Battle of Cissa

Significance

The Battle of Cissa, fought in the fall of 218 BC near Tarraco in north-eastern Iberia, was the first engagement Roman forces ever fought on the Iberian peninsula. A Roman army under Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus defeated a Carthaginian force under Hanno, inflicting approximately 8,000 casualties on a numerically inferior opponent and seizing control of territory north of the Ebro River that Hannibal had only recently subdued in the summer of 218 BC. The victory gave Rome a secure foothold among friendly Iberian tribes and established the operational base from which the Scipio brothers would prosecute the Iberian theatre throughout the war. Its strategic consequence extended directly to events in Italy: because Roman forces maintained persistent pressure in Spain, Hannibal was never able to draw reinforcements from that region during his Italian campaign, a deprivation that shaped the trajectory of the entire Second Punic War.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (2)