defeat. To stay without support was to achieve nothing.
For such a great man, it was a terrible result from one decision.
Just to wrap up, on the "baby killing Carthaginians" theory, there has been a pro-Carthaginian TV documentary where the presenter put forward the very reasonable proposition that the tophets are actually crematoria dedicated to children because the Carthaginans revered their children so much, Infant mortality would have been as bad in Carthage as anywhere else in the ancient world yet there are, apparently, very few burials of Carthaginian children. So what happened to them all?. He claimed that, far from sacrificing children, the Carthaginians set aside the tophets as places where dead children would be cremated and kept together.
While it is possible that the Carthaginians did sacrifice children, the story does come from the Romans, so again it must be suspect. The Carthaginians did, allegedly, crucify unsuccessful generals, so they could be drastic if need be, but then, so could the Romans who were not above a bit of human sacrifice now and again if it suited them. Mind you, they tended to sacrifice slaves, so that was OK, because they didn’t count as real people. -
Message 7
Posted by mickeymay (U3600416) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Quite right, a bit like Blair's labour party and the EEC.
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Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
In fact the Romans exercised the right to 'expose' unwanted children (as many infant females found to their cost) merely on the whim of the father, whose decision was based often on heartless and hard-nosed business principles, and who saw no contradiction between this widespread practise and the notion of being civilized in the slightest. This meant leaving the newborn infants to die slowly of exposure to the elements, starvation, or attack from scavengers and wild animals (or worse), a far cry from the systematic and controlled 'sacrifice' principle that they attributed to the 'savage' Carthaginians and deigned to look down on.
Given that we have only Roman texts to support the claim that Carthaginians even did this, I would be inclined to dismiss the allegation as propaganda. -
Message 9
Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Thank you for all of your replies.
It does sound like Hanibal was at a loss when the Romans 'failed to surrender' and therefore the entire invasion was ill-conceived (hmm, thinks Iraq) because there was no alternative when the enemy didn't react they way they 'should' have. Maybe if the Carthaginians in Carthage had simultaneously rebuilt their navy (and I'm not sure why they didn't?) and fielded that by sea against Rome, and Hanibal also attacked Rome by land, they would have succeeeded.
I wonder whether Cannae - the programme said the highest loss of life in one day EVER, even the Somme! - backfired on them as well. If everyone in Rome had suffered loss of family, etc, then the resolve against Hanibal would only have been strengthened. Talk about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind...
As for the child sacrifice - good point about the lovely roman habit of exposing newborns! however, I guess the 'horror story' about the Carthiginians was that they were supposed to have immolated their children I think - even more horrific. I do recall that other semitic peoples, including one of the 'good' kings of Judah, did the same with his first born - basically chucked him into a hollow metal statue heated from below. UNBELIEVABLE.....and that was written BY Jews ABOUT Jews (good Jews too!)so obviously they weren't that fussed about doing it. I think the phoenoicans also practised similar atrocities.
Why has Punic not survived as a language by the way (or has it?) - ie, that only the Romans ever wrote about the Carthaginians?
Thinking about it, the Carthaginians sound rather like the Muslim extremists today, in the sense of 'Romans = Civilised West' and Carthaginians = Savage Islam.
Eliza -
Message 10
Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Reference Cannae -
Does military strategy of line facing line come down to either turning flanks back on themselves or using flanks to enclose the enemy?
Eliza -
Message 11
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Tony, don't we only assume that Hannibal should have marched on Rome while the city was defencless because Livy tells us he should have done so? On the basis of his behaviour in Cisalpine Gaul Hannibal was looking to re-enforce his men with local volunteers from Italy after dismantling the system of alliances Rome had built up that aided Roman manpower. As such the Carthaginians found many new friends outside Appenine Italy after Cannae but few in the peninsular itself and there was precious sign of any material assistance from the new allies in any case. In fact the Capuans, who did choose to renounce their alliances with Rome, demanded that none of their citizens should be forced to serve under a none Capuan Leader. Pride in individual civic autonomy and citizenship were alive and well in Italy at this point while its devaluation and the susequent desire for Roman citizenship does not start until the second century BC. The rest of Italy appears to have taken one look at Hannibal and more precisely his motley force of Spaniards, Gauls and North Africans and asked themselves would this lot protect them from the bandits and barbarians they so looked like? Perhaps more pertinently when they went home who would protect them from their neighbours? Again the concerns about guaranteeing civic autonomy overide those of maintianing independence in all their foreign and domestic affairs.
