My first serious military history book. It follows Hannibal's battles leading up to Cannae, as well as Cannae itself. There's a lot of nitty-gritty military history which I found, frankly, extremely tedious: How many soldiers did each side have, exactly? Who was leading which cavarly charge? Where exactly in relation to the river did the battle take place? But that's part of a military history, I suppose.

Cannae is the ancient battle. Maybe Gaugamela comes close, but for some reason people don't really care as much about Alexander. Alex was too weird, his successor Hellenistic Kingdoms were a fucking mess to keep track of, and no one really claims to be his spiritual successor today. They did have the best art of the time, but I think this works against them... People don't like artists. But people somehow feel like the Romans were just like them. They feel like they "get" the Romans.

Which is weird, because what you get in this book is what a bunch of psychos the Romans were. They were like Imperial Japan, just an absolutely fanatical tribe that scared the hell out of anyone around them.

The Carthaginians feel much more like "us" in a weird way. Corrupt, inept, ruled by a strange cabal of merchants in Carthage who seem more interested in picking each other's pockets than winning wars. And out of this morass comes our hero, Hannibal. He's got the classic origin story: His father fought the Romans in the first Punic War. Vowing vengence, he makes his son swear an oath to never stop hating the Romans. A life devoted to the single-minded pursuit of vengence... Lovely.

Like every hero movie, he has to do it alone, but he also can't do it alone, so he joins up with a motley crew of Celts, Spaniards, elephants, Numidians, and Balearic slingers. The Romans have already made plenty of enemies, and it doesn't seem like Hannibal needs to do a lot of convincing to get people to sign up on this anti-Roman crusade. And they absolutely crush the Roman army: Again, and again. Hannibal's multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-continental troops are much more disciplined and unified than the Romans: Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, racists!

Slowly, the Romans start losing it. Hannibal is rampaging around the countryside, slowly getting Italian cities to join with him. The Romans start getting weird. They bury some virgins alive, real old-school Indo-European shit. And they put together their largest army yet, so they can crush Hannibal and his troops. It's a mess of an army. Fresh troops with little experience, and so large that it becomes totally impossible to maneuver. And now you know the story, the story every single nerd knows better than any story: Cannae.

There's a morality-tale quality to Cannae, David v. Goliath, the Romans destroyed by their own hubris and all that. For those uninitiated in the mysteries, a vastly outnumbered Cartheginian army "allows" the Roman army to push through its center. The Romans, assuming that they've routed the Cartheginians, push through, only to be surrounded by the Cartheginian flanks. The Cartheginians encircle the Roman army and slaughter the surrounded Romans until they're too exhausted to event swing their arms.

The real story isn't radically different, but it is more interesting. For one, a lot of stuff about ancient warfare finally clicked. For example, ancient armies really only fought when both sides agreed to it. Not for gentlemanly reasons or anything like that, but because these armies were so unwieldy, if one army didn't feel like fighting, they could very easily just walk away. So before Cannae there's this tense will-they-won't-they, even more tense because the Romans have this weirdo system where they alternate leaders every day. Hannibal is running out of food and the Romans are running out of patience, and eventually they agree to do battle.

The book also explains how ancient (pre-modern, really) warfare worked. It is both obvious and totally counter to the way it's always depicted. First, the infantry charge: It didn't exist. The lines would approach each other, not at a run but at a quickened pace. Then they would approach each other and then sort of hack away at each other, trying to get at the exposed parts (left-legs, face, right-arm). At this point there's no longer a single "line" of battle, but a sort of fractal line, with small domains of people lined up. This hacking away only lasted for a few minutes, because it's very very tiring. So both lines would step away from each other while they caught their breath. The mortality rate was extremely low. Soldiers would slowly accumulate non-fatal cuts and wounds on these exposed parts, eventually succumbing to a combination of bloodloss and exhaustion. Those that got injured would usually retreat back deeper into the line and be replaced. Most soldiers were much more interested in not getting killed than killing, leading to very defensive combat.

And this was only a single line of people. Another "duh" moment: The vast majority of soldiers were neither fighting nor in any immediate danger. But they were a sort of moral wall, keeping the front line supported and fighting. Now put yourself in the, uh, sandals of one of these middle-of-the-pack Roman soldiers. You've been standing here for an hour. All you hear is noise and yelling. You can't see anything because of the dust. Slowly you notice your comrades getting a little antsy. They're looking around, looking for an exit. Holy shit, are we losing? You can't see the front line, no way to know. Yes, you're certain now, we're about to be routed. Well, if we're running, I don't want to be left holding the bag, so to speak. You start running, and everyone starts running. You've been routed. And now the bloodbath begins. The battle goes from extremely low casualty to extremely high. The pursuing army is stabbing your army in the back, stabbing their calves, or just trampling over you. This is why you put your most loyal and experienced troops (the Roman triarii) in the back. They're not there to fight, they're there to prevent the middle from running. Because if you ran, there's also the cavalry: A bunch of sadistic aristocrats turning you into a pin-cushion. If you've been in a protest and been charged by horses or armored police, this whole thing feels very familiar.

Anyway, Hannibal crushes the largest Roman army. Any other country would've sued for peace. But this is a zombie movie, and Hannibal is the protagonist unloading clip after clip into this unstoppable horde. The Romans just keep on coming. They couldn't be stopped. Eventually Hannibal loses, Carthage is razed to the ground, and he spends his remaining days kicking around the Mediterranean, in some Hellenistic court or other, eventually dying by poison as the Romans surrounded him. There's no justice in the world.

Rating: Quinque milites romani morituri