n epitome--has been that Maharbal was correct, or at least that Livy was correct in his judgment of events, if not by our standards of historiographical precision, if he put those words in Maharbal's mouth. Field Marshall Montgomery put it unequivocally: "Maharbal," he said, "was right." However, Recent writers such as John Lazenby, from whom the above citation is taken, have tended toward a certain revisionism with respect to this traditional critique of Hannibal.
In the narrowest sense, what Maharbal called for was impossible. Cannae was some three hundred miles from Rome, and neither Hannibal's army or any other could march that distance in five days. Maharbal's cavalry might conceivably cover the ground in that time, but cavalry was the force least suited to an attack on a fortified city. Unless the cavalry arrived with such total surprise that they burst through the city gates before they could be closed, they could do nothing against the walls of Rome. Some fifteen centuries previously, Hittite chariotry had achieved just such a total surprise against Babylon, but Hannibal cannot have known of that, and would have had no reason to consider it a serious option if he did; conditions were too different. Rome was certainly on some sort of war footing, with a strong guard at the gates, which would certainly be closed at first sight of the dust cloud raised by a large force of approaching cavalry.
Even if we ignore the narrow element of timing, the problems of making a sudden descent on Rome would be difficult in the extreme, and the outcome highly uncertain. The army might cover the ground in ten or fifteen days at a forced march, with the cavalry going ahead (as Maharbal suggested) to cut off the city, and perhaps lay waste to the areas immediately outside the walls, as a morale-destroying measure to signal to those within the enormity of their army's disaster and the imminence of worse to come.
Hannibal's arm...