Battle of Herdonia (210 BC)

Second Battle of Herdonia

Date	210 BC
Location	Herdonia (modern Ordona, Foggia), present-day Italy
Result	Carthaginian victory

Belligerents

Carthage

Roman Republic

Commanders and leaders

Hannibal

Gn. Fulvius Centumalus

Strength

approximately 25,000

less than 20,000

Casualties and losses

minimal

up to 13,000 killed

The Second battle of Herdonia took place in 210 BC during the Second Punic War. Hannibal, leader of the Carthaginians, who had invaded Italy eight years earlier, encircled and destroyed a Roman army which was operating against his allies in Apulia. The heavy defeat increased the war’s burden on Rome and, piled on previous military disasters (such as Lake Trasimene, Cannae and others), aggravated the relations with her exhausted Italian allies. For Hannibal the battle was a tactical success, but did not halt for long the Roman advance. Within the next three years the Romans reconquered most of the territories and cities lost at the beginning of the war and pushed the Carthaginian general to the southwestern end of the Apennine peninsula. The battle was the last Carthaginian victory of the war; all battles which followed were either inconclusive or Roman victories.

There is a controversy among modern historians arising from the narrative of Titus Livius, the major source of this event, who describes two battles taking place in the span of two years (in 212 BC and 210 BC) at the same place (Herdonia) between Hannibal and Roman commanders with similar names (Gn. Fulvius 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 promises of freedom. 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 in 212 BC (see the first battle of Herdonia), because despite the severe defeats on the battlefield Rome still managed to preserve intact the core of its system of alliances in Italy and continued to mount a slow but steady counter-offensive.

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