Cannae, battle of

The battle of Cannae was fought on August 2, 216 BCE , in northern Apulia. Dissatisfied with the “delaying tactics” (harassing the enemy but avoiding battle) of Fabius Maximus in 217, the Roman Senate authorized the levying of armies twice the normal size under the command of both consuls in 216, Terentius Varro and Aemilius Paullus. The ensuing disaster was blamed by later generations on Varro, unfairly. On a broad plain beside the river Aufidus (Ofanto), Hannibal, with forty thousand African, Spanish, and north Italian Gallic infantry and ten thousand Numidian and Gallic cavalry, confronted the Roman super‐army of eight enlarged legions and allied units. This totaled at least seventy thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry on the field, while some ten thousand garrisoned their camp.

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