and success shone forth.  That he therefore would follow up his own good fortune, though the dictator persisted in his delay and sloth; measures condemned alike by the sentence of gods and men.”  Accordingly, on the first day on which he met Quintus Fabius, he intimated “that the first point to be settled was the manner in which they should employ the command thus equalized.  That he was of opinion that the best plan would be for them to be invested with the supreme authority and command either on alternate days, or, if longer intervals were more agreeable, for any determinate periods; in order that the person in command might be a match for the enemy, not only in judgment, but in strength, if any opportunity for action should occur.”  Fabius by no means approved of this proposition:  he said, “that Fortune would have at her disposal all things which the rashness of his colleague had; that his command had been shared with him, and not taken away; that he would never, therefore, willingly withdraw from conducting the war, in whatever post he could with prudence and discretion:  nor would he divide the command with him with respect to times or days, but that he would divide the army, and that he would preserve, by his own measures, so much as he could, since it was not allowed him to save the whole.”  Thus he carried it, that, as was the custom of consuls, they should divide the legions between them:  the first and fourth fell to the lot of Minucius, the second and third to Fabius.  They likewise divided equally between them the cavalry, the auxiliaries of the allies and of the Latin name.  The master of the horse was desirous also that they should have separate camps.

28.  From this Hannibal derived a twofold joy, for nothing which was going on among the enemy escaped him, the deserters revealing many things, and he himself examining by his own scouts.  For he considered that he should be able to entrap the unrestrained temerity of Minucius by his usual arts, and that half the force of the sagacity of Fabius had vanished.  There was an eminence between the camps of Minucius and the Carthaginians, whoever occupied it would evidently render the position of his enemy less advantageous.  Hannibal was not so desirous of gaining it without a contest, though that were worth his while, as to bring on a quarrel with Minucius, who, he well knew, would at all times throw himself in his way to oppose him.  All the intervening ground was at first sight unavailable to one who wished to plant an ambuscade, because it not only had not any part that was woody, but none even covered with brambles, but in reality formed by nature to cover an ambush, so much the more, because no such deception could be apprehended in a naked valley and there were in its curvatures hollow rocks, such that some of them were capable of containing two hundred armed men.  Within these recesses, five thousand infantry and cavalry are secreted, as many as could conveniently occupy each.  Lest,