The Ancients - Hannibal vs Rome: Terror at Trasimene

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

Towards the beginning of the Second Punic War on 21 June 217 BC, a Carthaginian force under Hannibal launched a vicious ambush on a Roman army commanded by Gaius Flaminius.The resulting battle, at Lake Trasimene in Italy, saw a complete capitulation of the Roman forces - with thousands of legionaries meeting their end at the bottom of the blood-sopped waters.In this episode - part of our special miniseries on Hannibal's wars with Rome - Tristan is joined by Dr Louis Rawlings from Cardiff University to discover more about the terror of Trasimene.Produced by Annie Coloe. Edited by Aidan Lonergan.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, we are continuing the story of Hannibal Barca and his great campaign against the Romans at the end of the 3rd century BC, the Second Punic War. You might remember from our back castle that we've done a few episodes on Hannibal Barker already, quite a few of them with the legendary expert, that is Dr. Louis Rawlings from the University of Cardiff. Well, I'm delighted to say that Louis is back on

the podcast today to continue the Hannibal story. And yes, I mean continue, because last time we chatted to Louis, we ended at Hannibal's first great victory against the Romans at the Battle of the River Trebia in December 218 BC. And in this episode, the first of a new mini-series with Louis on Hannibal in Italy proper, we're going to be going from the aftermath of the Battle of the River Trebia all the way down to Hannibal's Italy proper. We're going to be going from the aftermath of the Battle of the River Trebia all the way down to Hannibal's next great clash against the Romans the following year in 217 BC, roughly around this time of year in 217 BC, the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Louis, it was wonderful to get him back on the podcast. He's such a brilliant, enthusiastic speaker when it

comes to Hannibal and his great campaign against Rome I've got no doubt that you're absolutely going to love this one so without further ado to talk all about Hannibal and his great ambush at the battle of Lake Trasimene here's Louis Louis it is great to have you back on the podcast Tristan it's absolutely wonderful to be here face to face with you now face to face exactly we're doing it in person and we're continuing our hannibal story we did the rise of hannibal and crossing the alps and the battle of river trebia last time now we're getting this is really the start now what we're talking about next his great war against rome isn't it indeed it is and you know the next couple of years of campaigning that hann does really set the tone. They're the most famous years

of the Second Punic War and Hannibal's military genius, as people have admired it ever since, these are the campaigns that really stand out as being the most engaging, the most fascinating, and obviously the most threatening to the Romans as well. So this is a really critical period and it's great to be able to talk about it. Well, let's delve into it now. So the end of 218 BC, beginning of 217 BC. Louis, take it away, a bit of background. What's the situation with Hannibal? What's the situation with Italy at this time? So Hannibal has just won the Battle of Trebia and effectively destroyed two Roman armies. The remainder are holed up in one of the Roman colonies in Cisalpine Gaul, which is now hostile territory. So Cisalpine Gaul had

only recently been conquered by the Romans and subdued only in the late 220s. And now in 218, some four years later, the whole countryside is in revolt. The main tribes, the Incebrés and the Bori have gone over to Hannibal. Soannibal spends the winter recovering from the epic march across southern france across the alps and down to fight that winter battle against the rems at trebia and his army has really been knocked about by that and so he needs to spend some time recovering also his elephants have died or most of them have died because of the severity of the winter certainly in the aftermath of trebia that winter really closes in and a lot of his troops and horses and particularly the elephants perish in severe conditions in the weeks after the battle

so he has to kind of rebuild and he has to reach out to the gauls who are quite happy to have him they were in revolt from the Romans anyway they were expecting him to come and join him and so now he there he was he's demonstrated that he can defeat Romans in the field and so he's enthusiastically embraced by the Gallic tribes and he is able to recruit many many thousands of Gauls during the winter and start to put together an expeditionary force which will head south into italy so we've got a small roman force holed up in placentia which is the main very recent roman colony it's monday piacenza isn't it yeah yeah that's right yeah and so it's up there and it's only really been established for a couple of years and that and now it's just basically got a roman

force in there that is keeping alive essentially by riverboat traffic and supplies are coming into a not a completely besieged city because hannibal doesn't really have the resources to besiege this roman army at this point but he's kind of ignoring it really and he's moving around the allies and recruiting and settling things and settling affairs to his kind of advantage so the romans themselves in italy south of the po plains is still in roman hands and the romans are beginning to marshal forces and troops and to recruit large numbers of legions to continue their campaign so they're expecting the carthaginians to maybe make some moves against some of the other parts of the Roman domain in Italy. So the Romans have raised troops.