Without re-enforcements Hannibal was in no position to hold down the city and Mahabal's cavalry were the most important feature of his domination over slow moving consular armies thus could not be seperated from the main body of his army. It seems he was not keen on dispersing his depleted infantry across a city the size of Rome. -
Message 12
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Rome obliterated the Carthaginians after the last Punic 'war' (in reality a contrived affair by the Romans against a fatally weakened enemy to achieve just that ambition). They effectively removed its centre of administration - for ever - and left the Carthaginians a simple choice, absorption into the Latin speaking world or dispersal to its peripheries. In the process they destroyed almost all Carthaginian records (we are left with some texts relating to agricultural administration and little else), and what they didn't expunge was quickly lost in any case by a people who had no vested interest remaining in their heritage and were positioned in what became a cockpit for feuding Roman factions for a long time to come.
The language, like the rest of their culture, could not survive such an onslaught. -
Message 13
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Really, so just what language did Augustine of Hippo's flock speak?
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Message 14
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 2nd June 2006
Latin.
Punic survived in pockets until around the 5th century AD. Augustine didn't have a 'flock' as such, except in a monastic sense, but it would be reasonable to presume that during his career in Hippo he reserved his use of Punic for the rare occasion when he had to communicate with a rustic from the mountainous interior. The majority of his order and all those within communicable radius would have used Latin as their common (and mother) tongue. During his own lifetime he would have seen the necessity for speaking Punic diminish and by his death it had all but disappeared. A hundred years later and it was history.
The Romans dealt Punic a fatal blow, but the death throes can take quite a while. Really. -
Message 15
Posted by jonsparta (U3871420) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
to me, Hannibal's best cavalry commander Mahabal best sums up Hannibal: 'you know how to gain a victory but not how to use one.' something i reckon you could not say of Alexander or Caeser.
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Message 16
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
Well if youi take the view that the difference between a language and a dialect is that the fornmer posseses a standing army then it seems likely that Punic did cease to be a major international language after the second Punic War. I was under the impression that the incorperation of the Berbers into the Islamic Caliphate when their conversion to islam was allowed was the final death knell for Punic dialects.
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Message 17
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
The destruction of Carthage took place after the third Punic war, the one to which I was obviously referring. As to the language of the Carthaginians, referring to it simply as a Berber dialect is quite disingenuous of you since it was more correctly styled a direct offshoot of the Phoenician tongue used by its colonising founders, not strictly related at all to the languages used by its neighbours. On the other hand the distinctly seperate Berber dialects of North Africa not only survived their brief inclusion in the Roman world (brief by anthropological standards) but also their later absorption into the Islamic sphere, contrary to your stated belief. In fact many of the Berber dialects have gone on to become the official languages of modern day North African countries.
Have I read your reply correctly or has its ambiguities led me astray? -
Message 18
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
The latter I'd say. We just don't get many reports of who was saying what after the Vandals arrived in North Africa thats all.
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Message 19
Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
That's fascinating - what countries still use Berber then?
Has Poneician itself survived from Palestine (I mean on documents/artefacts etc.
I do find it odd - and sad- that an entire civilisation's own records of its existence are barely there (there are some stelae, I think?)
Eliza -
Message 20
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
As far as I know Morocco and Libya have Berber has a joint-official state language, probably others do too (in Algeria for example it is spoken by 25 percent of the population).
Phoenician gave rise in turn to Aramaic, Hebrew and even Greek. Its last use in a near original form was as Punic, which is generally considered (despite lolbeeble's insistence) as having gone past the point of no return on its way to extinction in around 200AD.
As a 'child' of the proto-Canaanite tongue Phoenician has been well represented in the acrchaeological record in the Middle East. But in the form of Punic, its North African version, the record is not as rewarding - and we have largely the Romans to thank for that. -
Message 21
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
Who was speaking what after the Vandal incursion into North Africa is rather well understood, I would have thought, especially as the dialectic spread and importation of newer languages coincided very succinctly with the known political developments in the region. In my own time studying language development the North African region was considered - in comparison with Europe for example - a model of continuity and a much better yardstick of linguistic development demographically than any other area west of the Chinese Himalayan borders.
