Why didnt hannibal just sack rome and be done wit it...

Ancient warfare was economic warfare.

>Destroy your foes and lay waste their country.
>By fire and burning let all be set alight.
>That nothing be left for them, either in wood or meadow,
>Of which in the morning they could have a meal.
>Then with his united force let him besiege their castles.
>Thus should war be begun; such is my advice,
>First lay waste the land.

He never had enough men to do either.

Rome never had walls until Aurelian in the third century. Don't post if you don't know what you're talking about.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_defensive_walls
The Aurelian walls were not the first of Romes walls or defenses.

You're retarded.

Rome also didnt exist at the time of aurelian. Rome fell with the republoc anythang after is barbaric degeneracy

He made feints but the Romans knew he didn't have the means to threaten Rome.

>The Romans were greatly incensed by the revolt of Capua, and determined to punish its citizens. Regular siege was laid to the city, and two Roman armies surrounded its walls. Hannibal marched to the relief of the beleaguered city and attempted to raise the siege; but could not draw the Roman army from its entrenchments. As a last resort, he marched directly to Rome, hoping to compel the Romans to withdraw their armies from Capua for the defense of the capital. Although he plundered the towns and ravaged the fields of Latium, and rode about the walls of Rome, the fact that “Hannibal was at the gates,” did not entice the Roman army away from Capua. Rome was well defended, and Hannibal, having no means of besieging the city, withdrew again into the southern part of Italy. Capua was soon taken by the Romans; its chief citizens were put to death for their treason, many of the inhabitants were reduced to slavery, and the city itself was put under the control of a prefect. It was apparent that Hannibal could not protect his Italian allies; and his cause seemed doomed to failure, unless he could receive help from his brother Hasdrubal, who was still in Spain.

Should have just eaten the elephants

There are not enough fish in the Tiber and the next five closest rivers to feed 50,000-80,000 men in a sustained siege.

Well then why didnt they make supply lines to all the rivers in italy so they could have fresh trout any time? It just dont make sense. Why would hannibal not set up good trout supply lines? How can you expect to go to war without food? Was hannibal retarded?? Was there mercury in the tiber trout?

>Was Hannibal retarded?

Debatable. ANybody have the greentext about war elephants?

Ok, i hear this stated a lot but Carthage did still have a sizable navy, Scipio even mentions this when he's at North Africa and burns the Carthaginian fleet. Also, Rome's Navy was stretched thin due to being involved in multiple theaters. Also Carthage didn't seem to have any trouble sending a fleet to recall Hannibal and take his army back to North Africa. It seems that the Carthaginian senate just didn't want to send Hannibal any supplies. I know at one point the pro war faction of the Carthage's senate was outed due to the war being too expensive, but that was much later.

This one?

Das it mane

After Cannae Hannibal sent an envoy back to Carthage to request reinforcements and supplies, but he was basically ignored.
Carthage was just not committed to the war effort in Italy.

Carthage begin her conflicts with Rome with a sizable navy. After the first Punic war, this was greatly reduced by restrictions placed on them by the peace treaty. Rome maintained a huge fleet by comparison, and had proved several times during the course of the 1st Punic war that they could absorb hundreds of ships being destroyed in battle or in a storm, in a very short span, and then just cheerfully build replacements. The Carthaginians had no such resources and never recovered a credible navy after their defeat.

So yes, going into the 2nd Punic war, Carthage was no longer a fearsome naval power. If you wanted to resupply Hannibal, it had to either come from Spain, which is why he went to great lengths to secure Spain as his rear supply area before invading Italy, or go through spain by way of north Africa, assuming the home city wanted to send him some help.

At any rate, giving him more to work with was not as simple as it sounds. Even if they had thrown their full weight behind him, there just was no way the Carthaginians were going to de-Romanize Italy, nor did they have enough money to buy enough mercenaries to overcome Rome's manpower advantage even if they melted down every statue, bauble and candlestick in their city.

