to Flaminius, and which consisted chiefly of cavalry: it was surrounded by Hannibal, and almost entirely destroyed. Such is the account of Polybius, which has every appearance of truth; Livy, on the contrary, says that Centenius had formed an army by order of the senate, when tidings had been heard of the defeat at the Trasimene lake, a thing which is not likely, as the news could not yet have reached Rome. Hannibal now turned to Spoleto, which he could hope to overawe; yet the town, which belonged to the third line of the Roman colonies, remained faithful, and held out. Hannibal, like many great generals, Frederic the Great, for instance, had an aversion to sieges, and he never undertook any in person. He first tried to intimidate Spoleto; and when he did not succeed in it he withdrew. The gates were everywhere shut against him, wherever the earthquake had not opened them. He strove therefore to spread terror far and wide. Why did he not march close up to Rome? why did he not entrench himself before its walls? and why, if he could not take it by storm, did he not at least try and blockade it? But for a siege like this, very great machines were indeed requisite, and as he had none whatever with him, he could only have burned down the suburbs. When one knows the extent of ancient Rome, one understands the difficulties of a siege. The Capitoline hill was a scarped rock; the side of the Quirinal to the _Porta Collina_ was very much like it; then came the wall of Servius Tullius: it would have needed an immense army to invest Rome. Hannibal’s men were suffering from sickness, especially from diseases of the skin; the horses also had suffered much; he had therefore to put them into quarters. The unhealthy air of the neighbourhood of Rome in summer is another reason. The battle at the Trasimene lake may have taken place in May, or in the beginning of June, and already before the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the malaria at Rome begins; so that the army would have been swept away by disease. He therefore stationed himself in Picenum and the March of Ancona, a fruitful country, with a very temperate climate, and exceedingly healthy. There he had his summer-quarters, which in Italy are just as necessary as winter-quarters are elsewhere. The earthquakes had been his battering rams, and the walls of not an inconsiderable number of Italian towns had been thrown down: he was thus able to enter into them without hindrance, and to appropriate to himself their resources.