The Tragedy of Hannibal

Perhaps nobody else in history seems as tailor made for a Shakespearean tragedy than Hannibal, or more appropriately, a Greek tragedy--a soldier who has spent his entire life perfecting his skills until they are perfectly conditioned, who has taken a blood oath to defeat his father's nemesis, and meets that enemy in battle time and time again, always victorious.  And yet for all his skill, all his victories, no matter how many times he cuts off the head of his enemy, it simply rests a while and comes back again, stronger than before.  Meanwhile, even in victory, he gets a little weaker.  He is never able to defeat it.   Until finally it grows a head smart enough to defeat him.  Tragic and yet romantic at the same time, romantic in the way that all underdogs are for we all want to believe that it is possible to take on and defeat the machine, if our cause is just and our faith is strong.  And even if the war is lost before it even begins, as Hannibal's was, we always hope that even in defeat some change will come of it, some legacy that will let the world know that we fought and stood for something, and in some cases died for that which we believed was right.  And as the ultimate irony of this tragedy, so it was here.

"Arguably the events of this August day either initiated or accelerated trends destined to push Rome from municipality to empire, from republican oligarchy to autocracy, from militia to professional army, from a realm of free holders to a dominion of slaves and estates."

"Rome had lost a great battle and needed a scapegoat.  Rather than blame the strategists and commanders who had planned it, the powers that be turned on the survivors.  But these ghosts of Cannae would live to haunt the republic.  For one day, legionaries would look to their generals and not Rome for a future and that perspective would spell civil war and absolute rule.  This more than anything else was the battle's legacy."

"To rid itself of the succubus of Hannibal, Rome required a general as good as he, and a truly professional army.  Both were to be found among Hannibal's victims at Cannae, but in taking up the the general and the professional army, the republic drove the first few miles down the road to republican ruin."

"From beginning to end, Scipio's career betrayed a restlessness with the norms and constraints imposed by Roman politics and senatorial domination.  When confronted, he inevitably--if grudgingly--acceded, but in establishing this pattern, he set a precedent of personal ambition that led eventually to Caesar and the collapse of the republic.  So, it seems that in order to save the state from Hannibal, it was necessary to generate the very type of individual who would ultimately destroy it."

All quotes taken from The Ghosts of Cannae by Robert L. O'Connell; Easton Press; Norwalk, CT, 2010.