At the end of the day, the vast majority of those 70,000 people were dead. What's more, the rest would be killed the next day. The battlefield was supposed to have been one of the most amazing, horrific sights anyone had ever seen. And that's by their standards -- ancient people, who were used to seeing the results of ancient battle. It's unimaginable for people like us, who've never seen anything like it. Where's my Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the battlefield the day after Cannae?
It's not a mental picture that any of us can envision. And there are often people who will try to tell you what battle in that period was like, or what something like the battlefield of Cannae must have looked like the day afterwards. Don't believe a word of it. We don't know what it was like, and anyone who tells you differently, no matter what their credentials, is lying. The experts disagree, no one's seen anything like this for five-hundred years -- what an organized, mass, "civilized" killing looked like before there was gunpowder.
Just think about the images that were maimed in the heads of the people who lived on after seeing what that looked like, and the nightmares they must have had for the rest of their lives. You talk about post-traumatic stress disorder in a modern sense? Think about what the survivors, on both sides, must have seen in their nightmares at night for the rest of their lives -- images that the human mind cannot imagine. And it's the same thing with ancient combat -- this is something we can't imagine. Could you have done this up-close-and-personal combat?
As Hannibal and his generals walk the battlefield the day after, as Romans who were only wounded, a lot of them had their hamstrings cut as they tried to get away, from behind, had to be finished off the next day, Livy says that they were baring their throats to the Carthaginians, asking to be finished off basically, they didn't speak the same language, but they figured it was sort of an international sign language, "finish me off," and they did. Matter of fact, in the hot August sun, it would have been a problem if they didn't, but you can only imagine trying to deal with, you know, that many people dead in such a small area.
And yet of course, as shocked as he's said to have been, Hannibal, at this sight, his subgenerals must have been in a wonderful mood, one of them says, "It's time to move on Rome." And back in Rome, that's exactly how they were feeling too. Panic does not do justice to the Roman reaction to the loss at Cannae. It looked like they were doomed. It reminds you of Polybius' line -- "It is when Romans stand in real danger, when they are most to be feared." And after the Battle of Cannae in 216, the Romans stood in real danger.
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