Tom Holland

So the fact that so few people had wanted to take the risk and escape from that smaller camp to join the large camp, I mean, this to Hannibal is an indicator that Roman morale is broken.

But also what then happens in Canusium is another indicator of this.

Because even in the relative safety of Canusium, which is a walled town, it's evident that morale is really, really at rock bottom.

So one officer...

who is the son of a consul, the consul is the kind of the leading magistrate in the Republic, he is reported by Hannibal's spies to have insisted publicly that all is lost, to quote him, the future has nothing to offer but misery and despair.

And there are other officers who, again, are men of very high birth, high rank, who are said to be planning to flee overseas.

You know, they have despaired of the situation.

Yes.

And in the speech that he's recorded as giving, I think it expresses what were almost certainly his real sentiments.

So Hannibal is made to say by Livy, I am not waging a war of extermination against the Romans.

I am merely contending for honor and empire.

My ancestors yielded to Roman valor.

So in the first Punic war,

Now, in the Second Punic War, it is the turn of the Romans to yield to my good fortune and to my valour.

And that, I think, is clearly what he thinks.

will happen.

Why wouldn't the Romans choose to negotiate?

He doesn't want to wipe them out.

He doesn't want to destroy them.

He just wants to do to the Romans what the Romans had done to his own city.