The Republican march on Rome
From our US edition
Perhaps the greatest defeat the Roman Republic ever suffered was at the hands of Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Livy estimates that some 50,000 Romans were slaughtered and nearly 20,000 captured. Hannibal lost fewer than 6,000 men. It was a brilliant tactical victory for the Carthaginian general. The sun and wind were at his back. He had deployed his men in a convex semicircle with his weakest troops in front. When the armies assembled for battle, Hannibal ordered his men to shuffle their feet to stir up the dust. The Romans, half-blinded by the dust and the sun, plunged headlong against the protruding bulge of Hannibal’s line, easily pushing it in upon itself. Yet too late did they realize that only the tip of Hannibal’s line was falling back.
