Customer Reviews

The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic

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This is an interesting and easy-to-read narrative for the beginner history fan of Ancient Rome's military tactics and battles during the Punic Wars. Robert O'Connell presents an introduction to Rome's early Republic years before delving into the Second Punic War. Ancient Roman historians such as Polybius and Livy are often quoted (not that historians have a lot to go on, either) but credit must go to O'Connell for also wanting to present the Carthaginian point of view, of which many pages are dedicated. He uses his own vast knowledge to add his analysis of why certain tactics failed and others were successful.

History is written by the victors and the losers just fade away. The curious reader will want to understand why Hannibal and his followers took the route they did, why they wanted to attack Rome where they did, and why it all mattered. This is a book not just about Hannibal, but about Hasdrubal, Scipio Africanus and Quintus Fabius Maximus. Maps are included to show the progress made by Hannibal from Spain to Italy. What should have been a vicotry for Hannibal turned out to be a deafening defeat, and O'Connell goes into impressive analysis of why Hannibal's strategy failed. Although I can't verify all facts in this book, this is an easy-to-read and inquisitive narrative of the Second Punic Wars and the aftermath. A non-military-trained historian would be able to understand O'Connell's work.

I just finished a semester of Ancient History and found this book perfect for some citations on the Roman Republic. I enjoyed this book. It is not too heavy into military tactics, nor is it too scholarly for everyman's history fan. But the author also asks the "How" and "Why" of the strategies used by the commanders and why they all failed.

Perhaps more scholared readers may find this book repetitive or perhaps long in the introduction as the Second Punic War and Hannibal's crossing of the Rhone don't happen until half-way into this book, however for someone who just enjoys a good historical read, this book is ideal. Robert O'Connell clearly has a passion for military history and the Ancient Romans. If you want to know more about the Second Punic War and read some analysis, this book is perfect.

There are two extremes when reviewing pre-release books. One of them is a book that is so boring that you find yourself not finishing it before the release date exemplified by [ASIN:0345505352 Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir]]. The other extreme is exemplified by The Ghosts of Cannae a book SO good that I finished it in two days and put it down wanting more.

This book examines Rome and Carthage, a bit of history of the first Punic war, some excellent coverage of Hannibal and the battle itself, and the subject of the title. The "Ghosts" of Cannae, namely the Roman survivors who were given short shift by the republic..

He does all of this in a prose stile that really works, he turns a phrase with the best of them and approaches the problems with the surviving accounts of both the battle and ancient history without disrespecting them.

He spends a fair amount of time talking about the effects of the battle and how it shaped all the various parties. His suggestion connecting the battle with the eventual fall of the republic is an interesting proposition.

His epilogue about how Cannae has become a fixation of some modern soldiers was the only weakness, not because it is bad but because I wanted more of it. The worst part of this book is the fact that it ended.

I can't recommend this volume enough, buy it.

Author Robert O'Connell acknowledges up front that a lack of contemporary sources from the time period limit what we know, but he makes exceptionally good use of what information is available. He explains that the Battle of Cannae during the Second Punic War was a turning point for Republican Rome (216 BC). Rome was beaten badly by Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who led his troops over the Alps in a daring and highly successful raid. But for all Hannibal's military genius and victories, he lost the war and Rome went on to become a great power. The "Ghosts" in the title refer to Roman soldiers who lost at Cannae and were exiled in shame, but later played a pivotal role when Scipio Africanus (gotta love the names!) recruited them and finally defeated Carthage.

I remember Hannibal from history classes long ago but didn't recall the Battle of Cannae - even had to look up the pronunciation which surprisingly turns out to be kan-EE (the emphasis can actually be on either syllable). Hannibal really was the star of this book for me, and I found it rather boring (almost stopping for something else) until it reached his trek into the Alps. Then the book takes off and was almost impossible to put down as he explains Hannibal's military strategies, and how he adapted and took advantage of situations (like positioning his troops upwind so the dust blew in the Romans faces). While I think O'Connell tries to make the book accessible for those without much knowledge of early Roman history, some prior exposure might be useful to follow the narrative. I also appreciated that O'Connell explains the limitations on the record from that early time, and throughout debates on the merits of various records and why or why they might not be reliable. His writing style is... well, I guess I could say 'interesting' - I thought it sounded like it was written by a twenty-something instead of a seasoned historian - but it works and makes it very readable. Maps, a 'list of characters,' and glossary of important terms are also helpful for those of us not familiar with ancient military history. In the end, a very enjoyable book (now I'll have to find something on Archimedes and the battle of Syracuse, which sounded very interesting...).

