Cannae and the Roman Republic

[sylla]

For some reason, I have the impression that the Carthaginian population was not large and that they would would have to use 'mercenaries', 'soldiers of fortune' from other populations whether they be conquered peoples or not. Unlike Rome, Carthage did not have a history of a citizen army.

Unlike Rome, Carthage had no large citizen base. Plenty of people living amongst them, nominally obedient to their government, but Carthage could not raise a large enough citizen-based army because of that. Therefore they recruited anyone willing to fight, and as often happens in these xases, that meant cash incentives.

 

Carthage was after all wealthier than Rome. It's farmland was richer, it's tax base effectively larger, and in the early days close trading links with Britain meant they almost had a monopoly on the manufacture of bronze. By the time the Iberian campaign had ground to a halt, Carthage also had access to silver mines which funded Hannibals campaign in Italy.

That is a common line of argumentation; sadly, it is essentially incompatible with the existence of a huge Punic navy (reportedly at some times of 500 ships or more) based almost entirely on the recruitment of thousands of definitively non-mercenary Punic citizens, well attested by Polybius and other sources.

Edited June 21, 2009 by sylla

[caldrail]

That is a common line of argumentation; sadly, it is essentially incompatible with the existence of a huge Punic navy (reportedly at some times of 500 ships or more) based almost entirely on the recruitment of thousands of definitively non-mercenary Punic citizens, well attested by Polybius and other sources.

 

Sadly, it's essential to realise that Carthage had different priorities to Rome. They had a large navy? Agreed, they did. So if a sizeable portion of the available manpower is pulling oars on galleys, they can't be rounded up to wield swords. Adrian Goldsworthy wrote a book on the Punic Wars that covers this point adequately.

[sylla]

That is a common line of argumentation; sadly, it is essentially incompatible with the existence of a huge Punic navy (reportedly at some times of 500 ships or more) based almost entirely on the recruitment of thousands of definitively non-mercenary Punic citizens, well attested by Polybius and other sources.

 

Sadly, it's essential to realise that Carthage had different priorities to Rome. They had a large navy? Agreed, they did. So if a sizeable portion of the available manpower is pulling oars on galleys, they can't be rounded up to wield swords. Adrian Goldsworthy wrote a book on the Punic Wars that covers this point adequately.

Who's talking about the "priorities"?

 

QUOTE:

"Unlike Rome, Carthage had no large citizen base". (???)

"Plenty of people living amongst them, nominally obedient to their government, but Carthage could not raise a large enough citizen-based army because of that". (???)

 

Simply stated, if Carthage really lacked a citizen army, another explanation would be required.

Edited June 21, 2009 by sylla

[caldrail]

I'm talking about priorities. All nation states have them.

 

Simply stated, if Carthage really lacked a citizen army, another explanation would be required.

Other than yours? The information I have, which comes from published works on the subject, suggests that Carthage did not have anything like the proportion of citizens that Rome did at the time. Citizens defend out of public obligation more often than not, so yes, for the record, in front of the whole UNRV community, Carthage lacked a citizen army. Was that simple enough?

[sylla]

I'm talking about priorities. All nation states have them.

 

Simply stated, if Carthage really lacked a citizen army, another explanation would be required.

Other than yours? The information I have, which comes from published works on the subject, suggests that Carthage did not have anything like the proportion of citizens that Rome did at the time. Citizens defend out of public obligation more often than not, so yes, for the record, in front of the whole UNRV community, Carthage lacked a citizen army. Was that simple enough?

Well, it's evident that Carthage did have plenty of citizen military men for their navy, not to talk about the army that kept the legions at bay for three full years in Punic War III; not even Polybius (the main primary source for all those published works) denied such evidence.

 

The fallacy of appeal to prestige (Argumentum ad Verecundiam) is always worth a try whenever the evidence doesn't back you, but sadly it is usually not enough.

Edited June 21, 2009 by sylla

[caldrail]

Where is the evidence that Carthage uses citizens to man their oars? The armies raised by Carthage weren't citizens Sylla. They were raised by cash. Even those men who could call themselves citizens demanded cash from the Carthaginian senate when they discovered the mercenaries did so. Hardly patriotic sentiment or civic obligation is it?

 

"The fallacy of appeal to prestige" - Sylla, what are you talking about? Anyway, I've plenty of evidence for my assertions, just not enough time to put it together. Sorry if that doesn't suit you, but hey, thats life. As a matter of fact, apart from a lot of info dumping, you really haven't presented much a solid arguement, and arguably, you've made some howlers. Why else would I be contesting it?

[sylla]

It should be patently obvious by now that Polybius and other Roman sources were extremely biased and chauvinistic, and also that they never seriously tried to study Carthage, just to embarrass it.

