ly happens in combat among individual soldiers or small groups of soldiers--largely for granted.
Polybius' description of Cannae is characteristic of both the strengths and the weaknesses of this approach to battle history. On the one hand, Polybius gives a vivid and general clear picture of the overall course of the battle: the clash of cavalry on both flanks, that on Hannibal's left by the river devolving into hand-to-hand fighting on foot; the crunching advance of the Roman infantry, driving back the 'V' of Hannibal's Spanish and Gallic troops and in the process compacting together the Romans themselves; Hasdrubal's sweeping move from one end of the battle to the other to break and disperse the Roman allied cavalry on Hannibal's right; and finally the terrible snapping-closed of the trap, when Hannibal's African troops faced from column into line and hammered into the Roman infantry from both flanks, even as Hasdrubal's cavalry struck at it from the rear. This version of Cannae lends itself neatly to being diagrammed and analysed, as indeed it has been
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