Peninsula,
between the Etruscans, the Romans, and the Samnites, had studded the
declivities of the Apennines with castles and fortified burghs, the
walls of which in great part still remain, and constitute not the least
of the many interesting objects which Italy presents to the traveller.
Towards the reduction of those cities, the tumultuary array of the
Gauls, numerous and efficient as they were in the field, could not
afford any assistance. Engines for assault or the reduction of walls
they had none; funds for the maintenance of a protracted methodical
warfare were not to be looked for, in their savage and half-cultivated
plains. The communication with Spain by the circuitous route of the
Pyrenees and Alps, had been found, by dear-bought experience, to be
difficult in the extreme. It could only be opened again, by an army
nearly as powerful as that which had first penetrated through it, under
the guidance of his energetic will. It was in the south of the
Peninsula, amidst its opulent cities and long-established civilization,
that the resources for a war of sieges could alone be looked for. It was
there, too, that the most direct, the shortest, and in fact the only
secure channel of communication with Carthage could be opened: to a
Punic as to a British army, the true base of operations is the sea, the
worst possible base for that of any other military power. Beyond all
question, it was to the judicious choice of the south of Italy as his
stronghold, and the combined skill and policy by which he contrived to
detach a large part of its rich republics, with their harbours and
places of strength, from the Roman alliance, that the subsequent
protraction of the war for fifteen years is to be ascribed.

Such, however, was the terror of the Roman arms, and the influence
acquired by the combined steadiness and severity of their rule, that
this irruption into the south of Italy was not at first attended with
the desired effect. In vain he had, in all preceding engagements sent
back all the prisoners from the allies without any ransom, and treated
them in the most generous manner; in vain, in all preceding marches, he
had cautiously abstained from pillaging or laying waste their lands.
Still the Roman influence was predominant. Not one state in alliance had
revolted: not one Roman colony had failed in its duty to the parent
state. The Gauls alone, who now formed half his army, had repaired in
crowds to his standard since he ha