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The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, taking place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of the Carthaginian Empire under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. Following the Battle of Cannae, Capua and several other Italian city-states defected from the Roman Republic. Although the battle failed to decide the outcome of the war in favour of Carthage, it is regarded as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and the greatest defeat of Rome. Having recovered from their previous losses at Trebia (218 BC) and Trasimene (217 BC), the Romans decided to confront Hannibal at Cannae, with roughly 87,000 Roman and Allied troops. With their right wing positioned near the Aufidus River, the Romans placed their cavalry on their flanks and massed their heavy infantry in a deeper formation than usual in the centre. Perhaps the Romans hoped to break the Carthaginian line earlier in the battle than they had at the Battle of Trebia. To counter this, Hannibal utilized the double-envelopment tactic. He drew up his least reliable infantry in the centre, with the flanks composed of Carthaginian cavalry. Before engaging the Romans, however, his lines adopted a crescent shape — advancing his centre with his veteran troops at the wings in echelon formation. Upon the onset of the battle, the Carthaginian centre withdrew before the advance of the numerically superior Romans.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/2

The Roman Empire at its greatest extent under Trajan in 117 AD

The history of ancient Rome—originally a city-state of Italy, and later an empire covering much of Eurasia and North Africa from the ninth century BC to the fifth century AD—was often closely entwined with its military history. The core of the campaign history of the Roman military is the account of the Roman military's land battles, from its initial defence against and subsequent conquest of the city's hilltop neighbours in the Italian peninsula, to the ultimate struggle of the Western Roman Empire for its existence against invading Huns, Vandals and Germanic tribes after the empire's split into East and West. Despite the later Empire's encompassing of lands around the periphery of the Mediterranean sea, naval battles were typically less significant than land battles to the military history of Rome, due to its largely unchallenged dominance of the sea following fierce naval fighting during the First Punic War. The Roman army battled first against its tribal neighbours and Etruscan towns within Italy, and later came to dominate much of the Mediterranean and further afield, including the provinces of Britannia and Asia Minor at the Empire's height. As with most ancient civilisations, Rome's military served the triple purposes of securing its borders, exploiting peripheral areas through measures such as imposing tribute on conquered peoples, and maintaining internal order. Rome is almost unique in the ancient world in that its history, military and otherwise, is documented often in great detail almost from the city's very foundation right through to its eventual demise.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/3

The Corinthian War was an ancient Greek conflict lasting from 395 BC until 387 BC, pitting Sparta against a coalition of four allied states; Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos; which were initially backed by Persia. The immediate cause of the war was a local conflict in northwest Greece in which both Thebes and Sparta intervened. The deeper cause was hostility towards Sparta provoked by that city's "expansionism in Asia Minor, central and northern Greece and even the ... west". The war was fought on two fronts, on land near Corinth and Thebes and at sea in the Aegean. On land, the Spartans achieved several early successes in major battles, but were unable to capitalize on their advantage, and the fighting soon became stalemated. At sea, the Spartan fleet was decisively defeated by a Persian fleet early in the war, an event that effectively ended Sparta's attempts to become a naval power. Taking advantage of this fact, Athens launched several naval campaigns in the later years of the war, recapturing a number of islands that had been part of the original Athenian Empire during the 5th century BC. Alarmed by these Athenian successes, the Persians stopped backing the allies and began supporting Sparta. This defection forced the allies to seek peace. The Peace of Antalcidas, commonly known as the King's Peace, was signed in 387 BC, ending the war. This treaty declared that Persia would control all of Ionia, and that all other Greek cities would be independent. Sparta was to be the guardian of the peace, with the power to enforce its clauses. The effects of the war, therefore, were to establish Persia's ability to interfere successfully in Greek politics and to affirm Sparta's hegemonic position in the Greek political system.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/4

The Cretan War (205 BC–200 BC) was fought by King Philip V of Macedon, the Aetolian League, several Cretan cities (of which Olous and Hierapytna were the most important) and Spartan pirates against the forces of Rhodes and later Attalus I of Pergamum, Byzantium, Cyzicus, Athens and Knossos. The Macedonians had just concluded the First Macedonian War and Philip, seeing his chance to defeat Rhodes, formed an alliance with Aetolian and Spartan pirates who began raiding Rhodian ships. Philip also formed an alliance with several important Cretan cities, such as Hierapynta and Olous. With the Rhodian fleet and economy suffering from the depredations of the pirates, Philip believed his chance to crush Rhodes was at hand. To help achieve his goal, he formed an alliance with the King of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus the Great, against Ptolemy V of Egypt (the Seleucid Empire and Egypt were the other two Diadochi states). Philip began attacking the lands of Ptolemy and Rhodes's allies in Thrace and around the Sea of Marmara. In 202 BC, Rhodes and her allies Pergamum, Cyzicus, and Byzantium combined their fleets and defeated Philip at the Battle of Chios. Just a few months later, Philip's fleet defeated the Rhodians at Lade. While Philip was plundering Pergamese territory and attacking cities in Caria, Attalus I of Pergamum went to Athens to try to create a diversion. He succeeded in securing an alliance with the Athenians, who immediately declared war on the Macedonians. The King of Macedon could not remain inactive; he assailed Athens with his navy and with some infantry.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/5

