Battle of Cannae - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Rome, Greece, Egypt & other ancient history (c 4000 BCE - 476 CE) and pre-history.
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By Albert
#14811394
Anyone else fascinated by this battle. It is interesting how ancient warfare was conducted and to see how once order and rank of soldiers collapses they pretty much turn into a herd of cattle to be slaughtered. I believe this epic battle demonstrates how true this is.

Here is a video by this youtuber, I think his fascination with gore is a little troubling but otherwise he made one excellent video about it.


The battle actually begins at third part, before that is mostly prelude to it.
Last edited by Albert on 04 Jun 2017 21:33, edited 1 time in total.
#14811401
When in comes to war, I am less interested in "traditional warfare" and more so in guerilla warfare. Using the latter method allows a sufficiently skilled to take down a much more powerful enemy. For example, Mao used it to defeat Imperial Japan and Nationalist China, despite having a smaller, less organized force.
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By JohnRawls
#14811466
Saeko wrote:^ I recommend the above series. I watched every single video on that channel.



If you liked that channel then you can check this: https://www.youtube.com/user/GREATMILIT ... LES/videos

And this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiiQcZ ... udw/videos

Its mostly from discovery channel and other documentaries but there are good ones. They are pretty long.
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By fuser
#14811503
Rome always loosing famous battles (Cannae, Carrhae, Teutoberg) but always winning famous wars.

Also check http://www.theartofbattle.com/, the format here is powerpoint presentation but its good and this site has now quite a large collection.
By Decky
#14811780
MememyselfandIJK wrote:When in comes to war, I am less interested in "traditional warfare" and more so in guerilla warfare. Using the latter method allows a sufficiently skilled to take down a much more powerful enemy. For example, Mao used it to defeat Imperial Japan and Nationalist China, despite having a smaller, less organized force.


You might like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_F ... Verrucosus
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By Albert
#14812101
@JohnRawls Yep, already seen all those videos.

fuser wrote:Rome always loosing famous battles (Cannae, Carrhae, Teutoberg) but always winning famous wars.

Also check http://www.theartofbattle.com/, the format here is powerpoint presentation but its good and this site has now quite a large collection.
That is the beauty of Rome, its perseverance.
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By Albert
#14812167
Saeko wrote:^ I recommend the above series. I watched every single video on that channel.
I love the music and build up he did to the point when Carthaginians "sprung the trap" and encircled the Romans, you really felt how much the Romans were screwed.

I remember reading Plutarch apparently before the battle Carthaginians seeing the numerous Romans approaching them grew grim and discouraged by such sight, questioning their prospects of victory. Hannibal's adviser (Hankal or some sort of Carthaginian name like that I do not remember exactly now) rode back to Hannibal to report on this state of affairs of his men and how are they discouraged by such overwhelmingly numerous enemy. To which Hannibal replied something along the lines of this, "Well at least you can rest assured non of them are named Hankal". This made men resound with laughter and cheer, at this point Hankal rode out to rest of the men repeating the joke to the Carthaginian lines, thus cheering the men with laughter and uplifting their spirit.

The beauty of Rome is how they persevered, he mentioned in the series that Romans retrieved old scriptures from tombs of their temple after this battle. These scriptures were left by legendary king of Rome, Numa succeeding the Romulus the founder of Rome(, after his strange disappearance). Numa left these scriptures precisely in case for such calamity and told the Roman people to unearth them when Rome was in such need. So you see them doing it here.

Numa was a very interesting king, he is one who pretty much formed Roman religion and laid a lot of groundwork for Roman society in general. He was also a Sabine part of first Latin tribe that joined Rome, after Romans stole all their damsels, but that is a totally different tale.
By dejvid
#14881341
Albert wrote: That is the beauty of Rome, its perseverance.


I think we need to be a tadge skeptical about Roman perseverance.
The highest Roman casualty figures for Cannae are given by Polybius who as a client of the Scipio family would be expected to give a pro Roman account. Normally propaganda tends to minimize the casualties of your own side but in this case to over state the losses would suit Polybius.

He was writing for a Greek audience, many of whom dreamed of restoring independence. Polybius is saying okay if you rebel you might win a victory or two but look at what happened to Hannibal. He crushed them at Cannae and yet the Romans were so damn persistent that they still win.

Rebellion against such a people, he is saying, is futile so don't even try.
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