While this was going on, the light troops of both sides had been withdrawn through the intervals, and had formed in the rear and on the flanks of legion and phalanx, ready to fill gaps and supply the heavy foot with weapons. This had uncovered Hannibal’s salient. Varro had committed still another blunder. In the effort to make his line so strong as to be irresistible, he had ordered his maniples of principes from the second line forward into the intervals of the maniples of hastati in first line, thus making one solid wall and robbing the legionaries of their accustomed mobility, as well as lending them a feeling of uncertainty in their novel formation. Still, with its wonted spirit, the heavy Roman line advanced on Hannibal’s salient. The Carthaginian wings could not yet be reached, being so much refused. Striking the apex, the fighting became furious. Hannibal’s salient, as proposed, began to withdraw, holding its own in good style. Varro, far too eager, and seeing, as he thought, speedy victory before him, was again guilty of the folly of ordering the third line, the triarii, and even the light troops, up to the support of the already overcrowded first and second lines. The Carthaginian centre, supported by its skirmishers, held the ground with just enough tenacity to whet the determination of the Romans to crush it. Varro now insanely ordered still more forces in from his wings to reënforce his centre, already a mass so crowded as to be unable to retain its organization, but pressing back the Carthaginians by mere weight of mass. He could not better have played into Hannibal’s hands. The Romans--three men in the place of one--struggled onward, but became every moment a more and more jumbled body. Its maniple formation, and consequent ease of movement, was quite lost. Still, it pushed forward, as if to certain victory, and still the Carthaginian salient fell back, till from a salient it became a line, from a line a reëntering angle or crescent. Hannibal, by great personal exertions, had in an extraordinary manner preserved the steadiness and formation of his centre, though outnumbered four to one. The Carthaginian wings he now ordered slowly to advance, which all the more edged the Roman centre into the _cul-de-sac_ Hannibal had prepared. The Roman legionaries were already shouting their eager cry of victory; but so herded together had they got that there was no room to use their weapons. Hannibal had kept the Carthaginian centre free from any feeling of demoralization, and ready at his command to turn and face the enemy. The wings, by their advance, had hustled the Roman legions into the form of a wedge without a vestige of maniple formation left. The decisive moment had come. Hannibal seized it with the eye of the born soldier. Arresting the backward movement of the centre, which still had elbow-room to fight, as the Romans had not, he gave the orders to the wings which they were impatiently awaiting. These