After the disaster at Trasimene, with one consul dead and the other cut off from Rome, the comitia centuriata elected 08Fabius Maximus (c.77; fl.233-203 BC) as dictator, with 04Minucius Rufus (fl.221-216 BC) as his master of the cavalry. Fabius proceeded to deploy the strategy that was to make him famous: not to be drawn into battles in the plains where Hannibal might utilise his superior cavalry to advantage but to instead dog his movements, combat him in the hills and to wear him down by attrition.
Hannibal’s plan was to defeat the Roman forces in set-piece battles and to strengthen his army by gaining the support from the Gallic tribes. Although the way to Rome was now open he, probably because of the difficulty he was having provisioning his army, moved on to the southern part of the peninsula, destroying farmland as he went and hoping to gain allies. Passing through Umbria, Picenum, the Frentani and Luceria, he made camp near Vibinum in Apulia.
Fabius took the field with his colleague and the four legions that had been raised in response to the crisis. At Narnia he was reinforced by the army from Ariminum. After assuming the command of Servilius’ army, he advanced to Apulia and encamped at Aecae, a short distance from the enemy at Vibinum. Fabius kept to the hills where the enemy’s cavalry could not attack him, Carthaginian foragers and stragglers caught at a disadvantage were cut down, and the presence of his army kept wavering Italian cities from defecting to Hannibal. Eventually, the lack of an enemy to fight drove Hannibal westwards to Campania in the hope that the threat to devastate the region would bring Fabius to battle. Fabius carefully followed but still refused to take the offensive.
Hannibal marched southwest through Allifae, across the Volturnus River to Cales and down to the ager Falernus, a fertile river plain lying south of Latium and north of Capua. He then loosed his soldiers onto the plain and all through the summer they collected cattle, grain, supplies and prisoners, unhindered by a Roman military response. Fabius decided to box Hannibal in: he camped with his main army on the foothills of Mount Massicus to the north; positioned Minucius to the northwest to watch the Via Latina and the Via Appia; sent a detachment to occupy the pass of Mount Callicula to the east, the route by which Hannibal had come; and reinforced the Roman garrison guarding the bridge at Casilinum to the south. Fabius’ plan was to wait until Hannibal sought to escape and then attack him in the flank or rear.
Hannibal had torches tied to the horns of two thousand oxen and they were driven at night along the sides of one of the passes. When the sentries saw the fires above them, they believed that they were surrounded and fled their posts. Fabius heard the commotion but thought it was an ambush so he kept his men back. In the resulting confusion, Hannibal brought his entire army safely through the pass, marched it through Samnium and crossed to Apulia. Here, he stormed and sacked the town of Gerunium and began sending out large detachments to gather provisions sufficient to keep his army supplied throughout the winter.
While Hannibal’s army was dispersed in this way Minucius, who had command of the Roman army while Fabius was in Rome overseeing some religious rites, attacked and won a large-scale skirmish outside the town. Following exaggerated reports of this action the Senate, disappointed with the army’s lack of positive results under Fabius’ sole command, granted Minucius equal power to the dictator, effectively returning to the situation of having two consuls having equal authority.
On his return Fabius and Minucius divided the army into two equal parts and camped separately. Shortly afterwards, Hannibal sent a small force to occupy a hill near Geronium, with his infantry and Numidian cavalry concealed in ravines nearby. Minucius ordered his forces to take the hill, whereupon Hannibal launched his ambush. A rout seemed to be inevitable and it was only the arrival of Fabius’ men to cover Minucius’ retreat that prevented yet another disaster. This brief experiment with two commanders was abandoned and the remainder of the campaigning season passed without major fighting. At the end of his six months in office, Fabius laid down his dictatorship and returned to Rome.
At the elections for 216 BC there was general desire for consuls who would engage and defeat Hannibal in a pitched battle. 08Aemilius Paullus and 01Terentius Varro were elected and placed in charge of a new army of eighty thousand men, including approximately six thousand cavalry. 16Cornelius Scipio was chosen to be one of the military tribunes.
