its burdens, would at the end of the war perish as well as Hannibal.  He was, he said, like those timid surgeons who shrink from using decisive remedies, and who mistake the sinking strength of the patient for the abatement of disease.  His first act was to take some important Samnite towns which had revolted.  Here he found great stores of corn and money, and took three thousand of Hannibal’s soldiers who were there as garrison.  Next, when Hannibal defeated and killed Cnaeus Fulvius, the proconsul in Apulia, with a loss of eleven military tribunes and the greater part of his army, Marcellus sent despatches to Rome, bidding the citizens be of good courage, for he was already on the march, and would abate Hannibal’s exultation.  Livy tells us that these despatches when read did not diminish the grief of the Romans, but added to their fear, as they reflected that the risk they were about to run was so much more serious than the defeat they had sustained, as Marcellus was superior to Fulvius.

According to his despatch, he instantly marched against Hannibal into Lucania, and finding him entrenched on some strong hills near the city of Numistro, he himself encamped in the plain.  On the following day he was the first to draw out his army in battle array.  Hannibal descended from his position, and fought a great and well-contested battle, for it began at the third hour, and was scarcely over by dark, but without any decisive result.  At daybreak he again led out his army and defied Hannibal to fight.  But Hannibal retired; and Marcellus, after stripping the corpses of the enemy, and burying his own dead, pursued.  His skill and good fortune were greatly admired in this campaign, as he did not fall into any of the numerous ambuscades which were prepared for him by Hannibal, and in all his skirmishes came off victorious.  For this reason, as the comitia were impending, the Senate thought that it would be better to call the other consul away from Sicily than to recall Marcellus just as he was thoroughly engaged with Hannibal.  When the other consul arrived, they bade him name Quintus Fulvius dictator.  For a dictator is not chosen by the people or by the Senate, but one of the consuls or praetors comes forward publicly and names whom he pleases dictator.  And this is the reason that the man so named is called dictator; for dicere in Latin means to name.  But some think that the dictator is so called because he does not require any vote or show of hands, but on his own responsibility dictates his orders; indeed, the orders of magistrates which are called by the Greeks diatagmata, are called edicts by the Romans.