in this video which has been sponsored by the great causes plus but more of that later I'm going to talk to you about one of the bloodiest days in history probably the bloodiest day in Roman history and a strong contender for the bloodiest day in the history of any civilization ever this was the Battle of cannae and it took place in August 216 BC during the Second Punic War some of you will need a little bit of backstory so the story so far there was a general called Hamilcar Barca and he fought for the big long established Mediterranean superpower Carthage which is a city on the coast of North Africa which had great trading networks going all the way around the Mediterranean and it was very rich and powerful and had a largely mercenary army and it clashed with this upcoming new city called Rome which is in what we today call Italy and this they were they were rivals they were rivals over the control off for instance Sicily which is where Hannibal Barca fought and even though the Carthaginians overall lost the war Hamilcar Barca himself was undefeated and he was a bit annoyed being recalled by Carthage and having all his support taken away from him and he just said God don't ruin we nearly had to we nearly atom right I'll get them next time huh human what army de laughed well he did what any self-respecting general of the time would do that is he conquered half of Spain got loads of silver mines and got stinking rich I mean we think of Bill Gates today don't we is worth a bob or two quite a rich man absolutely if he wants a big yacht he can have a big yacht but the Barkers and other people in the ancient world got rich beyond the possibility of imagination in the modern world can we imagine Bill Gates or anyone like him being so privately wealthy that he could feasibly fund a successful invasion of Russia no no no one individuals that wealthy today but the Barkers thought let's give it a go now hamilkar had some daughters but we don't talk about them then later he had three sons he had the eldest Hannibal and then Hasdrubal and then Mako these became commanders after his death in the second Punic War Hannibal himself had been on campaign since the age of nine and he had a huge amount of leadership experience and a very experienced army to lead and he decided right I'm gonna do this at this time I'm not the make mistake of trying to use SI power it's gonna be a mainly a land invasion and I'm going to go over the Alps which he famously did was an elephants which were almost irrelevant but never mind to some elephants and then he fought a battle against the Romans that they the the river tikkun us and he beat them and then he fought another battle at the river trivia and he decisively beat them and then the Romans started really taking him seriously they sent out another much bigger army and he ambushed that at Lake Joe cemani and annihilated it and the Romans were wow really on the back foot they were absolutely aghast this what he beat out but we're Romans wit we don't lose what's going on so that's the background to the Battle of cannae now winter has come and he has spent that at a town called geranium and the in the ancient world not much fighting happened in winter normally and the the the Romans were licking their wounds from the campaign's of the the year before and electing new consoles consuls were generals and they always had two of them because they were constantly in fear of one person getting control of the army and then taking over Rome and setting himself up as king or something so two consuls made them feel much safer and they limited their power demanding for instance if I ever came to together in the same place they would have to share command between them and alternating days was one of the mechanisms that they came up with but it wasn't the only one anyway how we know all this well we know this because various historians have told us they two principle historians documenting the Second Punic War are polybius and living there are others Cornelius Nepos to talk Appian and so forth but they are in the main writing later and not so relevantly to the Battle of cannae now Polybius was writing only fifty years after the events he was describing and so he was able to talk to people who and have been there living on the other hand was writing more like two centuries later and historians do they generally think of him as less reliable although he has given us a much more complete history of the entire war after cani Polybius his history's just exist in the form of fragments whereas a Livy we've got got most of Livi's accounts oh but maybe 10 10 is gonna be carried away and he adds in all sorts of detail and though they make good stories we can't always rely on them anyway so the the console from the previously of previous year Flaminius had been killed at the Battle of trisomy and so he was replaced by a chap called Regulus and the consoles from the previous year they then become pro consoles who are still around because the army still needs to be out there needs to be commanded there are still a job to be done but they become pro consoles when the new consoles are elected to replace them and then they hand over at a convenient time so civilian was still alive from the previous year and so he became a pro console and the new consoles were Lucius emelius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro and from now on I'm just going to call them powerless and Varro but before I carry on I will make the point that if you read an account of cannae and you say Palace I can't find this guy Palace anywhere according to this account it was emelius who was in command of the Romans so did this this lloyd chap on the linear base channels got it all wrong ah no he was Lucius emelius palace and I'm calling him by his last name but that doesn't need to be a very rigid convention here different historians pick one of the Romans 3 names and they tend to just use that all the time rather than using all three so if you reads another account and it's emelius and not powers in command of the Romans well that's why okay sorry for the confusion but I hope that at least clears things up a bit the Romans typically had three names and one of them just gets picked seemingly random by historians to be that the one when the full name isn't used so these two men were quite different from each other Paulus was a patrician he was no bull descent and he was he was one of the nobles in with the nobles respected by the nobles and they felt that yeah he's our guy whereas this Varro guy is it's the son of a lowly butcher he's come up he's a man of the people he's a demagogue he's a rabble rouser his supporters are are described by Polybius as noteworthy for their numbers rather than their dignity I think you get the attitude so Barrow was not one of us as far as the patricians would contend that so it seems anyway he'd come up through the ranks and by getting the popular opinion behind him he'd been elected to high office and now this Varro guy was a consul and given command of an army now this was a very special year normally a consular army would be perhaps two legions it might have the same number of allies or two roman legion so it isn't your time the same number of allies drawn from the subjugated states around Rome so they might be Etruscans or some Knights people like that well that would be a four Legion army and that was normally it considered adequate to to see off any further room might face but they are up against Hannibal who seem to just annihilate large army sent against him so they thought right okay this made it seem like a hammer to crack a nut but let's just go for a wild overkill let's just defeat this guy once and for all let's put an army in the field that is so staggeringly gargantuan done even if he does some clever ruse he does these ambushes and things even if he's got some clever ruse he's still can't beat us because we will just overwhelming with overwhelming with just sheer numbers so they put into the field 16 legions and the two consular armies would join together so this was 16 legions in one enormous great lump and these are not ordinary lesions that normally in the past a legion would be four thousand infantry but they boosted that these were 5000 infantry legions so they're extra strength as well normally you'd have maybe 200 cavalry but they made it 300 cavalry and the Allies were supposed to supply three times as much cavalry as the Romans although it seems to me that they didn't Polybius says that it wasn't the norm but then doesn't go on to say but they didn't actually supply it but when he describes the numbers of cavalry that the Romans have he said they had 6,000 cavalry well they would have had 9600 cavalry if the Allies had put in three times as many so it seems that the Allies put in maybe one and a half times as many as the Romans but even so so you've got a usual amount so the Romans have not that many cavalry but they've got an enormous great block of infantry 