Battle of Capua crush the rebellion of Syphax without the Scipios gaining any advantages in Iberia. In Sicily, the Siege of Syracuse continued. On the whole, the Romans under Marcus Claudius Marcellus had gained the upper hand. The Carthaginians had not recovered from the ravages of pestilence which had decimated their army. Capua had defected to Hannibal after the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Hannibal had made Capua his winter quarter in 215 BC and had conducted his campaigns against Nola and Casilinum from here. The Romans had recaptured Casilinum, crucial for attacking Capua, in 214 BC. Since then they had conducted
Socii to raise a double-strength army of four legions and four "alae" e.g. at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, where each Consul commanded an army of about 40,000 men. Polybius states that the Romans and their allies could draw on a grand total of 770,000 men fit to bear arms (of which 70,000 met the property requirement for cavalry) in 225 BC, shortly before the start of the Second Punic War. The Romans reportedly asked their allies for an urgent register of all "men fit to bear arms" for a "tumultus Gallicus". Polybius' subtotals, however, are garbled, as he