Battle of Herdonia (210 BC) Flaccus and Gn. Fulvius Centumalus). Some state that there was just one battle in fact, but there is no general agreement on this issue. Following his incursion into southern Italy in 217 BC, Hannibal defeated the Roman forces in the battle of Cannae (216 BC). This victory brought him a host of new allies from Campania, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, Bruttium and Magna Graecia, who revolted from Rome enticed by his narrative of Roman oppression. One of these allies was the city of Herdonia in northern Apulia. It was the site of a general engagement between Hannibal and the Romans already
Battle of Utica (203 BC) and the reconquest of the parts of Sicily that had been temporarily lost after the battle of Cannae, the Romans secured a base for a naval assault on Carthage. They made use of that by carrying out a number of raids on African soil in 208, 207 and 205 BC. Since 206 BC, when Scipio Africanus finally expelled the Carthaginians from Iberia (see the battle of Ilipa), he was preoccupied with the idea that Africa should be the next target. To this end, he concluded an alliance with Syphax – one of the most powerful Numidian rulers at the time