 

The obvious problem for any supremacist agenda (children, please don't try them at home) is that they are inevitably full of holes when compared against hard evidence.

 

Trying to analyze the Carthaginian society based on such sources is in many ways like trying to study the history of the European Jews based solely on Mein Kampf.

 

BTW, Melvadius faced the same problem when analyzing the evidence for the Punic child sacrifice.

Edited June 21, 2009 by sylla

[caldrail]

The Roman historians were biased? Yep. They were. As for 'embarrasing' the events concerning Cannae, thats a daft assertion, and to say they never seriously attempted to study Carthage is also a very poor assesment, although one or two versions are painted in supernatural overtones. They may have arrived at different conclusions than you want to read. That in itself isn't bias, nor less than serious history, it's merely preconception at odds with evidence. That's what is obvious to me.

 

Supremacist agenda? It is true the Romans by the imperial period believed themselves to be lessed by the gods to receive an empire without limit throughout time, but then any successful conquest state would have similar leanings, and since Rome had effectively become the masters of the known world by that time it's hardly any wonder they had supremacist leanings. However... The events at Cannae took place in the context of a struggle for dominance. This is a very important physchological matter when the possibility of your entire culture becoming no more than a pile of ash and rubble arises. Such strong feelings often survive in folk memory, and indeed, so they did in regard to Hannibals campaign.

 

Analyzing Carthage as a society isn't reliant on supremacist teaching. Even if that were the case, careful study could still bring useful information to light. I don't believe biased Roman accounts are all we have to study Carthage with. There is after all archaeology, and works not limited to Roman origin.

[Formosus Viriustus]

[sylla]

Edited June 22, 2009 by sylla

[marcus silanus]

It should be patently obvious by now that Polybius and other Roman sources were extremely biased and chauvinistic, and also that they never seriously tried to study Carthage, just to embarrass it.

 

The obvious problem for any supremacist agenda (children, please don't try them at home) is that they are inevitably full of holes when compared against hard evidence.

 

Trying to analyze the Carthaginian society based on such sources is in many ways like trying to study the history of the European Jews based solely on Mein Kampf.

 

BTW, Melvadius faced the same problem when analyzing the evidence for the Punic child sacrifice.

 

 

 

"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with this blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means hetries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master."

 

From Mein Kampf.

 

"When Hannibal asked him to explain what he meant, Monomachus replied that they must teach the army to eat human flesh and accustom themselves to this. Hannibal could not say anything against either the audacity or the practicality of the idea, but he could not persuade himself or his friends to entertain it. It has been said that the acts of cruelty in Italy which were attributed to Hannibal were really the work of this man......"

 

Polybius.

 

Whilst I accept that Polybius has his distinct leanings towards Rome and in the above quote he does not consider the possibility of propoganda, the comparison with the repugnant rants of Adolf Hitler is inappropriate in my view. Hitler did not begin to present Mien Kampf as history, but in part as a summary of what he saw as a natural order in which Jews were behind all the calamaties of the world.

 

Polybius has his faults. He is clearly writing with his Roman patrons in mind. In his criticism of the Epirote's alliance with the Illyrians, he is clearly most indignant because his Achaean compatriots had their support betrayed. by comparing the two, equivalence is given to the writings of on the one hand and at the very worst a propogandist and on the other, the vile intellectual garbage of National Socialism.

 

I can accept the use of an extreme example or comparison in an attempt to drive a point home, but using Mein Kampf somehow sanitises the evil that it contains.

[sylla]

I can accept the use of an extreme example or comparison in an attempt to drive a point home, but using Mein Kampf somehow sanitises the evil that it contains.

Really??? I simply can't understand how using "Mein Kampf" as an example of extreme irrational chauvinism can in any way "sanitise" it.

A social study cannot be based solely on hostile chauvinistic texts; that's the whole and only idea behind my analogy, which I still find perfectly valid.

From what I remember, Mein Kampf has far more unpolluted idiocy than anything else, and it is certainly not an Holocaust manual (that was a late improvisation from the F

[marcus silanus]

I can accept the use of an extreme example or comparison in an attempt to drive a point home, but using Mein Kampf somehow sanitises the evil that it contains.

Really??? I simply can't understand how using "Mein Kampf" as an example of extreme irrational chauvinism can in any way "sanitise" it.

A social study cannot be based solely on hostile chauvinistic texts; that's the whole and only idea behind my analogy, which I still find perfectly valid.

