Gaius Flaminius

Gaius Flaminius was the Roman consul ambushed and killed by Hannibal at Lake Trasimene, and a politician the senatorial tradition disliked long before he lost the battle. As tribune in 232 BC he carried a law distributing the land taken from the Senones in the Adriatic plain to poor Roman citizens, over the opposition of the Senate, which regarded it as demagoguery and blamed it afterwards for provoking the Gallic invasion of 225. As censor he built the Via Flaminia north to Ariminum and the Circus Flaminius in Rome, both of which outlasted his reputation. He was consul in 223 and again in 217, and he supported the Claudian law restricting senators from large-scale seaborne trade, which did not endear him further. In the spring of 217 he took his army to Arretium to block the road south. Hannibal marched past him through the Arno marshes, losing men and an eye to infection, and then burned the countryside in front of him to force him to follow. He followed. On the morning of 21 June, in fog, his column entered the defile between the hills and the northern shore of Lake Trasimene with no scouts out, and Hannibal's army came down on it from above along its whole length. Around 15,000 Romans were killed, many drowned in the shallows, and Flaminius was killed by an Insubrian horseman. It is one of the largest ambushes in military history. Rome appointed Fabius Maximus dictator within days, and the strategy of refusing battle begins there.

• Lived: 260 BCE – 217 BCE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: politician, military_leader