Robert L. O'Connell in The Ghosts of Cannae puts forth the intriguing notion that the defeated, scorned and exiled Roman soldiers following Rome's disastrous battle with Hannibal at Cannae became the harbingers of an ominous turn in Roman civic life. In short, these "ghosts" of the Roman army wound up transferring their loyalty from the Republic of Rome to a particular Roman general (a benign transfer in this instance to Scipio, but later to lead to the fatal--at least fatal to Republican Rome--transfer of loyalty to Julius Caesar). O'Connell also does a good job explains the basics of Roman military and civic life (a la Michael Grant).

Unfortunately, O'Connell's writing is tinctured with corrosive cliches whereby one must always "drive home" a point, Roman officials are trapped in a "rat race" and certain types of Roman soldiers are "one-trick ponies." Indeed, there are jarring uses of modern idioms which O'Connell no doubt thought would help to make his book more accessible and relevant to the casual reader--a creature, I fear, that has been exterminated through the toxic carpet bombing of television and video games--at the expense of alienating more serious readers of history. So, Roman officials serve just one year thereby allowing rapid turnover with the result that everyone may have Warhol's 15 minutes of fame (alluded to here with the clunky phrase, "the Warholian rubric")while, elsewhere, Roman patriotism is contrasted with drinking the "proverbial Kool-Aid." In other words, to use yet another tired phrase, O'Connell has fallen between two stools (one of which does not exist).

Robert L. O'Connell concurs with the subject quote from Serge Lancel, in his categorization of the Second Punic War, at least in so far as the Mediterranean basin is concerned. The Punic wars, and there were three in total, were fought between Carthage and Rome, with the second one being in the late second century, B.C, between 218 to 202. This war involved numerous Roman generals and leaders attempting to stop one of history's all time military genius: Hannibal. The author draws the reader in on the first page by stating that their were more battle deaths on August 2, 216 B.C., at the battle of Cannae, than the United States suffered in the entire Vietnam War. In fact, on that day more soldiers died in combat than any other single day in the entire history of Western warfare. Previously, I had assumed that horrific record belonged to the British and their losses on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. But the grim British number of 21,000 was "only" 40% of those who died at Cannae. Although I've read my share of history, I knew I was quite weak in terms of the ancient world, and have struggled to keep the Peloponnesian and Punic wars separated. After reading this excellent history, that will never be a problem again.

O'Connell convincingly addresses two key questions at the beginning: How do we know what we know?, and for events this old, Why should we care? He draws heavily on the account of Polybius, who was born during the last year of the war. He was of Greek origins but raised in Rome, and knew some of the key individuals involved, or their children. O'Connell also repeatedly references Titus Livy, who wrote an account almost 200 years after the Second Punic War. The author says that Livy presented the "cinema graphic" pictures of the ancient world. And yes, there is at least one graphic image of the battle at Cannae that I will never forgot. The author also reviews contemporary scholarships, judiciously weighing all the theories and new evidence on these events.

Cannae is clearly the climatic moment of the book, but like any good historian, O'Connell provides a thorough explanation of the antecedents, starting with the establishment of Carthage in the 9-10th century B.C. by the Phoenicians. He provides the nitty-gritty of military history, with an explanation of the weapons, tactics, and leadership in the battles, and places that within the context of the larger political forces. There were no B-52's bombing peasant populations at Cannae; in other words, on an overall basis, the men and equipment were fairly evenly matched, with the Romans having somewhat of a numerical superiority on the battlefield. Yet when the battle was over, the Carthaginians had killed almost 8 Romans for each of their own killed. How could this be possible? Largely one man's genius, fielded against weak Roman commanders. So why do we not study the Carthaginian Empire today? After Cannae, O'Connell presents a 100 page denouement, with a familiar theme, particularly for Americans today: You can win all the big battles, but still lose the war, and Carthage did indeed lose.

