CHAPTER VI - THE WAR UNDER HANNIBAL FROM CANNÆ TO ZAMA

Summary

The crisis

The aim of Hannibal in his expedition to Italy had been to break up the Italian confederacy: after three campaigns that aim had been attained, so far as it was at all attainable. It was clear that the Greek and Latin or Latinized communities of Italy, since they had not been shaken in their allegiance by the day of Cannæ, would not yield to terror, but only to force; and the desperate courage with which even in southern Italy isolated little country towns, such as the Bruttian Petelia. conducted their forlorn defence against the Phoenicians, showed very plainly what awaited them among the Marsians and Latins. If Hannibal had expected to accomplish greater results in this direction and to lead even the Latins against Rome, these hopes had proved vain. But it appears as if even in other respects the Italian coalition had by no means produced the results which Hannibal hoped for. Capua had at once stipulated that Hannibal should not have the right to call Campanian citizens compulsorily to arms; the citizens had not forgotten how Pyrrhus had acted in Tarentum, and they foolishly imagined that they should be able to withdraw at once from the Roman and from the Phoenician rule. Samnium and Luceria were no longer what they had been, when King Pyrrhus had thought of marching into Rome at the head of the Sabellian youth.