16 legions it just is it's staggering so what were they going up against well Hannibal had maybe 40,000 infantry and but he had 10,000 cavalry so if you go with the 9600 figure for the Romans cavalry then he had a slight advantage in cavalry but most people most historians agree that he had a significant advantage so it looks like 10,000 Carthaginian cavalry against 6,000 Roman cavalry not staggeringly overwhelming they don't have more than double a number but that's a significant advantage to the Carthaginians in cavalry but a significant disadvantage in infantry so good that they could beam outnumbered two to one if we go with plebis figures but there are loads of problems with all the figures for troops for this battle and ancient battles in general I'll get I'll get onto that later so those a third roman army by the way that was sent as a diversion up to Gaul and that was quite significant because a lot of Hannibal's army was made up of Gauls from what we call Cisalpine Gaul you'll remember that what we think of today is Italy the northern part of it was actually a Celtic speaking so they they were Gauls and they were not part of the Roman sphere in this period they hadn't they haven't been conquered yet and a lot of those goals were had gone down south with Hannibal and had been fighting very successfully with him against the Romans and getting revenge for slights against them in the past of the rooms of perpetrated and it seems being pretty enthusiastic warriors so by sending a diversionary attack up north perhaps they could persuade some of those girls to desert and go back to defend their homeland but that didn't actually happen now we have to think about the bias in the histories because Polybius for instance who was a friend of the grandson of Paulus so being a friend of the grandson of Paulus here the vested interest perhaps to make Paulus look look good and how can you do that well one thing you can do is he blamed everything for the disaster on vero and reading his accounts you do get the impression that he is a little bit biased and that this this vero guy gets some somewhat unfair treatment meanwhile Palace is shown to be just ace and in Lily's account before Paulus leaves Rome Fabius who was the dictator in the previous you had a an idea that the best way to fight Hannibal isn't to take him on straight because he's just too good his armies are too good and he's to be the leader instead just shadow him and stop him getting access to supplies and just wait for his army to just wither and starve and for his various men to desert perhaps because they've had not been paid and he goes further he says that actually we later found out that he only had Hannibal only had ten days of food left at can I only we just waited a bit and the Spaniards were seriously thinking of deserting and would have if only can I hadn't happened when it did that vero only he hadn't started that the battle when he did and had listened to Palace then everything would have been possibly alright but instead we suffered we the Romans suffered the defeat of can out now Fabius had a word according to Livy Fabius has a word but it was it was writing this all down I mean it's all a little bit fishy it's difficult to believe that there you really can have a verbatim recorded verbatim conversation written down two centuries after the fact between two private individuals in ancient Rome but anyway Fabius takes palace aside and says you know you're actually up against two enemies here you may think that your main enemy is Hannibal but I know from experience that this vero guys perhaps more of an enemy to you and more therefore of an enemy to Rome than even Hannibal because he will disagree with you and he will be rash and foolish and you won't obey my advice but maybe you take my advice and don't take Hannibal on straight instead just as I say shadow him wait for his army to wither and die which is going to happen inevitably please believe me but in Livi's account Paulus replies what people are going to criticize me if I do nothing they gonna call me a coward if I just shadow him all the time and you know I would rather face the dangers of battle than the approbation of mic of my comrades so perhaps he wasn't fully enthusiastic with Fabian strategy after all but anyway they set out now then there's a little there's a tail in Livi which gets a little bit confusing because he has a skirmish happened between the Roman troops and Hannibal's troops and then following that he has this tale about two camps and they track the journey - can I whereas in polybius they get all the way - to the kenai area before the skirmish happens well we don't know where the skirmish happens but supposedly there was a skirmish which just happened against some of the cost in Ian's troops and it was going really well and they were inflicting significant casualties all the Carthaginians and Varro went up this is going brilliantly and he was encouraging them and come on follow with that followed up keep them on the run let's make this let's get at them according to Livy Varro had earlier made some very arrogant speeches saying that he was just gonna go out there and defeat this Hannibal guy well of course he probably felt safe to do so because he'd been given an unprecedented ly immense army but anyway even though it's a little bit arrogant and prove it to him to say Oh it'll be easy I'll get up there job done he was saying well perhaps that's what he had in mind let's let's press this all the way to the main army and let's carry the day but Palace was wrong no no no no stop this might be a traps trap and he brought everything to a halt and the Pharaoh was furious and the the men in the army are gently on Pharaohs side because he was a rabble rouser rouse a man of the people and he was he was good at getting him on his side like that and getting him angry publicly and riding the wave of their anger and directing this at port Paulus who had to try to counsel wisdom so goes the account and he got a vote there and then organized Barrow did and the army was overwhelmingly behind him let's get after Hannibal and so they did did any of that happen I think given that Polybius also mentions a successful skirmish and and a lot of the facts are the same maybe it did happen but it seems that Livy has moved these events earlier which gives it a a greater dramatic effect and because it has a greater dramatic effect that also makes it a little bit suspicious don't you think anyway he then tells an interesting tale of a ruse that is repeated Hannibal comes out of his camp in which he leaves loads of treasure and his tents and fires burning so it looks a cue pied and then he goes behind a hill and waits in ambush hoping that the Romans will come along and go all kinds of treasure and sack the camp and then he can bestow but there are confusions here because he says in his account that he left the fires burning in the tents in so the Romans would think that the camp was occupied but then he wanted them to see Oh a load of unguarded treasure let's have it so does he want the Romans to think that the camp is occupied or unoccupied anyway it seems that one scout went in on his own officer and had a look around and thought this is fishy you know some of these tent flaps are open and I can see into the tent and I can see treasure there it's as though they want me to see it and wait a minute they've scattered silver in the lanes between the tent this this is fishy that I don't I don't believe this what they wouldn't abandon the camp meat so after leave like this meanwhile it seems that Paulus was watching the behavior of some chickens and they were off their food which is a bad omen and so he was he was counseling against the fight and and Livie also two slaves appear and say oh yeah Hannibal is just over the hill waiting in ambush so so don't thing is though that if Hannibal was waiting in ambush for the Romans well then why didn't he spring the ambush so none of this story but wait right so I think that something has been lost in the retelling or else maybe it's a fabrication but anyway so the ambush doesn't happen and drat it rumbled but then he repeats the ruse but differently this time it's just the same camp fires burning in the in the in the camp tents bit of treasure probably not so much this time making it look as though it's a ruse to make them all think that he's trying to get away but actually this time he was trying to get away so this time the Romans hesitating went oh hang on we think it's a trap could be an ambush but that time no he actually was marching away and presumably he could afford to sacrifice a load of tents incidentally in Livi's description of the Carthaginian camp it comes across just like a Roman camp but then he was writing 200 years later and possibly that was a failure of imagination of his poem though I know of no reason why the Carthaginian camp should have been very different from Roman ones anyway so he uses the ruse twice