utmost precipitation, leaving the wings uncovered, and also driving the elephants before them.  Hasdrubal, after waiting the issue of the battle to the very last, fled from the midst of the carnage with a few attendants.  The Romans took and plundered the camp.  This victory united with the Romans whatever states of Spain were wavering, and left Hasdrubal no hope, not only of leading an army over into Italy, but even of remaining very safely in Spain.  When these events were made generally known at Rome by letters from the Scipios, the greatest joy was felt, not so much for the victory, as for the stop which was put to the passage of Hasdrubal into Italy.

30.  While these transactions were going on in Spain, Petilia, in Bruttium, was taken by Himilco, an officer of Hannibal’s, several months after the siege of it began.  This victory cost the Carthaginians much blood and many wounds, nor did any power more subdue the besieged than that of famine; for after having consumed their means of subsistence, derived from fruits and the flesh of every kind of quadrupeds, they were at last compelled to live upon skins found in shoemakers’ shops, on herbs and roots, the tender barks of trees, and berries gathered from brambles:  nor were they subdued until they wanted strength to stand upon the walls and support their arms.  After gaining Petilia, the Carthaginian marched his forces to Consentia, which being less obstinately defended, he compelled to surrender within a few days.  Nearly about the same time, an army of Bruttians invested Croton, a Greek city, formerly powerful in men and arms, but at the present time reduced so low by many and great misfortunes, that less than twenty thousand inhabitants of all ages remained.  The enemy, therefore, easily got possession of a city destitute of defenders:  of the citadel alone possession was retained, into which some of the inhabitants fled from the midst of the carnage during the confusion created by the capture of the city.  The Locrians too revolted to the Bruttians and Carthaginians, the populace having been betrayed by the nobles.  The Rhegians were the only people in that quarter who continued to the last in faithful attachment to the Romans, and in the enjoyment of their independence.  The same alteration of feeing extended itself into Sicily also; and not even the family of Hiero altogether abstained from defection; for Gelo, his oldest son, conceiving a contempt for his father’s old age, and, after the defeat of Cannae, for the alliance with Rome, went over to the Carthaginians; and he would have created a disturbance in Sicily, had he not been carried off, when engaged as arming the people and soliciting the allies, by a death so seasonable that it threw some degree of suspicion even upon his father.  Such, with various result, were the transactions in Italy, Africa, Sicily, and Spain during this year.  At the close of the year, Quintus Fabius Maximus requested of the senate, that he might be allowed to dedicate the temple of