1When it grew light, first the outposts were seen to have been withdrawn, then, as men came nearer, the unusual silence caused astonishment. 2Then, when the emptiness of the camp had been sufficiently established, there was a rush to the consuls' headquarters by men announcing that the enemy's flight had been so panicked that they had left the camp with the tents standing, and that, to make the flight less noticeable, numerous fires had even been left. 3Then a clamour arose for them to order the standards to be carried forward and to lead the men in pursuit of the enemy and to the immediate plunder of the camp. 3And one of the consuls was like one of the soldiers' mob; 4Paulus kept saying again and again that they must look ahead and take precautions; 4finally, when he could hold back neither the mutiny nor the leader of the mutiny in any other way, he sends Marius Statilius, a prefect, with a Lucanian troop to reconnoitre.
5When he had ridden up to the gates, he ordered the rest to halt outside the fortifications and himself entered the rampart with two horsemen; and having examined everything with care, he reports that there was certainly an ambush: fires had been left in the part of the camp facing the enemy; 6the tents were open and everything of value left in plain view; 6he had seen silver in some places scattered carelessly along the paths, as if thrown out as bait for plunder. 7What had been reported to deter their minds from greed inflamed them, and when a shout went up from the soldiers that, unless the signal was given, they would go without leaders, a leader was by no means lacking: for Varro at once gave the signal to march.
8Paulus, since the sacred chickens too had refused their approval in the auspices while he was already hesitating of his own accord, ordered this to be reported to his colleague as he was already leading the standards out of the gate. 9Although Varro took this badly, yet the recent fate of Flaminius and the remembered naval disaster of the consul Claudius in the First Punic War struck religious fear into his mind. 10On that day the gods themselves almost postponed rather than prevented the ruin hanging over the Romans: for it happened by chance that, when the soldiers would not obey the consul ordering the standards to be carried back into camp, two slaves, one belonging to a horseman of Formiae, the other to one of Sidicinum, who had been captured by Numidians among the foragers in the consulship of Servilius and Atilius, escaped that day to their masters; 11and, brought before the consuls, they report that Hannibal's whole army was sitting in ambush beyond the nearest mountains.
12Their timely arrival made the consuls masters of their command, after one of them, courting popularity, had first undermined his own authority with them by misguided indulgence.