And now it was my own turn. Fabius, newly elected as the commander of the army, wisely decided that time was on his side. Known as the Delayer, he harassed but did not attack. At one point he had Hannibal penned up in Campania. We held the passes that he would have to go through to escape. Yet escape he did from this trap. One night a herd of spectral animals, lit by eerie flames from the underworld, came through one of the passes, disconcerting the soldiers who held it and clearing a way out for his army.
This fiasco turned the tide against Fabius. He was removed in favor of the consuls Varro and Paullus, who were given a mandate to stop dancing and fight.
It was the biggest army Rome had ever fielded. There were eighty thousand of us — more than twice the number Hannibal had. Eighty senators — one quarter of the total number — accompanied us in various leadership capacities. But apparently the Senate, thinking itself unable to find one wise general, had tried to create a composite out of two men of vastly different character. Paullus was almost a direct replacement for Fabius, with the same restraint, lacking only his skill in generalship. Varro, on the other hand, was the energetic, impetuous engine for this two-headed monster. No more skilled than Paullus, he nevertheless intended to meet the enemy at the soonest opportunity. And opportunity quickly presented itself when Hannibal took up a position near a small town called Cannae.
Small it was, but not unimportant. It commanded the surrounding district and was our main supply depot. To say that we were worried is putting it lightly. We established a small supply camp to provide water and began feeling out the foe.
Hannibal was not sleeping. His attention to detail showed as he sent his cavalry to harass our water-bearers. This was more than an inconvenience: men in battle work very hard and can have their strength sapped by lack of water.
Varro recalled the battle of Trebia, in which the Roman legions had managed to penetrate the center of Hannibal’s army; though the battle was lost, they were the troops that survived. Varro decided that the problem was just not enough punch, and he resolved to smash clean through this time.
We deployed against Hannibal’s army. His smaller army matched our flanks because we were so concentrated in the center. As we moved forward, the plan seemed to be working perfectly. Hannibal’s center, which had advanced to give battle, started to fall back under heavy pressure from our front. I admired their discipline — they did not simply run but fell back slowly, contesting the ground against our heavier forces step by step.
The fighting kicked up a tremendous amount of dust that the wind blew into our faces — another detail that Hannibal had taken advantage of. I had the impression that the maniples were already too crowded to fight effectively. But I could not even see well enough to be sure, to say nothing of being able to ascertain what was happening elsewhere on the field of battle. More and more of our soldiers piled into the fray, funneling into the center where the resistance always seemed on the verge of collapsing. All seemed to be going well until suddenly we started hearing cries from behind.
Hannibal’s cavalry on either side had somehow pushed our cavalry out of the way, perhaps even destroying it as there was no sign of Roman horse. The Carthaginians were charging into our rear. At the same time Hannibal’s infantry, having created a kind of pocket into which our soldiers had crowded, stopped retreating and started attacking us from the side. Blinded by dust, confused by noise, weakened by lack of water and without room to fight, we became a mass of struggling men, unable to help one another, finally having no goal but survival — a goal soon rendered futile for most of us.
And here my earthly story ends. I remember only a sharp stab of pain and then … nothing.
… To Be Continued ….