tly invested the city, but had so greatly hindered the
cultivation of the soil and the ingathering of the harvest, that the
populous city was in urgent need of supplies from without. Hannibal
accordingly collected a considerable supply of grain, and directed
the Campanians to receive it at Beneventum; but their tardiness gave
the consuls Quintus Flaccus and Appius Claudius time to come up, to
inflict a severe defeat on Hanno who protected the grain, and to seize
his camp and all his stores. The two consuls then invested the town,
while Tiberius Gracchus stationed himself on the Appian Way to prevent
Hannibal from approaching to relieve it But that brave officer fell
in consequence of the shameful stratagem of a perfidious Lucanian;
and his death was equivalent to a complete defeat, for his army,
consisting mostly of those slaves whom he had manumitted, dispersed
after the fall of their beloved leader. So Hannibal found the road to
Capua open, and by his unexpected appearance compelled the two consuls
to raise the blockade which they had barely begun. Their cavalry had
already, before Hannibal's arrival, been thoroughly defeated by the
Phoenician cavalry, which lay as a garrison in Capua under Hanno and
Bostar, and by the equally excellent Campanian horse. The total
destruction of the regular troops and free bands in Lucania led by
Marcus Centenius, a man imprudently promoted from a subaltern to be
a general, and the not much less complete defeat of the negligent and
arrogant praetor Gnaeus Fulvius Flaccus in Apulia, closed the long
series of the misfortunes of this year. But the stubborn perseverance
of the Romans again neutralized the rapid success of Hannibal, at
least at the most decisive point. As soon as Hannibal turned his back
on Capua to proceed to Apulia, the Roman armies once more gathered
around that city, one at Puteoli and Volturnum under Appius Claudius,
another at Casilinum under Quintus Fulvius, and a third on the Nolan
road under the praetor Gaius Claudius Nero. The three camps, well
entrenched and connected with one another by fortified lines,
precluded all access to the place, and the large, inadequately
provisioned city could not but find itself compelled by the mere
investment to surrender at no distant time, should no relief arrive.
As the winter of 542-3 drew to an end, the provisions were almost
exhausted, and urgent messengers, who were barely able to steal
through the well-guarded Roman