History of Rome

​When Hannibal, having lost hope of gaining Nola, had retreated to Acerrae, Marcellus immediately closed the gates and posted guards so that no one should go out, and held an inquiry in the forum concerning those who had secretly been in conferences with the enemy.

​He executed with the axe more than seventy who were condemned for treason, and ordered their property to be confiscated to the Roman people. ​And having handed over the direction of affairs to the senate, he set out with his entire army and encamped above Suessula.

​The Carthaginian first attempted to entice Acerrae to a voluntary surrender, but when he saw that they were obstinate, he prepared to besiege and assault them. However, the people of Acerrae had more spirit than strength:

​therefore, despairing of the defense of their city, as they saw their walls being surrounded with siegeworks, before the enemy’s works could be completed, they slipped away in the silence of the night through gaps in the fortifications and neglected outposts. ​Through roads and trackless places, wherever either plan or wandering led each man, they fled to the cities of Campania, which it was sufficiently certain had not changed their allegiance.

​Hannibal, having plundered and burned Acerrae, when it was reported that the Roman dictator and his legions were being received at Casinum, lest any disturbance should arise in Capua also with the enemy’s camp so near, led his army to Casilinum.

​At that time, five hundred Praenestines held Casilinum along with a few Romans and men of the Latin name, whom the news of the disaster at Cannae, heard at the same place, had driven together to that spot.

​These men, having set out from home later because the levy at Praeneste had not been completed by the appointed day, had arrived at Casilinum before the news of the defeat; and when, with other Romans and allies joining them, they had set out from Casilinum and were marching in a fairly large body, the news of the battle of Cannae turned them back to Casilinum.

​There, having spent several days suspected by the Campanians and themselves fearing them, in mutually guarding against and plotting conspiracies, as soon as they held it for sufficiently certain that the defection of Capua was being negotiated and that Hannibal was being received, they slew the townsfolk by night and occupied that part of the city which is on this side of the Volturnus—for it is divided by that river—;

​and this was the garrison that the Romans held at Casilinum. Added to this was also a Perusian cohort of four hundred and sixty men, driven to Casilinum by the same news a few days before the Praenestines.

​And indeed, there were almost enough armed men to defend walls so small and surrounded on one side by the river; but the scarcity of grain made the number of men seem even too great.