Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory by Goldsworthy Adrian

Author:Goldsworthy, Adrian [Goldsworthy, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, War
ISBN: 9781541699243
Amazon: B07H7G7CMP
Goodreads: 42423978
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2002-03-01T08:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLE

Opening Moves

We do not know how long it took for the two armies to march from their camps and deploy for battle, but at the very least it must have taken several hours. Throughout this process, each army’s officers, especially the Roman tribunes who seem to have had a particular responsibility for overseeing the army’s deployment, needed to be very active, closely regulating the columns and then ensuring that each unit ended up in the right place and correct formation. At the end of this process, something like 126,000 men and at least 16,000 horses were packed into a few square kilometres of the narrow plain between the Aufidius and the high ground near Cannae. In summer the Apulian soil is dry and the tread of so many feet and hoofs must have thrown up great clouds of fine, sandy-coloured dust to be whipped around by the sudden gusts of the Volturnus wind. A fragment of the Roman poet Ennius, who composed his epic verse history of Rome not long after the Second Punic War, appears to refer to the dust of Cannae.22

Each army marshalled its line behind a screen of light infantrymen and it was these troops who opened the fighting, closing to skirmish with each other. Javelins could be thrown perhaps as far as 30–40m, although their effective range is likely to have been less. Slings and bows–and there may have been a few archers at Cannae though none are specifically attested–had a range of nearer 200m, but it is much more difficult to estimate their effective range. The distance and accuracy of fire was determined far more by the skill of the individual slinger or archer than by the technological limitations of his weapon. Unlike firearms, where the missile is projected by chemical energy, a sling or bow transfers the physical strength of the operator to its projectile. Skirmish combats in this period were conducted at ranges of less than a few hundred metres and usually considerably closer. Most battles in the classical world began with such encounters, but these were very rarely described in any detail in our sources. Cannae is no exception, and we are simply told that the light infantry screens met without either side winning a significant advantage. In ideal circumstances skirmishers were supposed to drive back their opposite numbers and then begin to weaken the enemy’s main line, but such successes were exceptionally rare. Even those close order troops who lacked body armour or helmets usually carried large shields which gave very good protection against thrown javelins, arrows or sling stones. It was also extremely dangerous for the light troops to get too close to a formed line for they were highly vulnerable to a sudden charge, especially if unsupported by close order infantry or cavalry of their own.23

It is improbable that many casualties were inflicted on either side during combats between skirmishers. Thrown and shot missiles could be delivered with accuracy and some force, but were also highly visible in

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