The terror was great at Rome; yet the conqueror, after devastating Etruria, and attacking Spoletum in vain, crossed the Apennines, threw himself into Umbria and Picenum, and thence directed his march through Samnium towards the coast of Apulia. In fact, having reached the centre of Italy, deprived of all communication with the mother country, without the engines necessary for a siege, with no assured line of retreat, having behind him the army of Sempronius, what must Hannibal do?--Place the Apennines between himself and Rome, draw nearer to the populations more disposed in his favour, and then, by the conquest of the southern provinces, establish a solid basis of operation, in direct communication with Carthage. In spite of the victory of Trasimenus, his position was critical, for, except the Cisalpine Gauls, all the Italiot peoples remained faithful to Rome, and so far no one had come to increase his army.[512] Thus Hannibal remained several months between Casilinum and Arpi, where Fabius, by his skilful movements, would have succeeded in starving the Carthaginian army, if the term of his command had not expired. Moreover, the popular party, irritated at a system of temporising which it accused of cowardice, raised to the consulship, as the colleague of Æmilius Paulus, Varro, a man of no capacity. Obliged to remain in Apulia, to procure subsistence for his troops, Hannibal, being attacked imprudently, entirely defeated, near Cannæ, two consular armies composed of eight legions and of an equal number of allies, amounting to 87,000 men (538).[513] One of the consuls perished, the other escaped, followed only by a few horsemen. 40,000 Romans had been killed or taken, and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of gold rings taken from the fingers of knights who lay on the field of battle.[514] From that moment part of Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttium declared for the Carthaginians, while the Greek towns of the south of the peninsula remained favourable to the Romans.[515] About the same time, as an increase of ill fortune, L. Postumus, sent against the Gauls, was defeated, and his army cut to pieces.
The Romans always showed themselves admirable in adversity; and thus the Senate, by a skilful policy, went to meet the consul Varro, and thank him for not having despaired of the Republic; it would, however, no longer employ the troops which had retreated from the battle, but sent them into Sicily with a prohibition to return into Italy until the enemy had been driven out of it. They refused to ransom the prisoners in Hannibal’s hands. The fatherland, they said, had no need of men who allowed themselves to be taken arms in hand.[516] This reply made people report at Rome that the man who possessed power was treated very differently from the humble citizen.[517]