The structural history of the Roman military describes the major chronological transformations in the organization and constitution of ancient Rome's armed forces, "the most effective and long-lived military institution known to history". From its origins around 800 BC to its final dissolution in 476 AD with the demise of the Western Roman Empire, Rome's military underwent substantial structural change. At the highest level of structure, Rome's forces were split into the Roman army and the Roman navy, although these two branches were less distinct than in a modern national defence force. The earliest Roman army mentioned in writing is ascribed by our much later sources, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, to the 8th century BC; and is often referred to as Rome's curiate army, named for the subdivisions of the army based upon the three founding tribes (Latin: curiae) of Rome. This army was a relatively small force, and its activities were limited "mainly [to] raiding and cattle rustling with the occasional skirmish-like battle". It lacked much of the professionalism and organisation of later Roman armies, with individual units or regiments probably being formed upon divisions by tribe, or gens. During this period Rome was probably fortified as a hill-top village and its army of the time can be compared loosely to a typical Bronze-Age warrior band led by a warrior chieftain. Much of the arms and armour of this period was very similar to the rest of the Villanovan culture that was predominant in the region.

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Italia and surrounding territory, 218 BC

The Third Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and The War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Servile Wars. The Third Servile War was the only one to directly threaten the Roman heartland of Italia and was doubly alarming to the Roman people due to the repeated successes of the rapidly growing band of rebel slaves against the Roman army between 73 and 71 BC. The rebellion was finally crushed through the concentrated military effort of a single commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus, although the rebellion continued to have indirect effects on Roman politics for years to come. Between 73 and 71 BC, a band of escaped slaves — originally a small cadre of about 70 escaped gladiators which grew into a band of over 120,000 men, women and children — wandered throughout and raided Italy with relative impunity under the guidance of several leaders, including the famous gladiator-general Spartacus. The able-bodied adults of this band were a surprisingly effective armed force that repeatedly showed they could withstand the Roman military, from the local Campanian patrols, to the Roman militia, and to trained Roman legions under consular command. Plutarch described the actions of the slaves as an attempt by Roman slaves to escape their masters and flee through Cisalpine Gaul, while Appian and Florus depicted the revolt as a civil war in which the slaves waged a campaign to capture the city of Rome itself.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/7

The War against Nabis or Laconian War of 195 BC was fought between the Greek city-state of Sparta and a coalition composed of Rome, the Achean League, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Macedon. During the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BC), Macedon had given Sparta control over Argos, an important city on the Aegean coast of Peloponnese. Sparta's continued occupation of Argos at the end of war was used as a pretext for Rome and its allies to declare war. The anti-Spartan coalition laid siege to Argos, captured the Spartan naval base at Gythium, and soon invested and besieged Sparta itself. Eventually, negotiations led to peace on Rome's terms, under which Argos and the coastal towns of Laconia were freed from Spartan rule and the Spartans were compelled to pay a war indemnity to Rome over the next eight years. Argos joined the Achaean League, and the Laconian towns were placed under Achaean protection. As a result of the war, Sparta lost its position as a major power in Greece. All consequent Spartan attempts to recover the losses failed and Nabis, the last sovereign ruler, was eventually murdered. Soon after, Sparta was forcibly made a member of its former rival, the Achaean League, ending several centuries of fierce political independence.After the death of the Spartan regent Machanidas in 207 BC in battle against the Achaean League, Nabis overthrew the reigning king Pelops with the backing of a mercenary army and placed himself on the throne, claiming descent from the Eurypontid king Demaratus.

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Portal:Ancient warfare/Selected article/8

The Battle of Red Cliffs, otherwise known as the Battle of Chibi, (Chinese: 赤壁之戰; pinyin: chìbì zhī zhàn) was a decisive battle immediately prior to the period of the Three Kingdoms in China in the northern winter of 208 CE between the allied forces of the southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. Liu Bei and Sun Quan successfully frustrated Cao Cao's effort to conquer the land south of the Yangtze River and reunite the territory of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The allied victory at Red Cliffs ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, gave them control of the Yangtze , and provided a line of defence that was the basis for the later creation of the two southern kingdoms of Shu Han (蜀) and Eastern Wu (吳). For these reasons, it is considered a decisive battle in Chinese history. Descriptions of the battle differ widely on details; in fact, even the location of battle is still fiercely debated. Although its precise location remains uncertain, the majority of academic conjectures place it on the south bank of the Yangtze River at some location southwest of present-day Wuhan and northeast of Baqiu (modern Yueyang city in Hunan province). The most detailed account of the battle comes from the biography of Zhou Yu in the 3rd-century historical text Records of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Zhi). An exaggerated and romanticised account is also a central event in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

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