O'Connell's style is measured and balanced, but livened with modern references, such as, "the right stuff, and "drinking the Kool-Aid." He also has a dry wit. Consider, in regards to Sophonisba, a Carthaginian who turned her charms on Masinissa, an allied leader of the Romans, whom she married: "That's no Punic subverter of Rome's allies; that's my wife!" The one image many have of the Punic Wars is Hannibal managing to get his elephants through the Alps, and the author has a droll proclivity for alliterative pachyderm phrases like: "panzer pachyderms," "pachyderm pandemonium" and "pachyderm panic." And how many historians can readily reference Flaubert's Salammbo (aka Salambo)?

Cannae is the metric bar of military history, with numerous other generals referencing this battle, and developing their own strategy based upon trying to duplicate Hannibal's success. In the epilogue, the author includes Count Alfred von Schlieffen (of the German plan for winning World War I,) Heinz Guderian and Edwin Rommel in WW II, as well as Dwight Eisenhower on the American side and later Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War.

There are all the caveats issued about this being an advanced copy, but you would think, surely, Random House could run the text through `spell-check' prior to issuing it: there are 20-30 errors that this program would have easily corrected before it was foisted upon reviewers. It's just plain sloppy. If I were the author, I'd be unhappy with the shoddy workmanship which needs a lot of cleaning up before "prime time." Also, the correct phrase is: FLOAT like a butterfly, and sting like a bee" (p 87).

And the "ghosts"? No, they are not the dead, but the living Roman veterans of a losing battle that Rome no longer wanted any part of, and for 15 years they were essentially exiled in Sicily. They were eventually "rehabilitated" by Scipio Africanus, and he lead them in the final victory over Hannibal in 202 B.C. Ancient history? As O'Connell says: "The conscience of a nation is often revealed by the fate of its veterans, particularly veterans of defeat. Belatedly we Americans have done what we can to rehabilitate our Vietnam vets and expunge the memory of their lonely return, vowing it will not happen again to those coming back from Iraq. Rome's example argues that this is not simply a matter of compassion but a matter or prudence." I'm in the "amen corner" on that one.

An excellent 5-star read, and I'll never confuse the "P" wars again.

Roman history is an interest of mine, though normally I prefer to read it "from the horse's mouth" -- that is, from the primary sources. That said, I also enjoy a good modern retelling of Roman history, so when I saw Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae, I snapped it up. I'm glad that I did.

The book is an enjoyable read, easily approachable for someone who has never heard of the Punic Wars but still satisfying for someone starting out with a good knowledge base. O'Connell makes excellent use of his ancient sources and marshals his information into a coherent and compelling narrative.

The writing flows well and is easily followed, making the book a fairly quick read. I found some of O'Connell's turns of phrase a bit bizarre, though. At one point, he says that republican Romans followed the "Warholian rubric" when it came to turn-over of their government officials. He also describes Hasdrubal Barca's escape from C. Claudius Nero as "a vanishing act worthy of Bugs Bunny," though he goes on to assure us that Nero was no Elmer Fudd! While I assume many folks reading this book will understand what O'Connell is talking about, I somehow doubt references to Andy Warhol will make much sense to someone reading Ghosts of Cannae fifty years from now. Admittedly, I suspect readers even 100 years from now will be familiar with Bugs and Elmer. As 20th century cultural artifacts, Looney Tunes are worlds more potent and long-lived than anything Andy Warhol ever did.

While I am no scholar of republican Rome, I felt that O'Connell's treatment of the history was detailed, well informed, and fair. In only one place did I quibble with one of his claims--that annoying modern assumption that the speeches made by the ancients and recorded in histories were mere whole-cloth fabrications created by ancient historians to make a moral point. Referring specifically to Livy, O'Connell says:

"Ancient history is replete with such speechifying, useful in delineating issues, dramatic, and at times elevating rhetorically, but it is not to be taken literally. There were no voice recorders or stenographers. Most speeches were extemporaneous."

While it may be true that most ancient speeches were extemporaneous, the idea that there were no stenographers is debatable. For example, in later Roman days, there were often reporters who followed around the great homilists (like Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostum) writing down what they said--in shorthand. I have trouble faulting O'Connell for this overmuch as he is only reflecting the conventional wisdom among scholars. It is certainly conceivable that Livy's speeches were all fabrications. But I think more caution should be used when making this assumption.

In summary, Ghosts of Cannae is a useful popular history of the Punic Wars. If you have a passing interest in this subject, you will do well to read it.

