purpose of defending the districts that he
had gained against the fortresses which everywhere defied him and the
armies advancing from the north, and at the same time of resuming the
difficult offensive against central Italy, his forces--an army of
about 40,000 men, without reckoning the Italian contingents--were far
from sufficient.

Marcellus

Above all, he found that other antagonists were opposed to him.
Taught by fearful experience, the Romans adopted a more judicious
system of conducting the war, placed none but experienced officers
at the head of their armies, and left them, at least where it was
necessary, for a longer period in command. These generals neither
looked down on the enemy's movements from the mountains, nor did they
throw themselves on their adversary wherever they found him; but,
keeping the true mean between inaction and precipitation, they took up
their positions in entrenched camps under the walls of fortresses, and
accepted battle where victory would lead to results and defeat would
not be destruction. The soul of this new mode of warfare was Marcus
Claudius Marcellus. With true instinct, after the disastrous day of
Cannae, the senate and people had turned their eyes to this brave and
experienced officer, and entrusted him at once with the actual supreme
command. He had received his training in the troublesome warfare
against Hamilcar in Sicily, and had given brilliant evidence of his
talents as a leader as well as of his personal valour in the last
campaigns against the Celts. Although far above fifty, he still
glowed with all the ardour of the most youthful soldier, and only a
few years before this he had, as general, cut down the mounted general
of the enemy(1)--the first and only Roman consul who achieved that
feat of arms. His life was consecrated to the two divinities, to
whom he erected the splendid double temple at the Capene Gate--to
Honour and to Valour; and, while the merit of rescuing Rome from this
extremity of danger belonged to no single individual, but pertained to
the Roman citizens collectively and pre-eminently to the senate, yet
no single man contributed more towards the success of the common
enterprise than Marcus Marcellus.

Hannibal Proceeds to Campania

From the field of battle Hannibal had turned his steps to Campania, He
knew Rome better than the simpletons, who in ancient and modern times
have fancied that he might have terminated the struggle by a march on