Cannae, the village in Apulia where Hannibal annihilated the Roman army of the consuls Aemilius Paullus and Terentius Varro in 216 BC, in the most catastrophic Roman defeat of the Second Punic War. Cicero invokes it as the standing paradigm of military disaster (Verr. 2.5.28; Pro Rosc. Am. 89; Tusc. 1.89).