History of Rome

​On the following day, Hannibal, having crossed the Anio, led out all his forces into battle array; nor did Flaccus and the consuls decline the contest.

​When the armies on both sides had been drawn up for the hazard of that battle, in which the city of Rome was to be the prize for the victor, a huge downpour mixed with hail so threw both lines into confusion that, with difficulty retaining their arms, they retreated to their camps, with a fear of nothing less than of the enemy.

​And on the following day, in the same place, the same storm broke up the battle lines that had been drawn up.

​When they had retreated into their camps, a wonderful brightness and tranquility arose. This event was turned into a religious portent among the Carthaginians, and a saying of Hannibal is reported to have been heard, that at one time the mind, at another time the fortune, was not given to him for gaining possession of the city of Rome.

​Two other circumstances, one small and one great, also diminished his hope: the great one was that, while he himself was sitting armed before the walls of the city of Rome, he heard that soldiers under their standards had set out as a reinforcement for Spain; the small one, however, ​was that during those days he learned from a certain prisoner that the very land on which he himself had his camp happened to have been sold, with its price not at all diminished on that account.

​This indeed seemed so arrogant and intolerable, that a buyer had been found at Rome for the very soil which he possessed and held as captured in war, that he immediately called a herald and ordered the bankers’ shops which were around the Roman forum to be sold.

​Moved by these things, he withdrew his camp to the river Tutia, six miles from the city. Thence he proceeded to the grove of Feronia, a temple at that time famous for its wealth.

​The Capenates and others who were its neighbors, bringing thither the first-fruits of their crops and other gifts according to their means, had kept it adorned with much gold and silver. At that time, the temple was despoiled of all these gifts. Huge heaps of bronze were found after the departure of Hannibal, since the soldiers, induced by religious fear, had thrown down pieces of raw bronze.

​The plundering of this temple is not doubted among writers. Coelius relates that Hannibal, while marching to Rome, turned aside thither from Eretum, and begins his journey from Reate, Cutiliae, and Amiternum;

​that he came from Campania into Samnium, thence into the Paeligni, and passed by the town of Sulmo into the Marrucini, thence through the Alban territory into the Marsi, and from here came to Amiternum and the village of Foruli.

​Nor is there an error in this, because the tracks of so great a general and so great an army could not have been confused within the memory of so short an age—for it is certain that they went by those places—; the only point of difference is, ​whether he came to the city by that route, or returned by it from the city to Campania.