efforts; while some, adopting an intermediate course, declared that it appertained to the censors, and not to the senate, to take cognizance of his case; and of this latter opinion was Fabius, who added, however, “that he admitted that the recovery of Tarentum was owing to the efforts of Livius, as his friends openly boasted in the senate, but that there would have been no necessity for its recovery, had it not been lost.”  One of the consuls, Titus Quinctius Crispinus, set out for Lucania, with some troops to make up the numbers, to take the command of the army which had served under Quintus Fulvius Flaccus.  Marcellus was detained by a succession of religious scruples, which presented themselves to his mind.  One of which was, that when in the Gallic war at Clastidium he had vowed a temple to Honour and Valour, its dedication was impeded by the pontiffs, who said, that one shrine could not with propriety be dedicated to two deities; because if it should be struck with lightning or any kind of portent should happen in it, the expiation would be attended with difficulty as it could not be ascertained to which deity sacrifice ought to be made; nor could one victim be lawfully offered to two deities, unless in particular cases.  Accordingly another temple to Virtue was erected with all speed.  Nevertheless, these temples were not dedicated by Marcellus himself.  Then at length he set out, with the troops raised to fill up the numbers, to the army he had left the preceding year at Venusia.  Crispinus, who endeavoured to reduce Locri in Bruttium by a siege, because he considered that the affair of Tarentum had added greatly to the fame of Fabius, had sent for every kind of engine and machine from Sicily; he also sent for ships from the same place to attack that part of the city which lay towards the sea.  But this siege was raised by Hannibal’s bringing his forces to Lacinium, and in consequence of a report, that his colleague, with whom he wished to effect a junction, had now led his army from Venusia.  He therefore returned from Bruttium into Apulia, and the consuls took up a position in two separate camps, distant from each other less than three miles, between Venusia and Bantia.  Hannibal, after diverting the war from Locri, returned also into the same quarter.  Here the consuls, who were both of sanguine temperament, almost daily went out and drew up their troops for action, confidently hoping, that if the enemy would hazard an engagement with two consular armies united, they might put an end to the war.

26.  As Hannibal, who gained one and lost the other of the two battles which he fought the preceding year with Marcellus, would have equal grounds for hope and fear, should he encounter the same general again; so was he far from thinking himself a match for the two consuls together.  Directing his attention, therefore, wholly to his own peculiar arts, he looked out for an opportunity for planting an ambuscade.  Slight battles, however, were fought between the two