posted on May, 23 2004 @ 06:50 AM
Hannibal is probably my favorite historical personality. He proves my personal motto: He who dares, Wins! Proving your guts for dummies:
Step 1: Try to conduct deep operations in the territory of the worlds strongest army.
Step 2: Stand off with a force about 10 times your size, and put your back to the river so there is no retreat.
Step 3: Order your lines to break and head for the river, and hope to God they'll keep their nerve and reform on your order.
Step 4: Reform your lines and hold on for dear life while your brother takes a small cavalry force behind enemy lines, to effectively destroy the
entire opposing force with your cavalry.
Step 5: Instead of going home happy to be alive, go on to the next fight.
That being said, Hannibal didn't do it. Atilla the Hun and Alarich the Goth weren't it either. Rome would eventually have been their rulers, and
assimilated their strengths into her own legions (just like they did with the Spanish mercinary cavaliers that made Hannibal so dangerous). Rome's
society and economy collapsed beneath them. If you study US history it will be all to familiar to you. The time-table is greatly truncated, but the
lessons are the same. We outlasted the rival superpower (For Rome it was Carthage) but before long it was doubtful rather we'd be able to outlast the
mounting barbarian threat from a world we had thought held no more danger for us. I know it's not very PC to refer to arabs as barbarians, but they
aren't in the same technological or cultural era as we are, so they are barbarians. I'm not really going anywhere with this... just that Rome
wasn't pushed- it fell. (Which opens up a pro-reagan saying i love... Communism didn't fall, it was pushed!)
Ok, i'll shutup.