#cannae

But 1. Ancient historians are well known for inflating number, 2. These guys weren't there, 3. They didn't raise 16 emergency legions right? Some of those legions had been raised prior at 4000 men and had undoubtedly suffered some casualties.

And you generally would not dilute a veteran legion with green recruits. Its better to have a block of 2000 or 3000 who have stood in battle together before than to have 4000 or 5000 with half of them unsure of what they're about to experience.

I saw a YouTube video that was well researched and interviewed a historian who has done extensive work on the battle. They mention 8 emergency 5000 man legions being raised iirc. That's 40000 men. But then they don't make any estimate about the actual size of the other 8 legions. If they started at 4000 and on average suffered 25% casualties fighting Hannibal (survivors and ransomed captives from Trasimene for example) we're talking a strength of 24000 from these legions.

All told that would be 64000 men. Minus two legions it is said were left to guard the camp and we're at 54000 to 58000 depending on which legions were left to guard (2 of the new larger 5000 man legions or some smaller previously existing group).

The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic

In history, famous battles define the generalship and reputation of military leaders, such as Gaugamela for Alexander the Great, Austerlitz for Napoleon, and the Battle of Cannae for Hannibal. Robert L. O’Connell’s book The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic offers a well-analyzed perspective on the Second Punic War and the Battle of Cannae. O’Connell was a senior analyst for the National Ground Intelligence Center and now primarily works as a military historian with many other publications on battles in history. The Ghosts of Cannae also provides a glimpse into the soldiers who survived the battle and were exiled to Sicily. If you are an aficionado of the Punic Wars, this book will help you delve further into that conflict.

There are other good works on Cannae but The Ghosts of Cannae is unique.

This book is aimed at a general audience, particularly those interested in military history. The first few chapters talk about the First Punic War, the origins of the second war, and a comparison of the Roman and Carthaginian cultures. While the militaries of both cultures are examined, O'Connell emphasizes that Rome was more militaristic while “the Carthaginians were good at business and bad at war” (64). This, however, is a flaw because both nations engaged in both aspects. His emphasis on Carthage as a trading center neglects Carthage’s culture and only portrays them as a commercial trading hub.

There are idiotic conspiracy theories being circulated about the Astroworld disaster in Houston. They are pure bullshit.

No, there is not any evidence that somebody was running around injecting people with a syringe.

[T]he needle-prick story should never have been reported as news. In addition to a lack of evidence—there was no toxicology report verifying the claim—it just doesn’t make basic sense. I’ve been a journalist on the drug beat for several years, and I’ve never talked to a drug user who’s eager to give their drugs away for free to people who don’t want it. It also takes time and concentration to dilute drugs and load them in a syringe, a task that could be quite difficult to do in a dark and crowded space like Astroworld. Then, there’s the matter of actually injecting a moving target square in the neck, unless maybe the assailant is Showtime’s Dexter. In reality, it’s incredibly difficult to inject someone in the neck, especially “stealthily,” said Dr. Ryan Marino, who specializes in addiction and overdose.

And the Satanic influence story sounds like a Christian fundamentalist fever dream which recurs whenever some music crops up which far right religious fanatics really don’t like.

It’s understandable to reach for a clear cause and source of blame in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy; on TikTok, conspiracy theorists suggested that the concert was some kind of satanic ritual led by Scott. 

Blaming problems on people who are allegedly in thrall to Satan is part of the playbook of loony Christian fanatics.

In fact, nine people were killed because of poor planning, poor security, and poor crowd control.

Live Nation, the organizer, and Travis Scott both look irresponsible. The performance continued over half an hour after officials declared a mass casualty event.

That itself is so wrong. But what is worse is that there were simply too many people crowded together in too small a space without proper crowd management.

Crowd crush, otherwise known as “crowd surge,” is a horrifying phenomenon that occurs when people are jammed so tight together that they can’t breathe, leading to injury and possible death by compressive asphyxia. In crowd crush, people don’t need to be in an altered state of mind to trample other people to death (not that drugs cause one to do that, anyway). It’s happened before: A gruesome case of crowd crush at Hillsborough stadium in 1989 killed 97 people. “Crowd crush is not a very intuitive thing,” said Claire Zagorski, a paramedic and addiction researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “When I started paramedic school, I didn’t understand how trampling was deadly. But it’s completely plausible that young, perfectly healthy people could die from it.”

Crowd crush is nothing new, nobody can say this was totally unforeseen. It is a phenomenon which has been well known for at least 2,200 years.

At the Battle of Cannae (216 BC), the Carthaginian general Hannibal encircled most of a Roman army and kept advancing until the Romans were so compressed that many were asphyxiated. (Though ironically, many of those encircled Romans tried to commit suicide by asphyxiation.)

Just to illustrate: A scene from S06E09 of Game of Thrones was directly inspired by Cannae.

If Sansa and Littlefinger hadn't come to the rescue, Jon Snow and his allies would have ended up like those Romans at Cannae.

Astroworld was clearly a preventable tragedy. Profit was placed above safety. 

Charles III: I could kill you if I wanted to.