Any historian who wishes to tell the epic story of the Second Punic War only has a limited number of ancient primary sources from which to draw. (Polybius, Livy, Appian and Cassius Dio) The quality of the book will turn on the author's ability to tease out details from the original sources and use them to construct an engaging narrative. Good writing makes or breaks this type of book.

Call me old fashioned but I could not stand Robert O'Connel's attempt to be "relevent" to the contemporary reader. Descriptions like calling Hannibal's elephants, "pachyderm panzers" or one of Scipio's subordinates as being his "wingman" just drive me crazy. While describing the details of a 2,200 year old military campaign, the use of this contemporary language just does not feel right. In contrast, if you want to read a beautifully written account of an ancient campaign, check out Donald Kagan's book, "The Pelopennesian War". Historians will be reading Donald Kagan for as long as people continue to study ancient Greece. In contrast, O'Connel's book will be found in the remainder bins of Borders and Barnes and Noble in another six months. Having finished this book, I wish I had instead purchased Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Fall of Carthage".

This book, by military historian Robert O'Connell, looks at the hows and also the whys of the battle of Cannae, one of the most conclusive-but ultimately least decisive-battles in Western history. In 216 B.C,, Hannibal, the brilliant Carthaginian general, inflicted a nearly-mortal wound on the Roman republic. The Roman army lost more men on that day than any other army in any other battle in history. Yet Hannibal ultimately was unable to defeat Rome, and 14 years later suffered his own defeat at Zama, in northern Africa, a battle which effectively ended the Second Punic War. THE GHOSTS OF CANNAE takes the reader from the origins of the Roman/Punic conflicts to the aftermath of the wars.

The book, generally a synthesis of ancient and modern scholarship on Rome, Carthage, and their conflicts, gives the reader a great deal of information. We learn how soldiers on both sides trained, how much equipment they carried, and what it took to get them in the field. O'Connell also sheds light on the political maneuvering that, more than military needs, often determined the pace of the war.

Given that all of this happened about 2,200 years ago, there's not the same sense of immediacy you'd get from an account of a more recent war-surviving records are sometimes fragmentary, and there is simply a great deal about many of the central characters that we don't know. At this stage, though, vivid personalities are pretty much the realm of historical fiction, as there's just not enough in the historical record to flesh out characters. This at times makes the reading a bit one-dimensional, but O'Connell's good sense of space and geography gives the battles enough context to seem real.

All in all, it's a good military history of an epic battle, and a good read for those interested in military history.

Robert O'Connell's account of Hannibal's career of inflicting Roman defeats is almost impossible to put down. He begins with brief bios of the key players and promptly gets underway with Hannibal's famous passage across the Alps. One of the book's main strengths is the author's use of sources, he points out the contradictions and gaps in two of the primary histories by Polybius and Livy and covers what is known of Hannibal, what can be known, and what we can infer. Mr. O'Connell breaks down the Roman war machine to its constituent parts, its equipment, size, battlefield evolutions, and funding, and he provides a history of Rome and Carthage that creates a context for Hannibal's story. O'Connell's approach is hypermodern, he describes war elephants as panzer pachyderms, and frequently points out that panicked elephants are as dangerous to friends as they are to foes. In short, 'The Ghosts of Cannae' is a technically sweet work, a modern interpretation of ancient events.
Hannibal was a wily trickster on the battlefield and his troop combinations were innovative, mixing heavy infantry and cavalry, light infantry and skirmishers, and he was supreme in the art of the ambush, utilizing troops concealed in terrain, defiles, and treelines, who would descend without warning and create havoc. Not much is known about Hannibal as an individual, but much is known about his troops and how he maneuvered them, thus making it possible to infer something about the man himself. Following only eighty years behind Alexander the Great, the Greek influence on warfare during this period was paramount and Mr. O'Connell demonstrates how tactics on both sides were affected. The author notes that as soon as Hannibal set forth across the Alps quills went to paper in disagreement, but at the bottom line is the fact that the passage was made and events culminated at Cannae, a tremendously decisive and influential battle of double envelopment that many since have sought to emulate, the great tank commanders of WWII in particular; be they Panzer, Sherman, or T-34.
The events leading up to Cannae and the battle itself occupy the first two thirds of the book, six out of nine chapters, and afterward the narrative meanders, the difference between a great book and a fantastic book. Some of the trouble here could be attributed to Hannibal himself, as he should have marched immediately on Rome rather than drifting through twenty more years of attrition, a deadly game that only the Romans could win. Hannibal is said to have cursed his mistake as he drank poison to avoid capture many years later. Finally Scipio Africanus steps in to revivify the narrative, and he is every bit the battlefield equivalent of Hannibal, performing complicated battlefield evolutions in the face of the enemy, using varied combinations of troops and cavalry, and staging a series of night raids that incinerated Hannibal's feared Numidians in their thatch shelters. Hannibal's final battle, Zama, is the source of the book's title; 'The Ghosts of Cannae' were the defeated survivors of Cannae who were outcast and ostracized for many years until Scipio welded them back into a formidable force that achieved a victory similar in its decisiveness, and earned him the title 'Africanus.'
This is a great book, a fusion and an appraisal of many histories, with a passing look at Alexander and even Archimedes' exploits at Syracuse. The Punic Wars are placed in a context that produces Hannibal, a commander whose influence is still felt well over two thousand years later.

Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae is a military history, not a political or economic history. This has both benefits and drawbacks. O'Connell does provide a bit of background on the Roman Republic, but it's probably not enough if you're completely unversed in the subject. For example, he references the causes of the later decline of the Republic, but readers might not catch his allusions if they don't know about Marius and Sulla. Hopefully, this should simply give readers and incentive to read a more general history of Rome first (I recommend Neil Faulkner's Rome: Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC - AD 476).

The benefits to O'Connell's approach are crystal clear explanations of the battles of the Second Punic War. I had never been that interested in the details of military campaigns, but O'Connell really brings them to life. For the first time, I could understand Hannibal's strategy at Cannae, as well as what it might really have been like to fight in the legions. The Ghosts of Cannae's description of the battleground as piled with corpses and slippery from all the blood will stay in my mind for quite some time as emblematic of ancient warfare. For Cannae, O'Connell provides several useful maps to aid the reader. (I wish he had included maps for all the major battles, but he describes them well enough.) Also, his description of the maniples really showed why they were such a military innovation over the phalanx - as well as why they led the Romans to ruin at Cannae.

O'Connell, who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, utilizes his insights into war to try to explain the strategic considerations of both Carthaginian and Roman commanders. Unlike many historians, he doesn't just criticize Varro, the Roman general who lost at Cannae, as a bumbling fool. Rather, he considers the information available to the Romans at the time and tries to explain the logic behind their choices. He makes an obvious but frequently ignored point that Roman commanders did not have a birds-eye view of the battlefield and at ground level they probably could not gauge the depth or formation of Hannibal's troops. This provides more a more nuanced history of the battle than what we traditionally hear.

O'Connell relies heavily on Livy and Polybius, but also shows a willingness to challenge these ancient sources when appropriate. This is most readily apparent in his description of Carthage. Many of the ancient sources claim Carthage was fully behind the war, but O'Connell describes a more nuanced relationship between Hannibal and his homeland. In short, O'Connell believes Hannibal instigated and started the war on his own initiative and basically dragged his countrymen along. O'Connell also tries to get beyond the reputation of Carthaginians as "baby-killers" (they occasionally practiced human sacrifice) and understand Carthaginian society and strategic interests.

One of O'Connell's more interesting observations is his comparison of Rome and Carthage. Rome, he argues, was an essentially military state, with most of the leadership having served as senior officers for a time. The Romans saw much of their world through the prism of military threats - even Carthage's willingness to repay war reparations led suspicious Romans to conclude that it could quickly raise an army of mercenaries.

By contrast, Carthage was a commercial and (at least initially) a naval power, with leaders who pursued war and statecraft to advance commercial goals. At the risk of simplifying too much, O'Connell suggests that Carthage was actually much more like a modern state, such as Great Britain or America, which places economic concerns first. He even argues that Carthaginians had stumbled upon the secret of comparative advantage in international trade.

The third branch of the ancient Mediterranean, the Hellenistic states, were personality-based kingdoms that saw international relations as a "great game." Interestingly, O'Connell places Hannibal, who depended upon heavy infantry and was less interested in commerce, into this Hellenistic tradition more than that of his homeland Carthage.

At the end of the day, does the world need another book about Cannae? It's frankly a tough call as there are already quite a few. However, if you are interested in ancient history but haven't read much about the Second Punic War, Robert O'Connell's The Ghosts of Cannae is well written and certainly worth your time.