LOCAL CONDITIONS REVISITED: A BRIEF SUMMARY

The previous five chapters have brought the Second Punic War into focus from the perspective of the Italian states and suggest that Hannibal's lack of success as a diplomat was an important component of his overall defeat in the Italian theatre of the war. Because Rome enjoyed a significant manpower advantage, Hannibal needed to elicit massive allied revolts in a short period of time. Rome's Italian allies were willing to come over to Hannibal's side, but only on their own terms, and Hannibal struggled to get all the communities in any given region to revolt at the same time. Moreover, it was difficult for Hannibal to maintain the loyalty of the Italian communities that did revolt. The arguments presented in this book reveal that local conditions and motivations significantly influenced the decisions of various Italian states to remain loyal to Rome, thus shaping the course and ultimately the outcome of the Second Punic War. In short, Hannibal's failure resulted from military disadvantage that he could not overcome through diplomatic means because of local, circumstantial factors.

Why was Hannibal unable to unify the Italians against Rome, or even to keep his new Italian allies unified during the eventual war of attrition? Goldsworthy has stated that the communities that did join Hannibal lacked a sense of common identity or purpose. This was indeed the case, though it is perhaps more accurate to say that there were too many mutually exclusive identities and agendas.