metal fucking shit but OP implies we had the choice to besiege and destroy Rome and chose not to; Hannibal probably didn't have the forces to do so and didn't secure sufficient reinforcements from the Italians (most of whom outside of Capua chose Rome)
he theoretically had the manpower but lacked the engineers necessary to build siege weapons. i believe he did surround Rome once, but they knew he could only send over rocks or arrows and just waited til he left.
surrounding and waiting is a valid way to capture a city. Rome's size and position made it a tough nut even if one has numbers and engineering (no way hannibal wouldn't have the ability to make ladders and rams).
i should think hannibal didn't want to spread his troops around the circuit then get sallied to a death of 1000 cuts, or be vulnerable to roman reinforcements encirclement
I believe the point of his siege was to make Rome recall its generals so his allies could grab more territory further away, so he wasn't too scared of encirclement(After all, his whole thing was encirclement). And yeah he could build rams and ladders but as you said that would just lead to his men slowly getting picked off because the Roman guard could easily snipe them from the walls. Rome had enough materials inside that he'd have to wait years to actually get any results from a siege of just sitting there patiently, so he just left once he saw they weren't recalling their generals. Scipio departed for Carthage and he was called back quickly some years later.
Well played.
Yeah, when they finally recalled him just before Zama, wasn't that the first time he was in Africa in his adult life?
Edit - and of course by 217 Hannibal was already in Italy. "You bolt awake in the fog near Lake Trasimene . . ."
"you bolt awake in a bath of roman blood"
metal fucking shit but OP implies we had the choice to besiege and destroy Rome and chose not to; Hannibal probably didn't have the forces to do so and didn't secure sufficient reinforcements from the Italians (most of whom outside of Capua chose Rome)
he theoretically had the manpower but lacked the engineers necessary to build siege weapons. i believe he did surround Rome once, but they knew he could only send over rocks or arrows and just waited til he left.
surrounding and waiting is a valid way to capture a city. Rome's size and position made it a tough nut even if one has numbers and engineering (no way hannibal wouldn't have the ability to make ladders and rams).
i should think hannibal didn't want to spread his troops around the circuit then get sallied to a death of 1000 cuts, or be vulnerable to roman reinforcements encirclement
I believe the point of his siege was to make Rome recall its generals so his allies could grab more territory further away, so he wasn't too scared of encirclement(After all, his whole thing was encirclement). And yeah he could build rams and ladders but as you said that would just lead to his men slowly getting picked off because the Roman guard could easily snipe them from the walls. Rome had enough materials inside that he'd have to wait years to actually get any results from a siege of just sitting there patiently, so he just left once he saw they weren't recalling their generals. Scipio departed for Carthage and he was called back quickly some years later.