Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2014Excellently well done, largely because it is much more than a recounting of the slash and splatter of Cannae. For the newcomer to Roman and Roman military history, O'Connell's book is a solid and trustworthy introduction to both. It also presents a clear argument for why the six-decade struggle between Rome and Carthage, from their nearly accidental first clash in Sicily to Scipio's victory at Zama, profoundly shaped the history of the Mediterranean world for at least the next six centuries, and why that was a history of Rome, not Carthage. What I found most touching about the book, however, was its account of "the ghosts," i.e., the Romans who survived Cannae and usually receive short shrift in histories of this war. No one ever seems to remember that roughly 13,000 men survived that abattoir, and that among them was the young Cornelius Scipio. Likewise, no one ever seems to remember that he and the other "ghosts" formed the heart of the army which defeated Hannibal at Zama. The thesis which O'Connell develops from that story is perhaps one of the most fascinating ideas I've read in a long time, namely, that Scipio's conduct as politician and general was the model of those who, from Marius to Caesar, would dominate Rome during the first century BCE, and that the government's abandonment of "the ghosts" set in motion that dynamic of army and general, which brought the Republic crashing down roughly 170 years after Hannibal's defeat. Well worth the read!
