the supplies from that squadron
itself, and the territory, which Hannibal commanded, scarce sufficed
to maintain his army, the besiegers on the side next the sea suffered
not much less than did the besieged in the citadel, and at length they
left the harbour. No enterprise was now successful; Fortune herself
seemed to have deserted the Carthaginians. These consequences of the
fall of Capua--the deep shock given to the respect and confidence
which Hannibal had hitherto enjoyed among the Italian allies, and the
endeavours made by every community that was not too deeply compromised
to gain readmission on tolerable terms into the Roman symmachy
--affected Hannibal much more keenly than the immediate loss. He had
to choose one of two courses; either to throw garrisons into the
wavering towns, in which case he would weaken still more his army
already too weak and would expose his trusty troops to destruction in
small divisions or to treachery--500 of his select Numidian horsemen
were put to death in this way in 544 on the defection of the town of
Salapia; or to pull down and burn the towns which could not be
depended on, so as to keep them out of the enemy's hands--a course,
which could not raise the spirits of his Italian clients. On the
fall of Capua the Romans felt themselves once more confident as to
the final issue of the war in Italy; they despatched considerable
reinforcements to Spain, where the existence of the Roman army was
placed in jeopardy by the fall of the two Scipios; and for the first
time since the beginning of the war they ventured on a diminution in
the total number of their troops, which had hitherto been annually
augmented notwithstanding the annually-increasing difficulty of
levying them, and had risen at last to 23 legions. Accordingly in
the next year (544) the Italian war was prosecuted more remissly than
hitherto by the Romans, although Marcus Marcellus had after the close
of the Sicilian war resumed the command of the main army; he applied
himself to the besieging of fortresses in the interior, and had
indecisive conflicts with the Carthaginians. The struggle for the
Acropolis of Tarentum also continued without decisive result. In
Apulia Hannibal succeeded in defeating the proconsul Gnaeus Fulvius
Centumalus at Herdoneae. In the following year (545) the Romans took
steps to regain possession of the second large city, which had passed
over to Hannibal, the city of Tarentum. While Marcus Mar