1Fabius, watching his own men no less than the enemy, first proves to them that his spirit cannot be conquered by them. 1Although he knew perfectly well that his delaying was a byword not only in his own camp but now even at Rome, he nevertheless kept stubbornly to the same course of policy and dragged out the rest of the summer, so that Hannibal, cheated of his hope of the battle he had sought with all his might, was now looking round for a place for winter quarters, because that region offered supplies for the moment, not lasting ones, being all orchards and vineyards, everything planted with fruits pleasant rather than necessary.
2This was reported to Fabius by scouts. 3Since he knew well that Hannibal would return through the same narrows by which he had entered the Falernian district, he occupies Mount Callicula and Casilinum with moderate garrisons; this city, cut in two by the river Volturnus, divides the Falernian from the Campanian district; 4he himself leads the army back along the same ridges, having sent Lucius Hostilius Mancinus with four hundred allied cavalry to reconnoitre. 5This man, one of the crowd of young men who often listened to the master of the horse haranguing fiercely, went forward at first in the manner of a scout, to watch the enemy from safety; but when he saw Numidians straggling everywhere through the villages, and even killed a few when the chance arose, at once his mind was seized by the fight, and the instructions of the dictator slipped from it, who had ordered him to go forward as far as he safely could and to withdraw before he came into the enemy's sight.
7The Numidians, one band after another charging and falling back, drew him almost to their very camp, to the exhaustion of horses and men. 8Then Carthalo, who held the supreme command of the cavalry, charging at full gallop, after he had turned the enemy before coming within a spear's throw, pursued them as they fled for almost five miles in an unbroken run. 9Mancinus, when he saw that the enemy was not ceasing to pursue and that there was no hope of escape, encouraged his men and turned back into battle, outmatched in every part of his strength. 10So he himself and the pick of the horsemen are surrounded and killed; 10the rest in headlong flight escaped first to Cales, then by almost pathless tracks to the dictator.
11On that day, as it happened, Minucius had joined Fabius, having been sent to secure with a garrison the pass which, above Tarracina, narrowing into a tight gorge, overhangs the sea, so that the Carthaginian could not get from Sinuessa into Roman territory along the line of the Appian Way. 12With their armies joined, the dictator and the master of the horse move their camp down onto the road by which Hannibal was going to lead his army. 12The enemy were two miles away from there.