Talk:Battle of the Trebia

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Trebbia River is flowing nothward from the Apennines, not from the Alps.

Polybius reports that "not less than 10.000" infantry saved in Placentia and other, later, had been driven there by Scipio with "the most part of cavalry" (Stories, III,74) . So how can Roman start with 26.000 men and have 20.000 casualties? (excuse me for my bad bad bad english)--151.37.226.15 14:27, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Has been corrected. The Romans hat two whole legions i.e. more than 40,000 men. --Proofreader 12:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

---

The article states that

"No sooner had the cavalrymen shown up in the vicinity of the Roman camp, than Sempronius sent out his cavalry to drive them off, and shortly afterwards, recklessly sent his entire army of 36,000 Roman infantry, 4,000 allied cavalry, and 3,000 Gallic auxiliaries, towards battle. He was impatient to gain what appeared to him to be victory, though unaware of the trap set for him."

And that the Roman strength was 45,000. (Which is backed up by Polybius)

But as stated before, Longus left a base guard of 10,000 at his camp. This means that the figure for Roman infantry that Longus sent in pursuit could have been no greater than 26000. --- The estimation of Hannibal's forces is also problematic. For one, Hannibal had about three dozen elephants, not "three elephants". Also, the article does not take notice of the Gallic forces that had joined Hannibal after his 26,000 man army arrived in Italy (probably about 14,000) and the numbers given in the description of Hannibal's deployment add up to 31,000, not the given 26,000.

[edit] Why keep the old image?

Hy, I tried to replace the old brown image with newer one from the US military academy. To my suprise this replacement was reverted with no explanation except "keep both images". Well I can only say that the newer image shows the locations of the troops in a better deatil (can you see the ambushed carthaginian troops in the old image?) and should logically replace the older image. The older image should be deleted in favour of the new. Flamarande 22:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The new image includes just the battle field, the old image shows a larger portion of territory, up to Clastidium, which had a significant role in the prelude to the battle. Beside, there is a discordancy between the two map (the positions of Roman and Carthaginian forces are reversed) and until now I didn't manage to investigate which image is exact. GhePeU 12:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sacred band cavalry?

"The sacred band" referred to earlier infantry units fielded by Carthage - is there any evidence this was ever applied to cavalry? As far as I know, it was Numidian cavalry used to lure the Romans into battle. JW (talk) 06:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)