Battle of Cannae Hannibal at Cannae, with approximately 86,000 Roman and allied troops. They massed their heavy infantry in a deeper formation than usual, while Hannibal used the double-envelopment tactic and surrounded his enemy, trapping the majority of the Roman army, who were then slaughtered. The loss of life on the Roman side was one of the most lethal single day's fighting in history; Adrian Goldsworthy equates the death toll at Cannae to "the massed slaughter of the British Army on the first day of the Somme offensive in 1916." Only about 15,000 Romans, most of whom were from the garrisons of the
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (consul 215 BC) Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (consul 215 BC) Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. Ti. n. Gracchus (died 212 BC) was a Roman Republican consul in the Second Punic War. He was son of Tiberius Sempronius Ti. f. Gracchus, who was apparently the first man from his branch of the family to become a consul. Gracchus is first mentioned in 216 BC as a curule aedile, in which capacity he was inducted as the Master of the Horse to the newly elected Dictator Marcus Junius Pera after the defeat at Cannae. He was elected consul in 216 BC, at the recommendation of the Dictator,