situated on level ground; reminding them, each and all, of Cannae, Trasimenus, and Trebia.  They then began to apply the vineae and to spring mines:  nor was any measure, whether of open force or stratagem, unemployed against the various attempts of the enemy.  These allies of the Romans erected bulwarks against the vineae, cut off the mines of the enemy by cross-mines, and met their efforts both covertly and openly, till, at last, shame compelled Hannibal to desist from his undertaking; and, fortifying a camp in which he placed a small guard, that the affair might not appear to have been abandoned, he retired into winter quarters to Capua.  There he kept, under cover, for the greater part of the winter, that army, which, though fortified by frequent and continued hardships against every human ill, had yet never experienced or been habituated to prosperity.  Accordingly, excess of good fortune and unrestrained indulgence were the ruin of men whom no severity of distress had subdued; and so much the more completely, in proportion to the avidity with which they plunged into pleasures to which they were unaccustomed.  For sleep, wine, feasting, women, baths, and ease, which custom rendered more seductive day by day, so completely unnerved both mind and body, that from henceforth their past victories rather than their present strength protected them; and in this the general is considered by those who are skilled in the art of war to have committed a greater error than in not having marched his troops to Rome forthwith from the field of Cannae:  for his delay on that occasion might be considered as only to have postponed his victory, but this mistake to have bereaved him of the power of conquering.  Accordingly, by Hercules, as though he marched out of Capua with another army, it retained in no respect any of its former discipline; for most of the troops returned in the embrace of harlots; and as soon as they began to live under tents, and the fatigue of marching and other military labours tried them, like raw troops, they failed both in bodily strength and spirit.  From that time, during the whole period of the summer campaign, a great number of them slunk away from the standards without furloughs, while Capua was the only retreat of the deserters.

19.  However, when the rigour of winter began to abate, marching his troops out of their winter quarters he returned to Casilinum; where, although there had been an intermission of the assault, the continuance of the siege had reduced the inhabitants and the garrison to the extremity of want.  Titus Sempronius commanded the Roman camp, the dictator having gone to Rome to renew the auspices.  The swollen state of the Vulturnus and the entreaties of the people of Nola and Acerrae, who feared the Campanians if the Roman troops should leave them, kept Marcellus in his place; although desirous himself also to bring assistance to the besieged.  Gracchus, only maintaining his post near Casilinum, because