2 de Agosto de 216 BC

Punic Wars: In the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal destroys the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius. The Battle of Cannae, August 2, 216 BC, was a decisive battle of the Second Punic War. A Carthaginian army under Hannibal destroyed a numerically superior Roman army under the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro near the town of Cannae in Apulia (SE Italy). The battle is famous for Hannibal's tactics as much as for the role it played in Roman history.

The consular forces at the battle amounted to 16 legions, 8 of them Roman plus an equal number of Latin allied legions, for a total of 80,000 men. Subtracting 10,000 for those left to guard the camp, the Romans brought to the field the following forces:

55,000 heavy infantry
8-9,000 light infantry
6,000 cavalry

Opposing them was a Carthaginian army made up of:

32,000 heavy infantry
8,000 light infantry
10,000 cavalry

Hannibal's victory at the Battle of Cannae is often viewed as the classical example of a smaller army thoroughly defeating a larger opponent, purely through the use of superior tactics on open terrain.

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