Traismene and Cannae

[Fragony]

That is why we have the expressian 'a pyrus victory'. He won the battle but lost the war.

[Centurion1]

Pyrrhic not pyrus. And you don't mean that this is where the term originated right?

[John the Mad]

That is why we have the expressian 'a pyrus victory'. He won the battle but lost the war.

Except for the Romans it wasn't a Pyrrich victory.

The flower of their manhood,not to mention their middle class,lay dead at Traismene and Cannae yet they went on to not only defeat Carthage but conquer Greece and Iberia.Livy talks about them still being picky enough,even after freeing slaves,of being selective of the farmboys they took into the army as they passed through the countryside.

[CBR]

That is many years after the Cannae and they never experienced that heavy losses after that. The fighting/conquest in Greece happened after the second Punic War was over and Rome never sent more than a few legions.

Depending on birthrate and mortality Rome+allies could have produced maybe 15,000 or more new males every year. So it does not take long to replace the losses in the 17-30 age group that would be most interesting to recruit.

For some time after the war I could imagine it would have been more difficult to fill in the Triarii classes though as they would either have been dead or enlisted for so long that they had already done their 12 years max or however long it was.


CBR

[Pannonian]

That is many years after the Cannae and they never experienced that heavy losses after that. The fighting/conquest in Greece happened after the second Punic War was over and Rome never sent more than a few legions.

Depending on birthrate and mortality Rome+allies could have produced maybe 15,000 or more new males every year. So it does not take long to replace the losses in the 17-30 age group that would be most interesting to recruit.

For some time after the war I could imagine it would have been more difficult to fill in the Triarii classes though as they would either have been dead or enlisted for so long that they had already done their 12 years max or however long it was.


CBR

The senate was down to 100 or so after the war, from a norm of around 300. Cannae saw a particularly high senatorial body count, as senators offered themselves as minor officers in what would be the decisive victory for Rome. Among the dead were Marcus Minucius Rufus, who was Fabius Maximus' co-dictator, and Cnaeus Servilius Geminus, the other consul in the Trasimene campaign.

[Marshal Murat]

One could argue that Hannibal brought down the Roman Republic, since the great loss of soldier/farmers allowed the various senators who survived to grab that farm land and begin latifundias that eventually contributed to their wealth and status and ensured their conservatism against any land reform...

[John the Mad]

That is many years after the Cannae and they never experienced that heavy losses after that. The fighting/conquest in Greece happened after the second Punic War was over and Rome never sent more than a few legions.

Depending on birthrate and mortality Rome+allies could have produced maybe 15,000 or more new males every year. So it does not take long to replace the losses in the 17-30 age group that would be most interesting to recruit.

For some time after the war I could imagine it would have been more difficult to fill in the Triarii classes though as they would either have been dead or enlisted for so long that they had already done their 12 years max or however long it was.


CBR

Yet they managed to form another consular army after Cannae..and it is very hard to find men fit enough to fill even a small army in moderen times.Look at the US in regards to afghanistan and Iraq.

A nation of 300,000,000 people finding trouble recruiting enough physically and moralely fit men to fill the ranks of the Army and Navy.

Rome must have dregged the very bottom of the barrel after Cannae.

[CBR]

USA does not use conscription though and they had a lot more in the armed forces in WW2 and with less than half the population. At its max Germany had more than 10% of its total population in the Wehrmacht which would be the same as USA today having more than 30 million in the armed forces (currently it has about 1.4 million in active and the same in the reserve)


CBR

[Centurion1]

An all volunteer army works better in my opinion. I think we learned that fact amply from nam'. But the generation of the 50's and before was different. They got drafted but they served as if they just volunteered.

[Sarmatian]

Except for the Romans it wasn't a Pyrrich victory.

The flower of their manhood,not to mention their middle class,lay dead at Traismene and Cannae yet they went on to not only defeat Carthage but conquer Greece and Iberia.Livy talks about them still being picky enough,even after freeing slaves,of being selective of the farmboys they took into the army as they passed through the countryside.

Rome and her allies had huge manpower advantage over Carthage and her allies. Even after Trasimene and Cannae Hannibal couldn't compete with that. You could say that the entire campaign was doomed from the start. The fact that it lasted as long as it did is a tribute to Hannibal's skill. I don't remember the exact figures but Hannibal's army that reached Italy was about 50,000-60,000 strong. Romans had over 200,000.

I don't believe Hannibal made a mistake by not attacking Rome directly. His greatest strength was mobility and ability to give battle only when he wanted to. If he decided to siege Rome, he would have lost those advantages and made himself a sitting duck. You can't siege a heavily fortified city if a huge army can appear on your back anytime.

Of course, tenacity of the Romans also played the part. They simply refused to be beaten, something rarely seen in the entire history of the world, comparable to Soviets absorbing their losses in WW2.

Hannibal probably needed a one or two Cannaes more to win. Romans knew that and simply refused to give battle, choosing instead the strategy of attrition. A lot of cities in Italy were fortified and Hannibal simply couldn't allow himself the losses from taking them, even if they were minimal.

We often like to think that wars are won by winning a decisive battle or a few battles. In reality it is the ability to absorb losses that wins the war. Not just in terms of manpower but also in economy. We've seen that time and again. Sweden could several decisive battles against the Russian empire and it was enough for the Russian empire to just win one. American Civil War would be another example.

[nokhor]

i think the comparison with the war between nazi germany and soviet russia are apt. the more cultural differences there are between two great powers, the more brutal a war for survival can become. when you have two despotic states fighting not just for terrritory, but they also have vast linguisitc, ethnic, social, and political differences there is less reason to stop the bloodletting.

for the romans, this wasn't like the first punic war, where a cannae like defeat, say in sicily could maybe have been absorbed and resulted in a disadvantageous peace. this war was being fought in their heartland, in italy. carthage got up to the gates of rome. there was nowhere else to retreat to if they lost rome/italy. so they were willing to take any type of casualties because the alternative was obliteration.

whereas in carthage, the war was more likely seen as a more distant affair, with the loss of provinces as the most to lose. carthage didn't really suffer physically from the war the way that rome did.

the war only became truly real for carthage with the third punic war, when they realized that the romans were bent on the destruction of them and their city. but by then, it was too late of course, they had lost everything else to rome. but they didn't give up. they fought fanatically with tooth and nail with all they had left just as the romans had after cannae. but of course their situation was much more desperate than rome's had ever been.