CANNAE AND CAPUA
By A. USHER
FORTUNATE is he who can combine pleasure with duty, as I was able to recently, when in the course of a day's work I found myself at lunch-hour on the ancient battlefield of Cannae. An Italian peasant left his fields and, shouldering his mattock like a battle-axe, assumed the role of guide, leading me first to what he called the necropolis. It was a cemetery, located in a corner of an orchard and dating back to before the time of the battle, but a part of it had been reserved for the Carthaginians who fell on that occa- sion. The remains of the far more numerous Roman slain are indistinguishable from others buried there who have no connexion with the battle.
There was plenty of scope for conjecture as I examined skulls and bones bleached white with great age, lying in stone coffins or in brick-lined vaults among the trees. The coffins might have once rested in catacombs, of which there is evidence yet. A small, lidless coffin, laboriously hewn out of solid stone in one piece, that had doubtlessly contained the deceased offspring of some highly placed citizen, now served as a plant-box, rather as if the child's spirit !lowered on in defiance of time. Nor were there only human remains ; the guide pointed out the well-preserved jawbone of a steed that had quite conceivably met its end in the battle.
We left the necropolis by a footpath across the fields and climbed the hill overlooking the battlefield, on which the city of Cannae had stood but where now its ruins repose. The size of the city was in no way related to its fame, for it covered but an acre or so. The central thoroughfare is easily discernible through the overgrowth, and a massive, ornate milestone of white marble has withstood the ravages of time and decay to keep visitors informed that it is 75 Roman miles to Brindisi. Not that anyone could ever have made the journey on this particular road, because it terminates abruptly at each end of the city, where the steep sides of the hill, the Monte di Cannae, do not allow of its extension. The lay-out of the city can be traced from the foundations of its buildings, but there is little else to show what these buildings were like ; several stray patches of mosaic flooring and the bases of columns, with a few of their broken shafts and detached capitals still lying about, that had formed the frontage on each side of the main road. Besides the milestone a number of other Latin inscriptions appear on pillars or marble blocks, one being to the goddess Pallas Athene, whose temple may have stood there, and where now the marigolds in great profusion come each year to keep the memory of her long departed worshippers.
From the brow of the hill, where stands a memorial com- memorating the battle, there is a fine view of the Ofanto valley, its winding river set in a pastoral landscape suffused with almond blossom. But it was surely the spell of Cannae's past, not its enchanting scenery, that induced a fit of abstraction wherein I pictured Hannibal standing near this spot to direct his famous enveloping movement, to which a German general recently paid tribute when he spoke of "encircling operations in the classical sense of the Battle of Cannae." The two armies lean on the river, with their cavalry facing each other on the opposite wing and the Romans'
numerically superior infantry largely concentrated in the centre, where their opponents are weakest. Yet it is from here that the Carthaginians advance in echelon formation and, though repulsed, this attack paves the way for the envelopment of the Roman centre by picked Libyan troops operating from the flanks of the Carthaginian centre. Meanwhile, Hascirubal's horse have routed the Roman cavalry and, sweeping round the rear of the infantry to the river, complete the encirclement of the entire Roman army. It was all over in a few glorious hours of pulsating action such as only film- land can now produce ; how much more interesting were battles then.
So much might have been expected from this great victory, but Hannibal, with the flower of the Roman army destroyed and the road to Rome wide open, acted. altogether contrary to his military strategy at Cannae by going into winter quarters at Capua. Just what this meant is best described by the Roman historian Livy:
"The Carthaginian army which Hannibal kept under cover there for the greater part of the winter had been long and thoroughly hardened against all the ills that can afflict mankind ; but when it came to the good things of this life the troops lacked both familiarity and experience. Accordingly, these heroes who had resisted the utmost assaults of adversity were undone by an excess of prosperity and enjoyment, and they fell headlong, because their long abstinence made them plunge in head-over-ears. The round of sleeping, drink- ing, eating, whoring, bathing and taking their ease became sweeter to them as each passing day confirmed the habit, until they became enervated by it, body and soul, so that their safety came to rest in the prestige of their past victories rather than on their present strength. It was the opinion of military experts that, in allowing them to come to this pass, their commander committed an even greater fault than in failing to march on Rome immediately after Cannae. It might even be argued that dilatoriness then had merely postponed the hour of final victory, whereas the error at Capua had deprived him of the strength to win the war at all."
It would seem, then, that Hannibal, who taught man so much in the art of war, gave him also this lesson in missed opportunity, from which he has learnt practically nothing. For if you take our own experience immediately after the last war, it must be conceded that our prospects of achieving what we had fought for—lasting peace and other high ideals—were at least as good as Hannibal's prospects of military conquest after Cannae. But we, too, wintered in Capua. If we repeat the mistake after this war it may well be that, when posterity comes to review our field of endeavour, it will not be in the light of transitory success but in the shade of ultimate failure that we shall be judged, just as Hannibal's brilliant action on this battlefield of Cannae was eclipsed by his inaction at Capua.. The obligations of success are the same today as on that historic occasion, for which the Romans coined a phrase we would do well to remember : Orium Capuanum.
Previous page
