Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory

Adrian Goldsworthy offers a concise account of one of history's bloodiest and most famous battles. On August 2, 216 BC, a massive Roman army met the forces of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who had crossed the Alps into Italy two years earlier, across a narrow plain near the southern Italian town of Cannae. Despite outnumbering their opponents almost two to one, the Romans were crushed. The scale of losses at Cannae—50,000 Roman men killed—was unrivaled until the industrialized slaughter of the First World War. Although the Romans eventually recovered and Carthage lost the war, the Battle of Cannae became Romans' point of reference for all later military catastrophes. Since then, military commanders confronting a superior force have attempted, and usually failed, to reproduce Hannibal's tactics and their overwhelming success. This work examines Rome's most devastating defeat and its lasting significance in military history.