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Updated: June 3, 2025
The Roman general had seen with astonishment the numerous lights making their way up the mountain side, but he feared that this was some device on the part of Hannibal to entrap him into an ambush, as he had entrapped Flaminius on Lake Trasimene. He therefore held his army in readiness for whatever might occur until morning broke. Then he saw that he had been outwitted.
Nothing short of a general movement among the hill tribes would be of any great advantage to us, and it is clear that no general movement can be looked for now. Besides, now that we see the spirit which animates these savages, I do not care to risk your loss by sending you among them." The news of the disaster of Lake Trasimene was met by Rome in a spirit worthy of her.
And, as if this were not enough, immediately after the battle on the Trasimene lake, the cavalry of the army of Ariminum under Gaius Centenius, 4000 strong, which Gnaeus Servilius had sent forward for the temporary support of his colleague while he himself advanced by slow marches, was likewise surrounded by the Phoenician army, and partly slain, partly made prisoners.
He overtook him in the district of Cortona, where Hannibal, accurately informed of his antagonist's march, had had full time to select his field of battle a narrow defile between two steep mountain walls, closed at its outlet by a high hill, and at its entrance by the Trasimene lake.
Battle on the Trasimene Lake No plan was ever more successful. In haste, the consul followed the line of march of the enemy, who passed by Arezzo and moved slowly through the rich valley of the Chiana towards Perugia.
Having in his seventeenth year entered the burgess-army, he had passed through the whole Hannibalic war from the battle on the Trasimene lake to that of Zama; had served under Marcellus and Fabius, under Nero and Scipio; and at Tarentum and Sena, in Africa, Sardinia, Spain, and Macedonia, had shown himself capable as a soldier, a staff- officer, and a general.
A first attempt to wrest from the Egyptians the coast of Syria, the loss of which he sorely felt, had, in the year of the battle of the Trasimene lake, met with a bloody repulse from Philopator at Raphia; and Antiochus had taken good care not to resume the contest with Egypt, so long as a man even though he were but an indolent one occupied the Egyptian throne.
Cavalry fighting on the banks of the River Marne in the year 1914 was almost identical with the charge in the days when Hannibal's Numidian horse charged at Romans at Lake Trasimene, or when Charles Martel and the chivalry of France worsted the Moors and saved Europe on the plains of Tours.
It was his genius that projected this expedition; and as the task of Stein and Scharnhorst was more difficult and nobler than that of York and Blucher, so the unerring tact of historical tradition has always dwelt on the last link in the great chain of preparatory steps, the passage of the Alps, with a greater admiration than on the battles of the Trasimene lake and of the plain of Cannae.
The sight reminded him of his native town, the gay city of Perugia, surrounded with its gardens, where springs of living water sing amid the fruits and flowers. He saw once more in fancy the terrace that looks over the vale of Trasimene, whence the eye drinks in the light of day with delight. And the yearning for life tore his heart afresh, and he sighed: "Oh! city of my fathers!
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