What if hannibal didnt attack rome?

[RoryLaddz]

If Hannibal Didnt attack Rome would Rome be a small Insignificant Nation or did Hannibal provoke Rome to conquer the known world

[conon394]

Well that's three questions...

would Rome be a small Insignificant Nation

Nothing to do with Hannibal. The basic tools that allowed the Republic to conquer the Med were all in place in circa 218 BC.

Roman control over the entire Italian peninsula south of the Po Valley and modern Genoa. That control d via the Republic (super critical factor here) - No other state at that time had such a stable and robust political structure. The first stages of Imperial control - most of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the initial steps of intervention in Greece in Illyria, and firm longstanding alliance with Syracuse and Messalia insuring Rome had definite interest in what Carthage did in any case. Most Important a well established drive to expand and absorb Cisalpine Gaul no matter what Carthage did or did not do.

Altogether Rome was realistically already the single most powerful state in the Med, without the Second Punic war it almost assuredly would have simply continued to absorb Italy and likely Illyria. The trajectory of expansion would likely be a bit different as Roman would be more likely to get sucked into the wars of the Greeks and Macedonia. Unless Carthage radically altered the way it ran its empire I have my doubts how long it would last. How long could Carthage continue to have the Barca's ruling their own personal Empire in Spain? Any civil war would open the flood gates of unrest from Carthy subjects..

If Hannibal Didnt attack Rome

See above - given the tension in the Carthy system I don't see it being sustainable - could the Carthage government really just rubber stamp a Hannible proclaiming his son an heir to Spain? Seeing as no power in the East could really distract Rome with a long war, I would guess Rome would simply jump into the inevitable civil and reduce if not eliminate Carthage and end up as master of the Western Med shortly and at less cost.

[Vezon]

And the roman view of warfare was this: You fight us, we will forever be going to war with you until one of us is destroyed, or you are a protecterate. The First Punic War had already happened, and Rome wanted Spain, so war was inevitable. History would play out as it had before. Rome already wanted to conquer.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Then someone else would attack Rome.
The clash of the two Empires was inevitable considering the they were the two primary powers trying to control trade in Western Mediterranean.

[Stultus]

Rome's Imperial desires didn't really surface until they were dragged into the umpteenth Greek war, well after Hannibal. Prior to that, they would constantly fight to uphold the status quo outside of Rome; it was only when they realized the Greeks would never, ever stop fighting each other that they decided to play the part of the angry dad and subjugate the Hellenes.

It would have been inevitable that Carthage and Rome would butt heads. Even if Hannibal did not attack Rome, the two powers would still have fought but, like Conon said, Rome would have been more active in Greece around that time instead (if we are assuming that Hamilcar did not fight Rome either, because Vezon is also correct: vengeance was big business).

The real question is how would the war have gone if Hannibal had seiged the actual city of Rome? As it was, he focused on isolating Rome from South Italy, which allowed a Roman army to cut off his supply lines and then attack Carthage directly, resulting in Hannibal's recall orders. If he had seiged Rome, would the costly seige have worked, and would Rome have fallen?

[HannibalB]

Rome's Imperial desires didn't really surface until they were dragged into the umpteenth Greek war, well after Hannibal. Prior to that, they would constantly fight to uphold the status quo outside of Rome; it was only when they realized the Greeks would never, ever stop fighting each other that they decided to play the part of the angry dad and subjugate the Hellenes.

It would have been inevitable that Carthage and Rome would butt heads. Even if Hannibal did not attack Rome, the two powers would still have fought but, like Conon said, Rome would have been more active in Greece around that time instead (if we are assuming that Hamilcar did not fight Rome either, because Vezon is also correct: vengeance was big business).

The real question is how would the war have gone if Hannibal had seiged the actual city of Rome? As it was, he focused on isolating Rome from South Italy, which allowed a Roman army to cut off his supply lines and then attack Carthage directly, resulting in Hannibal's recall orders. If he had seiged Rome, would the costly seige have worked, and would Rome have fallen?

