14. Cannae: a town of Apulia to the south of the Aufidus, about halfway between Canusium and the sea. This was one of the most important battles of the war. Although the Romans greatly outnumbered the Carthaginians, by the skillful maneuvers of Hannibal, they were surrounded on all sides and were cut down without mercy. “For eight hours the work of destruction went on, and at the end 50,000 men lay dead upon the ground. Aemilius Paulus, the Illyrian hero, who, though wounded by a sling early in the day, had clung to his horse, heartening on his men, till he dropped exhausted from his saddle, the proconsul Servilius, the late high-spirited master of the horse, Minucius, both quaestors, twenty-one military tribunes, sixty senators, and an unknown number of knights were among the slain. Nearly 20,000 Roman prisoners were taken. Of the rest, Varro, with a few horsemen only, escaped to Venusia. Amid all this slaughter the conqueror had lost only 5500 of his infantry and but 200 of that matchless cavalry to whom the victory was mainly due.” Rome and Carthage, p. 160; Creighton, p. 44.
16. pars dē exercitū ＝ pars exercitūs; a very rare usage.
18. acceptī sunt: ‘were handled’; an ironical use of the word.
20. nōbilēs virī: men whose ancestors had held high office.
22. mentiōnem habēre: usually mentiōnem facere.
quod numquam ante: sc. factum erat.
23. manūmissī: sc. sunt; they were liberated because none but freemen could serve in the Roman legions.
Ch. 11.
24. multae Ītaliae cīvitātēs: “chiefly Samnites and other south Italian states. The Greek cities held to Rome, and ‘not one Roman citizen, nor one Latin community, had joined Hannibal.’”