ed at Gerunium, twenty-five miles to the north of
Luceria. Two-thirds of the army were daily despatched from it to
bring in the stores, while Hannibal with the remainder took up a
position to protect the camp and the detachments sent out.

Fabius and Minucius

The master of the horse, Marcus Minucius, who held temporary command
in the Roman camp during the absence of the dictator, deemed this a
suitable opportunity for approaching the enemy more closely, and
formed a camp in the territory of the Larinates; where on the one hand
by his mere presence he checked the sending out of detachments and
thereby hindered the provisioning of the enemy's army, and on the
other hand, in a series of successful conflicts in which his troops
encountered isolated Phoenician divisions and even Hannibal himself,
drove the enemy from their advanced positions and compelled them to
concentrate themselves at Gerunium. On the news of these successes,
which of course lost nothing in the telling, the storm broke, forth
in the capital against Quintus Fabius. It was not altogether
unwarranted. Prudent as it was on the part of Rome to abide by the
defensive and to expect success mainly from the cutting off of the
enemy's means of subsistence, there was yet something strange in a
system of defence and of starving out, under which the enemy had laid
waste all central Italy without opposition beneath the eyes of a Roman
army of equal numbers, and had provisioned themselves sufficiently for
the winter by an organized method of foraging on the greatest scale.
Publius Scipio, when he commanded on the Po, had not adopted this view
of a defensive attitude, and the attempt of his successor to imitate
him at Casilinum had failed in such a way as to afford a copious fund
of ridicule to the scoffers of the city. It was wonderful that the
Italian communities had not wavered, when Hannibal so palpably showed
them the superiority of the Phoenicians and the nullity of Roman aid;
but how long could they be expected to bear the burden of a double
war, and to allow themselves to be plundered under the very eyes of
the Roman troops and of their own contingents? Finally, it could not
be alleged that the condition of the Roman army compelled the general
to adopt this mode of warfare. It was composed, as regarded its core,
of the capable legions of Ariminum, and, by their side, of militia
called out, most of whom were likewise accustomed to service; and, far
from