What makes Hannibal interesting is not that he almost won. He didn't. What makes him interesting is how much he accomplished in the face of the inevitable.

I get that resupplying Hannibal was no easy feat, but the thing is, Carthage made contact with Hannibal and vice versa multiple times. I read Richard Gabriel's book on Hannibal and he mentioned that Carthage sent convoys to Hannibal in 215 and 203 when the recalled him. Also Mago was able to successfully reach Carthage to tell of Hannibal's victories. Around 206, Hannibal was on the defensive but Rome's fleet at Sicily was reduced from around 100 ships to around 30, and an opportunity arose to back Hannibal. Carthage was primarily a commercial state. Their main purpose was to make money through trade, so they definitely had the ships to do this. Scipio remarked that when he burned the Carthaginian harbor, 500 ships were destroyed.
I get that Hannibal even with Carthage's full backing would never have realistically sacked Rome, but Hannibal was the boogeyman in Rome during that time, and after Cannae there was an unparalleled level of fear not seen since Rome was sacked by the Gauls. There's a chance that a stronger Hannibal would have forced the Roman hand to withdraw troops from its territories and protect the mainland.
I've speculated that the reason for the Carthaginian hesitance to send troops stems from Hamilcar, his father. Hamilcar was seeking to set up a sort of empire for his family when he subdued Spain, and he and his family achieved almost a quasi-divine status. Carthage had it out for the Barcas because of this and held a grudge against his family. But this is all unsubstantiated due to the lack of historical record.
I'm with you that Hannibal's genius comes from what he did despite limited support, but I think that the main opposition comes from personal disdain to Hannibal and not any strategic sense.

Also in regards to de-Romanizing Italy, Hannibal had formed a confederation of allies in Magna Graecia and even had Capua, which was the second most powerful city in Italy next to Rome. Hannibal's lack of support is what led to Rome being able to employ Fabian tactics to disrupt Hannibal and flip cities he had just captured. With more supplies he could've possible forced the Roman hand into a pitched battle and destroyed another Roman army.

It was a big city. He didn't have a big enough army to hold/occupy the city. He just wreaked havoc and only entered battle when he could win. He persisted for so long because overzealous roman generals would engage under unfavorable circumstances and get their buttholes licked.

So you're saying Hannibal Barca should have spread his army out over a large area... in hostile territory... to fish for trout...
You've got to be baiting me with all that trout talk man.

Hannibal's survival in Italy required movement to evade Roman legions, and pick the battlefields himself and never let the Romans be the ones to choose the field.

Laying siege to Rome would take months, or even years. he would have to set up camp, construct siege equipment, and somehow keep his forces fed and supplied while standing still, all while Roman legions from outside the capital can be called in to relieve the siege.

Hannibal's strategy instead was to convince Italian provinces/cities to defect from Rome and support Carthage through military victories against Rome's legions, once he had enough allies in Italy, then Rome could be brought to the negotiating table to sue for peace.

This almost seemed to work at Cannae, where Capua, a city that was second in importance only to Rome defected to Carthage, along with other minor cities. But the Roman senate rejected any sort of peace settlement with Carthage.

After that, Capua was retaken within 2 years, and Hannibal's popular support on the Italian peninsula slipped from there until he was recalled to defend Carthage at Zama.

No im not sayin spread the army out during a seige. Im saying he shouldve had good supply lines to be able to make a seige successful. The best supply lines wouldve been from the trout. This isnt hard to understand one trout could feed like 4 infantrymen. Unless of course tiber trouthad mercury?

The Greek colonies in the boot were always malcontents; they had an ancient history that predated Rome and being Greek they were only too happy to start trouble seeking "muh freedom".

Capua was a coup no doubt, and I give solemn props to Hannibal for everything he was able to do. But detaching the second city is not really significant when there are hundreds of other small and medium sized communities who never seriously saw the Carthaginians as an alternative to the Roman system under which they had lived for generations. The dominance of the Roman republic in their affairs was not a new thing and nobody's grandfather could even remember a time before them. You might detach Chicago from the US, but you're not going to win the war even though it's the second city.

