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In Italy the war, commenced by the Ligurians, grew daily more formidable. They now invested Pisae, with an army of forty thousand men; for multitudes flocked to them continually, led by the reports of the war and the expectation of booty. The consul, Minucius, came to Arretium, on the day which he had fixed for the assembling of the troops.
The two great Etruscan highways the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Pisa and Luna, which was in course of formation in 631, and the Cassian road leading by way of Sutrium and Clusium to Arretium and Florentia, which seems not to have been constructed before 583 may as Roman public highways belong only to this age.
The consuls had to protect the northern frontier, and stationed themselves accordingly on the two highways which led from Rome to the north, the western of which at that lime terminated at Arretium, and the eastern at Ariminum; Gaius Flaminius occupied the former, Gnaeus Servilius the latter.
Etruria sued for peace in the following year ; Volsinii, Perusia, Arretium, and in general all the towns that had joined the league against Rome, promised a cessation of hostilities for four hundred months. Last Struggles of Samnium
Here Hannibal formed his plans for the next campaign. He found out that Flaminius the consul was a vain, self-confident man, with neither experience nor skill in war. It would be easy, he thought, by laying waste the rich country to the south, to draw the Roman general from his camp at Arretium; and so it proved.
The Etruscan league actually revolted, and hired numerous bands of Gauls; the Roman army, which the praetor Lucius Caecilius was leading to the help of the Arretines who had remained faithful, was annihilated under the walls of Arretium by the Senonian mercenaries of the Etruscans: the general himself fell with 13,000 of his men . The Senones were reckoned allies of Rome; the Romans accordingly sent envoys to them to complain of their furnishing warriors to serve against Rome, and to require the surrender of their captives without ransom.
Somewhere in the Etrurian hills north of Arretium I overheard part of a conversation between Maternus and Caburus. They were talking of me and Agathemer. "You cannot be sure," said Maternus. "By every rule of reason Hedulio ought to hate Commodus consumedly.
He carried to the treasury forty-four thousand pounds weight of silver, and two thousand four hundred pounds weight of gold. To each of the soldiers he distributed, of the spoil, one hundred and twenty asses. The consular army had, by this time, been conducted from Arretium to Ariminum, and the five thousand Latin confederates had crossed from Gaul into Etruria.
While the consul employs himself at Rome in appeasing the gods and holding the levy, Hannibal, setting out from his winter quarters, because it was reported that the consul Flaminius had now arrived at Arretium, although a longer but more commodious route was pointed out to him, takes the nearer road through a marsh where the Arno had, more than usual, overflowed its banks.
On the former Marcus Antonius advanced as far as Arretium, on the second Caesar himself pushed forward. Resistance was nowhere encountered; the recruiting officers of quality had no military skill, their bands of recruits were no soldiers, the inhabitants of the country towns were only anxious not to be involved in a siege.
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