History of Rome

​This was the state of affairs in Spain. In Italy, the consul Marcellus, having recovered Salapia through treachery, took Marmoreae and Meles from the Samnites by force.

​Up to three thousand of Hannibal’s soldiers there, who had been left for the sake of a garrison, were crushed. The booty — and there was a considerable amount of it — was granted to the soldiers. Two hundred and forty thousand modii of wheat and one hundred and ten thousand of barley were also found.

​However, the joy from this was by no means so great as the disaster received within a few days not far from the city of Herdonea.

​The proconsul Gnaeus Fulvius had his camp there in the hope of recovering Herdonea, which had revolted from the Romans after the disaster of Cannae; the camp was neither pitched in a sufficiently safe place nor strengthened by outposts.

​The negligence inborn in the character of the general was increased by that hope, because he had perceived that their loyalty towards the Carthaginian was wavering, after it was reported that, Salapia having been lost, Hannibal had departed from those regions into the Bruttian territory.

​All these things, reported to Hannibal from Herdonea by secret messengers, created at once a concern for retaining an allied city and a hope of attacking an off-guard enemy. Having lightened his army, so that he almost outran report, he marched by forced marches to Herdonea, and, in order to cast more terror upon the enemy, he approached with his army drawn up in battle array.

​The Roman, equal in boldness but unequal in strategy and strength, clashed with him after his forces had been quickly led out. The fifth legion and the left wing fiercely entered the battle.

​But Hannibal, having given a signal to the cavalry that, when the infantry lines had occupied the enemy’s eyes and minds with the immediate struggle, they should ride around and attack, part the enemy’s camp, part the rear of those watching the fight, himself, taunting the similarity of the name of Gnaeus Fulvius — ​because he had defeated Gnaeus Fulvius the praetor two years before in the same places — taunting him, affirmed that the outcome of the battle would be similar.

​Nor was that hope in vain; for when, in close combat and in the struggle of the infantry, many of the Romans had fallen, ​and though their ranks and standards still stood, the cavalry uproar at their rear, together with the hostile shout heard from the camp, routed first the sixth legion (which, placed in the second line, was the first to be thrown into confusion by the Numidians), then the fifth, and those who were at the front standards.

​Some poured out into flight, some were slaughtered in the midst, where Gnaeus Fulvius himself also fell, along with eleven military tribunes.

​How many thousands of Romans and allies were slain in that battle, who could affirm for certain, since in some sources I find thirteen thousand, in others not more than seven? The victor took possession of the camp and the booty.

​Because he found out both that Herdonea would have revolted to the Romans and that it would not remain in loyalty if he should depart from there, having transferred the entire population to Metapontum and Thurii, he burned it; he put to death the leading men who were found to have held secret conferences with Fulvius.

​The Romans who had escaped from so great a disaster fled for refuge by different routes, half-armed, to the consul Marcellus in Samnium.