ruttium
into Apulia, and the consuls took up a position in two separate camps,
distant from each other less than three miles, between Venusia and
Bantia. Hannibal, after diverting the war from Locri, returned also
into the same quarter. Here the consuls, who were both of sanguine
temperament, almost daily went out and drew up their troops for
action, confidently hoping, that if the enemy would hazard an
engagement with two consular armies united, they might put an end to
the war.

26. As Hannibal, who gained one and lost the other of the two battles
which he fought the preceding year with Marcellus, would have equal
grounds for hope and fear, should he encounter the same general
again; so was he far from thinking himself a match for the two consuls
together. Directing his attention, therefore, wholly to his own
peculiar arts, he looked out for an opportunity for planting an
ambuscade. Slight battles, however, were fought between the two camps
with varying success. But the consuls, thinking it probable that the
summer would be spun out in engagements of this kind, and being of
opinion that the siege of Locri might be going on notwithstanding,
wrote to Lucius Cincius to pass over to Locri with his fleet from
Sicily. And that the walls might be besieged by land also, they
ordered one half of the army, which formed the garrison of Tarentum,
to be marched thither. Hannibal having found from certain Thurians
that these things would be done, sent a body of troops to lie in
ambush on the road leading from Tarentum. There, under the hill of
Petelia, three thousand cavalry and two thousand foot were placed in
concealment. The Romans, who proceeded without exploring their way,
having fallen into the ambuscade, as many as two thousand soldiers
were slain, and about twelve hundred made prisoners. The others, who
were scattered in flight through the fields and forests, returned to
Tarentum. There was a rising ground covered with wood situated between
the Punic and Roman camps, which was occupied at first by neither
party, because the Romans were unacquainted with its nature on that
side which faced the enemy's camp, while Hannibal had supposed it
better adapted for an ambuscade than a camp. Accordingly, he had sent
thither, by night, several troops of Numidians, concealing them in the
midst of the wood. Not one of them stirred from his position by day,
lest their arms or themselves should be observed from a distance.
There was a ge