As for forcing a battle, that's extremely difficult. The Roman advantage in manpower cannot be overstated; they were operating on interior lines, in friendly country that they knew very well. The kinds of reinforcements Hannibal would have needed to compete with Rome in this way simply didn't exist. There was no means to get them, even if every senator in Carthage had pawned his silk underpants and personally picked up a shield and spear.

It was not a near thing. It's fun to speculate, but having studied this in detail, there's just no way. Hannibal was contending with forces much more formidable than the legions, though they were endless; he was trying to dethrone the power that had thoroughly acculturated the entire peninsula. This was the genius of the Romans, the generosity with which they extended the franchise, in whole or in part, and the skill with which they wooed the ruling classes of their subjects. Every person of substance wanted to be more Roman, wanted to be a part of their system. None were thinking "Well let's see what life would be like under Carthaginian stewardship".

>hannibal
>ruler of carthage
#triggered

cont'd

Just want to trot out this passage I always think of when this discussion comes up. I think it's an excellent summary.

"The third century was not only, as Polybius observed, the high point in the development of the Roman body politic; it also marked the acme of the system of Italian alliances which Rome had built up, before the strains began to show. The last great Gallic invasion which Italy had to face was that of 225, and it is in the context of the preparations against it that Polybius describes the manpower resources available to Rome. To do so he drew on the account given by the first Roman historian, Q. Fabius Pictor, himself a witness to the events of 225. Although the list in Polybius contains some obscurities in detail, it fits with what else is known of Roman citizen numbers in this period and suggests that the Roman and Italian pool of men on which Rome could draw was of the order of 6-7 million."

So compare that with the paltry 50 or so thousand Hannibal arrived with in Italy, with maybe half again that many coming to him over the year as reinforcements or Gallic auxiliaries, and you see why Trasimene and Cannae, though horrible, were really just drops in the bucket to a state with the resources of Rome, and as long as they never lost their will to continue fighting, they could never lose. The Roman genius was that they never accepted anything other than total victory. And so in the end, they must win.

youtube.com/watch?v=hfIe9P13X8s

Speaking about Hannibal has anyone watched this? and the comment section is hilarious, how can people think Hannibal was black.

Also want to jump in to say if you haven't read Theodore Ayrault Dodge's volume "Hannibal", I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Dodge was a Civil War officer who fought at Gettysburg. His language is somewhat antiquated to modern ears but the volume is entirely understandable and truly excellent. Give 'er a look, lads.

because dumb people who know neither history nor geography think Africa = negro

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servian_Wall

Ah I see, you cleared up a lot, thank you.

The historian Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy listed the Battle of Metaurus (207 BC) as one of the most important battles of antiquity, rivaling Marathon and Gaugamela and eclipsing in importance any other battle of the three Punic Wars. This is because Rome's victory was far from assured beforehand, but inevitable afterwards.

This was the reinforcing expedition sent by Carthage to relieve Hannibal, which retraced his mainland route and this time brought siege equipment instead of elephants. It was only through sheer dumb luck that the Romans learned of them in time to scratch together an army to meet them before they could connect with Hannibal's host.

Had the Romans lost the Battle of Metaurus, Hannibal would have had the tools and the manpower necessary to assault Rome directly without needing to resort to a protracted siege. Had Rome been taken, the mythos and treaties binding the Italians together would have been permanently dissolved and Rome would have gone down in history as getting thoroughly curb-stomped by the Carthaginians.

But because this was the 2nd century BC launching expeditions of that magnitude was a colossal undertaking even for a fabulously wealthy mercantile power like Carthage, so the loss at Metaurus more or less ruined Carthage's only realistic shot at taking Rome down.

But until that point victory was by no means assured. Hannibal repeatedly smashed army after army arrayed against him, Cannae had been the largest army that Rome had yet assembled at that point in history which by itself represented a considerable fraction of the total manpower reserves that Rome had access too.

