The oxen with torches

Hannibal picks 2,000 oxen from the captured herds and has dry wood tied to their horns. Hasdrubal, the quartermaster, leads them with 2,000 camp followers and 2,000 light infantry towards a saddle below Fabius’s camp, north-west of the pass. In the third watch of the night, soon after midnight, the wood is lit, and the frightened animals run up the slope like an army marching with torches.

Fabius keeps his army in camp, fearing a trick in the dark. The 4,000 Romans at the pass leave their post to attack the lights. Hannibal’s army then marches through the empty pass, the Africans first, then the cavalry, the baggage and the herds, with Gauls and Iberians as the rearguard.

On the saddle the Roman detachment runs into stampeding cattle and the Carthaginian light infantry. At dawn Iberian infantry climb the slope, kill about 1,000 Romans and bring back the drovers, the light troops and some of the cattle before the main Roman army can intervene.

Sources

Polybius, Histories, book 3, 93 to 94.
Livy, History of Rome, book 22, 16 to 18.
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage (2006).

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