After getting possession of the enemies' camp with a loss of less than 100 men, Gracchus speedily retired, fearing an attack from Hannibal, who had his camp at Tifata, overlooking Capua. Nor were his anticipations groundless. [2] No sooner had the news of the disaster reached Capua than Hannibal, expecting to find at Hamae an army, composed mostly of raw recruits and slaves, wildly delighted at their victory, despoiling their vanquished foes and carrying off the plunder, hurried on with all speed past Capua, and ordered all the Campanian fugitives he met [3??] to be escorted to Capua and the wounded to be carried there in wagons. [4] But when he got to Hamae he found the camp abandoned, nothing was to be seen but the traces of the recent slaughter and the bodies of his allies lying about everywhere. Some advised him to march straight to Cumae and attack the place. [5] Nothing would have suited his wishes better for, after his failure to secure Neapolis, he was very anxious to get possession of Cumae that he might have one maritime city at all events. [6] As, however, his soldiers in their hurried march had brought nothing with them beyond their arms he returned to his camp on Tifata. [7] The next day, yielding to the importunities of the Campanians, he marched back to Cumae with all the necessary appliances for attacking the city, and after effectually devastating the neighbourhood, fixed his camp at the distance of one mile from the place. [8] Gracchus still remained in occupation of Cumae, more because he was ashamed to desert the allies who were imploring his protection and that of the Roman people than because he felt sufficiently assured as to his army. [9] The other consul, Fabius, who was encamped at Cales, did not venture to cross the Vulturnus; his attention was occupied first with taking fresh auspices and then with the portents which were being announced one after another, and which the [10??] soothsayers assured him would be very difficult to avert.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.