Second Punic War the middle between the Fabian tactics and the tactics suggested by Varro. In the campaign of 217 BC, Hannibal had failed to obtain a following among the Italics. In the spring of 216 BC, he took the initiative and seized the large supply depot at Cannae in the Apulian plain. The Roman Senate authorized the raising of double-sized armies by the consuls Varro and Aemilius Paullus, a force of 86,000 men, the largest in Roman history up to that point. The consuls Aemilius Paullus and Varro resolved to confront Hannibal and marched southward to Apulia. After a two-day march, they
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