Ambush on Lake Trasimeno (June 217)
Hannibal subjected the territory between Cortona and Lake Trasimeno to all the scourges and ravages of war, to further incite the enemy to avenge, in his anger, the outrages inflicted on his allies. He had already arrived at a place made for an ambush, that where the foot of the Cortona mountains is nearest to Lake Trasimeno. There is only a very narrow path between them, as if, on purpose, space had been left only for him; then extends a slightly wider plain; then the mountains rise. Hannibal places there, in the open, a camp which he himself will occupy with the Africans and the Spaniards only; the Balearics and the rest of the light infantry, he leads them behind the mountains; the horsemen, he put them at the very entrance of the defile, well hidden by heights, so that once the Romans entered this plain, the cavalry barring the road behind them, all the rest would be closed to them by the lake and the mountains.
Flaminius, having arrived at the lake the day before, at sunset, the next day, without sending scouts, the day barely rising, having crossed the pass, saw, when his column began to extend in the open plain, that what enemies he had in front of him; behind him, above him, he did not discover the ambush. The Carthaginian, when he held, as he had sought, his enemy enclosed by the lake and the mountains and surrounded by his troops, gives to all at the same time the signal to attack. When, each as close as possible, they descended at a run, their attack was, for the Romans, all the more sudden and unexpected, as a mist, rising from the lake, extended thicker over the plain than over the mountains, and that the enemy columns, coming from several hills, could see each other fairly well and had charged with more unity. It was the cry uttered on all sides that told the Roman, before he could see him, that he was surrounded; and we began to fight on the front and on the flanks before we had time to straighten the lines, arm ourselves and draw our swords.