255 BC · Near Tunis, North Africa (modern Tunisia) Theater
255 BC
The Roman invasion of Africa went disastrously wrong. Consul Regulus, left with 15,000 men to winter near Carthage, faced a Carthaginian army reinforced by the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus, who retrained the Carthaginian forces in Hellenistic combined-arms tactics. Xanthippus deployed war elephants on the flanks and Carthaginian cavalry in a double envelopment. The Roman infantry, crammed into a narrow front, were trampled by elephants and surrounded. Regulus was captured; only 2,000 Romans escaped. The invasion collapsed.
Commanders