They've sent them to Sicily. They've reinforced a garrison in Sardinia. So they're expecting some operations there. They've already got a Roman army that's marched to Spain. And they've sent Publius Cornelius Scipio, who survived the battle of trebia out to spain to command that force and he will be campaigning in the sidelines now and we won't be concerned with him in these podcasts but he's out there engaging cannibal's brother hasdrubal who remains in spain so that's the main situation the romans apparently raised 10 more legions this year so that's another 40 000 troops

that's almost unprecedented in roman history that many in one year absolutely yeah so this may not be a completely accurate figure but nevertheless it shows that the romans are really gearing up for this war now and they send out two armies they realize that the geography is very important and that it conditions the way the campaign is going to be run. So they send out two armies. Firstly, they send out a Western army and then they send out an Eastern army as well. These are under consuls. So the consular armies of about two legions, which will be 8,400, 8,600, 8,800, around about that number of Roman citizens, plus some cavalry and also an equivalent number of allies so these armies are going to be in the region of about 20,000 men in fact the western

army we know appears to be about 25,000 men extra cavalry is recruited for both of these armies because they know that Hannibal's army has a very large cavalry contingent so these two armies are sent north to defend against hannibal's advance now this is where we have to talk a little bit about the geography of italy so if you in your mind's eye you can imagine italy as a long peninsula it's this big long leg with sicily as a football at the end and it stretches from the north down to the southeast running down the middle of that south of the po plains but heading essentially down and dividing the peninsula into two halves it's a mountain chain called the apennines very uplands very wide and consequently when we think

about italy we think about it really as two coastal strips we've got a western side which has Etruria and below that is Rome and then Latium which is the old core of Roman territory and Roman allies and then beyond that there's Campania and beyond that there are other places as well we won't need to get to those and then down the eastern side on the other side of the Apennines so if you're looking at it from Rome they're the kind of over the mountain side we have a kind of easy access from the po valley down into old gallic tribal territories which the romans call the aga gallicus the roman lands because they've taken them off them in the 280s and they still kind of ethnically sort of talk about them then beyond that there's piscinum and then samnium and then apulia and then we're down to

the heel of italy and then there are some greek cities and things so but we won't get that far this is very important because it means if hannibal decides to march down the eastern coast he will then have to cross the apennines to get at anything on the western coast and vice versa so the apennines play a very interesting role in the campaign in the next two years, and indeed Hannibal's whole adventures in Italy. They play a really significant role in terms of conditioning how armies move, where armies are placed, to try and cut off advances. So the Romans have put these two armies separated by the Apennines, one in the east, one in the west. The eastern army is at Ariminum, or modern-day Rimini, and the eastern army is at araminum or modern day rimini and the western

army is in aretium modern day arezzo so that's the situation they're commanded by two roman consuls as i said so we've got the western army is commanded by gaius flaminius and the eastern army is commanded by gnaeus Servilius Geminus. Flaminius is the most important, more important of these two for two reasons. One is that he's the one who's going to engage Hannibal first, and therefore is going to be showing his military chops or lacks of them first, lack of them first. And secondly, because he has a lot of history with this region so just to fill him in he's very significant in the sources because they are very hostile to him so livy and polybius and all the other sources

really don't like him they call him a demagogue they see him as a populist he's rash he's militarily incompetent according to polybius and so consequently he's going to be set up for a fall is he kind of like is he kind of like how sempronius longus is portrayed before him are they both yeah yeah yeah the person who lost the battle of the river trebia for the romans yeah there's a pattern coming out and we will see that in when we come to can i in the next podcast when we talk about varro but for me this is the worst of the three i think in terms of the way that he's kind of demonized he's a bit impious as well he doesn't do all the rituals that he's supposed to do before he marches out to campaign

so he's basically lambasted by the sources but there is a problem with this and that is that he is he got himself elected to consul not only that but this is the second time that he's made it to consul and in between he's been censor which is the highest office in the land so he must have had senatorial support now why does he get elected in 217 even if he's kind of got support but is a terrible general well you have to go back a little bit to his past history so in 232 as a tribune he passed legislation that parceled up the agogallicus from roman settlement right this apparently provoked the boy into renewing hostilities after you're a gallic tribe they did one of the gallic tribes to the north of this region because they think that this is basically ethnic cleansing there

