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The parents and relations of these men with difficulty obtained that ambassadors should be sent to the Roman consul. The consul, who had not yet set out for Canusium, they found at Venusia with a few half-armed troops, an object of entire commiseration to faithful, but of contempt to proud and perfidious allies, like the Campanians.
Instead therefore of sacrificing practicable and important successes for the sake of such empty demonstrations, or losing time in the besieging of the two thousand Roman fugitives enclosed within the walls of Canusium, Hannibal had immediately proceeded to Capua before the Romans could throw in a garrison, and by his advance had induced this second city of Italy after long hesitation to join him.
But now, since they have almost boasted of having surrendered themselves to the enemy, and have claimed to be preferred, not only to those who were captured by the enemy in the field, but to those also who came to Venusia and Canusium, and even to the consul Terentius himself; I will not suffer you to remain in ignorance of things which were done there.
Marcellus incited by the letter of the consul, and because he had made up his mind that no Roman general was so good a match for Hannibal as himself, set out from his winter quarters as soon as there was plenty of forage in the fields, and met Hannibal at Canusium.
The Romans showed their confidence in their power to resist a siege by at once despatching Marcellus with his ten thousand men to Canusium.
The insurgent chiefs, Gaius Iudacilius from Asculum, Publius Vettius Scato, and Titus Lafrenius, had assailed it with their united forces, defeated it, and compelled it to throw itself into Firmum, where Lafrenius kept Strabo besieged, while Iudacilius moved into Apulia and induced Canusium, Venusia, and the other towns still adhering to Rome in that quarter to join the insurgents.
Hannibal led his troops out of their winter quarters in Bruttium, and marched northward as far as Canusium. Nero had his head-quarters near Venusia, with an army which he had increased to forty thousand foot and two thousand five hundred horse, by incorporating under his own command some of the legions which had been intended to act under other generals in the South.
For my part, I envy not the good fortune or condition of any citizen or fellow-soldier, nor would I endeavour to raise myself by depressing another: but not even those men who, for the most part, leaving their arms, fled from the field, and stopped not till they arrived at Venusia or Canusium; not even those men, unless some reward is due to them on account of their swiftness of foot and running, would justly set themselves before us, or boast that there is more protection to the state in them than in us.
While the time is being spent there, all who had strength or spirit enough, to the number of four thousand foot and two hundred horse, quitted the greater camp and arrived at Canusium; some in a body, others widely dispersed through the country, which was no less secure a course: the camp itself was surrendered to the enemy by the wounded and timid troops, on the same terms as the other was.
The troops collected in the two camps being a half-armed multitude without leaders, those in the larger send a message to the others, that they should come over to them at night, when the enemy was oppressed with sleep, and wearied with the battle, and then, out of joy, overpowered with feasting: that they would go in one body to Canusium. Some entirely disapproved of that advice.
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