Basil Boioannes detachment of the elite Varangian Guard was sent. The two forces met on the river Ofanto near Cannae, the site of Hannibal's victory over the Romans in 216 BC. In the second Battle of Cannae, Boioannes achieved an equally decisive victory. Boioannes protected his gains by immediately building a great fortress at the Apennine pass guarding the entrance to the Apulian plain. Troia, named after the ancient city of Asia Minor, was garrisoned by Boioannes' own contingent of Norman troops in 1019. Soon, all the Mezzogiorno had submitted to Byzantine authority, with the exception of the Duchy of Benevento, which
History of Sardinia et Sardinia, under a praetor. Together with Sicily it formed one of the main granaries of Rome until the Romans conquered Egypt in the 1st century BC. A revolt, led by two Sardo-Punic notables from Cornus and Tharros, Hampsicora and Hanno, broke out after the crushing Roman defeat at Cannae (216 BC). A Roman army of 22.000 infantrymen and 1.200 knights, under Titus Manlius Torquatus, reached Sardinia landing in Caralis and defeating Hiostus, the son of Hampsicora, near Milis. The Romans then met the Carthaginian-Sardinian allied forces in the south of the island, defeating them in a pitched battle that