Around June 216 BC Hannibal moved from his winter quarters and seized the Roman supply depot at Cannae. The two consuls were sent to join the army in Apulia and bring Hannibal to battle. Varro, aware that Hannibal’s two previous victories had been largely decided by his trickery, was eager to do battle since the area around Cannae was very flat. But Aemilius wanted to manoeuvre the battlefield to a place more suitable to the Roman infantry and less so to the Punic cavalry which had the advantage in both quality and quantity. Usually, each consul would command his own portion of the army but here since the two armies were combined into one, the command was to alternate each day so Aemilius could not prevent Varro from entering into battle.
On 2 August Varro led out the legions; Hannibal knowing that the terrain favoured his cavalry drew out his army in response. Both sides followed the usual deployment of the time with infantry in the centre and cavalry on the wings. Varro chose extra depth rather than breadth for his infantry, hoping it would quickly break through the enemy infantry opposite, which had Iberians and Celts in the middle with the Africans on either end overlapping and slightly to the rear. Roman cavalry was on the right, opposite the Iberian and Celtic cavalry; Latin cavalry was on the left, opposite the Numidians.
The Roman infantry by its sheer weight forced the Celts and Iberians to give way into an increasingly concave formation, but the actions of the Punic cavalry soon proved decisive: the Celts and Iberians routed the Romans, and Numidians defeated and chased the Latins from the field. By now the Roman infantry was so far advanced that with its cavalry gone its flanks had reached and were now exposed to the African infantry. When Hannibal’s cavalry attacked the Romans in the rear then with Africans assailing them on both wings the Roman troops were caught in a pocket from which there was no escape. By the end of the day, perhaps as many fifty thousand Romans had been killed; among them were Aemilius, Servilius and Minucius; Hannibal had lost only six thousand.
In the same year an army of twenty-five thousand men led by 07Postumius Albinus (fl.234-216 BC), the consul-elect, was annihilated by the Boii in the Litana Forest in Gallia Cisalpina. Along the road he was marching, the trees on either side had been cut through and were held from falling until the Romans reached the ambush. Many were killed, including Albinus, few were taken prisoner, and very few escaped.
After Cannae, many towns in Samnium, Apulia (Salapia), Lucania and Bruttium revolted to Hannibal; and in the autumn Capua, the second city in Italy, and other Campanian towns followed suit. But the whole of Latium, Umbria and Etruria remained loyal. Hannibal’s losses were small but not insignificant and mostly of his best soldiers. He therefore asked for all reinforcements sent to him in Italy, but the Carthaginian senate gave him only a few thousand men and sent most of the reserves to Spain and Sardinia. This presented Hannibal with a dilemma: to win more defectors he had to operate offensively and to keep those cities that he had already gained he needed to defend them; his army was now not strong enough to perform both these tasks simultaneously.
The Romans had now moved into a stronger position strategically. They abandoned all thoughts of facing Hannibal in pitched battles, and instead returned to the Fabian, small war, strategy. If Hannibal attacked, the Romans would defend; if he stayed away then the Romans would campaign against her former allies that had deserted them. Hannibal had thus been drawn into the pursuit of ever-shifting objectives.
In 216 BC the Senate made 04Junius Pera (fl.230-216 BC) dictator, with the senior field commander 06Claudius Marcellus (c.60; fl.225-208 BC) who immediately marched south with two legions. He repulsed an attempt by Hannibal to take Nola, northeast of Naples; but Himilco (4) captured Petelia, Rome’s only remaining ally in Bruttium, after a siege of several months, and Consentia surrendered within a few days.
Hannibal’s meagre reinforcements arrived at the end of the year. Roman naval superiority and the fact that the Carthaginian government was dominated by Hanno (7), a former political adversary of Hannibal’s father, meant that very little support reached their army in Italy. Hannibal sent Hanno (9) with a force to support the revolt in Lucania. The following year (215 BC) Hanno was opposed by a Roman army under 04Sempronius Longus (c.50; fl.218-210 BC), who defeated him at Grumentum and compelled him to withdraw into Bruttium.
In 215 BC, using Nola as his base, Marcellus raided Hannibal’s allies, who had appealed to him for assistance. Hannibal again tried to capture Nola but failed when Marcellus launched a counterattack. The following day, outside the city, Marcellus and Hannibal drew up their forces. The bloody Second Battle of Nola ended in a draw. Hannibal then went to Casilinum, the key to Volturnus, which had surrendered after an obstinate siege (216/5 BC).
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