>The historian Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy listed the Battle of Metaurus (207 BC) as one of the most important battles of antiquity

Which is probably a reason to argue against its importance, not for it. Fifteen Decisive Battles is one of the memest of meme history books.

>, rivaling Marathon and Gaugamela

Except neither of them were that important, even if you consider their respective wars critical; How can you claim that Marathon was as important as Platea or Salamis? Gaugamela as important as Granicus or Issus?

>This is because Rome's victory was far from assured beforehand

It was. Hannibal had literally no means of decisive striking at Rome, which is why he'd been dicking around in Italy for a DECADE when Metaurus went down.

>Had the Romans lost the Battle of Metaurus, Hannibal would have had the tools and the manpower necessary to assault Rome directly

And you're basing this on what exactly? The fact that even with Hasdrubal's reinforcements, he'd be massively outnumbered by the Romans and his cavalry, the elite striking arm of his army, being of sharply limited utility in a city assault?

> Cannae had been the largest army that Rome had yet assembled at that point

Cannae had been 9 years before Metaurus and the Romans actually had rebuilt their armies and were going on the offensive in other areas, like the Carthaginian possessions in what's now Spain.

A good post! You're right that Rome's defeat of Hasrdrubal's(?) reinforcement expedition is one of the major reversals of fortune Hannibal suffered and more or less sealed his fate. I'm not sure I agree that an assault on Rome was ever possible, though. Rome was fortified, and strongly held, and the Roman national character had been proven again and again during the war. There would be no surrender. They would have fought to the last man to hold their city. I do not think even with that help, Hannibal could have overcome the city. It's certainly worth thinking about, though.

Not to mention there were still Roman armies in the field. The only time Hannibal seriously menaced Rome was immediately in the wake of Cannae, when there were no such forces; Hasdrubal's column came much later, when Fabian tactics had been adopted. Perhaps if Hannibal had linked up with Hasdrubal, they could have invested the city, but then you have a suicidal garrison at your front, and hostile armies at your rear; Fabian generals would never accept battle on unfavorable terms, so you could not bring him to battle to destroy him in detail before an assault on the city. The right moment to attack Rome never would have come.

I come again to the Roman national character. If they had been a Hellenistic monarch, then a defeat like that a Cannae would have brought them to the negotiating table. But the Romans had no such notions of a settled peace and would never quit until they had attained victory. In this regard, their unassailable advantage in manpower must mean they will win through in the end.

Perhaps, perhaps, if Hasdrubal's column had come on the heels of Cannae, Hannibal would not have turned away from the city and he might have cut the head off the beast. But it did not. It came when it was already far too late, and it's destruction was merely a formality.

My fucking sides

Because he couldn't. Officially, Rome still had several thousand Legionaries in the city, and multiple armies in the field smacking Carthaginian shit in Sicily and Spain. 10,000 men escaped cannae and were rapidly regrouping. Any attempt at a siege meant he got pinned by the small force in the city and then trapped against the walls by the returning field armies. If Hannibal sat still for very long, he'd lose at best, and most likely die.

Unofficially?
It's ROME. THE ROME. The city was absolutely full of armed men who had yet to serve and many thousands of veteran soldiers. It's a fully militarized society and EVERY healthy male has received at least some degree of training and owns weapons, as they could be levied any given year. Any attempt to siege it would almost certainly fail. Brilliant field maneuvers and cavalry tactics don't mean a fucking thing when you're trying to march down streets held by a bunch of sword wielding fanatics shouting shit like
>Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

He didn't siege it because that was a bad idea. He didn't have the manpower to invest it. He didn't have the manpower to assault it. He didn't have the time to do these things even if he could find the numbers.

>Rome maintained a huge fleet by comparison, and had proved several times during the course of the 1st Punic war that they could absorb hundreds of ships being destroyed in battle or in a storm, in a very short span, and then just cheerfully build replacements. The Carthaginians had no such resources and never recovered a credible navy after their defeat.
This can't be repated enough.