From what I remember, Mein Kampf has far more unpolluted idiocy than anything else, and it is certainly not an Holocaust manual (that was a late improvisation from the F

[sylla]

I have the utmost respect for your prolific contributions to this site. I will inevitably agree or have issue. I was simply uncomfortable with the comparison between a well regarded - if flawed - ancient source and Adolf Hitler.

 

No offence intended.

No one taken .

[caldrail]

Polybius wrote his account of events surrounding Cannae fifty years after they occured - still within living memory perhaps, but many sources of information gone. Infact, despite opinions to the contrary, Polybius was not the first original historian of the campaign. That honour must go to the greek Philimon, whose now lost work was the basis of most accounts that followed, including Polybius and Livy. Polybius in fact goes to some length to assure his readers that his work is justifiable, mentioning at one point the discovery of a bronze tablet marked by Hannibal himself and listing his available forces. Was there such a tablet? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Polybius has no supremacist agenda. That concept is a distortion of Roman politics of the day. The Hannabalistic War was a terrible experience for Rome. They were under attack on home soil by a foreign power. Domination of the Mediterranean was at stake. Rome was in danger of losing everything. The threat felt by Rome was tangible. Fabius could not assert a new dictatorship on the Roman public because the senate was under suspicion of prolonging the war deliberately for their own benefit (History of Rome - Mommsen). The senate felt obliged to make an all out effort to stop the delaying tactics of Fabius and deal with Hannibal directly, thus the unprecedented levy of eight legions that year.

 

This was a national emergency, and as such, left an important mark on the Roman psyche. Florus lists the 'thunderbolts from the gos' that struck Rome during the war with Hannibal, and describes Cannae as 'The fourth and almost mortal wound'.

 

Carthage was an enemy bent on their subjection or destruction after all. The idea of slavery was unpalatable to Roman sensibilities. It's worth noting that a Roman citizen forced to obey another man was considered as if enslaved, even if not actually constrained by status for real. Young men in love were 'emotional slaves' of their intended partner. It's an important concept. The Roman Republic was born out of a struggle for freedom from a lking considered tyrannical. Cassius Dio frequently refers to men becoming enslaved by obligation.

 

Rome was master of Italy, but not the empire of later times. It was the head of a federation of similar, if somewhat weaker, city states (perhaps town-states might be more accurate). Cannae produced some far reaching changes. The Roman economy was seriously harmed. One seventh of the available manpower of military age had been killed in that battle alone. Farmland had been stripped of produce. Settlements put to the torch. Slaves and rogues formed bandit gangs in the countryside producing a level of social strife that Romes confederation of italian city states had been intended to stop, only this time, is was the criminal element that became a threat to stable and peaceful times.

 

In fact, many of Romes federated allies told the Senate in no uncertain terms that if they wanted to wage war in future, then Rome must pay for it - they would no longer supply men or funds for military adventures (Hostilities in the Second Punic War began when Rome guaranteed the freedom of Saguntum, under siege from Hannibal as an excuse to provoke Rome to warfare).

 

Polybius might possibly be accused of writing a pro-Roman account, but then what else would he write? Pro Carthage, as Philimon had done? In a city that had suffered to the point where families were introducing slaves as family members in desperation of maintaining the family line? Where eight thousand slaves were levied as soldiers, something unthinkable in a state where serving in a citizen army was a privilege? Where businesses were forced to conduct themselves without profit, for the good of the state? The war with Hannibal was costly. Not just economically, but politcally. The senate had fallen under suspicion from the public. The Roman allies wavered, both during the campaign and afterward, and to preserve the peace that Rome had won, the allies would find themselves with reduced clout and eventually formalised as parts of Roman Italy. That was not a supremacist ideal of Polybius at all.

 

Livy on the other hand wrote his history at the time of Augustus. There is no supremacist agenda there either, even though he lived at a time when Rome was indeed supreme. If anyone should be accused of it, surely it would be Livy, at a time when Rome had "been granted with an empire without limit for all time" by the grace of the gods. He didn't.

 

The image of Rome as a facist state is in no way correct for the time of Cannae. It was a republic, with democratic institutions that encompassed far more of it's population than hated Carthage. They went to war to guarantee the freedom of a town in northern spain, an independent ally that had been granted that status by the Romans, who, it was described by one writer, paid the utmost respect to treaties, and did so against a man from an enemy state that had recently lost a war against Rome, led by a man who had sworn vengeance against the Romans. It's very easy to see Rome as a conquest state, as an aggressor, but the excesses of the late Republic and imperial eras do not apply.

 

. Rome was after all a state in which legality was an important issue. It was one of their founding principles after the immoral behaviour of Tarquinus the Proud. The greedy conquests of personal armies was a matter of the future, not of the time of Cannae, whose army was no more than an annual citizen levy until another century or more had passed.