The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities Read Online Free PDF Page B

series of Roman armies tried to stop Hannibal, but each was defeated in turn. More than just defeated—annihilated. At Trebia in northern Italy, Hannibal faked a retreat, which lured the Romans out of a strong defensive position to be ambushed in a shallow river. At Lake Trasimene, three Roman legions were enticed along the lakeside road and ambushed in a morning fog. By now, the Romans were wise to Hannibal’s tricks and refused to meet him in battle for another year. 2
    Finally, the Romans fielded their largest army ever, eight Roman legions plus allies and cavalry—80,000 men in all—and fought Hannibal on open ground, in broad daylight, at Cannae in southern Italy. Hannibal stood to meet them with an army around half their size. He stationed two heavy blocks of infantry on small elevations in the field and connected them with a flexible line of light infantry in the center. When the Romans attacked into his line, Hannibal’s flanks held while the center was pushed backward. This created a funnel that drew the Roman army into the center. The Roman front line shoved against the Carthaginians while the Roman back lines shoved against their front lines, and soon the Romans bunched up too tightly to wield their weapons effectively. Meanwhile, Hannibal’s cavalry chased away the Roman horsemen and sealed the open back of the funnel, trapping the entire Roman army in a crowded killing field. The Romans were systematically butchered for the rest of the day until none were left standing. 3
    In two years, the Romans had lost 150,000 men at Hannibal’s hands. Roman allies began to defect after this. Syracuse tossed in with Carthage and defended itself against Roman retaliation using an awesome (and probably mythical) collection of war engines devised by the mathematician Archimedes—improved catapults, a mechanical claw that grabbed ships and dashed them against the rocks, and a mirror that focused the sun’s rays into a deadly heat beam. Eventually, however, Roman discipline and martial skill defeated Greek ingenuity. Syracuse was taken, and Archimedes was killed during the sacking of the city.
    Unable to defeat the Carthaginians in Italy, the Romans sent an army under Scipio to take Spain away from them. After a protracted war that cut Carthage off from this vital source of wealth and manpower, Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian commander in Spain, broke contact and followed his brother Hannibal’s path into Italy. Along the way, two Roman armies converged on his army and cornered it on rocky, uneven ground at the Metaurus River in Italy, where he found it difficult to deploy his battle lines. The Roman armies wiped out Hasdrubal before he could add his army to Hannibal’s, and a Roman rider flung his severed head into his brother’s camp.
    Eventually, Scipio’s Romans landed in North Africa, which forced Hannibal to abandon Italy and hurry back to defend his homeland. Scipio convinced the Numidian neighbors of Carthage—suppliers of prime cavalry—to switch to the Roman side, and then he destroyed the last Carthaginian army at Zama when Hannibal’s war elephants panicked and stampeded back into Carthaginian lines. The ensuing peace treaty put the entire western Mediterranean under Roman control.

 

     

ROMAN SLAVE WARS

     
Death toll: 1 million 1
Rank: 46
Type: slave revolts
Broad dividing line: slaves vs. masters
Time frame: 134–71 BCE
Location: Sicily and Italy
Traditional translation of the name: Servile Wars ( bellum servile )
Who usually gets the most blame: Roman slave drivers
Another damn: rebellion against Rome
Economic factors: slaves, grain

     
    First Servile War (134–131 BCE)
     
    In their continuous wars of conquest, the Romans acquired hundreds of thousands of prisoners and confiscated vast estates from enemies all over the world, all of which they auctioned off to Roman speculators. This was especially true in Sicily, where the Punic Wars had broken the old Carthaginian and Greek aristocracy,