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And having arranged with Fabius Maximus, that while he besieged Tarentum, he himself would, by following Hannibal and drawing him up and down, detain him from coming to the relief of the Tarentines, he overtook him at Canusium: and as Hannibal often shifted his camp, and still declined the combat, he everywhere sought to engage him.
The praetor Gaius Cosconius penetrated into Apulia, took Salapia and Cannae, and besieged Canusium. A Samnite corps under Marius Egnatius came to the help of the unwarlike region and actually drove back the Romans, but the Roman general succeeded in defeating it at the passage of the Aufidus; Egnatius fell, and the rest of the army had to seek shelter behind the walls of Canusium.
But Canusium and Venusia had joined the insurgents, and in Venusia Oxyntas, son of Jugurtha, had been kept prisoner by the Romans. Mutilus now put royal robes on him, and the Numidians in Caesar's army, when they saw him, deserted in troops, so that Caesar was forced to send the whole corps home.
The letters of the consul and the propraetor having been read, they resolved that Marcus Claudius, who commanded the fleet stationed at Ostia, should be sent to the army to Canusium; and a letter be written to the consul, to the effect that, having delivered the army to the praetor, he should return to Rome the first moment he could, consistently with the interest of the republic.
Varro, who had escaped from the battle, had rallied ten thousand of the fugitives at the strong place of Canusium, and these would be a nucleus round which the rest of those who had escaped would rally, and would be joined by fresh levies of the Italian allies of Rome.
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