ed 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, retracing his steps, he took the
road to Apulia. During all this march of the Carthaginian army the
dictator had followed along the heights, and had condemned his
soldiers to the melancholy task of looking on with arms in their
hands, while the Numidian cavalry plundered the faithful allies far
and wide, and the villages over all the plain rose in flames. At
length he opened up to the exasperated Roman army the eagerly-coveted
opportunity of attacking the enemy. When Hannibal had begun his
retreat, Fabius intercepted his route near Casilinum (the modern
Capua), by strongly garrisoning that town on the left bank of the
Volturnus and occupying the heights that crowned the right bank with
his main army, while a division of 4000 men encamped on the road
itself that led along by the river. But Hannibal ordered his light-
armed troops to climb the heights which rose immediately alongside
of the road, and to drive before them a number of oxen with lighted
faggots on their horns, so that it seemed as if the Carthaginian army
were thus marching off during the night by torchlight. The Roman
division, which barred the road,