were gauls on this territory they've been subdued and they've been passive to the romans but they've been basically pacified for 50 years flaminius basically is clearing them off the land and this is creating all kinds of hardship and resentment so the boy and the inspirase get together a large army they recruit from over the alps for squad the gaiusati and they head south in 225 they make this campaign where they smash a roman army at phaisuli they then get defeated at telamon that's for them followed by roman campaigns to conquer susalpine gul so that in kind of revenge it's a trigger that allows the romans to go north and invade the po valley and to defeat things and in that in 223 flaminius is the consul who defeats the insubrays at the river adua even

though polybius says it wasn't his fault his deployment was terrible apparently he deployed his army having crossed a river and so he had an arm a river to his back now we've seen that atrebia for some previous longest there are lots of parallels here so polybius says actually that it was his military officers that won the battle not flaminus but he then goes on to become censor in 220 and then as censor he's able to a lot money to build roads and he builds the via flaminia which runs from rome all the way up to araminum which is through the agagallicus up to that northeastern part of the roman possessions so he's in 217 when hannibal is about to march south who better to choose than a gallic northern specialist somebody who's defeated the Insubres, somebody who knows the territory around Ariminum extremely well,

having parceled it up and built roads through it. You know, he's a natural choice to be the general, to coordinate the campaign to hold Hannibal back. Plus, Hannibal was coming south with lots of Gauls. He's the man of the hour. He's the man of the hour. He is the Gallic specialist. So I think it's a really fascinating individual from that perspective. And that rubs up against

this whole negative characterization we get in the sources. He seems quite a natural person to lead this campaign. So that's why I think he's important. And so in the early spring of 217, the Roman armies are in place and Hannibal prepares to cross or to advance against them. So does he take the eastern route, try to force his way past Ariminum and then get on the Riviera Flaminia and maybe head to Rome, maybe head down that Adriatic coast and down those plains and take those cities that way? Or does he head into Etruria, old enemies the romans from 50 60 70 years earlier and try and kind of maybe stir up some support there this is the route he decides to yes so which route does he decide to take then louis the route into etruria okay there are different ways to get

into etruria from the north but most of them involve crossing the Apennines at some point so we think that he possibly we don't know which one he took we just know that Polybius says that he took the most direct of the routes and the one that was quickest but also least well guarded so in other words it was a difficult advance probably over some quite high territory if he headed due south through from say Bologna or thereabouts heading, he would have headed towards Florence and taken the Colline Pass. So that's where we think he probably took. And he emerges from the Apennines sometime in May, probably of 217 with a large army. So now he's got around about 50,000 men. he's got around about 50,000 men. So remember that when he crossed the Alps, he only had 26,000 men by his own account, which Polybius looked up when he saw some evidence that Hannibal had set up an

inscription in southern Italy in 205 BC. So Hannibal claims to have had 26,000 men, but he comes into Italy proper, into Etruria with 50,000 men, 10,000 cavalry, 40,000 infantry. So he must have recruited around about 20,000 Gauls. So half of his army is Gallic now. Okay. So marching south, he gets to the river Arno. It's a very marshy area. It's the spring.

So the river is up. It's been flooding. area it's the spring so the tide that the river is up it's been flooding and the crossing of the arno and the marshes around it are completely horrible sources say that it was a four to five day journey the water was quite deep around the men but the handball had reconnoitered the area to make sure that there was firm footing by the route that he took but nevertheless the men couldn't sleep they really struggled polybius that a lot of the pack animals perished. And in fact, people were sleeping on top of dead pack animals in order to keep themselves dry overnight. Hannibal himself caught ophthalmia and lost the use of one of his eyes in this. And this prompts

lots of later Latin poets to call him a cyclops and one-eyed guy tulian and all these kinds of derogatory terms thereafter he loses his eye crossing the alps he rode up on top of the one remaining elephant apparently to keep himself dry and so the crossing is very difficult there are some derogatory things said in our sources about the gauls in in their march they're not used to this hard marching you know their armies tend to move at a kind of leisurely pace and this hannibal's really forcing the route forcing the pace and through very hostile climate very hostile sort of territory really um and so the Gauls really suffer apparently and would have deserted had not Hannibal actually centered them in the middle of his army and put cavalry behind

