ans, was still undecided.
Informed that the former were gaining the superiority, Marcellus
crossed the river at Caiatia, and marching along the heights of
Suessula so as to evade the enemy's army, he reached Nola in
sufficient time to hold it against the foes without and within.
In a sally he even repulsed Hannibal in person with considerable loss;
a success which, as the first defeat sustained by Hannibal, was of far
more importance from its moral effect than from its material results.
In Campania indeed, Nuceria, Acerrae, and, after an obstinate siege
prolonged into the following year (539), Casilinum also, the key
of the Volturnus, were conquered by Hannibal, and the severest
punishments were inflicted on the senates of these towns which had
adhered to Rome. But terror is a bad weapon of proselytism; the
Romans succeeded, with comparatively trifling loss, in surmounting the
perilous moment of their first weakness. The war in Campania came to
a standstill; then winter came on, and Hannibal took up his quarters
in Capua, the luxury of which was by no means fraught with benefit to
his troops who for three years had not been under a roof. In the next
year (539) the war acquired another aspect. The tried general Marcus
Marcellus, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who had distinguished himself
in the campaign of the previous year as master of the horse to the
dictator, and the veteran Quintus Fabius Maximus, took--Marcellus as
proconsul, the two others as consuls--the command of the three Roman
armies which were destined to surround Capua and Hannibal; Marcellus
resting on Nola and Suessula, Maximus taking a position on the right
bank of the Volturnus near Cales, and Gracchus on the coast near
Liternum, covering Neapolis and Cumae. The Campanians, who marched
to Hamae three miles from Cumae with a view to surprise the Cumaeans,
were thoroughly defeated by Gracchus; Hannibal, who had appeared
before Cumae to wipe out the stain, was himself worsted in a combat,
and when the pitched battle offered by him was declined, retreated
in ill humour to Capua. While the Romans in Campania thus not only
maintained what they possessed, but also recovered Compulteria and
other smaller places, loud complaints were heard from the eastern
allies of Hannibal. A Roman army under the praetor Marcus Valerius
had taken position at Luceria, partly that it might, in connection
with the Roman fleet, watch the east coast and the movements of the
M