# Loeb Livy and Polybius print Cannae as a mass killing in Italy, without a Factrail-original body count

Date: 1922

## The fact

Loeb and Perseus Polybius and Livy print the 216 BCE as received battle of Cannae as a slaughter of a Roman army and a disaster for Italian civilians in the war’s path. The dated public carrier is that modern bilingual narrative. Medium confidence on later annalistic numbers; high that the received story is a mass killing.

## Context

He is the received commander. Shared with a Carthaginian coalition and Roman command failures as later told. Do not treat Mommsen’s plate as a photograph of the field.

[Hannibal](/people/hannibal) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official heritage, Loeb, or encyclopedia pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Perseus — Polybius (English) (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0234; Perseus Digital Library / Tufts).

## Significance

Printed Cannae is a humanitarian-harm path; the number remains the ancient historians’ claim, not a new census.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument. Not established: a unique Factrail-original body count, or a recovered 216 BCE civil-registry file.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [humanitarian-access](/drivers/humanitarian-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Hannibal: https://factrail.ai/people/hannibal

## Drivers

- Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hannibal-Carthaginian-general-247-183-BCE
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0234

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ha-cannae-as-later