His intention was to proceed to Casinum, but by some stupid misunderstanding, the general led the way to Casilinum, and the result was, that Fabius got ahead of him. On the mistake being discovered by Hannibal, he got 2000 oxen--but where he got them from does not exactly appear--and, having procured several thousand bundles of wood, he tied them to the horns of the animals. Having set the wood on fire, he turned the oxen out among the Romans, whose quarters soon were thrown into the sort of confusion prevalent in a London thoroughfare on a Smithfield market-day. In order to inflame the oxen, their horns had been covered over with pitch, which gave them an inclination to toss, and the poor creatures were running about in all directions, under the influence of fear and fury. Fabius is said to have mistaken the cattle for the Carthaginians, and to have rushed forwards, sword in hand, resolved on butchery. The Romans were thus drawn out of their favourable position, and Hannibal slipped into it, leaving the bulls to decide by a toss-up, if they pleased, the chances of victory over their aggressors. On the mistake being discovered by Fabius, he backed out as well as he could, and ventured on a few skirmishes, in which he met with some success, but he continued his policy of trying to tire out the enemy.
The plan he adopted was to continue always in an imposing attitude but to be ready to slip away, so that, when his antagonist gathered up his strength to make a hit, the force was always expended on vacancy. The Romans grew extremely impatient of a series of tactics which showed no immediate result; and Fabius, having occasion to return to Rome, was insulted by having the epithet of Cunctator, the dawdler, or the slow-coach, applied to him. One of the tribunes even went so far as to charge him with treachery; to which he made, what is usually called, the "noble" reply, "Fabius cannot be suspected."
It seems to have been extremely easy to get a reputation for "noble" replies among the Romans, since the mere denial of a charge, amounting to the commonplace plea of "not guilty," is frequently cited by the historians as a noble reply, because an individual in a toga happens to have uttered it. For the purpose of annoying Fabius, or the "slow coach," the people conferred on Minucius, who, for the sake of distinction, may be appropriately termed the "fast man," an equal share of power with the dictator himself, and half the command of the army. On the return of Fabius to the camp, Minucius proposed that they should command on alternate days, a course that would have been extremely inconvenient; for if Minucius had ordered the army to take a week's march, it is possible that on the day ensuing, Fabius would have ordered the army back again. The latter, therefore, proposed that each should take a separate half; but an army, like a house, cannot be divided without weakness being the inevitable consequence. The ill effects of the separation were soon shown; for Minucius, who was hot and hasty, was soon provoked by Hannibal to make an attack, and the Carthaginian general, who had been accustomed to talk of the Romans hanging over him like a cloud, declared that they had now come down upon him in a weak and watery shower. Minucius and his army would certainly have been absorbed, or, to use a more powerful figure, they would have been effectually wiped out, but for the generous intervention of Fabius. The latter saved the former from destruction, when Minucius, who was no less mawkish than rash, followed up the allegory of the rain by bursting into tears, and throwing himself on the neck, as well as on the generosity, of Fabius. Minucius resigned the dictatorship into the hands of his colleague, who leisurely wound up the campaign; and having resigned his power, has to this day reigned supreme as the example of the slow-and-sure principle in the theme of every schoolboy.