I say we crush them by superior force, no risk. You speak of soldiers and retrainig as if they were chessmen. But these soldiers are Romans! Though they are not of high rank, they still are our brothers. Do not lead them into massacre and say "we have enough of them, we'll attack again if we lose in the first place". We don't lose! Roman discipline is great, but its founded on intelligent strategical desicions, and not on leading men into battle and hope they kill enough enemies until they get slaughtered, so the next army may win! One single dead roman is already too much to give to those filthy, smelly naked barbarian in the north, though I know, that a very hard fight is about to happen! If we lose, this will be an invitation to all Barbarians to invade our territories because they see, that we can be beaten. The Carthagians will laugh at us, the Greeks may invade too and many other nations could come to the conclusion, that roman power is to be challenged. Let us make an example once and for all.