carried out with the same artful audacity as formerly his expedition to Bocchus, relieved the hard-pressed Aesernians for a moment; nevertheless they were after an obstinate resistance compelled by the extremity of famine to capitulate towards the end of the year.  In Lucania too Publius Crassus was defeated by Marcus Lamponius, and compelled to shut himself up in Grumentum, which fell after a long and obstinate siege.  With these exceptions, they had been obliged to leave Apulia and the southern districts totally to themselves.  The insurrection spread; when Mutilus advanced into Campania at the head of the Samnite army, the citizens of Nola surrendered to him their city and delivered up the Roman garrison, whose commander was executed by the orders of Mutilus, while the men were distributed through the victorious army.  With the single exception of Nuceria, which adhered firmly to Rome, all Campania as far as Vesuvius was lost to the Romans; Salernum, Stabiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum declared for the insurgents; Mutilus was able to advance into the region to the north of Vesuvius, and to besiege Acerrae with his Samnito-Lucanian army.  The Numidians, who were in great numbers in Caesar’s army, began to pass over in troops to Mutilus or rather to Oxyntas, the son of Jugurtha, who on the surrender of Venusia had fallen into the hands of the Samnites and now appeared among their ranks in regal purple; so that Caesar found himself compelled to send home the whole African corps.  Mutilus ventured even to attack the Roman camp; but he was repulsed, and the Samnites, who while retreating were assailed in the rear by the Roman cavalry, left nearly 6000 dead on the field of battle.  It was the first notable success which the Romans gained in this war; the army proclaimed the general -imperator-, and the sunken courage of the capital began to revive.  It is true that not long afterwards the victorious army was attacked in crossing a river by Marius Egnatius, and so emphatically defeated that it had to retreat as far as Teanum and to be reorganized there; but the exertions of the active consul succeeded in restoring his army to a serviceable condition even before the arrival of winter, and he reoccupied his old position under the walls of Acerrae, which the Samnite main army under Mutilus continued to besiege.

Combats with the Marsians
Defeat and Death of Lupus

At the same time operations had also begun in Central Italy, where the revolt of the Abruzzi and the region of the Fucine lake threatened the capital in dangerous proximity.  An independent corps under Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo was sent into Picenum in order that, resting for support on Firmum and Falerio, it might threaten Asculum; but the main body of the Roman northern army took its position under the consul Lupus on the borders of the Latin and Marsian territories, where the Valerian and Salarian highways brought the enemy nearest to the capital; the rivulet Tolenus (Turano),