but to a different purpose the second time he used it in order to steal a march and go away and the Romans then delay in following after him but they even then there's a there's a contradiction here because Levy says that the that the Roman people roused up by Vera again at the Roman soldiers they say no no no we want action we should get after him and loot the camp well which if you want to just charge after him then you're gonna do that or we're going to stop and loot the camp you're gonna do that but then again because he's trying it seems that Liv he's trying to have it both ways I don't entirely by this story but anyway so he uses this ruse twice two opposite effects and he gets away and he goes to a place called can I now can I was a fortified town and it had a large grain reserve there Hannibal had a supply problem he didn't own any of the farms he was having to forage for food and that's pretty tricky when you've got a very large army to feed and he was very low on supplies don't forget he had a lot of horses as well which require an awful lot of fodder ground for them to graze in and you can't carry huge amounts of fodder everywhere you go for the horses so it is a was a constant logistical problem for him so he went to Canada because the Senate had ordered all farmers in the air in in row under the Roman controlled lands to harvest their their grain as early as possible and store it in fortified places can I being one of them but can I was not well fortified in this period it have been badly his fortification has been badly damaged and Handel was able to take it and that alarmed the Romans because it commanded a very fertile plain in the southeast of Italy and they thought right if we go there with an army we're going to be drawn into a fight because it's a big plane he'll see us we'll see him he'll know that we've seen him and this this this place Kenai commands this fertile valley and if he gets access to all the food there are no this is not good this is not good we okay so the Romans then went on pursuit of him to Kenai Palace constantly wanting we are told to just shatter him and make sure that he didn't get all the foraging done that he wanted constantly harrassing his forages making it and whittling away attacking small parties of fat of foragers whittling away at his army my small increments but Vera just wanted to get in there now they went for alternating command so Libya San Livia Tellez so one day the army will be commanded in its entirety by Palace and the next by vero and this definitely was one way that they shared come on although it's not the only way just the previous year Fabius and Manutius had decided to have half the army each under constant command so it wasn't the only way they could have shared command but this is we are told what happened so you had the days when the rash guy was in command so maybe Hannibal could get him to attack and the guy and the days when the more cautious guy was in command and Hannibal would have a more difficult time on one day Hannibal told his men to just prepare and get ready because we could have be fighting the next day that was a very day although we're also told that Hannibal knew exactly who was in command and knew exactly what was going on through some network of spies if this is never explained but somehow he just knew exactly who was in command and what their personalities were like and and all those useful details the next day on a palace day he arrayed his army come on men let's have a fight said Hannibal but phallus was having none of it and towards the end of the day Hannibal go he's not going to fight okay took his troops back into Cabot dispatched his new midians now his new minions were North African light cavalry man he had loads of these and they were really good really effective troops but these were light cavalry man they were armed with a smallish shield javelins they would had some other armament club a dagger or whatever but their main weapon was javelins and so they was they were skirmishing they weren't get in there and punch and slug it out like cavalry they were ride around keep moving confuse the enemy keep coming at him from different angles and harrassing him chucking javelins at him and just generally being annoying sort of cavalry and he sent them out to attack the water in parties now the Romans had camped with two-thirds of their troops on one side of the river or fidus and one-third on the other side on this flat agriculturally rich plain and according to Livy dusty plain as well but Polybius never mentions the dust and he was able with his new billions to disrupt the the men who had been sent down to the river to get water for all their tens of thousands of men in the camp so you imagine they need quite a bit of water so if he could stop them getting access to the water that would be quite an inconvenience for them and this was quite successful and it it it put the Romans it annoyed the Romans to an extrordinary degree not on Europe with a bit thirsty but there was this continuing suspense they knew that an enormous battle against this deadly foe was coming really soon near certainly on this plane one of these days and being in suspense is extremely stressful and in all sorts of Wars our soldiers report this that they they end up thinking that's half of the fight they would rather have the fight just to end this horrendous suspense and this is reported by Polybius so the next day it was a very command and varan right we're doing this and he led his maid out he put them all on one side of the river now in this video I'm not gonna get bogged down with where exactly the exact geography of the of the camps and and the river and the battle itself because I could spend an entire video on it and either end up having to conclude but we don't really know so what would be the point of all that but anyway we can't be entirely sure which side of the river the battle happened on on which way people were facing and which way was right and left but never mind the broad story of the of the the battle is clear enough so it doesn't really matter there was a river which of the Silla River there today but the river there today has migrated quite a bit so if you go to the site of cannae today do bear in mind that the river that you see was nowhere near where it was back in the days of this the battle in 216 BC so and we can't be completely sure where it was we just know it's moved a fair bit migrated across the plain so anyway they got all on one side of the river and he brought out his the entire army and arrayed it he had the the Roman citizen cavalry on the right and he had them quite close to the river anchoring one flight one flank and then a raid in one enormous block with all his infantry according to Globus 80,000 although as you'll see that figure doesn't quite add up maybe it was 70,000 but it was an awful lot anyway and he he also adds the detail that they are arrayed that was a narrower front and greater depth than usual and on the other side were the Allied cavalry now he makes it quite clear that Paulus was with the cavalry on the right the Roman citizen cavalry who were next to the Roman citizen troops and that Varro was on the left with the allied cavalry near the allied infantry which is a little bit odd because the position of Honor when you were commanding an army normally was on the right but so that would suggest that Palace was actually in command on that day and not Vera he also tells us that the pro consuls Regulus and civilians were commanding the troops in the center they had four commanders this is a discrepancy here because according to Livy another guy called at Ilyas I was considered too old and infirm for the battle and was sent home and first I thought oh who is this guy's a completely different guy no his name was Regulus Marcus Tullius so some historians abbreviate back to Regulus and some have gone with at Ilyas and I daresay someone somewhere has gone with Marcus so it's actually the same guy it's the same problem I was talking about earlier so there are either 2 1 or 2 Pro consoles in the middle so they got you for three or four main commanders so why and how come Paulus is on the right well what I'm about to say is pure conjecture for me I haven't got it out of any book this is just the way I see it the Romans had a massive problem of command and control they had zero experience of of handling an army this big now what was the frontage of the Roman army we don't know but we can conjecture now they did in one book see a conjecture that the army was five miles across I don't think that's true I think the the widest reasonably credible frontage I've seen quoted in the book is three miles but even that I think is on the high side but let's say I say upstate was 2,000 yards which is not very different from two kilometers if you want to be metric about it that's a long way if a guy's two kilometres away on a flat ish plane with a little bit of rubble to it and don't forget