Battle of Ticinus

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SP183, 110, 27025 Gambolò PV, Italy

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N45° 15' 0" E8° 52' 0"   (45.25, 8.8666666666667) Start navigation »

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he Battle of Ticinus was a battle of the Second Punic War fought between the Carthaginian forces of Hannibal and the Romans under Publius Cornelius Scipio in November 218 BC. The battle took place in the flat country of Pavia county on the right bank of the Ticino River, not far north from its confluence (from the north) with the Po River. The battle is named from the river, not the nearby contemporaneous settlement of Ticinum (today's Pavia). Although the precise location is not known, it is generally accepted that a settlement known today as Vigevano is mentioned in Livy's text and that Scipio's camp was to the south at Gambolo, whose coordinates are given on the map. The conflict would have been west of there. It was the first battle of the war against the Romans that was fought on Italian soil and the first battle of the war to employ legion-sized forces. Its loss by the Romans, and the temporary disablement of Scipio's command, set the stage for the Roman disaster at the Battle of Trebbia in December.
This battle was mainly a cavalry engagement. It was so fast-moving that the javelin-throwers deployed by the Romans had no chance of firing even a single volley and milled around on the field, a major cause of the Roman defeat. Scipio was wounded and barely escaped with his life. He was in fact rescued on the field by his 18-year-old son, the later Scipio Africanus.
The two main sources on the battle are the History of Rome by Livy (Book XXI) and Histories of Polybius (Book III). Polybius makes it clear in his account that he visited the places and monuments and looked at documents. The two vary in some of the details.

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