Hannibal had a rational plan of attack, namely, to sever the ties of Rome's allies to dissolve the power of the Republic, something to his chagrin, proved difficult indeed. Besieging Rome would have put him in a very dangerous situation. Immediately after Cannae Hannibal sent a delegation led by Carthalo to negotiate a peace treaty with the Senate on moderate terms. It would have made little difference if he had been outside Rome, he was only about a week's march away regardless, yet despite the multiple catastrophes Rome had suffered, the Roman Senate refused to parley. With poor supply lines, he relied on movement across the Italian peninsular to acquire food (one of the main reasons he brought so many Numidian cavalry with him - to forage - most of Hannibal's shock cavalry were Iberian and Celts) he could also not sever Roman supply lines.

In Hans Delbruck's Warfare in Antiquity he says: At Cannae then, he had beaten and wiped out only the smaller half of the Roman Legions (8 of 18), and the Romans soon replaced their losses through new levies; they did not even have the legions stationed overseas - in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain - return home. To have moved against Rome immediately after the battle with a view toward the terrorizing effect would therefore have served no purpose for Hannibal and, passing as a negative demonstration, would have nullified the other morale effects of the victory at Cannae. If the well-known statement by the cavalry leader, Marharbal, that Hannibal understood how to win but not exploit his victories, was actually said, it only proves that the brave general who said it was a simple fighter rather than a true strategist. During the lengthy butchery of the encircled legionaries the Carthaginian army had itself sacrificed 5,700 killed, and consequently in addition at least 20,000 wounded, who were not capable of marching again until days and weeks had passed. Had he started out immediately after battle, Hannibal would have arrived before Rome with hardly 25,000 men, and the Romans would not have given in to such a small force, even at the height of their terror. (p.337)

And onto besieging Rome:

Rome was a very large, well-fortified city: the Servian wall had a circumference of more than five miles. Large open areas within the walls could accommodate refugees from the countryside. Rome was also a large trading capital, richly provided by supplies of all kinds. Hannibal would have had to control the sea and taken Ostia first so he himself could be supplied by sea to make besieging Rome not impossible with 50-60,000 men. But we know the Roman's had superiority at sea, which is why Hannibal had gathered his forces in a land army. According to Delbruck again:

The siege army would, therefore, have had to be supplied by land. Gigantic supply lines would have had to be organised and made to function through a completely hostile countryside and passing by innumerable cities and strongholds that blocked the routes. A very large portion of the Carthaginian force would have had to be assigned to this duty, and every isolated unit would have been exposed at every turn to the legions and cohorts, both Roman and allied, which were still stationed in the country or were newly organised. The remainder of the army which would have been available for siege, divided by the Tiber River, would have withstood only with great difficulty sorties of the numerically far superior garrison. The principal arm of the Carthaginians, their cavalry, could not have been of any assistance. (p.338)

With what forces Hannibal had at his disposal after Cannae, he clearly couldn't achieve the above.

[Silverheart]

If Hannibal hadn´t attacked Rome, Rome would have attacked him.

It was a bold campaign he did, with impressive victories, and he deserves admiration for it - but in the end it had no impact on the outcome of the war.

[Caesar Germanico]

even if hannibal managed to take the city he really needed to do a genocide for a drastic change to happen,he probably would have just sacked the city and rome would then be left in a bad condition for a few decades
maybe he could have used his victory to gain more power in carthage and change how things worked there,but still was an hard thing to do

[Scipio Afracanis]

Its said that it would have taken multiply Cannes to get the desired effect on the Romans. Since they after that battle something like another 250,000 possible soldiers to call on, Hannibal was thinking that what happened to Carthage in the 1st Punic war could happen to Rome, beat them in a couple of battles, show them to be vulnerable and have the cities/people rebel against them. Good plan and while some did not nearly enough to make a difference. The Roman machine worked to well.

Siege of the capital would have just ended his time in Italy even sooner.

[Mr. Shaboobies]

Lol but he could've just spammed the awesome siege towers for epic stone walls and ballistaed (sp?) the crap out of the romans!