Numidians kind of drove the Gauls on um this is all part of a stereotype of the gauls being you know soft and and not really capable of enduring italian climates they're used to the cold north and when it gets a bit warm or a bit difficult they kind of want to give up i think it's mostly a stereotype but nevertheless hannibal gets across the arno and camps for a couple of days at faesulae which is where ghouls had won a battle in 225 so now we're getting some sort of correlations you know if hannibal wants to think about a route all he has to do is ask the ghouls which route did you take or which you know where are good places to stop in etruria given that they've been campaigning there eight years earlier so i think the reason

why he marches through the middle arno and crosses the marshes and stops at is to do with gallic support gallic information maybe even gallic opportunism saying etruria is a good place to plunder if you're after booty then that's the place to go and this is what the hannibal then does he spends the next few days marching south plundering the wealth of etruria really causing a scene and trying to get the attention of the romans so flaminius is nearby arezzo and finds that hannibal actually marches past him at heading south and his officers apparently advise him to just harass hannibal's army but flaminius because he's this headstrong rash militarily incompetent kind of guy,

he decides he's going to try and bring Hannibal to battle. And so pursues him with his army, leaves Eretium and heads south after Hannibal. And they get quite close. So they're about a day behind in terms of the marches. So Hannibal looks like he's heading for Rome. And at this point, we wonder what's going to happen now Hannibal decides suddenly to swerve left as it were swerve east as he's heading south so he leaves the road to Rome and he heads east so almost towards the Apennine mountains yeah again yeah absolutely towards those

now this would play directly into Flaminius's hands because Flaminius has been in communication with Geminus, the other consul, and Geminus's army. And it's clear that Geminus's army has been on the march. As soon as they know that Hannibal has crossed the Apennines into Etruria, Geminus has mobilized and he's heading south and west to join Flaminius. In 225, the Gas have been caught by roman armies marching in from opposite directions and have been surrounded and destroyed this seems to be what flaminius is hoping for the hannibal now is swerving towards geminius and with flaminius behind they can engage him flaminius army is only 25 000 men so it's not as big as hannibal's army so by all accounts he ought not to really try and engage hannibal in army so by all accounts he ought not to really try and

engage hannibal in a pitched battle so maybe he's rash and militarily incompetent or maybe he's just shadowing hannibal and making sure that he heads in a way that the roman armies can kind of surround hannibal and get together and crush him so the night of the 20th of june feminius camps outside of nearby lake trasimene whereabouts is lake trasamine then we're talking yeah so lake trasamine is still more or less in etruria it's on the eastern side really of etruria and it's a famously large lake and it's quite important we're not entirely sure where the battle takes place that will take place the following day but we do know that the geography and modern italian sort of sightseers are directed to the geography of this place if you go and visit you there are

various places that are that are marked out so we rather suspect that it's the northern side of the lake that is where the battle took place now if you think about the geography of this place quite an interesting geography if you imagine the lake running in a large kind of rectangular shape the northern side has an entry point which is quite narrow where hills come down those hills then extend around and form a plane or essentially like a bowl that's placed on the top of this rectangle so you have a curve of uh high ground um and then at the far end at the eastern end of the lake there is another kind of narrowing a pinch point okay um so there are various debates about whether or not the battle took place in the whole of the plane or whether it's a narrower part of the plane that it took place it's complicated by the fact that probably the shoreline has moved

as well and was receded so there's probably more space now than there was in the third century BC so we come to the day of the battle and Flaminius' army marches out to continue tracking Hannibal's army. So he's camped outside of the first of these pinch points, the entry point to this bowl. And the first thing that happens, according to our hostile sources, is that the Roman standards refuse to be pulled out of the ground and Flaminius orders them to be dug out of the ground and Familius orders them to be dug out of the ground so there's a moment for you if anything whether we believe that or not is neither here nor there if it's clay then it you know might well be quite difficult to get this stuff out anyway Familius's army marches on to pursue Hannibal and presumably to sort of see where he's running away to trying to avoid the

Roman army I guess if you if you want to be optimistic about what the situation is from the roman point of view they enter through a sort of fairly low but narrow entranceway onto the plain behind is against the northern side of the lake and walk through lake mists that have risen overnight and in. So they can't really see very much. It's quite misty, but they're marching along and their column probably is a few miles long. It's a typical Roman marching column with a baggage in the middle and the troops all deployed in various ways.

