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When Hannibal's troops descended from the Alpine forests, the
Romans were astonished... and totally unprepared. Hannibal pulled
off stunning victories against the armies Rome sent north to meet him.
At the Battle of Cannae, for example, the Carthaginians wiped out a
Roman army that outnumbered them two-to-one.82 Between 50,000
and 70,000 Romans died, including 80 senators and 29 military
tribunes.83
Hannibal shrewdly took advantage of the old pecking order rule:
friends flock to the beast on the top; they abandon the beast on the
bottom. Whenever the Carthaginian triumphed, he reduced his
Roman prisoners to slavery. But the Romans had been bolstered by
armies of allies--troops from the conquered tribes of the Italian boot.
The savvy commander sent his non-Roman prisoners back to their
tribal towns unharmed. All he asked was that they carry a simple
message: Carthage had nothing against the non-Roman Italians.84
The gesture worked. As Hannibal demonstrated his strength,
one Italian tribe after another deserted Rome and threw its lot in with
Carthage. After all, it looked like the city of the seven hills was
slipping down the pecking order...fast.
The Greek historian Polybius says that at his peak, Hannibal
managed to hold together an army of extraordinary diversity. "He had
Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Celts, Phoenicians, Italians, [and] Greeks
who had naturally nothing in common with each other."85 It was the
Carthaginians' seemingly unstoppable winning streak that kept them
all together.
Hannibal outfoxed the Roman forces every time they met. He
stormed across the Italian peninsula, taking towns and overwhelming
garrisons almost at will. Soon panic seized the Roman populace. They
imagined the Semite from North Africa showing up outside the walls
of their city any day or night. But Hannibal was in no position to
attack the center of Roman strength. Marching over the mountain
passes, he had been unable to carry the siege equipment that would
allow him to defeat the city's heavy fortifications. Hannibal waited for
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