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Chapter 4: Cannae, the most celebrated memorial
of Punic victory
Cannas Punicae victoriae clarissimum monumentum
Hannibal to Prusias, Val Max., 3.7. ext. 6
One man‟s victory is another man‟s defeat and elsewhere Valerius Maximus describes
Hannibal‟s victory at Cannae in August 216 as an unmitigated disaster for Rome:
Cannensem cladem (Val. Max. 1.1.15). Cannae is accepted by many historians 250 as the
biggest military defeat for Rome in the mid-Republican period. Hannibal‟s victory
becomes yet more stunning and the Roman defeat more ignominious given Roman
numerical superiority and the fact that both consuls were sent to Cannae to force the
issue against Hannibal (Hist. 3.107-8.1).
Apart from the general agreement that Cannae was Hannibal‟s high-point and a
disastrous defeat for Rome, there is considerable variation between the presentations of
the event and the figures involved. In part these differences result from assessments that
are made in moral terms. The most negative form follows a tradition that traces Roman
moral decline back to Cannae, a view which underlies the Punica and, as will be shown,
to a lesser extent underlies the Histories. The first section of this chapter compares the
treatments of Cannae and the generals involved in terms of various features including
the location of the event within the text; divine intervention; and exhortations.
The second section of this chapter compares the types of omens and portents
associated with Cannae (even Polybius includes a rare reference to omens prior to
Cannae) to argue for their use by Livy and Silius Italicus to connect Cannae and/or the
generals at Cannae with other events or people. Livy will be shown to create
connections within the third decad and to a First Punic War defeat in book 19, whereas
Silius Italicus, using the same method, draws connections to other texts, particularly
those concerned with the civil war battle of Pharsalus. The effect of the connections in
the Punica is to align the Romans at Cannae with the Pompeians at Pharsalus, and this
carries consequent implications for reading Hannibal as Caesar, though the
250 E.g. Lazenby, 2004, 225, describes the outcome as „perhaps the worst losses ever suffered by a
Western army in a single day.‟ See also Goldsworthy, 2001, 197-221; Daly, 2002.
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