It's probably extraordinary. So these are chosen Latin allies at the beginning of the army at the Van and then the legions and allies kind of interspersed amongst each other. Millions dead, a higher proportion of civilian casualties than in the Second World War. America, Britain, Russia and China all involved in a conflict that technically remains active to this day. So why is the Korean War of 1950-53 called the Forgotten War? This July, we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out what this unique conflict was all

about. Join me, James Rogers, throughout July on the Warfare podcast from History Hit, as we remember the war, the world forgot. These legions, so we can really picture them, I mean, how would they have been armed? What was the Roman army, the standard equipment at that time? So Roman armies divided in two halves. Essentially, there's a Roman citizen body who formed the legions, and then there are allies that are drawn all over italy often they're drawn from the sort of theater of operational nearby allied areas and those allies are tend to fight by now after centuries of integration

into the roman army they tend to look a bit like the roman legions but they may well have their own distinct approaches to equipment and decoration and maybe even fighting styles but essentially we can treat them as legions light as it were and they are organized in cohorts and they are organized in two wings so ally uh roman roman words for that so they are essentially two lumps of troops but the best of them about 1200 of them are called extraordinary and they are recruited to do all kinds of special duties for the consul and so they're creamed off the top of the allies and put in their own special unit and one of their roles is to operate in the van of the march and to go off and do special missions that kind of thing

guard the consul's tent and that sort of stuff the roman legions themselves are structured by age so there are four categories of troops the youngest end are the levies the light infantry who are generally javelin armed men they may or may not have had shields at this point but certainly by the end of the war they will have shields there will be some kind of reform of the levies the light infantry at some point in about 211. Maybe it's a full scale reform. Maybe it's just an ad hoc adjustment, but we're not sure. After that, they tend to be called Velites.

But at this point, we'll call them just light infantry. So in each legion of 4,200 men, there were about 1,200 of these young guys. And their role is to skirmish and to throw things at the enemy until such time as the grown-ups get ready for proper fighting. So these guys are probably 17, 18, 19-year-olds. They're the youngest, but also they're the poorest, according to Pilibis. So you can be a young man and then progress up through. But if you're too poor, you might just remain a light infantryman for much of your career, depending on how lucky you are with booty and stuff. So it's the youngest and the poorest who form the velites.

Behind that, in any formation, the Romans tend to have these light infantry in the front and then three lines organized by age. And these are the line infantry who will engage in hand-to-hand fighting. Firstly, we have a group called the Hastati, who are the sort of early 20s somethings. They are armed with a large body covering shield, a scutum, and a couple of peeler, heavy throwing spears, and a sword. And their role is to engage the enemy after the skirmishers have withdrawn, and hopefully win the battle. If they can't break the enemy, then they are reinforced by the next line of late 20s, early 30s somethings, who are called the Principes, men in the prime of their

life, lots of experience from military campaigns before. They will join in at some point and come up through the lines and just drive the enemy back. If that doesn't happen, which it normally does, then it comes to the triari to paraphrase a roman saying for things are getting really desperately bad yeah yeah when if it gets to the triari then things are getting bad so the triari are the old men the old timers up to about the age of 40 they are armed differently from the hastati and principales were armed the same they have a scoot on a body covering shield like the others but they have instead of a throwing spear thrusting spears

at this point and a sword so they tend to form a a hedge and there are not as many of them so there are only 600 triarii in a legion at 1200 velites or leves and then the rest of the legion is divided equally between Hastati and Principes so these guys will only commit if the battle is going badly and often when the rest of the army is collapsing and running away they will rise up from where they've been kneeling or sitting and advance into a conflict and this third line is often the thing that will determine victory or defeat these are older men they're not going to be running around they're not so energetic so they just sit around until they're needed essentially and they're not going to run away either because they're too old to you know you you haven't got as much stamina when you get into your late 30s as you do when you're in your young 20s so these are guys who are stable

veterans they've seen it all but also they're not going to run away because they're too old to really they're not their chances of running away against you know if they've been pursued by 20 somethings that is very very dangerous for them so they're going to fight for as long as they possibly can so that's how each legion is structured internally and the battle roman battle line therefore is what's called a triplex acies with these three lines of line infantry and then skirmishes in the front of the sort of fourth line ahead with cavalry on the wings and the roman legions tend to deploy with legions in the center allies on the wings and then cavalry beyond that on on the far wings so that's a standard sort of deployment and so thank you for explaining that slight tangent from your story i know so let's therefore go back

