Philip Freeman ends his book by asking the questions, how could Hannibal have defeated the Romans and what would that have changed historically and for us today.
This is the usual way speculations about alternatives in history are framed. Like Freeman’s view generally, the speculations focus on single individuals.
I am less interested in sharing his answer to the questions he poses than I am in sharing a broader perspective Freeman and most historians simply miss because of this oddly narrow perspective.
Bruce Catton in his alternative speculation, “If the South Had Won the Civil War,” imagines a cat startling Grant’s horse. The general falls off and dies before he can win the siege at Vicksburg and then take over in the East to defeat Lee.
When I read this as a boy, I thought it was not a terribly interesting scenario. Grant could’ve died many other ways. But actually it is unlikely that Grant’s death alone would’ve allowed the South to win over the much more powerful North.
In fairness, Catton may have thrown in other differences also focused on individuals. Say, if Jackson hadn’t been shot by his own men at Chancellorsville, and then things at Gettysburg might have gone a different way.
Catton may have thrown in more changes, involving Lincoln, who in many ways was more important as an individual than any general on either side to the outcome. But all of it really misses the broader picture.
As Shelby Foote remarked, the North was almost certain to win the war from the outset. Much like the way the US has conducted wars after its own Civil War, the people in the northern states continued to live relatively normal lives compared to the people in the Confederacy.
He said, it was as if the North in the earlier years through the bloody end fought with one hand tied behind its back. Bluntly, if the rebels had started to succeed, the Union would have simply started to use its other hand.
Getting back to Freeman, what strikes me is the lack of imagination. Like Catton, the questions are focused on solely if one side won or lost. Like Frost’s poem, we are supposed to believe that single forking in the roads would make all of the difference.
Of course, Frost was being ironic, while the historians seem deadly earnest. Frankly, it is almost as if these guys have suffered some kind of blow to the head and are unable to conceive of the world as anything but conflicts between powerful, violent men.
Everything hinges on which guy comes out on top, or which tribe wins the fight over the waterhole. Those silly apes all still find themselves in the same desert. What kind of creatures would hang out in such a place? Who imagines these things from the range of possibilities?
Here is some further irony. Freeman begins his book when Hannibal is nine years old. His father takes him to the temple and makes him swear to hate the Romans and never stop until he has defeated them.
Freeman mentions that it had been usual practice to sacrifice the firstborn in a family but this had been replaced by substituting an animal.
Hannibal was the firstborn. As I read Freeman’s speculations in the final chapter, it occurred to me immediately as more interesting to ask, What if his father had sacrificed him as an infant?
The word sacrifice itself is interesting in the context of both war and religion. I think again of the American Civil War and the use of these words, “sacrifice on the altar of freedom,” to describe the loss of sons in a letter Lincoln wrote to one mother, made popular in that peculiar war film by Spielberg.
What occurs to me is that there are much more interesting questions we can ask when we stop believing that war and mass violence are more important than anything else in the course of human events.
War itself was likely more of a ritual in its earliest forms. There are no animals that aim to exterminate a herd or flock. When chimps attack another troop of chimps, they may kill one of the other band but the goal is usually to drive the others away.
When we consider the Punic Wars and the stance Carthage took towards the execution of their fight against Rome, does it make sense to ask questions about why they differed from the Romans ultimately?
“Carthage must be destroyed” is a famous example of rhetorical repetition in a speech by Cato the Elder. Freeman in his alternative speculates that Hannibal after the Battle of Cannae could have destroyed Rome instead.
Ultimately Scipio Africanus and the Romans did destroy Carthage and sowed salt into the soil so nothing would grow there. This anticipates a later Roman reflection, which we can apply to the way the Romans carried out war: “They make a desert and call it peace” (from Tacitus, put in the mouth of one Calgacus before the Battle of Mons Graupius).
Let us reflect on the difference in the levels of desperation and fear which cause people to resort to lethal force in some situations versus, say, the range of feelings a parent restraining a frustrated child can have.
Even in the most intimate relationships we see the worst along with the best. Our feelings are only limited by our ability to imagine for both good and ill. Consider the sacrifices we make for each other, for our children and those we love, that do not involve slaughtering animals or each other, or even pretending to.
Care and violence are intimately connected in our lives from the first relationships into the broader understanding we gain in maturity. We all must think a great deal more and bring more imagination to bear on these questions and alternatives, both in history and in our own lives going forward.
I Dwell In Possibility 