this is this is not just flat battlefield there's no such thing as a battlefield this was agricultural lands that have been hedges and barns and fences and sheep and olive groves and vines and there's some quite tall crops it would be very difficult to see any one at two kilometres away but you could blow a trumpet in a battle when once the battles he's not gonna hear he's 2,000 yards away he's not gonna he could wave a banner now he's not gonna see it you got to send a runner well that's gonna take ages because he's 2,000 yards away and there's a battle on and loads of terrain to negotiate so there is a huge command and control problem that the Romans have and I think that the explanation isn't that oh it was this guy rather than that guy or they've lied and then they swap them round I think they were all in command because they probably had a meeting and decided very quickly none of us has any experience of commanding and this number of troops even if one of the proconsuls for instance is in command of just half the infantry that's still an army twice the size of any army he would ever have had experience of commanding before so all of these guys are really up against it for the sheer scale of the operation they have to mount so troops want to be within a bugle distance and and order receiving distance of a command that someone's meant to be in control of them and if the commander is so far away they have they feel no connection with him they won't won't feel in command and might just stand around doing nothing which is what troops tend to default to if they are not actually given very definite orders so I think the Romans had a huge and unprecedented command and control problem and their solution was to have a number of commanders and a really simple battle plan and formation let's just put all our troops in one block maybe making it narrower so that the distances for commander control aren't so great so the bugles will carry that to the ears of a greater number of men and yeah we'll solve our problem that way and since we overwhelmed this guy even if he's got some guys over there in ambush or something if we just pick the center of his army with everything we've got it's just a massive hammer it will just smashing by sheer force of numbers how can he but we outnumber him two to one and you know how can you how can we possibly lose here so let's just say that our battle plan is advanced and engage the enemy and leave it at that one of the things that makes me like this idea is that if Hannibal's plan that was an active which then defeated the Romans really was his his one plan right from the start and he had predicted exactly what the Romans were going to do but they were gonna fall into his trap in this very particular way then the problems that he might have perceived that his enemy had might have made him more confident in his predictions so he might have said to himself or to his commanders around the table in the in the command tent meeting the night before it's actually to our advantage that they've got so many troops because they won't be able to control that number of troops what I think they'll do is just stick them all in one huge lump and just tell them all to go forwards an attack because I think that's what they will conclude is the wisest thing to do because they try anything complicated it could go horribly horribly wrong so they'll just keep it simple in which case they may fall into my trap now Hannibal had up till now always had lots of ruses in his battle and they'd all involved hidden troops an ambush at some point so I think that the Romans going forwards would be the super wary of an ambush they'd be looking around all the time for where where is he hidden the ambush where are the troops going to come at us from and one thing you will do of course is look at the front of the the army arrayed in front of you and and and see what he's got there and is that all his troops and if Hannibal arrayed in the way that a lot of historians believe then a lot of his best troops his his his Africans his Libyans and Carthaginian troops the very experienced spearmen they would not have been many of them visible on the front line so they so that immediately reported perhaps put into the heads of the Romans they must be hiding behind behind a little rise in the ground somewhere though they're all lying on the ground behind that hedge or or something that would be preying on their minds constantly and the more the Romans are looking there and there and there for a trap the less likely they are to realize that the entire Carthaginian army that they're looking at is the trap so Hannibal in response to the two tavares leading out his forces which by the way was would have had to the Willie tase the light troops out in front and as far as I can tell the Romans would have a significant numerical advantage in in Willie tase the light troops like skirmishing troops Hannibal only had about 8,000 whereas a quarter of the roman army according Livius was was like troops anyway Hannibal and all the sources are clear that he crossed the river but that's not warrior cells back home which direction he was going he crossed the river in order to fight this battle and he sent his lights out in front and then according to Livy he followed with the rest of his army but according to oblivious he then sent across his Pike's now there's a problem there did he really have pikemen is this just a problem of translation but it does say in the sources pikemen now and it occurs to me is just a possibility you might send guys armed with Pike's across the river just to hold off any sudden enemy attack whilst you're getting other rest of you the rest of your army across and then those men are having done that job might then just put down the Pikes and take up some other weapon and become spearmen perhaps for the rest of the battle that's possible but a little bit unlikely that there's certainly conjecture all we are told over and over again that so much Roman kit had been looted in the previous battles at his heavy infantry that is to say the Carthaginian heavy infantry we're now from a distance near indistinguishable from Romans so that would certainly mean that they would have the the Roman shields the Scouten as well as a lot of Roman armor and helmets and if you've got a scooter in one hand you can't really use a pike in the other hand a plank is a definitely a two-handed weapon so most modern historians are of the opinion that in fact he wasn't using pikes at this battle and that there he had spearmen instead there is also a literal reference to the fact that these Spears were apparently a little bit shorter than the Spears of the triarii that the Romans were using so in cases they were using Spears and definitely not pikes which would have been longer okay so a bit of an aside there but I think probably Spears probably not play expect us a banks so hand the ball gets across the river and then arrays his troops he also has cavalry on the flanks this is completely normal in an ancient battle opposite the allied cavalry he has his new midians that I've described before and opposite the Roman cavalry close to the river where there's not so much room to fight he has his Spanish and Celtic cavalry in in waiting from the sides of them he has his Africans he's his veterans perhaps his best troops certain his best foot troops what formation were they in mmm come on back later and then between those he has the Spanish and the Gauls now Libby deserts the Spanish and the Gauls and what a lot of people will do when reconstruction the ancient battle is they'll just assume well all the Spanish together one great big block because that's quite normal and then all the goals together but Polybius uses the word alternating he says it's quite clearly so what does that mean does it mean some Spanish all of the calls some other Spanish so that there's a symmetrical arrangement what does it mean Spanish call Spanish call Spanish call Spanish call Spanish calls alternating by small units all the way across the line judging by what happened after that and what I think is probably more sensible I think it's the latter I think it's lots of little ones but we don't know and there's no point in my trying to convince you with any sort of authoritative yes or no because we just don't know but anyway alternating Spanish and goals in the line now there is this famous bulge where the the Spanish and and gore supposedly have formed a pecan that was that convex crescent facing the Romans now it is described how did it happen it referred to was it deliberate by hand more do you want that formation did some of the girls in the middle to say come on come on that's loose out then why are we starting this battle better and go and go forwards wasn't accidental don't forget when the the battle lines of this long you might think you're in a straight line but you're not so you can see pretty straight line to them I can't really see any further than