Rome lost over 90,000 men in ONE FUCKING STORM. The entire fleet, dead.
They built another one and continued fighting with no hesitation.

Carthage couldn't do that. Their population during the third war was only 400,000 total. Rome had more male citizens of fighting age than Carthage had people. ONE major storm and they'd risk demographic collapse.

>Their main purpose was to make money through trade, so they definitely had the ships to do this.
Trade vessels and warships were not the same then, same as they are not now.

Also, it's pretty well understood that carhtage had both a war and peace party, though it was less war/peace and more africa/overseas empire.

>Carthage was primarily a commercial state. Their main purpose was to make money through trade
This didn't require their own navy. Carthage made an absolute fuckload of money by simply selling produce, which traders would come to the city to buy.

"more support" wouldn't have mattered. He DID try to force a pitched battle. The romans simply refused to meet him and elected to kill his brother instead. More troops would have turned into more supply issues for him.

>How can you claim that Marathon was as important as Platea or Salamis
Please, explain how we get salamis without marathon.

>Please, explain how we get salamis without marathon.

By the fact that a 10,000 man expedition force can't conquer all of Greece, can barely conquer a single city state, and is at most going to demand some sort of indemnity and leave Athens pissed. It's not like there isn't a long history of Greek warfare where cities get defeated in battle and then aren't completely destroyed.

Hell, the invasion that led to Marathon was precisely because the Ionian Greeks, though defeated and "conquered" were actually still in control of their own affairs to a large degree and in a state of revolt that the Athenians were supporting. How is a Marathon that goes the Persian's way going to do any better?

30,000* Stupid typo.

>Fifteen Decisive Battles
You call Fifteen Decisive Battles a meme and then try comparing Plataea to Marathon. I think you're the one being memed here if you think that Plataea even remotely compares on a strategic level
> neither of them were that important
Are you trolling? Gaugamela is literally the battle which permanently fractured the Persian Empire (won despite being massively outnumbered) and the stunning upset victory of the Greeks at Marathon is the reason that the classical Greeks didn't get divide-and-conquered like the Ionians in Asia Minor. Only Salamis rivals these battles in importance.
>It was. Hannibal had literally no means of decisive striking at Rome, which is why he'd been dicking around in Italy for a DECADE when Metaurus went down.
the reinforcements under Hasdrubal were meant to rectify this and when discussing length of time let's reiterate that this is the late 3rd century BC, technology was comparatively primitive and everything was inefficient and took forever.
>And you're basing this on what exactly?
Plutarch, mostly.
>he'd be massively outnumbered
Oh gee, what a giant fucking handicap for Hannibal. How ever in the world could he deal with being outnumbered by the Romans?
Let's also keep in mind that the Carthaginian infantry was actually gaining ground against the Romans at Zama until the cavalry returned, so that door swings both ways.
>Cannae had been 9 years before Metaurus and the Romans actually had rebuilt their armies and were going on the offensive in other areas, like the Carthaginian possessions in what's now Spain.
Yes, Roman political unity is what kept all of the disparate pieces working together which certainly couldn't be said for the oligarchic, self-interested Carthaginians. But throughout those 9 years Hannibal basically curb-stomped whatever army the Romans could throw at him and it was only with great protest that the Romans adopted Fabian strategy after a series of stunning, humiliating losses.

>Rapidly regrouping
The survivors of Cannae were outcast to Sicily.

I think they were sent to sicily to fish for syracuse trout right?

They didn't magically teleport away, user. They sat in Canusium and reconstituted themselves while waiting for orders from rome, and would doubtless have marched home if the city itself came under siege. >Let's also keep in mind that the Carthaginian infantry was actually gaining ground against the Romans at Zama until the cavalry returned, so that door swings both ways.
Every single account i've seen says otherwise. Hannibal would have lost outright if the cavalry hadn't returned when they did.

