pouring out in crowds to meet them at the gate, embraced, congratulated, and invited the troops to entertainments.  They had all prepared banquets in the courts of their houses, to which they invited the soldiers, and of which they entreated Gracchus to allow them to partake.  Gracchus gave permission, with the proviso that they should feast in the public street.  Each person brought every thing out before his door.  The volunteers feasted with caps of liberty on their heads, or filletted with white wool; some reclining at the tables, others standing, who at once partook of the repast, and waited upon the rest.  It even seemed a fitting occasion that Gracchus, on his return to Rome, should order a picture representing the festivities of that day to be executed in the temple of Liberty, which his father caused to be built on the Aventine out of money arising from fines, and which his father also dedicated.

17.  While these events occurred at Beneventum, Hannibal having laid waste the territory of Naples, moved his camp to Nola.  The consul, as soon as he was aware of his approach, sent for Pemponius the propraetor, with the troops he had in the camp above Suessula; and then prepared to meet the enemy and to make no delay in fighting.  He sent out Caius Claudius Nero in the dead of night with the main strength of the cavalry, through the gate which was farthest removed from the enemy, with orders to make a circuit so as not to be observed, and then slowly to follow the enemy as they moved along, and as soon as he perceived the battle begun, to charge them on the rear.  Whether Nero was prevented from executing these orders by mistaking the route, or from the shortness of the time, is doubtful.  Though he was absent when the battle was fought, the Romans had unquestionably the advantage; but as the cavalry did not come up in time, the plan of the battle which had been agreed upon was disconcerted and Marcellus, not daring to follow the retiring enemy, gave the signal for retreat when his soldiers were conquering More than two thousand of the enemy are said, however, to have fallen on that day; of the Romans, less than four hundred.  Nero, after having fruitlessly wearied both men and horses, through the day and night, without even having seen the enemy, returned about sunset; when the consul went so far in reprimanding him as to assert, that he had been the only obstacle to their retorting on the enemy the disaster sustained at Cannae.  The following day the Roman came into the field, but the Carthaginian, beaten even by his own tacit confession, kept within his camp.  Giving up all hope of getting possession of Nola, a thing never attempted without loss, during the silence of the night of the third day he set out for Tarentum, which he had better hopes of having betrayed to him.