"There is a nightmarish quality about many of the descriptions of the aftermath of Cannae....Later sources would invent further horrors, claiming that Hannibal bridged the River Aufidius with Roman corpses. The reality of Cannae was probably even more appalling than such horrific inventions, for it remains one of the bloodiest single day's fighting in history, rivalling the massed slaughter of the British Army on the first day of the Somme offensive in 1916."