Punic Wars Day!

Today I Learned:
 It's Punic Wars day! Not really, but I learned some interesting things about the Punic wars, so here are your three Punic Wars facts for the day (specifically, from the second Punic Wars)

1) The famous elephants that Hannibal brought across the Alps into Rome? It seems they were pretty effective until they died from the cold at the foot of the Alps.

2) The Romans lost a lot of political leadership during the Punic Wars. Today I learned that Roman politicians of the time of the second Punic Wars were a) without exception military veterans and b) led the military, directly.

In particular, Rome of the day had a position called the Consul, which was a bit like a president except that a) they served one-year terms, b) they were truly military commanders as well as politicians, and c) there were always two of them at a time. A lot of these led armies against Hannibal, and were killed in battle. Politics may have been pretty similar then and now, but being a politician was not.

3) Speaking of Roman military leadership, one of the most famous Roman generals *possibly* of all time was Fabius Maximus, of the eponymous Fabian strategy, which I'll get to in a second. Today I learned that Fabius was elected dictator of Rome early in the Second Punic War in response to a string of early humiliating defeats by Hannibal. His strategy, the Fabian strategy, was to beat Hannibal by not fighting him. After all, Hannibal had just smashed several competent Roman armies, so Fabius figured he probably wasn't going to out-fight Hannibal. Instead, he would shadow Hannibal's army across the countryside, never engaging it directly but ensuring that it couldn't really rest and recuperate, either. Hannibal was far from home and essentially not getting any reinforcements, while Rome was marshalling new armies as quickly as she could.