All Things Cannae

[Paullus Scipio]

Timotheus wrote:-

It would be easy for him to rally his troops by lying about which one was in command that day.

...remembering that it is Polybius who is putting the words into 'Hannibal's' mouth, what possible motive could 'Hannibal' have for lying to his own troops, especially as many of them will have been present at Cannae and would know the truth?? How would getting the commander's name wrong possibly improve the morale of the troops?

This is of course assuming that we can even take the speech at face value.

.....naturally, such a speech could not be delivered to tens of thousands of troops in real life, nor (usually) was such a speech if given recorded for posterity. It is usually an authors 'device' for conveying information he wants us to have....a literary topos. In this instance, it is one more piece of evidence to add to the rest ( see 'Rome's Ablest General thread') that it was really Aemilius Paullus who commanded at Cannae.....
Tarbicus/Jim wrote

perhaps they simply forgot what they called them before and used a different name or term unintentionally?

....which raises an interesting point! Authors frequently 'forget' when they are reading their sources, and often unintentionally use the terminology they find. This is one important clue for scholars when analysing, say, Livy because tracing two or more different 'terminology threads' through the work allows us to deduce when the author is using a particular source.