Gaius Terentius Varro ( 218–200 BC) was a Roman politician and general active during the Second Punic War. A plebeian son of a butcher, he was a populist politician who was elected consul for the year 216 BC. While holding that office, he was decisively defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae. Early years Varro was a member of a plebeian family, the gens Terentia, and the first man of note in his family. His father was reportedly a butcher who had "employed his son in the menial tasks associated with that profession." Despite this low birth, on his father's death he used the inheritance to embark on a public career, making his name by prosecuting those of higher status and progressing through the various magistracies of the cursus honorum, holding the quaestorship and both the plebeian and curule aedileships. When discussing the provenance of his cognomen, Servius suggests that this Varro served in the First Illyrian War. His first time in office for which details survive was the praetorship of 218 BC, during which he was perhaps posted in Sardinia. In 217 BC, having completed his praetorship, Varro was one of the few senators to support the elevation of Marcus Minucius Rufus to the dictatorship, apparently more because of the popular support of the plebeians that could be won by doing so than from any personal conviction. Not only was Varro successful in appointing Minucius co-dictator, but he was also elected consul for the year 216 BC. Consulship Varro and his colleague, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, assumed the consulship two years after the outbreak of the Second Punic War and the year after the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus had earned the epithet cunctator (delayer) by refusing to engage Hannibal's army in pitched battle. Varro and Paullus, though, took the rare step of combining the two consular armies, which each would normally lead separately, into an 85,000-strong force to face Hannibal. As was customary in such situations, the two consuls took charge of the force on alternating days. The two armies met at Cannae where the inexperienced Varro, using his day in command, pressed Paullus to attack while ordering a short battle line. Hannibal enveloped the Roman force and inflicted huge losses. Paullus was killed in the battle while Varro escaped to Venusia with around 4,500 surviving troops. On receiving word that larger Roman forces were at Canusium, he