Battle of Sena
Death of Hasdrubal

Nero found his colleague Marcus Livius at Sena Gallica awaiting the enemy.  Both consuls at once marched against Hasdrubal, whom they found occupied in crossing the Metaurus.  Hasdrubal wished to avoid a battle and to escape from the Romans by a flank movement, but his guides left him in the lurch; he lost his way on the ground strange to him, and was at length attacked on the march by the Roman cavalry and detained until the Roman infantry arrived and a battle became inevitable.  Hasdrubal stationed the Spaniards on the right wing, with his ten elephants in front of it, and the Gauls on the left, which he kept back.  Long the fortune of battle wavered on the right wing, and the consul Livius who commanded there was hard pressed, till Nero, repeating his strategical operation as a tactical manoeuvre, allowed the motionless enemy opposite to him to remain as they stood, and marching round his own army fell upon the flank of the Spaniards.  This decided the day.  The severely bought and very bloody victory was complete; the army, which had no retreat, was destroyed, and the camp was taken by assault.  Hasdrubal, when he:  saw the admirably-conducted battle lost, sought and found like his father an honourable soldier’s death.  As an officer and a man, he was worthy to be the brother of Hannibal.

Hannibal Retires to the Bruttian Territory

On the day after the battle Nero started, and after scarcely fourteen days’ absence once more confronted Hannibal in Apulia, whom no message had reached, and who had not stirred.  The consul brought the message with him; it was the head of Hannibal’s brother, which the Roman ordered to be thrown into the enemy’s outposts, repaying in this way his great antagonist, who scorned to war with the dead, for the honourable burial which he had given to Paullus, Gracchus, and Marcellus.  Hannibal saw that his hopes had been in vain, and that all was over.  He abandoned Apulia and Lucania, even Metapontum, and retired with his troops to the land of the Bruttians, whose ports formed his only means of withdrawal from Italy.  By the energy of the Roman generals, and still more by a conjuncture of unexampled good fortune, a peril was averted from Rome, the greatness of which justified Hannibal’s tenacious perseverance in Italy, and which fully bears comparison with the magnitude of the peril of Cannae.  The joy in Rome was boundless; business was resumed as in time of peace; every one felt that the danger of the war was surmounted.

Stagnation of the War in Italy

Nevertheless the Romans were in no hurry to terminate the war.  The state and the citizens were exhausted by the excessive moral and material strain on their energies; men gladly abandoned themselves to carelessness and repose.

The army and fleet were reduced; the Roman and Latin farmers were brought back to their desolate homesteads the exchequer was filled by the sale of a portion of the Campanian domains.  The administration of the state was regulated anew and the disorders which had prevailed were done away; the repayment of the voluntary war-loan was begun, and the Latin communities that remained in arrears were compelled to fulfil their neglected obligations with heavy interest.