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Fool! be thy boding on the Dardanian's head and thine own fortunes. Go on; cease not to throw all into confusion with thy terrors, to exalt the strength of a twice vanquished race, and abase the arms of Latinus before it. Now the princes of the Myrmidons tremble before Phrygian arms, now Tydeus' son and Achilles of Larissa, and Aufidus river recoils from the Adriatic wave.
"From the field of Thrasymene Hannibal passed into southern Italy, and gave battle a third time to the Romans, near the village of Cannæ, on the banks of the Aufidus, now called the Offanto. He had then under his banners 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry; and of these 50,000 combatants, at least 30,000 were Gauls.
The Romans would not come out of their encampment to give him battle on equal terms, and they were too strongly intrenched to be attacked where they were. He determined, therefore, to evacuate that part of the country, and move, by a sudden march, into Apulia. Apulia was on the eastern side of Italy. The River Aufidus runs through it, having a town named Cannæ near its mouth.
Thus the bull-formed Aufidus, who washes the dominions of the Apulian Daunus, rolls along, when he rages and meditates an horrible deluge to the cultivated lands; when Claudius overthrew with impetuous might, the iron ranks of the barbarians, and by mowing down both front and rear strewed the ground, victorious without any loss; through you supplying them with troops, you with councils, and your own guardian powers.
Still, there was room left them for some discretion, and when Paullus had viewed the country along the banks of the Aufidus, level as it lay and open to the sweep of cavalry, his soldier eye told him that the opportunity was not here, and that, with a short delay, the enemy must, in the lack of safe forage, retire to more favourable ground.
Hannibal might doubtless still hope for victories, but no longer such victories as those on the Trasimene lake and on the Aufidus; the times of the citizen-generals were gone by.
Thus suddenly attacked, they fled, without making any show of resistance, abandoning everything to the assailants. Cossinius himself, who was bathing, had time only to escape with his life. The Romans rallied, a battle ensued, and they were routed, Cossinius being among the slain. This action took place not far from the Aufidus, which had witnessed the slaughter of Cannae.
After recruiting his men in the champaign country of Picenum, where the Numidian horses, we are told, were groomed with old Italian wine, Hannibal marched through Apulia and ravaged Campania, dogged by the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus, whom he vainly endeavored to entice into an engagement. He wintered at Gerontium, and in the spring took up a position at Cannæ, on the Aufidus.
The conclusion of this book and its predecessor, The Odd Women, marks the conclusion of these elaborated problem studies. The inferno of London poverty, social analysis and autobiographical reminiscence, had now alike been pretty extensively drawn upon by Gissing. With different degrees of success he had succeeded in providing every one of his theses with something in the nature of a jack-in-the-box plot which the public loved and he despised. There remained to him three alternatives: to experiment beyond the limits of the novel; to essay a lighter vein of fiction; or thirdly, to repeat himself and refashion old material within its limits. Necessity left him very little option. He adopted all three alternatives. His best success in the third department was achieved in Eve's Ransom . Burrowing back into a projection of himself in relation with a not impossible she, Gissing here creates a false, fair, and fleeting beauty of a very palpable charm. A growing sense of her power to fascinate steadily raises Eve's standard of the minimum of luxury to which she is entitled. And in the course of this evolution, in the vain attempt to win beauty by gratitude and humility, the timid Hilliard, who seeks to propitiate his charmer by ransoming her from a base liaison and supporting her in luxury for a season in Paris, is thrown off like an old glove when a richer parti declares himself. The subtlety of the portraiture and the economy of the author's sympathy for his hero impart a subacid flavour of peculiar delicacy to the book, which would occupy a high place in the repertoire of any lesser artist. It well exhibits the conflict between an exaggerated contempt for, and an extreme susceptibility to, the charm of women which has cried havoc and let loose the dogs of strife upon so many able men. In The Whirlpool of 1897, in which he shows us a number of human floats spinning round the vortex of social London, Gissing brings a melodramatic plot of a kind disused since the days of Demos to bear upon the exhausting lives and illusive pleasures of the rich and cultured middle class. There is some admirable writing in the book, and symptoms of a change of tone (the old inclination to whine, for instance, is scarcely perceptible) suggestive of a new era in the work of the novelist relatively mature in many respects as he now manifestly was. Further progress in one of two directions seemed indicated: the first leading towards the career of a successful society novelist 'of circulating fame, spirally crescent, the second towards the frame of mind that created Ryecroft. The second fortunately prevailed. In the meantime, in accordance with a supreme law of his being, his spirit craved that refreshment which Gissing found in revisiting Italy. 'I want, he cried, 'to see the ruins of Rome: I want to see the Tiber, the Clitumnus, the Aufidus, the Alban Hills, Lake Trasimenus! It is strange how these old times have taken hold of me. The mere names in Roman history make my blood warm. Of him the saying of Michelet was perpetually true: 'J'ai passé
The Romans made up their minds to fight, and confronted the Carthaginians on the right bank of the Aufidus. According to a foolish custom, the command devolved on one of the consuls every other day, and Varro determined to avail himself of the first opportunity for a battle.
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