All the defeats sustained by the generals of the Republic had been caused, first, by the superiority of the Numidian cavalry, and the inferiority of the hastily levied Latin soldiers,[525] opposed to old veteran troops; and, next, by excessive rashness in face of an able captain, who drew his adversaries to the position which he had chosen. Nevertheless, Hannibal, considerably weakened by his victories, exclaimed, after Cannæ, as Pyrrhus had done after Heraclea, that such another success would be his ruin.[526] Q. Fabius Maximus, recalled to power (539), continued a system of methodical war; while Marcellus, his colleague, bolder,[527] assumed the offensive, and arrested the progress of the enemy, by obliging him to shut himself up in a trapezium, formed on the north by Capua and Arpi, on the south by Rhegium and Tarentum. In 543 the war was entirely concentrated round two places; the citadel of Tarentum, blockaded by the Carthaginians, and Capua, besieged by the two consuls. These had surrounded themselves with lines of countervallation against the place, and of circumvallation against the attacks from without. Hannibal, having failed in his attempt to force these latter, marched upon Rome, in the hope of causing the siege of Capua to be raised, and by separating the two consular armies, defeating them one after the other in the plain country. Having arrived under the walls of the capital, and foreseeing too many difficulties in the way of making himself master of so large a town, he abandoned his plan of attack, and fell back to the environs of Rhegium. His abode there was prolonged during several years, with alternations of reverse and success, in the south of Italy, the populations of which were favourable to him; avoiding engagements, keeping near the sea, and not going beyond the southern extremity of the territory of Samnium.
In 547, a great army, which had left Spain under the command of one of his brothers, Hasdrubal, had crossed the Alps, and was advancing to unite with him, marching along the coast of the Adriatic. Two consular armies were charged with the war against the Carthaginians: one, under the command of the consul M. Livius Salinator, in Umbria; the other, having at its head the consul C. Claudius Nero, held Hannibal in check in Lucania, and had even obtained an advantage over him at Grumentum. Hannibal had advanced as far as Canusium, when the consul Claudius Nero, informed of the numerical superiority of the army of succour, leaves his camp under the guard of Q. Cassius, his lieutenant, conceals his departure, effects his junction with his colleague, and defeats, near the Metaurus, Hasdrubal, who perished in the battle with all his army.[528] From that moment Hannibal foresees the fate of Carthage; he abandons Apulia, and even Lucania, and retires into the only country which had remained faithful, Bruttium. He remains shut up there five years more, in continual expectation of reinforcements,[529] and only quits Italy when his country, threatened by the Roman legions, already on the African soil, calls him home to her defence.