Eh, Hannibal was hardly someone to sit on his butt letting opportunities sail by. The fact is, as brilliant a victory as Cannae was it wasn't total - a decent chunk of the Roman army including most of the cavalry got away, and had started reorganising in a matter of days - and it had put a severe dent in Big H's manpower pool, chiefly in the infantry arm; the Iberians and Gauls who'd had the somewhat questionable honour of holding up the massive Roman column in the center had suffered their share of casualties. Neither had the destruction of the trapped Roman foot been exactly a cakewalk.

Quite simply, Hannibal's army was in no condition to do much anything impressive before some R&R, nevermind now with a mobile Roman force at loose in the vicinity. The latter may not have been even remotely strong enough to be any threat to Hannibal's force in a straight fight, but it takes a lot less to be a major problem and limiter in strategic terms.

Quote Originally Posted by Intranetusa
Didn't the medieval Europeans believe that taking bathes would wash away your soul - so they would never take baths? :/ ??
Not really. I don't quite recall the exact reasoning involved, but it was more that bathing simply wasn't considered important; most people did it in some form at least every now and then, just very rarely. Only some reigious ascetics, such as some monestic sects, actually wholly declined to bathe - resulting in a strong whiff of what was termed odour sancte...

That sounds somewhat like you're mixing the matter with early superstitions about photography you know...