that so we're fine but the guy who's at the extreme of your site might be looking for the right thinking well they're behind me to the right but whoa hang on there there behind I'm I'm at the front here how did this happen that's a straight line all those guys to cease to know guys well I'm to fight we need to pull back it could have it could have been accidental anyway very soon in this tale the battle is about to start but order to raise suspense levels that are still within legal limits are set down by the YouTube statute of narrative practice I'm going to go to my sponsor now this has been sponsored very generously by the great courses plus now just in case you don't know what the great courses plus is its enormous website which has loads and loads of lectures over in 7,000 of them now and constantly being added to every week by a huge staff while ago I was in the Washington area and I visited the offices and I I found that that in order to do the graphics and the effects and you know all the stuff you've got to do to make one of these videos they had had 88 0 80 people working on it which certainly makes me I'm still the one-man band feel rather insignificant but anyway so they have tremendous resources to put into these these videos they have proper studios and all the rest of it and they bring in professors from very prestigious universities particularly the Ivy League universities of Eastern USA but not exclusively and one of the lecture courses that I noticed there was the rise of Rome which is a series of 24 half hour lectures hothouse quite manageable isn't it it's probably going to be shorter than this is going to turn out to be and it's not just battles and generals and so forth it's also the rise of Rome has looked from its constitution the society that they want to hell the society together religion and economics and so forth why was Rome so successful across the board not just militarily and number nine is all about the second Punic War which makes it absolutely pertinent to what I'm talking to about today and it's taught by a guy who's got swagger who's got an impressive the cavalry of one-handed gestures and my word that guy's got shoulders now if you go to www.thebraintrust.net a free trial so why not do that it's completely free if you like it you can then choose to subscribe and there's limit to the number of lectures you watch so you could just spend your whole time binge watching if you want and get through loads and loads of lectures in in one month so there's no limit and no exams at the end of it which I it's personally just wonderful because don't we all hate exams I do I certainly did I'm so glad I don't have to do another exam although actually sometimes when I'm making these videos I feel this is a bit like an exam because of course I actually quite a bit of swatting before I do one of these all in one take spiels the camera so it's a bit like swatting for an exam ha just ruined its myself maybe I said so the great courses plus and yes I think I did it so great address and here it is on the screen again and clicking the link and free trial lectures knowledge novice it's not all a history either it's how to do stuff like cooking in photography and chess and there's all sorts of stuff on science and oh you'll love it art a lot anyway so back to the Battle of cannae now the battle opens with a cavalry engagement on the Roman Rite this is close to the river and both Polybius and Livy remarked that this is a very unusual cavalry engagement they just isn't room for them to wheel about and have have little passing attacks that then and to attack and retreat and take a retreat they are actually forced to just go straight at each other and just slug it out according to polybius the Romans largely dismounted to fight but according to Livy he doesn't mention dismounting at all in fact he describes quite graphically men being dragged out of their saddles so they've gone they've gotten close enough and have come to a halt which is something that cavalry would never want to do if you can if you can fight never coming to a halt and you're a cavalry man that's good as soon as you come to a halt you are so vulnerable horses are so vulnerable it's very easy for someone to stab your horse and then you're a bit stuffed aren't you if you're a cavalry man you're then well pedestrian so men are brutally fighting each other at very close quarters the Carthaginians had better cavalry and more cavalry and seemingly more vicious cavalry and though both authors say that the Romans Haarlem gallantly and all the rest of it they lost and it could be that rather than losing a small number and then the rest of them routing away which is what normally happens it could be that so many of them were killed that actually they were no longer a viable unit on the field which is very significant for what happened next now whilst that was going on the infantry were advancing on each other they at first you've got the lights which would attack each other and one thing I want to make clear about light infantry is that one of their principal functions is to scream the main army so if you are setting up in a very particular way you don't want the enemy to see how you're deploying your troops you can send out loads of lights and they can skirmish like crazy in front of your army and the enemy won't be able to see through that mass of moving men all those shields all those javelins and all the rest of it and the backs of their own lights trying to deal with them so it could be that one of the reasons that Hannibal threw out a screen of skirmishers was to hide what he was up to behind that screen we don't know that it's not going any of the sources but it's possible anyway the light the engagement of the lights it seems was fairly neutral neither side got any particular advantage and after a while they withdrew through the lines of the advancing heavy infantry which then clashed and of course the first two clash were the Spaniards and Gauls who were right at the front of that bulge in the line be it a deliberate or accidental one so the Romans hit that and though of course the fierce goals with their long slashing swords and the experienced Spaniards with the Hispanics or the bravest it's a theater at the ancestor of the Gladius it's a shorter pointy more of a stabby sort of sword but they had very similar shields both the Gauls and a and the Spaniards they fought very gallantly at first but then the Romans by Chef weight of numbers coming out them started to push them back now here I have a little bit of trouble reading the sources because it seems that the language they use suggests that the the wrote the the Gauls and Spanish were turning table which you actually turn your back on the enemy and running running for their lives I split is at one point suggesting that they're actually sprinting away from the Romans who were then physically chasing them triumphant the surging forward says Polybius at one point but then the language gets very confused they came to Libya more points until they came to the position of the the Carthaginian auxiliaries African auxiliaries so who are they then if they the African heavy infantry either side well they wouldn't normally be called auxiliaries do they mean that the the light troops that had wrote had gone back through had they gone penetrated the line the word penetrated is used a few times but you could penetrate a formation I didn't go all the way through the troops and passed them or you could you could penetrate the position that a formation was holding and that is a form of penetration as well it's all it's all a bit vague and frustrating what exactly happened when the the Gauls and Spaniards fell back but they did fall back and the Bulge became concave so the at one point the few points Livy uses a word which is often translated there's wedge which suggests that which suggests is very sort of an offensive formation designed to smash through the opposition but anyway Crescent is the way that it's normally understood so this bulge became concave and it became a sack into which the Romans moved now what Roman what formation were the Romans in were they were they in their checkerboard formation with gaps in between each of the centuries or manopause depending on which version of the checkerboarding they used if they had gaps like that then as they searched for word victoriously against the enemy there was a natural gap to move into and so that it was possible for the rumors to be closing up into those gap as they went forward but maybe they were absolutely without gaps maybe there was a continuous line of Romans but even then if you're if you are in a aligned against the front of a bulge it will be a temptation for that line to close in against that bulge and then when the Bulge turns into a concave shape and you you then find yourself just bunching up into that concave shape so either way the Romans will end up more bunched up and Hannibal and mego who were