>You call Fifteen Decisive Battles a meme and then try comparing Plataea to Marathon. I think you're the one being memed here if you think that Plataea even remotely compares on a strategic level

Considering it ended an invasion that was far more massive and actually an attempt at conquest instead of a punitive expedition, yes, I think I'm justified in following guys like Bury over guys like Creasy.

> Gaugamela is literally the battle which permanently fractured the Persian Empire

Gaugamela is when Darius the Third had to offer enormous concessions to his subject peoples and arm them all after his elite and loyal Greek mercenaries were defeated (Granicus) and then his core persian army was defeated (Issus), and he watched helplessly for two years while Alexander conquered the entire Mediterranean coast and thus forestalled any attempt to attack Greece or Macedon while he struck inland.

It's like saying that the decisive battle of WW2 was Bagration: Sure, it was a big, crushing victory, but Persia was already on the ropes at that point. It IS a meme battle.

>the reinforcements under Hasdrubal were meant to rectify this and when discussing length of time let's reiterate that this is the late 3rd century BC, technology was comparatively primitive and everything was inefficient and took forever.

It did not take a decade to move forces from Carthage to Italy. You're retarded if you think that. The original expedition only took a couple of months to march up across Spain, southern France, across the Alps, and into Italy.

>Plutarch, mostly.

Where does Plutarch say that Hannibal had the capability of assaulting Rome in 207?

>Oh gee, what a giant fucking handicap for Hannibal. How ever in the world could he deal with being outnumbered by the Romans?

In attacking a city? I must have missed all the times that happened.

1/2

>But throughout those 9 years Hannibal basically curb-stomped whatever army the Romans could throw at him and it was only with great protest that the Romans adopted Fabian strategy after a series of stunning, humiliating losses.

And throughout those 9 years, Hannibal never could actually get into Rome, even after the crushing defeat at Cannae. If he couldn't then, winning at Metaurus certainly wasn't going to give him the opportunity.

No, they were outcast to Sicily and were only reinstated on Scipio's request before his invasion of Africa.
They would under no means have been ready for a fight directly after Cannae.

Niggas don't like the cold.

...are you retarded?
>No, they were outcast to Sicily
After a period of sitting in Canusium. They didn't just lose and instantly fucking appear in Sicily.

>and were only reinstated on Scipio's
Irrelevant. They spent their time in sicily fighting. Scipio just got permission for them to finally leave Sicily.

>They would under no means have been ready for a fight directly after Cannae.
They were well enough to consider leaving rome to act as a mercenary band.

The man just likes Tiber trout
No bully

No need to sperg out here. We're having a conversation.
It seems you are correct, I did a little more research.
I finished the Ghosts of Cannae a while ago and O'Connell makes it seem like they were outcast directly after the battle. In actuality they were indeed reorganized for a defense of Rome.

I didn't get that impression from the book, though that may be due to the other reading i've had. Now I need to reread it.

>Considering it ended an invasion that was far more massive and actually an attempt at conquest instead of a punitive expedition, yes, I think I'm justified in following guys like Bury over guys like Creasy.
This is totally dropping historical context. Marathon isn't important for its tactical significance but for the fact that it was a massively important symbolic victory for the Greeks which united them in the face of Persian aggression and marks the starting point of the classical era. And I think I'm justified following guys like John Stuart Mill, who famously said "the Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings".

No victory at Marathon, no united Greeks, no western civilization.

Only Salamis comes close to Marathon in importance, and comparing Plataea to Salamis is like comparing the Battle of Okinawa to the Battle of Midway.

>Persia was already on the ropes at that point.
But it was still a staggering giant capable of levying armies which outnumbered Alexander's by a massive margin, and the only reason it toppled was because Alexander kept up the pressure and threw himself at impossible odds again and again, with Gaugamela representing the point where the pressure was so great that it sundered permanently.

