Dodge's book was written over a hundred years ago. The author has traveled around the battlefields of the second Punic War and tried to work out from the existing historical sources what really happened. Dodge was an army officer who served in the American Civil War. As such he knows the difficulty of moving large bodies of men, of supplying them with food, the difficulties of feeding horses and keeping them in good condition.
The book establishes the greatness of Hannibal. Very little is left to tell us much of what Carthaginian civilization was like. Coins and sculpture suggest that the Greeks heavily influenced it. We know that Carthage was an oligarchy and that it was a city that traded extensively.
It seems that it was probably a city that depended on slavery to produce its agricultural produce. This led to Rome having a pronounced advantage in the conflicts between the two cities. Rome had a sizeable peasant class who were integrated into its civil life. The Roman peasant class formed the basis of its armies. Rome as well had built up a coalition of allied cities some of which shared the benefits of citizenship. This meant that in any conflict Rome was able to put in the field 750,000 soldiers. In addition it had considerable economic power. Thus in the first Punic war Rome was able to build a number of fleets to challenge the Carthaginians at sea. The Carthaginians did not have a large class of landed peasants who could be mobilized and they depended on mercenary armies. The history of Carthage prior to their first war with Rome was not a history of military brilliance. Carthage had considerable problems in maintaining their control over about a third of Sicily fighting a large number of wars with the Greek city of Syracuse.
Rome in addition to being able to raise large numbers of men had developed a superior military unit. The predominant military unit prior to the rise of Rome was an infantry formation called he phalanx. This was a Greek invention. Heavily armored men would stand shoulder to shoulder and advance in a mass. The phalanx was effective in crushing the more lightly armed Persian troops during the time of Alexander. The Romans developed he legion. Its troops were armed with a short stabbing sword rather than a spear. Each soldier stood further apart than the phalanx. The formation was more flexible and the more spread out nature of the Roman formation allowed them to outflank the more compact Greek formations.
The twin advantages of a large population meant that Rome would over the next 400 years win wars even when poor generals led it. It had a military organization that was would work even with generals of limited talents and if something went wrong the Roman state could put army after army into the field. The decline of the Roman empire occurred when the military organization of the state changed and peasant levies gave rise to mercenary armies.
It would seem that Hannibal's father Hamilicar was an extremely competent military commander. He fought a guerrilla campaign against the Romans during the first war. After the peace he put down a mercenary revolt in Africa with numerically inferior forces. He then went on to conquer Spain. The reason for conquering Spain was to provide an economic base for the conquest of Rome. His son Hannibal fought in Spain to consolidate his fathers conquests.
Hannibal's war with Rome is remarkable in many respects but the one which Dodge explains is that it was a private war. The Carthaginian State did not really have the resources to finance a war with Rome. The enterprise was based on revenue from Spanish mines as were most of the infantry. Spain was in effect the personal property of Hannibal. He made a decision to attack Rome and Carthage agreed this decision to as it did not mean that they had to contribute much to the war effort.
Hannibal realized that to defeat Rome he would have to break up the Roman confederation. His strategy was to invade Italy and by winning military victories to prize away Romes allies.
In the end the scheme failed. Rome lost army after army but she was always able to raise more. In the end the Romans held Hannibal at bay while conquering Spain and cutting off the chance of fresh troops. Hannibal had to retreat to Africa were he was at last beaten at the battle of Zama. Rome triumphed and went on to rule most of what is now Europe for 800 years.
Dodge rates Hannibal as one of antiquities greatest figures. Although in the end his career was a failure the challenges he had to face were immense. Alexander the Great inherited an army and faced enemies of much less caliber and steel than Hannibal did. Caesar was born into the Roman empire and was given command of armies which Hannibal could only dream of. Hannibal's achievement's were immense. He fashioned with his father a private state sufficiently rich to enable him to raise a private army. That army he trained and honed into one of the finest of its age. He won spectacular victories over what was to be the strongest power in Europe for hundreds of years. His campaigns were far sighted and he had enormous talents in keeping together for over ten years a mercenary army made up of many different peoples. In Italy he was one of the first to create an intelligence network to monitor the movement of Roman armies and to anticipate cities which might be willing to change allegiance to his side. Despite these many talents there is a limit to what an individual can do when faced by a nation.
Dodges book is readable and in its own way fascinating. His own war experience gives him a much richer understanding of the campaigns and the maneuvers between the battles. The histories which still survive are those written by Polybius, Livy and Plutarch. Dodge is of the view that Polybius had a grasp of military matters which Livy and Plutarch lacked. He has to reconstruct the movements of the various armies to get a real picture of what was happening.
All in all a fascinating book which conveys the nuts and bolts reality of warfare in the ancient world.
