the ground, and that the eager warriors never perceived it; but again
the Romans lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dreadful
slaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no quarter to a Roman. The
only thing that was hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etruscans,
nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor of Hannibal; and though
he was now very near Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help of
the people around to bring him supplies, so he only marched southwards,
hoping to gain the support of the Greek colonies. A dictator was
appointed, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by strengthening all
the garrisons in the towns and cutting off all provisions, he should
wear the enemy out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was called
Cunctator, or the Delayer; but at last he had the Carthaginians enclosed
as in a trap in the valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut them
off, posting men in ambush to fall on them on their morning's march.
Hannibal guessed that this must be the plan; and at night he had the
cattle in the camp collected, fastened torches to their horns, and drove
them up the hills. The Romans, fancying themselves surrounded by the
enemy, came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the camp, and
Hannibal and his army safely escaped. This mischance made the Romans
weary of the Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and two
consuls came in, though one of them, Lucius AEmilius Paulus, would have
gone on in the same cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without a
battle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who commanded on alternate
days with him, was determined on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that it
was fought on the plain of Cannae, where there was plenty of space to use
his Moorish horse. It was Varro's day of command, and he dashed at the
centre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space for him, then closed in on
both sides with his terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of the
Romans. The last time that the consul AEmilius was seen was by a tribune
named Lentulus, who found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, and
would have given him his own horse to escape, but AEmilius answered that
he had no mind to have to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had rather
die. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode off, and looking back,
saw his consul fall, pierced with darts. So many Romans had been killed,
that Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 10,000