1/2

>It did not take a decade to move forces from Carthage to Italy.
Fair point, though I was referring to the speed at which information flows and the timeliness with which the ruling classes could react. The Carthaginians were definitely at a disadvantage in this regard

>Where does Plutarch say that Hannibal had the capability of assaulting Rome in 207?
digging through my sources it wasn't Plutarch, but Appian puts the size of the reinforcements around 48,000, Livy around 50k, larger than the combined consular armies which Polybius describes as being around 47,000, though Polybius's estimate for the Carthaginians is smaller at around 30,000, but even with this lower end estimate the combined Carthaginian army would have outnumbered the Roman consular army for the first time while being led by Hannibal, the military genius who consistently outfought the Romans even when they outnumbered him by huge margins.

Through sheer luck a messenger got lost who is intercepted by the Romans, and because of having detailed knowledge of the Carthaginian reinforcements they had all the information they needed to launch a battle on extremely favorable terms which caught the Carthaginians completely flatfooted and decimated them. Had Hannibal been able to unite with his brother and crush the Consular army, he could have marched directly on the city with the siege equipment before any other senator could have raised, funded, and equipped an entirely new army.

>In attacking a city?
>Hannibal never could actually get into Rome
Because he lacked foresight and brought elephants instead of siege equipment.
>If he couldn't then, winning at Metaurus certainly wasn't going to give him the opportunity.
A victory at Metaurus (or even avoiding the battle altogether) would have given Hannibal siege equipment

2/2

Hannibal's Italy campaign always made me wonder if the explanation for the Battle of Tours is a similar situation i.e. A Muslim force too powerful to be defeated in traditional battle yet too weak to hold important territory

Anybody got the sauce on this? Looks well written, and I've been looking for books on Hannibal.

forumromanum.org/history/index.html

Thank (You)

Are Livy's books on Roman history a good source? Does he embellish much, or is it more objective?

Weren't they close to breaking their limits though thanks to Hannibal ruining their territories?

Had Hasdrubal forces had been successful in uniting with Hannibal. Rome was doomed since their resources were almost spent and their allies were restless, regardless of how much manpower they have.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Still about unclear bout two hing. 1. Was hannibal antiochos' fuccboi?
2. Could carther hold out a seige on rome with tiber trout and other trout from italy?

>Weren't they close to breaking their limits though thanks to Hannibal ruining their territories?
No.

>Had Hasdrubal forces had been successful in uniting with Hannibal. Rome was doomed since their resources were almost spent and their allies were restless, regardless of how much manpower they have.

I don't think you understand how war works.

You CAN NOT defeat a force with millions of men of fighting age with the requisite gear and training if they're technologically equal to you and simply refuse to surrender. Not when you are, at best, outnumbered 60/1. They can simply hurl themselves at you and drag you down with weight of numbers, and the romans repeatedly proved willing to do exactly that in past wars.

What's worse, they didn't fucking need to. Any significant casualties would see his Gaulish troops walking home. They were fair weather friends at best, and culturally unwilling to take serious losses.

Rome, meanwhile, couldn't be taken at that point. Cannae was ten years in the past. The armies were on the offensive, hannibal couldn't move freely, and the city could fight and win without most of their allies. The vast majority of the latins would never break with rome, and the city, its colonies, and the latins alone had the manpower to win the war even if all the other socii took their ball and went home.

Incidentally, they also had the manpower to re-conquer them in the social war.

Hannibals entire plan was a fucking pipe dream born out of a total inability to understand his enemy at anything beyond a tactical level. There is no point at which he could have made it work.

Only if the windfish approved, user, and the windfish hated african kikes even more than he did gyros.

Hannibal is probably my favorite...
The Carthaginians weren't coordinating with Hannibal, that hurt him...but Hannibal somewhat may have overestimated his ability to negotiate with his own country, or rather, put himself into the mercy of the political machinations in Carthage. We should forgive him of that desu famalam

>Restrictions on navy to reduce its size
Basically WW1 and WW2 all over again
;)

Except Carthage actually intended to honor the treaty. Hannibal acted unilaterally to break it, the city still had a weak fleet.