commanding the center oh here's another discrepancy according to Livy muhawwil who was the commode the second-in-command at Lake Jos Emily was commanding the new medians but according to Polybius it was a chap called Hannah anyone castable was with the Spaniards in the hernia the cows on the other side so I should have said that earlier anyway Hannibal and his brother Mego were commanding the troops in the middle suggesting to me that that's where they felt they were the most needed so this was the if there was if this would deliver a plan that was where they were going to be most needed they had to make sure that that sack didn't burst certainly didn't burst prematurely if it did get penetrated he had all his lights - - to flood the gap and seal it up Balearic sling it was a multinational army the Carthaginian army he had mercenaries from all around the Mediterranean anyway the sack held long enough for the Africans on the side to seal the trap and the doom of all the Romans who had run into that sack now how did they do this it could be that there was a bulge like that and then on the end of the line two units of spearmen arranged in the usual way so when the bulge went became concave those units then just moved like this wheeling as we would call it wheeling and according to - Livy even sealing the trap be joining up into a ring around the Romans we know there was a little bit difficult I consulted my lecturer John Lazenby who's a noted author of battles of the ancient world and he said that the literal meaning of polybius is that each man turned on the spot as an individual so one way of reconstructing the battle is that actually the Africans were formed up in columns either side of the Bulge and when the Romans died into the sack those columns either advanced and then every man turned on the spot so they could then just go slammed that way or the the sack gave ground exposing these two columns of troops which then were able to just do that either way the Romans were caught in the trap the men could could fight kill a few every time any of the Romans died and they would have to close up ranks and they found they were just closing up ranks inwardly always there was no space to expand and after a while they were so pressed together they couldn't fight properly and it was just butchery it was just slaughter the men stood almost no chance once they were sealed in like that the the veteran Africans the Libyans and Carthaginian spearmen just mowed them down now I haven't mentioned what was happening with new medians on the other side of the battle on the on the Roman left well according to Lille the opening on that side was the load of new midians pretending to desert to the Roman side and then treacherously producing hidden swords they'd somehow hidden under their tunics and no one had noticed this because they they don't ostentation they dumped their javelins too and the shields down and the Romans then live them to the back and said stay there but they went once the the Romans were distracted by other events in the battle they've in treacherously brand forward and started hamstringing men and yeah it's not impossible this type is very unlikely though a peon in his history which has written later again and has the same story only it's not new midians doing it it's it's the Kelty barians the Kelty beer in light troops so that makes it I think even less likely but anyway maybe that happened more likely is what polybius describes is just the the new midians just whirled round and round around they outnumbered the Allied cavalry in front of them and they were very good horsemen and they just kept those guys busy not inflicting many casualties but not taking many either they never got to grips with the enemy they would say making these passing harrassing attacks with with javelins so they were women around around around just keeping that Roman cavalry or allied Roman cavalry busy so that he couldn't interfere with the the main battle then hazard all who would won his victory on the other flank rode up with his guys which is of course possible because maybe they weren't needed to pursue fleeing Roman cavalry because they'd killed so many there was no viable unit on that side that they had to deal with so he was free to ride across the battle and join in with the new midians against the Latin allied cavalry on Roman side and his arrival just made the Latin cover okay that's it we're off and they fled and then hazdeb according to Polybius made a very good decision which is that he would not pursue with his troops and he gave the numidians of that trip that task new medians you pursued the fleeing latin allied cavalry and just keep them busy and that frees us to come round and then charge into the rear of the of the Roman infantry which he did apparently for many many times from all sorts of distant different angles constantly sapping the morale and boot of the Romans and boosting morale of the Africans who are doing so much butchery of course if remember going to Libya the the Africans actually sealed the bag but most people think that they would have sealed the bag completely there would be a gap for the Spanish and Celtic cavalry under hostile to do their work anyway so they had to hack them hacked and casualties now then according to polybius 70,000 Romans were killed Libya is not quite so extreme he says forty five thousand other estimates sixty-five thousand there are loads of figures but it's a vast number which a wet whichever account you go with it's a staggeringly vast number I'm actually Dulce specious of polemicist numbers but this is normally considered to be more reliable he was writing much closer to the events but he says for instance that there were 80,000 Romans in the main block of infantry but then later he says that 10,000 who were the camps who have put there to defend the camps then got captured so were they in addition to the 80,000 because if there were 16 legions in the field of 5,000 strong that's 80,000 so was the world whether in fact 70,000 plus 10,000 in the council did two other legions that we weren't told about to turn up whether in fact 18th Roman legions and different accounts if you've read several the council this summer will say 18 legions someone will say 16 I think I've seen 14 there are various estimates but 16 legions I think with fairly solidly be sure so maybe there were only actually 70,000 in the main block but does that mean that every single one of them was killed that seems so unlikely any men after a while they just surrender if you're if you're one of a tiny number left and you just can't survive just drop your weapon and put your hands up and hope that they're taking captives and it seems that the Carthaginians were taking captives they negotiated terms with the men who were surrounded in the camps and Hannibal agreed to ransom them even in fact later he let all the Allied ones just go for free but he said it was Brandon you it's her 300 denarii for a Roman soldier and it's 200 for an allied and 100 for a slave later in another meeting he upped the price for the cavalry but never mind so it seems that the cartoons were taking prisoners now then oh I've got a lot to cover in this in this and having to just pause a second whilst they we just drop my thoughts so I didn't talk about what the goals looked like the goals are calling to Polybius were naked which some people consider is quite a romantic image of the Celtic fight a little bit unlikely I mean it's so impractical he just grading Eve he just stumbled a bit I know and a draw cut well you can you can save yourself from a draw cut with just a woollen tunic or and with something underneath you don't need anything very spectacular huge huge man Obama but the draw cut on skin will just slice and you'll lose so much blood some wife wife might make it some people say I was a religious thing then they had maybe word on them and they'd done prayers and they believed that they were the nakedness made them somehow invulnerable really I suppose it's possible but it's suspect knees a little bit unlikely but Livie he said that they were naked from the waist up which is a way you'll often see Celtic warriors portrayed today they got a pair of trousers on because they're barbarians but they're naked from the waist up and of course always spectacularly muscular because well that's artists for you and they were using their ease in the cut cutting swords the meanwhile T the Africans were supposedly in clean white venom tunics quite short trimmed with what is usually referred to as purple but this wouldn't be Imperial purples to be more like a week to Dacor perhaps indigo and the was it like was it how much did Hannibal really know about what the Romans did because he'd suggest that Hannibal had no plan B and I thought you would need a plan B because this this is not a completely foolproof plan is it he would have to know that the rim is going to form up in just that way and behaving just the way he expected