Explanation: One of the great advantages of the Roman Republic was that it was terribly, horrifically, unbelievably stubborn. In the First Punic War, they lost three entire fleets - fleets they built from scratch, as they had no navy at the start of it - and just kept building more until they won.
This horrific pigheadedness, naturally, is a double-edged sword - in the Second Punic War, the Roman dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus continually advised the Roman people to exercise caution and wait the Carthaginian general Hannibal, an unmatched military genius, out. He, and his close political ally, General Marcellus, adopted a strategy of hemming Hannibal in and only offering battle on favorable ground, on THEIR terms, not Hannibal’s.
The Roman people, however, were convinced that this was a QUITTER’S move, and despite appointing Fabius dictator, immediately began agitating for Roman armies to FIGHT and WIN against THAT DASTARDLY CARTHAGINIAN! They began calling Fabius ‘cunctator’ (‘delayer’) instead of ‘dictator’ (‘speaker’), and several politicians promised that THEY would be BOLD and ROMAN and DEFEAT HANNIBAL.
One prominent such politician, Minucius, ended up taking half the fucking army and leading it right into a trap of Hannibal’s, forcing Fabius to bail his dumb ass out. In Minucius’s defense, he was contrite after being rescued, publicly submitting to Fabius’s authority and saying, “My father gave me life. You saved my life today. You are my second father.”
Eventually, after several more such incidents, the Roman people did finally relent of their terrible stubbornness, and acclaimed Fabius as a hero - “One man, by delaying, has saved the Republic.”
The fact that Hannibal was able to destroy multiple armies and Rome still wouldn’t surrender is mind boggling. Poor Hannibal must have been pulling his hair out trying to get them to give up.
It has to be some sort of cultural-level mental disorder. They lost 1/5 of their adult male citizen population to Hannibal. Like, fuck’s sake.
But they HAD to win. Roman pride DEMANDED it. If that meant they had to sell all their jewelry, adopt foreign gods (very powerful!), free slaves to fight as citizen-soldiers, make foreign alliances with Numidian and Spanish tribes, they were willing to do it. Anything to win!
I think I half remember accounts that the roman resorted to human sacrifice by burying some guys alive to gain the gods favor.
They did! The Sibylline books, a series of cryptic poetic verses, which were consulted only in times of crisis and largely left unread otherwise, supposedly told them to do it. They buried four slaves, two Gauls and two Greeks if memory serves, despite the fact that Roman cultural norms regarded human sacrifice as odious and offensive to the gods. It was an episode that later Roman writers were always deeply uncomfortable with.
Damn dude, dou you remember all this from the top of your head?
Rome is an obsession of mine. I gave up most of my basic life and social skills at character creation for this talent. :p
And I’m still nowhere near real academics. Man, speaking with someone who can outright quote and translate sources from the top of their head? It’s like being a Catholic meeting the Pope.
You are an asset to our community, I’m just a romaboo. Speaking of, have you heard of Francis Ford Coppola latest movie supposedly inspired by Catiline’s conspiracy?
