Maximus, Warts and All

I have just published my new historical novella Maximus, Warts and All, on Kindle and Create Space. Maximus,Warts and All, is the story, told in the first person, of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator, the Roman general who confounded Hannibal’s ambitions during the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. For those who have read my novel The Death Of Carthage, where most of the action takes place in Spain and Africa, Maximus, Warts and All adds the Italian theater to the story.
Quintus Fabius was a man who thought outside the box. While most Romans responded to Hannibal’s invasion of Italy and the depredations he wrought, by wanting to confront him in pitched battles, Fabius could see that Hannibal was a military genius without peer, and that confronting him on his own terms would prove disastrous for Rome. Four successive Punic victories, Ticinus, Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae, proved Fabius correct. Fabius advocated guerrilla warfare, scorched-earth tactics and attempting to deprive Hannibal’s forces of sustenance, with the hope that desertions and hunger would weaken them and eventually force Hannibal to give up his ambition to conquer Italy. These tactics might have worked if Fabius had been allowed to continue them, but he was over-ruled by the politicians in Rome and Rome assembled a force of 80,000 soldiers under the Consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro to confront Hannibal. The result was the disastrous debacle of Cannae in which Hannibal’s double envelopment strategy trapped the bulk of the Romans and some 50,000 were slaughtered. Once the battle of Cannae occurred, Fabius realized that his strategy was no longer viable because many of the Italian allies, which had stayed with Rome until this point, rapidly deserted to Hannibal, providing the invader with an endless supply of men and materiel. From this point on, the war would be a hard slog.
Along with the first section of The Death of Carthage, Maximus, Warts and All, completes the fascinating story of the Second Punic War.

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