his camp on a high hill, was conducted by the inadvertence of his men to a lower one. Fearing that the enemy would attack from above, he dug a triple line of trenches and encircled these with a rampart. Then, running a single trench around all the tents, he thus fortified the entire camp. Having thus shut off the advance of the enemy, he filled in the ditches with earth and leaves, and made his way across them to higher ground.[1]
Gaius Fonteius Crassus, when in Spain, having set out with three thousand men on a foraging expedition, was caught in an awkward position by Hasdrubal. At nightfall, when such a movement was least expected, communicating his plan only to the centurions of the first rank, he burst through the enemy's patrols.
Lucius Furius, having led his army into an unfavourable position, determined to conceal his anxiety, lest the others take alarm. By gradually changing his course, as though planning to attack the enemy after a wider circuit, he finally reversed his line of march, and led his army safely back, without their knowing what was going on.
When the consul Cornelius Cossus had been caught in a disadvantageous position by the enemy in the Samnite War, Publius Decius, tribune of the soldiers, urged him to send a small force to occupy a hill near by, and volunteered as leader of those who should be sent. The enemy, thus diverted to a different quarter, allowed the consul to escape, but surrounded Decius and besieged him. But Decius, extricating himself from this predicament by making a sortie at night, escaped with his men unharmed, and rejoined the consul.[2]
- ↑ 323–281 B.C.
- ↑ 343 B.C.. Cf. Livy vii. 34 ff.
