rode up with a body of cavalry to the walls. But he failed to achieve his purpose. One of the Consuls led his army from before Capua to the relief of the capital, but the other still pressed the siege. Hannibal retreated, and though he turned upon the Consul, who was following him somewhat carelessly, and defeated him with very heavy loss, he could not relieve Capua. This city capitulated before the end of the year. In 209 Hannibal won another great battle on the same spot, Herdonia, where he had triumphed two years before. In the field, it will be seen, he was always successful, but he could not be everywhere, nor could he protect all his Italian allies. In this year the two important regions of Samnium and Lucania gave in their submission to Rome, which had the wisdom to grant them favourable terms. And Tarentum was lost, betrayed to the Romans, as it had been betrayed a few years before to Hannibal. The next year (208) was marked by the death of the consul Marcellus, and by other Carthaginian successes. In 207 we came to another great crisis of the war, the attempt of Hasdrubal to join his brother, ending in the decisive battle of the Metaurus. We last heard of Hasdrubal as defeating the two Scipios in 212. What hindered him from following up this success by an immediate march into Italy it is impossible to say. Livy's account of the transactions of the next five years is wholly incredible, and Polybius' narrative is lost. It is rash to pronounce a judgment where we know so little of the facts. Still it is generally true that few commanders have the same power of perspective which Hannibal seems to have possessed. It is at least possible that Hasdrubal may have overrated the importance of what he might be able to do in Spain, and have forgotten that the war had really to be decided in Italy. It is a fact that he put off his advance in Italy for four years, and that when he made it his general prospects had not improved. A very able young commander, afterwards known as Scipio Africanus, had appeared upon the scene, and had achieved the great success of capturing New Carthage. This he followed up in 209 by defeating Hasdrubal himself. This defeat, however, did not prevent the Carthaginian general from carrying out his original plan. Either in this year or in the next he crossed the Pyrenees. He spent a considerable time in Gaul, where he was able to enlist a large number of recruits, and, after an easy passage of the Alps, descended into Italy early in the year 207. And here, again, we find him neglecting, as far as we can see, the main issue, and wasting strength and time on a quite subordinate matter. He besieged Placentia, a strongly fortified colony, and so gave the Romans time to recover from the surprise of his unexpectedly early arrival. By the time he had made up his mind to raise the siege of Placentia, one of the Consuls, Livius by name, had advanced to bar his way.