More About Hannibal's Army

[David Kush]

I've never seen any reference about my thought here. Is it possible that Hannibal's Libyan skirmishers, given they spoke a similar language, could have been recruted into the heavy infantry to make up for loses crossing the Alps and the battles prior to Cannae? Can anyone bring up sources that would refute this as a possibility?
Thank you for any thoughts on the matter.
David Kush

[Duncan Head]

We have no hard evidence stating that the skirmishers were Libyan, IIRC - though they probably were. The longchophoroi are still mentioned at Cannae, so must have still been available then - Polybios uses the word for Hannibal's light troops, but not IIRC for Romans or even for light infantry in other Punic armies, which might suggest it indicates a specific unit.

[Patrick Waterson]

And we get no further specific detail until Hannibal's army travels to Africa for Zama, where there is no differentiation among Hannibal's veterans, who form an apparently homogenised third line.

My own suspicion is that following Cannae everyone - lonchophoroi, Spanish, Gauls and new Italian recruits - were all Romanised and turned into imitation legionaries.  Hannibal's veteran heavy infantry had been thus equipped prior to Cannae (Polybius III.87: "Having therefore now got possession of a rich country, he got his horses into condition again, and restored the bodies and spirits of his soldiers; and made the Libyans change their own for Roman arms selected for the purpose [metakathōplise = arm fully], which he could easily do from being possessed of so many sets stripped from the bodies of the enemy."

Hannibal's Italian recruits would already have been Romanised and accustomed to working with a Roman-style army: Romanising his own troops would have made it easier to assimilate his post-Cannae Italian intake.