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With 33 elephants and his best troops he departed by forced marches from Tarentum for Campania, captured the Roman post at Caiatia, and took up his camp on Mount Tifata close by Capua, in the confident expectation that the Roman generals would, now raise the siege as they had done the year before.
The next day Hannibal, supposing that the consul, elated with his success, would engage him in a regular battle, drew up his troops in battle-array between the camp and the city; but finding that not a man was removed from the customary guard of the town, and that nothing was hazarded upon rash hopes, he returned to Tifata without accomplishing any thing.
The heights of Mount Tifata began to fall away on the left, the rough, precipitous line of crags, sweeping around toward the east, seemed to dwindle into the distance, even as they drew nearer, while the low jumble of Neapolitan hills, beyond which towered Vesuvius with its fluttering pennon of vapour, rose higher and higher upon the southern horizon.
For the Samnites, taking no further notice of the Sidicinians, having attacked the Campanians as being the chief of the neighbouring states, from whom the victory might be equally easy, and a greater share of spoil and glory, after they had secured Tifata, a ridge of hills hanging over Capua, with a strong garrison, they march down from thence with their army formed in a square into the plain which lies between Capua and Tifata.
Sulla in Campania Opposed by Norbanus and Scipio Sulla Gains a Victory over Norbanus at Mount Tifata Defection of Scipio's Army Reinforced thus considerably both in a moral and material point of view, Sulla and Metellus marched from Apulia through the still insurgent Samnite districts towards Campania.
As they announced this with so much fear, Hannibal concluded he must make haste lest the Romans should get there before him; and setting out from Arpi, took up his position in his old camp at Tifata, above Capua.
In winter the snow lay long on these cold hills, and their gloomy oak-woods were believed to be a favourite haunt of Diana, as they have been of brigands in modern times. Again, Mount Tifata, the long abrupt ridge of the Apennines which looks down on the Campanian plain behind Capua, was wooded of old with evergreen oaks, among which Diana had a temple.
The mountains to the eastward seemed to be dancing away in a mad chase toward the south, a chase which Tifata itself was urging on. The glimmer of white in the north told of the morning sun striking upon houses. Still they rode on, pursuers and pursued. Suddenly a sound, half-trumpet note, half bellow, swelled up ahead. Then another answered it, and another and another took up the refrain.
With fresh indignation his veteran troops threw themselves on the enemy; their vehement charge down from Mount Tifata at the first onset broke the enemy drawn up in the plain; with the remnant of his force Norbanus threw himself into the revolutionary colony of Capua and the new-burgess town of Neapolis, and allowed himself to be blockaded there.
Sulla in Campania Opposed by Norbanus and Scipio Sulla Gains a Victory over Norbanus at Mount Tifata Defection of Scipio's Army Reinforced thus considerably both in a moral and material point of view, Sulla and Metellus marched from Apulia through the still insurgent Samnite districts towards Campania.
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