cians.
This was a great, in fact an all-important, gain for the Romans.
Nevertheless it was felt in the capital that it would be imprudent to
put the fidelity of their allies to such a test, without a Roman army
to keep the field. The dictator Quintus Fabius combined the two
supplementary legions formed in Rome with the army of Ariminum,
and when Hannibal marched past the Roman fortress of Luceria towards
Arpi, the Roman standards appeared on his right flank at Aeca.
Their leader, however, pursued a course different from that of his
predecessors. Quintus Fabius was a man advanced in years, of a
deliberation and firmness, which to not a few seemed procrastination
and obstinacy. Zealous in his reverence for the good old times, for
the political omnipotence of the senate, and for the command of the
burgomasters, he looked to a methodical prosecution of the war as
--next to sacrifices and prayers--the means of saving the state.
A political antagonist of Gaius Flaminius, and summoned to the head of
affairs in virtue of the reaction against his foolish war-demagogism,
Fabius departed for the camp just as firmly resolved to avoid a
pitched battle at any price, as his predecessor had been determined at
any price to fight one; he was without doubt convinced that the first
elements of strategy would forbid Hannibal to advance so long as the
Roman army confronted him intact, and that accordingly it would not be
difficult to weaken by petty conflicts and gradually to starve out the
enemy's army, dependent as it was on foraging for its supplies.

March to Capua and Back to Apulia
War in Apulia

Hannibal, well served by his spies in Rome and in the Roman army,
immediately learned how matters stood, and, as usual, adjusted the
plan of his campaign in accordance with the individual character of
the opposing leader. Passing the Roman army, he marched over the
Apennines into the heart of Italy towards Beneventum, took the open
town of Telesia on the boundary between Samnium and Campania, and
thence turned against Capua, which as the most important of all the
Italian cities dependent on Rome, and the only one standing in some
measure on a footing of equality with it, had for that very reason
felt more severely than any other community the oppression of the
Roman government. He had formed connections there, which led him to
hope that the Campanians might revolt from the Roman alliance; but in
this hope he was disappointed. So, ret