not only at the command level but the troops closing up as they went forward it or I had to just click into place and all his men would have to do their duty just at the right time now tantalizingly polybius at one point when he's describing the the Africans if you like sealing the trap he he says in one sentence that they were responding to the circumstances of the moment and then in the very next sentence he says and it went exactly as Hannibal had planned or which is it that they're they're thinking old hey this is going a bit weirdly but maybe we have an opportunity there if we do X Y and Zed we can perhaps seal a chaplain and then win the battle or is it but they're waiting for the trigger when the Romans come past you on your side here pushing the Spaniards and Celts back when they get to a certain point then to turn left and then wheel left and seal the trap maybe there was just a trigger point that they were waiting for but from that sentence that combination of two sentences we don't get it so was what Hannibal just lucky was it that the Bulge and accidentally and just happened to make his his plan work so much better and how come the the these goals and Spaniards pressed so hard didn't just give way it was a very thin line much thinner for two reasons one there are half as many men in it and and two curbs are longer lines than straight lines so you stretch yourself thinner by putting us up into a curve so how did they manage to hold off for so long well anyway it seems they did they have Hannibal there to say steady lads steady lads and perhaps that's what turn the tide anyway Libby tells interesting story about what happened to a load of the the Romans who had fled to the two camps actually he says that Palace of poutine a load of men in one of the camps in order to attack Hannibal's camp during the battle and he even says that this happened but Hannibal had stationed perhaps eight thousand goals in some versions of the story to defend the camp so he was able to repulse her attack actually going there in person because things were going so well with the general battle that he just left that and directed the defense of his camp and then managed somehow to kill two thousand Romans which seems I suppose is suspiciously large number of them and chased them all the way back to their camp and surround them again night fell and there were seven thousand in one camp and ten thousand Romans in the other and the ten thousand sent a message to the the smaller camp saying come over to us and we'll all escape together under cover of darkness the the enemy they're all celebrating and looting and exhausted from all the fighting and so forth you can do it and then the guys and smaller camera yeah brilliant you want us to come to you there are more of you so it's easier for you and mass to come to us one you just do that instead of sending us a message older you want us to do the more dangerous thing don't you and then of course the hero steps forward and said come on lads we've got to do this and about six hundred and about six hundred of them did go across and a load of them escaped and they went to a town called canoes iam Varro he disgracefully according to the Polybius fled the field and he went to Venusian with just seven - cavalry he was able to scrape together 270 cavalry and better 300 others and it's a it's pitiful how few Romans in all the accounts it seems got away and so many of them were then rounded up later by marauding new medians and the like and and all the way back there was a lady that stories that Livi throws in called busa who out of her own pocket put money for the road - into the pockets of her pockets into the hands of these these fugitive Romans and gave them food and clothes and for that she was honored after the war anyway so vero had made his escape meanwhile Paulus was dead as were civilians and if he was there regulus and Manutius as well the master of Horsa under-under Fabius from the year before now how did that happen then well I can certainly vary and according to Polybius Paulus was fighting with the cavalry had seen a lot of action there and then seeing things not doing so well in the center had moved the centre to encourage the men and spur them on and also get stuck in with his sword and that he fell in the fighting but Livy Livvy's far more spectacular Libby says that palace was wounded very early on by a sling and he staggered around the battlefield heroically with an escort of cavalry man doing his best and fighting the enemy but getting weaker and weaker all the time until he had he was finally forced to stop and say oh I have to just make my last stand here and he his bodyguards dismounted with him and made a heroic last stand and a Tribune at Rubin came past and said ah here look take my horse come on you I can rescue you this is disaster for Rome but you know let's not make it any worse by having a consul die as well and and Palace saying no no you go on I I will die with my man blah blah it's a spectacular a dramatic scene so dramatic that one starts deltad really but oh well I was researching this yes they're very athis very athis is listed in on the Wikipedia page for can I use one of the commanders of the Carthaginian side come on Wikipedia No very athis is the historical name of a Spaniard who lived quite some while after can i resisting the Romans trying to conquer more of Spain but a poem written by someone called silliest italic us and should we ever take seriously someone called silly ass italic as I say not two centuries later he wrote a poem in which the commander of a suspiciously large number of the Spaniards two whole travel the the Lusitania pnes and the some of the lot he got stuck into the battle and he with his own sword he slew Sevilla's and then Paulus came along and met him and palace with his own sword avenge Siviglia sand kids yeah did that happen did he hell no and yet sir wikipedia has listed him as one of the commanders of the Carthaginians no come on just I'm gonna go with no cause I don't I can't be 100% certain but 99 point something no anyway um what the heck was I talking about what I got too distracted by that oh yes so palaces pilot dies but Vera gets away now when a very stubborn Newseum according to the Liberty this was shameful disgraceful retreat yeah he's really pouring on the the disgrace and shame of the blame for this disaster on vero and not on on his guy his best friend's grandad and the patrician because he also be in with the patricians because they're the peace all the people who buy histories for a start and that's what he's writing now if you recall a lot of Roman soldiers had escaped the battle mainly from the camps that the Romans had built and had made it to canoes iam and four of these were military Tribune's who found themselves now rather senior officers and compared with all the other people around them and they thought well we're I suppose we should be in charge then and one of them was the the son of Fabius the dictator from the year before and the other one was a certain Publius Cornelius Skippy Oh now put me as Cornelius Skippy is very significant figure because he is the man who will finally defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama many years ahead of this so if you're trying to tell a dramatic story you might want to introduce your hero at some point now his very first introduction history was quite spectacular that was at the Battle of tikkun us when he he rode in to the rescue of his father who was wounded his father also called rather confusingly Publius Cornelius Scipio and that's a good way to enter history and he was 16 at that point so this part he'd be about nineteen years old I know you've been 17 before sorry and what happens now well he gets elected as one of the two Tribune's who will then take over command of this fugitive force in canoes iam and whilst they're still debating what to do in one room in bursts the messengers it says breathlessly anyhow just over there there there's a there are some Roman officers who are who are colluding and they're colluding to make it to the coast get a ship and just take off abandoning Rome and maybe set up shop with some foreign prince somewhere well what does what does Publius Cornelius skippy Oh who would later become Skippy Oh Africa and every africanus what does he do what he snatched up his sword I'll have no this he says and he hastens over to that house but sin finds the men mid collude and says right I swear that I will undyingly do everything in my power to defend Rome my nation and if any of you here does not take the same oath you will be the enemy of my sword so what do you say that hey yeah one son and aghast the men who took the oath and the day was saved so this is Skippy Oh coming to the fore again so now whereas before he was a teenager saving his father now he's the hero saving Rome you're setting your hero up for great things later on so did this happen I don't know I it's a good story isn't it