The influence of Scipio’s personal qualities was now seen. In Italy there was famine and disease, and yet part of the Etruscan and Umbrian states, which were not obliged to bear any burthens whatever, and therefore, owing to the regard which the Romans then had for every sort of privilege, had remained in full vigour, whilst Rome had worn herself out, exerted themselves for Scipio, as much as if they had themselves to undertake a war. They built a fleet for him, and equipped it; Arretium gave him arms for thirty thousand men, and likewise money and provisions; from the Sabines, Picentines, Marsians, and other neighbouring peoples, a great number of veterans and young discharged soldiers volunteered to serve under him. Thus he got a considerable fleet and a large army, quite against the wishes of the senate. He crossed over to Sicily, made from thence an attempt upon Locri, and took that town from Hannibal; yet, on the whole, the year of his consulship passed off without any thing remarkable. Why he waited so long in Sicily, has not been fully accounted for; it seems that he took matters easy, and willingly lingered in these Sicilian regions, being particularly delighted with Syracuse. Men’s expectations were most signally disappointed: it had been believed, that as soon as his preparations were at all complete, he would pass over to Africa; and now it was understood that he was living quite in the Greek style at Syracuse. Commissioners thereupon were sent to inquire into the matter, and if the charge were true, to depose him; but he so overawed them, that they reported that he was by no means wasting his time, but was finishing his preparations. Hannibal, after the battle of Sena, had already foreseen the issue of the war; but he did not yet lose courage. On the contrary, he deemed it his duty to struggle to the last moment, that the Romans might not be sure of their own country; yet, as he could not defend such extensive provinces, he evacuated Apulia, Messapia, the country of the Hirpinians, and the greater part of Lucania, so that he only kept the south-eastern part of it, and Bruttium. Here he remained for three campaigns, with a perseverance which Livy himself admires; like a lion, he made whoever dared to touch him, pay heavily for it. Within this narrow tract of country, he had to recruit and provision his army, and to detain the Romans, so as to keep them away from Africa, living the whole time in the midst of peoples whom he drove to despair by the most exorbitant demands. And he succeeded in all this, without a thought either of rebellion or of violence being awakened against him; yet he was neither able to pay nor to feed his army, and he suffered from plague and hunger. His headquarters and arsenal was Croton. Thus the war went on, until the Carthaginians called him to Africa, the Romans narrowing his district more and more by wresting from him one place after the other.