> Rome's eventual strategy—the Fabian strategy of delay, harassment, and avoiding direct confrontation—wasn't intuitive to Romans. It felt wrong.
My understanding of the story is Fabius was running the Roman strategy before Cannae and had identified all the lessons of that battle in advance. It was clear that in a pitched battle Hannibal was going to do extremely well. It is a fascinating historical example about how being right is not enough in politics, but Fabius got a unique opportunity to demonstrate that he told them so. It was clearly foreseeable and foreseen, so the entire problem the Romans had was that their leadership operating foolishly.
My understanding of the story is Fabius was running the Roman strategy before Cannae and had identified all the lessons of that battle in advance. It was clear that in a pitched battle Hannibal was going to do extremely well. It is a fascinating historical example about how being right is not enough in politics, but Fabius got a unique opportunity to demonstrate that he told them so. It was clearly foreseeable and foreseen, so the entire problem the Romans had was that their leadership operating foolishly.