A Companion to the Punic Wars by Dexter Hoyos

Author:Dexter Hoyos
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2010-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Roman Strategy and Aims

in the Second Punic War

Klaus Zimmermann

How could the Romans win a war which they plainly seemed to have lost on the battlefield? If Charles de Gaulle's famous exhortation of July 1940 (“La France a perdu une bataille! Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre”) fits a situation in ancient history, it is that of the evening of 2 August, 216 BC , when eight legions had fallen at Cannae as sacrifice to the tactical superiority of Hannibal, and on Italian soil no Roman army any longer existed.1 Instead of accepting the result of the defeat, Rome carried on the struggle and gradually recovered. Roman successes in Iberia forced Carthage in the end to retreat to her North African territories, and 14 years after Cannae Scipio's victory at Zama led to a peace that condemned Carthage to political insignificance. Rome's power monopoly in the western Mediterranean was the result, and simultaneously the prerequisite for its ensuing advance into the East. The Second Punic War, therefore, constitutes a turning-point that has decisively influenced the course of history in our cultural world from antiquity onwards.

Yet even viewed on its own “Hannibal's War,” as it is often called from a Roman perspective, is much more than the sum of impressive battle events and leading personalities: rather, its distinctive fascination lies in the spectacular transformation of a destructive defeat into a splendid victory. Moreover, the years from Saguntum to Zama were anything but a straight line to Cannae and back. More than once situations and opponents demanded delicate and fundamental decisions from the Senate, and it ranks among the crucial questions in the history of the middle Republic how far did better strategic concepts contribute — along with individual generals’ ability, superior resources, and “the gods” in the form of good fortune — to Roman success in this war. The key to the answer lies — as so often — in the details: a look at Rome's conduct at decisive moments of the Second Punic War will show us what the Romans wanted and in what ways they achieved their aims.

Rome's Aims in the Saguntum Crisis

An analysis of Roman strategy during the Second Punic War cannot avoid discussing first the aims for which the Romans entered on this war. At first glance the situation seems to be clear: when the Iberian coastal city of Saguntum came within the pull of Carthaginian expansion, its politicians turned to Rome for help. Roman envoys thereupon warned the Carthaginian general Hannibal against an attack, as the city stood under Roman protection. That Hannibal nonetheless besieged and destroyed Saguntum forced the Senate in 218 to react. So Roman, or Roman-influenced, tradition depicts the proceedings: the punishment of injustice against amici populi Romani and therefore the safeguarding of its own credibility was allegedly the purpose of Rome's military intervention, which is presented to us as the unavoidable reaction to a deliberate Carthaginian provocation.

Our chief authority is the historian Polybius, who does constantly strive for neutrality within

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