1Fabius was aware of this commotion; 1but thinking it was an ambush, and in any case shrinking from a battle by night, he kept his men within the fortifications. 2At first light there was a battle under the ridge of the mountain, in which the Romans would easily have overcome the light troops cut off from their comrades (for they were considerably superior in numbers), had not a cohort of Spaniards, sent back by Hannibal for that very purpose, come up. 2This cohort, more used to mountains and better suited to running about among rocks and crags, and nimbler both through the speed of their bodies and the style of their arms, easily baffled an enemy used to the plains, heavy with arms and fighting in a stationary manner.
4So, parting from a contest far from equal, they hurried back to camp, the Spaniards almost all unharmed, the Romans having lost a number of their men. 5Fabius too moved camp and, crossing the pass, settled above Allifae on high, fortified ground. 6Then Hannibal, pretending to make for Rome through Samnium, went back plundering as far as the Paeligni; 6Fabius led his army along the ridges midway between the enemy column and the city of Rome, neither keeping away nor engaging. 7From the Paeligni the Carthaginian changed his route and, heading back again towards Apulia, reached Gereonium, a city deserted by its people through fear, because part of the walls had collapsed in ruins; 8the dictator fortified a camp in the territory of Larinum.
8Then, recalled to Rome on account of religious rites, he dealt with the master of the horse not only by command but by advice and almost by entreaty, urging him to trust more to good counsel than to fortune and to imitate him as a commander rather than Sempronius and Flaminius; 9he should not think that nothing had been achieved by dragging out almost the whole summer in baffling the enemy: doctors too sometimes did more good by rest than by movement and action; 10it was no small thing to have stopped being beaten by an enemy so often victorious and to have drawn breath after continual disasters; having warned the master of the horse of these things in vain, he set out for Rome.