it's it's reasonably it's reasonably easy to imagine that something like that could have happened and maybe it involved Skippy oh and maybe a lot of the credit of what other people did got shifted to him it's easy to believe for instance that there were people thinking that's it we got to go because Rome at this point was absolutely despairing despite everything they'd thrown it Hannibal had just been annihilated there their grip or their supremacy over Italy was now looking and untenable surely the various people who were under their yoke the Etruscans the Samnites that they relied on as allies to fight their Wars for them or at least half there was thought that those those people would start rebelling against them because Hannibal had said that he was there to liberate all the the the allies of Rome thought from the subjugation of Rome so they thought that's it he's done it he's now defeated pretty much everything out there by the way a couple of days after can I there was another massive defeat remember I said earlier there was a another army sent north as a diversion that got ambushed and annihilated as well so upon the this enormous defeat of cannae there was another shocking defeat for the Romans and Rome is described in the history books as just one load of processions of religious processions and prayers and wailing women Fabius and others got a grip the Senate got a grip according to previous Polybius they they they kept their heads and did the right thing if he goes into much more detail saying that the public mourning was was forbidden that women were confined indoors because so many of them were just whaling in the street and they can't have that and yes all sorts of quite strict measures guards were placed at the gates of Rome to stop people leaving Rome not the other way around to stop people leaving Rome because they just thought we've got to contain this panic in fact the living describes a most on the Roman act which is the sacrifice in the center of Rome in the cattle market of two goals and two Greeks one man and woman will have each human sacrifice yeah the the Romans had stooped to human sacrifice apparently coincident with this two Vestal Virgins were discovered to have sinned you know that sort of sin with with a chap and they're caught at least one of the chaps involved and he was beaten to death one of the Vestal Virgins for her sin was buried alive as was the customer as the other one committed suicide such was her shame and for festival virgin sins that was meant to bring all sorts of calamitous ly bad luck upon Rome so yeah scapegoats again you might think really so Rome was gripped by religious panic and military panic they then in response to this they raised four legions possibly in a day which is quite staggering but in order to do this they had to drop the age of a recruitment a bit relaxing have to be seventeen anymore just had to sort of look big enough to hold a sword and they even they even armed 8,000 slaves they raised the force of eight thousand slaves and put swords into their hands was not a good idea well I'm possibly not but they were so desperate so desperate that they started arming slaves the Romans think about that that's a sign of tremendous desperation and so what if Hannibal dude did he immediately march on Rome and take Rome and that score health with victory did defeat of the enemy no he didn't and Livy said that he could have and should have taken Rome and that that that slight hesitation of not immediately attacking Rome was what saved Rome and ultimately therefore the empire but I'm I'm really not convinced of this one I don't think that it was ever Hannibal's intention to take Rome - had he tried it I don't think he would have succeeded there was still it was still possible for Romans - to put armies out in the field there were there were legions in Spain there were there were loads of forces that could be mustered to hit him from behind cuz as soon as he goes to Rome which is a hell of a tough tough nut to crack it was very well fortified and had an awful lot of people in it literally millions of people in it and if he was going to try to take the whole of Rome how would he do it how did he have no siege equipment and as soon as he immobilizes himself in front of rome he's thrown away his advantage he's better at marching and maneuvering than the Romans that's what he's good at he's a he's a field commander as soon as he mobilizes his force trying to take Rome then they can surround him and then he really will starve wither and die and it really will be all over I think that he was very shrewd not to march on Rome now Livy tells us that muhabba has a go at him sir come on send me to Rome I tell you what the first the Romans will know that they've lost it can I is when I show up on a horse with loads of the new median cavalry saying haha what do they do now in Romans come on it's this this take this this this opportunity come on what were you throwing us away for you know how to win a battle but you don't have to how to use it once you've won it but in fact Hannibal really has scored a hell of a victory because things changed you God remember that up until this point he'd been campaigning on his own he'd been getting no support from Carthage he had been running short of money of the whole time yes he got some Gallic allies from the north but he went south beat the Romans again and again and again and none of the Roman allies was defecting over to him after cannae they did oh yeah in droves kappa the second-biggest city in Italy came over to the Carthaginian side Toronto Trentham came over to his side and and the Samnites loads of people there what they were changing sides coming over to him so it was a huge success and went further than that the king of Syracuse joined his side cause I recuse sucked out certainly many many many Roman soldiers to deal with that in in Sicily Archimedes and all the rest of it he also got an ally in the king of Macedon for the fifth so he's getting international allies international recognition this guy can he beat the Romans so yes let's throw in our lot with him so for that reason Hannibal I say did get a huge amount of benefit out of his victory at can i what he wanted was an alliance against Rome and that's what he got thanks to this battle now how many men died lots of different figures no which is completely reliable but they're in the region of say 50 to 70,000 Romans died on that day and on the Carthaginian side maybe something like 4,000 Gauls died maybe 1500 of the African and Spanish and I forget how many Calvary but not that many come up a few hundred cavalry and according to Polybius so the calf you injured suffered very few casualties the Romans had lost the biggest army they'd ever put in the field by miles they'd also lost so many of their seen if they'd lost but both the content that what they'd lost earn another console Vera of course escaped they'd lost her both the pro consoles they lost a couple of Chi stores they lost something like 29 out of 48 Tribune's were killed and they lost another 80 senators or men of the equivalent rank to two senators XM's of similar motors where as well the the leadership of Roman had been cut in half and as for the population well how do I get across to you the scale of this if you're American you probably think are the bloodiest in American history Battle of Gettysburg only 8,000 men were actually killed on that day and population of the USA at the time was about 32 million so that's something like naught point naught point naught to 5 percent of the American population were killed on that day and don't forget Americans were fighting on both sides if you're British you don't you think are did a song first day of the song horrendous 60,000 casualties over 19,000 men killed on the first day of the psalm what the bloody day that was yeah but that's nowhere near 70,000 in one day and the British population at the time was was 4050 million something like that so if you look at it in terms of the pop the percentage of the population that's not point naught four five percent of the British population of the time about 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War fighting over 19 years but that's not point naught naught naught naught naught naught naught four percent of the American population at the time which was 216 million the cat that the Battle of cannae Rome lost two point one five percent of its population naught naught point naught something two point one five percent of its population in 20 months the war had killed about one-fifth of the adult male population of Rome every household knew someone who had died had someone from it probably who had died almost every household so the scale of the carnage viewed from the Roman perspective is just so much greater than the son or Gettysburg or the Vietnam was so much more of a psychological trauma because of the proportion of the people killed in one day this was the Battle of cannae [Music]
