The prisoners were badly treated if they were Romans; the Latin allies who were captured were well treated by the Carthaginians and many were freed and sent back to their cities, in the hope that they would speak well of Carthaginian martial prowess and of their treatment. Hannibal hoped some of these allies could be persuaded to defect. The Carthaginians continued their march through Etruria, then Umbria, to the Adriatic coast; continuing their devastation and plundering of the territory they crossed and the killing of any adult males captured; the Gauls were especially brutal in this respect. Contemporary reports claim that the Carthaginian soldiers accumulated so much booty they had to cease looting because they could not carry any more. The army then marched south into Apulia, in the hope of winning over some of the ethnic Greek and Italic city states of southern Italy.