Summary of Book XXV
Publius Cornelius Scipio, later Africanus, was made
aedile before the legal age. Hannibal, with the aid of
young Tarentines who had pretended that they were going
hunting at night, captured the city of Tarentum, except
the citadel, to which the Roman garrison had fled. The
Ludi Apollinares were established in accordance with the
oracles of Marcius, in which the disaster at Cannae had
been predicted. A successful battle was fought by Quintus
Fulvius and Appius Claudius, the consuls, against Hanno,
a general of the Carthaginians. Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus, the proconsul, was led into an ambuscade by
his Lucanian guest-friend and slain by Mago. Centenius
Paenula, who had served as a centurion, after begging
the senate to give him an army and promising a victory
over Hannibal if he gained his request, received eight
thousand soldiers, was made commander, engaged Hannibal
in battle-line, and with his army was slain. Capua was
besieged by Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius, the
consuls. Gnaeus Fulvius, a praetor, was defeated in a
battle with Hannibal in which twenty thousand men fell.
Fulvius himself escaped with two hundred horsemen.
Claudius Marcellus took Syracuse after two years and bore
himself as a great man. In that uproar of the captured
city Archimedes, while intent upon the figures he had
traced in the dust, was slain. Publius and Gnaeus Scipio
in Spain met with an unhappy end of their many successes,
being slain with almost their entire armies in the eighth
year after they went to Spain. And possession of that
province would have been lost, had not the remnants of
the armies been brought together by the bravery and
activity of Lucius Marcius, a Roman knight, and with his
encouragement two camps of the enemy been taken by
storm. About twenty-seven thousand were slain, about
one thousand eight hundred men and vast booty captured.
Marcius was named commander.