to the story we now know how this roman army is looking you've already explained how the carthaginian army you've got carthaginians libyans numidians but lots of ghouls there yeah so talk us through the battle itself yeah so the triplex act is isn't in this battle you see because they're all still marching because they're in their marching column yeah they're in a marching column they're all strung out by legion and consequently they're marching along this northern coast of late trasmine so they've got the lake on their right hand side their weapon hand side as it were and they're marching and suddenly the column stops because it's encountered at the exit as it were of this bowl they've encountered hannibal's line infantry hannibal's veterans who have been the core of his army since

he was a teenager from spain all the way through across the pyrenees alps the victors of trebia these are the guys that they encounter so there are a mix of africans and iberians so the iberians spaniards who have been recruited by hannibal himself these are well experienced very experienced kind of guys and they are there to hold the line and they're holding high ground and they're holding narrow ground as well to stop the romans getting out of what turns out to be a trap because in the night hannibal had arranged the rest of his army along the whole of the bowl edge so all on the high ground above the lake so as the romans bump into the front the rear of their column has already entered

through the first sort of bottleneck and it's at that point that the rear discovers that actually the carthaginian cavalry has suddenly descended upon them there's probably the carthaginian light infantry which is a mix of javelin throwers and spearmen of various sorts there's a slightly odd word long chopperoy which we talked about in the previous podcast the long chopperoy art means spear bearers and there's various ways to translate that word sometimes it's translated to pikeman but i think it's highly unlikely that these are pikemen because light infantry throwing pikes it doesn't work and or operating with pikes you lose your advantage so i think they are spear throwers and also some balearic slingers but the rest of the line the whole of the sort of northern edge and so essentially what's covering the middle of the roman army and what we'll be charging into them are the gauls

who have been waiting for this moment since 225 and they've been sharpening their um swords i'm sure for the whole of that period they charge down of course galls are really terrifying in their first charge all ancient sources talk about the the shock and terror of a gallic charge this is where their galls are very much the strongest they're quite brittle so they don't have much staying power they charge and if you can stand up to them after a bit they weaken the sun gets a bit warm they get a bit fed up you know we've talked about that stereotype and then they collapse and that's basically how they work but in their initial rush like seguin in the morning they are getting stronger all the time they're charging down the hill so they charge and they get a lot of momentum and they crash into the roman marching column as it's still trying to

react to the fact that it stopped moving that they know that a fighter started to emerge so the romans are caught in this enormous trap. Their only ways of escape are to fight their way out or to try and swim for it. And the lake is absolutely treacherous. And a number of Romans are known to have swum out and drowned because they're in their armour. And it's, you know, it's a lake, it's still June,

and possibly the Roman calendar is slightly out of alignment. So it may even be May, early May. You know, the waters are cold and they get much much colder as you go in deeper so people are probably getting cramps and collapsing and drowning that way so the roman army is essentially attacked from all sides by surprise with an enormous momentum of that gallic charge and the carthaginian experience as well and it's essentially pushed into the. And the losses are calamitous. The sources say that around about 15,000 of the 25,000 man army are killed in that battle,

which lasts several hours. Apparently the fighting is so fierce that an earthquake that happens is unnoticed by the soldiers. This is hyperbole, but it's a great story, isn't it? So there's a local earthquake and nobody even notices because they're fighting so hard.

And so only about 10,000 escaped. 4,000 are captured. 6,000 cut their way out of the front of the Carthaginian army. As happened at Trebia, the Romans were able to punch through a particular part of the line. And here it's the force that was probably more prepared to fight and had the extraordinary in it. And they punched their way through and they fight their way the extraordinary in it and they they punch their way through and they fight their way to a small village where they hole up they are then surrounded by hannibal's cavalry corps and some of the iberians as well under a guy called mahabal who

then negotiates their surrender and that's the end of flamininus' army, Flamininus' army. And Flamininus himself disappears on the battle. However, there is a story that he was recognised by the Gauls because of his outlandish helmet. He had something on his helmet that they recognised. And they spotted him and they went for him. And the Gallic cavalry killed him. And his body was never found, presumably because they took his head and stripped his body but he was never found but he was recognized so he got his comeuppance for all of his gallic interventions interferences at least that's a lovely way to end