Are you sure we are talking about the same Africa? -
Message 22
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
The names attached to said dialects in that Punic seems to drop off the radar so far as terminology is concerned even if Donatists were still prominent in the area. Procopius refers to many of the areas that Augustine classifies as Punic speakers as Lybians to distinguish them from the the Berbers but then the Greeks had always classified Africans by that name.
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Message 23
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
You seem to think that Punic was a Berber dialect (it's hard to make out your syntax sometimes). It most definitely wasn't, though in the hayday of Carthage it would doubtlessly have influenced the development of neighbouring languages, including those now classed as Berber.
By the time of the Vandals though that day was long gone so in the context of this discussion what happened next in North Africa is irrelevant, except to say that the Berber tongues survived and Punic didn't. -
Message 24
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Saturday, 3rd June 2006
I'd suggest that's as much the fault of some of our sources. I don't doubt that was the case given that what i recognise as punic as opposed to Phoenician culture (the dreaded c word, we might as well throw all semblence of certainty out the window now...) is the mix of Levantine and native practices in North Africxa and later Sardinia. One might consider the century between the destruction of Carthage and the settlement of Latin veteran colonies in North Africa no doubt continued the process of blending of Phoenician and indigenous dialects in the surviving urban settlements. It strikes me that as Augustine can still comment that Latin speaking colonia in parts of North Africa are still islands amongst non Latin speakers suggests that Latin did not come to dominate the area and was not the first language of a majority of North Africa's residents. This is harrdly surprising as after the first century BC North Africa was lightly garrisoned with Roman troops. One could argue that Latin speakers would have become an even lower proportion of the province of Africa as urban living declined in the late Empire but this would also have affected the Punic speaking urban centres of North Africa as well.
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Message 25
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Monday, 5th June 2006
Reference Cannae -
Does military strategy of line facing line come down to either turning flanks back on themselves or using flanks to enclose the enemy?
ElizaÌý
Elizabeth,
This question seems to have been overlooked in the responses to the language issues. Protection of flanks is one of the key features of warfare. If you have two lines of troops armed with weapons of equivalent effectiveness, the battle turns into a slogging match. There are a couple of things a general can do. One is to turn the battle in your favour is to get round the side and attack from there or, even better, the rear. Of course, the enemy is trying to do the same thing.
Of course, .they had to watch that they did not thin their line so much in an attempt to lengthen it, and thereby improve their chances of flanking, that the line was not strong enough to hold a stronger line attacking in the centre. Traditionally, cavalry were used to protect the flanks on the basis that they could move a lot faster to cover any threat. If fighting a defensive battle, generals would seek to have their flank protected by impassable terrain
The other factor, of course, is concentration of firepower. I use the term loosely, but if a general concentrates his best troops, or a greater number of troops, in one area of the battle and uses them to create a local superiority them even if outnumbered, a battle can be won by destroying one part of the enemy army.
The trick, of course, was to balance the two tactics, concentrating forces and trying to outflank the enemy, by achieving one without compromising the other.
That’s a bit simplistic, but you’ll find examples in many battles of someone using one or the other tactic.
What Hannibal did at Cannae was to achieve both. His cavalry drove off the Roman horse and the Romans, as Hannibal knew they would, tried to concentrate their force into a central thrust. Thanks to his centre holding while still falling back he was able to push his flanks forward and then his cavalry came back and completed the encirclement. Because the Romans wer so tightly packed, only the men at the edges of their formation could actually fight, so all around their army, Hannibal achieved superiority in numbers of men who could actually fight., The Romans in the middle could do nothing except wait their turn to be killed. -
Message 26
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Monday, 5th June 2006
Tony, good points, I thought the manouvre at Cannae was helped by the Roman formation of three lines contracting in order to try and press forward into what they percieved as the weak point of the Carthaginian line that allowed the infantry on the Carthaginian left and right to wrap around the Roman flanks. This further restricted the area each Roman soldier had to move in as well although I'm not sure the term friendly stab is entirly appropriate for what is likely to have come to pass. Hannibal's skirmishers had succeeded in their role of masking the depth of troops in the centre of the Carthaginain line however and this contributed to the Roman armies downfall. The cavalry completed the encirclement by attacking the rear of the Roman formation.
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Message 27
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Monday, 5th June 2006
Lolbeeble,
I must admit I have always had great admiration for the men at the centre of Hannibal's line at Cannae. Supposedly, they were his weakest troops, the unreliable Gauls, yet they stood up to the biggest army Rome had put into the field and did not break even when they bore the full brunt of the attack.
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