The Battle of Cannae

The strategic defeat was equal in magnitude to the sheer loss of soldiers. Carrhae and Teutoberg Forest both took place at the edge of the Roman zone of control (and both set essentially permanent limits on Roman expansion in their respective regions). Trebia might also be said to have happened at what was then the edge of the Roman zone; of all the battles considered, only Lake Trasumennus and Adrianople itself might be said to have happened well within the contemporary Roman heartland. Moreover, both Trebia and Lake Trasumennus, disastrous as they both were, left substantial Roman armies still in the field, armies comparable in strength to those that had been lost, and even after Adrianople the empire still had other armies to call on.

Cannae, in contrast, left Rome effectively without an army in the field; the Romans had thrown practically everything they had at Han

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se of the Roman pilum would have been precisely to break the momentum of such a mass charge (whether by phalangites or troops in more open order): The wave of hurled pila might only bring down a few attackers outright, but many more would be thrown off-stride by the effort of warding them off, or by having the heavy pila stuck in their shields. It is worth noting again that the third line of Roman forces, the triarii, were still at this time armed in phalangite fashion. Their role must have been to deal with any serious collapse in the lines in front of them in their sector by mounting a mounting a local charge, with spears leveled in phalangite fashion, to stop the incipient breakthrough and restore equilibrium. Roman armies were therefore equipped and arrayed in a way that allowed them to stop any headlong mass charge, and cause the battle to devolve into a stand-off, in which their superior ability to pull back and replace front-line units would allow them to outlast the enemy. In facing Hannibal, however, the Romans' ability to stall a charge along the front lines hardly applied. The last thing Hannibal wanted was a sudden mass collision along the front, followed by a few minutes of high-intensity combat leading to a d
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Approximate Pages = 23 (250 words per page)

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