XIV.  After this, Fabius laid down his office, and consuls were again elected.  Those who were first elected followed the defensive policy of Fabius, avoiding pitched battles with Hannibal, but reinforcing the allies and preventing defections.  But when Terentius Varro was made consul, a man of low birth, but notorious for his rash temper and his popularity with the people, he made no secret, in his inexperience and self-confidence, of his intention of risking everything on one cast.  He was always reiterating in his public speeches that under such generals as Fabius the war made no progress, whereas he would conquer the enemy the first day he saw him.  By means of these boastful speeches he enrolled as soldiers such a multitude as the Romans had never before had at their disposal in any war, for there collected for the battle eighty-eight thousand men.  This caused great disquietude to Fabius and other sensible Romans, who feared that if so many of the youth of Rome were cut off, the city would never recover from the blow.  They addressed themselves therefore to the other consul, Paulus Aemilius, a man of great experience in war, but disagreeable to the people and afraid of them because he had once been fined by them.  Fabius encouraged him to attempt to hold the other consul’s rashness in check, pointing out that he would have to fight for his country’s safety with Terentius Varro no less than with Hannibal.  Varro, he said, will hasten to engage because he does not know his own strength, and Hannibal will do so because he knows his own weakness.  “I myself, Paulus,” said he, “am more to be believed than Varro as to the condition of Hannibal’s affairs, and I am sure that if no battle takes place with him for a year, he will either perish in this country or be compelled to quit it; because even now, when he seems to be victorious and carrying all before him, not one of his enemies have come over to his side, while scarcely a third of the force which he brought from home is now surviving.”  It is said that Paulus answered as follows:  “For my own part, Fabius, it is better for me to fall by the spears of the enemy than be again condemned by the votes of my own countrymen; but if public affairs are indeed in this critical situation, I will endeavour rather to approve myself a good general to you than to all those who are urging me to the opposite course.”  With this determination Paulus began the campaign.

XV.  Varro induced his colleague to adopt the system of each consul holding the chief command on alternate days.  He proceeded to encamp near Hannibal on the banks of the river Aufidus, close to the village of Cannae.  At daybreak he showed the signal of battle (a red tunic displayed over the General’s tent), so that the Carthaginians were at first disheartened at the daring of the consul and the great number of his troops, more than twice that of their own army.  Hannibal ordered his soldiers to get under arms, and himself rode with a few others to a rising ground,