sence of Hasdrubal. He entered the camp of Livius in
the night, that his arrival might not be known to the Carthaginians.
After a day's rest the two Consuls proceeded to offer battle; but
Hasdrubal, perceiving the augmented numbers of the Romans, and hearing
the trumpet sound twice, felt convinced that the Consuls had united
their forces, and that his brother had been defeated. He therefore
declined the combat, and in the following night commenced his retreat
toward Ariminum. The Romans pursued him, and he found himself compelled
to give them battle on the right bank of the Metaurus. On this occasion
Hasdrubal displayed all the qualities of a consummate general; but his
forces were greatly inferior to those of the enemy, and his Gaulish
auxiliaries were of little service. The gallant resistance of the
Spanish and Ligurian troops is attested by the heavy loss of the Romans;
but all was of no avail, and seeing the battle irretrievably lost, he
rushed into the midst of the enemy, and fell, sword in hand, in a manner
worthy of the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal. The Consul
Nero hastened back to Apulia almost as speedily as he had come, and
announced to Hannibal the defeat and death of his brother by throwing
into his camp the severed head of Hasdrubal. "I recognize," said
Hannibal, sadly, "the doom of Carthage."

The victory of the Metaurus was, as we have already said, decisive of
the fate of the war in Italy, and the conduct of Hannibal shows that he
felt it to be such. From this time he abandoned all thoughts of
offensive operations, and, withdrawing his garrisons from Metapontum and
other towns that he still held in Lucania, collected together his forces
within the peninsula of the Bruttii. In the fastnesses of that wild and
mountainous region he maintained his ground for nearly four years, while
the towns that he still possessed on the coast gave him the command of
the sea.

[Footnote 33: See the map in the "Smaller History of Greece," p. 117.]

[Footnote 34: The story that Archimedes set the Roman ships on fire by
the reflected rays of the sun is probably a fiction, though later
writers give an account of this burning mirror.]

[Footnote 35: Upon his tomb was placed the figure of a sphere inscribed
in a cylinder. When Cicero was Quaestor in Sicily (B.C. 75), he found his
tomb near one of the gates of the city, almost hid among briers, and
forgotten by the Syracusans.]

[Illustration: Hannibal.]