his story from a gallic perspective of course so that's the end of that army but it's not quite the end of the whole operation because jaminis's cavalry i was going to ask where jaminis yeah he so jamininis is coming down looking for familiars and they're only a couple of days away by all accounts at least the cavalry are only a couple of days away because there was a report that two or three days later geminis's cavalry of 4 000 so this is quite a large force encounters mahabal's cavalry maybe six to eight thousand we don't know and is surrounded two thousand are killed two thousand are captured and that's the end of the roman cavalry in the north yeah geminus with no cavalry

can't fight this battle half an army you know an army half the size of hannibal's and so he retreats back to ariminum and leaves hannibal therefore almost master of the north the victor yeah i mean louis this is great i mean because we've got to start wrapping up this Trasimene podcast now that you've explained the battle and the run out to it brilliantly. But why, just as a summary, so why is this battle, this campaign, and his ultimate victory against Flaminius and taking away of Geminus' cavalry, why is this so significant for Hannibal at this time? He needs victories.

He has no friends. Apart from the Ga Gauls he has no friends in Italy he needs to persuade the Italian allies of the Romans that he is going to win this war because what he wants ultimately is to stop the Italians from supporting the Romans and to try and break up the Roman alliance so that's one significant thing that he is beginning to work on and in order to promote that any of the italians that he captures he's done it after trebia but he does it again after tras i mean he frees and says my war is not against you it's against the romans it's as we who are disputing the mastery of italy you can just stand aside and let us duke it out as it were um so he playing this propaganda war so it's very significant

because it's extra leverage on on that second thing is it opens up the possibility of a direct march on rome should he choose it and in rome there is mass panic a messenger comes along from the battle and says we have been defeated in a great battle that's all the information he gives and it's pandemonium and the romans then organize a scratch defense and appoint a dictator an experienced guy called fabius maximus so in terms of hannibal's victories he's managed to defeat the romans he's managed to get access to italy now so now he can start marching through italy in whichever way he wants he could head towards rome or he could now cross the apennines and start campaigning against some of Rome's allies. He's got some other things to

settle as well. He's got 20,000 Gauls in his army and they're not just serving for pay. I mean, they don't like the Romans already and they have got some revenge for Telamon, but there are other things that were on their minds. And one of the things that Hannibal does next and it seems to be illogical in a way because he could march on Rome he's only a hundred or so miles 150 miles away from Rome so he could get there and he could really put pressure he could potentially end the war immediately if the Romans cave in also we hear of a Carthaginian fleet of 70 ships that turns up at Pisa on that coast, at some point finds that Hannibal is not there and sails away. So it sounds like at some point early in the Carthaginian strategy,

a fleet was meant to hook up with Hannibal and help him kind of march down the Etruscan coast. So we're expecting Hannibal, as it were, to get the Etruscans on his side, perhaps. They haven't revolted, but maybe a bit more pressure, maybe advance on Rome, hook up with his fleet and campaign that way. That seems like the most logical thing to do. But he heads, he keeps going.

So having swerved to Trasimene, which is a beautiful ambush place, he carries on across the Pennines and into Piscinum. Now, why does he do that? And how does that set up the next part of the campaign? Well, that's a great question to ask, which we're going to do the answers for in our next podcast episode.

But Louis, we're going to wrap up that episode there. Absolutely brilliant. Always wonderful to have you on the podcast. And last but certainly not least, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast thank you so much tristan it's such absolute joy well there you go there was dr louis rawlings explaining all about hannibal and his great clash against the romans at the battle of lake trasimene in 217 BC. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Louis is such a brilliant guest. You can listen to him all day and I'm delighted to say

that he's going to be coming back on the podcast for a few more follow-up episodes, particularly around that most famous or most infamous of Hannibal's clashes against the Romans, the Battle of Cannae. Stay tuned for episodes on that with Louis just around the corner on the ancients. Now in the meantime, if you want more ancients content, you know what I'm going to say, because you can subscribe to our weekly ancients newsletter via a link in the description below. Every week I write a bit of a blurb for that newsletter saying what's been happening in team ancient history hit world that week. And of course, if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from, wherever you get the ancients from,

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