General Hannibal

--much less in 1815--and it still thrives today as a leading power of the second rank, one whose opinions carry very substantial weight in world politics.

Carthage, in contrast, never recovered from the Second Roman War, as it had from the first, and within two generations it was extinguished altogether. It surely was the bitter memory of the Second Roman War that gave Cato the Elder's cry, "delenda est Carthago," so powerful a resonance to his Roman audience, and provided motivation for the Third Roman War, a war of revenge without strategic necessity against an enemy already eliminated as a threat. Insofar as Hannibal's campaigns evoked this catastrophic vengeance, t

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the very gates of Rome itself. The problem was that his advance on Rome was a feint: not a serious threat to the well-fortified and well-defended city, but merely an attempt to draw off the pressure of the Roman siege of Capua. Moreover, the Romans understood it as a feint, and refused to be drawn off from their own strategic plan. The sight of smoke from burning houses and fields drifting over the walls of Rome might be annoying, even alarming, but the Roman leadership knew that the city was in no serious danger. Attempting to counter Hannibal by meeting him in the field would at best be a distraction from the more useful employment of their main force at Capua, and at worst an opportunity for Hannibal to inflict a defeat on them in an unnecessary battle. The siege of Capua, and Hannibal's abortive attempt to raise it by attacking Rome, serve to illuminate the fundamental problem that faced Hannibal on the level of military strategy. The equation of military power in this era--as, indeed, in most historical periods--consisted of two components. One was mobile armies, whose contests against each other were most typically and decisively settled by battles. The other was fixed defensive strong points and their garrisons, wh
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Approximate Word count = 7075
Approximate Pages = 28 (250 words per page)

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