Historical person
Lucius Aemilius Paullus
died 217 BCE
Lucius Aemilius Paullus was one of the Roman consuls commanding at Cannae in 216 BC. Ancient sources describe him as cautious and opposed to battle, contrasting him with his colleague Gaius Terentius Varro.
During Hannibal’s encirclement of the Roman army, Paullus was wounded and killed while refusing to leave the field. His death made him a convenient aristocratic hero in later Roman accounts of the disaster. Lucius Aemilius Paullus was born in Ancient Rome and died in Cannae.
In Ben Kane’s Cannae, Soldiers from both sides prepare beneath the summer heat while the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro argue over how to use Rome’s overwhelming numbers. David Anthony Durham’s Hannibal places Lucius Aemilius Paullus among the Roman commanders at Cannae, where his death in the catastrophic defeat embodies the scale of Hannibal’s victory over the republic.
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