Battle of Cannae. Speaking of this battle, Cicero, derisively mocking horoscopes, wondered if all 60,000 fallen Roman soldiers (of a total of 80,000) were born under the same zodiac sign, since they certainly met the same fate… The Battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 BC, was one of the major battles of the Second Punic War and took place near the city of Cannae in ancient Apulia. The Carthaginian army, commanded with extreme skill by Hannibal, encircled and almost completely destroyed a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic, led by the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. It was, in terms of combat casualties, one of the heaviest defeats suffered by Rome, second only to the Battle of Arausio, and is considered one of the greatest tactical maneuvers in military history. Regrouping after previous defeats at the Battles of the Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC), the Romans decided to confront Hannibal at Cannae, with approximately 86,000 Roman and allied troops. The Romans massed their heavy infantry in a tighter formation than usual, while Hannibal employed the pincer tactic. This maneuver proved so effective that the Roman army was annihilated as a fighting force. Following the Battle of Cannae, the city of Capua, once an ally of Rome, and other city-states switched allegiances to Carthage.
